₦airaland Forum

biafrandream: Our people are horrible when it comes to building our land. An Igbo man would rather fly to Kano first and then fly to his state than flying straight to Enugu. All the talk about lack of advertisement and awareness is simply not true. I know a lot of people who knew about Ethiopian Airline but they still prefer landing in Lagos or Abuja first (even when they have no business to transact there), before flying to their home destinations.

In as much as I agree that the initial price of flying to Enugu by Ethiopian Airline was very expensive, but what happens now that the price has been slashed and is the same with flying to Lagos. What is the difference between flying KLM, Turkish Airline, Air France etc and flying Ethiopian Airline, when all these airlines land first in their home countries before moving to their destination countries?

One of our sisters who was to travel to Nigeria told me, that it's makes no sense going to spend 13hours at Addis Ababa but it makes sense to her going to spend the same time in Holland. The I-too-know syndrome makes Igbos behave foolishly. We all claim to know but we have not understood the basic principle of self-preservation. We lack the spirit of Igbo patriotism and that is why we will remain slaves in Nigeria and will continue to be killed like chickens, everywhere, everyday.

I am not here to preach tribalism, but we must understand that we are first Igbos, before Nigerians and no one would build our land except us. An Igbo man has not learnt to patronize his own business for the sake of making sure that businesses in that part of the world survive, in order to keep people in jobs. A white man once told me that he spends so much money in the bar to keep people in jobs. He said that if he saves all the money he makes, many bars will close down and he will be in deep shit because lack of job will breed crime.

An Igbo man will first ask you if the business will benefit Anambra, Imo, Enugu, Ebonyi or Abia? He would rather patronize an hausa or yoruba business than his fellow Igboman's, yet he is the first person to go to the roof top to moan about government's inability to provide jobs. He feels on top of the world when his fellow Igbo man is living in abject poverty while he swims in money because it gives him a sense of superiority over his brother.

The bottom line is that we are still suffering from self-hate and no people have ever succeeded with such attitude. The Nigerian state succeeded in destroying our sense of altruism, such that we cannot be happy seeing our brothers living better than us without feeling bad. Even some comments here attests to this fact. Who would have bought Innoson buses if Sullivan Chime did not first buy them in hundreds? How many of us would rather eat Abakaliki rice than imported ones? How many would prefer Ibeto cement to Dangote?

Hey guys if we cannot develop this spirit of self-preservation, we will remain slaves running helter-skelter all over the world. While you patronize other businesses, do not fail to patronize yours, because in such way, you make your society better.

Please I did not mean to insult anyone, It's just a thought.

I think its time to form an airline for the people of the former eastern Nigeria. The most widely Traveled Nigerians! so we can eliminate the lay over in European countries like Arik does. An Eastern Airline flying from europe and America to enugu, uyo, calabar, ph, asaba, owerri direct will solve the problem, or encourage klm, british airways to fly to enugu Lol.

You cant blame anyone for wanting to stop over in Europe over Addis Abba, especially if they have families and friends in Europe that they can break their journey and visit.
I had to deny myself and family the joys of visiting friends and family in Europe en route Nigeria this time, just for the satisfaction of entering Nigeria for the first time with Ethoipian without going through Lagos not because i hate Lagos but for a different experience, Am not sure that this is practicable for most families and Ethoipian fares are very exorbitant.

Nice one APC = disgruntled PDP + New Acronym.

Airports are necessary infrastructure, therefore any state that can afford to build one with their resource/allocation without borrowing to do so should be encouraged to do so.

I am in full support of the osun airport as long as it is not just a publicity/money laundering stunt. every state of the federation should have an airport.
I would rather they build an airport profitable or not, than siphon the money into their personal bank account.

If this present generation cannot figure out how to make the airport functional/profitable maybe the next generation will. note most big airports around the world today did not start out being a big profitable/international venture, History tells us that some of them were small military airfield and some small private airfield that with time were converted into money spinners that we all envy today.

when building don't just think for today shot term benefit but for the future long term benefit and Africa must not despise their years of little beginning.

