₦airaland Forum

4bobo: A foreigner, pastor, and a black american preacher that last visited lagos ,about 5 years back around the time fashola came in as a governor, revisited lagos this week, and really saw and acknowledged what had been changed and developed( even without asking who did that) whereby some bigot nairalanders in association with 40 man laptop crew, who has never visited lagos for the past ten years( and some, i believe never visit lagos in their life time) will be castigating, posting non sense, and asking questions they can never ask their serving governors ,about lagos. Do you think it is easy to govern a state like lagos?
I dont care anyway, because they will still say it was fashola that gave the preacher ,money to speak about his achievements.
But until we appreciate our own that are really working both in federal and state levels, (criticize them, when needs be), then this country can be better than this, not political sentiment that create hatreds and wickedness just because of some individual personal interests.

Myles Munroe has been in Lagos more than 10 times in the last 5 years. And he has traveled across Nigeria too. He was in Warri 4 months ago. He was in Uyo sometime back. He was also in Abuja. And he is always in Lagos including in December last year. The man didn't say Lagos has changed,He said Nigeria has changed. The credit for the changes in Nigeria in your warped mind should be attributed to Fashola and not Jonathan. Low-level thinking. What the heck are you talking about?
I love Fashola and I appreciate his efforts in Lagos, but I also appreciate the infrastructural change going on across Nigeria both at Federal level and in so many states across the country. As much as I give credit to Fashola for his successes, I must also give credit to Jonathan for his immense successes. Nigeria is a much more difficult place to govern than our small mono-cultural island called Lagos.

In case you failed to realize, the man was at the airport and saw the changes happening there too in comparison to what it was previously.Changes that are carried out by the Federal Government.

Very fat useless lie. The ones here in Nigeria are not begging for food it is the ones sent outside that would beg?
Nonsense useless premium times.
Food shortage and village heads are doling out 50 bags of rice and full cows. Nonsense article.

earthgreeners: DUMB...Jonathan cock sucker...How is you dirty village?
I'm sure you have never been to Lagos your entire life....
Comparing Fashola with Jonathan is like comparing a Lion with a Snail...... Jonathan can never acheive 1/1000 of what fashola has in Lagos, given the same resources and Time.....

Sorry eh. I dont usually debate dullards. I mistook you for a normal poster. My apologies.

earthgreeners: FOOL...
Everyone knows Fashola is an acheiver, though he still needs to do far more....Even my 5years Old nephew knows the othername for FAILURE is JONATHAN

The kind of empty rhetoric that leaves you wondering the kind of mentality those that hate Jonathan have.
Everybody knows Fashola is an achiever and Lagos is still a dumpsite?? Please. knock it off.
Fashola is doing great by laying a very healthy foundation for others to build upon, but to say he is an achiever,sorry Lagos is still a dumpsite despite all its assest and resources.
What has Fashola done as State Governor in 6 years that Jonathan has not done in 2 Years at an even greater scale?

Whizkid captured it aptly. Fashola's impact is on structure and its actually the most important first step. On Infrastructure,I wouldnt say Fashola has done excellently given that the difficulty of living in Lagos remains some of the worst cases on planet earth.

omiobo: GEJ is a failure. I can't see a project that is fully executed in the abovementioned projects. All is in progress as corruption is in progress.

How long did it take from conception for your mother to deliver you? Nine months no? If she did it in less than 9 months that would have been a failure because you would have come out premature. You want fully executed major projects in less than 2 years of an administration? Are you an advocate for premature delivery??
Major projects are for the first time in Nigeria been completed at record speeds and you are here talking failure. All previous governments ignored our airports. All previous governments ignored our railways. All previous governments ignored our road networks. Infrastructure is coming back up.
Anytime I drive the Benin Ore road these days and remember the days I was stuck in the bush for hours until late in the night, the missed flights that the bad road caused, the gruesome accidents I saw on that road, I appreciate Jonathan's government even more.
Fashola has been working on the 50km Lekki-Epe road for eight years and they are yet to complete it despite the huge income the accrues from tolls.

