APC should not be pressured to zone its presidential ticket to the South since Southwest and Southsouth are unable to subzone it to Southeast. Indeed, no politician from Southsouth and Southwest must hide on equity and fairness while arguing for zoning APC ticket to South when the same people cannot subzone to Southeast.

It is the same call for PDP: when it refused to zone it to the Southeast, there was no need wasting time zoning it to the South. Atiku has the ticket now.

I expect APC to keep this in the North because Southsouth and Southwest provided strong reasons that Nigeria has “matured” and “outgrown” zoning and quota system. This is a major precedent. At the end of everything, I want to see this applied in all domains of Nigerian existence including admission, business permits, etc where quota, natural and artificial advantages, comparative disadvantages, etc would be muted and discarded for the “best” to emerge. 

I am beginning to feel like the 2023 election may begin the turning point in Nigeria. Kill zoning for politics. Kill quota in everything. Let competitive spirit return in the land.

Comment on Feed

Comment 1: Prof don’t you think you’re being unfair to the other south zones?They can’t be held responsible for the failures of that zone to get their act together.When Buhari contested,there was nothing like this zone in the North must get the ticket.Let the SE fight for it.

My Response: You are rewriting history. The SE politicians are just like SW and northern politicians. SW did not support OBJ, that did not stop him from winning. Northern delegates voted for GEJ in 2011 even when they had many from the North; they voted for GEJ.. Everything you wrote against SE is disinformation. It would be bad if all the SE politicians are aligned 100% – I am happy some are in APC, PDP, etc.

Buhari did not win because of North; he won because of SW. Never think it is about any region getting “act together”. If North decides it is SE, it will happen irrespective of SW. SW decided it was North in 2015 and it happened. That is how it works.

… He is making it look like Kwakwanso was not running when Northern delegates voted for Jonathan. He was making it look like Buhari would have won without SW or there was a magical strategy on unification why Buhari won. That SE delegates voted for other regions is typical: Northern delegates voted for GEJ and Nigeria voted for OBJ even when SW did not accept him. 

Comment 2: Ndubuisi Ekekwe , what do you think of this statement credited to former minister of Aviation – Osita Chidoka?… “No other group did more damage to the idea of zoning than the 80 out of 95 Igbo delegates to the last Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) convention who cast their votes against Igbo aspirants. The 80 delegates and their sponsors, in a tragic display of lack of group consciousness and primacy of personal interest, sent the country a clear and loud message: zoning is not an issue dear to Ndigbo. Igbo PDP delegates told Nigerians that a President from the Southeast is not a priority and not an issue of justice and fairness. The country heard them”. 

My Response: Chidoka is wrong and I think his political sagacity is limited. I would be more worried if Igbo delegates just vote for SE. The Northern delegates in 2011 voted for GEJ against their own. Nigeria voted for OBJ in 1999 even when SW rejected him. Chidoka should see the big picture. We cannot win by being local. We win by arguing at the big picture. That picture is that Nigeria must consider since we cannot win via “numbers” because they are not there. We need our own quota. Period.

My Response: “So the south east was a major beneficiary of GEJ regime ,so they should have combined to give the south south ,” – incorrect. You would have said that SE was the political beneficiary of GEJ govt but went ahead to build other regions, driving on the Igbo spirit of not to be seen as favouring itself. Okonji Iweala, Pius Anyim, etc who held all those big positions for 5 years built zero road, rail tracks, airport, anything in SE but of course developed other areas. That is the Igbo spirit so that we do not take advantage to corner opportunities. In Igbo tradition, the elders serve drinks to Nwa-ada before the sons of the soil.

On SE delegates, that is not a problem. The Northern delegates voted for GEJ in 2011 even though they had politicians from the North. This is typical in politics. SW rejected OBJ but Nigeria elected him. Can APC pick Onu, Umahi and do what PDP did in SW for Obj? That is the issue.

Comment 4: Prof. the two references both in 1999 & 2011 are won through the ballot even though we all knew it wasn’t free and fair due to the massive electoral malpractice but all the candidates campaigned/lobbied in almost all the 36 states of the federation. The only time we can say the Nigerian presidency was negotiated was when IBB handed over to Shonekan.

One particular region in the south has created hatred even among the Southerners claiming marginalization.

We all know the election process everywhere in the world is about lobby and campaigning.

My Response: Elections in Nigeria are mostly won at the primaries, out of the powers of the citizens! Hope you know that. Delegates determine more than 90% of everything. (In America, citizens determine 100% because it is OPEN primary.). 1999 was negotiated as Nigeria decided in all major parties to nominate SW flagbearers due to Abiola case.

