Samantha124: I'm just joking, she's a South African...
I never knew her name.
Whaaaat?! So, she's a South African after all, and you were just joking? Very cheeky.
Samantha, you owe me a giant mug of freshly made "umqombothi" (African beer) as a sweet punishment OR alternatively, you will get tickled on the soles of your feet with ostrich feathers till you implode.
I think we all liked hip hop then cos it was all we had. I referenced Tosin and Chi Chi cos our childhood memories wouldn't be complete without them. I preferred the older artistes and my number 1 song was Ifeoma.
I think everyone liked foreign hip hop and blues too. I also remember how we used to study song magazines to learn those foreign lyrics. I never liked rap.
And Fela too. Too young to make sense of his songs but my dad would always interrupt (I typed interrupt twice as interup and interrup convincing myself each time I was correct and couldn't understand why spell check marked it as wrong) your sleep on weekends with either a Fela song, Bob Marley or Sunny Ade...even Haruna Ishola. It's that Haruna Ishola I just didn't get. Listening to him made me feel like I would have apoplexy.
My mum on the other hand was more sentimental. She loved Dolly Parton and Sonya Spence. She'd listen to Salawa Abeni or Adewale Ayuba too depending on whether she was feeling romantic or funky.
I loved Sonya too and knew all the lyrics to her songs as far back as when I was in primary two. I remember cos her daughter Mimi and I were in the same class.
I could go on and on cos nothing replaces nostalgia not even a trip to Maldives 😄
But what strikes me the most when I look back in retrospect is how our parents strived to give us the best life within the limits of their income. Our old folks are to be cherished beyond reasoning oo.
@randymirrors,
Nicely put!
The last two bolded paragraphs of yours strike a cord with me.
Last but not least, wow, your mum loved Adewale Ayuba?
I think Adewale Ayuba should do a remake of his very early 1990s monster hit song, "Bubble" since just this month of June, 2023, Grammy Awards included a new category for popular African music genres from fuji, juju, amapiano, afrobeat, afrobeats, highlife, and more. He could still win a Grammy award or any other music award with a remake of that "Bubble" track.
I just watched the video. The dude in the video spoke straight from the gut. The broadcaster in him revealed a lot of falsehoods that the Anambra propagandists like to brag about and throw around online and offline about their state in terms of security, bad environmental sanitation, and more.
Dude was even telling all Anambra folks in Lagos and other places they relocated to NOT to come back... And he said: "to come and do what?"
In any event, they will have to start moving back because I remember that a vast number of Ibos left the South East to look for economic survival outside their region, and because of the vicious kidnappings for ransom of elderly family members of Ibos in the villages (by Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike aka Evans, Osisikankwu and co), and insecurities in Anambra, Abia, Imo, etc, back in the late 1990s and beyond the year 2000.
It got so bad in the late 1990s and the 2000s that Ibos stopped travelling back to the South East, and started celebrating the so-called new yam festival in Lagos and the rest of Yorubaland, the Northern states, and the Niger Delta States because they were running from their region. That was the period Ibos desperately started rushing to buy land and properties in Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja, PH, Asaba, etc. So, it wasn't because Ibos came to develop anybody's land, it had to do with HUGE insecurity situations in the South East that made them run away to safer states as indicated by many Ibo public affairs analysts in newspapers and online and even the newly-elected Abia Governor also stated in an interview I read almost 10 years ago how many Abia indigenes including a friend of his ran away from Aba because of kidnappers, he closed his company and relocated to Lagos when Babatunde Fashola was the Governor because there was better security that Fashola had provided through the Lagos State Security Trust Fund.
randymirrors: Haha yes, somewhere in between those areas.
I meant Lekki Phase 1. Yes Felix Lebarty. I'm surprised no one seems to know Tosin Jegede and Chichi of Africa though.
Chichi sang, "don't smoke, smoking is not good for you".
Tosin sang, "let there be love shared amongst us, let there be love in our hearts...".
"Parents listen to your children, we are the leaders of tomorrow....".
"singing a song for you now, to cheer up all my friends, I love you all, all my friends, we are one".
Yeah I was spot-on. You lived somewhere in between those areas within Ikeja... That's mad cool.
