Adimz:
So there's no way someone can get this material free of charge
Am broke and can't afford it ooo
Somebody help

Judith?

excptnalcharis:
Please help me. After allowing access for webcam and microphone the page is yet to reload. I have true and tried

same here.

Dpathway2777:
Just stay calm and focus on the questions. I am not a fan of past questions but u will surely need Gmat experience. Just did mine and i had 81.7% (49/60). Time management is very important and my invigilation signal was full all through.

Pls how were u able to do the test? Mine isn't loading. I'm using my laptop.

keyke:
My test is taking forever to load o Who else experienced this

same here. Have u been able to assess the test now?

[quote author=Magdalenepius07 post=70584788]Not happy
Just did mine
Got 55%
The trucks still moving on the street by dis time of the night reduced my invigilator score
Some said cut off is from 56
please how were you able to later do the test?

Good for her. I wonder how she will judge a case though involving a non Muslim and Muslim seeing as she couldn't suspend religiosity for a day. Well congratulations to her anyway

Even the DSS confirmed that ISWA terrorists had penetrated the herdsmen groups. President Buhari himself spoke about the proliferation of arms from Libya. Make no mistake, these are jihadists

aumeehn:
see lies! Guy i'm also a stude student of that school! Pls post pictures of what the Muslims did to the Christians worshipping in the LT and will post pictures of what xtians guys did to Oba Adetuna Mosque! Stop spreading false info! Just pray for peace! Your hate for islam will put u in trouble!

Oya bros please tell us what happened now, no need for insults. I need you to try and give an honest and unbiased opinion on the matter.

Education was supposed to be the last hope against fanaticism. I dare say it has failed. I can confirm the incident. There are 2 narratives flying around. 1 is because Christians swept the SUG elections last week, another says someone insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Whatever the case, we're finished in this Country. My advice to Christians is to abstain from SUG elections in the future Biko. It isn't worth dying for.

cc: lalastica

Editi Effiong is the CEO of Anakle. He is the tall one.

My parents lost millions to a self proclaimed pastor in an import business scam some years back. I think it just shows how we can be easily manipulated by religion. Scammers know it too, so don't be surprised everyone's opening a Church these days.

TundeHashim:
The reporter cum the OP must be very sick and stupid...how do u expect us to believe that this was done by Fulani? What's the evidence at ur tips? every criminal activity is done by Fulani but when they commit the most heinous crimes against us, u guys won't spay anything.

I really don't blame you guys. The one that survived the attack doesn't know his attackers ba? The same Fulani's have been destroying farmlands in my hometown in Edo state. You guys can keep up the perpetual denial.

A reported 20100 people were born on January 1st, 2018. That's 7.4 million people in a year! I'll advice anyone who can leave this Country to do so. Things would not get better this way.

I don't like this government but fair is fair, this is a welcome development. However I urge all those having orgasms over this news to thread caution. The last administration might have been a wasteful spender, but this is an excess borrower. The last might have bloated a lot of capital projects, but this keeps paying lip service to capital expansion and the diversification agenda. Go read the Q3 foreign trade reports (in fact, start from Q1 2017), you'll see that diversification is in lip service and we actually had a more diversified base then (2014) than now. Stop ignorantly shouting sai Buhari or Jonathan and get involved in the actual processes that would save this country for us and our children.

As much as I find the trend ridiculous, it should be addressed ASAP before it actually cost us human lives. We all know how fanatics can easily take advantage of these situations.

So i came by a tweet of a certain individual who made his First million (naira) by a paint job contract for a government parastatal. He eventually abandoned bidding for contracts to pursue his passion - Manufacturing. Today he's always complaining about how difficult the business climate is in Nigeria and how he probably shouldn't have let go of his contract connections. So if it were you which would you go for? Passion or easy money?

Well, Mr Enlightened. Since am bored I'll crave your indulgence for a few minutes. Your article is poorly researched, I'll-concieved and uncalled for. Am a critic of religious excesses myself but slandering based on facts would get us Nowhere. Since it's between Oyedepo and Dangote, I'll stick to the points you posed.

