Yar'Adua is a good man, but a bad president.

Obasanjo was a bad man, and also a pretty awful president.

Could've paid for some schools, hospitals, and infrastructure improvements.

No wonder the north is so underdeveloped.

Lol no chance.

Russian will shoot Russian.

For an outsider like him,


Bleep. No Chance.

Pretty buildings a country do not make.

I'd like to know what the job market it, services, sanitation, government transparency, etc.

America has running water and 24 hour power supply.

fail

Pretty skyscrapers don't make a equitable or functioning society.


Skyscraper city forum is very selective of the pictures that are posted. People are given temporary bans if they post the pictures of areas where the 'masses' live.

Adding to that, Angola's president has been in power for well over 30 years and is corrupted to the bone. Under his rule there has never been a free and fair election.

Brazil in the 90s?

blackspade:

Angola is waaaay different than Nigeria. I would compare it with the likes of Brazil in the 90s.

That's an absurd comparison. Brazil's economy in the 90s was diversifying and wealth was starting to trickle down. The gap between the rich and poor had begun to narrow.

Angola's economy is stratifying itself exclusively into oil while other sectors are neglected, and the gap between rich and poor is widening.

blackspade:

This article is old, many of the problems with those investments have already been sorted out. I go to this website called SkyscraperCity where there's a lot of news about Angola. I've seen pictures of those things under construction. The West and their sinophobia never fails to amaze me. Chinese investment into Africa is a good thing that benefits both parties. Angola has changed so much, you wouldn't believe your eyes.

Wrong!!!

Angola is now becoming the Nigeria of the 60s when oil was discovered.

Luanda — A chauffeur guides a shining 4x4 BMW out of a gated condominium, ferrying a smartly-dressed executive and her three uniformed children out into another morning in the Angolan capital, Luanda.

Leaving her air-conditioned office at lunch, our executive will pay $100 for lunch in a beachfront café and think nothing of spending $300 on a few items of imported food from an upmarket grocery store.

A few miles away, another woman sits on the verge of a dusty street, one of many selling dented tins of palm oil and bruised tomatoes. They sit on the ground or on upturned plastic water containers, just metres from a trench of rotting rubbish.

Oblivious to the stench and swarms of flies, she braids another woman's hair and watches her malnourished children play in the murky puddles nearby.

Both these women are Angolan, but they will never meet nor are they ever likely understand each other's reality.

Since the end of Angola's three decades of civil war in 2002, the country has enjoyed unprecedented economic growth - an average annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increase of 15 percent - thanks to high oil prices and billions of dollars of foreign investment, particularly in construction.

Pumping around 1.8 million barrels of oil a day, Angola has overtaken Nigeria as Africa's largest oil producer and become the world's fifth biggest exporter of diamonds.

But while the country has gained international recognition for its rapidly expanding economy, two thirds of its population continue to live on less than two dollars a day, according to the World Bank.

The Centre of Studies and Scientific Investigation (known by its Portuguese acronym, CEIC) at the Catholic University of Angola records unemployment at around 25 percent, but notes more than half of the population rely on the informal sector to generate income, and in rural areas most remain dependent on subsistence farming.

No jobs

Angola's oil boom may have brought millions of dollars into government coffers, but it has created few jobs, and the thousands of construction sites around the country - signs that the country is rebuilding itself after many years of war - mainly use imported labour from China and other Asian countries. As a result, few Angolans have benefited from these job opportunities.

According to Alcides Sakala, spokesman for Angola's main opposition party UNITA (Union for Total Independence of Angola), the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to widen.

"What we are seeing is a small minority of people getting richer, while there is a majority of people getting poorer and poorer and poorer," he told IPS.

The chasm between the rich and the poor is evident everywhere, particularly in Luanda, where beggars roam outside city centre apartments which command rents of more than $25,000 a month and land mine victims spend their days helping people park their oversized Sports Untility Vehicles (SUVs) in the hope of a few bucks for an evening meal.

According to the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), which measures citizens' wealth, education and life expectancy, Angola is showing little sign of life improvement, despite its oil riches.

The index goes from zero, meaning no human development, to one, meaning full human development.

At the latest count, Angola's HDI was 0.484, compared to 0.670 for South Africa, 0.664 for Botswana, and 0,541 as the average across all the countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

While there is enough money in the country to build private hospitals for those who can afford the fees, most Angolans struggle to access even basic health care, which lacks trained staff and infrastructure, particularly in rural areas.

