₦airaland Forum

MackyNaija:
The 'threat to life' with course attendance no be here.
Miss 3 classes and you are due for the next level grade! Meaning, no matter what you score, you can only get a B-grade maximum.


I am coping, the assignments are pouring in like.
I wish this part was different.

its for your own benefit my guy. Not lectures here who teach only to see their handout and make money,at the end of the day they will mark down students.


You get what you deserve. And when you graduate,you will be more employable more than few this our naija grads who cant read.

MackyNaija:
Better safe than sorry o, I didn't finish but didn't want to exceed the due time.

you are the true son of your father,naija no dey dull.

MackyNaija:
I wrote my first online quiz yesterday..
It was a new experience, test was scheduled for 9am and was due by 9.20... It could be written online from anywhere.

Before I could start, it was 9:01, objective type, multiple choice and fill in the blank type of questions.

I had to rush thru.. Very aware I had to submit at least a minute before due time...
9:19am, I submitted and saw -

Start time 9:01, end time 9:19, duration 18mins - smart software I thought - Then I saw the grading!

Pheewww... This one was fast....
I scored about 90%, twas fair enough, still an A.

I called some friends and they said they saw 'Late' attached to their grades, you submit 1second after due time and it is termed 'Late submission'.
No idea what the implication is - make we deh look.

guy you fast sha. Is better safe than being sorry,i hope the folks who did theirs late will get to resit.

ruggedised:
go back to romance section kid, we aren't talking about sex and boobs here

God bless you my brother.


What do Nigeria want from igbos again?

Why do the yorubas think that the igbos cant be granted self autonomy.

It hurts me to see suck wickedness and dispacable behaviour being portrayed by these nairaland kids


we need more working brains like your at Biafra Republic

fruzzy:
plsss kindly add me up,need some advice from u.i sent u a PM.thanks

bros calm down


mackynaija made it known from the onset that he does not reply PMs but can help you answer your questions here on this thread


hope i didnt instigate any hard felling? Thanks

This keeps taking families life here in Nigeria but families often learn the hard way which is always deadly. Rip to the dead.



To the poster above me

Jessu

Lalasticlala please come and move to front page abeg

deji17:
Danke

,,

Guy you are talented

And someone will come and scream one Nigeria here

deji17:
Buharinomics explained...

https://dailytrust.com.ng/news/letters/buharinomics-theory-and-practice/185593.html

you try. You be correct guy

When he puts only the tip and it worth it

deji17:
I hear you. This is Buharinomics.

which kind english be that?

Buhari spoil our match with bad luck,i for say!

Jesus


they black like omenka nyash that was roasted by the gods

deji17:
http://www.premiumtimesng.com/business/242346-firs-generates-n2-11-trillion-7-months.html

your head they there

So you want to tell us you are an introvert now indirectly abi?

But Buhari said Nigeria is broke

Pictures or

whisper88:
I dey tell u, we don draw now

the thing pain me die

Buhari done carry him bad luck spoil our game today. Which kind wahala be this?

AnonyNymous:
Please don't be hypocrites, we all watch Game of Thrones and enjoy it when we see Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) naked. . . nobody calls her an ashewo or olosho. So why attack her. . .its her industry, its not like she's having sex on camera. If a movie requires nudity to have more effect (such as Cersei Lannister's (Lena Headey) walk of shame) then why should she not act the scene if she is talented enough and paid well?

