₦airaland Forum

olisaEze:
Nigerians still remember the role he played to help PMB into power in 2015. The half truths & misinformation he peddled against GEJ & PEJ on his online newspaper. Just like Charly Boy, Nigerians still remember that he also got paid for his dirty work! He’s no different from any other cashtivist in this country, his party chairman in 2019 said as much! No one is prepared to lift a finger to help him 'take back' the Nigeria he personally delivered to these wicked old men in the first place, know this and know peace.

Rubbish,

GEJ deserve to be removed, the problem is that he was replaced with a more useless president.


The reason why I don't support Sowere is because his policies are still based on activism and not real politics. For example, he suggested that he will pause debt repayment to international creditors....madness

Xking:
Nigeria educational system is so broad that you learn everything by force.

Someone doing botany will take a course in biochemistry, microbiology, chemistry down to 3h level. Like what

That is the essence of an undergraduate degree: a broad understanding of education. You specialise when doing post-graduate studies or during your professional work.

MadeInTokyo:

Tinubu will be disgraced and naked here in the North on election day...any Tinubu Zombies can quote me anyday, anywhere and anytime.
Unpleasant Surprises await Tinubu on election day in here in the North
The most popular politician in the North after Buhari is Atiku...hate it or love it...that is the reality on ground here in the North

You poverty will never end with Northern politicians

Peter Obi, the 61-year-old ‘youngster’ who wants to clean up Nigeria
The presidential candidate has enjoyed a rapid rise from outsider to election frontrunner. Is his country ready?
Richard Assheton, Lagos


In Lagos there is no arguing with traffic. So when crowds backing a smiling, mild-mannered outsider for president brought gridlock to Nigeria’s teeming megacity late last year, it proved that their man had arrived as a force to be reckoned with.

Afrobeats music ringing in their ears, thousands of supporters of Peter Obi filled the streets. Many converged near the Lekki tollgate, where in 2020 soldiers had massacred people protesting against the same corruption and authoritarianism that Obi has now promised to eradicate.

“We are taking back our country,” said Chijioke Chuwunyere, a tech consultant, during the march on October 1, Nigeria’s Independence Day. “This is a chance to right all the wrongs.”

A few months earlier Obi, 61, had been an unfancied long shot to become the nominee for the main opposition party. Then he ditched the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and took up with the obscure Labour Party, whose previous presidential candidate secured less than 0.1 per cent of the vote in 2019.

Today, weeks away from the world’s first big election of 2023, Obi is arguably the frontrunner. Victory on February 25 would put him in charge of a booming country of 200 million people which is on track to become the planet’s second-largest democracy by 2050.


The reasons for his rapid rise include years of political and economic stagnation, his relative youth, and a suitcase.

Nigeria, everyone agrees, is sick, its long list of ailments enough to make the heart skip. Unemployment stands at 33 per cent. Annual inflation has risen to 21 per cent, with a chronic lack of foreign exchange and hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, Nigeria’s main export, lost this year to theft and inefficiency. Some 92 million Nigerians now live in acute poverty, according to the World Bank, and hundreds leave every day for greener pastures.

Stalls spill onto railway tracks at a market in Lagos. Some 92 million Nigerians live in acute poverty

Life expectancy in Nigeria is 55, and 60 per cent of the population are under 25. Yet one of Obi’s main rivals, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, is 76. The other, the former governor of Lagos State and ruling party chairman Bola Tinubu, claims to be 70, but may be far older. Obi, a successful former state governor, has cleared a very low bar to become the candidate of youth, in a country where that advantage could prove transformative.

He has also established himself as the anticorruption candidate, promising to tackle head-on what he calls the “structure of criminality” in Nigerian politics.

Inverting the country’s political culture of “big manism”, he has been photographed carrying his own luggage and proudly claims to possess only one wristwatch.

