The Rich List

"The generation before mine, looted my inheritance and forced me to work in another country, where less qualified people get better jobs than my country folks because of the colour of their skins, of course I am not bitter, why should I be"

my cousin wrote this email and sent it to me and a couple of his friends, i'm posting it here as it touches on issues that affects all Nigerians/Africans.

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To some of you who have been asking me about investment ideas, this is where I get things of my chest. If you are of nervous disposition, this is where you should stop reading.

I read with interest the list of the richest people in the UK, guess what!, not a single African. There was even an Asian list. We know there are several Africans who have looted their national treasuries and are probably as rich as hell, obviously those of ill forgotten funds cannot be counted.

So, to my real reason for writing this, why are we not making money in the UK?.

1) We don't have the capital or the number of people to support our ventures
2) We never come together as there are too many 419ers amongst us. Like the people at home, several of us would rather steal from their friends than work honestly for their money, the result, we don't get anywhere at all.
3) We spend most of our time having great parties, without any plans for the future.
4) Unlike the other groups in the UK, we are completely divided and we will rather do our own little things, which normally gets us no where. If you are one of those ˜buy to let" entrepreneurs, before you start writing to me about how wrong I am, please take a few minutes to consider your options. If you are doing so well why are the banks making record profits?.

For some of you interested in properties, have you tried to buy abandoned or struggling hotels, old schools, a warehouses or public houses for conversion. These are property investments outside the reach of most people, but by coming together you can convert these buildings into apartments. Look at the scenario, a 200 bed former hospital on 80 acres of land, costing £2m, look at the potential when you convert a property like this, with land in short supply, you can convert the property into apartments, and use the land to build on, but you ask me how many people have £2m to burn, definitely not one of us, as individuals, but can you imagine if several of you come together and buy shares in a company, buy the building, renovate, sell some of the apartments, let out others, use the money to convert even more. Amongst us are probably the best brains money can buy, but yet divided we will get nowhere, together though, we are a formidable force.
Unless you can rent rooms in a house, its now difficult to make money from property in the UK.

I know some of you will want to rush off and start on this idea, e-mail me and I will advise you on what to do. I am doing same with a few of my friends, there are enough properties to go round. There are pubs and hotels in distress and there are so many "first time buyers" looking for cheap and affordable houses.

Several of you have attended all the start up business courses on "how to make money from no deposit" property deals. Please spare me the details, if you have money to waste, please continue to attend those courses, if those ideas are so good do you think they will be selling them to you. Can you imagine Richard Bronson or even the Donald Trump trying to tell you how to make money from business or properties?.

Don't even get me going about Franchising, I have analysed so many business plans, your chances of making money on several of them are so slim, the camel and the eye of the needle come to mind.

The only way to make serious money is hard work, nobody will make money and then give it to you. Its just not going to happen, mate. So my advise, get together with people you trust. There is no point in trying to make money by ripping people off, you will end up in jail. There is a lot of money to be made, save well, work together, and most importantly don't get ripped off, even legitimately.

The best business at the moment for Africans is in churches, its legitimate and the church ministers have flashy cars and justify everything about how you need to pay 10% of your earning to support their expensive life styles. The 10% in the bible was before the introduction of the current tax systems.


Your next question to me is why the heck are you doing this?. I hasten to say, I dislike people who take advantage of other people, whether a church minister, a government worker, the plumber who charges £300 for half a day's job or people selling "how to get rich quickly ideas".
If you think I am bitter, of course not. Due to some idiots back in my country, I and several of my country men and women and their children are languishing in strange countries as second class citizens, toiling away for pennies, doing menial jobs and getting insulted in the process. Should I be bitter?, of course not. The generation before mine, looted my inheritance and forced me to work in another country, where less qualified people get better jobs than my country folks because of the colour of their skins, of course I am not bitter, why should I be, our kids are now strangers to their own land and like the Israelites will continue to dream of the land of milk and honey. I don't want any e-mail from you IT consultants, doctors and dentists on £1000 a day telling me how rich you are, but I do want to hear from people who should have been on the rich list i.e worth £60m.

For anybody with Investment ideas, from buying a pub, properties, new business, franchising, tax etc I will analyse it for you, free. You may not like what I tell you, but i will give my honest opinion.

If you or your parents are one of the looters in Nigeria, please don't even try and contact me, it will get my blood boiling, same for 419ers.

My mission in life, is to make sure that we have one genuine African on the list of the 1000th richest people in the UK by 2010, at which point only people with £100m will be eligible. I am just tired of people telling me that if Nigerians are so dynamic, smart and hardworking why are they not on the "bloody list". Roller-skate ready and 4 years to go.


