You remind me of my history of West Africa class: Awo was quoted as telling Sarduana, "it makes no sense lumping me and you together under Nigeria as one nation, I come from a region where my grand father retired as a British educated judge, and you come from a region that's yet to produce up to eighteen university graduates"

I don't remember the time of this quote, but it was an eye popping remark for me.

It may also explain a lot of the problems we have in naija today.

naijaking1:

You remind me of my history of West Africa class: Awo was quoted as telling Sarduana, "it makes no sense lumping me and you together under Nigeria as one nation, I come from a region where my grand father retired as a British educated judge, and you come from a region that's yet to produce up to eighteen university graduates"

I don't remember the time of this quote, but it was an eye popping remark for me.

It may also explain a lot of the problems we have in naija today.

It more than sums up our entire problem. In order to accomodate the north we set up JAMB to force poorly qualified students into federal schools to take the places of far better qualified students. To select ministers we sacrifice merit on the alter of federal character.
To choose our president, zoning is of far more importance than competence. Revenue sharing is glorified over productivity because everyone wants to have a share of oil resources by force rather than developing their own revenue source.

Nigeria has now become no mans land because suspicious land use decrees ensure northerners have as much or even more right to land in Portharcourt than indigenes of Rivers state.

And we decieve ourselves into thinking we are on the path to progress?

@pth

100% agreement.

Historians also agree.

During the OBJ administration I used to think Nigeria was on the path of progress

But right now I dont know how many of that feeling of optiimism is left in me.

Until Nigeria becomes a place where one can expect a fair wage for fair labour, we'll contiune running in circles.

Baffles me how positive changes being experienced right now in Nigeria is being watered down by some Nigerians especially those living outside Nigeria.

Who is afraid of a better Nigeria? Sometimes it seems that Nigerians living outside Nigeria prefer to see Nigeria remain backward.

Yar'adua is in charge of the train and he does not intend to apply the brakes until he takes Nigeria to its destination or close to it.

If you can't live with the reality today, kindly take up foreign nationality and leave Nigeria alone, enough of the bad mouthing.

Afam:

Baffles me how positive changes being experienced right now in Nigeria is being watered down by some Nigerians especially those living outside Nigeria.

Who is afraid of a better Nigeria? Sometimes it seems that Nigerians living outside Nigeria prefer to see Nigeria remain backward.

Yar'adua is in charge of the train and he does not intend to apply the brakes until he takes Nigeria to its destination or close to it.

If you can't live with the reality today, kindly take up foreign nationality and leave Nigeria alone, enough of the bad mouthing.

I speak for myself, i would like to see a forward and progressive Nigeria. Nigerians in the diaspora seem to be quickly accused of not supporting the country. That is just generalisation. I see more nigerians in Nigeria say lots of negative things. That is not to say there are no bad eggs on both sides.
The fact we are abroad and have a chance to see how "things are done" maybe makes some more critical of the government and the electorate. As long as criticisms are positive, they should be taken on board.

In terms of living the reality, do you know that many of the so-called leaders that are supposed to move the nation forward have many of thier relatives as foreign citizens too and some of them sponsor their loved ones with the country's money? Please do not believe everything you see or hear. When Yaradua was ill before the elections, he had to travel out to get a check up. Imagine that, does that mean he has no faith in the medical facilities including the ones run by the government?

Please, let us criticise fairly. Nigeria is making progress at least with successive "elections" with minimal problems, never mind the validity of the elections. But we are having a go and trying to make things work. Nigeria will be great again. . .it will just take time and requires commitment from the leaders and all Nigerians whether in nigeria or elsewhere.

Imani:

I speak for myself, i would like to see a forward and progressive Nigeria. Nigerians in the diaspora seem to be quickly accused of not supporting the country. That is just generalisation. I see more nigerians in Nigeria say lots of negative things. That is not to say there are no bad eggs on both sides.
The fact we are abroad and have a chance to see how "things are done" maybe makes some more critical of the government and the electorate. As long as criticisms are positive, they should be taken on board.