And while private schools rake in astronomical fees to educate the children of the elite, one third of the country's children are outside of the school system. Many are kept at home to work to support their families.

Douglas Steinberg, country director for Save the Children in Angola, explained: "There is an enormous gap between the rich and the poor here, and a lot of people are not really aware of how rich Angola is. People who live in the rural areas or central areas, they don't see the oil rigs offshore, they don't know just how much money is there, they don't see all the new construction and the flash cars and expensive restaurants."

"And I think this is part of the problem - if people don't know how wealthy the country is, it's harder for them to hold the government to account for how it spends that money," he added.

In its 2008 Economic Report, CEIC noted a continuing level of poverty, which was in direct contrast to the country's growing wealth.

"GDP increased fivefold from 2003 to 2008, from $959 to $4961 in 2008," the report said. "But despite this, the large majority of the population remain in a permanent state of poverty, having to survive on little more than two dollars per day."

Widening gap

Sister Domingas Loureiro, runs a charity that helps poor families in Luanda's crowded Cazenga neighbourhood, a maze of self-built homes with no electricity and little access to water or sanitation.

"People here are literally fighting to survive and many children are being forced to work from a young age. The reality of life and the level of misery in these bairros is not something the government really knows about," she said.


Angola's president Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, however, claims to know about the poverty in his country. In March, during a speech alongside Pope Benedict XVI, Dos Santos, who marks 30 years in power, acknowledged the "tremendous challenges" the country faces to overcome poverty and unemployment and pledged continued investment to address them.

During the visit of United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Angola in August, foreign minister Assunção dos Anjos was asked by a Washington Post reporter to explain how Africa's largest oil producer scored so low on the HDI.

The minister responded by saying: "Give us time to resolve this problem. We have mechanisms, we have the will and we have the structures to be able to guarantee to our people that they can live in dignified conditions. Unfortunately poverty can't just be overcome by waving a magic wand."

For the estimated five million Angolans who live in slum conditions around Luanda, a magic wand may seem like their only hope.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200909170712.html

Epiphany:

So upsetting, too upsetting. Makes me think that Africa and Africans are too damn stupid. For too long, we have allowed these parasites come into our land to suck us dry, while using our money and resources to develop their own lands. Can you imagine that after the 'white' men have come in and done their own, it is the turn of the so called 'elite asians' (of which the chinese are the worst) to come in for their share now? By elite asians, i mean the Chinese (Huawei, ZTE, Railway contractors, Oil companies), Indians (mittal, Tata, IT companies, Telecoms), Koreans (Daewoo Heavy Industries, LG) and others.

Can anyone give me the name of one, JUST ONE AFRICAN company operating in any of these countries or anywhere in Asia? Or name one African country that is CONTRACTED by any Asian government to help with development or infrastructure building?

Stupid Africans (before anyone starts crucifying me for calling us stupid, i am an African too)

Abselutely right. I agree with you fully on that. Its like with every generation since the old Mali and Yurobo empires that we're getting dumber and dumber.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/news/article03//indexn2_html?pdate=200909&ptitle=Violence,%20Voter%20Intimidation%20Mar%20Ondo%20Assembly%20Bye-election

Violence, Voter Intimidation Mar Ondo Assembly Bye-election
From, Niyi Bello, Akure

LOW voter-turnout, violence and intimidation by political office holders and hoodlums characterized the conduct of yesterday's bye-election to fill the vacant position of Akure North Constituency in the Ondo State House of Assembly.

The position became vacant following the demise of Akindele Alasoadura, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the April 14, 2007 State Assembly elections before he was inaugurated.

Yesterday's election was organized after a two-year interregnum of litigation instituted by the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Akindele Adeniyi, who alleged non-compliance with the Electoral Act in the conduct of the April 14 exercise and prayed the Election Petition Tribunal to declare him the winner.

But despite the heavy presence of policemen and other security agencies, the exercise which was ordered by the Court of Appeal as the final adjudicator in the matter, could not be said to be free and fair if what was observed during its conduct were anything to go by.

Although, men and materials were dispatched early enough by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from the Iju Police Station, the heavy presence of political office holders, drawn from across the state, underscored the averseness of the political class to a positive change in the country's electoral system.

At Iju/Ita-Ogbolu, the twin community which has the largest concentration of voter population in the constituency, hoodlums who rode in about eight 18-seater buses and led by their leader, a popular political enforcer in the state, riding a black Lincoln Navigator SUV with Registration number BD 110 AKR, had a field day driving dangerously and wielding dangerous weapons.