Signed

Ade
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Quote: "Money is called currency, because it is designed to flow through you. Money doesn't change you; it only reveals who you truly are." ~ Anon

get involved by sponsoring an African child today:
http://www.plan-uk.org/wherewework/westafrica/

Hey Abbott Pt 3 (a rejoinder from Ms Abbott)

Ms Abbott responds...

see previous posts
Hey Abbott
Hey Abbott Pt 2

DIANE ABBOTT
Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington
HOUSE OF COMMONS, LONDON SW1A 0AA

24 Answering Service: (020) 7219 3000 Parliamentary Telephone: (020) 7219 4426
E-mail address: drejerc@parliament.uk Parliamentary Facsimile: (020) 7219 4964



18 May 2006


You contacted me about an article I wrote for a Jamaican newspaper about Nigeria. First let me apologise for taking so long to respond. We had local elections in Hackney at the beginning of this month and the campaign took up a great deal of my time.

Obviously I am sorry if my article caused offence. That certainly was not my intention. I realise that the title was quite provocative. But you will appreciate that I am not personally responsible for that.

But I am a little baffled by the response to the article. I wrote it after my second visit to Nigeria in the past six months. In preparation for both those visits I read widely about Nigeria. The issues that I raised in my article were: the fragility of Nigeria's democracy, corruption, religious strife in the North and the tragic situation in the Niger Delta due to oil pollution and the activities of Shell and other oil companies. And I know from my reading and research that these issues have been written about extensively by politicians, academics and journalists. Some of the judgements I have read from serious political scientists have been much harsher on Nigeria than anything in my article. So I could not have expected that, by merely discussing these issues, I would have excited the vitriolic response that I did.

Many people have taken offence at the comparison with Jamaica and speculated as to why I did not mention Jamaica's own serious problems with crime and violence. But the article is just one column from the regular weekly columns that I write for the paper. In other columns I have discussed at length Jamaica's own problems. The comparison with Jamaica was not meant to be slighting to Nigeria, but merely to engage the interest of Jamaican readers.

One of the issues that I raised was the attempt to alter the constitution to allow President Obasanjo to serve a third term. This was raised with me everywhere I went in Nigeria. After all my discussions I came to the conclusion that this would have undermined democracy in Nigeria so I was pleased to see that the Senate has voted the proposal down. But I do not see how it helps those struggling in Nigeria on this, and other human rights issues, to pour abuse on anyone who tries to discuss them.

The most important thing is that I was criticising the Nigerian government and multi-national corporations, I was not attacking the ordinary people of Nigeria.

I am disturbed by how quickly some of my correspondents have assumed that I am anti-Nigerian and responded with an anti-Jamaican diatribe. I have been a political activist in Britain for thirty years. Everybody who knows me understands that the last thing that I am is anti-African.

However I have had some supportive letters from Nigerians. One of them quoted from the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. I will leave you with this quote that comes from his novel "The Trouble with Nigeria"

"Quite clearly, patriotism is not going to be easy or comfortable in a country as badly run as Nigeria is. And this is not made any easier by the fact that no matter how badly a country may be run, there will always be some people whose personal, selfish interests are, in the short term at least, well served by the mismanagement and the social inequities…. Naturally, they will be extremely loud in their adulation of the country and its system and will be anxious to pass themselves off as patriots and to vilify those who disagree with them as troublemakers or even traitors. But doomed is the nation which permits such people to define patriotism for it"

With all best wishes


Diane Abbott MP
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No wonder Ms Abbott is concerned even The Guardian has an article about it and an interesting quote from moi

"Another British Nigerian, in south London, wrote: 'We intend to mobilise and inform Nigerians in her constituency that she only represents the interests of "Jamaicans" and not of other nationalities."

'Think Jamaica is bad? Try Nigeria ... ' How Diane Abbott enraged a community
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1774633,00.html


Quote: "Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." ~ Harvey Fierstein

get involved by sponsoring an African child today:
http://www.plan-uk.org/wherewework/westafrica/

i'm lovin it

I'm lovin it

I'm talking about Youtube Its like Napster in 99 before it went all 'legal'.
In the last few weeks i've had the opportunity of seeing music videos i haven't seen in years. Shalamar's a night to remember, Kurtis Blow's Basketball, Klymaxx's meeting in the ladies room and Malcolm Mclaren's buffalo girls.

Watching these videos from way back reminds me of how much of a TV addict i was in the 80s. I think i was permanently glued to NTA2 Channel 5 and LWT (Lagos weekend TV, you couldn't touch this station when it came to showing pirated stuff ; ))

I know i'm probably going to come across like an old timer but i have to say the 80s was the best decade ever !!

