NewStats: 3,264,146 , 8,182,764 topics. Date: Monday, 09 June 2025 at 08:57 PM 4v211a6z3e3g |
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I have to agree with Hero on this one. I was driving to Calabar during my last visit to Nigeria in December 2007 and we had to through Aba. I was left emotionally scarred. That place looks like a dumpyard. I would struggle to believe there is a worse looking city in Nigeria or the world for that matter. Tufyakwa.
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When I say successful, I mean at the same level as other nations around the world. Success to me is a situation whereby you are an economical power. Where your policies and actions affect the rest of the international community in a very significant way. You also have to look at things like life expectancy, in Botswana it is currently 51 years old for men and 49 for women (not exactly good), 37% of the population is infected with HIV. To be fair though the country has a high level of literacy (about 80%), economic growth is one of the highest in the world, the GDP per capital is about $15,000 (Nigeria's is $2000 big big shame). On a worldwide scale Botswana does quite well in some areas such as GDP/capital, economic growth and literacy but in areas such as HIV it has about the highest infection rate in the world. Overall though it fairs much better than other African countries but being the best of the worst does not make a country successful.
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There is fox news in the UK on sky channel 510. Anyway, I agree with you on the fact that Fox news can be very very reacist. Most of the reporters make me cringe. And then they go on to say that they are fair and balanced. Just look at the coverage of Obama during this election season and unles your IQ is sub-standard, it is very obvious that they are a racist network, with Hannity being at the top of the chain of course. When Obama won the democratic nomination last month he shared a fist bump with his wife, Michelle and one E.D. Hill had the audacity to call it "a terrorist fist jab". and then you have O'Reilly saying he was surprised to see black people behaving properly. All of this is proof that Fox news is racist against blacks but when you have a black men coming in to theie silly beliefs, that just takes the cake. While Africa has it's problems (a lot of them), from the tone of your posts it seems all you know about Africa is what you see on CNN or National Geographic. I don't feel it is okay for you to just write off the whole continent. As I said Africa has had and still has its fair share of problems but you make it seem as though it was one big village with mud huts scattered around. How can you say there is no form of intelligence on the continent? It is not a planet like mars where scientists are trying to find proof of life , it is a continent with many, many hardworking and intelligent people. By saying there is no form of intelligence you are in effect dissing yourself (supposing you're African). I think the major reason why many African countries fail to develop properly is due to bad leadership and not the people. I can think of so many private citizens right now that would do a better job in Nigeria than all the past istrations we have had. |
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I just found out about this black preacher Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson. The guy is thankful for slavery and apparently hates blacks in general. He has compared the transatlantic slave journey to being in economy class on a plane. Anyway, I just want to know if anyone of you agrees with his point of view on slavery in this clip: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RQQGaXAepOw HE COMES ON AT 1:35 SO YOU CAN SKIP TO THAT POINT. I hope we can all have a meaningful dialogue about the Reverend's (if you can call him that) comments. |
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I've always wondered about my genetic makeup. My father's family is very, very light (they almost look mixed race) and yet if you ask any of his sisters they'd tell you that there was no mixing (I don't believe that). You may find this link useful: http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v3/v3i1a2.htm |
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EXPONENT: I am very aware of the history of blacks. I am asking about the current state of things. History is in the past, we are in the now. Of course our history has been a major part of the problem (I think we are all aware of that) but surely that is not the only reason for the overall lack of success. |
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How would a kalabari person look?
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Hero: I'm very impressed. Your information is pretty accurate. Are you a history major or something cos you seem to know more about the history of slavery in America than most Nigerians. I think before we start arguing with Hero's well researched claims of 60% celebrities being Igbo we should really do our own research on slavery and make sure we know exactly what we are talking about. |
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This transcends beyond African countries. If you go to Cuba, Brazil, The United States or even the U.K. you find that blacks tend to fare a lot worse than all the other races economically and socially. This week in London there have been 6 stabbings majority of which where carried out by black youths. I know there a many successful black people in Nigeria, in Africa and the rest of the world but the fact is that as a whole we fair much much worse than others and no amount of personal success academically, professionally, socially or financially can make me feel great about myself until we can figure out a way to solve this problem. I'm just gonna throw this out there as well, if you've ever watched sweet 16 on mtv you'll notice that the black kids parents are almost always celebrities but the white kids, latina kids and all the other kids' parents are just wealthy unknowns. I think that the show highlights the extent of the problem in a way. |
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Are you people joking? Juju is in your minds oh. That's why Nigeria will not progress, when we have people hoping evil supernatural powers will deliver us.