The airports have improved for the first the first time in our history. The railways are working even if not the best yet. They are commissioning new power plants. Agriculture is finally been transformed and the impact is obvious. OBJ had 8 years to do all this and he squandered it. He worked well on economic reform but he failed woefully in infrastructure development. I am glad anytime I see the areas that are improving. To think that all these are happening with huge security challenges.

More importantly, we havent had a bomb from Boko Haram since November 2012. Thats 3 months since the last bombing.

Nigeria is on a path of progress and Jonathan's administration is doing greatly. Although his scorecard on fighting corruption is very poor. Emphasis on fighting. But he has chosen to attack it through the back door. Not a good approach. He put the tools in our hands via the FOI but we have refused to use it. Also he doesn't come out strong on rule of law.

One thing Jonathan must learn to do is to inspire the nation. Working is not all it takes. Inspiration gets the citizens to participate effectively in the governing and developmental process. He hasn't inspired us well enough but he is working and performing assiduously!!

Are you guys serious? After reading the posts on this thread, I heard to be sure that the article wasn't from 2010-2011.

Haba, there are many Nigerian online businesses doing good.

Wakanow has turnover running into billions of Naira yearly and sorry, they are a web based.

Travelstart is another travel web business and they are doing good too although they came from SA.

Dealdey is doing pretty ok.

IrokoTV is big time and they are rumoured to be worth over 30 million dollars. Plus they received funding to the tune of 8 million dollars.

Nairaland sef dey try, even though I think he is making much less now than previously.

But how can you guys forget two big game changers that arrived in 2012- KONGA and JUMIA(Kasuwa).
I have no idea how much they do in sales, but its obvious with the amount they spend on advertising, they intend to do sales running into billions yearly.

There are a host of others making money. But the draw bag usually is that people have become accustomed to the free web. Almost everything is free online(Facebook, Google search, Email and a host of other services). To get people to pay for the services you are offering, you have to provide a compelling solution to an existing need such that it beats flat out the solution provided by offline businesses.

[quote author=edo.girl]Rubbish. Why cut fees for foreign investors, while only last week or so, the same government increased the cost of registering a limited liability company at the CAC . You reduce for foreigners who don't need the reduction only to increase for long suffering locals?

At the end of the day, it is small businesses established by ordinary Mr Chinedu and Mummy Junior that will create the jobs that we need, not mostly fake foreign 'investors' who come with empty pockets but are able to obtain big loans from local banks 'cos they are Oyinbo.

Surely, a genuine foreign investor with millions of dollars (supposedly) in his 'back pocket' will care less about a reduction in fees equivalent to just USD 250.

As things stand today, it will cost me less than £20 (N5000) to register a company in the UK, but registering an equivalent company in Nigeria will cost at least 6 times that amount due to GEJ government's latest increase.

To encourage entrepreneurship, Government must get out of people's way and cut down on needless barriers and costs. The cost of registering a company should be cut down to N10K or less.

Confused Government.[/quote]I agree with you to some extent but you must understand the context in which this reduction was done. You rightly stated that Foreign Investors would care less about such a small fee. But there is something Called the "Ease of doing business Index". Many foreign investors look at these indices before deciding on what country amongst a couple similar countries they would choose to invest. Things like how long it takes to register a company, the number of regulatory offices you have to deal with, the cost of registration and a host of others are used in scoring countries. What Aganga is trying to do is to make the country more investment friendly, get us up on the rankings investments that would have otherwise gone to Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and the likes.

Ease of doing Business Index: [url] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index[/url]

[quote author=edo.girl]Rubbish. Why cut fees for foreign investors, while only last week or so, the same government increased the cost of registering a limited liability company at the CAC . You reduce for foreigners who don't need the reduction only to increase for long suffering locals?