Dangote renders no special service to society today, just sells really expensive cement - highest in the World, in Nigeria. Also posts ridiculous profits Y-o-y for doing so. He employs some 20,000 people - a mere fraction for a company of his size. He's successfully leveraged on the gaps in our system to create a monopoly in the mining industry and is now moving into oil and gas. He pays virtually no taxes contrary to what you may believe - as he gets tax rebates and pioneer liscences y-in-yo. He does do humanitarian work, which is commendable. Don't forget he's worth some $12b or something.

Now Oyedepo - Employs over 50,000 people - from churches, schools, and other investments. Owns the frontier research universities in Nigeria today. Does humanitarian work through his charity arm. - I have more than 10 friends who benefitted from 100% scholarships to landmark university, kwara. Remains one Nigerias biggest exports in Africa, don't know about him owning 6 private jets though.

I hope you see that they aren't so different afterall. Don't give yourself a heart attack over religion, and what people choose to do with their lives. I criticize religion too but it's not the source of our problem, only a means to an end

Yeah you're right. Ideas matter but execution and insight is probably more important. Good thread

Updated

Africa’s best police service is that of Botswana despite being ranked 47th best in the world. This is according to the World Internal Security and Police Index (WISPI) released by two bodies, the International Police Science Association (IPSA) and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

The index ranked the Rwandan police as Africa’s second best (with global position of 50th) followed by Algeria (58th), Senegal (68th) and Tunisia (72nd) in that order. Completing the top 10 for Africa were, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Ghana, South Africa and Mali respectively.

“WISPI measures the ability of the police and other security providers to address internal security issues in 127 countries, across four domains, using sixteen indicators,” authors of the report stated. The four domains are, capacity, process, legitimacy and outcomes.

The Botswana Police Service has been ranked no. 1 in Africa and 47 out of 127 countries in the World Internal Security and Police Index #WISPI, released by the Institute of Economic and Peace (IEP). GlobPeaceIndex— Botswana Government (BWGovernment) November 9, 2017

Despite the failure of Africa to break into the top forty, the continent was very prominent in the lower rankings. Six African countries were in the bottom 10. Cameroon and Mozambique in the 120th and 122nd spots.


Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Nigeria made it an African quartet at the bottom – occupying 124th to 127 slots respectively.

At the top of the global rankings, Europe dominated with eight countries. Except first place Singapore and Australia in sixth spot, all the other countries were in Europe – Finland, Denmark, Austria, Germany (2nd – 5th), Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland (7th – 10th).

About the World Internal Security and Police Index (WISPI)

The aim of the WISPI is to, firstly, measure security provider performance across the four domains of internal security: capacity, process, legitimacy and outcomes.

Secondly, to see how these domains relate to each other and finally to track trends in these domains over time, and to inform the work of security providing agencies, researchers, and practitioners in the field of peace and conflict studies, criminology, and police studies.

I knew the topic would have the moderators move it from politics to business. If you read carefully however, you'd realise that it has everything to do with politics and very little to do with business.

To start to understand how Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, came to have such influence over the Nigerian government, it is useful to go back in time to 2003. Before then, he was a Nigerian billionaire just like any other.
But in the run up to the 2003 election campaign, president Olusegun Obasanjo had a famous falling out with his vice president, Atiku Abubakar, over the latter’s attempt to succeed him as president after only one term. Obasanjo had also been operating on the understanding that Atiku, as the People Democratic Party’s (PDP) money man, would fund his re-election campaign.
But Atiku told him that all the money had been spent during Obasanjo’s turbulent first term, notably on lobbying the national assembly not to impeach him on two different occasions. Without access to the party’s old fundraising machine, Obasanjo was left with no choice but to find his own new donors.
In his 2013 book, The Accidental Public Servant, the current governor of Kaduna state and former minister under Obasanjo, Nasir El-Rufai, describes how this episode presented Dangote with an opportunity he has maximized to his great benefit. He writes:
Obasanjo had to resort to raising money from other sources and that was how Aliko Dangote came into prominence in the government. From 1999 to 2003, nobody had heard of Dangote having anything to do with the federal government in any significant way. – El-Rufai, Nasir. The Accidental Public Servant (p. 170)
Dangote Stays Winning

