₦airaland Forum

bigx: It was wrong, I admit and there was an element of greed too but Only my mum put all 4 of us through school then and not having to depend on her reduced the load and did a lot of good to my conscience ( not trying to defend or justify it though)

I just mentioned it to illustrate that if you are dedicated and work hard and smart and seek and take action on opportunities you can achieve anything you want even in Nigeria. The attitude of the poster who I replied is the reason a lot of Nigerians remain in poverty. They give up early and either stop trying or refuse to try at all.

I admire the way you put your points forward and if my actions in the past hurt anyone, I apologize for that, I was young, reckless and didnt know better.

From the mature way you responded, I can safely say you are a credit to your mum that sacrificed for your education.

We all make mistakes. It's how we move on and learn from them that matters.

Not sure why 70% should be from the Niger Delta. 40% or so seems fair.

Couple of m0r0ns here saying "It was just a joke". Rubbish. It's a serious gaffe that fully deserves outrage.

I don't agree with those who are trying to get Glo to terminate their arrangement with him, though. He's been verbally excoriated enough on Twitter and he has apologized.

That would be political suicide...and GEJ knows it.

Truth be told, I see little hope for a South East President in 2019. The deals GEJ will have to make to get his 2015 ticket will see to that.

Not interested in anything concerning Chime until he makes public his health challenges. Nobody wants another Yar'Adua.

I didn't post this to ridicule GEJ...I expect him to see this as a wake up call, if he does read the Vanguard article.

Our leaders are too complacent. The current status quo isn't good enough. It's time to stop trumpeting a transformation in the rail sector until the major issues have been worked out.

43 hours is just too long. The touts at the terminals should be crushed without delay. Stop talking about providing jobs and hire more engineers and technicians to keep the trains running like clockwork.

Above all, let's stop pressing these ancient Locomotives into service and embrace modernization in the sector.

spenca: 100k

Nope.

Vanguard has this excellent article

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/12/poor-services-cripple-intercity-rail-line/

BAsically, the Lagos - Kano journey by train is so terrible that passengers rarely go through the harrowing ordeal for a second time. Passenger numbers are declining steadily.

Seems the rail sector transformation still needs an immense amount of work on ground and not on pages of newspapers.

One year after its re-introduction, poor services have crippled the Lagos-Kano intercity rail line, with travel time worsening by 13 hours.
Investigations by Vanguard reveal that the intercity service, which was flagged off by the Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar in Lagos December, 2012, is still being bedeviled by the same problems of ticket touting, disorderliness and frequent breakdowns.
The reintroduction of the passenger service had attracted a surge in rail users within the southwestern-northern axis, which overwhelmed the resources and capacity of the railway management. Hence, overcrowding, technical failures and delays became the order of the day, with passengers demanding for more rolling stocks and improved quality of service.

Travel time worsens

When the service was reintroduced in December, 2012, the journey from Lagos to Kano took between 29 to 30 hours. By mid-March, it worsened to 34 hours, and further to 39 hours by the end of August. And by December, 2013, the journey time had increased to 43 hours. For example, the Lagos to Kano train that departed Lagos by 3: 00 pm on Friday, 20th of December, 2013, got to Kano by 10: 00 am on Sunday, December, 22nd.

Volume of passenger drops

As a result of these problems, passengers have started avoiding the intercity rail line service. Most passengers rarely patronise the service twice. This is reflected in the passenger volume per trip which dropped from 2000 in January to 1,000 by mid October. This trend was confirmed by the passenger volume on the Lagos to Kano service on Friday December 20th. The train took off with 700 passengers which filled only three of the eight coaches. Although the remaining coaches were later filled along the way, this was not the case from the beginning.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/12/poor-services-cripple-intercity-rail-line/#sthash.XriDa58s.dpuf

Why are you people attacking PapaBrowne? He has made some serious allegations that none of you have bothered to refute.

Do we take this to mean his words are completely true?

