12 November, 2008

Nigeria: Will someone turn on the lights?

November 12th, 2008

Returning to Nigeria for the first time in five years, nothing is more striking than the mobile phones ringing wherever you go.

The phone signal barely drops on a drive some five hours out of Abuja, through countryside where the only people visible are hoeing the red earth and balancing unwieldy stems of sugar cane on bicycles. A growing number of village households now have phones.

It marks a big change in a country where not long ago it was often easier to visit someone than to try to call.

As elsewhere in Africa, free access to mobile phones has created a new industry and made business easier for everyone helping to propel the continent's fastest growth in years.

But finding somewhere to charge a mobile phone's battery can be problematic.

Nigeria, like some of its neighbours, has had far less success in bringing the reliable power supplies that business also needs to take off.

Nigerians blame that failure as much as anything else for holding back Africa's giant. They increasingly question the ability of President Umaru Yar'Adua to make a difference, despite campaign promises ahead of last year's election and a pledge to declare a "national emergency" to improve power supplies.

For many Nigerians, the lights rarely if ever come on. It is not only frustrating, it forces businesses to run their own generators, pushing up costs and eating into profits.

The growing economy and population have only made the shortfall more dramatic.

To put Nigeria's failure to meet its power needs in context, South Africa suffered crippling outages early this year despite having 10 times Nigeria's generating capacity for only one third of the population.

The success of mobile phones in Nigeria was not so much because of anything the previous government did as the fact that it was able to remove longstanding official obstacles to private firms eager to invest in a country of over 140 million.

The power sector is a bigger task, given the huge investments needed, but there is little sign of government action to address the problem despite an investigation into billions of dollars that the previous administration is accused of misusing in its failed efforts to improve electricity supplies.

In fact, there is concern among Nigerians and foreign investors alike at the slow pace of government under President Yar'Adua, now widely dubbed "Baba Go-Slow".

A new cabinet has yet to be announced despite the sacking of 20 ministers and there are doubts over progress on the 2009 draft budget. Worries over Yar'Adua's health have added to the mood of uncertainty.

Meanwhile, the economic environment is getting harsher with prices for the crude oil on which Nigeria relies now closer to $60 a barrel than the $140 they topped earlier this year. Turmoil in the Niger Delta continues to restrain oil production. Nigeria's main stock market index has lost nearly half its value since March.

Is Yar'Adua going to be up to the task of turning on the lights? Is anyone? What do you think?

NEWS SOURCE

Why so sensitive?

The waffarian: Why so sensitive?: "Why so sensitive?"

Nigeria’s N40bn Satellite Missing from Orbit

Nigeria's N40bn Satellite Missing from Orbit

By Efem Nkanga, 11.12.2008

The Nigerian Commun-ications Satellite (NigComSat), which was launched into orbit over 18 months ago, is said to be missing.
THISDAY gathered last night that with the satellite missing from orbit, the huge amount spent by the Nigerian government, about N40 billion may have gone down the drain.
The satellite was found to have run into a technical hitch for some weeks now, according to a source, when it was discovered that it was using a technological standard that was not meant for Africa but Asia.
The materials used in the building of the satellite by the Chinese that built it were said to have also been in question.
The solar panel was said to be faulty and not working. All this was being battled with while, the Managing Director of NigComSat, Ahmed Rufai, was said to be angling for the launch of the second satellite.
The contract for the NigComSat project which was signed on December 15, 2004 in Abuja between China Great Wall Industry Corporation and the National Space Research and Development Agency was said to have cost the Federal Government over N40 billion. China was awarded the deal after it outbid 21 international.
The cost of the satellite include items such as construction, insurance, value added tax as well as the price for building one ground control station in Abuja and a backup control station in Kashi, China.
The satellite has four gateways said to be located in South Africa, China, Italy and Northern Nigeria.
The satellite, which has a lifespan of 15 years, is being monitored and tracked by a ground station built in Abuja while the Chinese firm, Great Wall Industry Corporation, has a ground station in Kashgar, in northwest China 's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
It will be recalled that NigComSat which is 100 per cent owned by the Federal Government, was recently given a 15 per cent stake from the Federal Government's 49 per cent stake in NITEL.
Nigeria in May 2007 launched NigComSat into orbit with expectations of tremendous gains to the nation's telecoms sector.
The NigComSat is a super hybrid geo-stationary satellite designed to operate in Africa, parts of the Middle East and southern Europe and was expected to digitalise the Nigerian economy and promote technological advancement in Nigeria and Africa.
The expectation from many quarters was that NigComSat's carrier rocket, Long March 3-B, which blasted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province and entered the orbit accurately on May 14, would set the stage for Nigeria to consolidate on its growing profile as the technological hub of Africa and an emerging player in the global terrain.
The satellite project was supposed to enable Internet access to even the remotest rural villages, a major quest of stakeholders in recent times. It was also expected to enhance government's economic reforms, particularly in the areas of e-learning, e-commerce, tele-medicine, tele-education, and rural telephony.
The project, according to experts, was expected to help African users save more than $900 million spent for telephony trunking and data transport services, $660 million in phone call charges and broadband access which is more than $95 million spent each year, as well as create more than 150, 000 jobs for Nigerians.
Rufai had before the launch disclosed that Nigeria would earn about $1.05billion which is N128billion yearly from NigComSat. A major part of the earnings was expected to come in from the sale and leasing of transponders from NigComSat.
Rufai had stated that each transponder, forty in all will be sold for between $60-70 million. NigComSat currently has forty transponders, with 28 active and 12 inactive.
However despite the huge expectations of Nigerians, NigComSat has not performed to expectations. Rufai at a recent media interaction agreed that NigComSat had not been able to capture the market principally because of the challenges it faced from the regulatory authority.
Government sources confirmed to THISDAY the failure of the satellite in orbit. While admitting that the level the failure has gone is mindboggling, the source disclosed that the Federal Executive Council will meet today on the matter and issue a statement on how the failure will be addressed
.