At the end of the day, it is small businesses established by ordinary Mr Chinedu and Mummy Junior that will create the jobs that we need, not mostly fake foreign 'investors' who come with empty pockets but are able to obtain big loans from local banks 'cos they are Oyinbo.

Surely, a genuine foreign investor with millions of dollars (supposedly) in his 'back pocket' will care less about a reduction in fees equivalent to just USD 250.

As things stand today, it will cost me less than £20 (N5000) to register a company in the UK, but registering an equivalent company in Nigeria will cost at least 6 times that amount due to GEJ government's latest increase.

To encourage entrepreneurship, Government must get out of people's way and cut down on needless barriers and costs. The cost of registering a company should be cut down to N10K or less.

Confused Government.[/quote]I agree with you to some extent but you must understand the context in which this reduction was done. You rightly stated that Foreign Investors would care less about such a small fee. But there is something Called the "Ease of doing business Index". Many foreign investors look at these indices before deciding on what country amongst a couple similar countries they would choose to invest. Things like how long it takes to register a company, the number of regulatory offices you have to deal with, the cost of registration and a host of others are used in scoring countries. What Aganga is trying to do is to make the country more investment friendly, get us up on the rankings investments that would have otherwise gone to Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and the likes.

Ol boy. This is what you call brinksmanship!!

Brinkmanship (alternately, brinksmanship) is the practice of pushing dangerous events to the verge of—or to the brink of—disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome. It occurs in international politics, foreign policy, labour relations, and (in contemporary settings) military strategy involving the threatened use of nuclear weapons

This man totally understands the game of power. Hehe. He is out to deal with the bigots in NFF. Now if he talks everybody will listen.
World cup is just a year away and there will be no better coach to man this wonderful squad Keshi has created.

Them go beg am. And I hope the bigots get flushed out of NFF. They would surely put up a tough fight and try to call his bluff. We the people should not leave him at this time. He gave each and everyone of us a certain kind of joy and pride yesterday. One we haven't experienced since the "miracle of damman" when we came back and equalised russia from 4-0 in 1989. Keshi, we gat your back!!!

Brinksmanship!!!

Ol boy. This is what you call brinksmanship!!

Brinkmanship (alternately, brinksmanship) is the practice of pushing dangerous events to the verge of—or to the brink of—disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome. It occurs in international politics, foreign policy, labour relations, and (in contemporary settings) military strategy involving the threatened use of nuclear weapons

This man totally understands the game of power. Hehe. He is out to deal with the bigots in NFF. Now if he talks everybody will listen.
World cup is just a year away and there will be no better coach to man this wonderful squad Keshi has created.

Them go beg am. And I hope the bigots get flushed out of NFF. They would surely put up a tough fight and try to call his bluff. We the people should not leave him at this time. He gave each and everyone of us a certain kind of joy and pride yesterday. One we haven't experienced since the "miracle of damman" when we came back and equalised russia from 4-0 in 1989. Keshi, we gat your back!!!

Brinksmanship!!!

Pacemaker: I happen to have old college friends that are from few African countries, and I wish to do some business research tour real soon in their countries. Sir, since you are widely traveled and acquired vast knowledge like most of us here, which African country would you recommend for business dealings?

Don't fail to include Nigeria in your tour. Nigeria is the biggest opportunity centre in Africa. Infact the various problems we have actually serve as horrendous opportunities. If you seek partnerships, then ensure that you get someone that is as capable as you are financially. Dont put money in anybody's hands except you have more than concrete reasons to. Also you can always set benchmarks before releasing monies. Do this and I release so and so. Over the course of your partnership, your partner would definitely expose hios deficiencies if there are any and at that point you can decide whether or not you would want to continue. Trust me there are more honest Nigerians than there are frauds!

gbola h: Can u pls post the link for people to be able to view the write up.

Link?? Please it is a book. You can buy it in bookshops both online and offline as well as on Amazon.com

bilms: I didn't know what to reply with

But Bilms you have a very poor grasp of the English Language too, you know that right?
In your article too there were many oral blunders, so what justification do you have to castigate or mock someones write-up who you are only just slighty better?

