Who is the right leader................

[amira]

Salams....
As we can see and hear elections are coming up, many campaigns going on, candidates all trying to get the most votes to claim the presidency chair.

Nigeria needs an upright leader that can set her straight from the cripple path she's moving on, make her nigeria not the 419er and i mean no dodgy businesses, but the question is "WHO" is going to be the One for this job?

Ma fellow onliners who do you think is able to do this job and Why? and what they ought to consider in doing for the country, cos i can think of many must do's but would like my fellow Onliners to chip in.

Firstly: i know that nigerians want security cos the amount of insecurity that is going on i dont even want to get in to that.

Second: better police force, as i have mentioned many times in some of ma posts.

Third: better roads that can ensure safer travelling between states and within state.

Fourth: equipping hospitals with medical equipment, hygeine etc.

Fifth: Education better goverment schools as not all nigerians are able to pay for their children to go to private schools, they should also have an oppotunity to a good eduaction.

Sixth: These two that am about to mention need to be wiped out to cure peoples greed "Bribery and Corruption".

Seventh: NEPA this electrical thing soooooooooo needs to be sorted out.

naija can be a better place for all!!! ;)

[alkanawi]

the person that wud provide all that mana.LOL
After some sleuth work a la sherlock holmes and CIS, computer forensics and post printing has determined that Amira is a supporter of Buhari and would like him to be next president.
me too.

[alkanawi]

Let us examine OBJ/YAR'ADUA reform policy as set out by Stiglitzt, formerly the World bank's VP/chief economist and a Nobel prize winner in economicsl

There's an Assistance Strategy for every poor nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's staff "investigation" consists of close inspection of a nation's five-star hotels(i remember one of their visits they stayed at NICON Hilton Abuja). It concludes with the Bank staff meeting some begging, busted finance minister( Iweala ?) who is handed a "restructuring agreement" pre-drafted for his/her "voluntary" signature.

Each nation's economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the exact same four-step program.

Step 1 is Privatization -- which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called "Briberization". Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders -- using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics -- happily flogged their electricity and water companies. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10 per cent commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest "briberization" of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. "The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We don't care if it's a corrupt election. We want the money to go to Yeltzin" via kick-backs for his campaign.

Stiglitz is no enemy of democracy/detractors as they would say. The man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers.

After briberization, Step 2 of the IMF/World Bank one-size-fits-all rescueyour- economy plan is "Capital Market Liberalization". In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. Stiglitz calls this the "hot money" cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days, hours. And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30 per cent, 50 per cent and 80 per cent.
"The result was predictable," said Stiglitz of the hot money tidal waves in Asia and Latin America. Higher interest rates demolished property values, savaged industrial production and drained national treasuries.

At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step 3: Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and domestic gas/petrol,They have been increasing petrol prices regularly abi?

This leads, predictably, to Step 31/2: what Stiglitz calls "The IMF riot."

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is "down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up" -- as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots, but there are other examples -- the Bolivian riots over water prices in April 2000 and, in February 2001, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in domestic gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan.

And it is. Because in the "Interim Country Assistance Strategy" for Ecuador,the Bank several times states -- with cold accuracy -- that they expected their plans to spark "social unrest", to use their bureaucratic term for a nation in flames.
Stiglitz notes that the IMF and World Bank are not heartless adherents of market economics. At the same time the IMF stopped Indonesia "subsidizing" food purchases, "when the banks need a bail-out, ntervention [in the market] is welcome". The IMF scrounged up tens of billions of dollars to save Indonesia's financiers and, by extension, the US and European banks from which they had borrowed.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers in this system, but one clear winner: the Western banks and US Treasury, making the big bucks from this crazy new international capital churn. Stiglitz told  about his unhappy meeting, early in his World Bank tenure, with Ethiopia's new president in the nation's first democratic election. The World Bank and IMF had ordered Ethiopia to divert aid money to its reserve account at the US Treasury, which pays a pitiful 4 per cent return, while the nation borrowed US dollars at 12 per cent to feed its population. The new president begged Stiglitz to let him use the aid money to rebuild the nation. But no, the loot went straight off to the US Treasury's vault in Washington.
Rings a bell? $43 billion in foreign reserves and borrowing $2 billion to finance railway,pensioners,local contractors not paid to prevent "inflation" a la Soludo

Now we arrive at Step 4 of what the IMF and World Bank call their "poverty reduction strategy": Free Trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organization and World Bank. Stiglitz the insider likens free trade WTOstyle to the Opium Wars. "That too was about opening markets," he said.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades to force open markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade that's just as effective -- and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz is particularly emotional over the WTO's intellectual property rights treaty (it goes by the acronym TRIPS, ). It is here, says the economist, that the new global order has "condemned people to death" by imposing impossible tariffs and tributes to pay to pharmaceutical companies for branded medicines. "They don't care," said the professor of the corporations and bank ideologues he worked with, "if people live or die."
By the way, don't be confused by the mix in this discussion of the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They are interchangeable masks of a single governance system. They have locked themselves together by what are unpleasantly called "triggers". Taking a World Bank loan for a school "triggers" a requirement to accept every "conditionality" -- they average 111 per nation -- laid down by both the World Bank and IMF. In fact, said Stiglitz, the IMF requires nations to accept trade policies more punitive than the official WTO rules.

Stiglitz's greatest concern is that World Bank plans, devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, are never open for discourse or dissent. Despite the West's push for elections throughout the developing world, the so-called Poverty Reduction Programs "undermine democracy". And they don't work. Black Africa's productivity under the guiding hand of IMF structural "assistance" has gone to hell in a handbag.

Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, identifying Botswana. Their trick? "They told the IMF to go packing."

And they have been inundating us with this so called "reform policy".It was laughble the other day Soludo, the abracadabra economist,conveniently increased our per capita and made each of us richer.Beating his chest that we have passed the $1000 per capita threshold forgetting that it is a result of higher oil prices and not any economic policy or reform.
I beg i don tire.
Vote Buhari jare.

[HUSNAA]

I beg i don tire.
Vote Buhari jare.

You should tire Al, speak more plainly

Anyway economics is not my strong point. I am still trying to figure out how all those stock market indexes are calculated and why they should differ with different stock exchanges like the FTSE, CAC DOW JONES.
And how about all those maniacs trading commodities with sign languages at the stock exchange, how do they understand each other? How do they influence the price of say corn or crude? How do companies evaluate their stocks on a daily basis?
I try listening to Bloomberg TV, but its a crashing bore cos I just cant develop the requisite amount of interest. Any one out there can help?
On another note, yeah, lets vote Buhari. I am beginning to have jitters about this marriage between ANPP and AC, its not going to materialize. An ce hada aure na da lada ko? This is one marriage I would rather not see happen, althouhg I remember being all for it before.