PapaBrowne: I love this point you've raised. I want to discuss the merits of this point but I might have to do it on another thread. It baffles me that this simple principle of urban planning that would cost zero in financing is totally missing in all states of the federation. I want to discuss what is called URBAN SPRAWL vs SMART GROWTH, but nairaland is too charged politically and ethnically for any intellectual discussion to hold.

Look at the whole stretch of Lekki for instance. There was a huge opportunity to plan it smartly to world class standards. But it was left to just evolve into a sprawl.

Now let me explain the merits of containment as you described. Lets assume Lekki & environs is a 25km stretch by 4km in width representing about 20000 plots of land or 200 plots per knm stretch. Lets assume also that the components of infrastructure include Roads, Drainages, Street lightings and Green spaces. Lets further assume that each kilometer stretch would contain 10km of inner roads and that each kilometer of road would take 50 poles of street lighting and have one green/public space each.
Now with the assumed data, the Lekki stretch would have 250km of inner roads, 250km of drainages, 12500 street lights and 250 green/public spaces. Now lets assume that it would cost 100 million to build each km of road, 50 million per km of drainages, 0.2million for street lights and 20 million for public spaces. The complete cost of building Lekki would in that case be Roads 25bn, Drainages 12.5bn, street lights 2.5bn and public spaces 5bn which in total is 45bn. Now these figures are just presumptive and to buttress a point.. They leave approximately 2bn per sqkm area in infrastructure costs.

Now in urban sprawl where there is no containment, development would occur haphazardly. A few hundred plots sold on km1 and another few hundred sold on km 10. and another few hundred sold on km 15 in which case to connect the few hundred plots government would have to build infrastructure in 15km stretch which by the figures provided would cost 30bn just to serve less than 1000 plots.

Now imagine if smart growth strategies was followed and containment was applied, those 1000 plots would have been restricted to the first 5 km and Government would have to provide infrastructure worth just 10bn and everywhere would be excellently done. When the first phase empties out, restrictions would be lifted on the next and so on and so fault.

My desire is to see when our politics would be about issues of developemnt as against issues of power. Its sad that we the people dont see these issues and continue to join our politicians in the argument for a scramble for power that they never get to share with us.



Anyways, I am pretty sure 99% of readers wouldn't understand as my post as many are not intellectually inclined but still I had to communicate it. We need to take urban planning seriously. Its sad that areas built in the colonial era are far better than those new areas built today.

Excellent points!

We have suffered a lot in this nation because our leaders did not make enough far reaching plans when the going was good. Imagine how much better our economy would be if in the first Obasanjo and Buhari administrations (70, early '80s) we had made significant investment in modern rail transportation, for example. Or if we had foreseen the rapid population expansion and invested earlier on in improved power generation or distribution.

dami212: Sahara reporters we don tire for una. Everytime negative news. Tahhhhhhhhh

You live in a country where corruption is rife, tribalism is rooted deeply, the youths are fickle-minded cowards, kidnappers roam the streets, terrorists roam freely in wide swathes of the North, guns are being stockpiled and a bitter election battle is set to play out in a year...and you expect to hear more of positive news?

Perhaps you should restrict yourself to watching Telemundo or Youtube videos of Davido and Olamide. Bury your head in the sand.

southsouthman: Please have u heard that a brand new car will cost btw 1.2m to 1.5m

Yes. We've heard this same tripe from paid lapdogs like yourself. Each of you is VERY careful not to mention the type of cheap, tiny vehicle that will retail for that price.

Of course, none of you has the intelligence to explain why the FG did not wait until these miraculous 1.5m brand new vehicles were available before hiking the tariffs upward or simply maintaining status quo and letting market forces do the trick. Why prevent a civil servant from buying a 2007 Camry Tokunbo at an affordable price if you're so sure that the 1.5 million car will be a reality and will be worth it?

@OP

Absolutely nothing illegal with Fashola buying armored vehicles if they were properly budgeted for.