Without the backing of a major party, and despite a lack of experience in national politics, he leads in several polls, most recently one by the ANAP Foundation, a Nigerian organisation, which on December 21 found that 23 per cent of voters plan to vote for him. In second place was Tinubu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), on 13 per cent and Abubakar, of the opposition PDP was third on 10 per cent.

On January 1, Obi secured the endorsement of Olusegun Obasanjo, 85, a towering figure in Nigerian politics who was head of state in the 1970s during military rule and then president from 1999 to 2007. Obasanjo, whose preferred candidates have won three of the last four elections, noted that “the vigour, energy, agility, dynamism and outreach that the job of leadership of Nigeria requires at the very top may not be provided as a septuagenarian or older”.

Obi has two deep wells of support: young people, many of whom are cheering him on on social media, declaring themselves his #Obidients; and his own Igbo ethnic group, which largely has been shut out of politics at the highest level.


He also has broad appeal, winning over market traders, taxi drivers and high-flying businesspeople beyond those constituencies, even in the majority-Muslim north. In polite society in Lagos, professionals jaded by years of disappointment mutter approvingly of his modest habits and straight talking. One political source claimed to have been told by several staff members at the APC that they would vote for Obi.

The former president Olusegun Obasanjo has endorsed Obi’s campaign

His manifesto includes plans to refocus the military from fighting insurgencies to external threats instead. He also intends to introduce an hourly national minimum wage, support export entrepreneurs and save costs by merging government agencies. But much of it reads more like a wishlist than a programme of action. “On policy, Atiku’s is better than Obi’s and better than Tinubu’s,” said Ayisha Osori, of the Open Society Foundation, who nonetheless hopes Obi will win.

It is the style, rather than the content, of what Obi is offering that seems to resonate.

His calm delivery and affable manner set him apart in a nation used to rabble-rousing speeches. A source who attended a meeting he recently held in London said they had never seen such political excitement as in that room. Obi will be back in the capital for an event at Chatham House on January 16, a testimony to the influence of Nigerian expatriates, who do not have a vote in the election.

Obi is also helped by his opponents: he is up against two ageing political veterans shadowed by suggestions of entitlement and serious corruption accusations. Tinubu, who amassed vast wealth as the so-called “godfather of Lagos” and has said it is his “turn” to be president, is visibly unwell and recently released a video of himself on an exercise bike to prove he is fit for office. In July he settled a $42 million claim by Nigeria’s anticorruption agency over tax fraud and evasion. He also paid out $460,000 to the US in the 1990s, which accused him of laundering the proceeds of heroin trafficking.

Abubakar, who lost to the current president, Muhammadu Buhari, 80, in 2019, has denied multiple corruption allegations, including a claim by US senators that his American wife helped to transport more than $40 million “suspect funds” into the US, and a claim by Nigerian senators that in 2007 he diverted more than $100 million of public money to his own business interests.

Not that Obi’s record is squeaky clean. Financial records published in the Pandora Papers leak suggested that he owned an undeclared offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. His campaign chief, Doyin Okupe, was last month convicted of money laundering in Nigeria, having been charged in 2019 before he started working for Obi.


As a former state governor and Abubakar’s running mate in 2019, neither is Obi the total outsider he implies he is. He has been pulling the strings of his campaign from a suite in the Hilton hotel in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

Obi may well lose. More than half of respondents to the ANAP Foundation poll were undecided or declined to share their plans. “That’s a huge margin that shows that really the elections are still in play and nothing has been decided,” Osori said.

Both Obi’s main opponents have much larger political machines and financial resources at their disposal. Vote buying, intimidation and ballot stuffing have all been features of Nigerian elections, and while a new electronic voting system is touted as a potential solution to some fraud, a clean election is unlikely.

Whatever the result, it matters. West Africa has endured a spate of coups under the pressure of a jihadist insurgency that now encompasses much of the region. A functional election in Nigeria followed by clear signs of progress would be a shot in the arm for democracy on the continent. “Nigeria, when it performs well, is a really important anchor state for its region,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa programme at the Chatham House think tank.

