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One vast toilet and other Nigerian
impressions

By Okey Ndibe
...Read the full article.

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it is 5.00pm Nigeian time and the piece just came up on NVS, i had actually been waiting for the Tuesday-Tuesday Ndbe tonic and now it finally comes.

Great as ever.

Okey Ndibe's stories about his last visit to Nigeria seem unending. If soem one who just had a brief visit from the states has so much to talk about, our experiences back at home can best be imagined. For us living daily in Nigeria is a big story.

About our seeming cordial r/ship with filth in Naija, well it is now legendary. virtually all of our so called cities are dotted with heaps of smelling refuse right in the middle of busy highways. Personal hygiene is at its lowest ebb and dont even attempt to visit any public facility...you might never forget the experience.

squating or standing to do it in public places is like a second nature around here. what is more, no one cares.

being a Nigerian is sure one big experience.

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"To be sure, there seems an odd correspondence between the grandiloquence of Nigerian leaders and their country’s deepening malaise. I have never heard a Nigerian governor speak merely of transforming his state. No; they speak, instead, of “totally transforming” their states. But look closely and you see that the only total transformation is in their personal fortunes. In just six months in office, many a Nigerian governor contrives to pocket billions of naira of public funds. The more they steal, the more fevered and inflated their rhetoric. Each stealing governor likes to invent a fiction of himself as a faithful deliverer of “the dividends of democracy.” Sheer bunkum! "

What is most painful and damaging is not just the money these people and their predecessors stole, it's the PERMANENT DAMAGE to the collective psyche of Nigerians !!
Permanent because it is impossible to repair the damage HUMANLY -it will take a HIGHER power. God is still on the throne though.

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Fantastic piece once again. Those that have been and are still at the helm of Nigerian affairs will not permit people that remotely have even a modicum of common sense to make it through to the positions of power. I really wonder how hard it is to identify and employ the services of those who have proven track records and have excelled in leadership or mangement in the different sectors of the economy they have managed.

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Is Udokaamah here to validate Pavlov's Experiment yet? :lol:

L. Hussein Auspicious.

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There is a spirit in Nigeria that makes that nation what it is today.

Decent individuals, who are very polite abroad, become rude and insolent at home.

Those who regularly queue in other places jump the queue back home.

Impeccable persons who never stole rob the nation blind on assuming public office.

First class brains who trained in world class institutions return home and become professors of “sex for grades” and “egunje for project”.

Brilliant ladies rise to top positions in government or banks only to sell their bodies to maintain those positions.

If you are “fortunate” to be recommended for a ministerial post, you have to bribe the legislative body to be confirmed.

Outstanding individuals who serve in the public sector are usually disgraced out of office. The Provost of my school was banned for life from holding public office.

There is a spirit that degrades human decency and promotes corruption and decadence.

Well-designed market stalls are routinely abandoned by our market women in favor of roadside trading with all its inconvenience and danger.

OBJ, under whose watch cell phones became widespread, “likes it natural”. How can such a leader regard public bathrooms as a necessity?

When I went home, changes to my bank account were sent to my cell phone as text messages; a feature which may be unavailable in the US. But should I need a bathroom while in public, I may have to join my comrades in the parade of the filthy.:(

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Okey
You may be on to a great truth without realising it.Nigerians are the happiest,sexiest people on the planet.Other Africans envy our dynamism.Could all this be linked to our love of chaos?
Home is where you can loosen your belt,your bra and 'go naturel'
Home is where you can burp/belch fart and **** in peace. Home is Nigeria,every square inch of it.
Malaria saved us from servitude and merde will save us this time.
Turd class happy country thats Nigeria!

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A well written piece, Okey. I witnessed the same mess during my resent visit to Nigeria (August). As much as we don’t what to turn a blind-eye to the ineptitude of our leaders nor be indifferent to Nigeria problems, what then can we do?

