Tekedia Capital Syndicate Q4 2021 Investment Cycle is currently active; register for access to the deal flow – and join our members and invest in Africa’s future promising startups. The Startup Demo Day is Oct 30 and we have very great companies. One processes N4 billion per month (never raised money) in Lagos and other is growth-defined. Join today for your login to access the deal flow. Begin here
Nigeria Launches e-Naira, Well Done; Now, Let’s Replicate That Urgency on Electricity
Let me congratulate the Central Bank of Nigeria, Governor Godwin Emefiele, President Buhari, Vice President Osinbajo, and all the team who worked hard to make the e-Naira a reality. This congratulation is not because this is rocket science. Rather, I am thanking them for demonstrating that Nigeria has the capacity to decide on something, and get that thing done. What does that tell us? We can do and execute anything we commit to do. Can we do that on electricity? Clean water? Education?
People, things used to work in Nigeria. It took Governor Mbakwe of Imo State just 3 months to put those men who used to come in the night, to move human waste, out of work in Owerri. Yes, in 3 months, he replaced the mess with WC. Governor Jakande was there in Lagos expanding future opportunities via his novel basic education. Kano worked. Kaduna worked. And Nigeria was rising.
E-Naira just made it look like the old time: yes, the government can get things done on time. For that I congratulate the team. But remember, e-Naira will not save Naira and that means we need to get to work by making sure we focus on what really matters: factories of the old and new! And just like we set a tough deadline for e-Naira, we can do the same on power, water, and those factories. Can you copy me, now?
God bless the nation.
How Far With The Lagos’ New Building Technology?
A few years back, the Lagos State government under the reign of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode graciously introduced a new building technology towards addressing various ongoing anomalies in the State’s housing sector as well as erecting a structure fast and easily.
It’s noteworthy that the emergence of the technique was as a result of the colossal housing deficit recorded thus far in the State. Survey indicates that over two million losses had been recorded across the length and breadth of Nigeria’s biggest city.
It isn’t anymore news that building collapse alongside allied matters has in recent times been a plight for public discourse within the shores of the Nigerian building industry at large. It suffices to assert that decadence is ubiquitous.
However, it seems that Lagos is on the rampage compared to other states, perhaps owing to the fact that the territory consists of the highest number of erected structures coupled with the deplorable atmospheric condition faced by its residents.
In his speech to newsmen, the then State’s Commissioner for Housing, Mr. Gbolahan Lawal disclosed that the new technology was already being used in its ongoing housing estate at Idale in Badagry and would further be deployed in the site situated at Imota in Ikorodu, in a bid to achieving the government’s motive of delivering 2,000 houses across the cosmopolitan city.
Mr. Lawal, who equally disclosed that the technique ensures construction of bungalow within 48 hours, stated therein “We want to see how to go into the manufacturing of houses. We make it seamless and produce about 100 units in a month. We have three companies; one is already at site.”
He went ahead to opine that investment in the housing sector usually have a multiplier effect on the economy as he informed that various gadgets and accessories such as tiles, electronics, water cum electricity meters, mattresses, TV subscription, in addition to menial jobs for artisans, are tied to construction of houses.
When announced, I was elated that Lagos as an over-populated State could eventually arrive at a point where erection of formidable structures was considered as priority and could be done with ease by the builders.
It had overtime been insinuated in some quarters that the Nigerian polity was yet to embrace building technology to the fullness considering the level of quackery and mediocrity invariably witnessed in the sector. But it appeared the Lagos government’s lofty move disabused some persons of the notion that Nigeria lacks the apt resources to get it right.
Nevertheless, I made it clear then that before we celebrate in haste, it would be pertinent for the government to critically consider some factors with a view to ensuring the newly discovered technique doesn’t fade away in no distant time as well as being fully domesticated in the State.
We aren’t unaware that the firms contracted to handle the job were mainly foreign, hence the need for every discerning mind to worry about the future of the initiative. Though the housing commissioner disclosed that some indigenous workers were being trained in the technique and process of construction, I was of the strong view that there’s need to institutionalize the training.
Institutionalizing the said application would enable our teeming professionals, and the prospective ones, to passionately key into the process. Consequently, our indigenous designers and builders would be in charge of the initiative thereby helping to greatly boost the economy. So, Lagos was expected to take a lead in this aspect.
Similarly, there’s a compelling need to establish a strict policy to guide the housing sector in the State. We were notified that a new housing policy aimed at tackling the State’s housing deficit had been drafted. Such a policy, which was expected to be fully functional by now, must bear every clause needed to address all forms of lapse currently observed in the State’s building sector.
The policy, which was required to be designed with the aid of well-experienced and reliable town planners, needed to enshrine reasonable penalties for anyone guilty of violating the development control laws. It’s in record that Lagos was the first state to create a full-fledged Housing Ministry in 1999 because of the priority it accorded shelter, hence such prioritization must be fully upheld by the policy.
It’s appalling that three years later, nothing tangible has been recorded in respect of Lagos’ new building technology. Hence, at such a time like this when expectations are very high, an onward review coupled with apt implementation of the needed policy is consequential. We aren’t unaware that successive governments in Nigeria are not good in continuing with the capital projects or initiatives introduced by their predecessors. This is why they are charged to have a rethink in this regard.
It’s also time we started recognizing the use of materials like wood, clay and bamboo in the construction of standard structures, either residential or commercial. We were informed that the Lagos Housing Ministry had in years back experimented on the use of the aforementioned items but the availability and speed of delivery was the reason it dropped the proposed initiative.