A Nigeria that remains on its current course will continue to lose talented people to the West. “For the United Kingdom the economic challenges of Nigeria have meant a steep increase of skilled migration to the UK,” he said. “There are Nigerians in all walks of life now in the UK.”

Whoever inherits the presidency will take the reins of a country that will be home to 400 million people by the middle of the century, surpassed only by India and China. For that reason, said Vines, “what happens in Nigeria is globally significant”. Osori said: “The Nigerian election should matter, especially in the global conversation about the future of democracy.”

@RichardAssheton

after4:
It is you guys that didn't experience kwankwaso's governance that take him serious. How is kwankwaso better than buhari?
Buhari is a bigot, kwankwaso is a bigger bigot
Buhari is a religious fanatic, kwankwaso is
Kwankwaso has this mentality of northern supremacy and that is why he refused to step down for obi, you can see his comments later on.
Mark my word any where, this is is best opportunity he just lost
He will never have another opportunity to aso rock for any reason

Think about it. If Obi/Datti ends there tenure,
and obi did well which we believe by God's grace, Ahmed Datti will easily get the youths support and after that, it will be a southern turn. That means the next opportunity for kwankwaso will be the next 16years. How old will he be then and will the youths pick him against younger contenders then? No

I am happy pride did not allow him. He is not a good person at all

Kwankwaso , Atiku and Buhari are all born to rule bigots

Thanksful:
Why Tinubu was a drug baron, Atiku was a thief disguised as a custom officer stealing our common wealth as a nation.

Two misfits

ATIKU was responsible for the transit of the drugs.

Nigeria has a presidential candidate with a fake name, DOB, fake school and unknown career history.

The experienced Biden and Hillary Clinton both stepped down for new senator Obama in 2008 because they knew it was his time and the environment was ripe for an African-American president.

Kwankwaso is ignorant and the reason why Nigeria is a failed state today. His 17 years in government and Education has amounted to nothing in Northern Nigeria, yet he wants to continue another 8 years of Fulani rule in Nigeria.

dniceguy1:
[b][/b]hey guys,
Although, we know that "life goes on " as they say, but some life challenges doesn't seems go with these rules,or let's say it does, but after some hurdles,
So, let's share our experiences as a 3rd class graduate.
.............
Mine is a little bit funny cos after one or two interviews with stories that touches, I think life is about to end,
Although, still in search for job WITH ZERO HOPE but I STILL thank God for his plans for my life.

What have you done to improve your 3rd Class degree?

There are many reasons to get a third-class degree, health problems, late development, too much fun and the wrong degree ..etc.

The solution is always to add new value to your degree, such as taking an extra online course, a post-graduate certificate, part-time work, or professional certification, volunteering for an NGO, or teaching.

This will add more character to your application and focus the interview on you learning from your 3rd class degree.

Nbote:
Why are they targeting poor and helpless critics? What haven't they picked up the likes of Deji Adeyanju who has dared them to come for him

They cannot touch Southerners because we know all about Fulani hegemony. Still, Buhari's corruption, incompetence and insecurity have been a shock, even to the Hausa's who once supported anything Fulani. The poverty and insecurity in Northern Nigeria have been intense on the Hausa's

While daring Mrs Buhari to arrest her, the Hausa nationalist said in the audio posted on a Youtube channel @jarumhausatv that the first lady’s grandparents were itinerant foreigners wandering in the bush.

“Your husband deceived us, lying and crying. It is good that we elected him, and his election had exposed all the Fulanis in Nigeria.

“Your government is silent about killing of Hausa people by Fulani. The southerners have rained all manner of abuses against you, but you are silent. Now you are here intimidating Northerners,” she said in the audio.