Oduah was in hot water because it was reported that she forced the an aviation agency to purchase the vehicles that were not in the budget, the vehicles were bought on an extremely frivolous premise (ferrying international VIPs which should not have been her concern), were not on the NSA list of approved armored vehicles, irregularities with the amounts paid for the vehicle, imported under a false premise and a deliberate attempt to defraud the FG of import duty revenue by using waivers granted for another unrelated purpose.

If you cannot see the difference, you're a bigger sheep than I thought you were.

Ab025: This Op is a liar....this incident happend quite long ago and not last week, and btw he wasn't fed to dogs.

You were there?

I didn't know an execution that happened last month is now 'long ago'.

[quote author=ndu_chucks]I predict that this policy of 250% increase in tariffs on Tokunbo cars will be reversed within 6 months of its implementation. It will be aborted as promised by GEJ.

My question is, why couldn't GEJ promote and assist the auto manufacturing industry without this absurd increase in tariff. What happened to waivers, tax incentives, and outright grants? This administration is clueless as to the number of jobs which would be lost as a result of this policy. This administration keeps digging its own grave. SMH[/quote]Because tax waivers, incentives and grants are solutions that are logical and make sense and thus are forbidden in this present administration.

There will be no local manufacturing capability from foreign companies in the next 2 years. Innoson motors has only one consumer model vehicle (an SUV, no sedan model). Why indulge in the intensely stupid decision to increase import duties right now?

This is a very stupid policy, supported by stupid people and designed to please the likes of Elizade and Coscharis.

If you support this policy, you're a traitor. Pure and simple. There is no iota of common sense behind this policy. None at all.

Bump

And we're supposed to care when a treasonous loud mouthed fellow writes an open letter?

Feeding fat on amnesty funds while his personal fortune (the size of which is yet to be explained) is used to emancipate himself and the people of Benin Republic and not the people of the Niger Delta.

toheeb12345: only so funny

You Have multiple threads where you sell stuff without anyone coming to troll them. Flee from foolishness, please.

Keeping it short and simple.

Brand new Playstation 4 Killzone Bundle for sale.

PS4 Console + Killzone Shadowfall.

Location: Lagos

Price? 125k only.

Non negotiable, please. Console only on Jumia, Konga et al cost more than this.

Keeping it short and simple.

Brand new Playstation 4 Killzone Bundle for sale.

PS4 Console + Killzone Shadowfall.

Location: Lagos

Price? 125k only.

Non negotiable, please. Console only on Jumia, Konga et al cost more than this.

Keeping it short and simple.

Brand new Playstation 4 Killzone Bundle for sale.

PS4 Console + Killzone Shadowfall.

Location: Lagos

Price? 125k only.

Non negotiable, please. Console only on Jumia, Konga et al cost more than this.

I'll take the battle field


Your number ain't going through.

It is painfully obvious that the OP has no idea what the word 'Invention' means.

Some of those things fall far short of the word 'amazing'. I struggle to see how someone can describe the DOA Gamestick with that word and keep a straight face.

xxxtedyxxx: Mumu.u don av u lived in china?

You don't have to have lived in China know that Tecno has no significant marketshare in China.

[quote author=I_am_strata]so because things are bound to happen, we shouldn't pray against them happening to us?

Ode pataki[/quote]LMAO. Do you realize that you're insinuating that bad things only happen to those who are not prayerful enough?

This is why the Nairaland atheist brigade will always finish you fledgling sheep in arguments on Nairaland.

Sorry, there are no lessons to be learned from Tecno's success in Nigeria. They were just in the right place at the right time. This has nothing to do with people being fascinated with Nokia phones at the time. Symbian was by far the dominant Smartphone platform at the time and tecno were making substandard products with abysmal build quality and a dumb OS. This is more of a case of finally providing a decent product after years and years of shitty products.

Thank God for Mediatek that has enabled legions of chinese OEMs to mass produce Android phones at a cheap price, thank God for Google that released Android, a license free OS that these guys could adopt.

