Shym3xx:


I believe you're look at accountability from a large government perspective i.e. Nigeria. You also can't rule out the Nigerian factor and the fact that almost everything is controlled from centre. However, with small government, governance would easier and people won't have to go through different layers of bureaucracy to demand accountability.

But we already have smaller levels of government i.e the state and local governments. How come nobody is demanding accountability from those? It's simple logic really. Of you keep waiting for government to get smaller, there would always be a larger government entity till you are your own government. If resource control is granted to the regional then they would start being state governments for non performance. Grant states resource control and they would start pointing fingers at the local governments. Give the local governments and they'll direct you to district chairmen. And on and on and on till the only person that you can't be referred to a smaller entity is yourself.

Shym3xx:


@ bold - illogical argument. The same argument can be made for the whole country, including the FG. Whatever they do with their resources is no one's business.

The whole scrounging business the insufficient oil is breeding is counter-productive. Ibadan is a classic example of everything wrong with oil. That was a city built during the latter days of colonial rule and in the first republic with money from cocoa. However, the city has stagnated since oil was dicovered with amala politics/mentality cos oil breeds lazy people/thinkers and everyone is out for stipends from oil for owanbe parties.

Another oil curse is how lazy most Yoruba people have become. I remember vividly that last year during the Oba-of-Lagos-gate, some idi.iotic and ignorant Yoruba chic posited an utterly disrespectful post that Yorubas lack the mental business acumen to make any Yoruba city thrive and Yoruba only produce the lands and conducive environment for business to thrive, while the Igbos are the brain. And you've to wonder how come the same Yorubas who own at least 80% of Nigerian businesses in diaspora (over 90% in the UK) lack the fundamental skills to thrive in business in Nigeria. The answer to that is the oil and the generation of lazy Yoruba folks it continues to breed in Nigeria, thus disgracing the industrious/creative Yoruba folks doing well outside the shores of the country.

Give these people their oil and get back to what we do well as a people. You lot are disgracing us.

I'm not an advocate of government keeping control of the resources, if you think that's what I'm insinuating. I'm just an advocate of things being done the right way. I get that you want the Niger Deltans to have their resource control so that the oil curse would be restricted to their region instead of the entire country. I wouldn't mind that either. But I'm just being logical here, and the ND is just a case study. Accountability is paramount for any democratic system to be efficient at least to an extent. Even if the ND gets resource control and all the individual regions start sourcing for their own revenue, the question is, would the leaders in these regions use such revenues judiciously? Would the people hold them accountable? Because it doesn't matter what the source of the money is and how hardworking the people are, if at the end of the day it gets spirited into pockets of the few in power. Each region needs to ask it's leaders:what are you people doing with the money meant for all of us?

LordAdam:
@LRNZH, if you are not from the Niger Delta, you are telling our story exactly how the whites would tell the story about Africa.

Like Adichie right said on TED Talk, Africans have to tell the African story. In similar vein, Niger Deltans have to tell the Niger Deltan story.

Don't feign knowledge of all issues when you have not held crude oil on your bare hands when you try to fetch water. Simply because you can read papers.

The Nigerian state historically is a repressive brute. FACT.

Adara fought an armed struggle, he got amnesty at the end.

Ken Saro Wiwa did a peaceful struggle, he paid with his life.

The 13% derivation was agreed in 1995.

It was implemented in 2000.

This was after the 1998/1999 peaceful later turned armed struggle led by the Ijaw Youth Council in Bayelsa and Delta.

When it started peacefully, the tanks were called in. Tens of thousands of troops were deployed. Hundreds were killed during peaceful protests.

It was after violence erupted that culminating with the Odi Massacre in 1999, that we started getting something back in 2000.

13% derivation was initiated in 2000. NDDC was created in 2000.

It was only after the armed struggle that started in 2004, that training of youths and Niger Delta Ministry was created in 2008.

In fact, the courts have said the Nigerian Army/FG should pay circa N20b as compensation to the Odi community for the massacre. That money has not been paid till date.

The moral of these historic facts is that Nigeria has historically suppressed peaceful agitations in Niger Delta but react to armed struggle in the Niger Delta.

Take last year for example.

