The unhealthy relationship between the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), and the national team coach, Gernot Rohr, came to an abrupt end last weekend.
Rohr, who has been in charge of the senior national team, Super Eagles, for over five years, is Nigeria’s longest serving coach. His predicament started following the team’s repeated failures in both CAF and FIFA tournaments.
The Franco-German technician was hired in August 2016 to revive the Nigerian team that has been depleted since it won the African Cup of Nations in 2013. But instead of improving, the national team has sunk lower in Africa and world FIFA ranking.
Against this backdrop, the clamor for Rohr’s sack by football-loving Nigerians has been ringing for long, but the NFF was indecisive due to the severance cost. Now, the Federation has accepted the financial consequence of letting the German go.
“The relationship between the Nigeria Football Federation and Mr. Rohr has come to an end. We thank him for his services to the Super Eagles and Nigeria.
“We also want to thank the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports for their collaboration and guidance all through,” General Secretary of the NFF, Dr. Mohammed Sanusi said.
The NFF also announced the appointment of former Super Eagles player, Augustine Eguavoen, currently its Technical Director, as the interim Technical Adviser of the Super Eagles.
In addition, the NFF Executive decided that Eguavoen will work with Salisu Yusuf (Chief Coach); Paul Aigbogun (Assistant Coach); Joseph Yobo (Assistant Coach); Dr Terry Eguaoje (Assistant Coach) and Aloysius Agu (Goalkeeper Trainer). Former Nigeria captains Augustine ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu and Garba Lawal have been appointed to provide technical and ambassadorial support for the crew.
While the replacement of Rohr is believed to be long-overdue, the appointment of Eguavoen is stirring fresh concerns. He will be in charge of Super Eagles’ preparations for the 33rd Africa Cup of Nations taking place in Cameroon 9th January – 6th February 2022, and until the appointment of a substantive Head Coach.
Eguavoen is thus inheriting a critical mission to ensure that the Nigerian national team qualifies for the 2022 World Cup playoff. But given the limited time at his disposal and how wobble the team has become, he will need more than the average technique to accomplish the mission. Eguavoen, a former Nigeria captain, had been at the helm before and his performance was criticized.
In 2006 in Egypt, Eguavoen led the Nigerian squad to third place at the Africa Cup of Nations, a performance that did not augur well with Nigerians. With Eguavoen’s past record as a coach under criticism, Super Eagles chances of winning the 2022 AfCON are in doubt. However, there is hope that the NFF will find a suitable coach, who will lead the team to AfCON and World Cup, on time.
The next edition of Tekedia Mini-MBA which begins Feb 7 2022 will be the best yet! Many new courses are coming. I am excited to share that Charles Igwe PH.D, EMBA, PMP has joined the Faculty of Tekedia Institute. A graduate of University of Benin, Coventry University and Concordia University.
He will be teaching a course titled “Driving Growth and Operational Excellence Using Lean Six Sigma”. The goal here is to use the Lean Six Sigma principles to educate on the mechanics of business growth and operational excellence.
If you are in business, this is a civil engineer teaching business in the most practicable and quantifiable way. One of my finest courses in FUTO was the one that included Engineer Turns Manager. Dr Charles has a 160-page slide here to explain how we can make business growth predictable through probability.
Come with your calculator because you will understand the “Measure of Central Tendency” and how all can improve growth in the firm.
Dr. Charles, welcome to Tekedia Institute and Good People, look at our latest curriculum for the next edition of Tekedia Mini-MBA.
There has been a legal brawl between some Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Nigeria against the Federal Government simply for the determination of who has the power to operate marriage registries, conduct marriages and issue marriage certificates.
Statutorily, the local governments are the ones empowered to conduct marriages and issue marriage certificates, for this reason, the LGAs have insisted that their powers to register marriages which are statutorily provided are being usurped by the Federal Government through the Ministry of Interior.
The Eti Osa LOcal Government Area of Lagos State took the Ministry of Interior and Attorney General of the Federation to court in suit no.: FHC/ LS/CS/816/18 between Eti-Osa LGA & 3 others v. Hon. Minister of Interior & 2 others (Federal High Court, Ikoyi Judicial Division), where they accused Federal Ministry of Interiors of usurping the Local Government’s power to operate marriage registries, conduct marriages and issue marriage certificates.
