₦airaland Forum

Post pictures. Is the land free from govt acquisition?

I just dey laugh until my head became sore.
When will they (419ers) grow up and stop embarrassing the Nigerian nation?

@ Brabus/ Nexthome,

Based on some recent discussions in this thread, I will like to ask you these questions as
part of the learning curve for everyone, including the contractors and investors/ property owners.

Do you include the rate of inflation within a set period of time for your quotations?
How about time frames for a given quotation? For example, stating that the quotation is valid for 2-3 months
and if there is a delay, it may be adjusted.

I was thinking if many factors, including the above, are taken into consideration, it may help the contractor
avoid running into serious hitches and financial losses.
Just my 2 cents.

OBJ is a BIG disgrace! The case is still in the appeal process and Boko Haram is unleashing mayhem in the
name of revenge for the death of their father.
Let them allow the court process to run its course and justice to prevail and not resort to jungle justice and terrorism.
GEJ is a spineless leader and BH and their supporters know this fact and will exploit it to the full.
All BH bombers and merchants of death must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Let OBJ go back to Otta and stop making a mockery of the justice system.

South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy says not building Nigerian shipyard

By Associated Press,




SEOUL, South Korea — Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. is denying a statement from Nigeria’s presidential office that it plans to build a multibillion dollar shipyard in the country.

Hyundai Heavy spokesman Kim Moon-ju said Friday that the company has no such plan.

A statement late Thursday from President Goodluck Jonathan’s office said the shipyard would be built in Brass in Bayelsa state, his home region.

Kim said that Hyundai Heavy President Lee Jai-seong made no such comment during a trip to the country. Kim said the company is building a small pipe-manufacturing factory in Bayelsa.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, faces crushing unemployment and poverty. The government has promised other projects in the past that failed to materialize.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Nigerians should be investing heavily in quality and top-notch health facilities. If Indians or others must invest in healthcare, the govt should
make such they follow established standards.
This is one area I will invest in very soon. God Bless Nigeria!

vitodorado:
The floor plan

@ Vitodorado,

Good job! I like the design of your house and wish you well in completing the house soon.
I have one suggestion for you: if possible change the size of the master BR and make it larger, and convert the
madam BR to a regular BR. In this day and age, there is no need for madam BR, just one very large master BR for oga and wiffy.

Peace!

Good job Spyder880! Another eye-opening thread.
What is the recommended standard thickness of security doors?

I think most of the rust noticed from some of the local doors is due to lack of adequate
anti-rust treatment. Iron can easily rust and corrode badly when exposed to weather conditions that leads
to reduction of oxygen and oxidation of iron (redox reactions).

It appears Zecca plate (zinc plating) doors may prevent / reduce the chances of rusting. My contractor recommended
we buy zecca plate doors for my house last year, and I agreed with him. I can't remember if the doors are local or foreign.
I may have to ask him.
Stainless doors may help reduce corrosion too.
If local door factories improve the design, durability and coating with anti-rust, they may compete well with the foreign-made.

Interesting thread! I was given three quotations some time last year for the decking of my house, and
the quotations had up to one Million naira difference. Do they have generally acceptable average rates
in different locations in Nigeria? For example, painting one room will cause an average X amount of naira
in a given location.

What documents do u have?
Is it possible to sell about 50 acres from the land?

Both idiotic leaders if they are worth their salt, they should be engaged in improving the society and the economy.

Good for her and good for Nigeria!

Ill-timed plan. Make Nigeria fully automated or set-up cashless payment systems prior to engaging in a draconia rule.
Good idea, but bad timing!

Send the info to Lawyer if you are to be taken seriously.

Is this law efforceable? Govt should focus on developing low-cost housing estates and let the free market forces determine the rent.
This is very undemocratic and anti-investment. We will see the opposite effect, rents will sky-rocket.

None issue. Nairaland should stop displaying topics like this on the front page.
If you can't handle minor issues like the above, then the major ones will lead to mega problems.
Communicate with her for God's sake and stop acting like a child.

Cargoed,

I like the solar affordability model.
Email me: Sagewood@yahoo.com for further discussions.

A Caution on China


Engagements By Chidi Amuta. Email & Tel: chidi.amuta@thisdaylive.com, 08056504733


I find this article below by Thisday's Chidi Amuta thought provoking. What are your thoughts?