In terms of living the reality, do you know that many of the so-called leaders that are supposed to move the nation forward have many of their relatives as foreign citizens too and some of them sponsor their loved ones with the country's money? Please do not believe everything you see or hear. When Yaradua was ill before the elections, he had to travel out to get a check up. Imagine that, does that mean he has no faith in the medical facilities including the ones run by the government?

Please, let us criticise fairly. Nigeria is making progress at least with successive "elections" with minimal problems, never mind the validity of the elections. But we are having a go and trying to make things work. Nigeria will be great again. . .it will just take time and requires commitment from the leaders and all Nigerians whether in nigeria or elsewhere.

You are sure you are not Aisha2 ---The "Sweet Wind" babe

Imani:

Please, let us criticise fairly. Nigeria is making progress at least with successive "elections" with minimal problems, never mind the validity of the elections. But we are having a go and trying to make things work. Nigeria will be great again. . .it will just take time and requires commitment from the leaders and all Nigerians whether in nigeria or elsewhere.

LMAO! tiny Sierra Leone held one of the most impressive elections in the last few yrs. this was a country that needed Nigerian troops to stabilise it less than 10yrs ago. We are not going anywhere but regressing!

SOBOTAGER!  one thread don lock oh!  I talk am!  Lock this one too!

Oooops wahala don come! Time to log out! I smell a rat! MAMAJAMA----CARRY GO OH!

The FEDERAL CHARACTER IS GOOD We SHOULD NEVER STOP IT FOR NOW.

THE POLITICIANS WE HAVE ARE VERY DIVISIVE.

ALL THE ETHNIC GROUP IS REPRESENTED IN THE ARMY A GREEDY POLITICIAN CAN GO AND INSIGHT PEOPLE OF OTHER ETHNIC GROUP THAT MAY BE EXCLUDED.

WE SHOULD NOT LOOK AT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE ALONE WHEN MAKING POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS. TO BE A MINISTER YOU ONLY NEED A GOOD CONSCIENCE.

AWO WAS WRONG. GOOD HEART WITH HONESTY IS WHAT IT TAKES TO LEAD A PEOPLE.

IT WAS A NONE GRADUATE THAT HELD GHANA. THE OXFORD HOLDER RULING NOW COULD NOT HAVE FOUND IT EASY. EVEN THEN NOW THE COUNTRY IS UNDER SERIOUS PROBLEM.

WE HAVE THE HIGHEST NUMBER UNIVERSITY IN AFRICA. YOU CAN NOT DEVELOP WHEN YOU KNOW SOMETHING TO YOU DONT HAVE THE HEART TO HELP.

YOU MAY HATE OBJ FOR ALL ETERNITY BUT HE IS THE ONLY MAN THAT SAVED NIGERIA'S MONEY WE HAVE NEVER SAVED MONEY LIKE THIS BEFORE.

EDUCATION WITHOUT THE LOVE AND PATRIOTISM CANNOT WORK IN NATION.

EVEN IF PEOPLE ARE ILLITERATE BUT THEY CAN STILL DEVELOP.

EDUCATION IS GOOD BUT IT IS NOTHING WITH SACRIFICE OF LOVE FOR YOUR COUNTRY.

THE STUDENTS THAT WE ARE TURNING OUT NOW ARE SELFISH AND ARROGANT NON PATRIOTIC.

IT IS MYSELF MYSELF MYOWN ONLY THAT OUR STUDENTS KNOW. ASK A STUDENT OF WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN HE OR SHE GRADUATES.

OUR LAWYERS ARE FIGHTING THE GOVERNMENT TO BECOME FAMOUS THERE IS ALOT OF INNOCENT PEOPLE IN JAIL NO LAW ORGANISATION IS READY TO HELP THIS PEOPLE.

THERE ARE FINANCIAL GURU IN NIGERIA THEY ARE SEEKING THEIR OWN. THEY HAVE IDEAS THAT THEY MAY NEVER PUT TO WORK BECAUSE OF THE WEALTH OF INFORMATION THEY HAVE.

