Blog 1 - Nigeria

Hey

This is the first blog I am going to post during our journey from Nigeria to Norway. All of these countries have a very interesting culture and political system. I think I will learn and see a lot during this trip. To keep you updated, I will post a blog about every country I visit.

Nigeria is the first country we (me and a couple of friends) visited. It is a beautiful country with a lot of historical background. Nigeria has the largest population in Africa and you can find a lot of natural resources throughout the country. One of these natural resources is the oil-production. Nigeria is the six largest oil-producing nation in the world. It also has a well-educated and industrious society.

This surprised me! Before I came to this country, I thought it was an underdeveloped country, where most people live in poverty. But I discovered this isn’t true at all. Many Nigerians have a good education and a well-paid job. Because off it’s natural resources, Nigeria has a prosperous economy.

While we were travelling through the country, I saw churches of different cultures. I found out that many different religions are followed in Nigeria. There is a policy of religious freedom in this country, so everyone can believe in the religion he or she wants. Most of the Christians live in the south of the country, Muslims are located in the north. Of course there are also indigenous believes in Nigeria, but only a small part off the population follows these believes.

I think it is really important to have a policy of religious freedom, especially when there are many different believes in one country. People should accept someones believe, even if it isn’t the same as their own. This is still a major problem in Belgium. Some people are not open enough to other religions. They don’t understand what those other religions are about, because they don’t try to understand. Everybody should be free to believe what he or she wants, weither it is Christianity, Islam, Judaism or another religion.

As my journey continued through Nigeria, these were the things I noticed most.
If you want to know more about this country, you can go to the source I used: http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/nigeria.html

The next country where me and my friends will stop, is Tunisia. While we are in Tunisia, I will write another blog on the culture and political problems. I hope you will keep following my adventures during my trip from Nigeria to Norway.

Bye,

Elisa Debleu

Nigeria

Hi everyone,

So, this is my first blog. I started my journey in Nigeria, more particularly in Lagos. Because of my studies, Marketing, I’m very interested in business in general. So I thought it might be nice to stay in the biggest business centre of Nigeria for a while. What I have learned from my 1 week stay in Nigeria is that it has an amazing and impressive economy. So, this is something I should really tell you more about.

First of all, the currency here is the naira (sign: ₦; code: NGN) and it is subdivided into 100 kobo. You have 3 sorts of coins: 50 kobo, 1 & 2 naira. You have also banknotes: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 & 1000 naira. At this moment 1 € = 210 Naira and 1USD = 154 Naira. Once you got that, it’s time for some shopping!

Another thing you should know about Nigeria’s economy is that Nigeria is ranked the 44^th worldwide and 3^rd in Africa in factory output. That is something I would never had expected! An example: in 2000, oil and gas exports accounted for more than 98% of export earnings and 83% of federal government revenue. Well, that can count! The largest trading partner of Nigeria is the United Kingdom, followed by the United States.

At last, I will tell you something about transport in Nigeria. The main thing about transport in Nigeria is that it’s owned by the government. And of course, that is a major constraint to economic development. There are 3 big ports you must see when you visit Nigeria: Lagos, Port Harcourt and Calabar. These ports are really impressive! When I visited the Lagos port, I met someone who told me that the docking fees for freighters are among the highest in the world! Besides the ports, Nigeria has another important source of transportation: airports. There are several airports in Nigeria, but only 4 of them currently receive international flights: Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt and Abuja. What’s remarkable here is that Nigeria Airways, the airport owned by the government, is not in the list of the airports who receive international flights!

I was really blown away when I read this on a webpage. Before my trip to Nigeria, I thought Nigeria was poor, far away from reality, … But after being here, that image has changed totally! Nigeria is ranked the 44^th (worldwide!) in factory output. It has 3 big ports and several airports. So unlike what I thought, Nigeria is not at all cut off from the outside world, the real world.

If you want to know more about the impressive economy of Nigeria, here is the source I used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nigeria

I hope you enjoyed my explanation. Tomorrow I leave Nigeria behind and go to the next stop of our travel: Tunisia. See you then for another interesting blog!