ItsTutsi:
The effeminate frog voice bisexual gap teeth Pandora Anini that u want is to vote failed to develop Anambra from a slum, that's why you and ur relatives are always packed in a night bus to lagos

Olodo, I am from Lagos. Unlike that drug dealer called Tinubu

Raheeqilmaktoom:
Many people down south don't know the history of Almajirci and how it came to be, how it was abused and what led to those abuses, Gej probably made the same mistake - in a typical Southerner's mind, it's shouldn't be there in first place.

To a northerner, its a system that worked well before certain factors led to its abuse -mostly economic and to some extent cultural, address those factors (esp economic), the people keep getting enlightened and the system would be transformed.

Right now, the Almajirci system is a insult on the north, right management of it would turn it to a spectacular system where people are made.

So, major thing, economic empowerment of the region, education should also be improved (Western and Islamic) over a long time and converting those almajiri schools into boarding schools like incorporating both Western and Islamic education. (Long term).

Immediate measure: clusters of these schools, taking off the kids off the streets and providing them with education, plus economic empowerment of the region and engaging stakeholders (scholars) to enlighten and disseminate information.

Without economic empowerment, most of these things will always come to naught.

This is a complicated waffle.

Each governor in Northern Nigeria has the tools to provide primary education.

Free Universal Education and Healthcare are not unique to Nigeria. The South Western Action Group and UPN political party successfully implemented universal education and primary healthcare across the SW and Niger- delta, and it was not expensive.

The Awo regional government requested the support of wealthy landlords to allow their courtyards to be used as schools. The student wasn't required to have clothing or shoes but to attend school to learn; over time, the pupils were provided free uniforms, shoes and books. The students acquired Islamic education in the Mosque every Friday evening, overtime they got good western education and Islamic education

Northern Nigerian elites are not committed to primary education and development in their region. Tinubu cannot solve Northern Nigeria's basic education problem.

ItsTutsi:
Tinubu, we northerners love you.. we are surely voting for You!!

Before you vote for him please ask Tinubu whether he tackled the Almajiri problem in Lagos , by now he should have developed a solution to the problem

” If I become the President, I will work with you to establish a Commission to find a lasting solution to the Almajiri problem” he stated adding that he would transform the enormous potential of the Nigeria youth to something productive

Mindcure:
So you de Canada now?

How de freezing Cold bro?

Olodo

In 1982 Nigeria minimum wage was N125 ($1 -= N1) = $125 per month

In 2022 Nigeria's minimum wage is N30,000 ($1 = N750 -900) = approx $42 per month ( with inflation now unofficially over 50%) A cleaning job in the UK is better than an accounting job in Lagos.


Nigerians have never had it so bad, the politician has successfully stolen the country's future.

ahiboilandgas:
Almost all workers are complaining in the UK and everbody is on strike on wage issue from trainr drivers to ambulance to teachers to nurses to university on strike They are complaining of poor pay debt and leaving the job . But Nigerians that are well paid are also leaving on student visa to join the strike in the .UK or cannot see the cost of living crisis in the UK . Is there something else

Skilled Nigerians are getting the low pay that the British don't want. The Nigerians are highly motivated and skilled. The majority of the Nursing course in the UK are self-financed by Nigerians

The port will serve the Lekki free trade zone which will become a manufacturing hub, if there is a railway it will be designed to support Lagos and Ogun state industries.

naptu2:
So let's deal with the usual arguments.

1) Why Lekki? Why not Niger Delta? Well, why not both Lekki and Niger Delta? The Lekki Port has been on the drawing board for decades and it was proposed by the Lagos State Government, but it is not the only proposed deep sea port. There's also the new Bonny Deep Sea Port https://punchng.com/construction-of-462m-bonny-deep-seaport-takes-off-this-year-npa/ and the new Ibom Deep Sea Port http://www.idsp.ak.gov.ng/

So why not Lekki?


2) There's only one road into Lekki and it will lead to problems for people living in Ajah, Lekki Phase 1, etc.

Firstly, you need to know that the port is being built in Ibeju Lekki, which is far away from Lekki Phase 1, Ajah, etc.

