₦airaland Forum

Frankly I used to think the US educational system was similar to or inferior to the UK's system where a 2:1 (even a 2:2 for some) is generally all you need to open doors to the best schools. Cambridge and Ocxford may specifically ask for 68% and above but otherwise 2:1= ticket.

My course id chemical engg, Anybody who has recieved status updates from U of A

SCYLLA:
So no one is preparing for GRE now, na wa oh what is it like to write GRE in naija self?  I mean test conditions?

Did you ask your father about Ekiti expelling ondo indigenes after they were created?

It means that over 10% of Ekiti residents are fraudsters and you are not alarmed. God help Nigeria.

Apparently, you studied the math in Yoruba language. Anyway, I quoted an estimated population of workers in Ekiti and not the state's population; there is a difference if you can pocket your arrogance and read well.
Also, 98% of people working with the state's government are from that state. Ekiti state expelled all Ondo indigenes working in Ado from the service when the state was created. There was mass dismissal then and Ondo state was struggling to absorb their brothers and sisters laid off in Ekiti state. Go and ask your father if you ask me because you are still a small boy who grew pubic hairs last month.

Al Gore's split from wife Tipper after 40 years of marriage was a shock to everyone who thought theirs was the ideal marriage. Now Star can exclusively reveal that the former Vice President was having an affair with Larry David's ex-wife — for the past two years!

In the June 28 issue of Star, on sale Wednesday, we report that Al and Tipper's breakup didn't come as much of a surprise to one Hollywood player — Laurie David. Star has learned that Al has been having an affair with Laurie, who divorced Seinfeld creator and Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David in 2007 amidst reports she was cheating with the caretaker of their Martha's Vineyard summer home.

“Al and Laurie went from friends to lovers," an insider tells Star. "It couldn’t be avoided."

The on-going certificate verification exercise for the newly-recruited officials of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corp (NSCDC) in Enugu State has opened a can of worms, as many of them were

found to have presented forged certificates.

This fraud was allegedly uncovered as security operatives working for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) extended their dragnet to the venue of the screening.

Led by Mr. Aro Udensi, the operatives explained that some forged certificates were discovered during the verification, especially in the area of age declaration and certificate of place of origin.

It was learnt that the government decided to involve security agents in the exercise to ensure transparency in the recruitment of the officers.

Although sources said that those who were allegedly involved in the forgery have been handed over to the police, the identities of the culprits were not disclosed.

NSCDC State Commandant, Mr. Sikiru Raimi, said that the development was a welcome one, adding that the verification would be thorough to ensure that qualified people were employed.

He noted that if such people are frequently fished out, NSCDC would stop being a dumping ground for the never-do-wells.

Raimi stated that an increase in manpower would assist the command in beefing up surveillance along petroleum products pipelines, local government areas and other government infrastructure.

The on-going certificate verification exercise for the newly-recruited officials of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corp (NSCDC) in Enugu State has opened a can of worms, as many of them were

found to have presented forged certificates.

This fraud was allegedly uncovered as security operatives working for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) extended their dragnet to the venue of the screening.

Led by Mr. Aro Udensi, the operatives explained that some forged certificates were discovered during the verification, especially in the area of age declaration and certificate of place of origin.

It was learnt that the government decided to involve security agents in the exercise to ensure transparency in the recruitment of the officers.

Although sources said that those who were allegedly involved in the forgery have been handed over to the police, the identities of the culprits were not disclosed.

NSCDC State Commandant, Mr. Sikiru Raimi, said that the development was a welcome one, adding that the verification would be thorough to ensure that qualified people were employed.

He noted that if such people are frequently fished out, NSCDC would stop being a dumping ground for the never-do-wells.

Raimi stated that an increase in manpower would assist the command in beefing up surveillance along petroleum products pipelines, local government areas and other government infrastructure.

FL Gators:
I dont watch it either. I was just being patriotic. I loff repping naija no matter how bad we are lol.
look dude, if you were also kicked in the nuts like that, you'd be crying your eyeballs out. That shoit hurts like hell.

FL Gators:
LOL I didnt even get to watch it. no thanx to my exam.
So you watch sports too? wow, i thought you were 100% dork.

FL Gators:
Aloy.Emeka is pretentious. Dude is more tribal than EzeUche, You, sjeezy and willy-willy put together. His own is more quiet and "innocent".

A case of mistaken identity. I bet you, if properly conducted, the investigation will tell you that 95% of these ppl are from EzeUche/SEFAGO's compound.

FL Gators:
Insults. We're beyond that. . . expect Oxford University. . . .even Yale and Duke dey beg us to come. MIT no even fit carry him touch next to us.

Rastamann:
Poor Super Eagles, Goodluck did not follow them to South Africa!

A boy playing by Bodo Creek in Bodo, Nigeria. As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, experts said. More Photos »

The Niger Delta region contains fragile wetlands. More Photos »

Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.