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anonimi: I'm compelled to agree with you. For Nigeria to run better it has to start from the ground up. Kids asking their parents to do the right thing, parents pleading with their children to do the right thing. Uncles and aunties telling their nieces and nephew to do the right thing and friends telling their friends not to cheat on that WAEC math paper. Until we start to do this in Nigeria we are doomed to continue this downward spiral. However this is all ideological Hoping for all this to happen is being extremely optimistic. I have friends in uni already telling of their plans on becoming governor or minister so they can embezzle enough money to buy this and that. Is that the attitude we need? No!!! I do try to talk to these people but they just laugh me off, which is sad really. The current generation in power should not place all their hopes on my generation hoping we would do the right thing. When we see our elders behaving the way they have what hope do we have? How many Nigerians in the public eye can we genuinely say we look up to and are of sound character. There are very few. As I said hoping for change in Nigeria at this point is ideological and in my opinion not a very realistic dream. I feel what we need is a smart and well educated president with an iron grip. Someone who is willing to send anyone who does something as little as throwing litter on the road into jail or forcing them to pay a significant fine (say 30% of their salary or so). Someone who is willing to jail any government official found guilty of corruption for life (no special treatment). I know this might seem harsh but let's face it, democracy cannot succeed in Nigeria. We need to instill fear in the citizens in the hope that one day in the future, we are all of a civillised mindset because of those fears of our past and are able to say no to corruption. Extreme I kow but neccessary. |
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UTTER STUPIDITY AND LACK OF COMPETENCE!!! The PHCN and Murtala Airport should go bury their heads (or lack thereof) in shame. The statement made by the PHCN is the most stupid thing I have ever heard in my life!!! How can u cut power supply to a friggin international airport and the busiest in Nigeria (maybe even West Africa) at that to focus on "other areas". They are just dumb. Who the hell makes these kind of decisions? Next week you'll hear the idiots demanding a payrise. If I were them I would just keep quiet and thank God they haven't reduced my pay (cos I would if I were in charge of Nigeria). Idiots!!!! Murtala International Airport = The shame of a nation. What kind of impression does this give visitors to the country? Huh? Every airport should have an automatic backup supply of electricity (no need to start mentioning nuclear energy here cos it takes years to plan a plant and about 6 years on average to build a significantly large one). All these guys had to do was have an automatic standby generator like they do in other countries. This isn't the first time the airport has fallen short. In december, I was on a flight to Nigeria from London and when we were about to land in Lagos we couldn't because of the fog and lack of appropriate facilities to guide us to a safe landing. We had to divert all the way to Accra (where the weather was even worse mind you) and wait about two hours for the fog to clear before heading back to Lagos. On getting to Lagos, my flight to Port Harcourt was delayed a further 3 hours which I understand is a normal thing. Please people, let's not even start talking about nuclear energy. If we can't provide backup electricity or equipment to land an aircraft in a supposedly international airport during bad weather, what makes you think the Nigerian government is going to have the competence to manage a nuclear plant? Although I cannot be certain of this, I think the PHCN (Please Hold Candle Now) would be the ones responsible for the nuclear plant if it came to be. God Forbid bad thing like that. DISGUSTING SITUATION!!!!!!!!!!! And then you have a minister blaming juju for plane crashes. In the Abuja- Port Harcourt plane crash of 2005 if there had been water (WATER!!!!) at the airport a lot of my sister's friends and the other victims would have survived that crash. GOD HELP NIGERIA. AMEN. |
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If this story is true, which I find very difficult to believe then WOW!!! Even my primary and secondary schools would not suspendnot to speak of expell a student for not bringing their bible to assembly. Covenant University is just a joke. How are they preparing their students for the real world when they keep doing things like that. I'm pretty sure even a pastor at church would not ban you from his congregation for not bringing a bible so who the hell do these guys thing they are?
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Um, why shouldn't they on CNN. It gives them more foreign exposure. More and more companies in the west are aware of them thus making it significantly easier for them to attract more foreign investment than those who do not worldwide. With the extra funds they can do even more in the way of helping eradicate poverty in Nigeria. Of course I could be speaking complete nonsense but I genuinely feel Jim Ovie and his counterparts are qualified and educated enough to know what they are doing.
