₦airaland Forum

....just passing by....
....whatever will be will be....
We are all culpable for this mess.... all 200 million number poor quality citizens...

shadelek:
El Rufai is just a simple definition of devil in human cloth.
Wetin be my own, Northern problem for Northern people. It's just a pity everybody has taken laws to his own hands.
I don't understand why someone will wake up and decided to put and end to another person's source of income, too bad!

Income from where. You folks like to speak from both sides of the mouth. Is this not cutting the high cost of government we have all been talking about.

Everywhere else on this planet since the beginning of Covid there have been restricted incomes, failed enterprises and massive job losses, everywhere except the Nigerian public service.

On which planet do they exist?. They are part of Nigeria's failed economy and the pain should go round. They shouldn't expect the private sector only to make the sacrifices. The NLC should tell us how they intend to help this country survive economically.

Even cruise control has become a problem for me to engage these days. How times change. All the youthful exuberance has vanished I guess. The value to life has suddenly quadrupled since leaving the military and 'growing up'. I'll gladly pass up any attempt to have electronics determine how I will eventually go.

Though the figures look dodgy but he is absolutely right. Oil resourced economies are not the biggest economies anywhere in the world and the history of coal as an extractive industry resource should tell us we are in line for a big fall.

Meanwhile the fundamentals surrounding agriculture will remain forever strong with rising populations and consumption particularly as more escape poverty is the rest of the world.

The million dollar question I would always ask my fellow black man popularly known as THE NIGERIAN is:
Does it necessarily need a tragedy of epic proportions to drive home the point and trigger the impetus to restructure. Have we not been playing poker with this diversification thing for the last 40-odd years without any side blinking....

Truly, suffering is good for the soul.

I am totally with El-Rufai on this one.
Government is simply a burden on the people. A huge, huge burden for that matter, hoovering up almost every penny earned by this country at the Federal/National level and at the Federating States of which El-Rufai must be seeing 'red' figures recurrently.

The sheer cost of government is a big reason why this nation simply CANNOT invest in productivity. Then the big question remains. What is the ROI for typically expending 60, 70, 80 percent of revenue on this 'well deserving 5 percentile'....the best you get in return is PAYE which to the government is like eating food before preparing it....

The real goose that should be laying up treasure for the nation, the private sector in the form of the middle class, blue chips and small businesses struggle with the high cost of staying alive simply because there is no government footprint to its statutory responsibility of infrastructure or a shoulder to lean on in times of economic difficulty. Meanwhile they are required to pay the bulk of taxation and generate the bulk of jobs.

I think it is time we as a nation should get serious and begin to create laws that will limit the amount of resources every tier of government can expend recurrently as a factor of overall earnings with severe penalties for defaulting governments.

Barcelona is in terminal decline with the certainty of a Messi imminent retirement. Keeping him will not improve the fortunes of the team. The sooner they let him and his astronomical wages go the better their finances will be with which to rebuild.

The history and destiny of all great institutions is all too similar. The longer you keep the kingpin beyond its sell by date the deeper will be the fall when the inevitable happens and the harder it will be to rebound. The world of politics, business, industry, entertainment and sports is steeped with examples. Both Manchester United and Arsenal are colourful examples of this truism, holding onto managers for long without a post plan. So long, too long and the recovery to glory will exactly be like that.

The tree of liberty and prosperity will always lend itself to self renewal at every opportunity. Winter is certainly coming to the Nou Camp.

Was it not the same 'hope' the previous regime sold tirelessly but was still ejected at the polls. What has changed except the 'preacher'.

The great question we should be asking today is why the standards of citizen advocacy has fallen to such grave levels that felons, brigands and violent non-state actors are the ones forcing action and the much desired changes.

Doesn't it tell us that the great crusade of hope was left unfinished in 2015 as a good many thought development started and ended with the elections. What a monumental waste. Eight years down the drain. How long is ones lifetime.

festacman:
I don't walk backwards. I bounce forward boldly.

It is useless wasting time crying about the past when you can use the same time to surmount the challenges the past brought about in the present in order to have a better tomorrow.

Don't mind them. That's their stock in trade. Blackmail, to distract and destroy good intentions by repeatedly stoking tensions via past errors.

If all civilised societies were like this the Germans won't be the preeminent power house of Europe having been the centrepiece of the most destructive war in history nor will Japan have been allowed to thrive after its ignominious war of the Pacific, ending in 1946.