OUR YOUTHS ARE NOT FORCED TO SPEAK OUR LOCAL LANGUAGES.

IT SHOULD BE A LAW THAT IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR WORK IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS THAT IF YOU CANT SPEAK 4 LOCAL LANGUAGES YOU CAN NOT WORK IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE OF NIGERIA.

THIS COULD BRING JOB TO 1 MILLION PEOPLE ACCROS THE NATION.

YOU CANOT SPEAK 4 LANGUAGES OF NIGERIA THEN FORGET ABOUT WORKING THE FEDERAL CIVIL SERVICE.

WE MUST WORK AND THINK ON HOW TO MOVE OURSELVES FORWARD

Well the present federal government does not represent federal character.

afam,
i hereby nominate you as the most patrotic nigerian on nairaland.
but the question is how patrotic are u?
yar adua shld have agenda for such a big country as nigeria. do u know what a time table is?
give him some time, how long? we gave ibb some time, we gave abacha sometime, obj had his time but what happened?
these were presidents without a timetable. primary schs, secondary and the universities use time-table what more such a big country?
are we in for another trials and errors?
are we waiting till 2020 when he said nigeria will be among the 20 greatest countries in the world?
how many times have we had such a long term projects and how many of them come to reality?
we are not happy that we are outside as home remains the best but why will a country with a great quantity and quality oil supply have her citizens scattered here and there in other poorer countries of the world doing odd and illegal things just to make life?
how long are we going to wait my dear patrotic citizen?
the secrets of electricity in nigeria is beyond human reasoning as it will take less than 6 months for a chinese company to stablize power supply in nigeria.
india and china are nigeria multiply by 20 yet they have power supply and it is stable so why nigeria?

Afam:

Baffles me how positive changes being experienced right now in Nigeria is being watered down by some Nigerians especially those living outside Nigeria.

Who is afraid of a better Nigeria? Sometimes it seems that Nigerians living outside Nigeria prefer to see Nigeria remain backward.

Yar'adua is in charge of the train and he does not intend to apply the brakes until he takes Nigeria to its destination or close to it.

If you can't live with the reality today, kindly take up foreign nationality and leave Nigeria alone, enough of the bad mouthing.

It is always good people think before they utter anything.Afam are you still holding this same view of yaradua today?

@Asha80, you wicked, no be small!!! Roflmao!!

asha 80:

It is always good people think before they utter anything.Afam are you still holding this same view of yaradua today?

On holding the same view about Yar'adua

No, I don't. In fact I believe OBJ's greatest mistake was bringing him to power.

However, as at the time I wrote what I wrote he was the better candidate (when compared to others that wanted to become president of Nigeria) and made promises that every single well meaning Nigeria would want actualized. Do I have any regrets making the statement then? No, considering the facts on ground then.

On your comment on people thinking before uttering anything

I guess only fools would make that type of statement because there was nothing wrong in the statement itself and if it took you close to 2 years to make the statement then it means that the statement you are referring to now made a lot of sense then.

You should of course learn to address issues squarely without resorting to insulting remarks as some of us would always respond to insults in kind and on time too.

FACTS ON GROUND OVER TWO YEARS AGO

Yar'Adua's Record as Katsina State Governor - Reuters

KATSINA, Nigeria (Reuters) - The poor farmers, camel herders and market traders of far northern Katsina state give their governor credit for new roads and schools but few are so impressed that they want him to be Nigeria's next president.


Umaru Yar'Adua, who is little-known beyond the remote expanse of semi-desert he has governed for almost eight years, emerged as the ruling party's presidential candidate last month.
This makes him the front runner to succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo at the helm of Africa's most populous country and biggest oil producer after elections in April.

Back home in Katsina, there is little enthusiasm.
"He has tried. But in my village we still have no water and no power," said Dalha Tasiu, a subsistence farmer, as he loaded jerrycans of brown water from a stagnant reservoir onto an ox-drawn cart. He was taking the water home for drinking.