Like seriously, which flank of the APC's manifesto is that?? The CPC Flank?? Like did the Tinubu clan suddenly cast out the demons that have prevented Northerners from supporting true federalism?? Like who is deceiving who? I thought PDP was the Papa Decieving Pikin party. Is APC trying to borrow a leaf from the PDP??
Buhari to support True Federalism as manifesto for APC?? I am more likely to believe a story that says Buhari converts to Christianity than believe this manifesto crap!

[quote author=akande.james]just to clear the air.... this is a sign to Nigerians that all we need is a GOOD LEADER. a good leader in every organizations till the presidential office will fix all the problems we have and we will be celebrated all over the world as we are today. note that during this celebration, we forgot our race, religion, ethnicity and all other things that divide us. WE WANT GOOD LEADERSHIP pls. if GEJ truly loves naija, he should step aside for the capable hands, for God sake, people resign honourably in other democratic countries now !!!![/quote]The senselessness of your post. He should resign for who? Sambo or David Mark or Tambuwal?? Are any of them any better??
Please leave us alone to celebrate. A better advise would have been to tell him to up hid game.

Jonathan has just set a crazy record on Facebook.
15,000 Likes and 16,000 comments in just 3 hours.
Football is a great uniter. Nigerians are proud of the country again!

InvertedHammer: OP..you are a freaking genius.

A very good piece....Partnership in Nigeria is a murder waiting to happen adventure.

But people are making these partnerships everyday and have excellent stories to tell. If you are on a plane coming back to Nigeria, you see hordes of foreigners streaming into the country and the numbers keep increasing. Way back around 2005, it was only Chinese, Indians and Arabs you see on the plane. But now the mix is varied and spreads all the way from Australia to Turkey, Japan to Germany. These people(Foreigners) make successful partnerships in Nigeria so a Diaspora Nigeria has no excuse for not choosing the right partners.

In any country you go, no matter the systems in place, due diligence is required before you enter any partnership. Sweet words are not an indication of capacity. Tangible experience and adequate market info in the given field as well as credible and verifiable structures are a requisite before entering any partnership.

From the above story or satire,which ever is ideal, it is obvious the writer was a victim of sweet words. No hard questions before the partnership appeared in the write up. Writer would have fallen victim of the same thing in any country from Mexico to New Zealand, Singapore to Qatar!!

Emotional intelligence as well as Intuition are two of the most important characteristics of success! Get these two and you'll always do busniess with the right Nigerians.

Very strange that CNN's reknowned Amanpour would cut out the positive opinions a play only the negative ones. That is new and way out of professionalism. I'm not just amazed, I'm miffed.
Anyways, I stopped watching CNN SOME TIME BACK.

Is this a joke?? So there will be no primaries??
So if CPC is allocated the Presidential slot and Buhari is for some reason deemed unelectable, the opposition would be left with no choice but to manage any of the various other terrorists that come from CPC??

This is an instant losing strategy and its things like these that makes PDP look like a darling despite all its evils.

I noticed Oshiomole's name was conspicuously missing from the 10 governors that endorsed the merger and subsequent formation of the All Progressive Congress. Considering that his party, the ACN was a key player in the merger, you would think he would be one of the key supporters.
But no, A delegation has even been led by Shekarau to woo him and his responses do not connote one eager to join the new party.

What would you think went wrong?
Oshiomole is potentially the biggest asset the new party can wish for, can they afford to do without him?
He talked about selfish interest as a stumbling block to the success of the new party, which of the party's leaders do you think he referenced?

My personal opinion is that if the new party really wants a shot at the presidency, the only man they can position side by side the incumbent, Jonathan and expect to get near to victory is Oshiomole. And this is a function of nothing else but geography.


If you pick a northern candidate in the mould of Buhari and make Fashola or Tinubu his vice, majority of Southerners and Northern Christians would vote for Jonathan. Reason one, is that a Muslim Muslim ticket that has a perceived fanatical Muslim atop the ticket would be utterly unsellable. Even the South West would find that ticket hard to buy. Its only the core north, just like the last election that would give it votes.