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Did u visit Calabar? The Vision is there .... and some people keep killing it. Read below and check this link

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Thisday
Nigeria loses N219b Yearly on TINAPA

From Ernest Chinwo in Calabar, 02.08.2008

Nigeria may be losing more than N219 billion annually to Dubai due to the failure of the Federal Government to approve the procedures and guidelines for the take-off of the Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort in Calabar, Cross River State.
THISDAY checks reveal that about 500 Nigerians travel to Dubai daily to shop and each of them spend about $10,000 (about N1.2 million) per trip to cover their airline tickets, hotel accommodation, local transportation, feeding, purchase of various goods and services as well as cargo insurance.
This shows that about $5 million (N600 million) leaves Nigeria each day or $1.825 billion (N219 billion) yearly, to improve the economy of Dubai. This is mainly because the Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort, built at an estimated cost of $450 million (about N54 billion), is not operational.
When THISDAY visited the project located at Adiabo in Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State, the place looked deserted with only a few shops open. Even the few open shops would not sell their wares to people for fear that they would incur the wrath of men of the Nigerian Customs Service.
At one of the shops rented by Vlisco, the management of the company pasted a notice on its doors that they they had been forced to suspend operations on the directives of Customs.
The notice read in part, “We are unfortunately unable to sell you any goods. We have been closed by Customs due to the non-gazetted situation of Tinapa Shopping Centre as a whole.” They however said the management of Tinapa had assured them that the issues would be resolved soon.
Some officers of the Customs were also seen moving around the Site apparently to ensure that the few shops stocked with wares did not sell to people who troop in to the Resort to shop.


The Managing Director of Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort limited, Mr. Bassey Ndem said in Calabar Friday that the failure of the Federal Government to approve the Procedure and Guidelines for the operation of the Resort was responsible for the delay in the take-off of the project.
According to him, “the construction of Tinapa has been completed and all that remains is for the Federal Government to approve the Procedures and Guidelines that were jointly prepared by the same Government and private stakeholders since October 2007.”
Ndem noted that while the Federal Government was foot-dragging in approving the regulatory framework for the project, the Cross River State Government was losing N3000 billion annually from economic and commercial activities that would have been generated at Tinapa.
“Indeed, the TINAPA project is sure to be a NEPAD Project for economic integration in the continent with an estimated cost of USD 450 million. With this capital base TINAPA is clearly one of the biggest investments on the African continent,” he said.
He noted that the Dubai Government had realized that a sizeable portion of their revenue would be affected by the successful take-off of Tinapa and was already taking steps to shore up its revenue by investing in similar projects in Senegal and Ghana .
He noted that Dubai Government was investing $800 million (short term) and $3 billion (long term) on developing a tax and duty free leisure and business resort in Dakar and also taking over the Port in Dakar to make Senegal their trade hub in West Africa .
Dubai he also said had concluded arrangements to take over and rebuild the Ghanaian Free Trade Zone.
“What the Dubai Government has done is bring Dubai closer to Nigeria so that the $1.825 billion being spent by Nigerians remains within their control,” he said considering the nearness of the two countries to Nigeria .
According to the Tinapa Managing Director, the two projects are a direct economic threat to Tinapa, Cross River State and the Federal Governemnt.

He said Tinapa was threatened because the entire investment of over N45 billion cold be wasted because of the non-approval of relevant federal authorities while Cross River State would lose the multiplier effects on the local economy and employment of more than 12,000 jobs.

The Federal Government, he said would also lose because as the single greatest beneficiary of Tinapa, it would lose custom duties, taxes, fees and tariffs for shipping lines, airlines, licenses and other sources of revenue.

“It appears indeed that there may be an official conspiracy to kill the Tinapa project even before it starts. While we play our Nigerian Geopolitical games and allow personal interests becloud the vision of Tinapa, the Dubai Government is moving forcefully to provide good roads, education, health, housing etc to its citizens using Nigerian resources in addition to its own,” he said.

He called on the Federal Government to take appropriate steps to approve the Procedures and Guidelines so that the Tinapa project would take off fully.

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"GuardianNewspaper"

"Tinapa, Customs and the Federal Government

SINCE attaining nationhood four decades ago, Nigerians have dreamt of the day when their country would join the league of industrialised economies in the world. At various times their governments at all levels have upheld this dream and have launched numerous development programmes and projects which have, sadly, faltered on the altar of planlessness and corruption, and a patent lack of commitment or political will. In consequence, the nation's landscape is littered with numerous abandoned projects; eternal beacons to the failure of our collective aspirations. One such project, which we hope and pray will not join this list of shame, is the multi-billion naira Tinapa Tourism and Business Resort in Calabar, Cross River State.

Tinapa was conceived by the forward-thinking and the visionary former governor of Cross River State, Donald Duke, as the first integrated business and leisure centre in Nigeria. The project exploits Calabar's strategic location as the link city between the West and Central African sub-regions, to give investors the opportunity to exploit the huge market potential of the two sub-regions. Modelled after similar resorts in Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Bombay, among others, Tinapa is expected to become an investors' haven that also provides opportunities for visitors from within and outside the country to combine commercial activities with leisure in a well-integrated and attractive environment. The goal is to make Calabar the ultimate hub of wholesale and retail commercial activity within ECOWAS.

