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Post by omohayek on Sept 15, 2017 20:53:51 GMT
Brilliant post omoolowu Abeg what's happening to Shooting stars. These men don't look like they watch football Prof omohayek is deliberately avoiding posting about this Oti o! It's just that I've been too busy keeping up with the recent "Amazing Adventures of Nnamdi Kanu and His IPOB All Stars (in a Very Special Episode entitled "Python Dancing")!
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Post by omohayek on Sept 15, 2017 21:06:26 GMT
This is why Technocrats need to be the ones ruling and not these clueless old cargoes 🚢. Some of these Nigerian governors would run a perfectly viable state like California to the ground if given a chance to rule it. Do you think his successes in the state wtr IGR, FDI etc was a no brainer? Do you think it has to do with the state's proximity to Lagos or it's as a result of his brilliance Do you think any other governor could have achieved the same? Do you think he would have been able to do the same if he were governing a state like Ebonyi? Her Highness omohayek Short_Biscuit omoolowu Belmot AgbongboAkala Omo Oba of the Source ajanaku I'd love to know what you guys make of this Until now I'd have been willing to give Amosun more credit (though his glaring failures on the secondary education front is something I've commented on in the past), but after reading what Short_Biscuit and omoolowu have had to say on his administration, I'm starting to believe I seriously overrated his capabilities. It's certainly true that the rise in IGR under Amosun is nothing trivial - if it were, all other states would have done the same - but the ridiculously oversized wage bill of the state makes me wonder what exactly the point of the whole exercise is. Bloated public sectors are a shortcoming of all SW states (including even Lagos), but Ogun seems to have taken this disease to the next level. Combine Amosun's reluctance to trim the state's public payroll with his gigantic expenditures on an educational program that has yielded no results, and the picture that arises isn't a pleasant one. The one thing I will say on Amosun's behalf as a weak excuse for refusing to trim back the number of government employees is that any such action is bound to lead to the usual Nigerian accusations of "favoritism", "marginalization" and "leave our sons/daughters alone" from all the groups who would rather have a useless government with their "children" getting a big share of the "cake" than a slimmer, more efficient state in which "juicy" positions seem to be flowing to others instead of their own kinsmen. This dynamic saps the will of ambitious politicians to do what needs to be done, and I don't see how it can easily be overcome without a mass reorientation of mindsets.
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Post by Short_Biscuit on Sept 15, 2017 21:59:08 GMT
Do you think his successes in the state wtr IGR, FDI etc was a no brainer? Do you think it has to do with the state's proximity to Lagos or it's as a result of his brilliance Do you think any other governor could have achieved the same? Do you think he would have been able to do the same if he were governing a state like Ebonyi? Her Highness omohayek Short_Biscuit omoolowu Belmot AgbongboAkala Omo Oba of the Source ajanaku I'd love to know what you guys make of this Until now I'd have been willing to give Amosun more credit (though his glaring failures on the secondary education front is something I've commented on in the past), but after reading what Short_Biscuit and omoolowu have had to say on his administration, I'm starting to believe I seriously overrated his capabilities. It's certainly true that the rise in IGR under Amosun is nothing trivial - if it were, all other states would have done the same - but the ridiculously oversized wage bill of the state makes me wonder what exactly the point of the whole exercise is. Bloated public sectors are a shortcoming of all SW states (including even Lagos), but Ogun seems to have taken this disease to the next level. Combine Amosun's reluctance to trim the state's public payroll with his gigantic expenditures on an educational program that has yielded no results, and the picture that arises isn't a pleasant one. The one thing I will say on Amosun's behalf as a weak excuse for refusing to trim back the number of government employees is that any such action is bound to lead to the usual Nigerian accusations of "favoritism", "marginalization" and "leave our sons/daughters alone" from all the groups who would rather have a useless government with their "children" getting a big share of the "cake" than a slimmer, more efficient state in which "juicy" positions seem to be flowing to others instead of their own kinsmen. This dynamic saps the will of ambitious politicians to do what needs to be done, and I don't see how it can easily be overcome without a mass reorientation of mindsets. You are correct bros. It really worries me that our SW states are the worst in terms of overbloated civil service. And like you said, the governors lack the political will to downsize their state's civil service due to political considerations. The few ones that have tried it have faced very vicious backlash from the wider public (stoked by labour unions) -- I mean the likes of Ajimobi and Aregbesola. I think I've related a story about an encounter I once had with an Ibadan indigene sometime in late 2015. Our exchange encapsulates the psyche of a lot of our people when it comes to this issue of bloated civil service. It was shortly after the current governor won his second term in office. I asked the man why former governor Rasheed Ladoja was more popular within Ibadan than the incumbent (who also happens to be an Ibadan indigene), his response was that the civil servants of the state are the ones behind the former's cult-like popularity. He said while Ladoja was in office, he never joked with the civil servants 'welfare' -- they always got their 'alerts' on time, he was overly generous towards them by ensuring that they got regular salary increases (at a particular time, some got up to 300% salary increase), and never shied from hiring even more of them. As for Ajimobi, he said he's too 'technocratic', stingy, and blows too much grammar. Incidentally, it was the combined votes from the other sections of the state that enabled the incumbent to win a second-term (a first in the history of the state), as Ladoja trounced him in virtually all the 11 local governments that comprise Ibadan. This made me realize that the average person doesn't really care much about the financial implication of all these recurrent expenditures on the state's ability to meet its obligations to its citizens. Times have changed, and now is the best time for governors to restructure their states' civil services to reflect the current economic realities -- the olden days of waste are long gone. The masses expect so much from the government, not understanding that the oil money is no longer sustainable, and the governors too have come to see the pacification of labour unions (who mainly represent the interests of government workers) as a critical strategy toward the stabilization of their administrations. Our people are yet to appreciate the benefit of an efficient tax system that they can use as a basis for holding their government accountable. Without massive reorientation to correct this disposition, the future isn't looking good at all o. If we can't take advantage of the current economic crisis to trim our civil services and adopt more streamlined and efficient administrative methods (like Lagos was able to do when the FG seized part of her allocation), then we're in serious trouble.