Secondly, you also need to know that there isn't only one way to the port. There is the Epe-Ijebu Expressway, which easily provides a link to the hinterland (through Ogun State) from the port. The Ondo State Government is also working on the Araromi-Ibeju Lekki Expressway, which will provide a link from Ibeju Lekki to Ondo State.

3) Rail lines: There are two rail lines that are meant to service that area: (a) The Green Line of the Lagos Metro system, which will run from Marina to the proposed Lekki Airport and Seaport. Provision has been made on the Eleko Road for the rail line to run on the median. There's also going to be a link from the Lagos-Calabar national line to the Lekki Port.

4) Dedicated truck lane: The road will also have a dedicated lane for trucks (just as you have your BRT lane), so that they won't cause congestion on the axis.

[quote author=naptu2 post=119475950][/quote]

naptu2:


3) Rail lines: There are two rail lines that are meant to service that area: (a) The Green Line of the Lagos Metro system, which will run from Marina to the proposed Lekki Airport and Seaport. Provision has been made on the Eleko Road for the rail line to run on the median. There's also going to be a link from the Lagos-Calabar national line to the Lekki Port.

The Green line is for moving people only and not freight.

The Lagos -Calabar national line is still a plan and will be available once they raise funding in the future. The Lekki port has no plan to develop a railway, it will have to use the raos and turn Lekki into Apapa.

tctrills:
It is win not won. You and I may not be president but at least we can use correct tenses.
GEJ and Atiku lost because Buhari won the North. Tinubu is not going to win the north.

Buhari won the North and with the help of Tinubu and Amaechi the South.


Who is going to help Atiku win the South?

I honestly don't understand the greed of the Fulani'. The South stood back and allowed two Fulanis to compete in 2019 (Buhari vs Atiku); come 2023, Fulani still wants the top seat after eight years of destructive government.

Glorified village, the city looks ok from a drone picture

internationalman:
The only picture of Nigeria we have is aerial view.

We dare not take the camera down to Nigeria streets.

But how do these Oyinbo manage to make all these building straight in the same line and structurally alike in a particular street.

Secondly there's no difference between their floors in their living room and the floors in the streets.. Everywhere is so damn clean.

It's called town planning, the teach it in universities across Nigeria.

Before we start praising him for his excellent work.

Can he please show us his factory where he manufactures his Nord truck and drones?

Where is the evidence that he can manufacture drones or even trucks?

BreconHills:
Bros many things can be true at the same time.

1. Emefiele has never been an independent cbn governor. He is almost certainly not a clean one.
2. The current uproar against him is sponsored by powerful politicians - I suspect NASS both PDP and APC as Atiku and BAT have enough paper dollars to prosecute their campaigns without recourse to new naira notes.
3. The President will toe the line of NASS and ask the deputy cbn governor to act for Emefiele. You can see already that cbn directors are distancing themselves from Emefiele
4. Nigerians are co conspirators based on party and tribal lines. When emefiele stood for the primaries people opposed him. The same people are now defending him on the tribal basis of " leave our thief
alone"
5. The whole episode is symptomatic of the big mess Nigeria is in.
6. The only answer is to tear up that horrible 1979/99 constitution that makes the president a demi god and the states lazy appendages suckling at the breast of a sick malnourished cow.
7. Serious problems lie ahead.

Emefiele ways and means policies are some of the reasons why the country's inflation of N48 billion has been printed, leading to the collapse of Nigeria. He now needs to rein in those currencies to reduce national inflation, but majority of the currencies are under the bed of politicians that need to fund their election campaigns.

copyrites:
Emefiele is obviously not clean but those after him are the biggest thieves. Unfortunately for him, he has no integrity to fight back. Nigerians can't fight for him either.

See, unless Peter Obi makes it to Aso rock, the status quo will remain. Who does Tinubu want to challenge when the entire Africa knows about his corrupt lifestyle?

