I have written about this amazing Nigerian company named Okomu Oil Plc. It is neither a tech nor a bank, a major reason I respect what it has accomplished at a higher level. Yes, this company has provided a validation that wealth can be built via agriculture in Nigeria. And interestingly, investors like the dance steps the company is showing in the market.

Its market value continues to climb, outperforming the market index: “revenue grew by 63% to N20.49 billion from N12.55 billion in Q1 2021, just as profit after tax jumped by 80.2 per cent to N9.50 billion from N5.27 billion in the same period last year.”

When we talk of GDP, we are talking of the market value of total goods and services produced within a period, usually a year. It provides the aggregate of economic activities which are deployed in the production of goods and services over the period. 

 While oil gives us huge fat foreign bank accounts, the associated economic activities in the sector are limited. You do not need so many (diverse) activities to produce barrels of crude oil. But when you come to agriculture, you see massive activities making it possible that you can use one stone to kill two birds, especially if the agro-products can find export lanes.

Agriculture remains the largest component of our GDP; companies like Okomu Oil deserve to be used as case studies to demonstrate how a future can emerge, if we make agriculture a business, not just activities aligned with ancestral culture! Yes, I am farming because my ancestors farmed in this land even though you are creating more hunger doing it because of archaic practices at play.

Nigeria must make agriculture a business – Okomu Oil is showing how to do just that.

Okomo Oil, Nigeria’s biggest producer of crude palm oil and the second-biggest producer of rubber recently released its Q1 2022 three-month report, which shows it recorded revenue of N20.49 billion, the highest ever quarterly result by the company.

Data sourced from the NGX showed that the growth in revenue is driven by export sales due to the surge in CPO price influenced by the Russian/Ukraine crisis and sustained supply issues in the international market.

A further cursory view of the report shows that revenue grew by 63% to N20.49 billion from N12.55 billion in Q1 2021, just as profit after tax jumped by 80.2 per cent to N9.50 billion from N5.27 billion in the same period last year and thus earnings per share grew by 80 per cent to N9.96 from N5.53 in Q1 2021

Comment: Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso do not have nationwide political structures like their APC (Tinubu) and PDP (Atiku) counterparts. My Response below on why you should not discount Obi and Kwankwaso as technology has reduced information asymmetry [‘occurs when one party to a transaction has more or superior information compared to another’] which made local structures very potent.

This is not to say that structures are not important, my point is that disintermediation [“reduction in the use of intermediaries”] is evident, and general voters have access to more information about candidates now, to make decisions independently, out of the influence of political bundlers and brokers.

Technology will create disintermediation that old-style political structures may not matter that much since information asymmetry will be reduced as a result of the ubiquitous smartphones and mobile internet connectivity in Nigeria. Nigeria’s electoral market is becoming more perfect with reduction of information asymmetry (everyone gets the same info about candidates and can make decisions unlike in the past when people relied on emirs, obas, obis, village heads, etc to guide them). 

As digital systems penetrate, the influence of political brokers, bundlers, etc will fade, since those citizens now have access to the right info about candidates and make decisions.

Yes, you can have party chairmen in all local government areas. But if you do not have the message for the citizens, the chairman  will not stop them from learning about those with the right messages. In the pre-mobile internet age, those chairmen were the pipelines to reach the voters. They used their positions to influence how those voters vote. 

Today, do not count on those old-style structures. You can have them – very vital – but if you do not have the right message, you will struggle. It is like in football where some clubs have zone playbooks – defend in zones and attack in zones. You get a village head, and with him, you have cornered everyone in the village politically. Just like playing zone in football which does not guarantee wins, having those village heads when the citizens can get the information directly will cause a dislocation.

With your phone today, there is no information you cannot reach. Many Nigerians are getting the right info and they can independently make decisions. And they have the channels to also express those feelings, recruiting and influencing others, without just relying on what the pundits are telling them. So, a small party with the right message could be a threat because technology can create disintermediation to the old structures we have seen in Nigerian politics.

Of course, this does not mean that a contestant does not need to build the old structures. My point is that those structures will not win elections unless they come with great visions for Nigerians since mobile internet will help voters discover those with the right messages!