the walk of shame was done by a stunt double. Google it up

A hospital building program in South Africa has been delayed to help pay for the country's hosting of the 2010 football World Cup. The construction of two hospitals in the remote Northern Cape has been held up for a year while funds are diverted to pay for the tournament. The South African Treasury said spending on health was increasing but did not deny that the money had been transferred. The cost of providing new and renovated stadiums for the World Cup is rapidly rising, with construction bills hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The budget blow-out is due to inadequate government planning. President Thabo Mbeki has staked South Africa's reputation on the success of the World Cup.
Surrendered guns used by criminals
A "sizable number" of guns surrendered to the police for destruction have mysteriously found their way to criminal syndicates and warring taxi groups. Crooked police working at firearm centres at several police stations countrywide have been selling guns to criminal syndicates. The guns were meant to be kept in safes pending their destruction.
We are at war
South Africa’s top businessmen have expressed outrage at spiralling crime, saying violent criminals have plunged the country into crisis. Johann Rupert spoke of South Africans “being at war with ourselves”, and Saki Macozoma decried the country’s descent into “criminality” following the murder on Friday of world-renowned KwaZulu- Natal battlefields historian David Rattray at his home. The 49-year-old Anglo-Zulu War expert was shot three times in the chest at his home in Fugitive’s Drift, apparently by would-be robbers, and died in front of his wife Nicky. The historian had influential friends throughout the world. Billionaire businessman and chairman of Swiss luxury goods group Richemont Johann Rupert described the murder as “senseless”. “Is this the society that thousands of people fought and sacrificed their lives for? People who do not believe that our country is in crisis with violent crime must be in denial,” said Rupert. “This is not the type of country I’d hoped my children would live in ... we must now realise that in this country we’re at war with ourselves. South Africa has definitely lost one of its great sons ... he gave his life to promoting Zulu culture,” he said. Businessman, former activist and ANC National Executive Committee member Saki Macozoma described his death as “an example of the criminality that pervades our society.”

As Eskom is a state-owned and, ultimately, state-controlled utility, the suspicion exists that Manuel's outburst was a defencive response, an attempt to minimise the damage to the government he serves by minimising the cost of the outage to the economy.
Manuel, who has been highly praised for his skillful management of the government's macro-economic policy, is normally a man who chooses his words carefully and presents his case skilfully. His colloquial outburst is not unprecedented, however.
He delivered a similar outburst during a budget debate in 2004, when he accused opposition parliamentarians of "speaking voodoo" for daring to press the government to make anti-retroviral drugs available at state health institutions for the treatment of HIV/Aids.
As it turned out, the government eventually agreed that there were sound medical reasons to prescribe anti-retroviral drugs as an integral part of its comprehensive treatment plan for the dreaded pestilence.
To return to the recurring outages that increasingly characterise South Africa: like Nelson Mandela, Alec Erwin, the minister of public enterprises, is another minister who is generally respected for his cool-headedness and rationality.


But late in February last year, as Cape Town's residents seethed because of a series of power cuts and as the national local government elections approached, Erwin further inflamed anger in many households that had reverted to primus stoves to boil water for tea or coffee.
In what seemed to be a deliberate intervention to deflect public anger away from the ANC government and the ANC-controlled city council for failing to ensure the supply of power to the city, he raised the spectre of sabotage.
He publicly postulated that a loose bolt that had brought a unit of the Koeberg nuclear power station to a standstill had not been caused by incompetent maintenance of the unit but, instead, by a deliberate act of sabotage.
Erwin's statement did not save the ANC from defeat in its battle against the Democratic Alliance for the control of Cape Town, however.
Later, in August last year, when police investigations failed to establish that saboteurs had been at work, Erwin took another tack. He strongly denied that he had mentioned the word "sabotage", although, he said, at the time there was a "serious possibility" that it had been the work of a saboteur or saboteurs.
Unfortunately for Erwin, he was recorded by e.tv news as saying: "This is in fact not an accident… Any interference with any electricity installation is an exceptionally serious crime. It is sabotage."
He referred in the same statement to pending legal action and the laying of a charge. Neither occurred.
The saga is not over yet. The full cost of folly and incompetence has still to be paid. South Africa's reserve supply of power is well below the international standard of between 10 percent and 15 percent. A winter of discontent looms ominously.

