₦airaland Forum

I am so excited about this project, the way dangote is going, he will almost single handedly turn around our national economy.

I hope buhari has given him his hand over notes.

Yes with bubu out of the way, we will certainly make progress.

jomonic:
The injustice that pervades this part of the globe is self-evident. I know that some are benefiting so they do not want the status quo changed. We do not need a holder of PHD to lead a struggle against injustice. What it requires is courage, commitment, conviction, and empathy. You do not acquire these virtues through academic studies otherwise we will be looking in the direction of Charles Soludo or similar. However, in terms of western education Kanu can stand his grounds. Have you not heard him speak on diverse subjects? It is hypocrisy to demand very high academic standards from Kanu when you are very happy under a Buhari presidency. Is Buhari more educated or possess more leadership quality than Kanu.

Can you tell us exactly what injustice the igbos are being subjected to that is different from what other Nigerians are experiencing.

How exactly are the igbos being marginalised as opposed to other sections of the country? What exactly in concrete hands is the issue that is giving them problems?

IPOB is surely on a self destruct mode, it's their fellow igbo politicians that will finish them off. Bunch of delusional weed smokers

dlondonbadboy:
Kunle...

Atleast this one was bold enough to call his real names..others would have claimed they're chinedu or chukwuka...bunch of shameless cowards.

Why should anyone be afraid of stating his real name? After all most biafra agitators are just a bunch of misguided hypocrites. Ever wondered why the millions of igbos living in the southwest never join their delusional igbo brothers in the misguided call for biafra.

simplyhonest:
too long to make sense

Intellectual midget sighted

Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB finally presses the self-destruct button.

Initially I personally took the IPOB call for secession as a joke or at best a scam by some disgruntled South eastern politicians to blackmail to federal government to the negotiating table with the aim of securing some juicy positions for themselves. Whilst I will agree that our union in this country is not based on Justice, equity and fair play, with the leaders of a particular region always trying to manipulate resources and policies to their favor to the detriment of others whilst contributing little or nothing to the centre and not even taking care of the needs of their own people. However fortunately or unfortunately, the calls for secession got louder and louder and it became a popular rallying call amongst the igbos of the south east. Initially I thought it was just the unexposed igbos resident in villages in the south east who were being misled through the emotional rants of Nnamdi Kanu cause it was obvious to me that the calls for secession were clearly political and not because of any perceived marginalization but soon it became apparent that the calls for secession was more popular than I thought going by the daily E-wars that happen on social media on a daily basis.
Kanu’s misadventure started with his radio Biafra in the U.K after breaking away from MASSOB to start his own ‘sponsored’ Biafra agitation. Through the force of his strong character and his constant emotional rants that lacked substance, he was able to gain popularity amongst the igbo people resident in igbo land and in the dispora but most igbos living in other parts of Nigeria continued to ignore his noise and viewed him at best as a nuisance. As time went on he became more popular and more confident, he eventually returned to Nigeria to continue his agitation even though he knew he was a wanted man. The Buhari administration in their characteristic brutish manner wasted no time in arresting him and detaining him indefinitely contrary to court orders that he be released on bail. Whilst in detention Kanu expressed a lot of defiance against the federal government and proved himself to be very committed to the cause and with that his popularity ratings went through the roof. As events would turn out, buhari had to proceed on an indefinite vacation and in the interim he yielded power to his Vice who is a Professor of Law and unlike his boss respects court orders. So when the issue of bail came up again and he was granted a conditional bail, the government this time around respected the decision of the court and released him conditionally.
It was after the release of Kanu that his true colour started showing and him being unable to tame his ego with his new status as an igbo ‘messiah’. With this new status and the popularity he enjoyed, he started parading himself as a demigod, a power broker and even a miracle worker. His successful stay at home order to the igbos of the southeast further confirmed his popularity thus fueling his already over inflated ego and this was when he felt that he could take on the igbo establishment(political class) who were his initial sponsors by asking the Anambra people to boycott the upcoming governorship election.
Two areas which most corporate organizations like avoiding due to the divisive controversies that trail them are religion and politics. Nnamdi Kanu has successfully ignited a fire that will end up consuming him by crossing these two ‘sacred’ lines. Kanu’s parading himself as some sort of messiah with the heresy of some of his followers comparing him to Jesus is sure to backfire in the predominantly Christian Igbo land and as if that was not bad enough his attempt to get the people to boycott the upcoming Anambra governorship election will certainly hit a brick wall if he doesn’t retract. By daring to ask for a boycott of the elections, he has taken the war to his own people and sponsors. All along the igbo politicians turned a blind eye to his rants and even silently goaded him on but today Kanu sees himself as a demigod who is answerable to no one and has decided to take on the all-powerful political establishment by calling for boycott of their elections. The way the politicians will react to this is already very clear with the predominantly igbo APGA party coming out openly to condemn him. The way this will play out will be very interesting as the political class who have more resources and structures on ground will do everything to ensure that their elections are not interrupted and Kanu girded on by his messiah complex and his over inflated ego will be unlikely to retract on his foolish call for boycott of the elections. The die is already cast but it is my bet that IPOB days are numbered.

