JonnyWaka; first African traffic Mobile App

By Prince Osuagwu (Vanguard Newspaper)
Download; Google Play store | Blackberry App World

Necessity is the mother of invention. That could be a better way to describe new mobile developments in Nigeria today. Almost in quick successions, we have, for the past one year constantly featured Nigerians who invented innovative mobile applications, gadgets and devices out of the frustrations they have either experienced as Africans or observed being part of this continent.

From social media sites to mobile devices, apps and tabs, the list of Nigerians joining the history books seems to be unending.

Just as we were celebrating a bamboo tablet from a Nigerian inventor on this page last week, we were also awaken, almost immediately after, with the info of another Nigerian, Dele Oluwole who has made good use of the chaotic traffic situation in Africa,particularly Nigeria to create an app.

Why this app Although, Oluwole said he has not been parmanent in the country for the past ten years sourjouning Denmark, Great Britain and New Zealand, traffic reports bachome were however frustrating and immediately evoked the desire to think home. He created a mobile application called JonnyWaka 316, meant to help improve road user experience, safe, efficient road management and reduction of road hazards.

How it works

Developed for road users in Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Abuja in Nigeria, and also Accra roads in Ghana, Oluwole said JonnyWaka is a FREE mobile app to download. The app is specifically designed to help users avoid incidents like traffic jams, armed robbery, flood, among other road hazards.

Beneficiaries

available for download on Google Play Store and BB app world free

Apart from road users who can use this app to plan their day, it was also said to be designed to help authorities like Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corp, FRSC and the Nigerian police to monitor and report traffic situations, track road crimes and armed robberies.

The app also gives road users who have downloaded it the opportunity to help the administrators upload traffic incidents like accidents, flood and armed robberies on the site.

With this, the Traffic Report screen is then updated automatically in less than 60 seconds for everyone to see and the incidents are then marked on the road, route, and map showing the precise locations.

There is also a provision on the app site, for users to take a shot of accident scenes and upload immediately to help people avoid those roads/routes.

Source; Vanguard Nigerian Newspaper

New classified adverts website for the Nigerian and UK markets: ww.Whitedrum.com

October 27, 2010 by Albert Njoku

www.whitedrum.com is a new entrant to the highly competitive classified adverts market in Nigeria. There are already a few big players in this area as seen on this earlier post. Initially focused on the Nigerian and UK markets, Whitedrum.com is a product of Deltek Solutions UK and Deltek Solutions Nigeria (two different companies). The motivation for the launch could be summarised in this quote from an email I received from the CEO, Dele Oluwole:

Nigeria is highly populated and we think the good people of Nigeria deserve much more than the classified advert websites we are seeing around today, so we have put in the best of our resources to come out with whitedrum. There are still many more web applications for the Nigerian online market in the pipeline. Our plan for the future is to become a globally preferred classified website as we have long-term plans for countries like Ireland, Canada, Ghana, Australia, etc.

Users can either log on to the Nigerian or UK version of the website via a menu option at the top left corner of the site. Adverts are then filtered accordingly. The Nigerian version groups adverts by the States and it was easy to locate information. Advert posting is free and users can upload up to 4 photos. Youtube videos are also allowed. Users have a private dashboard from where they can manage their adverts. At the moment, there are not much adverts since the site just launched.

Did I find any major problems on the site? Not really. There was no functional error as I was able to register, search for and find adverts easily. The only problem facing Deltek Solutions is how to raise awareness about the existence of the website. To this end, I saw they have implemented sharing options for facebook, twitter etc. The site's focus on the UK market as well means contending against industry giants like Loot, Gumtree and a myriad other small sites occupying smaller percentages of the market.

I was a bit overwhelmed by the many colours and graphics though. I kept wondering how this would affect speed. Given that adverts already would contain pictures, additional graphics decoration could come at the expense of speed of execution. I thought this but the site seemed to run pretty fast. (Why does every Nigerian website have to have massive shades of green everywhere?)