The history that is worthwhile is that which teaches the right path and guarantees future survival and prosperity for all involved.
To restructure Nigeria is to set it on a path of sustainable development for ALL including those kicking vehemently against it, those who cannot let go of their destructive, debilitating habits.

Who in his right, honest, just mind will claim he benefits from Nigeria as it is presently constituted if not the vermin of mindless corruption and the sectional predators who wish to see this country reduced to ashes.

My brother. Do not bother to answer them. Their time is fast ending, brace for the kicks of a dying horse.

KingZaddy:
I will find it highly offensive if a foreigner maybe from Ghana who plays in Nigerian league celebrates the team win with Ghanaian flag

European club soccer has grown to become a global spectacle. There is very little engkish about the English Premier League. Some teams donot even feature British born players on occasions.

tonyzeal:
Ndidi settled the stupid comparison with Kante.

Better than him x1000

It’s not about run & covering grounds like Julius Berger, it’s about doing the real blocking work of a DM.

Ndidi is the best DM in the world.

Argue with Tuchel

Agreed. The guy deserves to be in a titlist team.

deji17:
First time in the history of the over 130 years old Leicester Club history, they have lifted the FA cup .

See my Nigeria flag flown by Kelechi and Ndidi.
All hail King Kelz.
Na so we go win world Cup.

Better PR for Nigeria than all the old hags in embassies and consulates throughout the world. The only flag being flown in that pitch right now.

Igbochief001:
LMAO ... without tinubu getting same amount of votes buhari got in the north ( which we all know is impossible ) it is mathematically impossible to win the presidency for him

Looks so. Recent events have proven the northern block is only after its interests and suspicions over any southern candidate boils over. Can't see any sort of homogeneous vote for any candidate south of the Niger. The fear of the disintegration of this country is real.

Hedone:
Chaii..see as e shed the bullets like clothes for okrika market

It's sad to think that each of those bullets will be laid in someone's body

Poor storage. And that will lead a lot of them to become defective and inoperable. Only a keen experienced eye will detect that. Ammunition needs to be stored like medicine. Cool and dry. If you have to keep them exposed like this keep them oiled.

Good one. That is qualitative leadership. So unfortunate it cannot be extended to all peoples at all times, in crises and in peace, in difficulties and in successes. Perhaps a lot of conflicts ravaging Nigeria and sapping lives and resources could have been avoided.

How we so need qualitative leadership now at all levels and genuine statesmen without agendas and personal plans against the peace Nigeria and her hapless citizens should enjoy.

Good one Mr. Hope.

I still feel he is the best man for the job but it is up to 'Anambrarians'. They haven't put a foot wrong since the mid 2000"s dark years of Federal meddling and seem to have empowered relatively qualitative candidates. And in APGA there is certainly stability and continuity.

Who will have thought that a state teeming with 'big men" with bigger egos could hget it so flight consistently without major rancour. They should guard against letting the good stuff end.

LPP

Chloraseptic:
You sacked an old man with experience and started employing rookie coaches and you want the club to move forward...

Employing EPL former players will always be a disaster, they know nothing about coaching. All they are good at is running their mouths analysing coaches and players..

Lampard, Neville, OGS, Arteta, Scholes, Giggs and Henry have all been a failure so far..

I'm still observing Gerrard.

Arsenal needs such a chap in the dugout. Honest and hard as nails. Won't tolerate half the crap Arteta's shovelling.

This fixture is very unfair on United. They played just a few hours ago while Pool has been idle for several days now.

The Prem always punishing its teams in Europe.

Speaktruth88:
Ignorance and nairalanders like 1 and 2. The people of Gaza are Christians, Muslims and Jews they are just Arab. Israel is being run by a fascist government that hate anybody not white. Go and google Ethiopians in Israel. What they are doing is what the white people did to South Africans under apartheid just that these ones are Arabs instead of black people

It is everywhere in the middle east and the arabian peninsula, There is deep discrimination and prejudice of biblical proportions running everywhere. Majorities always seek ethno religious totalitarianism.

Look at Syria, Iraq, Iran today, their Christian populations for example have been decimated by Islamic fundamentalist movements.

The 'centre' of the world or you can call it the crucible of civilisation is just not ready for peace and prepared to move on.

Lazycapitalist2:
Well, if you read my post, you would see that i did not speak against dececntralisation, rather I spoke about the fact that the sector is not earning enough cash in the first place to make decentraisation work well

If it is not earning enough cash....decentralisation won't help much. We would still be back to square one. Decentralisaiton is fine...but equipment, workers, etc have to be paid for...and we can't pay for it if we aren't making the sector profitable.