When Buhari came in, he immediately cancelled pipeline surveillance contracts against background uproar from the region. Then he said he would begin to wind down the Amnesty program in 2018.

All peaceful routes to get him to change his mind achieved nothing.

All of a sudden, NDA starts bombing, and his mind changed.

In a recent meeting between the FG represented by Minister of Niger Delta and ex-militants, pipeline surveillance contracts will resume. Buhari now has repeatedly said he would not cancel Amnesty.

Can you see the trend?

As I said, good as your intentions are, if you are not a Niger Deltan you can never see things as we see them. Your opinion can never replace ours.

In 55 years, hundreds of trillion of Naira have been gotten from the sales of oil in the Niger Delta and politicians and elites gained with little to how for it. But Niger Deltan leaders use N8.1t with nothing gained in less than a decade and all of a sudden, you guys are now champions of accountability.

I am not saying it is right.

However, when the government only allow armed struggles lead to resolutions, those at the forefront are bound to take the largesse of what comes out. It is natural.

Niger Deltans cannot start bickering over wastage when we are being raped by the entity called Nigeria. A time will come when we would hold our leaders responsible for the wastage. However, for now, we cannot afford to fight internal squabbles when we need all hands on deck to conquer our far more aggressive neo-colonialists with more resources at their disposal.

The enemy of your enemy is your friend!

That is why the issues of accountability are currently downplayed in the Niger Delta. We are far more structured in our handling of issues.

You would know that if you have studied our struggle for years rather than do a two day research and come up with a biased piece of less than 5000 words.

The Niger Delta has a diverse ethnicity. Yet we put our differences aside and fight for our right. 80% of Niger Delta resources is in 20% of Niger Delta Lands, yet we do not do major inter-squabbling about who gets what.

When the Nigerian state begins to be civil, we in the Niger Delta will adopt peaceful resolutions. Until then, we have identified the nerve of Nigeria. Bomb oil pipelines and you would draw the attention of the Nigerian state and get juicy contracts and funds. Do peaceful protests like IPOB and you will be killed ruthlessly.

I hope you know that Buhari is visiting the Niger Delta this week, as a sign of good faith. To commission the start of Ogoni land cleanup.

Those who oppose war must be reasonable enough to value peace.

The Nigerian state does not value peace.

-Lord

Unfortunately, you're failing to take the South Sudan example. They were probably telling themselves "the time will come when we will hold our leaders accountable". Now, they have not just complete resource control, but their own country to themselves. And the squabbling and fighting and dissent has continued with almost the same vigor as the one that got them their secession. You would have thought that one week after getting their demands, the country would become a land flowing with milk and honey with the way they agitated for a secession. It shouldn't be the other way round. It shouldn't be "wait till we get the resources first, then we will demand accountability", because when that resource control is granted, those selfish leaders that funded the agitation would become the new oppressors in control of the resources and then a new struggle would start afresh. Don't set the cart before the horse.

WeNigerDelta:


If you've read all my post, you won't find a line where I absolve my leaders of any blame....They are all part of the corrupt evil Nigerian system....
What is it with you guys and calling us lazy? Is that what they beat into your head to believe? Most youths in the region are ready to work, damn they even take extra welding and whatever courses just to be able to get any job.....Stop it already, we are that farthest thing from lazy....
Most of the job slots you're raving about are contract jobs for few months....Come to Warri and understand the meaning of the work don finish....These jobs has zero benefits and their safety are not the priorities of the IOC, because they defer those responsibilities to the contractors.....Because you are not from our region you have no idea how Yorubas steal the permanent jobs in these companies with tribalism, people that attend the same school as our brothers....Believe it or not it's our reality, if your company is in Texas you employ Texans first, same in Cali or London it's when you cant find competent hands that you outsource from all over....Employ Niger Deltans in permanent positions first is all we are asking for, we don't need any hand outs.:.

Bro, the joblessness is a national problem, not something peculiar to Warri or the ND alone. Even the little other states have isn't enough to employ their own citizens. A lot of agitators keep painting this picture that people elsewhere in the country are enjoying and they are the only ones suffering. This is a straight up lie. There are no jobs across the entire country, not just in the ND. Power supply is epileptic across the country. Health care same. As is availability of necessary infrastructure. My brother, all of us are suffering in this country. It's not a ND thing.