NEWS SOURCE

419 Hits Facebook

419 Hits Facebook… Nigerian ingenuity knows no bounds…

November 10, 2008 by Naija Pundit

Nigerian ingenuity knows no bounds. Instead of engaging in activities which are actually positive in nature, it seems we always look for the easy way out…

From Australia we get this interesting article….

Facebook has been infiltrated by Nigerian scammers and other cyber criminals who use compromised accounts to con users out of cash.

Now that even non-tech savvy internet users know not to respond to, or click on links in, emails from strangers, online thieves have turned to social networks and are finding it is easier to trick people when posing as their friends.

On Friday, Sydneysider Karina Wells received a Facebook message from one of her friends, Adrian, saying he was stranded in Lagos, Nigeria, and needed her to lend him $500 for a ticket home.

Adrian used relatively good English but, after chatting further, words such as "cell" instead of "mobile phone" tipped Wells off that she was not talking to her friend but someone who had taken over his account.

Using sites such as Facebook allows scammers to research and target victims more effectively and avoid having their messages blocked by spam filters, said Paul Ducklin, head of technology at Sophos Asia Pacific.

It is likely the scammer obtained Adrian's Facebook login details after he was infected with a virus delivered by email or in an infected web page.

Oh well… What goes around, comes around.

Posted by Naija Pundit

Africa: NO WE CANNOT, at least not yet

Africa: NO WE CANNOT, at least not yet

"Yes we can" and they have. Certainly the election of Barack Obama is historical. Yes he is likely to initiate changes, as obviously his being President, at the very least, symbolises this. However, we collectively need to lower our unrealistically high expectations of him because he will work within a system that has many challenges, some obvious and many subtle. If he can focus, as he has pledged, on American education then he will have laid the seeds for America's future prosperity and survival. Barack Obama certainly brings a level of constructive intellect, creativity, global goodwill and energy to leadership in the USA that has been missing for several years..

As a Nigerian, I find Barak Obama's victory, while extremely well deserved, bitter sweet because while we rejoice that YES WE CAN, it is sad that apparently in Africa it see that NO WE CANNOT, at least not yet. Not that we cannot, as such, but we won't have the opportunity to, at least not likely in this generation. The seeds of today were planted years ago, probably in the late 50's and early 60's. Barak Obama was born in 1961 but more importantly that was approximately the middle of the modern period of the struggle for the political and social emancipation of the African-American, the anti-apartheid struggle and the political (not economic) independence of African nations. Clearly, Nigeria and much of Africa are NOT effectively planting seeds now for tomorrow, or what we are planting is troubling to say the least.

As the ancient Chinese proverb says, "If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people." Today, we must educate our people and leverage on global tools such as Information Communication Technologies to foster the requisite education for all people at all levels regardless of background, age, sex, physical and mental characteristics, creed, tribe, religion, status, income or any other social divide. Today, our competition is no longer local but global, and our core limiting factors are ourselves, our education and the opportunities we create..

Can an African child of humble means be empowered to attend the best University in Africa? Assuming of course you believe that the best African Universities are globally competitive. Can that African child be empowered to rise to a level in the political sphere where they can realistically aspire to greatness in Africa? Will the African/ Nigeria political machinery give them an opportunity to articulate and express their possibilities? Will the African/ Nigeria general electorate receive the message of someone who is "not like them", especially if that person is not from their ethno-cultural group. Arguably people like Nelson Mandela, MKO Abiola and the like have demonstrated that in principle "Yes we can." We should remain hopeful that it is potentially possible for this to happen. However, the price/ hurdles are still very high and part of MKO Abiola's lesson, in Nigeria, is that there is still a way to go. Our current political circumstances however, remain disappointing.