By the time president Goodluck Jonathan came to office, the PDP-led government had become very closely and publicly aligned with Dangote. During a presidential media chat in 2011, the president told his interlocutors that Nigeria was to begin exporting cement that year because “Dangote himself, because he is the number one producer, told me” [pdf, page 64].
This Dangote promise of cement exports is repeated nearly every year, Nigeria is desperate to be seen to be diversifying exports beyond oil. Most recently at this week’s FT Africa Summit where Dangote announced—to vice president Yemi Osinbajo’s hearing—that the date for cement exports from Nigeria will now be 2018.
Nigeria's President Jonathan and billionaire Dangote are seen during a commissioning ceremony at the Dangote cement factory in Obajana
Nigeria’s former president Goodluck Jonathan (L) with Aliko Dangote in 2012 (Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye)
A few people have raised concerns about the relationship between Dangote and the government and its impact on policy decisions. But if they thought things would change under president Buhari’s new All Progressive Congress (APC) government, which came into office in May 2015, they were mistaken. Barely three months after being sworn in, the vice president was leading a government delegation to Zambia to commission a Dangote Cement plant.
Since then, the vice president, with several ministers in tow, have also visited the Dangote refinery for an “inspection” even though it was mainly sand filling of the site going at the time. Early last year, in a separate visit to the Dangote refinery construction site, the Central Bank governor, Godwin Emefiele, said “more Nigerians need to think like Dangote” and pledged to support him as much as possible.
Perhaps unsurprising then that a Reuters investigation in June last year found Dangote’s companies had been receiving preferential foreign currency allocations from the Central Bank at a time when the Nigerian economy had been almost crippled by a dollar shortage.
Cementing his status

While Dangote is involved in many industries, his wealth—over 90% of his net worth—has come from his cement business. Dangote Cement’s 65% share of the Nigerian market means that it also sets the prices for the commodity in the country. And it has used this advantage to generate large profits—the gross margin on its cement was as high as 70% a few years ago and has slowly come down to just under 50% in 2016. A Bloomberg Intelligence report showed average global cement profit (EBITDA) margins were 17.2% in 2015, but Dangote Cement reported a margin of 42.3% in the same year.

Nigerians have almost come to accept paying over the odds for cement as a sacrifice worth making to have cement produced in the country.

In 2013, an analysis of the world’s top 15 cement producers revealed that while Dangote Cement’s revenues of $2.4 billion represented 2% of the cohort, its profits of $1.2 billion represented 13% of all net profits in the group. In that year, its net profit margin was 52% with the next most profitable producer—China’s Anhui Conch—managing a 17.8% margin.
Dangote has used the sentiment of “national pride” very cleverly to his advantage. The government and indeed many Nigerians have almost come to accept that paying over the odds for cement is a sacrifice worth making in the name of having cement produced in the country.
The Nigerian press also helps to propagate the story of Nigeria’s cement “self-sufficiency”. This self-sufficiency argument is never challenged with the simple point that it is easy to make that claim when the product is priced beyond the reach of the vast majority of Nigerians. If prices came down to global averages, would Dangote Cement be able to meet demand with its current production levels?
Dangote also regularly inundates Nigerians with stories of how he has put all his eggs in the Nigerian basket and how he is always betting on the country by investing more than any other foreign investor. Every now and again, he announces large investments in an industry (usually one favored by the government of the day) sometimes running into billions of dollars. The stories and announcements (which may, or may not, come to fruition) help to reinforce the narrative Dangote is always investing in Nigeria even when no one else is doing so.
The cost to Nigerians

The nature of cement as a product that is too heavy and costly to transport and too tricky to smuggle has allowed the Nigerian market to be a captive one for Dangote.
In June 2016, the World Bank published a report examining the impact and costs of lack of competition in a number of industries in Africa. They found that African cement prices averaged $9.57 per 50kg bag compared with $3.25 globally. Put another way, Africans paid 183% more than people around the world for the same product.

A World Bank report showed Dangote has 90-year mining licenses for materials like limestone even though its cement plants have a 50-year life span.