Kunle Oshobi is a New Nigerian Nationalist
https://www.facebook.com/New-Nigeria-Nationalists-269693356773027/

Rossikki:
What will they do when the actual secession comes, and the ENTIRE Nigeria asks them to leave? There are over 12 million Igbos living in other parts of Nigeria.

Why I ask is because I thought the Arewa youths' ultimatum would rally the Igbos up north to actualise their secession there and then, by leaving in droves. Instead what we saw was the Igbos agitating to remain. Why are you agitating, and claiming rights to remain inside a zoo?

Is it that you are so accustomed to life in the zoo, that you cannot survive outside it?

Or you love the smell of the zoo so much that if you leave it your noses start to itch?

And if such is the case, then why the secessionist drive?

It's really confusing.

It proves majority of igbos are not in support of the Biafra movement. Only a noisy few ignorant illiterates resident in the south east are falling for the scam.

Buhari is the biggest disaster that has happened to Nigeria since the end of the civil war. The list of his atrocities is endless and he is clearly incompetent.

May God continue to bless dangote.

I am a New Nigerian Nationalist.

Cc: lalasticlala mynd44 see how Nigerians are fed up of bubu.

Celcius:
Mehn...this one is hard. Really dicey. Nice arguments y'all are making.
Donald Duke was governor of Crossriver in his late 30 and performed exceptionally well. Bukola Saraki also did his bit for Kwara State then as a youthful governor.
But sincerely the same cannot be said of Yahaya Bello of Kogi State right now.
In any case, me won't vote any 55+ year old laggard for president.

The more important thing is that we Nigerians start choosing our leaders based on ability to perform and not ethnicity or religion that does not add value to anyone. We really need to raise our standards.

omohayek:
Why would they bother, when the only thing most Nigerians care about is tribe, religion, and who is handing out rice and chicken for votes? Just look at the energy people on here put into nonsense like "the next president must come from XYZ", without once considering that someone from the "wrong" region might actually offer policies that are more beneficial to them.

Very well said but the results of this polls shows that perception can be changed if only youths with right leadership qualities will be bold enough to take the plunge. Our youth need to come out boldly and sell themselves and ideas to the general public instead of allowing the old generations tribalistic sentiments that did nothing for us to hold them captive.

SalamRushdie:
What is this balderash about youthful president please when 90 percent of our presidents ruled us in their youth with a very youthful cabinet from Azikiwe to Gowon ..our problem doesn't have anything to do with age but the lack of leaders with selfless vision

Our youth today are better educated and exposed than our fathers were at our age. That said we are just not advocating for generational shift, the youth leaders that will emerge must be youth of high repute, integrity, intelligence, dynamic, creative and with a passion to develop Nigeria.

Lalasticlala, mynd44 let's promote the youth agenda.

tit:
buhari till 2023!

Enemy of Nigeria sighted!

The OP is 100% correct but their plan will fail in Jesus name.

Once again our dear Nation is at a cross road, with an economy in recession, insecurity in the land, poor leadership and institutionalized unfairness and corruption in the way we share our resources and run the country, the voices of those who feel oppressed keeps getting louder by the day. Opportunist are hijacking this genuine yearning for equity and justice to pursue their ill thought out agenda to secede and divide the country without thinking of the consequences of their evil actions. The Nation today stands deeply divided along ethnic lines and those who were around during the civil war in which over 2 million Nigerians lost their lives will remind us that what we are witnessing today is the same thing that preceded the war. Yet within this chaos are those who believe passionately in Nigeria, those who believe we are better off together and those who know that “united we stand, divided we fall”, those who dream of a great future for our dear country, those willing to make a sacrifice to make Nigeria great again.
Let us say No to the voices of division amongst us, No to the cries of war, No to intolerance, No to tribalism, No to religious bigotry, No to mediocrity and let’s all hands to make Nigeria great again.
I believe in Nigeria, a New Nigeria and a Nigeria of our dreams. I am a New Nigerian Nationalist.

https://www.facebook.com/New-Nigeria-Nationalists-269693356773027/?notif_t=page_fan&notif_id=1497024764977039

Share if you believe in Nigeria.