Asked who he would vote for in April, Tasiu did not hesitate: "Buhari," he said.
Muhammadu Buhari, a former army dictator who is also from Katsina, is a top opposition candidate. It was much easier to find Buhari supporters than people who would vote for Yar'Adua.

Elders say this is partly because the governor is reclusive.
"He has kept to himself. People complain that they don't know him, they don't see him. He is not accessible," said Ibrahim Coomasie, a respected state elder who knows Yar'Adua.


Many Nigerians are convinced Obasanjo backed the discreet Katsina governor so he could continue to pull the strings after the elections, but Yar'Adua's supporters and critics in his home state agreed that he would be no puppet.
Opponents called him headstrong while loyalists preferred the word resolute. Civil servants said he was a micro-manager who had ultimate control over what went on in every department.

Born in 1951, Yar'Adua comes from a famous political family.
His father was a minister in the first government after independence and his older brother was number two in Obasanjo's military regime in the late 1970s. Umaru Yar'Adua was a chemistry teacher until he went into business, then politics, in the 1980s.

MIXED PICTURE

Katsina is a traditional, Muslim state and one of the poorest in Nigeria. Farmers grow millet, sorghum, or beans in tiny plots dotted around the flat, barren landscape. They live in mud-brick villages, mostly without electricity or water.
More than a quarter of children die before their fifth birthday, according to the state's statistics from 2004.

Against this backdrop, Yar'Adua's record as governor offers a mixed picture. Everyone agrees he has built new roads and added much-needed classrooms to many schools, but critics say his administration has been disappointing in other key areas.

Yar'Adua says food security is a priority for Nigeria, but his government has not delivered it to Katsina. In 2005, foreign aid workers fed thousands of severely malnourished children in emergency camps in Katsina for months during a food crisis.

Almost no irrigation projects have come to fruition, while potable water remains in short supply. Even in the state capital, the taps run dry daily and residents rely on young boys who push carts loaded with jerrycans of water from boreholes.


The Jibiya dam and reservoir were built more than 15 years ago but not a drop of water flows through the network of cement irrigation canals because there is no fuel to run the pumps.

State government officials said the dam was a federal project and therefore it was not up to them to deal with it. But local farmers said the state government should have stepped in.

VALUE FOR MONEY?

Katsina's budget grew during Yar'Adua's time, as did other state budgets, thanks to high oil prices that boosted Nigeria's export revenues. The state's projected spending in 2006 was 41.3 billion naira ($322 million), 30 percent more than in 2005.

Yar'Adua's opponents said there was not enough to show for the money spent for eight years and the priorities were wrong.

The state government headquarters, a sprawling complex of air-conditioned offices powered by generators, is the most expensive project completed by the administration to date.


The total cost was $29 million, of which $17 million was contracted to Lodigiani, a company chaired by a cousin of Yar'Adua. The top civil servant in the state ministry of works -- also a cousin of the governor -- said the contract was signed before Yar'Adua's time and he just revived it when in office.

State house of assembly members complained the government had never presented audited accounts as required by law. The state finance commissioner said these would be ready soon.


The general hospital in the state capital boasts a new dialysis unit, but health workers questioned whether this was a priority in a state facing acute problems in basic healthcare.
They said the addition was perhaps connected to Yar'Adua's own health. He suffered from a severe kidney condition a few years ago although friends say he has recovered.

Kobojunkie:

FACTS ON GROUND OVER TWO YEARS AGO

Over two years ago would come to earlier than May 29th 2007 and this is a lie because Yar'adua was sworn in as president of Nigeria exactly 2 years ago today.

The article in question was written before the presidential election that brought Yar'adua to power.

This thread was based on the happenings after Yar'adua become president not before.

Trying to mislead or twist issues that are clear while a stock in trade for some of us here must be condemned in its entirety as it does not do us any good at all as a people with common problems.