In 2011, GEJ was anointed and all delegates, north and south voted for him. SS governors were not even happy. But Nigeria overruled them.

Without Tinubu who brought SW, Buhari would not have won in 2015. The delegate system reduces the choices and 2 parties use that to shape the options. If APC nominates Ndubuisi Ekekwe tomorrow, magically that is the option even though you have your preference. That is the power of delegates. You general ballot has limited impact as it is a secondary phase reaction.

Nigeria 2023: PDP Throws Presidential Ticket Open, No Zoning

I stumbled on something in a Facebook business group and thought there were one or two lessons we could draw from it.

Mr. A works a regular 9-5 job and has a small drink store on the side, which he attends after work hours and on weekends. He has a salesperson who works full-time while joining in after work and on weekends. Mr. A noticed that from his sales records and inventory that the store records a lot more sales when he is around than on those days he is unable to make it to the drink store.

At first, he dismissed it to mean that people get more drinks in the evening after work and on weekends, but the situation gets worse such that he has to question having a salesperson at all. His inventory shows him that his salesman is not stealing his goods, of course, but something seems to be wrong somewhere. Why keep the store open from 9 am to 6 pm with only four sales, where you make almost a hundred sales from 6 pm to 10 pm? One weekend, Mr. A decides to install a CCTV device in the store without informing the salesperson. And over the next two weeks, he finally figured out what was going on.

This may not qualify as outright theft, but the fact is, his employee was robbing him of his business profits. He pays the rent, utilities, and even the salary for the employee, without having enough income to justify the investment. And given that this employee stays in the drink store for almost 10 hours, you can imagine the magnitude of the loss for Mr. A.

A lady recounted how her salesgirls were inflating the price of frozen foods when she was not around and pocketing the difference. She only got to know because some of the customers complained about the price difference. In this case, they were not stealing from her. They were adding a little something for themselves, but this was injuring her business integrity.

Many small and medium businesses find themselves in the same ditch. Some may never even figure out what is going on. They may feel that business is not moving as smoothly as it should. This is not limited to companies selling products; even service providers find themselves in this cage. (I will talk more about that in a subsequent post).

Why are your payment and processes not wholly automated if you sell services or digital products? Why have you not installed a system where the goods can be scanned and documented and a receipt generated? You may not get an entirely foolproof method, but automating payments and procedures will reduce the incidence of fraud and theft and make it easier to do your inventory. We will talk more about the part of the services in a subsequent post.

Do you have a similar experience? Please share what cases of employee theft you have seen. How are you using automation to improve your business output? I will have my eyes on the comment section.

I just read this piece where the author lamented the increasing fraud in the digital payment ecosystem. First, Nigerian banking security  from the customer-facing side is one of the most intriguing banking structures in the world. It is only in Nigeria that you have to put your debit card number, expiration date, last 3 digits and then password to pay for most items. Nigeria’s banking system is more secure than even the US banking system. I mean, we all post our bank account numbers online in Nigeria! Our banks are really solid on security: companies do not post account numbers online in America.

Yet, Nigeria needs to do a really good job in the backend. And that means on the bankers and the systems they work on! If you do not clean that weak point, you expose the bank to vulnerability.

As a former bank’s system automation engineer with admin access to the bank’s general ledger, how you structure logs – no matter how benign – will help in hardening your system. This goes beyond spending more money on technology. 

The #1 rule is this: under no circumstance should you allow a “generic” user which many people can use to login into the bank’s architectures. (In the bank, my responsibility included deepening digital security from the software side.)

Banks and fintechs:  tell the IT unit to do one thing: deactivate all generic users in branches and HQs, and create the accounts with approved privileges for each user.  Branches are some of the weakest links in a bank’s operations. The server is kept in the branch system room and banks with poor security awareness create one user with admin rights. You need that user to do many things like backup, etc. The problem is that many people end up having access to that account (think of Head of Operations, Branch Internal Control, Branch Manager, Regional IT, etc).

Because anyone can login and do whatever he/she wants via that account, accountability post fraud becomes challenging. To deal with that, systems must apportion rights to users with privileges they need and delete generic users. Then have a solid logging structure which ensures you can trace what everyone is doing when logged in. 

If you execute Rule #1 with an all-log regime; those debit card frauds, etc will drop.

Banks Customers Lament Increasing Fintech/Banking Fraud