They prayed the court to declare that the federal government has no business in the conduction of marriages and issuing marriage certificates and order the closure of all marriage registries opened and operated by the Federal Ministry of Interior or through their agents including that of the Ikoyi Registry.
The case lingered but recently, the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi held in the favor of the Eti-Osa local government and granted their prayers.
The court held that conduct of marriages and issue of certificate is statutorily the job of the local governments as provided by the law and only the local governments have the power to do such and the acts of the federal government through the Ministry of Interior operating marriage registries is clearly beyond their powers.
The court further held that all marriages conducted by federal marriage registries or through their agents are illegal and invalid and the Federal High Court also ordered for the closure of all federal marriage registries including that of Ikoyi marriage registry with immediate effect.
Markets are vector quantities with magnitude (size) and direction (customer preferences). Unless your products evolve and adapt, you will remain a scalar quantity (only magnitude with no antenna to pick the directional patterns). Make 2022 the Year of Business Adaptability.
Every business model begins with an assumption on knowing and understanding the customer frictions with capabilities to provide products and services to fix them.
But most of the time, those assumptions must evolve. And that means, the greatest companies are those that have mastered the art of adaptability because in this world even the customers are changing.
Comment 1: Jeff Bezos stated in a letter to shareholders that Amazon will have a ‘Day One Mentality”. This simply means that Amazon will always have the mentality of a startup.
A Startup, by my definition, is a “young Tech or Tech Enabled organisation designed to seek, develop and validate a repeatable and scalable business model”. Therefore, Amazon having a Startup Mentality means that it’s always on an adventure, it just can’t stop, because then it will mature and decline. Companies are Living Entities, I call them “Borgs or Borganisms” (short for Business Organisms) because they possess all the characteristics of living organisms.
Big, Medium or Small; Young, Mature or Old, it’s all a State of Mind, a Lifestyle that can be assumed at will, but for many, it’s a Linear State of Life, a Reality they can’t escape from.
Jeff Bezos chose to keep Amazon Young Everyday by making it assume a Young State of Mind and as such, even though it’s big, it never loses its ability to be Ambitious and Grow, it never Matures and Declines, it never Ages and Dies.
You win by discerning and assuming the right state of mind for every given situation. You can’t stay Fixed in a Fast Changing World.
Comment 2: Product and market Adaptability is one of the key components of a successful company. The product should be able to suit customers changing needs and wants. It is also the key to customer retention and loyalty.
Comment 3: Business Vitality Competency is a business ability to reinvent and grow sustainably reading the market trend.
Relying on the current trend and performance will always short-lived business models thereby making adaptability difficult.
Now a business vitality is not measured in the current performance because the trend that may have produced such current result may not be appropriate to respond to due to the ever present customers’ dynamic requirements.
The common metrics used by businesses (growth, profitability and market share) measure what has happened in the past with little regard for what will happen in the future.
Therefore for a business to maintain vitality and effectively adapt it must take a futuristic look into what demands may look like (not neglecting the present) because customers are the investors according to Prof. Ndubuisi Ekekwe.
Whether in the time of crisis or peaceful period, people need to consume news of different types. Depending on individual preferences, business, politics, education, health among other news categories are available to audience every day from varied news media organisations. In some cases, these categories are being read, listened to or watched with the intent of being aware of happenings and events. To some people, benefit of consuming these news categories has been beyond just being informed of what is happening around them. Salient issues in the news are being used to make certain business and personal decisions.
Nexus between News Consumption and Economic Growth
Over the years, there are have been cases where news consumption influences economic performance positively and negatively. In the context of positive outcomes, several reports and academic publications have documented how media positive framing or coverage of economic issues and needs shaped Gross Domestic Product and other macroeconomic indices of countries positively because people and businesses reacted to the frames used to depict economic conditions by exploring opportunities and actions embedded in the news stories. It has also been established that the use of negative frames contributes to negative economic outcomes when people adopted the frames for decision making.
While these have been documented in academic publications and reports of several think-tank organisations, our analyst discovered that attention has not been paid to how nationalisation and foreignisation of news consumption affect Gross Domestic Product of a country. Like typical preference Africans usually have for foreign products and services, foreignisation is the consumption of foreign news content at the expense of the national news content.
In this piece, nationalisation of news consumption indicates Nigerians’ love of reading national issues and needs reported by online newspapers and broadcast stations that appropriate Internet-Broadcast media convergence strategy.