I'd be cautious about hailing TEcno as the 'messiah'. I'll get some flak for this, but IMHO, Tecno is one of the laziest of the Chinese OEMs when it comes to actual 'innovation'. They use that word very often, but I challenge anyone to show where the hardware innovation is in their recent devices. They also fail to provide software updates like the serious OEMs like Xiaomi, Huawei and ZTE sometimes do.

Still, their popularity is good news for the Nigerian market. Mediatek's new Chipsets will bring about excellent performance in the 2014 wave of phones, 720p should become standard as the screen resolution in 2014 and we should see much better camera performance. Best of all, the likes of Tecno have helped in sinking the grip of Blackberry on our smartphone landscape.

eesquare: I Cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod
aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal
pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the
ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the
frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can ...sit...ll raed it
whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not
raed ervey lteter by istlef,
but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas
tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
If you can raed tihs sya asewome!!!

[size=15pt]STALE DAN BANZA!![/size]

We were sharing this stuff via Yahoo Messenger way back in 2003. Why bring this stale stuff up here?

Akainzo: So in essence, to you, the game changer is relative to sales. Do you see the HTC One as a gamechanger for HTC then, considering it's relatively good sales though it's so well behind the Galaxy ranges?

Not sure if you're joking, but the HTC one didn't sell well. It wasn't a game changer since it merely continued the trend set by the One X before it.

Akainzo: What this implies is that, gamechanger qualifications are based on the company's intentions and from the Q3 earnings call, the Z30 is indeed a gamechanger for BlackBerry as it has clearly recognized that it's survival depends on getting BB10 into as many hands as possible hence its partnership with Foxconn to build low end devices.

No. It depends on the execution and market impact, both areas in which the Z30 fails to stand out.
The partnership with Foxconn is less about getting BB10 into as many hands as possible and more to do with outsourcing inventory management to Foxconn to avoid another damaging write off from unsold inventory.

Akainzo: However, on a balanced review, the Z30 outperforms both the S4 And HTC One except on Camera. Please do the check yourself or if you are willing, we can do it together.
Note: Performance is not based on simply comparing stated specs otherwise on simple specs, a GMC trailer would be outperforming the BMW X6.

Please keep your ill-advised trailer vs X6 analogy. It's laughable.
The S4 and have a better screen and a more powerful SoC. I'm not sure where you're getting your 'outperforms' statement from. Certainly not in synthetic benchmarks. Can you elaborate on this?

taharqa: Do these CLOWNS know how to read common English language??

Nice one, it's extremely annoying when people don't trouble themselves to read the op before commenting.

However, it's funny that in your self appointed capacity as an English language comprehension enforcer, you haven't tackled those simpletons that are insinuating that 'food poisoning' = 'deliberate poison using toxic substances'. Any plans to remedy this glaring omission?

So there's this clown that has been claiming that both the Galaxy S4 and Nexus 5 have better cameras than the iPhone 5S.

Has anyone set him straight yet?

lol. Silly article. Throw in all the gimmicky, me-too features of the Galaxy S4 and use that as a 'my phone is better than yours argument'?

Some of the points are downright silly. If you buy an iPhone 5S, you KNOW it has a 4 inch screen and you like that screen size just fine. Claiming an advantage for the S4 because it has a one inch bigger screen is just lame.

I have an iPhone 5S and a Galaxy S4. Both complement each other. For me, the main differences lies with the difference between iOS and Android. One is more open, one is a closed source, walled garden ecosystem. Each has their advantages and disadvantages. Bringing up stuff like the IR blaster and NFC that hardly anyone uses is just funny

Mbatagr82: Who is saying doctors should not be well fed? Pls Just close your mouth if you lack what to say.

Yawn.
I wonder why topics like these seem to attract these drive-by, lack witted posts from brainless scum like you.

Please go and look for your mate to argue with and stop trying to vilify your betters.