₦airaland Forum

Linoversace: Kinda agree with you but the airport is far from beautiful! It should be transformed to Yankari Games Reserve; looks more suitable for it!

Linoversace: An airport almost ready for operation?
Op you need to be sued for misusing the word 'beautiful'!

Alxmyr: You are wrong on that. He was a yes man to Peter Odili for good 8 years. He was a yes man to be people during his first term. He only became strong head when he became NGF chairman.

Afolabs101: @ujoinme, my fear is the chinese govt will choose chinese firms who are partly owned by the chinese govt.


1). How do we know the chinese firms will do a good/complete job before the chinese govt pays them?
With China completely byspassing nigeria in the bidding and award of contracts, we have no say in how much it will cost us. What if they insist that it will cost N10bn to do 1km of single lane road?

2). Also, there is the issue of revising contract sums which chinese firms may insist on as they colude with their Nigerian govt friends.

3). Also, no local content. China may choose to import all ther materials, even those available locally. For example they may choose to import all the cement they'll be needing.

4).Also, this presents a dangerous dimension as we are basically outsourcing our governments work to a foreign govt and China lest we forget is known to be slightly corrupt, with a govt that is highly un-transparent.
In a comunist country, there's no bidding for contract, the govt just decides who to gve it to. These are the people we trust our nation with?


5).Last bullet: we've basically told the int'l community that we're so corrupt we can't even handle our infrastructure development

scipher: We need to make another Lagos out of uyo

ddeola: It won't because the main problem confronting Nigeria remains bad and corrupt leadership. That money will end up in people's pockets and they will use it for 2015 election while Nija plunges further into slavery through debts

Reference: Development comes when leadership rallies people to confront their common challenges, whatever they are. It is then resources can be harnessed. It is often said about this country that our problem is not money, it is poverty.

We donot lack the funds the Chinese provide. In fact we donot lack the technical know-how. What we lack is the will to prioritize our resources and this takes a focused leadership that knows and leads by example and not one that finds itself tip-toeing through dirty laundry in search of help.

I've often said it. With a population in excess of a hundred million, a quarter of a million graduates a year, all the natural resources you can imagine and a total lack of any index of development, it should not take a brain surgeon to tell leadership that they should just put people to work.

It is the people that should build THEIR roads, their refineries, their hospitals, their power plants, their airports, their dams, their homes.

But where we collectively accept to spend our money at Shoprite and ask Julius Berger to build our toilets, then poverty, ignorance and slavery will never be far away.

Of course Dangote took a loan from his uncle but he was FIRST a darn hardworker with a smart nose for opportunity. His uncle did not build him. He built himself. Today he can pay back whatever interest has accrued. Will Nigeria ever be able to repay the Chinese. I mean really repay?

Reference: Yes you can just like you can take loans to grow a business but the question remains, should we be doing this. Is this the way to develop. Is this the way America became industrialized or China for that matter, I think not.

My view of this is clear. Just as democracy is of the people, by the people and for the people, development likewise should be of the people, by the people and for the people, no matter what.

Development should be people-centric. If a group of people want or need a road they must have the capacity to build it and the cost awareness to value it. It is then their appetite for imports and luxuries can be tempered by the realities of acquisition and maintenance.

When modern civilisation came to these parts, our fore fathers liked what they saw and embraced it. They literaly built their churches, schools, cobblestone roads and bailey bridges with their hands and the little farm produce they gleaned to sell. Then all the white man brought was knowledge. Some of these structure remain standinp today as a testament to the value people placed on them because their sweat mixed the mortar.

That is how America was built, China during the cultural revolution and pre-second world war germany.

No country can develop another without the active participation of its inhabitants. Its a pity this is an electronic forum where space is limited for proper explanation.

zuchyblink: No project in south east?

Peinstein: I feel Nigeria's democracy is maturing not necessarily because we have tangible dividends of democracy but because nigerians by virtue of the internet and social media in particular can now see their political leaders for who they really are, and not what they are being told. Information is power, and this is one area that fortunately Nigerian youths now have access to and subsequently base their opinions on, and in taking far-reaching political decisions. So though there are political fights here and there, corruption everywhere; the polity is being made wiser everyday and cannot be manipulated easily like before. Though I must admit, the democratic education of an average Nigerian is still lean and cannot yet sustain the weight of a complex country like Nigeria.

userlist: Remember these companies are owned by the same politicians.;
We have done this before and it never worked.
Same thing all over again.
I pity my country

gogodaye: It sure must work & help in assuaging our infrastructural deficits vis a vis the designated projects that the loans are tied to. We should thank the chinese for their ingenious model much unlike that from the west, which aims at securing their hand earned funds being doled out as loans to 'thieving' third world leaders. The power plant at Papalanto, some of the hostels at the games village, Abuja, new stadia in Angola, the new AU secretariat complex in Ethiopia were all executed under this scheme.

gerald09: Lemme get dis story straight, Mr president went to china to collect money to give to china to build infrastructure for Nigeria. So Ѿε̲̣̣̣̥ taking a loan from china n give d money back to china after which Ѿε̲̣̣̣̥ wuld pay back that money Ѿε̲̣̣̣̥ Collected from china n gave to china with interest. Wow! Dats just a bad limerick.