All those decamping to APC are doing so because they hope to get tickets to run for the next election. Lets wait and see what will become of APC once they start handing out tickets to their front runners!

By the way a party that brands itself as progressives are busy canvassing for PDP members to join, This dilutes what ever progressive message APC may want to offer Nigerian electorate for we know that APC as it stands today is made up of former PDP members with a new name.

The commissioner of Education and those advising the governor on education especially tertiary education have done a terrible job. The university building/environment looks terrible.

I Agree its a new university, but that's not an excuse to start off with mediocre buildings. A university above other things else needs and requires an environment that can breed/inspire excellence! from what i have seen of the school it is not yet ready to play in the big leagues.

If there is an area that needs attention, it is tertiary education in AKS. The Uncommon transformation should head on down to the state university and transform it.

bk

I must agree that the state govt has dropped the ball, when it comes to giving the university campus the right infrastructures, all the building at the school on their facebook pages www.facebook.com/AkwaIbomStateUniversity/photos_stream are mediocre at best. Its a real eyesore hope the next administration does better in Re positioning the university.
My 2 cents is that,the university does not require 2 campuses.The 2 campus structure will be the bane of any meaningful development of the school .

nice pictures imefon can you show more of the university?

I checked the schools facebook page and am not impressed at the structures on ground. Attached is what i found more like a primary/ secondary school blocks really dissapointing to say the least.

This tropicana center when complete will be a game changer in uyo, A 5 star accomodation, convention center amuesment park and shopping all in one place amazing!

convt

A 360 on the ongoing convention center in Uyo. all pictures courtesy of ITB and emb associates

November 2013 project update shows first floor completed

Akwa–Ibom International Convention Center,UYO

Client:AKWA IBOM STATE government

Contract Sum: N19.38Billion

Date of Award:May, 2012

Prime Consultant: I.T.B Nigeria limited

Project Duration:18 Months

Remark: Ongoing


Project Description:
The Ultra Modern Akwa- Ibom International Convention Center is situated in the Tropicana Resort in Uyo, Akwa – Ibom State.The new International Convention Center is in three levels, Ground floor level that includes a hall with sitting capacity of 800 persons and an Auditorium that sits 50 persons.
The two other levels, the first floor accommodating the main convention Auditorium and Mezzanine floor both have a combine sitting capacity of 5000 persons.
In addition the Convention center has 8 meeting rooms with full facilities, and an elaborate external works.
The external car parking has capacity for 700 cars

Shittu Ibrahim ekes out a living for his two wives and 11 children by selling tomatoes he grows to passersby along a highway that runs through the Kadawa Valley near Kano, the biggest city in northern Nigeria. With no way to find new customers, about two-thirds of his crop rots.

Now the country’s central bank and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, have teamed up to establish a $25 million tomato-paste factory that could boost income for Ibrahim and the 8,000 farmers who live in the valley.

“We are doing this only to feed, as you can see, I can’t afford the luxuries of life,” the stocky 56-year-old said as he sat on a stool on June 6 outside his mud-walled house, which is surrounded by tomato fields as far as the eye can see. “There are better prospects in supplying Dangote because people will buy from them from all over the country. We hope that things will improve.”

The intervention by the Central Bank of Nigeria, which commissioned a study to show that processing local tomatoes is cheaper than importing paste from China, is part of the government’s drive to cut annual food imports of more than $10 billion. It also plans to boost agriculture in a country that was food self-sufficient in the 1960s, and create jobs in the north where poverty and unemployment have fueled an Islamist insurgency.



“We want to take Kadawa as a model and prove that with the right application of government policy we could get finance to the sector, improve productivity, create jobs and raise income,” Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Lamido Sanusi said in a June 25 e-mailed response to questions.

Spicy Kebabs

The 2011 study showed that Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, pays $360 million to import more than 300,000 metric tons annually of tomato paste from companies including Hebei, China-based Baoding Sanyuan Food Packing Co. and Singapore’s Olam International Ltd (OLAM). a year. The country produces 1.5 million tons of tomatoes annually of which about 900,000 tons rot, Agriculture Minister Akinwunmi Adesina said at a June 13 presentation in the capital, Abuja.