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Post by Honorebu on Sept 18, 2017 11:09:21 GMT
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Post by Honorebu on Sept 22, 2017 12:05:02 GMT
He has a point, even though he doesn't sound like he understands what VAT means lol. It really has nothing to do with the number of industries. To the best of my knowledge, VAT is consumption tax abi beeko eyin economist ?
I find it difficult to believe Abuja or any other state besides Lagos are consuming more than the people in Ogun.
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Post by Short_Biscuit on Sept 22, 2017 12:46:25 GMT
He has a point, even though he doesn't sound like he understands what VAT means lol. It really has nothing to do with the number of industries. To the best of my knowledge, VAT is consumption tax abi beeko eyin economist ? I find it difficult to believe Abuja or any other state besides Lagos are consuming more than the people in Ogun. Well, in the case of Abuja, it may not be so farfetched considering that it has a lot of high net worth individuals (most of the political class, Northern elite, Federal ministries, civil servants, diplomats, e.t.c are domiciled there) who consume more and have a far higher spending power living there compared to Ogun. Ogun may have industries and all that but with less high net worth people with lower spending power. And probably most of the owners of the factories reside in neighbouring Lagos sef, and therefore pay their VAT in Lag. Depending on the kind of restructuring that Nigeria opts for, Abuja may lose relevance under a restructured federation. If the country is restructured along regional lines like it was during independence, the regional capitals would take a lot of shine off Abuja. Back in the 60s, Ibadan population was as much Lagos (FCT) population, it was the de facto entertainment and education capital of the country, and only second to Lagos in terms of economic activities back then.
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Post by Honorebu on Nov 28, 2017 19:16:38 GMT
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Post by Honorebu on Nov 28, 2017 19:18:31 GMT
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Post by Honorebu on Nov 28, 2017 19:20:43 GMT
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Post by Ogbeni Ogunnaike on Nov 29, 2017 19:34:41 GMT
I just hate how this businessday makes their articles for paid subscribers only
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Post by Honorebu on Nov 29, 2017 21:49:27 GMT
I just hate how this businessday makes their articles for paid subscribers only Lol. I dey always swear for those people. Who has time to be subscribing apart from people who work in the finance industry. They have the best news/articles tho
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Post by Honorebu on Dec 5, 2017 20:29:11 GMT
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Post by Honorebu on Dec 5, 2017 20:32:48 GMT
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Post by Short_Biscuit on Dec 6, 2017 3:40:47 GMT
Well, I saw his breakdown of the budget and it looked ambitious. Though I have noticed that it seems Amosun is rarely in the news for commissioning completed projects. You hardly hear of him even donating cars to the state police to assist them in fighting crime (apparently the last time he did that was in 2013). He did say that he intends to depend largely on the IGR of the state to fund most of the budget. The state's wage bill, as at 2015, stood at N9-billion naira monthly (bigger than Lagos' N6-billion, and even Adeosun publicly remarked sometime last year that she had achieved the feat of reducing the FG's monthly payroll to N6.6 billion). I can only imagine how much it has increased to by now coz I understand they are still hiring. I think the state might be shortchanging itself, in spite of it's relatively impressive IGR, on account of such a huge and unsustainable wage bill. I do commend his uncommon ingenuity when it comes to finding ways to shore up the state's IGR, but in the end it seems his motivation is more or less to service the state's ballooning wage bill. Ironically, one of his supporters who is also eyeing his seat recently attacked Yayi by saying that Ogun can't afford another Aregbesola who was supposedly brought in from Lagos, only to end up owing worker's salaries. But I don't see how Amosun's successors won't also fall into that state of affairs if something isn't urgently done to trim the state's workforce at some point. Besides, Aregbe's wage bill has reduced to less than N2-billion monthly. I understand that the Senate recently approved a $350-million dollar World Bank loan requested by the state government. Perhaps part of the budget will also be funded via that loan. omoolowu and AgbongboAkala might also have more valuable insights since they are more on ground in the state.
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Post by Honorebu on Dec 6, 2017 21:27:07 GMT
Well said Short_BiscuitYou're increasing IGR at the same time increasing wage bill. Where is the prudence? As far as I'm concerned, he's just as clueless as the rest of them. He's not doing anything special. He would have been a disaster if he was governing a state like Osun or Ekiti
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