In line with this objective, Tinapa is expected to provide international standard wholesale emporiums, integrated shopping complexes and product distribution outlets, along with business tourism and entertainment facilities. The project also incorporates a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for investment opportunities, which grants it a Free Trade Zone Status. This implies that investors in Tinapa would be granted some exemptions from taxes and customs duties, along with other benefits that are often associated with Free Trade Zones.

The fact that the Calabar Free Trade Zone is just next door to Tinapa points to a lack of co-ordination among the various federal and state government agencies in charge of the two projects. The lack of co-ordination and forward planning has been the bane of most projects in Nigeria and it is therefore not surprising that Tinapa appears to have become another victim of this typically Nigerian malaise.

No one appears to have given much thought to this potential problem when actual construction of the state-of-the-art-facilities covering over 80,000m2 of space began in January 2005. After an expenditure of over N45 billion, the first phase of the project was commissioned with fanfare in April 2007 by then President Olusegun Obasanjo. Unfortunately, not much has happened since then, except the millions that the sponsors continue to expend on advertisements in the international media to create global awareness for the project.

Essentially, the project has been caught in a bureaucratic web of intrigue and, some will argue, sabotage, with the unfortunate possibility that the investment might go down the drain, along with the dream of its sponsors. The problem appears to be between the Minister of Finance and the Comptroller General of Customs, which is rather strange considering the fact that the Ministry of Finance supervises the Nigerian Customs Service. In any case, it appears that the Minister and the Comptroller have disagreed over the issue of exclusive operational guidelines for Tinapa. The Minister presented the new guidelines to the Federal Executive Council for approval, only for the Comptroller to counter that if approved, the guidelines would run contrary to existing import policy that prohibits retail sales at the resort centre. The President is reported to have ordered the Minister and the Comptroller to harmonise their positions.

Meanwhile Nigeria continues to lose an estimated N219 billion to Dubai due to the federal government's inability to resolve the bureaucratic wrangling over procedures for Tinapa. Reports have also appeared in the media of a conspiracy by certain business and geopolitical interests in the country to kill the project. Investors invest their resources to make profit and are easily discouraged if their investments idle away while bureaucrats fight tuff battles over procedures. This situation should not be allowed to continue.

The country has wasted huge resources in the form of abandoned projects that litter the nation's landscape. Tinapa must not be added to this list. Although Tinapa is sponsored by the state government and private interests, it should be seen as part of the federal government's plan to transform the country into one of the 20 leading economies by 2020. Within that spirit, the bureaucratic in-fighting that has spelt the doom of similar laudable projects in the past should not be allowed to stifle the dream of Tinapa. Tinapa must be allowed to work."

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Calabar port suffers low patronage, as contractors abandon dredging project
By David Ogah, Snr. Maritime Correspondent, Guardian Newspapers Limited

THE dredging of the Calabar channel, which was awarded to two foreign firms at the cost of N8 billion, may have been abandoned.

It was thought that the dredging project would open up the channel for navigation and boost ship traffic to Calabar port. It was also hoped that the channel dredging would open up the state for tourism as the port was expected to support the tourism project of the state to boost its commercial viability.

The Chairman of Ecomarine, an indigenous shipping company, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, told Maritime reporters at the weekend in Lagos that the firms had abandoned the project apparently due to non- payment.

Tukur, whose company participated in the concessioning of Calabar port and which today owns a terminal at the port, said the situation with the channel was contrary to his expectation, saying he participated in the bidding process because of the promise that the channel would be dredged.

Fielding questions from The Guardian at his Victoria Island office, Tukur said only a portion of the channel was dredged, adding that the companies have since abandoned the project for reasons he did not specify.

"They dredged only a session of the channels, not all and the company has gone and siltation will set in again. I went to Calabar because of the good intentions, but we are loosing heavily. Our intention is to bring in containership to the port. They are not coming because the draught is poor. We thought the dredging of the channel will be completed in 2006.Our investment there is not commensurate with the traffic. We have invested up to $10 million to upgrade the port. The port is okay now for serious port operation but the channel is yet to be dredged and vessel traffic still very low even when productivity at the port has increased tremendously. We have equipment that are far under-utilised at the Calabar port because of the low traffic. The vision we have for the Calabar port was the same with that of TINAPA because we thought the port will compliment it to fast-track the flow of ships and goods from the port to TINAPA", he lamented.