Indeed @ randymirrors.
I remember Tosin and Chichi... They were very young then but I wasn't really into their kind of music... (I loved hip-hop and rap a lot from Heavy D, Cool Moe Dee, Ice T, MC Hammer, etc, with a dose of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's tracks blasting from my Walkman). The two girls (Tosin and Chichi) were hugely popular with the girls and younger males though.
I enjoyed the "back in the day" insights from you and it shows we've still got a lot of real male and female OGs here on NL based on the info on this thread. I've been a user of NL since 2005 with an older moniker.
1stGenAmerican: As the West surges toward electric cars, here’s where the unwanted gas guzzlers go By Nimi Princewill and Ella Nilsen, CNN
Cotonou, Benin-CNN Standing on the stony ground in the bustling Fifa Park car lot, Rokeeb Yaya is haggling over the price of a dark red car. It is one of a couple hundred vehicles, parked in long lines stretching out across the vast lot – some shiny and new-looking, others dented and dusty.
The car Yaya has his eye on, a 2008 US-built Ford Escape, is on sale for around $4,000. It’s relatively affordable – US cars are cheaper than most other brands in the lot – and he wants to upgrade from his motorbike to a car. He is not interested in the history of the vehicle, he said, only that he can afford it.
But how this Ford ended up here – in one of the biggest car lots in the port city of Cotonou – helps tell a bigger story about how many of the West’s gas-guzzling cars are starting second lives in West Africa.
The 14-year old Ford arrived in Benin from the United States last year, after being sold at an auto auction.
Car records reviewed by CNN show it had three previous owners in Virginia and Maryland, and has logged over 252,000 miles on the road. It had one previous recall for its power steering, but unlike some of the other cars on the lot, it arrived in a relatively sound condition – it hadn’t been in any reported accidents.
This aging SUV is just one of millions of used cars that arrive every year in West Africa from wealthy countries such as Japan, South Korea, European countries and, increasingly, the US. Many of these end up in Benin, one of Africa’s top importers of used vehicles. The stream of used cars heading to West African ports is only expected to increase with the West’s shift to electric vehicles. As wealthy countries set aggressive goals to move consumers towards electric vehicles to cut planet-warming pollution, gas-powered cars won’t necessarily go away. Instead, many will be shipped thousands of miles away to developing countries like Benin, where populations are growing, along with demand for used cars. Experts say the effect will be to divert climate and environmental problems to countries that are the most vulnerable to the climate crisis, undermining their own attempts to cut planet-warming pollution.
Exploding Demand The global market for used light-duty vehicles grew nearly 20% from 2015 to 2019, when more than 4.8 million were exported. There was a slight dip in exports in 2020 when the Covid pandemic started, but numbers are now “growing quite rapidly,” United Nations Environment Programme official Rob de Jong told CNN.
The US exports about 18% of the world’s used vehicles, according to UNEP data. These travel all over the globe, including to the Middle East and Central America, but many go to Nigeria, Benin and Ghana. Some of these are salvaged cars that have been in accidents, were flooded, or are just too old – which get auctioned off for parts. Others are whole used cars that US car dealers are looking to offload.
“A lot of them are going to be two- to five-year-old Hyundais, Toyotas, sedans,” said Dmitriy Shibarshin, marketing director for West Coast Shipping, a company that specializes in shipping cars internationally. “It’s mostly the economy cars that get shipped there.” Shibarshin’s company and others are “like FedEx” for cars, he said. His company usually specializes in higher-end vehicles, but also ships cheaper cars.
In major African countries like Kenya and Nigeria, more than 90% of the cars and trucks are used vehicles from overseas. In Kenya, where de Jong is based, the vehicle fleet has doubled every eight years; streets that used to be devoid of cars are now jammed with traffic, he said. There is a tremendous appetite for these used vehicles. “You have a very young population that’s getting richer and richer by the day,” said Etop Ipke, the CEO of Autochek Africa, an online marketplace for cars. “The first thing they want to do, as they can afford things, is some mobility,” he said.