Reports had it that the Iju home of an opposition politician and former state commissioner was attacked early in the morning where a man, another opposition politician, who gave his names as Otunba Oyediran Afolabi was given machete wound on the head.

Also at Iju, reports have it that one politician, Funso Ajayi was also attacked by the suspected political thugs who vandalized his Nissan Sunny car with Registration number AW 534 AKR while unconfirmed reports from Abo Asakun, one of the outlying hamlets of the constituency, had it that unknown persons have snatched the ballot box meant for the area.

The violence however reached its peak at Igoba Village where two groups of hoodlums engaged each other in sporadic exchange of gunfire over unconfirmed allegations of attempts to manipulate the process.

A group of opposition hoodlums were said to have holed up somewhere in the village thump-printing and stuffing ballot boxes and when questions were asked by another set of thugs, the former group opened fire and wounded three persons in the process.

The beaten group beat a retreat and went for reinforcement of more hoodlums who invaded the place under heavy gunshots while hapless policemen watched the scenario from a safe distance.

An attempt by the policemen to persuade the hoodlums to disarm and leave the situation for them to control was rebuffed by the wild-looking goons who smoked Indian hemp openly while shooting into the air.

A car, a Nissan Primera with Registration AY 592 YAB, said to belong to the opposition thugs, which was alleged to be carrying ammunitions, was severely damaged by the hoodlums at the Igoba junction on Ado-Ekiti Road.

Early results showed that the LP's Akindele Adeniyi was in a clear lead against PDP's Akin Idowu and Action Congress (AC)'s Olorunninbe Ameto.







This is a simple assembly elections rerun. If this is anything to go by, 2011 will be a bloodbath making Somalia look like Disneyland in the desert.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/72028

The town of Catumbela, in Central Angola, sits on a sprawling, fertile plateau planted with plantains and mangos. At the far end of town is a defunct paper mill. There, for several months earlier this year, a group of Chinese railway engineers and laborers camped out in the shadow of two idle smokestacks. The team was one of several sent to this isolated stretch of Angola's interior to build a railroad that will one day connect the African hinterlands to the Atlantic port city of Lobito, several hundred miles to the west. It's a $2 billion project and a colossal dream—a way to bypass Angola's sparse, decrepit roads, which like so many in Africa are strewn with land mines and liable to be washed out by flash floods.

There's only one problem: work has stalled. Along the railroad line at least 16 camps that once bustled with Chinese workers and equipment have been abandoned or shut down completely. In those that remain, row upon row of front-loading bulldozers, steamrollers and forklifts sit unused under the sleepy eyes of Angolan soldiers. And the Chinese? "They're gone," says a scrawny guard at the entrance to Catumbela's paper mill, as he stares disconsolately at the tracks. "I don't know when they're coming back—they ate their dogs and left."

Africa has rarely been kind to the grand visions of others—whether Dr. Livingstone or Bono. The Chinese are finding, to their surprise, that they're no exception. The Lobito railroad has fallen victim to a high-level dispute between the Angolan and Chinese governments. So have dozens of other deals, including another $2 billion contract, to build an oil refinery in Lobito. The American Embassy says that project will now most likely be awarded to Bechtel. "The Chinese thought they'd come in here and make a killing," says a Western diplomat in the capital, Luanda, who was not authorized to speak on the record. "Now they're facing the reality—it's hard to do things here."

Overall, China's push into Africa has been remarkably successful. Chinese companies are sucking up oil from Sudan, cutting down timber in Guinea and mining copper and zinc from the Congo. Beijing recently bought a major stake in South Africa's Standard Bank to fund infrastructure projects throughout the continent. And the Chinese are far outpacing their Western rivals. China has opened more embassies in Africa than the United States has, and is even investing heavily in countries, like Rwanda, where the immediate returns are murky at best. Last year trade between Africa and China topped $50 billion. By 2010 it's projected to reach $100 billion.

But all that money—China has extended $11 billion in loans to Angola, more than the World Bank—doesn't mean the Chinese working in Africa are insulated from the continent's troubles. Kidnappings, killings and death threats have plagued Chinese workers from the Niger Delta to the eastern reaches of Ethiopia, where rebels ambushed and slaughtered 17 Chinese oil workers last year. Angola is now China's biggest supplier of crude oil, and Chinese money helped propel the local economy to a 24 percent growth rate last year. But it's also a chaotic, corrupt country that has only recently emerged from a vicious civil war. For Chinese businessmen and workers, it's turning out to be a sobering, even dangerous place.

