₦airaland Forum

Obiagelli:
barcanista Gbawe, kel4soft, neenar, ,
descartes, egift, arewafederation, Egbagirl, donroxy,
Sweetlemon , donphilopus, BEREM, desola ,
demdem , lakpalakpa , whitecat007 , ,
lakpalakpa, omenka, ShehuAba , omenka , Rawani,
tribaleast kolaaderin soroptimist MizMyColi,
and all other JANJAWEIEDS,
Mynd44, , nduchucks, lacasa, baccaspace, Omerta, ilugunboy.

let's discuss.

CROWE:
This entire write up is designed to exploit the illiteracy of Nigerians. The economy of a nation is improved by investment in infrastructure and government policies designed to create a favourable business environment and then monies injected into the economy to induce growth. All this "we will pay people for 12 months while they look for jobs" is buying votes because if they don't invest in the business environment where is the job that you are supposed to find come from? I dunno who is good for Nigeria or who will fix her but I know that Atiku and Buhari just like most of you here screaming "apc! apc!" lack the faculties necessary to diagnose and fix Nigeria. I will probably be voting Jonathan if I bother to vote at all, he may be so far ineffective but his roadmaps and masterplans are designed by people who have some clue and it shows that there is something running around in his brain after all, more than I can say for most of them.

mapet:
@ datolee, let me engage you a bit

1. The APC led FG needs not mandate states irrespective of their party to follow the policy. First off, there are blue prints that cover the whole country. I had given an example of South African Railway strategy, for example. All the APC government needs to do is to come up with a sustainable employment aiding initiatives, pilot in APC controlled and some other states that can buy into the initiatives for starters. Also don't forget the fact that there are lines when national interest overrides and it is irrespective of party; case in point, the power aspiration. A huge, water-tight, sustainable strategy from a federal government will, will spin-off the necessary catalyst in states.

2. Your contrary point 2 turns logic on its' head. First off, identifying elderlies and vulnerable citizen is not rocket science, a first phase can be established in 6months. The Lagos State government has an ongoing initiative called LASRAB, I also know OSUN, ONDO, PH, and some Northern states have started one form of initiative to enumerate either a section or a whole of their coverage area. We have failed in the past with national census, but the parallel census Tinubu's government did in Lagos back then is the reference point even from international bodies used to estimate the population of Lagos. Back then Lagos state identified some classical points in the over 16m population, one of them namely, that we have over 4million registered houses in Lagos.

I'm also persuaded to emphasis that enumeration is important in planning, so either through elderly program schemes, school enrolments, state date enrolment etc. peoples demographics and stats needs to be established.

You also need to check your numbers, 5thousand times 25million is simply 125million.

3. The need to flesh out your usual "Nigerian Estates and FTZs" is probably important to check your understanding of its essence and implication. But in addition to that, If we look at it from the point of view of the aspiration for incubators and industrial clusters to revamp the yawning gaps and deficits, balance of trades, employment, and consequent boosters to related sectors of the economy, then you'd get the big picture. If a train can connect to the Lekki FTZ from Kano via Iddo to the proposed Lagos rail on the Lekki corridor, you can imagine the gap that will be bridged. If the proposed International Airport can handle 3-4times the volumes MM airports are struggling with in operations efficiencies, space, road nextworks...... I mean no single rail line connects to any of our international airports..... But I think we need to try look in the telescope, what are the "byproducts" of free trade zones? A major project the Ministry of Gas and Power has been toiling to land, since the days of Yar' Adua to date is the National Gas Park to be situated at Ogidigben. This should birth industries like Petrochemicals, Fertilizers, Domestic Gas, Gas for Export etc.

Estates are important, as they have direct ties to increasing the incomes that come to government in terms of ground rents and land charges, this is aside from closing the gap on housing. The newer concept when lots of skyscrapers are beginning to take the places of small houses will help further make houses more affordable comparatively. So startups can situate their offices in high commercial areas by taking small space of a 25th floor of 30floor building on Lagos Atlantic City.