But, unlike in the US, few prospective buyers have access to credit, so new cars are often out of reach. “That is fundamentally the reason why we’re not able to improve the quality” of cars sold, Ipke said. “It’s not like people want to drive used cars; it’s an affordability issue.”
Experts say demand for used cars could explode further as the take up of electric cars in the West increases the supply of used cars to African countries. Nearly one in five vehicles sold globally this year will be electric, according to the International Energy Agency, compared to less than 5% in 2020. China, Europe and the US are leading the EV market, the agency said.
In states like New York and Florida, where consumers are buying more EVs, dealers are increasingly looking overseas as a place to sell their older gas-powered models, according to Matt Trapp, a regional vice president at the huge auto auction company Manheim. Those states also have robust port operations, making them an ideal place to ship used cars to Africa. “It’s setting up a really complementary dynamic,” Trapp told CNN. “I’m not surprised to see how robust the export game is becoming,” Trapp said. “We’re going to see this dynamic more and more. When [auto dealers] see demand in other markets, they will find a way to move the metal there.”
From UNEP’s perspective, not all gas-powered cars are concerning – it’s the older ones, which tend to pollute more and be less safe, De Jong said. There’s evidence that the increasing demand in Africa for vehicles is actually resulting in more old and salvaged cars being shipped to the continent recently than there were 20 years ago. “What we see at the moment is a wide variety of used vehicles being exported from the global north to the global south,” de Jong said. “Not only is the number increasing, but the quality is decreasing.”
Polluting or Unsafe In one section of Fifa Park, CNN finds a 16-year-old Dodge Charger, worn by age. “We just sold it for 3 million XOF [around $4,500],” its seller, who did not wish to be named, said of the vehicle that arrived in Benin from the US two years ago. Parked across from the Charger is a 24-year-old Ford Winstar that was shipped to Benin from the US last year. It’s a cheaper alternative for low-income car buyers who cannot afford newer models.
Car dealer Abdul Koura said that US and Canadian cars are very desirable to importers, who often bring in cars that have been in accidents, he told CNN. “They repair these cars and resell them to make a profit,” said Koura, whose space at Cotonou’s Fifa park includes more than 30 used vehicles imported from Canada.
Victor Ojoh, a Nigerian car dealer who frequents Fifa Park, told CNN that it’s often possible to tell the origin of a car by what’s wrong with it. “The cars that smoke are mostly from the US,” said Ojoh. “The cars from Canada are mostly flooded cars that start developing electrical faults.” Some imported vehicles are missing their catalytic converters, an exhaust emission control devices which filter toxic gasses. Catalytic converters contain valuable metals including platinum and can fetch up to $100 on the black market. Some of the cars are shipped without catalytic converters or have them removed by dealers upon arrival, Ojo said.
Millions of cars shipped to Africa and Asia from the US, Europe and Japan are “polluting or unsafe,” according to UNEP. “Often with faulty or missing components, they belch out toxic fumes, increasing air pollution and hindering efforts to fight climate change.” Regulations aimed at reducing pollution and increasing the safety of imported cars into West Africa have tended to be weak. But attempts have been made recently to tighten them up. In 2020, Benin and 14 other members of the Economic Community of West African States bloc agreed a set of vehicle emissions regulations in the region, including an age limit of 10 years for used vehicles and limits on the amount of carbon pollution cars are allowed to produce. But it’s unclear how strictly they are being enforced. UNEP officials, including de Jong, have also had conversations with US and EU officials about putting in new regulations that would crack down on shipping very old or junk cars to developing nations. Those conversations are in early stages and have yet to result in any commitments. Still, de Jong said climate change and global emissions have made the conversation around used cars “a different ballgame.” Increased shipments of older and more polluting cars are just as much of a problem for developed nations as they are for the developing countries where they are being driven, he added. “Today with climate change, it doesn’t really matter where the emissions are taking place,” de Jong said. “Whether in Washington, DC, or Lagos, it makes no difference.” Ipke doesn’t think that it is inevitable that Africa will accept all the old gas-powered cars the West no longer wants. He hopes that the transition to electric vehicles will come to the African continent as well, although that will require significant improvements to the charging infrastructure. “In terms of where Africa goes, the transition shouldn’t necessarily be from used cars to brand new combustion engines, it should be from used cars to EVs,” Ipke said. “I think the continent has to be prepared for EVs, used or brand new, because that’s the direction the world is taking.” For Yaya, however, this all seems a long way off. What brought him to Fifa Park, and to the old Ford SUV, was a lack of other options. “I can only purchase what my money can afford,” he said.
jaelz: Dear Nlanders, I want to know if you have gotten to this stage in your relationship, if yes then there is a possibility of not turning back.