Chinese laborers are venturing deep into the lush Angolan countryside, not just the capital and larger cities. Tens of thousands of Chinese-made PMN-2 mines are still buried there, remnants of the Angolan civil war, which killed more than a million people. De-mining crews are digging the explosives out of the ground, but nowhere near fast enough for the Chinese. So the foreigners improvise. "With a front loader we push the dirt and if there's a mine there it explodes," says Zhou Zhenhong, manager of Kaituo Construction and Enterprises. "It's faster that way, and less expensive than being late."

The costs, however, can be more than monetary: on Oct. 24 a Chinese laborer for the Chinese telecom giant Huawei was digging a trench for fiber-optic cable near the southern town of Benguela when a mine exploded, killing him. Two co-workers were also injured. "We've tried to tell them to be careful and they just shrug their shoulders," says Rebecca Thompson, who directs a Norwegian de-mining NGO in Luanda.

Western executives—hidden behind the walls of their villas—have bred a certain kind of resentment in Africa. In Angola the much more numerous and adventurous Chinese are suffering from another. Perhaps as many as 100,000 Chinese workers have spread out across the country, many breaking rock on highways or pouring concrete at construction sites. Most live in isolated camps. Few speak English; fewer still speak Portuguese.

State-owned Chinese companies prohibit any type of fraternization between their employees and Angolans. If a worker becomes romantically or sexually involved with a local, he's quickly hustled back to China. "Africans and Chinese think differently," says Xia Yi Hua, a regional director for China Jiang Su, a massive construction conglomerate with offices across Angola. Xia has been in the country for four years, and his company still sends him shrink-wrapped packets of Chinese food from back home, along with regular sets of chopsticks. Everything in his office comes from China. One coffee table is made of Angolan wood, he admits, but he flew in a Chinese carpenter to fashion the table.

Racist stereotypes are common: both sides accuse the other of looking or behaving like monkeys or pigs. The Angolans claim (without good evidence) that the Chinese eat their dogs. At most work sites Chinese supervisors oversee black laborers, which has created friction. "You Chinese come to Angola and order us around, but in your own country you are suffering," says an Angolan who works for a Chinese company. (He asked not to be named for fear of losing his job.) At one Chinese-run construction site NEWSWEEK visited, hungry workers begged for food, saying their Chinese bosses never fed them. (The bosses say that's not their responsibility.) Angolans laying fiber-optic cable for Huawei near Benguela say they must dig 16 feet a day, or else they won't be paid their $5 daily wage. They claim their Chinese bosses only use one Portuguese word, cavar, which is repeated again and again: dig, dig.

The tensions go all the way to the top of the food chain. The Chinese say Angolan government funding for the Lobito railroad has dried up mysteriously; the Angolans say the Chinese stopped working because of mines along the route. Western diplomats in Luanda, who customarily speak only on condition of anonymity, suspect that the dispute has to do with kickbacks but cannot prove anything. They say that the government's finances are incredibly murky, and its dealings with the Chinese murkier still. "Is it all getting stolen? I don't think so," one Western diplomat says of the billions in oil money flooding into Angola's treasury. "[But] it's not clear to me that there's anyone in the government who can actually tell you where all the money is. If there is, it's going to be somebody like Al Capone's bookkeeper."

Even China's success in Angola is creating headaches for its businessmen. The handful of business hotels in Luanda are booked months in advance. Good luck finding a cab—the city has only one official taxi service—or renting a car, which can go for as much as $12,000 a month. Rents for houses in Lobito are double that. The extremes of poverty and wealth are deep, and worrisome. Where there are roads in Luanda—much of the city remains a hive of rock-strewn dirt tracks—they are choked with bright yellow Hummers and souped-up Chevy Blazers. Chinese-built mansions for Angolan ministers loom grotesquely on Luanda's hillsides, just above shantytowns where millions of refugees took up residence during the worst years of war.

For Mr. Li, a local director for the Guang Xi construction company, the boom is a mixed blessing. Li, who asked that only his last name be used, lives in a cavernous supermarket warehouse in Lobito, with sheets hung on clotheslines to create sleeping areas for his 20 workers. He spends much of his time slogging around the city, begging for the cement his crew needs to build bases for cell- phone towers. On a recent day visiting potential suppliers, he returned long after dark with 12 small bags of cement, all bought at retail prices. "Everything is waiting, waiting," he says, worried about the pace of his project. A Brazilian company has promised to build two new cement factories in Luanda, but so far work hasn't begun.

