₦airaland Forum

Since the images and videos of the maiming and killing of black foreigners in South Africa began to emerge on various social media platforms last week, Nigeria has been an emotionally frayed place. Tens of thousands of Nigerians live in South African cities and in recent years, they have become frequent targets of xenophobic attacks.

This time, anger in Nigeria boiled over and young Nigerians took to the streets protesting South African aggression and unleashing some of their own on South African-owned businesses.

The Nigerian government felt pressured to act and subsequently recalled its ambassador from Pretoria and announced it was pulling out of the World Economic Forum meeting on Africa which was held in Cape Town. While some Nigerians welcomed the move, others thought it was not enough and called on their government to intervene and rescue its citizens.

Examples abound of powerful countries going to great lengths to protect and repatriate their citizens who have faced danger abroad.

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But Nigeria is not one of them. Indeed, in the past, the country has stood its ground on a number of occasions when defending its national interests. In the 1960s, for example, Nigeria had a face-off with France over the latter's continuous tests of nuclear weapons in the Sahara desert. The government of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa acted decisively, breaking diplomatic relations with Paris, expelling the French ambassador and imposing a full embargo on French goods.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Nigeria led the international effort to isolate and pressure the apartheid regime in South Africa. It threatened economic action against Western powers for refusing to sanction the regime and supported the national liberation movements in Southern Africa, including the African Nation Congress (ANC), with millions of dollars annually.

In the 1990s, the country, under the leadership of military ruler Sani Abacha, defied international sanctions and welcomed a visit by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. It also directly intervened in the Liberian civil war, dispatching Nigerian troops to fight.

Most of the reactions to the violent attacks on Nigerians and other Africans in South Africa reflect a yearning for Abacha-style diplomacy. But as recent developments in its relations with the United States demonstrated, Nigeria can no longer wield such diplomatic power. Last month, the Nigerian government was spectacularly quick to react to the US's reciprocal rise in visa fees by reducing the charge for Americans applying for a visa to enter the country. And last year President Muhammadu Buhari decided to "keep quiet" on President Donald Trump's alleged "s***hole" remark about African nations.

At present, it is clear Nigeria does not have the military, the intelligence capability or the diplomatic clout to pursue a serious escalation against even a regional power, such as South Africa.

This diplomatic "standoff" with Pretoria has exposed the weakness Abuja has masked in parading itself as a self-styled "Giant of Africa". South Africa used to be a bully that Nigeria could restrain through its support for proxies inside the country and its neighbourhood. But since the end apartheid, this relationship has evolved into a regional competition, which Pretoria is winning.

After the sanctions and international isolation were lifted, South Africa quickly became the continent's more favoured ally of developed economies and foreign investors. Pretoria emerged as the recipient of the largest share of foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa and in 2011 joined the BRIC countries in an economic pact formed to challenge the domination of Western economic policy.

It is also an important trading partner that Nigeria cannot afford to lose. South African businesses have major investments in the country, including the DSTV cable service, MTN telecom, the Shoprite supermarket chain and others. Nigeria exports $3.83bn worth of goods, mostly oil and oil products, to South Africa. By contrast, it imports just $514.3m of South African products, which accounts for less than one percent of total South African exports.

The more contrasting feature of the two economies, and which again highlights Nigeria's weakness is that while Abuja levers around a commodity-dependent economy, Pretoria has built a highly-diversified economy with a superior industrial structure. In other words, Nigeria needs South Africa economically, much more than South Africa needs Nigeria.

Nigeria's geopolitical power has also waned in recent years, while South Africa has remained a major regional power. Abuja has been battling with a rebellion in the north for years and has struggled to put a stop to flares of tribal violence regularly killing dozens of people. In its neighbourhood, Nigeria continues to feel largely insecure, surrounded by Francophone countries whose allegiances to France threaten the commitment of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to stability and non-aggression in the region.