4. APC are not Father Christmas. They have simply come to point out few gospel truths that we're sitting on gold mine and we can mine it. That we can use the Oil money to accelerate true development. That we should accelerate massive capital projects especially when the Oil price is high and much more that investments in these capital projects will further bring prosperity as evidenced with Asian Tigers

5. Your number 5 is laughable. To your question about Nigerians comparative and competitive advantage in phone production? 1. Population = viable market, 2. Lower Labor cost - same reason Apple took theirs to China 3. Viable alternative market space for Apples' competitors. Why do you think Samsung's market strength is in sub-Saharan Africa?

6. Good enough you agree with the index-linked pricing strategy. The need to do this is to create a balance in the coverage of the produces to all works of life. Let me give you a funny example, if Nigeria suddenly becomes the largest exporter of leather (it could be farm produce), there will come a time where it will make more sense to the farmer to either horde his produces and wait for exporters who will pay a higher price, than sell in the open market. Nutshell we may have a situation where, even though we produce in large quantity, it is still expensive. So government will setup a price intermediation and management company who coordinates the who and how the produce will be sold. To the exporter, they sell at premium and gains on these premium will be used to pay the farmers the difference on the sales to the local consumers.

These are just examples of how we can creatively unearth wealth that are already locked in

7. When you keep saying money, money, money everywhere.......I'm tempted to believe you don't want to constructively critique on purpose. What is difficult in government creating a sinking/revolving from some defined income streams and excesses to drive startups, that will in turn increase employment and much more create more wealth. Lagos State government demonstrated that with the Security Trust Fund, the business sectors bought into it and has been a robust approach to crime reduction and equipping security agencies, a deficit rent sharing has not been able to solve.

8. The job of FG is to ensure each citizens is adequately catered for. So it means starting vocational centers in all LGs which they can then privatize later when they are commercially viable and can self sustain, then so be it. Let's be real, which business man will invest in vocational training center today just like that, when there are hardly any organized sectors the graduands will feed. But the government whilst creating structures needs to side-by-side start this centers and institutions to create a sustainable skill acquisition and value actualization strategy.

9. The Federal Mortgage scheme is largely in doldrums, not accessible, and needs total rework. The federal government's housing policies and it's realities are there for us to see in all these years. The Lagos State government has indeed been running a transparent and better strategy

10. As a short term measure, the FG can do one of the following - Provide a revolving fund, what excess crude oil returns should do if the constitution permit for example or Reenact People's Bank/Fortify the base of Bank of Industry to offer loan support to the small scale industries at a government indexed rate.

11. Obiageli's answer on this is on point and no more to add

datolee:
As an end note, when I talk about rhetoric of Nigerian politicians, remember when BRF promised 4th mainland bridge in his first and second campaign? when it was time for implantation, he had this to say “And to construct a kilometer of that bridge is about N40 billion, so the issue is that we also need to factor the cost of demolishing the 318 buildings into the project. Alot of these buildings are beautiful houses.” The question therefor is, didn't he know about those beautiful house before promising Lagosians 4th mainland bridge?

Just like Fashola and 4th mainland bridge, I will take APC road map to nowhere as rhetoric and usual political propaganda.

londoner:
Well, the intentions presented by APC are good, but I think they are going down a road of dependence to get votes, without the system in place to ensure Nigeria does not sink under it.


I know we want to replicate what we have in the west, but I wonder how much actual research or understudying of those systems they have done.

Social services, subsidies only work on the back of an ever replenishing system of tax. In other places, most people pay tax and that is what pays for all the services provided to those who both have and have not. Even if one or two states were able to do this, we are talking about 36 states doing this at once, and being paid for by the government. Will this be done yearly, or just for the lucky few that happen to be able to benefit from the election year?

It looks as though they want the government to spend, but in the absence of a robust national system of taxation that receives a simultaneous inflow, the gov will quickly bankrupt itself.