It has become fashionable to welcome the rise and incursion of China into the African market as an unmitigated blessing. Chinese goods are cheap relative to what we get from the West. The Chinese offer business and funds without silly conditionalities. China used to be a Third World country that has risen rapidly to constitute a counter civilisational force in the world. The Chinese do not necessarily come to you with supremacist swagger. They do not overtly lecture you on any anything. They talk to themselves mostly in a language many do not understand and which requires patience and artistry to write. We can go on with the list of attractions and curiosities about the new China.

I do not share this sense of euphoria. My attitude is that we need to take a long-term strategic view of China’s coming if we have any degree of national self-interest left. At this point in time, the best attitude is one of great strategic caution and informed engagement. If we are a serious nation with an eye on the future of our children instead of our present greed, we need to have put in place a team of people who have a capability for strategic thinking to fashion out a China policy. This is imperative not just because that is what other serious nations are doing but because it is the sensible thing to do because of who we are and the position we ought to occupy in the emerging world order that is staring us in the face. There are lessons to be learnt and dangers that are clear and present.

We have a huge population. But of our over 150 million people, our collective real productivity earns less than 20 per cent of our foreign exchange. In other words, if we take out oil and gas, we are a very unproductive people because the funds we generate through real sectors and activities are hardly enough to keep this flag flying for longer than 30 days. But our potential and inherent capacity exceeds the over 80 per cent of earnings from oil and gas. The rest of the money we are fighting and quarrelling over comes as oil and gas rents, explored by others with technologies we are reluctant to master and sold at prices determined by forces we do not control.

But we remain the largest number of Africans hurdled up in one nation state. In that capacity, we have a potential to generate enough diplomatic noise to engage any major external force that wants to do business with Africa. I guess that for these reasons, we present an attractive curiosity to the Chinese. Their perception of our weaknesses and potentials largely informs their presence and nature of activities in our midst.

But we cannot afford to ignore China. The reasons are simple. First, it is perhaps the first nation in human history that is developing simultaneously as an economic, military, diplomatic and civilizational force with a population that is one and a half billion strength and still growing, even if weakly. Second, the rise of China is the historic antitheses of the values and assumptions that colonized, imperialised and have informed our economic development strategies and international relations to date. Literally, China challenges us to learn new wisdoms in middle age.

China’s Confucian wisdom knows something that most of us do not realise: globalisation unites humanity not around the fear of America’s big guns but around the desire to possess the same goods - cheap cell phones, computers, clone wrist watches, fake denim, T-shirts, modern homes and appliances that make life easy and encourage people to feel special and a sense of belonging in a new train of civilization. And China goes on churning out those goods, thereby uniting humanity faster than the merchants of fear and humanitarian imperialism.

In terms of our contemporary reality, a few things are true. Made in China goods are relatively cheap. Chinese finance and credit come without obvious conditionalities. Most times, Chinese contractors bid lower and mobilise faster on projects. These contractors inundate the project sites with Chinese workers and therefore deliver fast because the communism-induced work ethic of the average Chinese leaves little room for indolence. In any case, they are too many to afford the luxury of laziness.

More importantly, China’s centralised political system and its heavy dose of ideology have ensured that every Chinese has imbibed the growing sense of national global mission; the mission to provide a counterweight to Western, especially American, world dominance of the international economic system. So, Chinese are going everywhere in the world, learning local languages and customs, trying to understand and fill real needs of real people.

But a few other things are worrying. For every dozen Chinese workers involved in projects here, that many Nigerians cannot find the same jobs. And most of these jobs are not specialised in any sense. China’s indifference to the domestic and foreign policies of their host African countries is a dangerous veneer for condoning vicious human rights abuses as in the case of its relationship with Sudan and its heavy involvement in that country’s oil industry while Darfur festered. The working conditions in Chinese factories in Nigeria violate nearly every code of minimally decent labour laws.

The influxes of cheap Chinese exports means that Nigerian manufacturers cannot compete even in the most basic of sectors and in most cases have to close shop after heavy investments and massive borrowing. Most importantly, the aggregate lowering of standards of quality for goods imported from China simply because we are poor does not deliver value for money in the long term.

Chinese participation in African economies is unrestricted and therefore making incursions in areas where our people should ordinarily be left to thrive in order to reduce poverty. At Oshodi and Aswani markets in Lagos, there are Chinese retailers. The poultry industry in Nigeria and Zambia is heavy with Chinese participants. So also bakery, basic carpentry, furniture, garments etc. They are no longer content with importing their produce. They are setting up manufacturing plants and workshops here as well.