If you put a South Western Muslim(Tinubu or Fashola) atop the ticket and select a Northern Muslim as vice, the core North and some good number of South Westerners would buy the ticket, but that would not give victory when you have the Northern Christians and the rest of the south supporting Jonathan.

But if you put Oshiomole atop the ticket with a northern Muslim as vice, he will steal two south south states(Edo & Delta) compulsorily from Jonathan, many South East voters would be comfortable with his candidature, the whole of the south west would support it, many Northern Christians would support the ticket and a huge population of northerners would go with him. The man speaks Hausa fluently, his parents are Muslims, he lived in Kaduna for much of his life, he was the chairman of the Textile workers, so with all these, wooing northern voters would be made easier for him.

Given the foregoing, can the new party afford to do without Oshiomole??

First I noticed that Oshiomole wasn't part of the ten Governors that endorsed the merger. That was strange considering that his party was a key player.
He and Mimiko were the only opposition Governors who were absent.
This visit and his responses are an obvious sign that he isn't part of the merger.
That is a huge dent on the so called Mega party especially when you consider that Oshiomole is the best candidate to up the fortunes of APC in any election by virtue of his position, performance and popularity.

I remember when GSM came to Nigeria. You call a number 20 times before it connects. But today you can call 100 times before it messes up.
I remember when internet first came to the world, checking mail was as slow as a snail. Today we watch live TV.
I remember when TVs first came to planet earth. They weren't flat screens but huge big boxes with black and white pictures.
I remember the first day I first saw a camera phone, it was like WOOOW. To think that it wasn't even a smartphone...
I remember the first day I tried to drive. I thought it was impossible. But today I probably can run a LORRY.


The moral is simple. The most important thing is to start. And then grow and grow and grow and grow!!
We have started. Slow and dastardly as it seems. We have started. Tommorow, or next year or a decade from now, we would have moved up the ladder and the trains would be faster. Our rail tracks that were ignored by all the past administrations have started moving again.
Even if the trains are slow for passengers, 21 hrs is not out of place for goods that previously ran on lorries.

Slowly and steadily, transformation is taking place... from Airports to Roads to Seaports to Railways... the evidence is made clearer by the fact that previous governments ignored all these things for decades!


I will end with the fact that while China is building SuperSonic railway systems, America and Europe that we love to reference are not able to do same because the cost requirements are enormous. Nigeria is not a rich country. Oil money is peanuts and would never build is speed trains.
There is a place and time for everything. We must start somewhere. If we dont start here, we will never start.

But which kind name be this na?? This people dont want to win eh??
All Progressive Congress. The name doesn't work abeg.
They should have found something better na.
If they cant give us a good name is it a good country they want to give us?

Jarus: Bros, you fall my hand o
You are one of the least people I expect not to be able to distinguish between out-of-station allowance(per diem) and travel costs. So you also think the logistics/service dept will hand over cash to a CBN governor to book hotel, flight etc himself.

Why on earth are people mixing what is expected to be simple?

I travel to Uyo, PH etc on official assignments and my company books flight, hotel etc for me and still hands over token as inconvenience.

If we don't know what is per diem/out-of-station allowance, at least we can read where he says he flies business/first/chartered. Does anyone expect that that is from the 25k? For God's sake, how does anyone expect a top public officer to be the one handling payment for flights, hotels etc by himself when there is corporate services dept? He may not even know how much those cost. The PA just hand over the ticket/reservation to him.

Ok. No mind me. I didn't really read the full article. I just read the headline.

But seriously, more important than the out of station allowance, wouldn't it do the populace better if we knew what exactly it costs per year or so to run the Governors office. Our intergrity governor should even be the one in a rush to show us the details like he is wont to do when it comes to other political office holders.