National Re-Orientation as a Panacea For Nigeria’s Socio Economic Growth and Development.
Growing up in the eighties under the corruption infested Babangida administration, I witnessed a time period in which we lost most of our values as a country. Yes corruption existed before the Babangida administration but it was under his administration that corruption was institutionalized and it became an integral and ‘accepted’ part of our social system. Prior to then policemen asking for bribes did so very discreetly but today they arrogantly demand bribes in full glare of the public and likewise our politicians who took bribes, were very happy with a ten percent cut after getting the job done but today our politicians inflate a contract by 1000%, award the contract to fictitious companies owned by themselves and their cronies and nothing gets done even after documents are signed that the job has been completed and full payment has been released for the contract. Today the average Nigerian sees government jobs as an opportunity to steal and enrich his/herself and families and not as a call to be of service.
I also witnessed a time in which hard work was not rewarded but rather crime. In those days businesses were collapsing and hardworking people were being retrenched and at the same time drug pushers and fraudster became the noveau rich. Organized fraud became so popular that a new term “419” was added to the Nigerian lexicon to describe these fraudsters and the term “419” itself was derived from an inconsistence in our criminal code which seems to suggest that ‘obtaining by false pretense is no crime’. The only other people that seemed to be making money then apart from drug pushers and fraudsters were people in government who were helping themselves to our collective wealth. The average youth growing up in those days had nothing much to look forward to as it was unlikely he got a decent job even if he graduated with a first class degree and even if he did the take home pay of a graduate then (and even now) was nothing to write home about. The incentive to work hard just wasn’t there. Bearing this in mind I can safely conclude that the greatest damage that Babangida did to Nigeria was not the billions of dollars he was alleged to have stolen but the fact that it was under his regime that our value system as a country was totally destroyed and till this day we are yet to recover from this national disaster twenty four years after he ‘stepped aside’.
The fall out of this institutionalized corruption which has eaten deep into our value system and has now made corruption the norm is that the average policeman now sees every case as a business transaction, you have to bribe to get virtually everything you need from government, incompetence is the order of the day were nepotism and tribalism take precedence over qualifications, politicians believe they can buy our votes and a lot of Nigerians gladly sell it for peanuts, we end up having bad roads, no electricity, poor health infrastructure, poor quality education, poor sanitation, low standard of living, high crime rate, low productivity, mediocrity both in government and even the private sector which all add up to the low quality of life that we are all being subjected to.
The greatest asset any country can have is the quality of its people. Quality not just in terms of intellect but in terms of integrity, drive, orientation, focus, passion and love for the country. The kind of people who are willing to sacrifice for the common good and not just people who think about themselves alone. A great American president once challenged his citizens to “think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” that challenge I believe is very relevant to Nigerians today. Japan is an island nation with almost no natural resources, yet they are one of the leading manufacturers and the third richest country in the world. They import virtually all their raw materials process and turn them to manufactured goods then export them again at a premium and in the process they create jobs for their people, revenue to their government and wealth to their nation yet they don’t have one percent of the natural resources God blessed our dear country with and yet in Nigeria we export raw materials for peanuts and import them back as finished products at exorbitant prices. The fact that we still have to import petroleum products today after exporting the crude oil that they are produced from remains the biggest contradiction in our governance and by far the biggest leakage to our economy in terms of foreign exchange and job loss.
The first step taken to solve a problem is to first identify the problem and a cursory look at Nigeria’s problem will reveal clearly that the problem with Nigeria is Nigerians themselves. The problem lies not only with the leadership but with the governed as well because we were all witnesses to how some Nigerians celebrated a convicted felon by the name James Ibori when he returned to the country after serving jail time in a foreign land for stealing the money of those same people who were celebrating him. To put it crudely, our mentality in this country is warped and we need to do something drastic about changing the mindset of the average Nigerian if we are to make any meaningful progress as a country.
When sometimes last year, the Buhari administration announced that they were going to launch a national orientation program aimed at re orientating Nigerians to be better citizens, I heaved a sigh of relief. I thought that something good was finally going to come out of this directionless government but alas, I spoke too soon. The government was more interested in the propaganda that they were seen to be doing something than actually getting the job done. After all the noise about launching the orientation program which was named “changed begins with me” we heard nothing about the program again apart from the skirmish between our propaganda minister and a private company about who owns the credit for the idea behind the program and the private company threatening to sue the minister for using their intellectual property without any acknowledgement. Clearly the minister was more interested in being seen to be performing than actually getting the job done.
The first problem with their so called re-orientation program was that the government itself failed to understand what it was all about neither did they get the buy in of the president who merely came to the charade as an invited guest rather than being the chief host and promoter of the program. Secondly the government tried to shift the responsibility of change to the citizens without providing the leadership by naming the program “change begin with you” thereby shifting the burden of change to the people they were meant to lead. The truth is that real change is a collective effort and if it is to be effective, it must start from the top. Government must lead by example, they must be ready to cut all the wastes in government, their anti-corruption war must be seen to be sincere and not just a witch hunt, they must be ready to make personal sacrifices and make drastic cuts in the cost of governance, service delivery of all government agencies must be improved on, corrupt elements in government must be identified, weeded out and made an example of. Government must lead the charge in this change whilst it actively encourages the citizenry to follow suit, also there is a need to run a campaign for an extended period of time across all media to drum in the message of change to re orientate the people. Those of us who are old enough to remember the “War Against Indiscipline” championed by Tunde Idiagbon under Buhari’s former military regime will recollect that Nigerians bought into it because the government of the day led by example and they sustained a campaign to inculcate discipline into our national lives. This I believe is not too difficult to replicate today.
I hereby call on our national leadership to re-visit this issue of national re-orientation, take a critical look at it and re-launch the program but this time seriously and sincerely. Government must lead by example with the change starting from the presidency, they must then get the buy in of the national assembly and the judiciary. The state governments, local governments and all government agencies must follow suit and this way the general public will buy into it once they see that the leadership is sincere and is leading by example. Our media houses should also be encouraged to commit to it so that the message can be spread on a persistent and sustainable basis at a minimal cost to government. The role of the media is very critical to this program as the people don’t just change their orientation overnight, the campaign to re-orientate Nigeria should be done with the same vigor that politicians use when they campaign for elective office and when millions of Nigerians buy into it, re-orientate themselves and begin to work selflessly towards a better Nigeria, we would surely realize the Nigeria of our dreams.
As Nigerians today, we need to do some soul searching, we need to go back to the drawing board, we need re-orientation and we need good leadership. We need a leadership we can trust that whilst we are making sacrifices to change, the leadership is making greater sacrifices to lead us there. We need to elect leaders based on their competence/capacities and not based on ethnicity, religion or sentiments, we all need to get involved, it’s a collective effort. We need to love our country, we need to start thinking what we can do for our country to make it a better place, we need to change our collective attitudes and re-orientate ourselves, we have a responsibility to ourselves, our children and our unborn generation, we need to tell ourselves the truth, we need to change our work ethics, we need to say no to corruption, we need to work hard to make Nigeria great again. Let’ all join hands together to work and realize the Nigeria of our dreams.
Kunle Oshobi is a coordinator of the New Nigeria Nationalist.
https://www.facebook.com/New-Nigeria-Nationalists-269693356773027/?notif_t=page_fan&notif_id=1497024764977039

