₦airaland Forum

I'm so angry about the way government continues to mishandle these issues. Yes, GEJ should not fall into the kind of sectional trap of 1966 but why should you create volcanic pressures instead. When such a thing happens, deal with the situation immediately while you have the moral high ground and the sympathy of cooler heads. Put their leaders - the IBB, Buhari, Chiroma, the Sardauna and their Emirs under instant and heavy pressure. Not making silly excuses on their behalf. If this happened in the east against northern interests the same elites will hold nothing back. It did not take Gowon 60 days to declare war. Today it will take our government six months just to admit the problem. Rubbish.

Is there anything more to say. On and on and on. The hatred, killings and destruction. If it is not places of religion they target, it is economic bases. What next. Political establishments?. The whole thing is becoming embarrasingly clear. With few cards left to play jealousy has given way to desperation. I pity any southerner still living in delusion over what this country is all about. The year has ended. I like Mr. President to come out and declare in clear terms the true State of the Nation.

From the reactions so far very few seem impressed by numbers just quality. No one is concerned where they get the money just perform no matter how harsh the environment. These are the benefits of true privatisation in an open market.

If the government was investing half that amount we will be up in arms as we do frequently for power and petroleum projects. So you wonder why people insist on government hanging onto these industries.

Sure, a 350 bed hostel will cost 100 million or there about. You can't fault any investment in education no matter what but you can understand why having colleges close to their catchment communities are better. 100 million could be better spent on learning aids rather than accomodation. Its a good investment doubtless.

This is a better type of relationship one that has the potentials for mutual economic benefits between the south-south and west and not the exploitative, parastic relationships we have now. This is the way Nigeria should work - private sector driven on the one hand and resource control on the other then fuel subsidy will not be an issue. Private selling to private does not bring resentment. No one protests the cost of beans or onions and expects government's subsidy or compares it with those sold by Tesco or ASDA.

The good thing about these types of arrangements is that they work even in a political state of true federalism. Good move.

I won't be surprised if United and City are paired together in the first knockout stage after Christmas with the glut of English clubs in the Europa Cup. That would be interesting just like Lazarus and the rich man as they carried their wahala enter heaven.

Maybe someone should propose to Mr. President. Make him an offer he can't refuse. He may then kick Michelle out of the WhiteHouse and make you say the First Gentleman of the United States. Fair enough?

What government is saying in a nutshell is that they don't want to be in the business of selling petrol. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing. For decades they have not been able to operate one succesful enterprise. I am not going to stake my future on people who are unwilling and unable to do things particularly when most developed economies are not doing so.

One is not saying there are no poor people but the truth is that university education is very, very expensive. Just look at ASUU and what they are asking for. The USS is way above that of the civil service.

I read in a report that they currently pay 25,000 per session. If that is true then its less than that of some private primary schools with NCE grade tutors.

250,000 may be steep for some courses but I think the way out should be targetted subsidies in the form of grants and waivers for the very poor.

In my view this is a no brainer. Most concerns are based on the assumption the state police are at the exclusion of Federal law enforcement. This is untrue. There are many countries with local, state or regional police in place but I don't know of any country without a national police. They are not exclusive or competitive but complimentary.

Secondly I think it is all about laws. To make it simple. We all have security men working for us (in Nigeria) in our homes and offices and enforcing our rules. Why isn't the government scared of them. Why don't they rig elections and intimidate political opposition. Why don't we arm them - the law. When they commit crimes aren't they accountable to higher authority.

Look we are just playing around. We need law enforcement at the grassroots. Accountable and available. That is how intel is generated. At the grassroots. That is how you reduce corruption, when the cop lives next door just like you maiguard, to truly serve and protect.

We are not saying they should be kitted with AK47's and APC, but boots on the streets with walkie-talkies as first responders to call in the Feds for fire power.

It will amaze you just how diverse crime is, quarrels, road accidents, exam malpractice, and all sorts bog down the NPF rendering them ineffectual. This should not be.

Michael Jackson's doctor pilled him to death and it is an issue in Quantico, haba.

Sounded promising until I stumbled upon the name of one Prof. Jerry Gana, now I exercise the first ammendment and reserve my comments.

Do we need further proof as to where this country is headed. IMHO they are snapping every strand of respect and no longer represent ideals of decency and humanity. We say we that its alien to our ideals in an ethnically and religiously diverse continent and they choose to tag it with their aid to needy countries. Very sad indeed.