Modified: The issue I am focusing on more is summarized in the below page from this report

I still submit that you can only get right pricing when.you decentralise and with it comes liberalisation. The power market is still heavily controlled centrally, by government so these so called power companies are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs

They buy power at government price, send it to government nominated customers and receive government approved income.

Compare it to telecoms where communication tariffs vary widely because services offered vary widely too and all because government doesn't tell them what to do and who to give service or not.

We jave said it from time. The model of power privatisation is not workable. It creates a chicken and egg scenario between investment and tariff income, a scenario we never saw in the telecommunications privatisation deapite the fact that teleccoms companies started from scratch, zero investmemt, wheras power comoanies inherited infrastructure and a customer base.

The tariffs is not the ultimate problem. It is the structure of the industry that is. Get the structure right and I tell you Nigerians have enough residual generating capacity to stabilize power in Nigeria.

Private owners of huge power plants should be able to sell power in a right thinking model but who will send it into a so called narional grid where government is not a fair or sound arbiter.

Lazycapitalist2:
Decentralising the grid is not the issue...the issue is, are we ready to

1.Allow the power sector set prices that would enable them to make enough of a profit to among other things fund the grid...decentralised or not?

2. Are we all ready to pay our bills.

3.We generate enough power from gas...are the gas companies ready to accept payment in Naira instead of dollars.?

By the way, stop blaming the North. All the DISCOS are running at a loss...meaning that people in the country ..North and South ....are not paying enough to the DISCOS TO Enable them make a profit to fund the TCN and the GENCOS.

That's the problem with power in the country....we don't pay the power sector the kind of money that enables them to make a profit to keep things running well (unlike GSM...which runs well in part because you cannot use a phone without paying for service first)

Oga stop trying to excuse the 300 pound gorilla in the room. The fellow is correct. Decentralisation is a major factor.

When you breakdown the structure into smaller independent units it is easier for these companies to have stronger bargaining power with their customers and so raise the funding they need to address their peculiarities.

Electricity does not have to cost the same everywhere in Nigeria. Those near gas fields ahould have it cheaper from gas plants. Those who are thousands of kilometres away and require huge investment in power infrastructure should pay a premium to have it.

That is what will stimulate the construction of power plants throughout Nigeria using local energy sources. The north-east has the largest hydro potentials in Nigeria but the Mambila dam continues to be an electoral football simply because consumers in the south pay a premium to have gas fed power sent all the way from the delta which is highly inefficient and terribly wasteful and expensive

Decentralise the power sector and the north will attract investment in solar which they have the land and climate for and hydro which they have abundant potentials.

But ignorance, greed and laziness won't let them.

Oga. You simply cannot have cheap electrcity if you cannot produce it where it is demanded, period. And if all the GSM networks today in Nigeria were asked to share transmission infrastructure, towers, base stations and the whole lot, they will all have been out of business because the system will have collapsed to the ground.

Ishilove:
And this, folks, was one of the remote causes of the Rwandan Genocide.

The day I knew we are in trouble in this country was the day I went to the state HQ of the NCS in Apapa during Buhari's first tenure. Every where I turned to, there was a Bala, Usman, Halil, Dikko Yahaya et al waiting to attend to me. I heaved a small sigh of relief when I got to a section where the only thing they do is to sit on their asses and twiddle their thumbs. In this section i finally saw a Bayo and Ifeoma. In every department, 4 out of 5 officers are Northerners, and in some sections, ALL the officers are northerners. My mind boggled.

I saw the same thing when I went to the National HQ of the same NCS in Wuse 3 in 2018. In whole sections the officers were Northerners but it was a bit better here because there were more non-northerners are one moved up the rank and file. Still yet, the lopsided federal representation was glaring. Some of these officers can even write a simple statement and the one who attended to me gave me pen and paper to write his report for him after he asked me the correct spellings of some words a couple of times and i gave him. Last last he handed the paper to me and asked me to kukuma continue. I left what I came for to be doing secretary.

Let us be guided. We are in deep shït.

But your vice president said times without number that restructuring is not the solution to Nigeria's myriad of problems but the 'allocation of resources. And guess where he is from.

It is certain he too 'assists' his staff write memos. He is a 'resourceful' person.