I think the role of the gov is to create an enabling environment for investors while they skill up citizens as a ready workforce. In a way, part of this, is what is being described, but they are painting a picture which I think is far too simplistic. Or even more, promising what can not be delivered in practice or at least as quickly as people are being encouraged to expect it.

I like that they will create programmes to provide funding for business, but it's only for those who have already secured funding elewhere, which leaves the poorest in society dependent on stipends from the government.

There needs to be help for small business start ups or sole traders. The woman selling akara can also become an employer if she is able to expand and develop her business skills.

How can we use what is already on ground to create jobs? As well as starting new initiatives?


Industries/sectors need to be ready to recieve all those trained, also, we can easily have a situation where we have yet more unemployed certificate holders. They don't seem to be talking on these things and I suspect it is because they want to , at this time, key into the "give me" mentality of the average Nigerian. Many will hear that they will recieve money, then switch off, before the details......lol

PDP does the same.


I'm not saying APC are wrong, but I believe they are not being realistic or really looking at the bigger picture of Nigeria. Hopefully, more will come to light leading up to the election.

At least they have policies aimed at the common person, the foundation of Nigeria.

mapet:
1. It's either you've decided to not to see reason or choose to see from your pov. Both ways are for you to decide anyways
2. The manifesto simply state objectives to provide Jobs, to match every job created by the state with double from the FG. We had gone ahead to elucidate that there are huge gaps in areas ranging from Government investments in Agric Investment, Capital Constructions, health care support, etc as areas these new recruits who as the manifesto stated will be trained by the government the places where these people will work? I wonder what more you're looking for? Do you want the government to place them in Blue chips or Banks
3. You supply me with an extract of the British Labour party offering and you call that a road map. You do not understand what a roadmap is, at least not in this context. Let's even review what you submitted. So APC should go to an average Nigerian and tell them in their manifesto something like " we will cap interbank settlement rate at 9%.....blablabla", please tell me what is the use of that to the average Nigerian of today? Those things you brought in the Labour party statements are extracts of a big pictures cascaded into metrics. They are meaningless when you don't relate them to an overarching objective, and at best useless measures.

londoner:
A road map should state HOW you are going to deliver. Without that, it's just a claim.

mapet:
1. You need to lay off what you don't know about or rather stop spewing lies.
2. The United Nations bodies that applauded Aregbesola's Youth Empowerment programs and the bodies that gave him award for it, were blind and did not see what you "concocted" yet gave him the award?
3. I know for a fact that teaching applications in Osun state had always been oversubscribed right from the 80s, so your "open secrete" is a figment of your imagination.

Obiagelli:
You want to employ ssce drop outs as teachers?

Did you not read continuous training? I know many lastma guys that have received part-time degrees and have moved on to greater things. Without lastma, kai and co, what would have become of these people.

Tell me that state where nysc members dont teach

obayaya:
Bros, I don't know what UN applauded and what they didn't. But believe me when I say that most of the secondary schools in osun are understaffed..

I know a school that has less than 10 teachers. The rest are corps members. Take a tour of the schools in the rural areas and see for yourself

datolee:
Here lies the problem of both APC, PDP and Nigerians, according to you, Average Nigerians do not need to ask for detail plans and policies of any Government because they will not understand it.. your solution s very simple, throw money at them! when that doesn't solve the problem, throw more money at them. I don't know about you, but if we are to believe every promises Nigerian's politicians make, Nigeria would have been the greatest country on earth!

I think londoner hit the nail on the head! I won't go further than what he said, that is exactly my position.

Final point, as per the 4th mainland bridge, what I wanted to highlight on that part is that Nigerian politicians don't do research nor understudy before making bogus promises that they cannot fulfill. You cannot tell me that after BRF first term, he didn't know about the difficulties in constructing 4th mainland bridge, but he still used the same rhetoric for his re-election. It is the responsibility of us the citizens to ask questions, keep these politicians on their toe rather than swallowing every lies they tell hook line and sinker.