But what do you feel about this.
Whoa!
If it's just a "peeing" situation, nothing wrong with that.
But then again, in a long-term relationship, there should be occasional space or privacy in the bathroom otherwise you become too familiar and that can be boring for a lot of folks.
RIVERS1stson: Ebonyi State will never be part of Biafra due to the marginalisation and slavery its people has suffered in the hands of other Igbos, says Governor Dave Umahi.
RubiesBanking: A contactless payment does not require you to swipe your card though a POS machine or make interactive contact with your device to do a transfer before you make payment.
With contactless payment, you just hover your card or a device next to a supported machine and it's much more secure.
Any phone that is NFC [Near-Field Communication] enabled will also be able to utilize this feature, also you can use your credit or debit card if it has a RFID chip embedded in it.
Here's how a contactless payment typically works
1. The customer presents his contactless card or NFC enable phone over a POS terminal that accepts such payments 2. The wireless chip transmits card information 3. The payment terminal contact the bank 4. The card issuer transmits an approval or a denial.
Here is a small video explaining graphically what all this mean
It seems the Benz moving in a circular trajectory was controlled with a remote device. The guy that supposedly commanded the car in the video spoke in Hausa language.
So I decided to check my Palmpay account today to check for something and I saw 50,000 naira was deposited into my Palmpay account. They even used their official access bank account to return the money.
This is the same Palmpay that said they don't know what happened to my money, so I'm still thinking of taking up this case legally as they haven't tendered a proper apology to me and thousands of customers affected by this incidence.
Lawyers in the house what do you think?
An official report to the CBN would have been a faster and better option tbh.
Naijastrapmedia: moment palmpay agents arrested debtor at eatery after tracking him
A video that has gained widespread attention online captures the moment employees of a prominent online loan company apprehend a customer believed to have failed to repay a debt. The video depicts the company's staff, accompanied by security personnel, tracking down the customer at a restaurant where he was enjoying a meal. Despite attempting to escape, the customer was stopped by one of the security guards. The agents verified the customer's identity using a photo he had presumably provided during the loan application process. The customer pleaded with them to allow him to make a phone call to his mother as he was being taken away.
neutralmind: Just use piggyvest. Its easy safe and secure
1. Piggyvest has been around longer than Opay and Palmpay.
2. It's not a typical digital bank therefore not a soft target for fraudsters. It's more difficult to move funds out of piggyvest unlike Opay where you easily transfer funds to any bank account.
3. You can make use of the website. No need to download an app. Good for privacy
4. The fixed deposit option called safe lock can not be broken before the due date. Even if someone is able to hack your account they cannot access your money.
Iceking1: I have been thinking of starting up a business lately, but while my money is wasting on my GT Bank, before starting up the business, I recently learnt that I can put the money on opay or palmpay and earn daily interest.
For opay Owealth save, I'd be getting N263 naira daily and 7,910 monthly. When I input N2m
While palmpay gives N813 daily and N24,555 montly.
I intend to go with palmpay but I'm scared, so I want to know if my money is safe.
Whats your opinion regarding this?
Note : I have upgraded both accounts to tier 3
Interesting.
The digital banks are under the watch of the CBN so, they are legit and good to go.
Helpfromabove1: So if it’s a managed float then it not it’s true value more like Emefiele in diff clothing
No country in the world allows a free float of their local currency. Free floating will distort the economy and lead to hyperinflation just like it happened in the UK recently and the new PM had to resign. A managed float of a currency by the regulatory authorities is more like it and is the global norm otherwise buccaneers and notorious profiteering will take over.