To be fair to Sanusi, I would like to look at his response from another perspective. By answering Aturu's request, he is strengthening the effectiveness, efficiency and efficacy of the FOI act. Commendable.

The youth have no hope because they don't want to.
Power never lets. Nobody would every give it to you on a platter.
If you want power, then take it.
There are more "youths"(18-45), probably about 80% of the population then there are old men. So if for any reason the olkd men still rule, it simply is because the youth haven't shown competence.

I hear people talk about a Buhari presidency and I scream in my mind in amazement.

25k?? I would hardly believe this amount. However it could be in order when you consider that the cbn governor has almost no where to go withing Nigeria on official assignment. Its just Lagos and Abuja which I think he has residences.

My average Lagos trip costs me about btw 40-60k per day.

Hotel bills on the island: 20-25k per night(very cheap)
Transport: Taxis or Car Hire: Average 5- 10k per day.
Feeding: Average 5k per day when there is no one tagging along. I avoid hotel food like a plague. Too costly and never worth the meal.
Other exigencies: 5 to 20k

25k is not a lot of money for a CBN governor. I so dont believe that figure.

nikaShow: 5 years hands-on experience. 3 of those years MUST be in a media and communication outfit. Anyone without necessary experience need not apply.

Must not be more than 25 years old by december 2013.

Meaning that at d age of 19, the person must have graduated form the University with a 2.1, Served by 20, and gotten a media related job
Common, give me a break, I bet you there's gonna be a compromise 'somewhere', so ignore the 'need not apply' and apply on !
All d best !

There surely is a catch to it.
What I see from the foregoing is that " If you are not determined enough to get this job, don't apply".
All those criterion are just set to discourage those random appliers. If you are 27 with maybe just one year experience and you really want the job badly, not because you want to get paid but because you believe that this company would go places and you can help it in doing so, you would apply at all cost. You would send your CV as well attach a well written cover letter. Your email would not be empty, your desire and passion would be seen in the mail. I would rather employ a passionate 3rd class holder who believes in the direction of my company and can be trained to be excellent than employ a first class graduate who wants to work for me only because the pay is good and would move on to chevron as soon as they broke him an offer.

All those restrictions are to prevent and discourage the half-hearted from applying.

Space Reserved for comment.
Entreprenuership is the lifeblood of any economy.It also is my passion and my work. I will comment in better details soon.....

^^^^
Ok, I assumed wrongly. You seem to know a lot about this and I'm glad you brought it up for discussion. I've never read in much detail the terms of the supreme court ruling and the abrogation act. My apologies for the allegation.

My interest about Bonga had been the economics of the field. The politics from what you're pointing out is quite interesting.

What in your opinion would be the reason why the FG takes the revenue and no state has the courage to challenge what might be an anomaly given that even the continental shelves ought to be defines geographically to belong in a certain state in Nigeria. Not very sure, but so I think.

@Aribisala, I assumed you had less info, so I just tried to pour some light on Bonga. But obviously, you know more than I thought.

Now you raised two salient points. One that no state claims revenue on Bonga and two that if all states were independent, the wouldnt have the capacity to claim the fields.

For your first point, I'd say there is no way revenue from Bonga would accrue diretly to the FG and the states would not invoke the supreme court ruling on onshore/offshore dichotomy. The field is too lucrative for the potential states to let go. Worse still, if any single drop were taken off Lagos waters, I know that the lawyer in Fashola would come in very handy.

On your second point, even small countries like Equitorial Guinea(pop 720,000) and Sao Tome(pop 180,000) have fields offshore. Ghana's oil discoveries are located offshore and same with much of the new discoveries accross Africa. Even if the field belonged to a country the size of a local Govt, it would get its due.

I think you got mischief off your sleeves and you are indirectly trying to debate the Onshore offshore dichotomy. You probably think states should not have the revenue from offshore fields accrue to thier accounts.

I wish Fashola can do the same and tell us just how much Tinubu stole from the treasury.
Ohakim might just look like a saint when Fashola does the Tinubu audit.