Interesting Times (in Nigeria)

old Chinese saying (or curse?)
"May you live in interesting times”

I've been trying to stop myself from blogging about the whole third term brouhaha in Naija. Its not that i'm not concerned about the current events in the country, its just that to be honest i'm just bored, fed up, don't care, don't give a shit etc.
I'm kind of at that point where i'll rather just face the important things in my life than read about the shit happening in naija.

But you couldn't keep me away from naija news, so i had to laugh when i read the news story about the presidency revoking AIT's licence
Presidency revokes AIT's network licence
http://odili.net/news/source/2006/may/10/600.html

Senator Uche Chukwumerije on Tuesday said the Presidency has cancelled the Network Licence of Africa Independent Television (AIT) and has issued a 21-day ultimatum to the television station to vacate its Asokoro office in Abuja.

Addressing reporters at the end of debate on general principles of the amendment of the 1999 Constitution, Chukwumerije, who is Leader of the 2007 Movement said the cancellation is part of efforts to frustrate the ongoing debate in the senate over tenure extension.
He confirmed that an ultimatum had already been given to AIT to vacate its the Abuja office.

Chukwumerije also raised an alarm over a plot to remove Senate President Ken Nnamani over his insistence on following the rules in the course of the on-going debate.

Said Chukwumerije: "The 2007 Movement is outraged by the evident determination of the Presidency to violate all rules, reduce and contract our democratic space in order to get its immediate partisan goal of elongating its tenure of office. In the last two weeks, the Presidency has intensified violation of citizens' rights to freedom of speech and association through three-pronged attacks.

Even Shakespeare couldn't come up with the tragicomedy going on in Naija today. When the likes of Chukwumerije become democrats fighting against dictatorship, you gotta laugh. Unless i'm wrong he used to be IBB's mouthpiece or was it Abacha's, many moons ago. As information minister the guy was a complete joke, even worse than the former iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf AKA Comical Ali

but i digress
The issue in naija today is still the same as always, those who want to hold on to power or influence if the dictator stays on and those who will lose out if that happens.
Political alliances change so fast in Naija that i won't be surprised if Atiku changes his mind and then decides to support OBJ for a third term in the "interest of peace"

There's a cancer growing in that country and we need some serious chemotherapy (social revolution to get rid of the political idiots in power) to deal with it. I don't give a damn about third term, as long as we have the usual recycled politicians leading the country we're not going anywhere..

enough said

Labour in meltdown

Yesterday's local election was the perfect opportunity for the electorate to give labour a bloody nose. The Labour party lost over 200 seats (mostly to the Conservatives). My ward which had been predominantly labour is now tory.

I'm really surprised at the turn of events, i thought it was about local issues but it has somewhat turned into a referendum on the performance of the current government.

In my ward the conservative councillors hardly campaigned, it was the incumbent labour councillors that were running around, going from house to house, sending out fliers etc, and they still lost.

The political landscape is definitely changing, the British National Party is making inroads in London, winning 11 seats in Barking. While the conservatives (under new leader David Cameron) are back in favour after a decade out in the political wilderness.
People are really pissed off with the Labour government and even though they voted them back in at the national elections last year, the electorate was prepared to punish them at the local level this time around.

hey Abbott (part 2)

previous post: Hey abbott
got an interesting letter today, it seems the jamaican observer published the email i sent in response to Diane Abbott's article Think Jamaica is bad? Try Nigeria

Which explains why i got a letter from some anonymous fool called Sogey. I won't be surprised if this 'Sogey' person is an assistant to Ms Abbott. Since she wrote the article she has kept a very low profile (i wonder why..)

Anyway this guy 'Sogey' sent me a two page letter on how "great" Jamaica is (yawn) but was too much of a coward to reveal his identity or details so i could respond.

Black youth's murder treated as race crime

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1761425,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1764165,00.html
Police investigating the murder of a black teenager in Kent said yesterday they were treating the attack as racially motivated. Christopher Alaneme, 19, described as a "popular young man with lots of friends", was stabbed to death in an apparently unprovoked attack as he walked along Sheerness High Street just before midnight on Friday.
SNIP
Mr Alaneme, whose family is of Nigerian origin, was from London but had been living in Sheerness. His murder occurred on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, south-east London.

I hope the police find the killers and hopefully it doesn't end up like the Damilola Taylor case
........................

face v Baker: No more 'sweet love'

It's strange when two of your favourite artists sue each other. Apparently Babyface is suing Anita Baker (story here)
The man behind some of the biggest love songs of the late 80s and 90s, recently divorced his wife (which explains why his current CD 'Grown and Sexy' has a song called 'goin outta business')
but i digress
I really hope 'face and anita sort this out soon, we need them doing what they do best, providing great music.