Another impressive addition was a geo-location feature for each advert showing the ad poster's location on a map. I have not seen this on any other of the Nigerian advert websites. Additional reassurance for would be buyers of advertised goods maybe :)

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The Rogue National Assembly Members

Nigerian National Assembly Member earns N15 Million (£60,000) PER MONTH
British Member of Parliament earns a little over £60, 000 A YEAR

Federal lawmakers’ pay unjustifiable – Balarabe Musa
By Mudiaga Affe
Thursday, 21 Oct 2010
The Chairman of the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, on Wednesday said the jumbo pay for the National Assembly members was unjustifiable.
Musa, who spoke on the telephone with our correspondent in Lagos, lamented the country’s mounting domestic debt and the depleting foreign reserve.
The CNPP chairman attributed the high domestic debt and the depleting foreign reserve to the jumbo pay of lawmakers and government’s mismanagement of public funds.
He said, “What members of the National Assembly collect is related to the misuse of the budget which has led to increase in domestic debts because what has been budgeted for the National Assembly is over spent.
“To keep the National Assembly under the control of the Executive, more money leading to increased domestic debt will have to be taken. Indirectly also, the foreign reserve could also be depleted to service some of these selfish agenda.
“It does not really make sense that a country which foreign reserve is depleting and local debt increasing will be servicing this kind of expensive National Assembly. The only reason they do this is because of the level of corruption in the system.”
Also, Chairman of the Osun State chapter of the Anti-Corruption Resolution, a volunteer group set up by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to monitor corruption in the grassroots, Chief Amitolu Shittu, said if the Federal Government remained insensitive to the high costs of maintaining the National Assembly, the country’s economy might collapse.
He said, “The problem is not unconnected with the amount we are using to service each member of the National Assembly that is too enormous. In the House of Representatives for instance, outside the principal officers whose allowances are bogus, each member gets at least N15m monthly. This system is bound to collapse the country’s economy.”
The Managing Director of the World Bank, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had during the 2010 World Bank/International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Washington DC, said Nigeria must curb its domestic debt to prevent unfavourable consequences.
Okonjo-Iweala, a former finance minister in Nigeria, who played a major role in the country‘s 2005 Paris Club debt relief deal, noted that the country‘s external debt was low enough at its current level.
The Debt Management Office said recently that Nigeria‘s total public debt had risen by 21 per cent in 2009 to $25.8bn, which represented 13.8 per cent of the country‘s Gross Domestic Product.

http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201010211442485

Nigerian senators highest paid in the world, yet they want more

Salary U.S. President: $250,000/yr. GDP U.S. Economy: $13Trillion/ yr.Allowance

Nigerian Senator: $1,500,000/yr. GDP Nig. Economy: $45 Billion/yr.

Now this is what a Nigerian senator earns

Basic Salary - N2, 484, 245.50.

Hardship Allowance @ 50% of Basic Salary - N1, 242,122.70 (Hardship?)
Consistuency allowance @ 200% of BS - N4, 968,509.00
Furniture Allowance @ 300% of BS - N7, 452,736.50
Newspaper allowance @ 50% - N1, 242,122.70 (Over a million naira for newspaper????)
Wardrobe allowance @ 25% - N621, 061.37 -Should Nigeria be responsible for clothing senators?
Recess Allowance@ 10%: - N248, 424.55
Accommodation @ 200% - N4, 968,509.00.
Utilities @ 30% - N828, 081.83.
Domestic Staff @ 35% - N863, 184.12.
Entertainment @ 30% - N828, 081.83.
Personal Assistance @ 25% - N621, 061.37.
Vehicle Maintenance Allowance @ 75% - N1, 863,184.12. (about £8,000 to maintain new cars)
Leave Allowance @10% - N248, 424.55. One off payments (As advised by Sagamite Severance Gratuity) @ 300% - N7, 452,736.50 (Once they get fired.)

Motor Vehicle Allowance @ 400% of BS - N9, 936,982.00 -
Every Four Years Senators Salary per month. - N2, 456,647.70
Total = N29, 479, 749.00 * 109 Senators Grand Total = N 3,264,329,264. 10

A feeding frenzy!!! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

And they want more. Doctors, teachers, civil servants can't boast of N1m a year and these guys want N30m every month

SAY NO TO THIS OPEN LOOTING OF NIGERIA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

God has permitted slavery for wise reasons

William Lloyd Garrison

We have power in our hands to save our generation and we do not use it. This is the supreme tragedy of our time. When I say that the apparently insoluble problems of today can be solved by religious faith, my conviction is based on no idle fancy or wishful hope, but upon the scientific fact that what has happened once can happen again. It has been done and therefore can be done. Consider an historical parallel.
In 1805 a man named William Lloyd Garrison was born. He grew to young manhood, and taking a straight look at human slavery said he did not like it. He said it was wrong and announced that he meant to destroy it. People laughed at such bumptiousness, and when they tired of laughing, they sneered and said Garrison was a fool.