I don't know why people are laughing. This is a serious matter. Lagos is fast becoming untenable. Just a ten percent increase in the per capita income of Lagosians and the roads will totally shut down.

He's telling the truth. A quarter of your day in traffic everyday is not living. That is merely existing. Whenever I'm in Lagos to VI early you see countless private cars. One car, two people, driver with oga asleep at the back struggling in traffic jams. This is shameful.

The worst of all is that instead of increasing the capacity of our roads and conserving energy by protecting the biker they are busy closing more roads to bikes and thereby inadvertently fueling congestion. Why not dedicated bike lanes for added safety.

There is nothing inherently dangerous in motorbikes if they are ridden by owners who are not under commercial pressures.

If we can overcome the status symbol thing and adjust our lifestyles then we will start living. I go by motorbikes whenever I'm opportuned. I'm in touch with reality.

slimyem:
^^^^no,it's a teaching hospital.if it was private,i won't be here asking this.private hospitals pay special attention and care to their patients and processes but the availability of specialsts in a teaching hospital overides that.it makes you kinda sure you are getting expertise treatment.

This is highly mistaken. The standard of care in teaching hospitals exceed those of 95 percent of private hospitals. You just cannot compare the competencies of staff. They may be over crowded and stressed but chances of such mishaps are very rare.

Hmm. Tanner and coach Holger I hereby warn you. Don't play with Naija boys. We will scatter your team and get you sacked. Period.

This match has said many things. One, Arsenal lacks depth. See what Barca did with their B team. Two, all the senior boys that player are totalled. Chamakh, Djorou, Arshavin should be retailed at massive discount. Third, it is a mistake to de-energise a rising club. If Arsenal had perfected its first team play then you could give them a rest. But with the exception of RVP all others should be playing as many matches as are available. With five new squad members its too early in the season to rest players.

With their history of spectacular momentum and form loss I won't be surprised if this loss creeps into the first team against Everton on the weekend.

Wow. Tell me this didn't happen. How could we have sunk so low. No wonder the man appeared lost before he was beaten.

Look folks there is something fundamental we have to understand in christianity. I am not criticizing anyone here but I just believe predictions are anti-faith, anti-hope and anti-love which are three key ingridients in one's experiences with God. We generally know that faith is dead without works so if these so called prophesies and predictions kill faith, they also immobilise your mind to think and your hands to work. This is NOT of God I'm afraid but the age old strategy of (you know who).

I also believe God cannot ask you to trust him for good always and undermine it with fear of failure simultaneously. Its not just His style.

Well, this is a topic of its own only suited for adult viewing so I won't press further.

But one thing is clear, from our knowledge of the two wicked and powerful forces controlling the world today namely fear and greed it increasingly appears some churches are covertly or overtly employing these dark forces with a little colouration to exploit the uninformed.

My dear Austin. If this is true and you believed it then why waste our time and tax resources on a futile misadventure to the maghrebs. Why.

Having obliterated all competition serious offers by this monopoly might just be pie in the sky.

For Eguavoen it is right to quit such an important position at the instance of failure but in the case of Nigerian football at this time it is too simplistic.

If a part of a functional system is bad it is removed. If the system is dysfunctional you sit back and analyse first. The former is what local mechanics do taking rash decisions that ruin vehicles. The NFF should suspend his notice and get him debriefed properly so that they know what exactly went wrong with a view to correcting things going forward. That is why they are given structured contracts running to the end of tournaments.

The circus of Siasia's exit did not produce any credible information that Keshi could use hence some past errors are already manifesting.

But I guess since his employers rarely know better this may sit fine with them, a fall guy so they may continue to grope around and tinker like our local clueless mechanics.

With the way things are going I can see the Government withdrawing to just a supervisory role at that level in the future. It just takes the longer term success of private universities. When the number and capacity eventually exceeds that of government owned ones and they become less sectional, bang, government will cut them loose.