There is every advantage in pursuing diversity in the national economy. There is also value in globalisation and the encouragement of competition so that our manufacturers can raise their standards and seek ways of producing cheaply, more efficiently and better products. May be the Chinese incursion is an advantage in this regard. But no country leaves its economic borders unprotected simply because you want to belong to some phantom global village. Both China and the United States have strict laws on which industries should be left to local participants and which should be open to external competition. Nigeria with its population and large-scale unemployment needs to be even more aggressive in this regard without being overtly protectionist.

There is an even greater worry. Why try to do something that someone else is doing for you cheaply and effortlessly? I recall that until the influx of cheap Japanese calculators in the 1970s, we went through the horrors of long multiplication, long division, use of log tables, slide rule etc. in Mathematics classes in high school. Our Mathematical instincts were honed in the arduous tasks of arriving at solutions through a long process. You were punished for arriving at answers to Mathematical questions without showing clearly, stage by stage, how you got there. Not anymore.

There are calculators everywhere now: in cell phones, on street sides, in computers, in the remotest villages etc. Our kids do not need to worry about how to arrive at answers. The answers have been provided by others. We need not ask questions. The answers are ready and waiting. Your daughter does not need to be trained by her mother on how to wake up early to make breakfast. The microwave oven is plugged and ready, set at two minutes! Food is ready! You can even set a reminder on the device.

The same goes with the ability to innovate, which is one area where Nigeria has failed woefully. Our ability to innovate, to come up with unusual solutions to our myriad problems are directly proportional to the pain we feel in those areas of problems. The Chinese are helping in providing us cheap solutions and therefore engendering a new culture of dependency and patent laziness. When you get used to too much of a good cheap thing, you may not need to work hard to do the same things for yourself. That is my worry.

But that worry can be converted into a national advantage. Forget the wheel. It has been invented for you while you were snoring. Wake up and pick what is already there and run as fast as you can. Those who advocate a leapfrog approach to our development challenges have a point in this regard. But we are not doing that.

The Nigerian state may be powerless in constructively engaging China on trade and skills because we have not even tried to understand that new frontier. But there are a few basic things we can do if we are minimally strategically minded as a nation. First, introduce Chinese language as a compulsory subject in our school syllabus. You cannot ignore the language and culture of a nation of one and a half billion people that is in clear and present prospect of assuming world economic domination. Our agreements and contracts with Chinese governments should include clauses for active exchange of skills and training of Nigerians in Chinese industries. We also have a huge population of unemployed citizens. We should minimally protect some of our rudimentary industries from Chinese dumping. Most importantly, we should have the political will to protect our industries from unfair competition.

Our obligation to our children in this China matter is even simpler: let us equip them with the language and culture of the power that will tomorrow determine what they wear, how they travel, communicate, study and see the rest of the world. We learnt the language and culture of our colonial and imperial masters.

@ Staflex,

Can you clear this for me? Is the land in Ibeju-Lekki or Epe or what is the
exact location? Please be specific. Thank you.

I don't think the topics are too much. Different people have different interests. A good mix is good. Let people read what they want to read. No information restriction. The only thing will be to make sure the topics are relevant to people, NOT thrash topics!

@ All,

I understand your various points. I have been brainstorming about all the above issues and several others.
Like most of you stated it will be an expensive venture.
Even in the US, only the middle class and above can afford to pay for expensive tests/ procedures, except the poor people have insurance provided or subsidized by the govt.
I am exploring all options. I know Nigeria is a developing country, I will see if a middle ground or some sort of balancing
act can be achieved.
All contributions welcome! We may learn and be better in planning for such capital intensive projects.

@ Silvasurfa,

OK, I will send you email. That's really cool to know that someone out there share similar vision.
My email is sagewood@yahoo.com

@ All,
Thanks for all your contributions. I am aware of some of the challenges in Nigeria.
I was born in Nigeria, and worked in Eko Hospitals PLC, Ikeja in the 1990s prior to traveling abroad.
Most of you made very interesting points.
I have a business development consultant working on the business plan / proposal.
I will post some major issues he will raise in this forum in the near future.
Meanwhile, I want to use this forum to hear from fellow Nigerians generally to feel the "pulse" of the people.
Eko Hospitals PLC business model is closely aligned to the system in the USA.
Every business has risks and that's why all your contributions matter. Keep them coming!