On the correctness of some of the content in the article

1. The piece claimed unaudited accounts where as it was well reported that Yar'adua recorded a budget surplus of over N6B in his state when other governors were looting funds and borrowing more.

2. Was Buhari ever popular to challenge Yar'adua even in Katsina state let alone at the national level?

We must do our best to figure out the motive of a news article especially if one is actually reads like a campaign release but is being see as factual information just as the poster has wrongly assumed and even introduced his own version of time frame - over 2 years ago.

I am not sure what you believe is misleading in that post there. Sure, this thread was created after the presidential elections but the information made available in that article existed way before the presidential elections. So, what part of that information do you deem misleading?

If you want to contest the information presented in the article, it would be best if you produced some supporting evidence, rather than simply claiming the information is false and basing it on nothing we can examine. I mean you are the same person who claimed Yar adua was the best for the country two years ago and not less than three months later, reality started to set in for the country as a whole. Plus, so many sold him as the most honest man but never able to explain how in 8 years as governor, he was able to amass so much in wealth, wealth which the article above was gotten through dubious means. I mean now we have the "honest" man in office over 2 years and so far, he ain't looking real honest to me.

Buhari was not the only other person on the ballot, was he?

Atimes, you cannot but wonder the need of even talking, but atimes you cannot hold your peace and you just have to talk.

Our political structure have no pillars, a little wind can bring it down. Nigeria cannot make progress because Nigeria have no direction. Man is weak of character by nature and thus requires laws to giude and control him. The "why" of government is to administer law and provide order and when the same government breaks the laws at random, you cannot but have anarchy.

We have internal colonialism where wicked and corrupt men are forced down our throats. All we are saying, "Allow us to choose our leaders, so that we can hold them accountable and responsible". When the Anambra people saw a leader in Dr Chris Ngige, the average Anambra citizen (average Nigerian) supported him with all their hearts. Within 3 years, we saw a monumental development that the state had never seen since her creation. Apart from the cronies of the former maximum ruler, Ngige was a great leader.

Our structure is such that the President/Governors have such powers to do whatever they like. If such powers are channeled towards positive things, then we shall be a great nation. There is nothing that can not be achieved if the president have the will. The kidnapping of law makers and forcing them to impeach a corrupt governor as we witnessed during the dark days OBJ is a pointer to this. If OBJ wanted the refineries to work, nobody and i repeat nobody can stop it. Whoever tries will be fried. He was rather interested inselling them in the front and going behind to purchase.

Currently, Port Harcourt is changing face courtesy of Gov Amechi. He banned "okada", every body complied. He is demolishing buildings in order to expand roads, everybody is complying. Rough driving is becoming a thing of the past because if they catch you, "na straight to pschia". It is real. Nothing is impossible. So far, his about 2 years in office, has seen more progress when compared to 8 years of Odili.

During Mbadinuju, armed robbers almost over ran the state and the police could "do nothing" to stop them. Mbadinuju brought the Bakasi and armed robbers ran away. Then OBJ ordered the police to stamp out the Bakasi (he was afraid of them becoming Biafran soldiers) and the police who "could not" fight armed robbers was able to dislodge the Bakasi.

Today, the armed robbers are back and kidnappers have also joined. Police cannot do "anything". Dear Nigerians, who is fooling who?

In Abia recently, a friends dad was kidnapped. The police "could not" do antything, but when the same gang kidapped a retired Deputy Commisioner of Police, Okiro gave the Abia police 24 hours only, and the DCO plus my friends dad regained their freedom.

Those who rigged the recent Ekiti state elections are still in their respective positions, preparing to rig another one. Those who resisted the rigging were the "bad eggs" in the society.

What Nigeria need to make progress is responsible leaders, who will execute the law without fear or favour. Leaders who have visions and ideas what path to follow. Once we have such leaders, Nigerians will follow and obey. Those who refuse to obey will find themselves face to face with the law.

The big question is, "will Nigeria ever have such leaders?". I have my doubts, but those doubts are not for this thread.