Ishilove: You knew he was in a serious relationship yet it didn't stop you from sleeping with him without contraceptives. This one is on you girl, even though Sarkodie is also a promiscuous idiot and deserves whatever is thrown at him
He (Sarkodie) was still living with his mum and was a struggling musician when he got the then younger girl pregnant as of 2010... All these are based on excerpts from the book.
One of the two has got to be telling lies about who initiated the abortion. What has happened has happened. Period.
A file photo of the Port Harcourt International Airport. (Photo: Facebook/FAAN)
That's a brilliant list.
The proposed Lekki International Airport could have been name after the great nationalist and lawyer, Obafemi Awolowo, GCFR, SAN thh.
The Port Harcourt Airport should have been renamed after Ken Saro-Wiwa or Harold Dappa-Biriye or Elechi Amadi. These are men who played key roles in the creation of Rivers State via the Calabar, Ogoja, Rivers Movement and the also took part in actions during the 2 years 6 months Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970 to liberate their lands from rebel invaders.
randymirrors: We were fairly rich and lived in one of the high brow areas in Ikeja. I finished from Corona primary school. Nothing like Lekki then. Someone said there was no satellite, but of course there was.
We had a satellite dish. Also access to games..the ones I remember clearly well are Super Mario and Contra. Another game.."shooting a flying bird" with a toy-like gun (can't remember the name of the game).
No matter how rich you were, you'd still go outside to play ten ten, suwe, mother may I, boju boju, mama & papa. Though we were not allowed to play these games in school. My school had a dedicated playground.
We didn't have a gen then and there was no need for one though I think some families had. Can't remember now.
Additional tv stations we had then were DBN and Clapperboard. TV programmes available were kiddies vision 101, sesame street, the invisible man, doctor who, days of our lives, Robin hood, Barney, Voltron, Tom and Jerry (I'm not big on cartoons so if there are more asides these, I can't remember). Locals were ripples, fortunes, willi willi, behind the clouds, checkmate, village headmaster, tales by moonlight, story land, cock crow at dawn....
I also remember Tosin Jegede, Chichi of Africa.
Older musicians were Blakky, Alex Zitto, Edna Ogholi, the man that sang "ifeoma I want to marry you (love this song die), Majek Fashek, Raski Mono, Christy Essien, Latifah, Sunny Okoso, Junior & Pretty,
Abeg, I still dey find this song..."egu egu Igbo amaka, omalicha nwa....". Love this song die. Sung by a woman. It's a shame that this song is nowhere on YouTube or the internet. You'll find other old songs but this one. Igbo people please do something.
Story books I remember by Enid Blyton...the wishing chair, the wishing chair again, Amelia Jane, Amelia Jane again...
Novels... famous five, mallory towers, the secret seven, little women...
Those days were the BEST. Some won't understand this but it's the truth. There was communal relationship and everyone lived with contentment irrespective of the little you had.
You have a pretty good recollection of some of these events from the early 1980s. I love the fact that you didn't forget the iconic "Cock Crow at Dawn." The theme song of Cock Crow at Dawn by Bongos Ikwue still gives me goosebumps anytime I listen to it on my mobile device or online.
It was "Felix Lebarty" that sang the hugely popular track "Ifeoma, I want to Marry You..." back in the 1980s.
Aha! You folks (including the OP) erroneously keep saying in absolute terms that "nothing like Lekki existed then."
The real Lekki town (Ibeju-Lekki) has existed for centuries. Lekki is an Ijebu indigenous town in Lagos State just like other Ijebu towns such as Epe, Ikorodu, Ajah, etc, stretching right across the border into Ijebuland in Ogun State.
What did NOT exist till the early 2000s was Lekki Phases 1 and 2 part of which was derived from the demolished Maroko slum settlement. Victoria Island Extension was also reclaimed from Maroko which was demolished in 1989 by the Military administrator of Lagos State, Raji Rasaki.
You must have been an Ikeja GRA or Allen Avenue/Adeniyi Jones/Toyin Street and environs resident. MKO Abiola lived around Toyin Street, Ikeja.
Crime › Re: Bodies Of Kidnapped Rachael Kanini "Kaniss" & Boyfriend, Omodollar Found by XAUBulls: 5:53pm On Jun 30, 2023