If the primary responsibility of governments is to protect their citizens from murderous criminals and lawless bandits, the Mbeki administration is open to criticism for downplaying the threat posed to South Africa by its high levels of crime.
If the second obligation of governments in the age of electricity and the marvels the microchip is to maintain a sufficient and reliable supply of power, President Thabo Mbeki is vulnerable to censure for allowing demand to exceed supply.
He cannot fairly be criticised for ignoring or denying that crime is a destructive force in post-apartheid South Africa. He can, however, be reproached for adding so many riders to his admissions of concern that they almost negate them.
'Mbeki asserted that most South Africans would agree with him'
Thus, while he referred to crime as "a scourge" in his recent address commemorating the 95th anniversary of the founding of the ANC, he later felt the need to qualify it by describing crime as a problem rather than an out-of-control crisis.
In an apparent bid to emphasise his qualifying point, Mbeki asserted that most South Africans would agree with him.
He needs to ask himself why, according to the Human Science Research Council's massive social attitude survey, 75 percent of adult South Africans support the execution of convicted murderers, if it is not because they think these criminals are literally getting away with murder.
While official police crime statistics point to a steady decrease in several categories of serious crime, including murder, it should be noted that the overall levels are still high and that the decreases need to seen in the context of increases in cash-in-transit robberies and rape, as well as a 7 percent increase in the 21 most serious crimes in the 12 years from 1994 to 2006.
In what might be interpreted as a sign that crime is not taken as seriously as it should be, South Africa's programme of action on how to address the deficiencies and weakness in contemporary society does not include crime as one of the problems that needs be tackled urgently.
The reason given for that astounding omission from the programme - which was submitted to the African Peer Review secretariat - is a decision by the programme drafters to restrict it to issues where a "discernible impact" can be made through limited and specifically targeted government interventions.

The African Union was not impressed, judging by the leaked contents of a report that it sent to Mbeki. The AU urged South Africa to take a tough stand against violent crime and radical action to remedy the underlying causes of poverty and unemployment.
Charles Nqakula, the minister of safety and security, has been sharply criticised for failing to take the concerns of opposition members of parliament seriously about the continuing high level of crime.
He is on record as advising three opposition parliamentarians to emigrate to another country if they believe crime makes life in South Africa intolerable. His facetious response contains a corollary: the imputation that they do not talk on behalf of the black majority, an insinuation that was repudiated by black as well as white people the next day.
On the critical shortage of electricity, and the recurring outages that disrupt the economy, inconvenience the citizenry and impede the flow of traffic on already congested and perilous roads, there is a similar inclination by Mbeki's ministers to belittle the distress of those affected or to deflect blame from themselves and/or the government. Instead of maintaining a tactful silence on the complaints of the businessmen about the loss of production and damage to the economy of the latest major outage - the one that cast a literal pall of gloom over large areas of Johannesburg and Cape Town - Trevor Manuel, the minister of finance, dismissed their estimates of the costs as "overcooked and utter garbage".

Business Day February 2, 2007
THE Institute for Security Studies says the violent nature of aggravated robbery in SA, and the obvious lack of fear of being caught by culprits who pick times when the public is likely to be around, are among the country's most serious crime challenges.
Institute researcher Antoinette Louw said yesterday the public perception that crime was out of control could be linked to the violent nature of crime and lack of communication by the police. This was made worse by the public having to wait a year-and-a-half for crime statistics.
While crime incidence is 7% higher than it was 12 years ago, there has been a steady decrease over the past three years in most categories. Louw, who has been monitoring the statistics for years, sees this as positive. But the rate of robbery, said Louw, was significantly higher than it was 12 years ago, with common robbery increasing 89% and aggravated robbery by 16% between 1994-95 and 2005-06.
Most robbery-type crimes had decreased over the past three years, with the exception of car theft and cash-in-transit heists.
"The response of police leaders has left the public with the sense that government, and the police in particular, don't care enough about the problem of crime or its consequences," she said.
"What would help is a sincere and informed acknowledgement of the problems, followed by a clear outline of how these will be dealt with in various parts of the country."
Louw said Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula's remark last June, that people who "whinge" about crime should leave the country, had not helped.
It had not reduced public fears that robberies at shopping malls, banks and homes often targeted people. The threat of rape and murder and that these crimes were generally committed by large groups tends to fuel public fears.