As Nigerians and Africans we ask, will our leaders at all levels truly learn from Barak Obama victory? Not likely. Will they try to superficially "ape" him? Probably. Will our leaders change and change our circumstances, for the better? Not anytime soon. This is the bitter pill we are swallowing. While a few of our leaders may themselves, or enable others who, have the basic intellect to deliver on a Barak Obama like potential we are yet to be convinced that any of them have the attitude, or can create the opportunities, to do so.

Thus, while, we remain convinced that Nigeria and the rest of Africa "can", & WE MUST, change for the better. Realistically, I suspect it will be later rather than sooner. To do this we must invest in knowledge and the requisite information tools, infrastructure, processes, methodologies and attitudes. As people of the so called developing world, and assuming that the generation to which I and maybe you belong to, have "missed the boat" we must still make the requisite investments for our children and those yet unborn – our posterity.

So as we congratulate Mr. President elect, and the people of the USA for having the opportunity to make a choice and for making what we consider the appropriate choice, we can only watch wistfully as they do so, and continue to work towards the day when we, and our children, can do likewise.

AhA (nidoa@yahoogroups.com )

SOURCE

OBAMA :AFRICAN LEADERS SHOULD RATHER BE ASHAMED says Asari-Dokubo

Obama: Asari-Dokubo slams political leaders
From FEMI FOLARANMI, Yenagoa
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

•Alhaji Mujadid Asari-Dokubo


Ijaw activist and leader of the Niger Delta Youth Volunteer Force (NDYVF), Alhaji Mujadid Asari-Dokubo has berated Nigerian political leaders for rejoicing at the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Obama made history last Tuesday, emerging as the first Black to win the race to the White House and many Nigerian leaders, including President Umaru Yar'Adua, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and state governors sent their congratulatory messages.

However, Asari-Dokubo, in an exclusive interview with Daily Sun, wondered why the Nigerian political class should be happy over the historic victory instead of burying their heads in shame and crying for the miseries they had subjected Nigerians to.

He did not also spare the political leaders in other Africa countries especially President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya for frittering away the hopes of their people.
According to him, Nigerian political leaders and their counterparts in Africa should shut up as they had no moral standing to rejoice over the election in America because they represented the opposite of what Obama stood for.

He said while Obama emerged through a fair and transparent election monitored by people over the world, Nigerian political leaders emerged through questionable elections.
His words: "Since the election of Barack Obama as President-elect Nigerians have been happy because what they see in Obama they did not see in our leaders. It is shameful that our political leaders are also rejoicing instead for them to be sad.

"Look at the elections how it was conducted and how people were monitoring it step by step. Nobody chased anybody away, nobody disrupted the election. When 20 states were released, John McCain conceded defeat. But can that happen in the black land without violence? The Blackman is not only backward in science but in all ramifications.

"Look at Kenya where a man who stole votes to become President is declaring a public holiday because of the election of Obama. Is that not shameful? In Nigeria where we could not hold a credible election, our leaders are also sending congratulatory messages when they should be crying. Most of them are not qualified to be local government chairmen but holding prominent political posts.

"Obama's victory is not for them (Nigerian political leaders) to rejoice but cry and bury their heads in shame. If Whites after buying Blacks as slaves would now allow a Blackman to rule them, then we should be weeping that up till now we Blacks are not able to hold free and fair elections in our lands. It is really a pity."

On the efforts to develop the Niger Delta region, Asari-Dokubo dismissed President Umaru Yar'Adua as unserious about development in the region.
He said besides that Yar'Adua lacked the political will to bring development to the region, his administration was also insincere about policies for the region.
He also blamed former president Olusegun Obasanjo for encouraging criminal gangs to hijack the Niger Delta struggle, adding that the situation would remain irredeemable unless a Sovereign National Conference was convoked.

He said: "I have lost confidence in the administration of President Yar'Adua to develop the Niger Delta because he is not interested in bringing meaningful development to the region.
"There is no sincerity and political will that would bring change and with the active encouragement of Obasanjo for criminal gangs in the region when he was president, Yar'Adua cannot muster enough political will to reverse things. The criminals have taken over and we can no longer control them.

"The government is not sincere and the condition would continue to deteriorate because there is no vision to transform the region expect there is a Sovereign National Conference (SNC) where a path of development would be chart for the region."