The report also highlights how the Nigerian government had been phasing out import licenses for cement beginning in 2012 when Dangote ramped up cement production in Nigeria as well as the Central Bank of Nigeria banning the use of foreign exchange for cement imports. The World Bank report [page 54] also showed how Dangote had exclusive mining licenses for limestone and other additive materials for cement estimated to last for 90 years even though its cement plants have an estimated life of 50 years.
If Dangote’s relationship with the government allows it to make healthy profits at the expense of Nigerians, perhaps this can be mitigated by the taxes it pays to the government?
No chance.
Between 2010 and 2015 when Dangote cement earned around 1 trillion naira ($6 billion) in profits, it paid only 12 billion naira ($72 million) in taxes—a tax rate of just over 1%. It has done this through a particularly aggressive interpretation of a Nigerian investment incentive known as ‘Pioneer Status’.
The idea behind the pioneer status was to encourage investment in industries which the Nigerian government deemed in need of support. In return for investments in those industries, companies were exempt from paying taxes on profits from those investments for a maximum of five years.
However, the law was described as “most abused in certain quarters“, by Deloitte. No one has taken greater advantage than Dangote Cement. It has claimed pioneer status multiple times on the same plants by applying for a new exemption each time it extends the plant. The illustration below, taken from a recent presentation by the company [pdf, page 27] shows how it has done this.
Screen Shot 2017-09-24 at 21.44.13
A page from Dangote Cement’s 2016 annual report showing the Nigerian pioneer tax schedule.
Dangote Cement has claimed the pioneer status ten times across three plants by carefully scheduling a new one to start as an old one is ending. This puts Dangote’s interests at cross purposes with that of the country—Nigeria wants investments as quickly as possible but Dangote’s incentives are to spread out its investments as much as possible to avoid paying any taxes.
Recently, the government announced some “reforms” to the pioneer status law ostensibly to plug the gaps that had left it open to abuse. It changed the definition of pioneer industries from new ones to “immature” ones. It also announced that cement i.e. Dangote would be ‘phased out’ of the scheme.
But if any Nigerian thinks that this means Dangote will soon start paying taxes in the country, they ought to think again. Most recently, the government announced the extension of an order that allows companies to offset the full costs, plus an additional 30%, of the cost of providing infrastructure to the public. This original order was signed by president Jonathan in 2012 to run until April 2017. Given that this exemption comes with a built-in profit element, if the past is any guide to the future, Dangote will take advantage of it and not pay any taxes at least for the next five years.
The question as to why a businessman who has benefitted immensely from Nigeria—making him the world’s richest black man in the bargain—continues to expend so much time and effort to avoid paying taxes remains an interesting one.
The most damning of all

A monopoly or market dominant firm might be tolerable if it is “contestable”. That is, the monopolist’s position is made possible by low prices. In many areas, this is the case with Amazon—anyone is free to compete with them but it is quite difficult to match them on low prices as Amazon’s wafer-thin profit margins show it prioritizes gaining market share over profits. This was the case with many of America’s so called “robber barons”—as they expanded their market share, they consistently cut prices and improved services, none more so than John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil.
This is the most damning case against Dangote. For all the effective license to print money that Dangote Cement has become, the company’s track record for innovation is practically non-existent. Its 2016 report does not mention any specific research the company is funding to bring down the cost of its products or even housing in general. It simply sells cement in the same form as it has been made since the time of the Romans who invented the stuff and demands the highest possible price for it.

An episode in 2014 illustrates this point. I spent some time investigating and writing about the issue at the time and the World Bank also highlighted it in its report quoted above. In a brazen move, Dangote Cement and the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) tried to eliminate the 32.5 grade of cement from the Nigerian market to replace it with 42.5 grade, produced by Dangote cement.
This campaign was supposedly led by concerned members of the public but when I investigated, I found it was a faceless organization fronted by a non-existent person. The plan nearly succeeded but for the other cement producers lobbying hard and taking SON to court. The Nigerian Society of Engineers also came out strongly against the proposed ban arguing, correctly, that cement grades were not about inferiority but usage.
The 42.5 Grade cement Dangote Cement claimed it was introducing into the market was supposedly a better product than what previously existed in the market. Yet it did not try to introduce the product with a publicity campaign or aggressive pricing. Instead it sought to first eliminate the competition before undoubtedly introducing the more expensive product.
Has Nigeria as a whole benefitted from Dangote Cement? This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer in the affirmative.
There is no obvious infrastructure boom, it has not collected any taxes. When it comes to jobs, the company reported 16,272 employees across the 10 African countries in which it operates for 2016. Around 10,000 of those are in Nigeria—a tiny drop in the ocean for a country of 190 million with a major employment problem.
Nigerian Exceptionalism