As for the person that mentioned Lagos, just wollup very well. Lagos is Nigeria's commercial nerve center. It only makes business sense for any companies coming in to the country to go the the state where there is a functional port, international airport, market and man power. Why would any company first go to setup shop in a state that would prove to be more of a liability than asset to it's business model? Before you start arguing about how the FG has favored Lagos, it would do you well to remember that from 1999 to just last year, Lagos was in the control of an opposition party. Much of Lagos' expenditure was/are also funded by IGR and PPPs. Ask Lagosians how much they paid/still pay in taxes. Interestingly, practically all the ND states were under the leadership of the same political party as the Federal government in this same time frame (asides maybe Ondo and Edo for half the period under review). So go and ask that party and the regional ND leaders from that same party that held sway for 16 years why they did not leverage on their connection to the Federal government to attract and fast track development in the region.

Some people on this thread have hit the nail on the head. It would be difficult, if not completely illogical, to give the ND region full control of their resources if with the little they get, they have done practically nothing. Remember Jesus' parable of the talents? (for the Christians). The master said "because you have been Faithful (prudent, judicious, useful, wise) with little, I will set you over more". Unfortunately, most of the ND leaders have been profligate and have mismanaged both allocations and goodwill. Why then are they asking for more, if they have not provided anything useful with what they already get? Majority of the leaders of the resource control clamour have terribly selfish interests - they just want direct access to all of the money. If you give them control today, I can almost bet in ten years they wouldn't have made any meaningful impact. The people of the region should first hold their current leaders at all levels accountable for the mismanagement of their current allocations before asking for more. I'm all for a proper federal structure, bit not when it will only benefit some that want to become Nigeria's oil sheikhs overnight on the back of their people's struggle and suffering.

While I still consider myself a theist, I leave my mind open to wonder and questions on the validity of my beliefs and beliefs of others around me. Probably because I know that none of us really has the answers and we can only find out for sure after we pass on (I guess). Who knows, my belief system can change based on the strength of my convictions at any point in time. This will be a prologue to all the questions I will be asking here on this thread. Just needed to get that out of the way first.

So, we theists have God as the furthest point of existence. But what if we are wrong. What if there are other equally great or greater "gods"? What if we are just playthings in the hands of this our particular God that he doesn't share with the others if there are?

For analogy, consider this. Imagine a hamster in a cage in a young man's room. For the sake of this analogy, this hamster is capable of rational or semi-rational thought. Now, also imagine that none of the other housemates is allowed into the young man's room (like a rent situation where everybody has their rooms and nobody is allowed into anybody else's room except with their Express's permission). All the hamster sees is the room around his cage (the universe) and the young man that owns him and takes care of him (God). Does this not leave open the possibility that:

1) There are other rooms in the house (other universes beyond our scope and vision)
2) Other housemates in the house (other "gods" with more or less equal power as the one we know and respectful of boundaries so they don't interfere)
3) Other hamsters in other cages in other rooms who are also oblivious to the existence of the hamster the analogy

Consider that since the young man that owns him is the only person he sees and the only person that takes care of him and moves things in,out of and around the room, he would naturally consider the young man to
1) Be the only young man (God) in existence
2) Be the most powerful (since there is nobody else in sight to compare him with except those he lets into the room and even then, they are under his jurisdiction because they are in his room)

This is just the start of a thought process. What do you think - rationally?

Sleek And Shabby

It’s rather difficult to properly highlight the differences between classes in just one, on-the-spur-of-the-moment picture. This picture (lucky take by me, in my opinion) seems to properly highlight that difference, the shiny smoothness of the posh G-Wagon in the background and the shabby roughness of the dance bus in the fire and, stuck between them, a young man’s reality of where he is and where he would clearly rather be. It’s saddening but it’s all so real. It’s the story of the daily struggle.

https://greysweaterdude./2016/05/15/sleek-and-shabby/

If you don't like reading long articles or your brain "just ain't got time", feel free to skip. Else, read and please think objectively. Thanks.

So word has gone out that there may/will be a strike from the middle of this week and that Nigerians had better start stockpiling on food and other essentials. Unexpected? Not really. But in whose best interests is any possible strike action at this point?