They thought piloting this structurally maligned country will be an ocean cruise to the Caribbean....at least he knows what the term clueless means. He virtually added it to Nigeria's lexicon back in 2014. Now he and his band of brothers have fully adopted its trade secrets.

For the avoidance of doubt. The simple question in the run up to the 2015 polls was, is this man capable of taking the hard decisions to restructure this country to enable it function properly with the software of democracy. The answer to most enlightened and non sentimental fellows was a resounding, no.

There were other candidates, some who didn't believe anything was wrong with the spine of this country but had in them the seeds of wisdom and the tenets of democracy so could be persuaded down the line when reality eventually emerged to do the needful, but we overwhelmingly put sentiment first and elected leaders hard in their ways, strongmen who will rather crash and burn than oblige democracy of its ways.

So here we are. A big lesson for the future.
You may not elect a rocket scientist, monk or trapeze artist....just empower a servant who is simply willing and obedient. Elected officials without bit and bridle is akin to 'bare-back' horse riding or bull fighting.

It never ends well.

otokx:
This is crux of the matter, imagine the hold up in front of UPTH gate? Over 2 hours people were trapped in the chaos.

Next time elect capable leadership into office. Sorry oh. How are you guys enjoying your Nigeria. We are in the season of 'I told you so' and helive me there will be many shows leading up to 2023.

We were all here in 2014/15 and yes, 'WE TOLD YOU SO'...that all Nigerians will get from this government will be a few roads, bridges and rail lines, nithing more to justifyvthe huge political capital given them simply because the folks we saw yapping all around about change, simply did not have the capacity to deliver.

Today, how far Nigerians....sorry oh..

aikyg:
How do we tell our politicians that pedestrian bridges are a waste of money. In America, you can drive from one state to another and you'll never meet a single pedestrian bridge. Just put bumps and traffic lights/signs to slow vehicles down at pedestrian crossings.

Oga. Cannot work here. There are far too many crossing points and far too many pedestrians for zebras to work in any large Nigerian city.

There are typically more people on our streets in both vehicles and on foot than on that of any developed country because our economy is largely informal and our infrastructure plain rudimentary.

The pedestrian bridges are just symptomatic of our inability to convey pedestrians underground for example. Shut down alternate tram, train lines in Newyork, London or Tokyo and their zebra crossings will fail as well.

brosom:
Please the elders should summarize

The personalisation of government. The primary antibody to the presence of corruption, period. Nothing else.

They will all flood Abuja and inflate the already overblown housing market.

bastardson:
The police cannot lock up a serving military personnel.. What they can do it’s report him to be court Marshalled then arrest him after his dismissal .

Yes he cannot pass through the normal course of the criminal justice system but he cannot be released from a crime scene as the perpetuator either.

What should happen is that the police authorities contact the Military Police and hand over he case file imcluding the suspect over to them.

I have since had my first shot, the second in a few weeks then I'm free from this bug and the inept goverment surrounding it.

richiemcgold:
imagine someone like van gal, pep, anceloti or klinsman coaching this bundle of talents we currently have in super eagles.

It can be done if the NFF/Sports Ministry thinks outside the box. Qualify for the World Cup, then launch a national lottery to raise about 5 billion on the back.

With that drop a proposal to pay any potential coach one million dollars a week for the duration of the world cup and I bet some of the best will be willing to sabbatical.

All we need is preparatory expertise and qualitative match day tactics.and we are good to go. Incidentally both values Rohr lacks completely.

One million dollars a week for 6 weeks only and Nigeria can match Cameroun or Senegal's record.

PS: Remove Klinsmann and Van Gaal from that list that looks like you made it in 2010.

Yeah, he's picking up his scoring boots at last. Watched the match. Good one for him and Napoli chasing a UCL position.

But you must spare a word for Lorenzo Insigne. He's the mvp of that team. His box to box, total football is the only thing keeping Gattuso out of the bread line.

OOzz:
God does not accept the prayers of terrorists.. may allah scatter his wrinkled scrotum, Amin!

This is very uncharitable and quite frankly totally disgusting. Your soul must dwell in a very dark, hopeless place from which you must endeavour to get out.

Nbote:
Arsenal Used to be the Gunners. These days they are jus Unknown Gunmen..

In those days Arsenal was a team players will depart from to the biggest teams in world club soccer.

Today I cannot see any single player that will be attractive to any club in the top half of the Premiership thoughtless of the likes of Barcelona, Juventus or any of the Lique 1 giants.

The club has evidently been deinvesting in talent and its decay is clear to all.