Niger Africa
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NIGER Republic, Africa NIGERIEN 100mm(4″) Sticker $5.22 |
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NIGER 1985 EUROPA – AFRICA block of 4 MNH SPACE TRAINS PLANES $5.50 |
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STAMP STAMPS. NIGER , NIGERIA, AFRICA WORLDWIDE MNH $0.99 |
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Map card Niger Warriors Camel Africa 30s $11.50 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $12.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $4.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $17.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $10.99 |
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NIGER COUNTRY Africa Car Truck Boat Laptop Surf Vinyl Decal Window Sticker Q212 $13.99 |
Tapping Youth Potential For Enterprise Revolution – A Niger Delta Perspective
The resulting Niger Delta Job Creation and Conflict Prevention Initiative was aimed at improving peace and security in the country by empowering youths with skills relevant to local exigencies. The first three-year phase of the programme entailed the training of 300 youths, at a cost of $2.4 million, for direct private sector jobs or self employment opportunities. Although restricted in terms of initial scope and outlay, the arrangement offered a desperately needed win-win situation for the Nigerian economy at large and for youths and the private sector in particular.
The volatile Niger Delta region – a network of shallow creeks leading to the Gulf of Guinea – is both the greatest boon and bane for the national economy, and the undisputed hotbed of militant activity in all of Western Africa. The discovery of vast hydrocarbon reserves in the area and the subsequent oil boom of the 1970s resulted in widespread destruction of agriculture, together with extensive displacement of rural communities from fertile lands without adequate compensation.
The genesis of conflict and militancy in the Niger Delta goes back to youth restiveness in the early years of the country’s independence, which precipitated a perception of injustices surrounding the distribution of oil wealth. A secondary cause was severe environmental pollution from oil explorations that devastated the local ecology and rendered vast swathes of territory along the Gulf of Guinea uncultivable. Together, these causes transformed fledgling community conflicts in the Delta region (rife throughout military rule between 1983 and 1999) into hardcore criminal activities by the turn of the last century. Against all expectations, the return of democratic governance only served to further proliferate and deepen the crisis.
While Nigeria’s aptly termed “petro-violence” is read by many as a just fight against repressive practices of the federal government and western oil companies, there is little debate over the magnitude of its impact on national fortunes. Bombings, kidnappings and oilfield raids continue to cause an estimated $1 billion in monthly oil revenue losses, according to the Nigerian Central Bank1. Mounting attacks on the oil infrastructure over the past few years have restricted production to 66% of the installed capacity of 3 million barrels per day. In fact, international observers point out a direct link between these developments and the record high of $150 a barrel that oil prices touched last year.
Understandably therefore, there are considerable global and regional implications surrounding Abuja’s attempts to halt the violence through state intervention and peace initiatives. The most recent and remarkable of such efforts has been the unconditional amnesty for all Niger Delta militants offered by President UM Yar’Adua last year. Unfortunately, just days after the announcement, rebels loyal to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) brazenly seized and destroyed a major oil distribution centre in the first ever assault of its kind on Lagos, the country’s economic capital.
The clear message emanating out of this and similar incidents hence is that an amnesty offer, however well intended, is not enough to resolve a long-standing crisis of huge complexity. Even though some militia commanders have signalled their intent to surrender, the stakes for Abuja are much higher than a breakdown of the law-and-order situation alone. The country’s Central Bank is unequivocally direct in its opinion that growth in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest economy is critically dependent on containing unrest in the Niger Delta.
Even so, well over 40 million Nigerians continue to be jobless2 despite the recently announced figure of 29%. Unemployment, however, is only one of many reasons behind youth unrest across the country and in the Delta region in particular. Others include:
* Lack of economic support activities and training programmes.
* Marginal youth participation in community decision making.
* Administrative failure, official negligence and corruption.
* Insufficient humanitarian and social welfare initiatives.
* High cost of living and failure to meet basic needs.
* Lack of education, socio-political empowerment and self esteem.
* Drug abuse and violence; inadequate recreational facilities.
* Problems of good governance in the Niger Delta
* Over exposure to negative western cultures
* Over exposure to the culture of greed
* Ethnicity and lack of National consciousness
Over the past decade, militants have abducted hundreds of foreign workers employed in the Niger Delta, forcing oil, telecom and construction companies to declare force majeure on multiple ongoing contracts and withdraw non-essential staff from vital installations. The security situation growing out of area is now a major deterrent to new investment, and not just in the oil sector or in the Delta. The larger repercussion of the Delta crisis has been on Abuja’s efforts to achieve rapid and sustainable development through enterprise revolution. Clearly, that effort faces its biggest challenge in the escalating petro-violence.
Past initiatives in this regard, like the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), could only accomplish limited success in the areas of youth development and conflict resolution, largely due to bureaucratic inefficiency, inconsistent policies and the absence of regulatory frameworks. Because of its complex geopolitical and economic history, youth empowerment in Nigeria demands a holistic approach focussed on certain key issues:
* Overhaul of the education system with specific emphasis on skills development and vocational training.
* Provision of meaningful employment and occupational avenues that are consistent with local realities.
* Administrative reforms that focus on transparency and accountability in youth policy implementation.
* Rehabilitation programmes that successfully wean away militants from violence and into economically productive endeavours.
* Instilling attitudes of national pride among the youth through creatively designed outreach programmes.
* Promoting extensive youth entrepreneurship by means of financial concessions, technical assistance and grants-in-aid.
* Safety-net social policies that persuade the coming generation of Nigerian youth away from crime and violence.
* In the contest of Nigeria’s troubled past, maintaining political stability and authority of democratic institutions are critical to the success of any worthwhile youth revival initiative
* Effective poverty alleviation programmes that focus on enterprise development as a viable means to legitimate prosperity. Mobilization of the youth workforce to promote rapid entrepreneurial development in rural and urban areas alike.
* Improvement in per capita income, standard of living and related human development indices through implementation of informed social and economic policy changes
Much as entrepreneurial development is central to the theme of national revival, so is peace in the Niger Delta region. President Yaradua’s amnesty offer in fact expressly cites that many Niger Delta militants are “able-bodied youths whose energies could be harnessed for the development of the nation at large.” To develop a nation of entrepreneurs, there must be a multi-sectoral, multi-level and multi-phase undertaking that begins with a collective resolve to get out of the old mould of doing things. We need passionate promoters of the entrepreneurial spirit that can inspire an entrepreneurial revolution in Nigeria and even Africa in totality. Hence, a radical and coordinated attempt to accelerate wealth creation through the promotion of innovative business practices. This acknowledgement is a standing testament of the fact that Nigeria’s long-term goals are unachievable without the whole-hearted participation of its sizeable youth population, even those who insist on holding on to their guns for now!
About the Author
Peter Osalor is a multi-skilled director, chairman of trusts, proprietor and consultant. Peter Osalor has been a successful entrepreneur since 1992 when he formed Peter Osalor & Co and which has since grown to a very large client base with a turnover of millions. He is currently a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Nigeria (ICAN). Peter is also a member of the Chartered Tax Advisors and the Chartered Institute of Taxation in Nigeria (CITN).
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UN confirms massive oil pollution in Niger Delta