Bye,

Libera Noerens

Nigeria

Hello, I’m in Nigeria now…
And I see a lot of unfinished buildings and places, I see also destroyed buildings and places. I wanted to know why was that and I went on research.
Immense oil riches have been replaced to places like this, but they have not brought the country peace because there are still kidnapping, sabotage, deadly bombing attacks,…
They fear for a new wave of attacks on the oil industry.

Nigeria is a country that earns a lot from its oil riches, but nobody know what the government does with the money they earn from that business.
We all know that Nigeria isn’t a rich country, but they were making good progress and then suddenly a lot of money disappear to expenses where a lot of people didn’t knew about it.
A portion of the money has been spent on failed efforts to upgrade Nigeria’s image, but nobody knows where the other part of the money is.
If they have money, they spend it wrongly. They build a beautiful building next to an unfinished house, this doesn’t give a positive image of the country.
And sometimes a few people decide to invest in huge projects, but the other people of the government don’t  know about something. They didn’t give a great picture of how the money is spend in their country.

The government must do something about it, because some situations are not normal anymore, for example: none of the schools have been renovated and sometimes the students sitting in the rain.

My opinion is that the government of Nigeria must take their responsibility and they have to justify on what they spend the money. It’s not good for the image of the country that there are everywhere unfinished places and buildings because when the tourists see that they never want to go back there (I don’t want to go back there).
Nigeria is not a rich country and if they cannot deal with money, than they have problems in advance.
The government is the head of the country and they must provide for money, so than they really have to do that and not spend the money on pointless projects.
Now, I don’t like to stay here, so I hope I can quickly go to another country.

I’ll talk to you at the next blog.

Bye

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/world/africa/09nigeria.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=nigeria&st=cse

Charlotte De Hainaut

Blog 1: Nigeria

Hey there!

I’m Kimberly and I’m one of the girls who’s making a trip from Nigeria, where I am now, to Norway, where I will be in a couple of weeks. I suppose it will be a very instructive trip which will introduce me to a lot of different cultures. To give you the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the trip, I’ll post a weekly message on this blog. Here is my blog message of my first week live from Nigeria:

In the movie, of which you find a link at the bottom of my blog message, you can see Nuhu Ribadu, a very famous man in Nigeria. This man always had an important function in Nigeria what makes him very popular among the inhabitants. After living in exile until 2010, he returned to Nigeria to run for President. Therefore he joined the party ACN. He once became a symbol of Nigeria because he told the BBC everything about the corrupt government of the country since its independency. The movie shows us a visit of Ribadu to some local inhabitants and how they react on this visit.

I think this video is a perfect reflection of how Nigerian people are and behave: always with a big smile on their face. They are happy with every little thing they get or with what happens to them. Those little things in life make them happy and worth living for. In the movie I posted we see that the local inhabitants are visited by president-candidate Nuhu Ribadu. According to me he’s a very important person in Nigeria. Not only for politics, but also on a lot of other levels since he once joined the EFCC too. I personally think he’s a good candidate to become a president since he’s loyal, has a lot of knowledge and is “new”. And that’s what Nigeria needs at the moment since there’s still a lot of poverty in the country. About his revelation of the political fraud, I think he has done the right thing. Even though this action had a lot of consequences for him. He fought for justice and that’s something what’s worth fighting for. Nigeria needs those people, people who dare to stand up for their rights, who protect the country and its inhabitants, who are new and innovative. I saw a lot of poverty there, but it's remarkable that people are still laughing all the time. They appreciate the little things, things we don’t even see anymore. As you can clearly see in the movie they aren’t used to some things that we see as ‘natural’, for example a video camera. When Ribadu arrives, a video camera records everything that happens and how people react. In that moment you can see that they are impressed about what’s happening and they’re all trying to be a part of it. Their culture is so different from ours. It made me think about the little things in life and about the fact that we, in Belgium, are arguing about stupid political issues while there are countries with bigger problems who are just trying to make the best of it.

I’ll leave Nigeria with a big smile. It’s infectious, trust me!
I’ll talk to you soon, when I’m on my next “blogpoint”!

Bye!

This is the video I was talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iggr_cIwrJU

Kimberly Pauwels