The Nigerian government has also been unable to muster enough influence in the West to become a trusted partner. In 2014, the Obama administration, for example, blocked the sale of arms to the Nigerian military. The Trump administration decided to proceed with it but under heavy conditions which Nigerian officials have deemed "unacceptable". Western reluctance to sell weapons to Abuja has pressed it to seek arms on the black market. South Africa has embarrassed it twice in recent years by intercepting large arms shipment bound for Nigeria.

In this sense, the Nigerian government cannot do anything about the violence against its citizens in South Africa beyond making a few symbolic diplomatic moves and bringing up once again the Nigerian role in liberating South Africans from its white oppressors. It is clear that in doing so it is addressing Pretoria from the position of weakness.

Indeed, using persistent references to sub-Saharan African commonality and solidarity as a result of shared history, race and geography is not an effective foreign policy tool.

The idea of One Africa is a farce taken too far, and successive Nigerian elites have pandered to this fantasy to the detriment of national interests. The legacy of this pan-African misadventure is a geopolitically weak Nigeria which cannot stand up to for itself and for its citizens

This very much has to do with mismanagement of the economy. The redemption Nigeria needs is one that moves the country away from dependence on oil exports, foreign imports and interventions and towards diversification and industrialisation. We cannot afford to glorify the idea of producing pencils in the age of artificial intelligence any more.

Only if the country becomes materially secure and industrially productive will it be able to regain its soft power and international clout and stand up to the old bullies in its neighbourhood.




https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/nigeria-nigerians-xenophobic-attacks-south-africa-190908200649204.html

Sunofgod:
Why are tarrifs not published?

The whole process is corrupt!

They have a publish tariff. It's very large. Find out if you need it

olaadesino:
PH is one of the cities that worst than Maduguri in term of killing but many Nigerians don't know

You are wrong. you have a wrong perception that's been fueled by media

tintedbliz:
did it play?

Yes

Guy the game enter.make we dey play

crestedaguiyi:
there was no such thing as INEC did not monitor the primaries conducted by both faction

No you are wrong INEC did

It will surprise you to know that this guy went to police training college.I know him personally just after his .early days of picking from Uniport.he is very popular

crestedaguiyi:
all this hal
f baked graduate running their mouth sef.

so between cole and abe , who should be on ballot box

Who was on INEC register before the judgement stopping INEC.?
Tonye Cole was and that was the judgement today

Morbeta11:
Mumu people... Keeping deceiving yourselves with tongues.. why not speak in Throats

When grown people are talking shut your mouth

TheTrueSeeker2:
You also heard when someone in the congregation yelled 'we understand pastor' right?

Can you hear yourself?
How those that translate to vote out Buhari

TheTrueSeeker2:
Speaking at the ongoing Global Communion Service 4th Nov 2018. Pastor Chris Oyakhilome spoke extensively in support of the current POTUS; Donald Trump.
Then concerning the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria, he

Details shortly....

I was in that service. Please stop lying
He just spoke in tongue when he talked about who to vote in Nigeria

yungdynho:
The Rivers people I know are strongly behind Senator Magnus Ngei Abe and not that dictator called Rotimi Ameachi. Its just un42nate that Ameachi has a longer leg than Abe.

Which Rivers people you know. The real Thing is holding at ibokwu field.no dey deceive yourself

Spot on

This one touch me

08063240192

08063240192

92

Are you thinking what I'm thinking

Iamtipsyy:
I stay at woji them never commission nothing. Photoshop construction is still going on at elelenwo

Brother get it right. It is not elelenwo main road. It is the woji link bridge to elenwo, the road is not just good but it's sexy

NonsoWow:
Only the roads are lit while everywhere else is in darkness! Also notice there are no vehicles on the roads because everybody goes to bed once it is 7pm in PH in order not to fall victims to the insecurity pervading Wike's Rivers.