They pointed out that slavery was a great mountain in human history, an ancient, firmly planted institution. It had existed from the dawn of civilization. The great empires of Egypt, Greece, and Rome had been built on slave labor. Single individuals owned as many as ten thousand slaves. The English uptaking world had long recognized slavery as a basic institution, blessed by religion. When the Peace of Utrecht was signed in 1713, which gave England a monopoly on the West African slave trade, the treaty was celebrated in Saint Paul's by the singing of a Te Deum written by the Christian composer Handel espe­cially for the occasion. In America slavery was likewise firmly established. In 1835 the governor of South Caro­lina declared: "Slavery is the cornerstone of our Re­publican edifice. Destroy slavery and you put a stop to all progress." The same principles were held in the North. A professor in Yale University said, "If Jesus Christ were now on earth, he would, under certain cir­cumstances, be a slave holder." In 1855 the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church declared, "God has permitted slavery for wise reasons." At the time of the Dred Scott decision most of the members of the Supreme Court were slaveholders. The law honored it, the Church blessed it, business profited by it, and the nation recognized and practiced it. It was a mountain, as granite is a mountain, and who could destroy it?

Garrison said he could. Garrison believed in God with the faith of a child. "I trust in God," he said, "that I may be his humble instrument of breaking at least one chain." He became the most hated man of his time. He was ostracized and burned in effigy, but he went up against the mountain. He was a man aflame. His biographer declares: "The continuousness of Garrison is appalling and fatigues even the retrospective imagination of posterity. He is like something let loose. I dread the din of him. I cover my head and fix my mind on other things; but there is Garrison, hammering away till he catches my eye and forces me to attend to him. If Garrison can do this to me, who am protected from dread of him by many years of intervening time, think how his lash must have fallen upon the thin skins of our ancestors. The source of Garrison's power," declares his biographer, "was the Bible. He read it constantly. It was with this fire that he started his conflagration."

So, armed with faith that nothing could daunt, Gar­rison rolled up his sleeves, took his little hammer of mustard-seed faith, and approached the great moun­tain of human slavery. He brought down his little hammer and a faint tingle was heard. The people laughed and booed and sneered. But Garrison brought it down again and again. Blow after blow fell until his little hammer became a great sledge, the reverberations of which could be heard throughout the land. As he beat with his faith upon the mountain, a crack began to show. It widened until the people shouted with a mighty voice, "Look, the mountain is breaking!"
The glorious, thrilling fact is that just fifty-eight years after Garrison was born, human slavery was out­lawed forever in the United States of America. It is an illustration of the shining truth that any mountain can be broken down by faith when men are completely surrendered to God. We can end war, depression, moral decadence, social injustice, and restore declining democracy if enough of us, like Garrison, will take seriously these words, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed . . . nothing shall be impossible unto you."

There is still another area where Christianity must give power to win in life if it is to measure up to the place we have assigned to it. It must help you and me as individuals to overcome ourselves. We have been discussing the method for solving the intensely per­plexing problems of society. It would perhaps be easier to accomplish that feat than to solve the intri­cate and complex personality of one man's own self. If you are like most of us, you are yourself the most difficult person with whom you will ever be forced to deal. Every man somehow must come to terms with himself. That is not easy of accomplishment. There is a perverse element in each of us, and in some it constitutes a real problem. Every right-thinking and normal person wishes his better nature to prevail. No man consciously wants to live life on a low or inferior spiritual level, but there is something in us that pre­vents us from being what we want to be. It is the fact that our whole nature has not been brought under God's control. There are still pagan areas within us. These unspiritualized elements of our lives get us into trouble.
- Norman Vincent Peale

....... the story of my country