This Nnamdi Kanu is really an accomplished iidiot.

May God grant Obasanjo many more years in good health. Love him or hate him, Obj remains the best leader we have ever had.

salam1:
and only fools will vote for looters

Are you saying the only option to buhari in 2019 must necessarily be a looter That buhari is the only saint in Nigeria? Just remember that looted funds was used to finance his campaign which makes him worse than an hypocrite.

To label buhari's government a monumental failure would be a gross under estimation of the problems his bigoted, archaic, daft and directionless govt has caused. Buhari is clearly the worst thing that has happened to Nigeria since the end of the civil war.

Rossikki:
Why don't these people just be honest and call a spade a spade?

They simply want to seize the whole oil and gas income the country is currently sharing. If there was no oil and gas in that region...If for instance, the oil was in the west, and all the south grew was bananas and pawpaw, does anyone seriously think we would be seeing this secessionist agitation from Biafra? I seriously doubt it. And the hilarious thing is how Ipob tries to rope in the south-south into their scheme - no doubt because of their oil fields, since they have disdain for every other ethnicity..... And the south south say "na...we're not in". Ipob considers the Efiks, Riverine people etc, "their brothers"..... Truth is, if you replaced those groups with Yorubas, watch how quickly Yorubas will become "their brothers". Success (and opportunity) has many friends (and 'brothers').

Very good observation, the roguish hypocrites are actually trying the south south to join their delusional movement. Bunch of criminals.

Anybody that wants buhari back in 2019 after his disastrous first two years in office really needs to get his head examined.

The primary problem with Nigeria is the vicious, selfish and greedy cabal that has held the country hostage for the past fifty-seven odd years.

Within this vampire coalition, all members of the different ethnic groups are adequately represented without exception.

It is from this gang of mindless usurpers that we must achieve our liberation.

God bless Nigeria.