I visited a family member who lived in a flat within his property in Ikenegbu Layout Owerri.  The man who would later become the king of Owerri asked me: “Ndubuisi, how are you doing with studies in FUTO?”.

I responded: “Sir,  Abacha is causing problems in Nigeria. He is making things very hard”.

Immediately, he quickly corrected me: “Ndubuisi, your Abacha now is FUTO and you need to do well, graduate with good grades, etc. Leave Abacha for us”.

That conversation remains evergreen. Yes, one needs to know what his “real problems are” and works to deal with them. That Jeff Bezos wants to go to space is not my problem today. And I do expect many young people spending all hours on Buhari and Abuja to modulate. 

If you are in school, your “Buhari” today is making sure you do well and graduate. Buhari should not consume all your time. Do not make other people’s problems magically become yours. Find ways to remain focused and do not be distracted by issues you truly have no power to fix. Sure, you need to be aware of the issues, but understand what really matters.

This is not to say that young people should not pursue causes and activism. But the key thing here is this: understand when you can make impacts.

Comment On LinkedIn Feed

Comment: “Wise words sir. Put most of your effort on things you can directly influence. Its a lifetime principle that is applicable in almost anything in life. /As a health coach, I help people to understand that there are things you cannot control, your age, sex, genetics, medical facilities, sometimes environment, nations economy.. However, there are things you can do now that will directly impact your health positively. You can choose to have a quality sleep, take a walk and eat healthy to improve your health.” by B.F…. the above conveyed my message better. 

Comment: It matters because decisions Buhari is making is affecting their stay in school. Unpaid lecturers stay away from classes and students suffer for it. Endless strikes . Low budget for education . Graduate unemployment after spending years graduating. Unsafe environment, whether on Campus or out of campus. Bandits now enter colleges and universities and cart away children in broad daylight and you , Prof, is saying students and the youth should not bother ?

We have a very indolent, incompetent, insensitive and uncaring leadership. Who only murder harmless protesting youths and you say their book is their Buhari. Let government create a conducive learning environment for our students and their only competition would be Chinese and Asian students !!

How can an average student in Nigeria today, not consider Buhari a problem . With spiralling inflation, economic mismanagement and unpaid salaries etc , what is the guarantee that their school fees would be paid in the future ?

Every youth and every Nigerian university or college student should be concerned about Buhari and should speak out. While studying and not engaging in miscreancy or mischief.

Response: Like I said, no one said you cannot leave school and relocate to fight bandits in Kaduna. My point is this: in anything in life, understand what your powers are and where you can make impacts. If you life is about what Abuja does and you leave the ones you can influence and affect, you may not be optimizing time. As I noted in the full piece, everything is asking for our attention but ask yourself where you can have the most influence.  Where can you have the most impact – and what is that? And not where you can make most noise even though it adds no value.

Comment: ” Do not make other people’s problems magically become yours””.

It is very easy to make that statement if you are currently living outside Nigeria. I think it is trite to suggest that s student should relocate to go fight bandits in Kaduna. They don’t have to relocate. The students in Kaduna are very concerned . Unless you are not looking at the total picture.

We agree that students should focus on their studies and not use current problems as an excuse for indolence or mischief.

Every one is making their positive impact in their little comers. Especially the youths. You can be very sure of that.

My Response: ” Do not make other people’s problems magically become yours”” – that is English. It depends on how you read. Those who read on themes understand. I am not saying that if you see a kid riding a bike and who falls down that you cannot help him. Read this piece with a big picture; you are reading the words and not seeing the big theme.

Intel Corp was legendary for decades as it pursued its strategy of designing microprocessors and manufacturing them in-house, with no space for allowing others to use its manufacturing facilities. That integration served well and Intel became the category-king, winning over competitors like AMD. But Intel has faced a double whammy: losing the edge on design to Nvidia (and Qualcomm, AMD, etc) on GPU and mobile chipsets, and lagging on manufacturing to TSMC and Samsung.  There was a frontal attack from TSMC when its contract chip making was bent to disintermediate Intel.

Today, anyone with access to a credit card can design chips and send them to TSMC to fabricate (yes, TSMC is the equivalent of Amazon Web Services (AWS) of chipmaking; AWS is a leader in public cloud computing). Intel’s  moat on manufacturing has been challenged and its  castle lays bay. The ability to fabricate  via TSMC without investing in foundries is a new level of disruption for Intel.

The Business Model of Today

In our contemporary technology business world, one business model has emerged to become very dominant: aggregation construct. Indeed, if you check the top 20 technology companies in the world, more than 80% run an element of aggregation construct. So, when the news flew that Intel was planning to acquire GlobalFoundries, a contract  semiconductor manufacturer, for $30 billion, I felt it was the right playbook. (GlobalFoundries has noted that Intel did not speak with it for an acquisition.)

Intel may buy an unsuspecting chipmaker. The rumor mill is churning that Intel is considering a deal to buy semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries, valuing the company at $30 billion. When reached by the Wall Street Journal for comment, a spokesperson for GlobalFoundries said they weren’t in discussions with Intel at all. If the deal were to happen it could have huge impact on the industry; the manufacturer is one of the biggest suppliers for AMD, Intel’s biggest competitor. (Fortune newsletter)

That aside, Intel picking GlobalFoundries would have been a good move. The reason is this: Intel has continued to lag behind on the global chip manufacturing business. Samsung has some of the most advanced foundries in the world, serving its ace enemies like Apple. TSMC fabs for some of the finest chip designers in the world in an open contract-model. The implication is this: their foundries are always busy because they do not just rely on getting internal hits, unlike Intel which kept all inside, making asset utilization challenging in cases where their brands are not moving well. 

So, for TSMC, for example, it has a statistical advantage that by servicing hundreds of customers, one of those will have great products that will give it confidence to keep investing in its foundries. That virtuoso circle has enabled it to accelerate and to a large extent that it is now better than Intel foundries.

With GlobalFoundries as part of Intel, Intel can provide a huge challenge to TSMC, running the same contract business it does while making sure that it can modernize its foundries and support its product lines. Yet, there is also a challenge: not many companies will like to send their designs to GlobalFoundries knowing that it will be both a designer and a fab provider under Intel since IPs can leak or be stolen.

But I do think since Samsung makes chips for Apple, Intel can handle those concerns easily. In the industry, I worked on many chip fabrications, and it was night and day at the foundry, making sure IPs are not violated.

So, Intel needs to be a fabrication aggregator to have the capacity to bring in resources to actually help it build products of the future with the right process technologies. Working with others is a strategic thing today and I recommend Intel to pursue the purchase of GlobalFoundries.