How can a personality like Tinubu fight corruption? Dude can't even face Nigerians to talk about corruption.

You can say the same for Atiku and I don't trust Peter Obi a former PDP vice president candidate. Nigeria is in deep trouble.

Due to the naked and wicked corruption, many diasporas are reluctant to invest or return to Nigeria.

d4gmail:


With the kind of money looted annually in this country it's a miracle that the country is still surviving.

The country is not surviving

Where are the housing projects to support millions living in the Makoko ghetto?

Very nice project but there must be a balance between vanity projects and social welfare.

Mindlog:
You are in denial.

The present generation and the future ones, are becoming more daring and less comfortable with "eye service" and cover ups.

The emotional blackmail the society has been using to subsidize deadbeat parents is fast losing its grip on children of neglectful parents.

Publicly treating deadbeat parents mess ups is becoming the new cool.

For those conversant with the bible: Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.....Col. 3:21

The nonsense that he is your father and should be respected despite glaring character flaws is gone. Don't have children if you can't be a good father.

Eriokanmi:
Haha. I never liked Okupe being in LP from the onset, given his antecedents. LP can now be exonerated for expelling him over mismanagement of 20m naira. Its in their blood. I pity thise rooting for atiku. The likes of Ayu will flood pdp appointment list, God forbid

You are right not to like Okupe for very valid reasons of political corruption. But why hasn't Dasuki been found guilty

dreamxhaser:
Story!


If they talk, una go start dey bring literacy rate and health care trying to sound smart. How will the start be able to manage a good health care system and literacy without any means of revenue generation to back it up.

You think you know better than the government?



Please keep shut, we the people of kaduna know the difference between NEED and WANT. So we know what we need

You can raise revenue, by cutting waste and reducing government stealing of state revenue. Kaduna insecurity that is linked to the state governors has been instrumental in the low production.

Reference:
You see the problem with Nigeria.
Was a great read until I got to the point where it says '...but we have been unable to get (an interested party) to operate it.

Which means the people are not interested in the project. Which means the government is forcing it on them, which means it is a white elephant destined to be an albatross on the back of government for years to come.

This is not how nations develop. There is no synergy between leaders and the led. We should understand that Government exists to organise society, period. Government is the sum of all the aspirations of the people it serves.

In this case the rail and BRT for which this loan is taken will have come about by exhaustive interaction, deliberations and advocacy between the people and government perhaps over several years by which plans and programs will have evolved, in a scenario whereby government will have said, 'we don't have the means, etc' and the people will have ended up with a plan to fund it by loan with another plan to repay by commercializing it.

Such that ownership, management, financial plans, even ticketing prices will all have been agreed by government and the people, a solid feasibility study before any action us taken. Only then can the development by a success.

But in Nigeria, Africa, attention to details, consultancy, consultation, plans, procedures and the ability to build values into a society is severely lacking making leadership so tempestuous.

We really need to raise our game. How can you conclude on a public works project of such importance with the primary components of it's success completely left out. If you already have the name of the 'gbese provider' and you don't have the name of the 'gbese repayer', is that not trouble you are looking for. Who takes a loan without a name by which it is to be paid or a plan by which it is to be serviced...

If the people who are the owners of government are not front and center of this development, how will it transit government when the title holders are out of power.

When the next government pulls out of the project, you will later read that the state owes the Indian company $100 million contract obligation, similar to Ajaokuta, Afram and PI&.

This is what state capture looks like they tried it in South Africa but failed, but they have been very successful in Nigeria and DR Congo

Adamumd:
The North keep developing their region while Biafra Governors keep looting and keeping their people distracted and busy with agitations to prevent them from demanding for accountability. Later they'll come and wail about marginalization.

According to UNESCO, Kaduna's literacy rate is 29.3%; let that sink in. Health care is no better. The state does need a line railway when clean water, education, and health care are lacking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nigerian_states_by_literacy_rate