After peaking in 2001-02 at 15846, reported robberies declined steadily, reaching 12434 in 2004-05. In the past financial year, robberies increased 3%.
Car theft was up 2,5% on 2004-05. Louw attributed this to an increase in the number of registered vehicles and the fact that organised crime was generally rising. The 74% increase in cash-in- transit heists between 2004-05 and 2005-06 was seen as a matter of concern.
Factors were more cash in circulation, inadequate cash management, the absence of minimum standards for vehicles, training and vetting among companies that moved cash, and guards generally being outnumbered by criminals during attacks.
A decrease in bank robberies because of banks stepping up security could also be a factor.
Louw said promises by the police that the next set of crime statistics would be released in early May, rather than in September, were encouraging and would reduce speculation about crime.
"Of the information that has been provided to the public it's encouraging to know that organised crime has been identified as a priority and that intelligence capacity and border control will be improved, although we know little about the precise restructuring of the police service." It was also seen as encouraging that Nqakula had hired the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation to help police in understanding violence.
Research by Robert Mattes of the Centre for Social Science Research found that while SA police were often better resourced than their African neighbours, the perception of its performance ranked among the lowest on the continent.
He said this suggested that "throwing more money" at the police or employing more people would not reduce crime. What was needed was a more community-orientated police service.

The result of the reorganisation was outrage and pandemonium in the ANC. Skwatsha parted ways with Rasool and teamed up with the "Africanist" faction that both had previously disdained. The provincial conference (during which the Skwatsha faction, according to a well-placed source, had its pre conference caucus meeting in a Seapoint hotel bankrolled by Kebble) saw Rasool stripped of much power. He lost his position as chairman and only barely held on to an ordinary seat on the provincial executive.
According to sources in the Skwatsha camp, Rasool had one more stab at Skwatsha before losing his position. Two weeks before the provincial conference, Skwatsha was hit by corruption allegations, accused of trying to get a security tender from the city council for his brother's company by using his political influence.
Rasool, says a member of the ANC provincial executive, admitted afterwards that he had met the investigating officer twice - which may explain why the police raiding the city's tender offices said in an affidavit that they were doing so on the orders of the premier.
Cleared over a year later of any wrong doing by the elite Scorpions unit, the ebullient Skwatsha cracked open a bottle of champagne at a press conference late last year.
"The champagne was not just because there was no case against him, but because Rasool had used state resources against him and failed," says a friend.
The broedertwis in the Western Cape ANC shows how the arrival of business opportunities has changed political life.
SA Communist Party leader and intellectual Jeremy Cronin says that the ideology of the ANC has shifted. While the general thinking used to reflect an organisational and collective approach to change, nowadays the emphasis is an individualistic one, a prevailing notion that "you can get whatever you want, if you want it badly enough".
Saki Macozoma - The ANC is being distorted to make money
Motlanthe and Macozoma both speak of the rise of the "Lotto mentality" and how the idea that it is possible to become an instant millionaire has taken root. Working for low wages or low returns in a small-scale enterprise is scorned.
"People see that others are making reported millions - even though it's actually all debt. Ordinary ANC members ask themselves why not me?'," says Macozoma.
So can the ANC get its house in order? For more than 18 months the party has been paralysed by leadership succession. Little else has been discussed at the NEC, the most senior committee of the party, despite a general recognition from across the board that the ANC is rotting from within.
A sub committee of the NEC, made up of Macozoma, finance minister Trevor Manuel and others, was recently asked to produce guidelines on how the ANC should deal with the problems arising from its members' dealings in business.
This was after Motlanthe rang alarm bells more than 18 months ago at the ANC's national general council, where he warned that the involvement of members in business was destroying the soul of the party.
Expedient membership of the ANC
Some of the group's suggestions include: declarations of interest for ANC officials; guidelines on what kind of donations the ANC should accept; and the suggestion that a special committee elected at the party's five-yearly national conference deal with disputes between members.
Solutions, though, are constrained heavily by two things.
The history of political and economic dispossession makes it unlikely that anyone, politician or high-ranking civil servant or not, will be excluded from the exceptional opportunities that BEE provides for wealth accumulation.
"You've got to be reasonable and pragmatic about this. Cooling-off periods [where ex-government officials are restricted from participating in the sectors they have regulated] won't work for our generation. Where a person has built up skills and knowledge in an area, you can't tell them they can't participate," says Macozoma.
Neither is excluding serving politicians from participation in business a realistic option, he says. "BEE creates a particular opportunity with a limited shelf life - you can't exclude people from it."
But more immediately, the ANC is constrained most heavily in finding a solution by its own organisational paralysis. Obsessed with its leadership battle, the party has been rendered incapable of honest self-reflection at a time when it is faced with challenges that can bring about its own destruction. It is crucial for the party to reflect on its own systems and processes. The ANC national conference, at the end of this year, must choose the future leader of the party. But it may be more important to decide the future of the party itself.
Motlanthe's words in reference to the Western Cape can be applied to the party as a whole: "I told them that they have no ideological differences; they have no racial differences. They are fighting over control and monopoly of tender processes."