The nature of the cement business across the world is that it tends towards oligopolies and uncompetitive practices. It is expensive to start a new cement plant and as previously stated, it is difficult and expensive to transport across long distances which means most cement is consumed close to where it is produced. Yet it is a vital product for construction and infrastructure development. As such, regulators across the world tend to watch over the industry very closely.

Nigeria’s government is the chief enabler of Dangote Cement ensuring it can extract fat profits from the market by subsidizing it with tax breaks

In 2014, the UK Competition Commission forced existing firms to sell some of their plants to create a new market entrant as a way of boosting competition. Last year in India, the Competition Commission, fined ten cement manufacturers a total of $1 billion for forming a cartel. In January 2016, South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission fined 6 cement producers a total of $168 million for price fixing. Spain’s National Commission for Markets and Competition handed down €29 million in fines to 23 cement companies in September 2016 after finding that they had been involved in a cartel where they shared price information via WhatsApp.
It is worth noting that in all the examples above, the countries in question have far more competitive cement markets and markedly lower profit margins than Nigeria and Dangote Cement. Yet the work of keeping these firms who produce a vital commodity on the straight and narrow never stops.
Nigeria is the complete opposite. The government is the chief enabler of Dangote Cement and ensures it can extract fat profits from the Nigerian market by subsidizing its operations with tax breaks and preferential foreign exchange allocations.
The government has bet everything on Dangote and looks set to do so again with the 650,000 barrels per day Dangote Refinery scheduled to come on stream in 2019. Its hopes of ending importation of petroleum products rest entirely on Dangote as several government officials and the oil minister have said publicly. Yet the economics of the refining business suggests the Nigerian government will once again pull out all stops to ensure Dangote’s refinery is profitable and this may even be at the expense of ordinary Nigerians. Such has been the corrosive relationship between the Nigerian state and the continent’s richest man.
It is not exactly surprising when companies collude to get customers to pay more than they should. “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices” said Adam Smith more than two centuries ago.

But to watch a government align so closely with a businessman with the attendant effect of denying its own citizens the many benefits of an important commodity is particularly painful to watch.

Quoted from quartz Africa by Femi Fawenhimi

How Garbage continually makes the front page is beyond me. Unverified propanganda and shameless lies. Even the military didn't lie this much.
http://punchng.com/plateau-killings-we-underestimated-number-of-attackers-says-military/. The truth is OP, as long as you never consider the possibility that there are violent Fulani herdsmen (maybe not all) who destroy crops, attack villagers and forcefully take over their lands as has been narrated by victims in Nassarawa, Benue, Edo, Enugu, plateau, Cross rivers, Edo, delta, Ondo, Oyo, osun states et al, then you'd forever remain a biased apologists. Maybe that's your motive anyway, but I've seen fulani rampage too many times in my native Edo state to believe propaganda.

Plateau state killings yesterday made me realise how cold and divided we've become as a nation. Very few actually cared about the dead, even fewer about bringing the perpetrators to book. Most people just rushed to take sides defending or attacking their loyalties. I once supported Buhari, and i'll still give his administration kudos whenever I seem fit; but we must never let our humanity be lost to blind Ethno-religious affiliations or archaic school of thoughts.

Tragedy is unfortunate. As decent human beings we should never politicise tragedy. However, if you've followed trends in Nigerian politics, you'd realise that its deeply embroiled in our failed system. The last administration suffered dearly from this, and this one rightly should. However, I just want to point our a few remarkable tragedies that have been more or less overlooked by us during this administration.