ASUU has many valid points but they should put their acts in proper perspective. They should realise that both buyers and sellers have to profit for market to exist.

bong4:
Prior to this competition, Nigerians never had the oportunity to assess this team. instead of NFF using them to play Botswana and Zambia, they went ahead and used super chickens. They would have used john Obuh's flying eagles for this qualifier nstead of this slow team. But it seems the bad luck in Nigeria football is a reflection of the failure in the larger society

This is exactly what I am saying. Where are the U21 that played reasonably well earlier this year. Why do we have to build a brand new team for every tournament. Why can't one coach pass on a team to the other to save scouting, informatory and preparatory time and resources like a factory product moving from one station to the next.

The answer is simple. Our football remains in bit parts. The thirty or so million expended on the flying eagles is gone, wasted with no benefit. We need an FA that is competent and capable.

If I may ask was there a post mortem after the U21 tourney, no. Nobody cared to know why we failed. Siasia failed nobody investigated why, so why won't Eguavoen. After this tournament he will be sacked, his file trashed and the NFF moves to the next gamble. Its so sad.

Sometimes government can be so insensitive. In saner climes the questions officials will ask themselves will border on, "How do we get these folks off these dangerous and humiliating jobs and unto stable, decent incomes. How do we create jobs and get them off the streets.

Nigerian authorities on the other hand view them as threats to be done away with.

We know what happened to the last king who treated his subjects so shabbily to the point of calling them 'gangster rats'. When asked later why he wasn't preserved for trial they asked, "do rats have lawyers too". Government, watch how you treat your people.

You give tickets to a dance and the guests don't show up and you pursue them to collect your dancing shoes. Is that important. What will it solve. If they can't come up with the goods dump them.

Funny law men. How about tackling the pressing matters that will support the establishment of a virile oil industry like the PIB under their noses and starting the process that will get the government the hell out of the oil business by shutting down NNPC. Then and only then can the private sector compete fairly and build refineries under a petroleum pricing regime acceptable to Nigerians through the DPR.

Government has no business building refineries, selling petrol or forcing anybody to build and run refineries at a loss.

Privatise petroleum or no to subsidy removal.

Why is it that people of influence never think straight under pressure. It is always about the money. They are quick to estimate the 23 million required to repair APC's and more but have no estimate to put tens of thousands to work sustainably. Pity. Banks should know this. If they cannot make demands beyond their interests then any solution proferred will only be temporal. For instance as long as the NLC concerned itself with salaries alone, lack has never left them.

I'm not saying they should not buy APC's, heck they can throw in a couple of M1-A1's but as long as they donot promote jobs by rigorous privatisation and grassroot oriented public works their service of special interests will not remove one miscreant from the streets.

Mark you I am not a fan of Eguavoen or Siasia or Ucheria. I don't do personalities but I rather look at the institutions they are associated with. I believe if the NFF is sound even a track suit wearing monkey will enjoy a degree of success. Sometimes institutions are referred to as culture or soul.

For example CocaCola is an institution so deep and strong no one mistake of an employee no matter how highly placed can pull it down. The culture and work ethic is institutionalised.

Closer home Manchester United is the success story not Sir Alex. He had failed severally during his time but the institution kept faith. ManU isn't doing well now but even if the board appointed you or I today we would be crazy to sack him. That is the power of institution, culture. Even Wenger and Moyes who habitually fail are sacred because of the institutions that surround them. The culture they have created has made identifying and isolating the problem easier. Failure becomes easier to analyse.

In both cases they lack quality players. In the case of the NFF nobody knows why we failed in all competitions this year. We are just like Chelsea (pardon me fans) lacking culture and run by a dictator. Such that with all the billions and having engaged some of the best coaches globally (multiple CL, Europa cup and World cup winners) and bought a good chunk of the best British and world players has very little to show for it.

Let us stop this gamble. Get a half descent coach, marry him and make him the beautiful wife we want to see. Let us stop all this impatient longathroat. It is when we try Pep Guardiola and crumble under his rigid formation that we will realise Barca is an institution that fabricates soccer machines from its academy.

The NFF is like a manufacturing outfit that makes products - players for public consumption - tourneys. By the way the company hires a marketer - coach to ensure the product is top dog in the market.

So how is the success of the product left to the marketer alone. These NFF chaps are jokers. They just want to cover their backsides by scaping the coach because they feel it will appease the mob. We know better. They have sacked countless coaches foreign and local, male and female with nothing to show for it simply because no matter how good a marketer is bad products don't sell.

Our footballers are poor because they come from a poor soccer house. Are coaches supposed to develop football, no. They are engaged to win trophies. If they are engaged to develop football what is the role of the technical committee and the company of men and women that litter the glass house.