There is no scientific measure of how bad corruption in SA really is. Organisations like Transparency International measure corruption on the basis of perceptions through interviews. SA comes out reasonably well, rated the second-least corrupt country in Africa. This might reflect the macro picture of SA's big corporates and government departments. But it is certainly a radical underestimation of what is happening at a micro level in provinces and municipalities.
Motlanthe, in touch with the ANC's nearly 200 branches, has a better view than most. He believes corruption is far worse than anyone imagines.
"This rot is across the board. It's not confined to any level or any area of the country. Almost every project is conceived because it offers opportunities for certain people to make money. A great deal of the ANC's problems are occasioned by this. There are people who want to take it over so they can arrange for the appointment of those who will allow them possibilities for future accumulation," he says.
Members the FM interviewed implied that sending contracts the way of an ANC-linked businessman was frequently legitimised by the notion that doing so was "good for the ANC". Often, it is claimed, the profit will be for the ANC itself - a statement, says Motlanthe, that is far more often false than true.
Direct donations to the ANC are frequently solicited, sources say. Contractors are also known not just to donate to the party generally but also to bankroll particular factions or individuals, well placed to dispense large contracts.
Bending the rules, says Motlanthe, becomes a culture when people lower down see that higher-ups do it.


The ANC and its structures are the first stop for anyone hoping to make money out of government contracts. And the party is highly vulnerable to manipulation by those looking to gain influence.
Corrupting the ANC is not an expensive business. Membership costs R12/year and the practice of buying members to support an individual in a branch or provincial conference election is common. ANC membership rises and sometimes even doubles in the lead-up to a provincial conference (see graphs).
Procedures put in place to confound ghost members had been subverted, Motlanthe said in an official report in July 2005, and people had been able to "capture branches" and "advance self-serving agendas".
One local councillor - a community worker of excellent standing who lost his seat on the Emfuleni city council (Vereeniging) when his branch failed to nominate him in 2005 - told the FM the branch nomination process was "mad".
"Almost everybody was pushing to get in [as a councillor]. I saw a lot of people I didn't know. These people had just been given membership - they had not been in the organisation at any point before."
The impact on the party is clear. Businessman Saki Macozoma says he is deeply concerned about how "the expectation of making money out of government distorts the politics of the ANC".
"People who have no interest in advancing the politics of the ANC have stormed in and taken over. Once inside, they displace others - and competence goes out of the window," he says.
Access to provincial cabinet positions now carry an additional significance. The highest prize are those with capital budgets to spend: housing, public works, roads and transport.
To see how access to such power is distorting the way the party should work, consider another example.
Mcebisi Skwatsha - Deployed
Mcebisi Skwatsha is the popular secretary of the Western Cape ANC - a position he has held for two terms. Though things have changed now, for many years Skwatsha was one of only a few African members of the ANC on the provincial executive. But though Skwatsha was close to Ebrahim Rasool, the ANC leader before 2005 and the premier since 2004, he wasn't automatically considered by Rasool for appointment to his cabinet.
Ebrahim Rasool - Faction fighting in the Western Cape
When Rasool put his cabinet together in April 2004, he was lobbied to include Skwatsha by the ANC's national structures. He was given the coveted transport & public works portfolio, which allows him to oversee the valuable property interests of the province, complete with a substantial capital budget.
The party was trying to solve another problem. It had become concerned by complaints of a monopoly on economic opportunities by a small group of businessmen in the Western Cape (see case study, "Ethnic wrangling".
But not long into his term, Skwatsha's responsibilities were summarily re organised by Rasool, who took the management of government's property assets away from Skwatsha and reallocated them to his office.
The FM has been told that Skwatsha was negotiating with businessman Brett Kebble over the disposal of the provincial government's most precious jewel, the Somerset Hospital site, situated near the Waterfront complex and ripe for a multi billion-rand development. Those negotiations have been confirmed by an associate of Skwatsha's.