In the Ovim community, there are two key axioms everyone grows up with: 

(1) aka ojoo gara na-nnu agwo gbakwaya” [ any bad hand that enters into the rabbit warren, may the snake bite him or her].

(2) nkparuri egwu la mu [as I work and pursue legal ways to earn a living, I will not die on it]

These two axioms are connected: you are expected to work hard to earn a living – but in that process, if you do evil while in that process, you should expect to be consumed. 

That takes me to what Elom Musk is doing to Twitter workers. Yes, while he has the right to push for higher productivity, he needs to respect the dignity of work. Earning a living in Twitter is an honuorable thing. Somehow needs to tell Musk that. These workers are humans and not “numbers” to be experimented with.

Read his latest memo.

“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore.

“This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade. Twitter will also be much more engineering-driven.

“Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway. At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense.

“If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below:[Google form link] Anyone who has not done so by 5 pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance. Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful.”

That memo is degrading but I understand to earn a living, men and women have limited options in this firing age. But that does not mean Musk must not be cautioned!

He can achieve his points without making work look like “0” and “1”. Running a social media is largely within social science and not the same as building cars and rockets (natural philosophy). What that means is that things are not that easy for social media firms because uncertainties are unbounded!

Updated: After I wrote the piece, LinkedIn News reported as follows.

So many Twitter employees took Elon Musk up on his offer of three weeks’ severance — rather than commit to “hardcore” work by a 5 p.m. ET deadline Thursday — that the new CEO was left scrambling to retain workers, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources. In somewhat of an about-face email to staff, Musk said flexible options would now be available. Early reports suggest it wasn’t enough, however, with The New York Times saying “hundreds” left the company. Employees were signing off internal channels with salute emojis, which became the symbol for “I quit.” Sources tell Bloomberg Twitter would undoubtedly “have trouble fixing problems or updating systems during its normal operations.”

Comment on Feed

Comment: Well, that’s how Elon has been running his companies and his the world’s richest man. So, maybe sir, you’re the one that needs to be spoken to. By the way, Elon Musk himself is a workaholic, there is nothing wrong if he demands the same kind of energy from his employees.

My Response: There is nothing he is doing that others do not do. But in life, there is always a space for decency and respect. That you can hire someone and pay him does not mean he has no rights to decency. Think about him, a professor has you as a PhD student in his lab. First day, he fires you. Second week, he recalls you. Next week, he asks you to check a button if you want to stay or not. Next day, he comes back, you are fired. That he is your professor does not mean he is your lord. You cannot fire and re-hire someone 3 times in a month. That is not how it works.

Another commenter on my response: I completely agreed with you on this Prof. He needs to take a well-rounded decision but not in this haphazard manner. Human beings are resources with dignity and should not be used for experimentation and guess estimations

Comment 2: Prof ,until you have 200Billion USD in equity or cash,I’d prefer Elon Musk’s approach.

My Response: I understand your feelings. It was like that until one day I sat on the same table and ate lunch with Bill Gates. By the time we finished that first meeting, I knew something: the best liberation is not thinking of the size of your pockets day and night. Why? If you do crazy things because you have a big bank account and can do whatever you want, you will become miserable. Elon can afford to fire, hire, fire, etc because for him, it is all money. But check over time, he will grow wiser to see beyond $$$. 

When that happens, he will look for how to give out most of the money so that he can feel better. I am not sure he will be Twitter boss in 6 months because he will feel empty at night despite the increasing digits in the bank. Go for it….but as a teacher, I have no chance.

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk said he will soon be replaced in his role as the CEO of the social media company, shifting his focus on his electric vehicle company Tesla.

Musk is making organizational changes that he believes will transform the social media platform. Since he completed the company’s acquisition late last month, the world richest man has sacked more than half of Twitter’s 7,000 workforce, raising questions about the sustainability of the country.

But Musk said on Wednesday he expected to reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company. He added that he hoped to complete an organizational restructuring this week.

Musk made the remarks while testifying in a Delaware court to defend against claims that his $56 billion pay package at Tesla was based on easy to achieve performance targets and was approved by a compliant board of directors, per Reuters.

Twitter has been greeted with a lot of controversies following the changes introduced to the company by Musk. The changes, which include the controversial introduction of the $8 verification check, have questioned Musk’s ability to run the company.

But Musk said in a tweet that he will continue to run Twitter until it is in a strong place, though it will “take some time.” His tweet came after former CEO Jack Dorsey said that he will not accept the role of Twitter CEO, in a response to a Twitter user who asked if he would take the position of CEO.

Musk earlier admitted that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months but promised that “we will keep what works & change what doesn’t.”

Musk is spending a lot of time on Twitter trying to implement the changes that will make the platform what he wants it to be. Earlier this week, he sent a late-night internal email to Twitter employees, demanding that they sign up to “extremely hardcore” work, which will keep them at the office most of the time, or walk away with their three months’ severance package.

“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” Musk wrote in the memo. “This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

However, his commitment to Twitter’s success is increasingly becoming a challenge to Tesla and the electric vehicle’s investors are getting worried that it will affect the growth of the company.

Tesla has been a big victim of Musk’s Twitter adventure. The leading EV company lost more than $400 billion following the controversy that rocked Musk’s bid to acquire Twitter. He said he will cut his time at the social media company as soon as the initial workload reduces.

“There’s an initial burst of activity needed post-acquisition to reorganize the company,” Musk said in his testimony. “But then I expect to reduce my time at Twitter.”

Amidst Nigeria’s increasing public debt profile, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has once again decried the country’s fuel subsidy.

The Minister, describing the government’s borrowing to pay for fuel subsidy as ‘double jeopardy’, said the federal government is determined to end it this time. She said this on Tuesday during a press conference to mark the end of the 28th National Economic Summit in Abuja.

The federal government had earlier this year announced that it plans to end the subsidy by June 2023, which will run into the coming government.

The debate around the removal of the subsidy has lingered for so long due to lack of political will by the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to do it.

The more it lingers, the more it consumes scarce resources, resulting in huge deficits in budget implementation and more public debt. The fuel subsidy gulped N2.565 trillion between January and August 2022. It also is expected to consume a large sum from the budget until mid-next year. According to the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, the Federal Government proposed to spend N3.3 trillion on fuel subsidies between January and June 2023.

The federal government’s lack of political will to remove the petroleum subsidy is masterminded by factors headed by opposition from labor unions and civil rights groups. This is because the government doesn’t have a clear-cut plan on how to cushion the effect of economic hardship the subsidy removal will unleash on the masses.

Though she said the removal of fuel subsidy is part of the FG’s medium-term plan in the budget, Ahmed also acknowledged that how to go about it poses a big challenge.

“First, we have to engage. We have already engaged with the states and the public before it was approved as part of the medium-term plan.

“We have to do it by systematically informing the citizens about the size and the quantum of the fuel subsidy. We also have to educate them about the opportunity cost of what we are unable to do because of the fuel subsidy,” she said.

Nigeria’s total public debt profile stood at N42.8 trillion as of June 2022, according to the latest report from the Debt Management Office. This does not include the N22 trillion from the central bank’s Ways and Means lending to the federal government. The minister said the fuel subsidy, in addition to the budget deficit, is putting enormous pressure on the “fiscals”, forcing the federal government to borrow more.

“It is not money that we have; it is money that we have to borrow to maintain the fuel subsidy.

“Some countries introduced subsidy during the COVID-19, and because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but they are using their money to fund such subsidy.

“In our case, we are borrowing to pay the subsidy; that is double jeopardy. It is something that has to stop. We are glad that majority of people in decision-making positions, including the political parties, have agreed that subsidy is not sustainable.”