It’s amusing for one to assert that the required wood for building construction is unavailable, or can’t be found in abundance, in Nigeria. What the governments at all levels need to do is to raise the profile of timber-based architecture toward promoting the demand. It’s needless to assert that everything centres on adequate recognition of the technique in question and the onward quest to deploy its lofty use.
In addition, the Nigerian government must begin to promote afforestation by assigning grievous punishment to unapproved deforestation via viable policies. By doing so, the needed wood would become more accessible and cheap than concrete and bricks, thus construction with the former would be done swiftly.
As we once again commend Lagos for recording this feat, the current government led by Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu must equally be urged to think deeply towards making advanced building technologies stand the test of time in the State, so other states can borrow a leaf from them.
Who Owns Published Outputs? Supervisors or Supervisees
One of the key responsibilities of lecturers and other tutors in higher educational institutions is supervision of students during preparation of dissertation and thesis as parts of the requirements for the award of various degrees. In some schools, it is the duty of a coordinator in a department to assign students to lecturers, who will coach and engage the assigned students for a certain number of months towards the production of quality output in the areas chosen by the students and aligns with the supervisor’s areas of specialisation or interest.
Typically, this process represents an advanced learning curve for the students because they have access to their lecturers within the direct knowledge transfer framework, which has been described as one of the best approaches for equipping what were taught in the classroom. For the students who participated fully in the learning process, there are chances that they would fix into the academia environment more than those who paid lip services to the expected rigor in dissertation and thesis production.
Apart from the fact that the lecturers are taking supervisory roles and students are the receivers of the constructive intellectual provision of the lecturers in the area chosen, lecturers are also collaborators in the production process. One of the existing submissions in this regard is that “collaboration can be a hierarchical relationship, like the one between a professor and a doctoral student, or a mutual relationship between two or more colleagues of equal status.”
The main product of the engagement for the students is the submission of dissertations and theses to their departments or postgraduate schools through departments. However, publishing journal articles and chapters in books are secondary outputs. Executing these depends on the supervisors’ interest in the main outputs. In most cases, supervisors do encourage their supervisees to modify the main outputs and present a journal article or a chapter in a book manuscript. In our experience, such manuscript gets refined by the supervisors when it is obvious that the manuscript may not be accepted by the editors of journals and books of interest.
Refining the manuscript for publication is not a bad idea as it signifies what our analyst called ‘redeploying learning research supervision curve’. A curve that helps students to further engage in another process for development of new academic products. What is really surprising in the second engagement is the removal of students’ names in publications by most supervisors. In our experience, this practice is not only pronounced in Africa, it is also in existence in other continents, most importantly in Asia, Latin America and others in the global south.
As the trend continues, there are different schools of thought regarding who owns the published outputs. As long as the supervisors refined the students’ works by removing the literature section and reworked the methodology part to align with the nature of the data collected by the students, supervisors own the outputs. The first school’s views. The second school believes that as long as the students are the basis of supervising. They are the ones who went to the field, spending their time and money for data collection, publishing without including their names is unethical and represents one of the key academic dishonesties to the fellow collaborators [in this case, the students]. What is your thought? Do you subscribe to any of these schools? Why? Let us discuss in the comment section.
Even Angola Spends More Than Nigeria!
Is Nigeria really a giant? I do not understand the basis of that illusion! These days I have stopped using South Africa in my speeches because many told me that it was not a fair comparison. So, I switched to Angola, and no one has explained why Angola budgets $45 billion for 33 million people when Nigeria can only manage $35 billion for 210 million with most of that $35 billion borrowed.
Fellow citizens, Angola is an oil nation. How can we retire all these men who have been running Nigeria since 1999 since whatever they are doing is not working? I mean we are severely underperforming as a nation across major metrics.
Sure, Angola may be running a unitary government which means most of its spending is concentrated at the federal level; Nigeria runs a federal system with states having their own budgets. Yet, that does not change the underperformance of Nigeria. Except Lagos with $2.3 billion and Rivers state with $1 billion, many of the states in Nigeria spend really not much; Zamfara is around $300 million. That noted, even if you add all the states in Nigeria, on per capita income, Angola does better than Nigeria.
Nigeria vs South Africa budget, 2019
Notice after the post:
Good People, I have received dozens of inmails asking for the source of my Angolan budget. But one from a Director-General in one of our government agencies is driving this notice. Possibly, there are many people asking for the same thing. Typically, anything I post here has an extended copy in my blog (next time, just go to tekedia as I archive all posts there).
But in summary, I relied on the Oct 2021 Lagos Business School presentation by Nigeria’s smartest financial analyst, Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Financial Derivatives Company Ltd. On page 25 of that presentation, he has this plot on the left. He is certainly a smarter man than yours truly that anything he puts out there must be correct. In short, he put the budget of Nigeria at $28.75 billion when I was gracious to put it at $35 billion. He is certainly right considering that our budget execution is never 100%.
But just to be sure it was not a typo, I also checked Wikipedia and saw the public expense at $45 billion. With that, I entered that number for Angola.
This is the full piece https://www.tekedia.com/even-angola-budgets-more-than-nigeria/ where I also noted the unitary structure of the Angolan budgetary system. But despite all, the trajectory is evident.
(I cannot share Mr Rewane’s 115-page document due to copyright issues. But you can go to LBS library for the Oct edition)