News Consumption Nationalisation, Foreignisation and GDP Growth or Dwindling
In its manner of reporting economic growth using different indicators, the National Bureau of Statistics reported some months ago that the country’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 4.03% (year-on-year) in real terms in the third quarter of 2021, representing a slower growth compared to 5.01% recorded in the previous quarter. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, real GDP grew by 11.07% in Q3 2021 compared to Q2 2021, reflecting a higher economic activity than the preceding quarter.
Since the news media reported various issues and needs across different news types, our analyst examines the connection of the types with the GDP growth in nominal and real terms from January to September. This is imperative because people, especially business and economic minded ones do utilize information reported by the media.
The use of nominal GDP is predicted on the fact that it tracks general changes in an economy’s value over time. This indicates the sum of all the final goods and services produced during a given period. The inclusion of real GDP is based on the premise that it considers inflation and accounts for the overall rise in price levels.
According to our analyst’s news consumption trend data, between January and November, 2021, a total of 2,834 foreign news reports were consumed by Nigerians, while 718 national news were consumed during the same period [see Exhibit 1]. From January to June, a significant difference in terms of consuming national and foreign news was noticed. In July, the data reveal that Nigerians still consumed foreign news report more but, not up to the volume consumed in the previous months. This trend was observed till August, 2021 before a wide spike in the difference was recorded again between September and November, 2021. These were analysed along with the GDP growth in real and nominal terms.
Exhibit 1: National versus foreign news consumption
Source: Google Trends, 2021; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
In our analysis of both national and foreign news content, some news categories associated with the two types of the GDP positively and negatively, suggesting possible good and bad outcomes on the economy. According to our analysis, reading lifestyle related news, which entails entertainment, music, arts and culture and other content that revealed the activities of prominent individuals and organisations in the country, connected with the two GDP types more than politics and health news reports [see Exhibit 2].
It is quite unfortunate that reading education news content and sports did not help the economy positively. Our analyst discovered that the more these news categories were consumed the more the two GDP categories suffered. One of the key factors that could be adduced to this is that in our data, a large number of sports and education news reports that were consumed were foreign content. Therefore, the negative outcomes on the GDP growth could be linked with non-use of the content for business decisions in Nigeria.
Exhibit 2: Nexus between GDP (nominal and real) and News categories consumed
Source: Google Trends, 2021; National Bureau of Statistics, 2021; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
With the data presented in Exhibit 3, it is clear that nationalisation of news consumption delivers positive outcomes for the country. The negativity of the foreignisation of news consumption in the GDP is unsurprising because foreignisation of news consumption should only have impacts on the economies of the countries that featured in the news reports.
Exhibit 3: Connection between news consumption by geography and GDP indicators
Source: Google Trends, 2021; National Bureau of Statistics, 2021; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
Across the news categories, different levels of explanation were found in the two GDP types. Similar to the earlier result, a large percent of the both nationalisation and foreignisation of consumption of lifestyle news category was found in the GDP nominal. This is closely followed by political related news, which has 68.3%. Consuming national sports related news reports seem to be significant to the economy because our analysis reveals 47.2% of its discovery in the GDP nominal. The 55.7% reduction in the GDP real suggests that despite foreignisation of sports related news reports, Nigerians failed to utilize the reports towards delivering positive outcomes for the economy.
Exhibit 4: Variation of news consumption in GDP nominal and real
Source: Google Trends, 2021; National Bureau of Statistics, 2021; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
Geographical analysis of the news consumption reveals that nationalizing news consumption delivers a better and significant outcome on the economy. Over 100% of prioritizing consumption of national news reports were found in the GDP nominal while a significant reduction in the GDP real was also found [see Exhibit 5]. Surprisingly, about 40% of foreignizing news content was found in the GDP real while it made a negative contribution to the GDP nominal.
Exhibit 5: Variation of news consumption by geography in GDP indicators
Source: Google Trends, 2021; National Bureau of Statistics, 2021; Infoprations Analysis, 2021
Strategic Options
The emerging insights have several implications for concerned stakeholders. For media organisations, there is a need for redesigning news content production and dissemination strategy. More attention needs to be paid to the reportage of national sporting events and happenings because it clearly established that foreign sports news reports failed to deliver significant value to the economy. Audience, especially the youth who use the Internet the most, should develop more interest in consuming national news reports and apply them while making business decisions. For instance, challenges or issues reported by the media organisations could be explored using strategy proposed by analyst in one of his previous articles.