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While I applaud the governments ambition of using nuclear energy as a source of electricity. I have to agree with the G8 peeps that we are not ready for that kind of responsibility in Ngieria. Our safety record is nothing to write home about so to now start dealing with nuclear is just a bad joke. Instead we should try to get the power plants we do have running at full capacity and find a way of transmitting to the people. When we do this we can start looking for alternative sources of electricity to meet demand. BUT NOT NUCLEAR.
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delvinmaya: You hit the nail on the head my friend. Those are my thoughts exactly. These idiots have gotten millions maybe even billions of naira from ransom money, they have kidnapped innocent children, killed innocent men and women and have yet to spend a dime on improving the lives of their people. While I agree that the Niger Delta (the rural areas) are heavily underdeveloped, these so called freedom fighters as far as I'm concerned are just criminals. They are simple minded gangsters and they need to be stopped by any means neccessary before this thing gets worse than it already is. Blowing up oil facilities only does more damage to their communities. By the way I'm from Rivers State and I don't know anyone who s their actions. |
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@ phattgirl I'm going to my final year in mechanical engineering. Mechanical Engineering is the most central discipline because it has aspects of every other discipline in it (even software engineering). The head of the systems engineering group at the company I'm doing my placement studied mechanical engineering as did the head of the sofware and electrical groups. If you are going to go into engineering (same goes for any other degree) make sure it's not for money or because your parents want you to but because you are really, really ionate about it or else you'll end up regretting doing the course (which quite a number of people do). I can tell you that my work load at university is way, way, way more than that of my friends doing other courses at the undergraduate level because for one I have coursework every week and then I've always got one project or the other running year round. On the other hand, engineering degrees are widely respected so it would be quite easy for you to get into another field unless you failed your engineering degree or got a bad degree (3rd class). I hope I'm not discouraging you, I'm just trying to share my experiences with you before you make a choice. Also, make sure you learn about how the programme at the university you want to go to is run. With all that said, I've got a female (Nigerian) friend who is doing a year long placement this year (just like I am) and if anything she gets preferrential treatment from her colleagues who are all white males, so discrimination should not be an issue for you. Just make sure you really enjoy engineering and work hard at school and you'll get there. |
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Go for it! I'm an engineering student myself going to my final year and in my experience almost all the [Nigerian] female engineering students I've met in the UK are extremely good at it (at least academically) with most getting a 1st or a 2:1 degree. If you have what it takes (good maths, design and analytical skills) I don't see why not. Overall though (and this goes to both male and female engineers that want to practise in the U.K.), if your aim is to make money, the hard truth is that engineering is just not the way to do so. Your best bet would be to study your engineering at the undergraduate level, put in some years in industry (3 to 7 years is ideal) and then go for an MBA (at a top tier school) or MSc in management and HOPEFULLY you'll get a job as a manager and move on from there. As for me, I think I'll switch to Petroleum Engineering by getting an MS then getting 4 or 5 years experience and then an MBA and hopefully management. But it's tough.
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At the moment oil is trading at $136.61 a barrel. From the 80's to 2003, oil was trading at less than $25 a barrel. This year, the price of oil has increased sharply from $100 a barrel on 2 January to a peak of $139.89 on June 16th 2008 before settling at $136.61 today (so far anyway). I don't know about Nigeria, but here in the west there is a lot of talk by consumers about cleaner, cheaper and renewable energy. I am of the belief that in the next ten years (unless there's some kind of miracle), automobile and jet engine manufacturers would have found a cheaper, more efficient and more reliable way to power their automobiles thus reducing dependence on foreign oil from countries like Nigeria. Currently in Nigeria, oil provides 20% of our GDP, 95%(!!!!!!!) of foreign exchange earnings, and about 80%(!!!!!!!) of budgetary revenues. My point is this, with nothing to fall back on in the event of a crash in the oil industry, isn't it time our government tried to diversify our economy. I think in the next ten years, the government should try to reduce our foreign exchange earnings frotm oil to about 40% of the total and encourage more exporting of cash crops like we did in the past. Even if the oil sector doesn't come to a halt, we still stand to gain from a more robust and diversified economy. Another thing I feel needs to be done if the Niger Delta crisis is resolved and we still have relative political stability would be to try to develop our manufacturing sector by providing training and apprenticeships to Nigerians, if we can do this we would become a destination for outsourced production lines which would further boost our economy. Do you thing all this will be possible or is Nigeria doomed. I'm not an economist, I'm an undergraduate mechanical engineering student so I may be speaking complete nonsense but I hope I'm not.