This reminds of popular saying in my state, when a man is in desperate to sleep with a man, he will make so many promises like "If i go shoe, i will buy you Onitsha" instead of if I go onitsha I will buy you a shoe. The goal of politicians is to get the votes, therefore they will make ambiguous promises like spending 30.2% of total budget on vulnerable 25 million people.

mapet:
1. I think the first problem we have is that the PDP government have killed the spirit of debates in this country. More and more PDP candidates avoid debates, so we are having situation when we can throw this into the open
2. Social services and subsidies work more on creating a sustainable system of generating returns that fuels those taxes. How do you want to sustain and increase returns from taxation if you do not increase jobs and potential to increase incomes.

My point is that we don't have a nationwide system of taxation at the moment. Let tax revenue begin from those who are working or operating businesses at the moment. We are not trying to create a new tax paying workforce.

3. The important things are get people credibly engaged for starters and work on how to increase return. Lagos State government demonstrated this in no small measure by increasing the IGR from 600m Tinubu met on ground to over 20B of Fashola today, with a projection to double this by the turn of the decade. If Lagos State had relied on taxation alone (which a huge % don't pay), how do you think this height could have been attained.

The issue is the so called huge % that don't pay......therein is the issue. Lagos is the commercial capital of Nigeria, with over 20 million people and many of the largest companies operating in Nigeria, head quartered there. In a national sense, where is Jigawa state, Ekiti state. Ebonyi state going to create tax for the central gov to collect and use for nationwide infrastructure, training, social welfare etc? Lagos is not a replica of every other state. There has to be a nationwide tax system imho.

4. Government creating enabling environment could require government making the first move to attract investors. We need to put our money where our mouth is in this case to further convince investors. Government could exit the market when the conditions are ok to self-sustain.

Let's be honest with ourselves, the money we have is not enough, alone to provide for training, enabling environment, infrastructure of the whole country of 170m plus people. Some individual states are able to make an attempt at a few things, but across the board, I don't think there is any state that is able to. Investors will never be attracted to a country that has a very government dependent population.

Your position that APC are not realistic is what I'm yet to understand. It is either you're content with the current abysmal state or you're not disposed to change.

I'm used to a system where 'road maps' don't just make claims but also spell out how......I live in a place where in the political space, "what and how" are dealt with simultaneously. Unless we are talking of the yellow brick road.

I still maintain that let there be series of debates leading to the election. Let not any candidate request for questions ahead of the debate as Jonathan required the last time. Let us all lay our manifesto at the altar of public scrutiny..

datolee:
Thanks a lot... londoner, this has been my problem with APC members offline and online... No need stating we will fight corruption, we will do this and that, yet, HOW ALL THESE WILL BE DONE IS ALWAYS A MISERY.

mapet:
1. You mean APC should stand on the podium in Oshodi, or Upper Iweka and tell people " we will give you 2% tax breaks"......and might I point out the obvious, how do you expect the ordinary man on the street to appreciate that? Will that solve his problems? Besides if we are addressing a business community, we'd communicate to suit the target audience.

2. My brother, I never said the average Nigerian need not ask for detailed plans, and wonder the necessity of your needless inference. I simply pointed out the misuse of the UK Labour Party metric extract in their manifesto which you naively think it's the totality.
3. I also hold no responsibility for your inability or refusal to comprehend APC's wealth generation strategy. PDP has always thrown money at people so it's not surprising you can't decider between it and stimulating empowerment through the consequent effect - improved school enrollment, reduced infant maternity, increase in workforce population.
4. Don't kill yourself with the 4MB thingy. Lagosian do know what we have delivered through thick and thin, how we have delivered beyond our promise in many areas. The 4MB will come to fruition and in a more sustainable way. If we can deliver Lekki Express way and the world class road on the the Badagry corridor, then it's only a matter of time.