Not far away, there is still black crude on Gio Creek from an April spill, and just across the state line in Akwa Ibom the fishermen curse their oil-blackened nets, doubly useless in a barren sea buffeted by a spill from an offshore Exxon Mobil pipe in May that lasted for weeks.

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

Small children swim in the polluted estuary here, fishermen take their skiffs out ever farther — “There’s nothing we can catch here,” said Pius Doron, perched anxiously over his boat — and market women trudge through oily streams. “There is Shell oil on my body,” said Hannah Baage, emerging from Gio Creek with a machete to cut the cassava stalks balanced on her head.

That the Gulf of Mexico disaster has transfixed a country and president they so admire is a matter of wonder for people here, living among the palm-fringed estuaries in conditions as abject as any in Nigeria, according to the United Nations. Though their region contributes nearly 80 percent of the government’s revenue, they have hardly benefited from it; life expectancy is the lowest in Nigeria.

“President Obama is worried about that one,” Claytus Kanyie, a local official, said of the gulf spill, standing among dead mangroves in the soft oily muck outside Bodo. “Nobody is worried about this one. The aquatic life of our people is dying off. There used be shrimp. There are no longer any shrimp.”

In the distance, smoke rose from what Mr. Kanyie and environmental activists said was an illegal refining business run by local oil thieves and protected, they said, by Nigerian security forces. The swamp was deserted and quiet, without even bird song; before the spills, Mr. Kanyie said, women from Bodo earned a living gathering mollusks and shellfish among the mangroves.

With new estimates that as many as 2.5 million gallons of oil could be spilling into the Gulf of Mexico each day, the Niger Delta has suddenly become a cautionary tale for the United States.

As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, or nearly 11 million gallons a year, a team of experts for the Nigerian government and international and local environmental groups concluded in a 2006 report. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 dumped an estimated 10.8 million gallons of oil into the waters off Alaska.

So the people here cast a jaundiced, if sympathetic, eye at the spill in the gulf. “We’re sorry for them, but it’s what’s been happening to us for 50 years,” said Emman Mbong, an official in Eket.

The spills here are all the more devastating because this ecologically sensitive wetlands region, the source of 10 percent of American oil imports, has most of Africa’s mangroves and, like the Louisiana coast, has fed the interior for generations with its abundance of fish, shellfish, wildlife and crops.

Local environmentalists have been denouncing the spoliation for years, with little effect. “It’s a dead environment,” said Patrick Naagbanton of the Center for Environment, Human Rights and Development in Port Harcourt, the leading city of the oil region.

Though much here has been destroyed, much remains, with large expanses of vibrant green. Environmentalists say that with intensive restoration, the Niger Delta could again be what it once was.

Nigeria produced more than two million barrels of oil a day last year, and in over 50 years thousands of miles of pipes have been laid through the swamps. Shell, the major player, has operations on thousands of square miles of territory, according to Amnesty International. Aging columns of oil-well valves, known as Christmas trees, pop up improbably in clearings among the palm trees. Oil sometimes shoots out of them, even if the wells are defunct.

“The oil was just shooting up in the air, and it goes up in the sky,” said Amstel M. Gbarakpor, youth president in Kegbara Dere, recalling the spill in April at Gio Creek. “It took them three weeks to secure this well.”

How much of the spillage is due to oil thieves or to sabotage linked to the militant movement active in the Niger Delta, and how much stems from poorly maintained and aging pipes, is a matter of fierce dispute among communities, environmentalists and the oil companies.

Caroline Wittgen, a spokeswoman for Shell in Lagos, said, “We don’t discuss individual spills,” but argued that the “vast majority” were caused by sabotage or theft, with only 2 percent due to equipment failure or human error.

“We do not believe that we behave irresponsibly, but we do operate in a unique environment where security and lawlessness are major problems,” Ms. Wittgen said.

Oil companies also contend that they clean up much of what is lost. A spokesman for Exxon Mobil in Lagos, Nigel A. Cookey-Gam, said that the company’s recent offshore spill leaked only about 8,400 gallons and that “this was effectively cleaned up.”

But many experts and local officials say the companies attribute too much to sabotage, to lessen their culpability. Richard Steiner, a consultant on oil spills, concluded in a 2008 report that historically “the pipeline failure rate in Nigeria is many times that found elsewhere in the world,” and he noted that even Shell acknowledged “almost every year” a spill due to a corroded pipeline.

On the beach at Ibeno, the few fishermen were glum. Far out to sea oil had spilled for weeks from the Exxon Mobil pipe. “We can’t see where to fish; oil is in the sea,” Patrick Okoni said.

“We don’t have an international media to cover us, so nobody cares about it,” said Mr. Mbong, in nearby Eket. “Whatever cry we cry is not heard outside of here.”