I’m a young man. I can’t say
I’ve lived long enough to see a lot of the periods of civil disobedience that have occurred in this country. However, I’ve lived long enough to have witnessed and have been affected by a few; whether from ASUU strikes that shut down universities for months (during my time in University, there were at least three separate ASUU strikes) or general strikes that shut down the entire country. If there’s anything that all these strikes have left me with, it’s this question: at the end of it all, are we really better off?

Okay, say labor calls a general strike and shuts down the entire nation for goodness knows how long. At the end of it, the government agrees to return the subsidy on fuel. Of course, the government, like the one before it, wouldn’t do a complete return and would only partially subsidize. Meaning we would end up still having to buy fuel at roughly N100 – N110 a litre. Life goes on. The evil day is postponed again. Three years from now, maybe a different government would be in power and would, again, decide to completely remove the subsidy. There would be another outcry. There would be another strike. And then the cycle continues on and on and on. To whose benefit really? If there’s anything else I’ve learnt from strikes in Nigeria, it’s that they are rarely ever the actual solutions. They are just cyclical measures that end up benefiting nobody, least of all the common man. Think of all ASUU’s strikes over the years. If strikes were the answer, shouldn’t there have been just one strike long ago that would have solved all the issues that keep causing the recurring strikes?

And it’s not like it’s our leaders that would even suffer during the strike periods. They would see it coming. They can afford to stockpile for months on end or even leave the country, while we would sit at home, our supplies diminishing, our valuable hours going to waste. At the end of it all, we’ll come out bruised and battered with only peanuts to show for our added suffering. And they come out of it pretty much the same. Who lost really?
And it’s not even as if we are striking for important things. We are not striking for the government to raise the minimum wage to meet the new cost of living we are beset with in this country. We are not striking to get our leaders to cut the cost of running the government and instead use the money saved from cutting such costs to better the lives of the people. We are not striking for a better living – we’re striking for peanuts; we’re begging for a survival. In our own country.

I personally don’t care what anyone thinks of my opinion – it’s mine after all and I’m entitled to it. I don’t want this strike. I don’t want to continue this endless cycle of striking and begging the government for peanuts. I don’t want to participate in a strike that is not targeted at addressing real issues. Look at all the ASUU strikes that have happened over the years. It’s basically been all about the lecturers’ pay-packets. Has the standard of education in Nigeria improved as a result of those strikes? Are our universities now equipped to turn out graduates that would be able to compete on equal footing with graduates from universities elsewhere in the world? Why do Nigerian graduates, after getting first degrees here, still run abroad for post graduate degrees, some never to return? Why are foreign degrees still regarded as “carrying more weight” than degrees obtained from our local higher institutions?

In short, who strike don epp?

This strike action is just reactionary; like everything else Nigerian. We don’t address real issues or root causes. We only address superficial effects of the aforementioned two, leaving the real matter to fester, get worse and afflict us with worse problems in the future. I think it’s high time we quit it. Strikes have never been our solution. We should start looking for answers elsewhere. The strike should be optional. Those that want to sit at home should sit and let those that want to get out and be productive do so. We cannot continue this pointless cycle, because we are just leaving our problems for future generations to partake in. If this strike will not give us new refineries, what is the point? If it will not raise the minimum wage, what is the point? If it will not diversify our economy, what is the point? If it will not provide basic social amenities for the average Nigerian, what then is the point? If it will not prosecute corrupt individuals and hand them long prison sentences with hard labor, what really is the point?

If it will not truly epp us, what then is the point of it all?

https://greysweaterdude./2016/05/16/who-nigerian-strike-epp/

NEHLIVE:
Hawking flesh online seems to be the new lucrative business for young ladies who are lazy and don’t want to make clean money using their own sweat. There’s this 23 year old lady who is ready to dish out her flesh to any well loaded man who is willing to pay her good money. However, you must take a HIV test before exchanging fluids. This is how she advertised her services...

http://www.newseveryhour.com/2016/05/are-you-ready-for-sx-lets-take-hiv-test.html

Don't make assumptions that all prostitutes are lazy. Till you step into someone's shoes, you'll never understand their journey.