Will you keep quiet. That picture was taken on the day of commissioning of that road thus the road was closed. You will be in your brown roof and be spilling BS. Imagine you saying people go to bed in ph by 7pm. All because of hatred that has engrossed your heart. For your information. Ph is safe and activities happen 24hrs. We move around freely at any time. Travel and see. You will be better off

A Steel Factory Gears Up to Start Production. After 40 Years
Nigeria’s Ajaokuta complex was built with Soviet aid. Now the government says it’s finally serious about opening it.
By David Malingha Doya
May 24, 2018, 12:00 AM EDT

The dilapidated Ajaokuta Steel complex. Photographer: David Malingha Doya/Bloomberg
On a hot April morning, workers are furiously cleaning a decorative fountain in front of the executive office of Nigeria’s largest steel complex. An onsite power plant is being repaired by electricians. Others around the 39-year-old facility are clearing brush. In the middle of it all, administrator Abdul-Akaba Sumaila is meeting in turn with the 20 or so people crowding his waiting room, a mix of union officials, local politicians and job applicants.

When one young man pulls a filled-out form from a wrinkled envelope, Sumaila asks him about his background, pats his back and encourages him to stay positive. Soon, he says, Ajaokuta Steel will start hiring. After that, it may actually make some steel.

The dilapidated factory complex has never managed to produce a single bar, coil or rod. Built with Soviet assistance, the sprawling facility has sucked up $8 billion in public investment and been hamstrung by repeated stops and starts, ownership changes, poor governance and sheer incompetence. It’s a tortured history that mirrors Nigeria’s broader attempts to develop a sustainable economic base beyond fossil fuels.



President Muhammadu Buhari has put a high priority on getting the plant into production, hopefully by selling it to private investors. But the legal, technical and political problems illustrate in microcosm—albeit a three-square-mile microcosm—many of the challenges that bedevil Nigeria’s diversification drive.

Sumaila, a mechanical engineer who’s taken a three-year leave of absence from Royal Dutch Shell Plc to try to revive Ajaokuta, is undeterred. “What excites me is the enormous potential of this place,” he said in his office at the plant. “Whatever we need to do, we have to do it.”

The economic imperatives are clear. Nigeria depends on crude for 90 percent of its export earnings. With global oil prices significantly below their past highs of more than $100 a barrel, shortages of foreign exchange are a daily reality. And Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, has little domestic capacity to refine gasoline and thus must pay to re-import its own oil. The consequent lack of foreign currency has driven up prices for everything from food to construction materials, further hobbling an economy that shrank by 1.6 percent in 2016.

Today much of the facility beyond the central administration block resembles the set for a post-apocalyptic action film
The need for diversification, and the employment it could provide, is made more urgent by a surging population. With about 200 million people and growing rapidly, Nigeria is by far the most populous country in Africa. Without durable sources of employment, a nation that’s spent much of the past decade fighting insurgencies in its arid north could descend further into disorder.

Yet the record of privatization in Nigeria is decidedly mixed. In the cement industry, it was largely a success: Investors succeeded in reviving production, making the country a net exporter of the material. One of the early buyers, Aliko Dangote, is now Africa’s richest man. By contrast, efforts to sell off power plants have failed to end blackouts, still a daily occurrence in much of Nigeria.


Steel has long been an obvious target. Nigeria has vast deposits of iron ore, much of it in Kogi State, the same region where Ajaokuta is located. Transformed into steel, the ore could make other domestic industries, such as construction, far more viable.

Those intentions underpinned the construction of Ajaokuta, which when it began in 1979 was envisioned at Pharaonic scale. At full capacity, it was intended to produce as much as 3 million metric tons of steel annually, enough to largely close the gap between Nigeria’s current steel consumption and domestic output. Yet the most critical piece of infrastructure, a rail line that would connect the plant to iron-ore mines and deliver the finished product, was never completed.