Nigerians wake up. How can the failure of six teams attending nine tournaments be attributed to just two men and one woman. No, the failure goes deeper than that and accountability must be broader. Thanks.

These people are not unserious to the point of incredulity. How can you receive a series of death threats and you do nothing while plowing ahead. As opposition to a powerful incumbency the only way to change the status quo is to descredit it not naively continuing. Now the man is dead there is no way to catch the perps. The evidence on ground is paper thin, speculative at best and can never convict anyone in a responsible court of law.

I tell my friends involved in highwire politicking. Take your secretary to document your meetings. Record your phone conversations. Practically every phone has a recorder. Save your important texts, mails and mms on hard media, so on and so forth. That is your insurance. It could mean the diffrence between life and death and perhaps life for your case after your death.

But will they ever learn. It is only the vile and sinister that document their arrangements, indoctrinations and base deals for 'omerta'.

Now that the violence has reached his doorsteps and consumed his kindred with no rescue coming from the centre, he can as well negotiate and cede his land to the HauFul or promote a motion in government to reform the indegenization policy or consolidate states.

The chickens have truly come home to roost. He unwittingly shapened both ends of his sword in 1967. To use it now without self injury is a problem. There's so much to say on this matter, far more than a phone can express.

Nigeria is like a dysfunctional or broken home. The kind of offspring is left to be imagined. These problems will end when we are able to fix our country. And I'm not just alluding to the economy, the whole social strata. For how can you stop yahoo when fraud is almost institutionalised here, how can you stop prostitution when practically every Nigerian believes the only way to get ahead is by 'knowing' someone - social prostitution and how come they are no more robbers abroad when blood flows here daily and the police's first weapon of choice is the assault rifle.

It is all too easy to name names and cast aspertions on persons but this is pointless. The fact that most of the eminent economists, administrators, bankers out of our schools, enterprises and industries have and are complicit says one thing. The finger pointing is territorial not personal.

A good economy is the product of a stable country where institutions are allowed to flourish. A man cannot prosper out of a dysfunctional home, neither can a company and neither can an economy.

Secondly to say IBB single handedly ruined the economy is to say an aircraft crashed due to a single reason. That is too simplistic. It is usually a series of frailties in perfect sequence just awaiting a trigger. An action of his have triggered the disintegration but the system (if there was any) was weakened already.

For instance it will be foolhardy to blame Bush alone for the US financial crises. If you simply save all the money spent on the military and repeal all his tax breaks it still won't do it. Similarly reverse all the policies of the IBB era and nothing will happen.

Economies rise and fall based on ideologies as espoused by institutions rather than policies and pronouncements of politicians.

The American ideology of promoting democracy, globalisation and free trade has meant they can be undercut by lower standards of living so their economy is fundamentally flawed and has no ultra long term prospects. Similarly the Nigerian economy has no chance of recovery until we adopt progressive ideologies anchored by solid institutions.

And you cannot build viable institutions without real unity by social justice, equity and political pluralism.

For example Sanusi should be able to impose painful decisions on us all without recourse to his ethnicity and religion even if the entire CBN is from his clan but perform optimally. So that when he leaves or the next president is elected turbulence may occur but the economic flight remains on course.

Let me just chip in too that in terms of existing mineral deposits, nowhere can beat the middlebelt, that band that stretches from Kwara, Kogi through Benue. A little north - Plateau and a little south Enugu. What Ogun has going for it is not just the deposits but the proximity to Lagos, the largest market by far.

Dangote has always had logistical challenges (rightly so). Obajana suits him because it is even closer to Abuja (perhaps second largest cement market) than his Gboko plant. The location of all these assets guarantees no importer can undercut him.

Of course Ogun state is important but it is simply because of Lagos. They are top producers of granite for roads and buildings too. Lagos is very much like Japan or Hong Kong. No mineral resources of repute but a heavy consumer.

Portharcourt and Uyo is the same thing. They rely heavily on Cross River for cement and granite. Its a pity the government and people cannot see the leverage they have.

Benzema still has some way to go to reach the very top. He's just not sharp enough to strike frequently under tight marking and not  flexible enough to create time and space. You can't fault his commitment though. I think Gonzalo is better if he can smoke his beef with CR7.