"Calabar River needs dredging and ships cannot come into the port. They spent billions of naira on TINAPA and free trade zone and you cannot dredge the river that will make them to work. All these investments and concepts cannot work if you don't dredge to allow sizeable vessels to come in."

The Federal Government had in 2006 taken bold steps to revive the dying Calabar port with the N8 billion contract awarded to two Dutch companies to effect the dredging of the 84 kilometres Calabar channels.

The project, on completion was expected to transform Cross River State economically by supporting the state's economic revival initiatives.

Already the state government has commenced a business tourism project -TINAPA- in an attempt to open up the state for commercial activities.

With the dredging of the channel, government intended to support the state government's economic development efforts as the port would have definitely become a centre of attraction to ship owners who may become willing to allow their vessels to patronise the Calabar port, which have since been abandoned because of the shallow nature of the channel.

The port would have witnessed increased in vessel and cargo traffic, as big and small vessels would have been attracted to the port because of the new draught along the channel.

The two Dutch dredging companies that signed �56.5 million (about N8 billion) dredging contract of the channel with the Federal Government in Port Harcourt last Friday were VAN Oord Nigeria Limited and Jan-de Aul.

While VAN Oord Nigeria Limited was expected to dredge an area covering 40 kilometres along the channel from the port at a contract sum of �26.5 million, Jan de-Aul was asked to continue from there and up to a distance of 46 kilometre along the same channel for �30 million.

It was not possible to confirm which of the two companies abandoned the project as a male voice who spoke with The Guardian on the telephone recently at Van Ord directed all enquiries about the Calabar dredging project to the Nigerian Port Authority. The two companies were given 66 weeks to complete the dredging contract at the time it was signed.

They were asked to remove 25 million cubic metres of silt from the 84 kilometres channel, which would at the long run have a gradient of 1:3.

Before calling it a day, according to the agreement, the two companies were expected to achieve at least 10 metres draught along the dredged area and the width area of not less than 150 metres.

The then Cross River State Governor, Mr. Donald Duke, who witnessed the signing of the contract, described the event that time as a watershed for the state.

The former governor lobbied for the project and as desperate as he was, he once accused the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) of sabotaging the dredging of the Calabar channel. He clamoured for the project, thinking it would complement his efforts at opening up the state for commercial activities.

"It brings a lot of joy to our hearts", he said, as he witnessed the ceremony which took place in his office that year.

Assessing the high potential of the Calabar port, Duke said the port of Calabar was of great value to Trans-Saharan trade and the transportation of slaves from Africa during the slave trade era.

"The greater number of slaves taken from Africa had their passage through Calabar being the most developed channel in Africa. The river was easily navigable and slave traders needed not to build infrastructure for their merchandise that is why there is no slave camp here. They shipped the slaves directly, but looking at modern Calabar, we have been challenged to create a kind of economy for the state. This state is being run from the Federal allocation. We are trying to do something to provide resources, for the creation of resources and for the government to manage the state. In doing that, we identified two major areas- agriculture and tourism."

He said the state government was trying to develop a mercantile economy for the state hence the need for the development of the Calabar port and its infrastructure.

"A lot of money was spent on the port many years ago and I don't think it has lived up to its expectation by stimulating local economy and by creating employment."

According to the former governor, the port and other associated business could generate employment necessary to make the state more secure.

"In few cases when vessels were diverted to Calabar port, the state recorded zero crime within the period. So job creation is very critical to national goals."

Defending his clamour over the years for the dredging of Calabar channel, Duke said: "We felt that if we could activate the port, we could reduce unemployment and its associated problems. I can recall my first meeting with Sarumi, I asked him if we have done anything to warrant the present state of Calabar port. But he replied, saying he was more emotional having served at the port before. We know very well that if that port is activated, it could serve as a hub. It will create jobs, bring meaning to the overall economic development of the area. I want to encourage the NPA to develop the second port in Calabar neighbourhood. But we need to sign this first," he concluded.

Former Transport Minister, Dr. Abiye Sekibo, who signed the contract agreement on behalf of the Federal Government and the NPA, said the government was ready to make down payment for the dredging job.

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Truthsayer you are talking absolute balderdash. When issues of immense importance and concern are being discussed, arm chair comedians like you only succeed in exhibiting the same reasons why our country still remain more static than ever.

I repeat what you just typed down is utter nonsense!