Nigeria’s varying policies may not be helping young people. Indeed, it is really strange news that Zamfara State owes the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) N1.6 billion as examination fees for students sponsored by the state for WAEC exams. WAEC’s tactic to recover the money is unfortunate: withhold the results until the students’ government pay.

Why it is a revelation that one could write WAEC on debt (never knew that was possible), WAEC should not punish these students. Rather, it has to get a “post-dated” cheque from the state so that the next allocation from Abuja is deducted for WAEC until the debt is fully settled.

Simply, punishing the students by withholding the results is not fair since WAEC willingly entered into this strange arrangement with the state government. So, WAEC must return back to Zamfara and the other 7 states and retake the exams on debt collection. Right now, it has an F9 but it can retry for a possible P8!

But the students should not be penalized as  some may be getting ready to enroll into universities only to be told that their WAEC  results cannot be released because some politicians did not do their jobs. That said, the ex-governor who under his supervision   “Zamfara did not present any candidate for this year’s WASSCE” should not be appointed a minister of education since he made the current ministerial list in Nigeria. Keep him away from education, please.

Zamfara State Government has explained the reasons the N1.6 billion debt owed to the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) cannot be paid immediately.

WAEC had on Monday announced that the government of eight states in Nigeria have unpaid debts from registration fees of candidates they willingly sponsored to take part in its examination over some years.

The Head of Nigeria’s Office of WAEC, Patrick Areghan, while addressing a briefing to announce the release of the results of the 2023 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates, disclosed that candidates from eight states owing the examination body will not be able to access their results until the states pay up.

Though Mr Areghan did not reveal the identities of all the indebted states, he noted that “Zamfara and Niger states are the highest debtors.”

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Comment 1: This has been a political strategy by past and present governors, where they boast and even include in their record of achievements, that they made education free including WAEC exams for their people.

In the early 2000s, when this strategy came about, WAEC repaid the schools that owed them with a WHOOPING OUTSTANDING SERIAL F9s to almost 97% of the students.

It was SPECTACULAR to behold then because ICT had not progressed like today as WAEC results were pasted on the school notice board for all your juniors to view and laugh their ‘OLODO’ seniors to scorn.

Broadsheets of F9s littered the whole board.

It is a shame that politicians use this as a strategy to score cheap political points. And it is more shameful that WAEC has allowed themselves to be scammed all these years just for favoritism with politicians.

Comment 2:Imagine what that ex-governor will do as a minister? We are reaping the harvest of cronyism and corruption on a massive scale. I just hope the student will not have to wait for too long before this is resolved.

Comment 3: It is really agonizing seeing how education is treated with such disdain. WAEC should cancel the arrangement of taking examination on credit. Our politicians are oftentimes irresponsible. If you ask the governor, he will tell you that the problem didn’t start with his government but can’t his government make sure that it does not create more problems? As you have said the debt should be taken from their federal allocation in installments. Punishing the students by not releasing the results to them is not fair. The government that promised to pay should be made to honour her word.

Comment 4: On the other hand, I think we should shine our torchlight more on the quality of education in Northern Nigeria especially the core areas. The deep poverty level in the north is just a reflection of the Educational system…and this loophole is a major setback for the nation at large, as some microscopic few continue to exploit their vulnerabilities and gullibility due to lack of basic education. Beyond WAEC what steps do we need to take to ensure quality and relevant learnings in Northern Nigeria?omment 5:

In the semiconductor industry, the most important and strategic company is Taiwan’s TSMC. TSMC is a contract chip manufacturer and its position in the global economy is huge. Samsung Electronics is also vital, but of course TSMC has a larger volume. As a global lead ASIC designer while in Analog Devices, I knew the destination: craft the silicon, and send the fabrication  files to Taiwan, and wait for days for that microchip to arrive. 

But to craft that silicon, you need another important company: Cadence, a computer aided design (CAD) tool, from a US company. In top US universities,  students are introduced to this CAD tool for designing integrated circuits, because the chip industry runs on it. Yes,  in the industry, that is what everyone uses to design the most complex chips in the world. So, mastering Cadence is a prerequisite for design jobs.

You have the design but no one can make it in Taiwan or anywhere without ASML equipment. Netherlands-based  ASML makes the world’s most advanced lithography tools which are used in foundries, as you turn wafer (born silica, a special sand!) into the most intelligent device species in the world.

These three companies – TSMC, Cadence and ASML – control our modern economy because without them, we will not have the advancements we are experiencing in the knowledge economy.  In that knowledge economy, we have companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Baidu, etc.

 Fascinatingly, these downstream players (yes, they feed on the powers of those three, which are the upstream players), are bringing new ordinances in the market through AI. One company, Nvidia, is the connecting layer between the downstream and the upstream, and has an unrivaled  position in the market today.  Nvidia was worth about $350 billion in Jan 2023; today, it is worth more than $1 trillion!

Understanding that Nvidia holds the ace, some Chinese internet companies are buying as many chips Nvidia can make: “China’s internet giants are rushing to acquire high-performance Nvidia chips vital for building generative artificial intelligence systems, making orders worth $5 billion in a buying frenzy fueled by fears the U.S. will impose new export controls.”

Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba have made orders worth $1 billion to acquire about 100,000 A800 processors from the U.S. chipmaker to be delivered this year, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The Chinese groups had also purchased a further $4 billion worth of the graphics processing units to be delivered in 2024, two people close to Nvidia said.

Cadence, ASML and TSMC are the real upstream which are fundamental to the midstream companies like Analog Devices, Nvidia, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm. But we know the downstream ones like Apple, Baidu, Tencent, Google and Microsoft. Because of AI, Nvidia has redefined the order with its AI chips and the network link for parallel computing.

If the AI optimism does not experience a bust, Nvidia will have an enormous impact in the future of industries through its technologies.

Update: these firms may be putting these orders to beat the new US sanctions.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order late Wednesday blocking and regulating some U.S. high-tech investments in China. The order — which comes after nearly two years of deliberations and anticipation from the business community — is targeted at advanced computer chips, micro electronics, quantum information technologies and artificial intelligence. While the details have yet to be released, the new terms, which won’t take effect until next year, may exempt passive investments and those in publicly-traded securities and index funds, Bloomberg reports. The order aims to deny China the “know-how, market access and other benefits” from U.S. venture-capital and private-equity investments and may discourage American companies doing business in China, notes The Wall Street Journal. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said early Thursday that it has “serious concern” about the order and “reserves the right to take measures.”

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Comment 1: Thanks Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe for the seamless connection that you made between these companies as this now makes so much sense as to this whole sector of Graphics processing, ASIC manufacturing and FPGAs altogether. I have long studied these companies for a while watching Bloomberg and CNBC’s analysis on them but the points you made connected them better. Such an eye-opener!

It’s really quite sensational and amusing that a company that struggled to be born in 1993 rivalling companies like Intel to be worth $1Trillion now is just another level of crazy. This same company even struggled to find their way into the smartphone industry with its #TegraChip now used by Amazon for their warehouses and now somehow without them knowing the #CUDAKit coupled with #A100 and #TeslaP100 used to power #ChatGPT made the deal for them.

Thumbs up to #CEOHuang and his resilience. I really admire him so much alongside #ElonMusk cause these men have taken “Impossible dreams and made them a reality” much like I am working hard to do.

I had a good laugh reading Francis Oguaju’s comment: “We are struggling to resolve food, water and electricity supply”. Let’s just not go there because I don’t know how we will ever transition there but Godspeed!!!