Beijing takes the long view in Africa, figuring its investments now are building good will for the future. But every economy the Chinese help revive becomes that much more attractive to their rivals, too. Already American firms Bechtel and KBR are bidding for infrastructure projects in Angola. Oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron are increasing their presence in the country. The Brazilian firm Odebrecht is building a highway to compete with the Chinese railroad to Lobito, South African companies are repairing the electrical grid near the oilfields in northern Angola, and the Portuguese are horning in on construction projects in and around Luanda. "In this country, you can get projects for $10 million and do $1 million in profit," says Zhou Zhenhong, the construction executive, over lunch at a seaside restaurant in Lobito. For that kind of money, a lot of people will be willing to put up with the same hassles as the Chinese.







China is sucking Africa dry of resources and creating further imbalances. The yellow man does not care for what happens to the Africans inhabiting these lands.

Nigeria, we deserve it.

When we step up the world is stop laughing at us.

We'll just keep immigrating there won't we.

source?

Nigeria should be taken over by one of the big 4 accounting firms and ran as a business. Get rid of all waste (Yar'dull, governors, their wives, etc).

not to starve

Send me a PM i'll give you my banking number wiring account number.


I'll hold it for you until you need it back.

I promise I am a honest prince and won't steal it.

Onlytruth:

Stop spreading lies you idiot!

How many minorities did Igbos kill in Biafra? Who is killing those minorities today?
The most peaceful and progressive African country of Botswana is a uni-national state (tswana). You conveniently forgot that just to feed your obsession with Biafra. Is Japan and South korea not stable and peaceful? Even all the nations you mentioned are dominated by single progressive nations.
China is 90% Han too. So leave Igbos and Biafra alone!

Actually you're wrong on Britain. Anglos and Saxons are two distinct tribes. Anglos are the original English people who dominate in Wales, and South England. The Saxonites were northern European invaders. The Scots and Irish also have much Celtic (nordic Euro) mixtures in them.

Language is a bigger barrier to cultural homogeneity than all other factors, bar perhaps skin colour.

Nigeria cannot be united unless we can all understand each other. With the right education all Nigerians should speak our newly adoped English. One of the major house indifferences is their language. The fuckers don’t seem to want to learn English.

He's morally and cognitively dead. However his respitory system still functions.

na_so:



So military is why governors wire public funds abroad?, military is to blame for our inability to organize credible elections, which we have been struggling with since first republic even before the first military coup?

Military is to blame for the state of our roads which would conveniently pass for sophisticated death traps. Abi?

My point is while the military have their blame for some of our challenges, there is sufficient evidence that our crop of politicians are just a bunch of criminals that are envied even by the devil. They blame the military and steal the money, they blame the military and subvert due process, they blame the military and celebrate the IBORIs ,Igbinedions and KALUS of this world.

Actually, yes it was. The military rulers and their chronies were notorious for taking public funds abroad. The military was a complete disaster. Our economy actually contracted. Do you know that 60% of all revenue generated in Nigeria's history was between 1999-2007. That is an incredible statistic.

If the military comes back, Nigeria is over. I personally would vouch for a complete breakup. Burn your passports and run. I would actually support foreign intervention. Anything but the military. To be honest British rule is better than the military.

afam4eva:

When will nigerians stop seeing the military as the only reason for the stinking state of nigeria.

It's over 9 years after military rule and we are still placing all the blame on the military. Apart from the fact that the military regime was totalitarian, authoritarian i'll say that the military performed better than the present crop of cabals that call themselves democratically elected officials.

Our military bred this generation. The Military was not good. The British happened to leave Nigeria in a half descent state, in the hands of the wrong people. Coups and counter coups guaranteed a slow degeneration of our nation.

We don't need strongmen, but it is in the mentality. If we had even a shred of faith in our leaders in the 60s, no matter how hapless they were instead of being happy to embrace morons who destroyed our country. I guess patience is what is lacking.

Nigeria's elections are a sympton of 50 years of mis-rule. Any country where a government job provides the most stable income for an individual is doomed to fail (Soviet Union for example).

No more military please. The last thing we need is that fools again.

We are not the only poor country in the world. This could be India. Our military rulers brought us to this mess. Instead of letting us decide our own fate through the ballot, they stole everything. Abacha alone took over 3 billion US dollars worth into his Swiss accounts.

Democracy, even this democracy is better than the best military regime we've had.

Nifailure.

Ah, the smell of rotten corpses and burnt tires during elections in Nigeria.

How refreshing.

Nigerian government should tackle itself first. Preferably a two foot sliding challenge.