Obi, Oba, Emir, etc could influence in the past as custodians of info; today, the youth sabi wetin dey.

Comment on LinkedIn Feed

Comment: America, whose democracy we follow and whose people have the most mobile internet connectivity, in the world has never produced a president outside the two major political parties- Democrats and Republicans. Why is this so? The structures both parties have that are not available to anyone outside the two parties. Without structures that APC and PDP possess, no other party can win the presidential elections in our beloved Nigeria.

My Response: I think you are not doing a good comparison here. If I ask you the logo of Joe Biden’s party, you will struggle. They have attained near zero information asymmetry where you do not even need logos or emblems to know candidates. How do you know them? Their policies or what they stand for. So, it is personalized not “party-nized”.

That is what I am saying. Nigerians will begin to pay attention NOT to party but what the candidates offer them. Interestingly, minor parties in US have nothing new to exploit. But in Nigeria, there are still opportunities as we have not attained policy saturation or stable state in our evolving democracy.

{As late as 1930s, African Americans voted mainly Republican. Later, they moved Democratic as Democrats used voting rights, etc to attract them]

Mobile internet can move us from party to person. That is the message.

Bitcoin went crashing further on Monday below $24,000, hitting a 29-month low. The recent dip was spurred by sustained selloff of crypto assets by investors as it becomes clearer that bitcoin is not a hedge to inflation.

Bitcoin has been on a nosedive performance since mid-last year, following the pullout of Tesla from the frenzy by its major cheerleader Elon Musk. The electric vehicle manufacturer had opted out of using bitcoin as a means of payment due to concern about its carbon footprints, which is contrary to the gospel of cleaner energy that Tesla stands for. The crypto market’s predicament was exacerbated by China’s clampdown on everything crypto.

As a result, the crypto market has lost its glorious capitalization of $3 trillion, costing investors billions of dollars and forcing crypto companies to downsize and to limit their services.

Over the weekend and into Monday morning, more than $200 billion had been wiped off the entire cryptocurrency market. The cryptocurrency market capitalization fell below $1 trillion on Monday for the first time since February 2021, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Celsius, a crypto lending company has suspended withdrawals for its customers. “Due to extreme market conditions, today we are announcing that Celsius is pausing all withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts,” the company said in a memo to clients on Monday.

Crypto exchange company Crypto.com announced on Saturday that it is laying off 260 workers, 5% of its workforce. CEO Kris Marszalek said in a tweet that the Singapore-based exchange uses the approach to stay focused on executing against [its] roadmap and optimizing for profitability.

“That means making difficult and necessary decisions to ensure continued and sustainable growth for the long term by making targeted reductions of approximately 260 or 5% of our corporate workforce,” he added. The CEO did not specify when the layoffs would be happening.

Others have towed the same path. On June 2, Coinbase said it will freeze hiring and withdraw some job offers. On the same day, Gemini said it was going to cut about 10% of its workforce. Binance has also paused withdrawal.

These drastic measures not only spark fears of contagion into the broader market, but also concern that the crypto crash is far from over.

A CNBC analysis that involves chats with experts in the industry highlights key factors enabling the current downturn.

Macro factors are contributing to the bearishness in the crypto markets, with rampant inflation continuing and the U.S. Federal Reserve expected to hike interest rates this week to control rising prices.

Last week, U.S. indices sold off heavily, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropping sharply. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have tended to correlate with stocks and other risk assets. When these indices fall, crypto drops as well.

“Since Nov 2021, sentiment has changed drastically given the Fed rate hikes and inflation management. We’re also potentially looking at a recession given the FED may need to finally tackle the demand side to manage inflation,” Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and international at crypto exchange Luno, told CNBC.

“All this points to the market not completely having bottomed and unless the Fed is able to take a breather, we’re probably not going to see bullishness return.”

Ayyar noted that in previous bear markets, bitcoin had dropped around 80% from its last record high. Currently, it is down around 63% from its last all-time high which it hit in November.

“We could see much lower bitcoin prices over the next month or two,” Ayyar said.