1. ZARIA MASSACRE
The Zaria massacre was a massacre carried out by the Nigerian Army in Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria on Saturday, 12 December 2015. Up to 348 Shiites, including members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria were killed.

The Army claimed that it had responded to an attempt to assassinate Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai by the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. This claim has been strongly rejected by the Islamic Movement and several human rights organizations who argue that the massacre occurred without any provocation and all the protesters were unarmed.

2. AGATU MASSACRE
Location Agatu, Benue State, Nigeria
Date February - March 2016
Attack type
Massacre
Deaths 300-500
Victims Several thousand (at least 7000 displaced)
Suspected perpetrators
Fulani gunmen & militia
The Agatu attacks and massacres occurred in Agatu, Benue State, began in late February 2016 and continued for several days into March. It is believed that the attack was committed in retaliation for the killing of the Fulani's' cows

3.MENINGITIS OUTBREAK
As much as 1000 people lost their lives during the meningitis outbreak of April 2017. Surprisingly, A sitting governor attributed it to divine punishment from God due to fornication.

4. 2017 REFUGEE CAMP BOMBING
On 17 January 2017, a Nigerian Air Force jet mistakenly bombed an IDP camp near the Cameroonian border in Rann, Borno State. They had believed it was a Boko Haram encampment. The bombing left at least 115 people dead, including six Red Cross aid workers, and left more than 100 injured.

5. SOUTHERN KADUNA MASSACRES OF 2016
The leader of the catholic Archdiocese of Kafanchan put the death toll at 808 people spanning across 4 local Governments. This however, while affirmed by most of the victims has been vehemently refuted by Nigerian security agencies as an exaggeration.

UPDATED

6. 250 DIE FROM SNAKE BITES IN PLATEAU AND GOMBE
This was attributed to a lack of Anti-venoms for treatment. This has been happening since early October

7. 50 CHILDREN DIE FROM 'STRANGE ILLNESS' in JIGAWA. Happened late last month. What on earth do they mean by 'Strange Illness'?! Life has no value in this Country.
This one just takes the cake for me.

Notable mentions include massacres in Ebonyi, Enugu, Plateau, Nassarawa, Borno, Adamawa, Cross rivers, Delta state, Oyo, Rivers and Taraba. It's unfortunate that we've become so insensitive to the plight of others in this Nation. Funny thing is the list is endless, but I only mentioned those involving loss of lives. I hope this shows that performance is a matter of perspective.

It does not matter what side of the divide your'e on; Atheist, Christian, Muslim or Other, religion remains a bit part of our national life - at least for now. I see no point wasting futile effort pointing out defects in every religion, as some of my like-minded comrades do. Instead, i've come to accept certain things the way they are. Now, some of the biggest influencers in our society today remain our religious leaders. They literally can do no wrong in the eyes of followers. My question is, why do we limit such extraordinary influence to the pursuit of vanities and 'unending spiritual satisfaction'. As the CEO of IROKOTV put it, "Religious leaders may hold the magic wand to our economic fortunes". Imagine a Nigeria where pastors are at the forefront of the 'BUY NIGERIA' campaign, where mega religious bodies are involved in the discovery, funding and promotion of entrepreneurship - kinda similar to what Tony Elumelu is doing but with greater worldwide influence. Where trade facilitation and market penetration are promoted by children along with inter-regional cooperation. The possibilities are endless and the potential, limitless. We are already the most religious society on the planet, it's high time some major economic good came out of it.

There are players in the frozen food sector. Majority operate on a small scale because of inadequate infrastructure (light) and high cost of production. For instance, to get equipments required for a simple cold room is over N10Million. I don't know about you, but for now I earn an average of 60k monthly; that'll mean saving for the next 15 years on current income �. Profit margin is good but mired by uncertainty, weak disposable income, price fluctuations and competition. Frozen foods for now is a high risk venture. I do love the idea of cooperating though. I believe the next wave of successful entrepreneurs are those who leverage on networking and business to business transactions.

If I get it now; leave Nigeria ASAP

There's only one factor you should consider - Your damn life!!!

Modsenemy:
Apparently, you haven't explored the nairaland forums .

Agreed, there's a boatload of information here, scattered everywhere.