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I am currently doing an internship as an engineer for a global company and they recently decided to outsource the production line for one of their new products to Mexico. This is obviously done in an effort to save production costs and increase profitability. Anyway, the minimum wage in Mexico comes up to $1595 per annum whereas in Nigeria it is $1380 per annum so cost cannot be an excuse for not outsourcing to Nigeria. Manufacturing jobs are outsourced to places like Brazil, Mexico, India and China all the time. Why not Nigeria? It cannot be illiteracy because assemblying machines usually require little training and the workers are given a manual on how to assemble the machines anyway. I have asked my uncle this in the past and his response was "the problem is we Nigerians are too agressive". I just want to know your views and if you have any ideas on how we can bring some of these jobs to the country because it will really boost our economy in soo many ways.
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T@meD0: T@meD0, Obama himself identifies himself as a BLACK MAN. He looks black and were he not such a high profile figure in America he would be treated the same way as any other black man in America. Your argument has no basis. If we all use the logic you are applying to this situation then 80% of "African Americans" cannot be called black. As far as America is concerned and as far as we are concerned as black people Obama na black man. As long as he looks black he is black, if he were mixed race and looked white, then we would all regard him as white. |
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LOLLLLLL!!!!! Nigerians are too funny. We have the best sense of humor. If na yankee people for don start to dey protest. But Nigeria's response is "SO". It shows how poorly the sector is performing. Ideally we require production of 120,000MW but are only producing 3,500MW. Chai! that is barely enough for Zamfara State.
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huxley: I myself have pondered upon this for a very long time. As a fellow black man it is hard for me to bring myself to say we are of inferior minds. This is simply not true. I had 60 classmates in my secondary school in Nigeria and about 10 of us are in ivy league schools in the US, a few of us are in cambridge, imperial, london school of economics and other very good universities such as loughborough, birmingham, manchester etc studying challenging degrees and in a lot of cases outperforming most if not all the other students in our various institutions. I also happen to know many other Africans who didn't go to my secondary school and yet are graduating with 1st class degrees and 2:1 degrees and getting GPA's of 4.0 (my sister for example) all over the world. Now that I have ruled out intelligence, the other things that may be holding Africans back (besides religion) are selfishness, the desire for material wealth and a lot of our skilled and talented workforce choosing not to return home. What I think is most responsible for our relative lack of progress is love of material wealth: it is what drives a lot of people to church on sunday, what makes our politicians so corrupt, what encourages the culture of bribe and so on and so forth. If we ever had anyone with the capabilities of Einstein on the continent, he/she would have probably missed his/her calling instead opting to use his/her intelligence to try and con others out of their wealth in order to buy a lexus jeep and lace for Sunday service. |
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tng: Lol @ tng. Obama didn't win any big states and yet the superdelegates whom you said wouldn't endorse him are the same once who helped put him over the top in order to clinch the democraatic nomination. |
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I guess the $2.2 billion that was recovered was monopoly money then. Oh well what else can you expect from these guys, their not exactly reputable sources of news or have good judgment of character. Birds of the same feather flock together.
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Nigeria ain't getting divided. If there is one thing we are experts at in Nigeria it is staying together as a nation (there is even a book about our expertise written by some British dude). Probably something to do with the bitter civil war we fought some decades ago.
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And do you know where all that money is going? I'll tell you: It's going to these thieving bastards children who in turn use it to pop moet and kristal in clubs all over jand and yankee. Quite sad really when you consider the millions suffering back at home but I guess if you can't see it then it isn't real
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Nigeria as a nation is very far from perfect that's a given. And the people who are chopping government conracts in my opinion are doing what most of us would do given the chance, so we shouldn't blast them. However I feel the posters comment about only Nigerians in diaspora complaining is wrong, a lot of people in Nigeria complain every damn day. However, the people in Nigeria do have a right to complain because they are eating, living and breathing Nigeria. They are the ones who have decided to stay in their God-given country (except conditions no allow dem comot sha) and strive to improve the country or at least themselves. Those in diaspora (of which I am one currently) do not in my opinion have any right to complain about Nigeria (they gave up that right the moment they abandoned the country in order to use their skills to advance another mans land) unless they plan to return and try to instill some sort of positive change in the country as people such as Jim Ovie have done. |
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