Annual consumption is about 900,000 tons. Tomatoes feature in popular Nigerian dishes like Suya, a spicy northern delicacy of meat kebabs with raw tomatoes, as well as a tomato stew eaten with rice, beans, yams and cassava dough.

Dansa Holdings Ltd., a unit of Dangote Group, the company that accounts for the bulk of Aliko Dangote’s $19.9 billion wealth, took up the project after a a failed attempt to get importers including Olam, Conserveria Africana Ltd. and Chi Group Ltd. to form a venture. The plant is expected to start by November and will produce more than 400,000 tons of tomato paste annually. Most of its tomatoes will come from farmers in Kadawa Valley.

Reaping Rewards

Farmers will receive a guaranteed price of about $700 per ton compared to an average of less than $350 now, the central bank said.

Dangote, the world’s 32nd richest man according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, owns businesses including flour mills, fruit canning plants and palm oil refineries. He also owns cement, salt and oil assets. He was born in Kano.

“It’s a win-win situation. We have a price we can compete with and the farmer has a price that makes the tomato a good value,” said Sani Dangote, vice president of Dangote Group and a brother of Aliko Dangote, in a June 18 interview in Abuja. “It’s only agriculture that can take poverty away overnight because it doesn’t take long for the farmer to see the results and reap the rewards.”

While agriculture accounts for more than 40 percent of the economy of Africa’s biggest oil producer, most output is by subsistence farmers who eat much of what they grow.

‘Create Wealth’

Gross domestic product per capita is $1,436 in the south and $718 in the north, according to Lagos-based Financial Derivatives Co.

Nigeria is now the world’s second-largest importer of rice and sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest wheat and sugar buyer.

Farmers in northern Nigeria once grew cotton, peanuts, cowpeas and rice for export. Half of Nigeria’s 160 million people dwell in rural areas and four-fifths of those live on less than a dollar a day, according to the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Nigeria attracted agricultural investment worth more than $8 billion in the past 18 months, Adesina said. Still, only 40 percent of its 21 million hectares (51.9 million acres) of arable land is cultivated.

“Our strategy is to change the face of the north,” Adesina said. “We’re using agriculture for poverty reduction; our intention is to create wealth.”

Credit Guarantees

Key to the government’s plan to end rice imports, now costing 1 billion naira ($6.2 million) a day, by 2015 and expand crop exports, is a central bank plan to channel credit to agriculture.

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending, or Nirsal, a unit of the Central Bank of Nigeria, which carried out the tomato study, also provides credit guarantees to enable banks to lend to farmers, Jude Uzonwanne, its head and a former consultant at Boston-based Monitor Group, said in an interview in Abuja.

At Kadawa, Nirsal determined that “about 8,000 farmers producing in about 5,000 hectares needed roughly 4 billion naira in working capital,” he said. It also established a farm office of agronomists and managers “to run all the middle mechanics between growing crops and delivering to the Dangote factory.”

Cassava Chips

Nirsal has the mandate to guarantee as much as 75 percent of loans to agriculture. Since giving its first cover for a loan by Sterling Bank in July last year, it has gone on to work with most lenders in Nigeria, according to Uzonwanne. By April, it had issued guarantees for loans worth 25 billion naira, covering an average of 57 percent of lending, he said.

Apart from tomatoes, Nirsal has provided similar guarantees for producers of cassava chips, rice, soybeans, cocoa and leather.

Loans to agriculture as a share of total credit rose to 3.8 percent in February from 1.5 percent in December 2009, according to figures released by the Bankers’ Committee. The central bank has set a target of 10 percent of all loans to agriculture by 2016.

Dansa expects to produce enough tomato paste for both the local market and export, Sani Dangote said.

Chinese exporters to Nigeria have responded.

“We’ve seen prices prices from China drop 30 percent in the light of our plan,” he said. “Everyone in the tomato world is aware of our project.”

For Ibrahim these developments mark a turn of fortune.