Today much of the facility beyond the central administration block resembles the set for a post-apocalyptic action film. The blast furnace, conveyor belts and giant cranes to move materials—many inscribed with the words “Made in USSR”—stand idle in scrubby fields. Pipes as wide as manhole covers are coated in creeping grass, and cattle graze in clearings meant to store coal for the furnace.

‘Made in USSR’ adorns a rusty crane at the Ajaokuta Steel complex.Photographer: David Malingha Doya/Bloomberg
Of the 10,000 houses envisioned for workers, the 4,000 that were completed are occupied mostly by retirees. The current workforce of about 1,500 civil servants is tasked primarily with keeping parts of the plant in serviceable condition. The combined 120 kilometers (75 miles) of internal roads and railroads, as well as the school, the library, and the hospital for workers and their families, are largely unused. The runway of an airstrip built to serve the area needs to be resurfaced.

Nigeria’s government says it’s serious about transforming Ajaokuta from an embarrassment into a viable asset. The plant’s biggest booster is Kayode Fayemi, the mines and steel development minister. While Fayemi concedes, with significant understatement, that the first 30-plus years of Ajaokuta “didn’t quite work out as planned, which is the Nigerian story sometimes,” he said fixing it is now a national priority.

“Ajaokuta is central to our diversification strategy,” he said in his office in Abuja. Building up domestic steelmaking, he said, is “the least we could do for ourselves as a country and for our manufacturing sector.”

“This is an alternative to oil”
Work has begun on the long-awaited rail spur line, which may accept test trains as soon as August. The government also will need to decide who should own and operate the plant. Ajaokuta is currently controlled by the state after a previous private-sector operator, Global Steel Holdings Ltd., had its concession terminated.

While the government has said it plans to solicit bids for Ajaokuta from new investors, a group of lawmakers, with some union support, is pushing to keep the plant under public ownership. They argue that only paltry offers are likely for a facility that still requires huge investment. Senate Majority Leader Ahmad Lawan proposed legislation to that effect in the upper house on May 8, against the government’s wishes.

Fayemi says he’s convinced that Nigeria can no longer afford not to process its own resources. “The idea that we must be taking our iron ore out, our gold out, every raw material, for others to add value, and then send back to us to pay probably 10 times what it’s worth when we send them out is unthinkable,” he said.

He won’t be around to see if that pans out. He said May 14 that he will leave at the end of the month to run for governor in his home state of Ekiti. And Sumaila, the Ajaokuta administrator, said he doesn’t know whether he will return to Shell or not when his term at Ajaokuta ends in October 2020.

Wearing moccasins, a black short-sleeved and collarless suit, with a pen in hand, Sumaila says he remains optimistic as he walks around his spacious office.

“This is an alternative to oil,” he said. “The complex can be up and running two years after the government makes the strategic decision on the direction it wants to take.”

— With assistance by Samuel Dodge
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-05-24/a-steel-factory-gears-up-to-start-production-after-40-years?__twitter_impression=true

Tboss should not be in this category
She is in a class of her own

7 Gmail tips every emailer should know
Want to quietly opt out of an email chain or take back that pathetic note to your ex? Gmail can help.

BY
MATT ELLIOTT
MAY 19, 2018 1:00 PM PDT

new-gmail-still
Google overhauled Gmail with a new look and a host of new features including Smart Compose, and you can get the new Gmail right now. While the new additions are appreciated, Gmail has a number of oldies but goodies that you may have overlooked. Here are seven such features that make Gmail awesome.

Mute annoyingly noisy email threads
Muting group texts is probably the single greatest thing about owning an iPhone ($799.99 at Cricket Wireless) (or at least texting on an iPhone), and Gmail offers a similar ability to mute noisy email threads. If you got put on a group email and no longer care to follow the back-and-forth replies, you can opt out. Open the thread, click the triple-dot button at the top and click Mute. The conversation will be moved to your archive, where it will remain even when more replies arrive.