“Before the price of tomatoes would keep going down because all the farmers sell at the same time,” he said. “With the coming of the Dangote factory, prices won’t go down that way any more. We can be sure of a stable income.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Dulue Mbachu in Abuja at dmbachu@bloomberg.net; Edwin Olofu in Kano at eolofu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net

catholic cathedral ikot ekpene

Ikot Ekpene catholic diocese

very informative thread. never knew that nigeria has gone this far in laying the foundation for mechanized and process agriculture.

projects the require picture updates include the airport: new international terminal and taxiway.

Etebi - Enwang road + bridges.

500 housing units in Uruan

The Abak bridge by Julius Berger.

The tropicana especially the convention centre + amusement park

If you live around this areas picture updates of the projects will be highly appreciated.

Please we need pictures from people who are resident in the State to update this thread. If you currently live in Akwa ibom pls use ur phone/camera and give picture update on whats going on in the state lets keep this thread current and interesting thanks.

Good job t-something finally you are doing what we know you are capable of but not willing! lol. good pictures can you please post current pics of the convention center and the hotels?

good job imefon pls post more pictures. are you in uyo?

Abagworo: There are up to 30 of those high rises but about 4 have surpassed the 8th floor. Amaechi does not go about with helicopters advertsing his roads or projects like Akpabio. That's why many people have dared compare them. There are countless bridges at New Port-Harcourt at various stages of completion but I personally believe it will take another 5 to 10 years for that city to be realized.

Akpabio goes around with helicopter to advertise his achievement because he has things on ground to advertise thats a no brainer. Akpabio inherited a glorified LGA In Uyo And transformed it into an enviable upcoming city that is the pride of all Nigerians, except Biased ones like you and your paymasters.

Amaechi Inherited Port harcourt the Oil and gas capital of Africa, one of the most established cities in Nigeria and turned it into a dump, with abandoned projects littering the state, and bad roads everywhere. If Amaechi used helicopter to capture images of PH the only thing that will be captured, are the bad roads and decay that litter the city, which he has failed to fix in six years of stewardship.
The only achievement that Amaechi has to show for his stewardship are the schools,healthcare centers that he built which were all done in his first term.

Come back and talk about Amaechi when he completes a single project in his second term besides fighting women. And by the way stop brandishing estates built and funded by Private investors (First bank) As Amaechi's Achievment.

Logging At Nwaniba Wharf in Uruan LGA of Akwa Ibom State

Logging @ Nwaniba Wharf Uruan LGA in Akwa Ibom State

Nwaniba beach @ le meridien

more

10,000 tons cassava Processing Plant Under construction in Nsit Atai LGA to be ready for commisioning First quarter of 2014 will go a long way in adding value to cassava product in the state.

The modern facility besides adding value to cassava is expected to become a recieving facility for cassava in the region where farmers are assured of ready market for their product hence stimulating growth in the area of production and further providing youth employment both in the crop production and processing areas.

A modern Hatchery with a capacity of producing 500,000 day old chicks + staff Accomodation is ready for commissioning at Uruan LGA. this will go a long way in consolidating the number 2 Ranking which the state occupies in poultry production in the nation second only to Ogun state which is the largest producer in Nigeria.

Kudos to the Akpabio Administration which is filling the gap of farmers demand, as Akwa ibom state farmers currently import 300,000 to 400,000 day old chicks weekly from other states this facility will make the state self sufficient in day old chicks.

More pictures of Uyo

What a shame that we cant have a factual/ meaningful debate on this forum without it resulting in a tribal war amongst ethnic nationalities. Throwing mud at any ethnic nationality in Nigeria = throwing mud on Nigeria, and later some Mofo will complain that ppl dont take nigeria serious/ hate Nigerians. How will they take us serious when we hate ourselves. quits thread.

o boy see stress for Amaechi face! stress don make am old finish with gray hair sprouting everywhere. Pickin wey no gree him mama/papa sleep no dey sleep too. LOL

Now Attached is the current external debt profile of all the 36 states in nigeria released by the Debt management office.

http://www.dmo.gov.ng/oci/subn/docs/States%20and%20FGN%20External%20Debt%20Stock%20as%20at%2030th%20June,%202013.pdf

There are so many insolvent states in Nigeria. what should be done about this?