If you later get curious about what you missed, you can always find it in the All Mail view of Gmail, which includes your archived messages. You can then unmute the conversation if you so choose by opening the conversation and clicking the Move to Inbox button at the top of the page.



Send and archive for the win
You can add a second send option for all replies and email forwards that archives the conversation with your reply or forward. It's helpful for keeping your inbox orderly. And don't worry, the conversation will pop back up in your inbox if someone replies to it. To set it up, click the gear icon in the top-right and go to Settings > General > Send & Archive, select Show "Send & Archive" button in reply and then scroll down and hit the Save Changes button. Now, you'll see a blue Send-and-archive chive button next to the regular Send button at the bottom of replies and forwards.

gmail-send-and-archive

Set undo send to 30 seconds
There's an undo option for emails you send and then immediately regret sending, whether it's because of a typo or your current emotional state. Or maybe you just hit send by accident when you were in the middle of composing your missive. Go to Settings > General > Undo, select the maximum time limit of 30 seconds and then scroll down and hit the Save Changes button. (The other options are 5, 10 and 20 seconds). After you hit send, look for the banner that pops up at the bottom of the screen that says "Your message has been sent." Click Undo to bring it back.

Hiding in plain sight: Advanced search
With Google behind Gmail, it's no surprise that Gmail offers powerful search functionality. You've likely used the search bar above your inbox to dig up an old email based on a keyword or sender, but it can do so much more. Click the little down-arrow button on the right of the search bar to open Gmail's advanced search panel where you can search for date ranges and attachment sizes, by subject line and with other filters.

gmail-advanced-search

Preview pane for an Outlook-like look
If you've got a big display, then I encourage you to make use of your luxurious screen real estate and use Gmail's preview pane. It makes Gmail look and feel more like Outlook, where you can view and respond to messages without leaving the inbox. Head to Settings > Advanced, click Enable for Preview Pane and then scroll down and hit the Save Changes button. You'll see a new button at the top of your inbox that lets you toggle the preview pane on and off and choose to split your inbox horizontally or vertically.

Choose your tabs
Gmail does an admirable job of filtering your inbox so the messages you care about go to your inbox while the rest get relegated to the Social or Promotional tabs. Go to Settings > Inbox > Categories and you can choose which tabs you want at the top. Or if you simply ignore all tabs other than your Primary inbox, then you can uncheck all but Primary for a streamlined, tab-less Gmail experience.

Email large attachments via Google Drive
There's a little Drive icon at the bottom of Gmail's compose window. It lets you attach files you have stored in Drive or simply send a link. For Google Drive formats -- Docs, Sheets, Slides and so on -- your only option is to send a link to the file. For other file types -- PDFs, Word docs, images -- you have the option of sending them as an attachment or a Drive link, which lets you share files larger than Gmail's 25MB size limit for attachments.

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/7-gmail-tips-every-emailer-should-know/

Seun

writeprof:
Why would the Govt mobilise a contractor when he has not settled the communities to start work. This is a one-sided story.
As a young man working with SHELL BP contractors then, SHELL will make sure you've settled every issue that may prevent the work before they mobilise the contractor and the projects go on smoothly.
This blame games should stop, pls.

Settle which boys. The government should settle community for bringing development to them. Isn't it pathetic. You are not talking about the jobs the project will create for people. Direct and indirect employment

vicfy:
The main problem is not the route, rather the superiority issues. I leant dt the one of d kings who installed their Chairman of Traditional rulers is being sidelined by d same "small boy" he installed.

Basically we are our own problem

Can you see where we are getting things wrong in this Niger Delta
Selfishness and greed. So because the route is not cutting through andoni it's Now a problem

macfreeman007:
V6 or v4?

It's a V6

Location is Woji port Harcourt

produce:
The way you took the pix of this vehicle sef for sale ? & you want a serious buyer with no price ? good luck

Apparently the site will not allow me load heavy pictures.

Thanks for the observation though

600k is the price