Let me once again congratulate the Tekedia Institute nation for winning the Velocity Mhagic Prize. This is a TV documentary prepared by ONTV for the award ceremony. It ran on DSTV, GoTv and a couple of other outlets. I thank all members who connected virtually due to Covid-19.
The Need to Introduce Criminology as a Subject in Nigerian Schools
As Nigeria continues to suffer all forms of abuses in the hands of criminal elements, it is evident that factors encouraging and enhancing crimes exist in our midst. Criminals do not grow in space. They are not aliens. They are products of societies. They lived, interacted, and developed amongst members of their communities. But somewhere along the line, they become entangled in crimes and find it difficult to free themselves from their entanglements. So the question we should ask ourselves is, “What should we do to discourage the growth of crime in our communities?”
Many people, to date, believe that crime is caused by poverty. If you raise issues concerning crime in Nigeria, a lot of people will tell you that it is caused by the poor economic state of the country. But then, crime also exists in developed countries. Does that mean their non-existent poor economy pushed their citizens into crime? Apart from that, in Nigeria, we have a lot of people living below the poverty line that do not engage in any criminal activities. We also have very rich Nigerians charged with crime of various kinds. The recent announcement made by the FBI of a Nigerian, an aide to a governor, arrested for fraud should tell everyone that poverty is not the prime motivator for committing crime.
One of the factors that increase crime in our society, which has not really been tackled, is the recruitment of criminal agents. We learnt that peer pressure can push people into crime but not all criminals belong to gangs. Some were recruited through radicalization processes while others were recruited by promising of freedom and better lives. The latter methods are used by insurgents and those that engage in violent crimes to recruit foot soldiers.
Recently, rumour has it that the Islamic States of West Africa Province (ISWAP) shared pamphlets to locals in Geidam, a town in Yobe State, promising them protection and inviting them to join their cause in spreading Islam. This strategy, used in a country ripened by hate and negative attitude towards the government and people of different tribes and religions, can do wonders because the criminals will easily find or create sympathizers and die-hard followers among the populace. This will make it more difficult for law enforcement agents to apprehend and neutralize criminals. This method can also be used by individuals, such as politicians, who tactfully radicalize their followers against their opponents until they become their human weapons. The problem with these methods is that those lured into the net find it difficult to pull out, even if they wanted to. That is why it is necessary to teach people how to avoid being enticed into crime before it is too late.
The Nigerian education system has been doing its best to nurture and produce the right citizens through academic activities. To raise good citizens, the educational curriculum has been extended to include Security Education, in addition to Civic Education and Social Studies. These subjects teach children how to live harmoniously in a society. However, Security Education focuses more on how children can stay safe in their communities. But then, it does not teach them how to identify criminals and their tact so that they, the children, can avoid falling into crime.
Based on the above observations, it is necessary that Criminology becomes a part of our education curriculum. Nigerians, from a young age, need to understand what crime is and how criminals operate. They need to know how to identify criminals and what they can do to avoid them. If the citizens understand that criminal elements, including insurgents, first seek sympathizers by working on people’s psyche, they, the citizens, will not allow them to come into their midst in the first place.
Nevertheless, we don’t have to wait for Criminology to be introduced as a subject in our school system before we begin to learn how to protect ourselves, dependents, properties, and community from criminals. All we have to do is avail ourselves of information on the modus operandi of criminals and then pass them on to the younger generation. That way, we can avoid crying later.
Engineer Perception Demand And Make Customers FANS
Steve Jobs, an Apple founder, was legendary for stimulating demand. He worked without surveys or focus groups. He was a genius, peerless in his generation. He saw an unborn future many years ago. He was an icon, who changed his world. He developed a good design paradigm of working at the perception of customers, beyond their needs and expectations. He found glory and Apple triumphed with iPod, iPhone, iPad and more.
The Perception Demand Construct is a product evolution construct where you work on things which are not really evident to be in demand. Yet you go ahead to create that product. The demand may not be existing but you are confident you can stimulate it. Yes, you do believe that your product can elicit demand and grow the sector when launched. This is different from existing demand which could be met via starting a web hosting company or selling light bulbs where you know people actually need those services.
Here, you create a New World. As I always explain in Tekedia Mini-MBA, you transition from being a Scalar quantity (you have magnitude – market share – but no direction because you are ordinary) to becoming a Vector quantity (you have magnitude and a direction). That direction is pioneering a new market through eliciting a new basis of competition, and bringing fandom out of customers. Blessed is that company whose customers are fans!
ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming Steps Down
ByteDance’s CEO and cofounder, Zhang Yiming, has announced he’s stepping down from his role leading the company. Zhang will move to another position in the company, allowing co-founder Liang Rubo, who currently runs HR in ByteDance, to become the new CEO.
Under Zhang’s leadership, ByteDance’s kid company, TikTok grew to become the most valuable startup in the world. But the prodigy thinks his time at the helm is up as he’s no longer developing new ideas to keep the company at the top of innovation.
“Yet I worry that I am still relying too much on the ideas I had before starting the company, and haven’t challenged myself by updating those concepts. As an example, before 2017, I spent a lot of time keeping track of developments in machine learning. However, since then, while I do my best to bookmark technical articles online, I haven’t had the time to make much progress digging into the area. During technology meetings, this sometimes means I actually struggle to keep up with the discussion,” Yiming said.
He explained that his decision was masterminded by the urge to avoid the trap of the CEO becoming overly central — listening to presentations, handling approvals, and making decisions reactively, that companies often fall into when they mature and expand. This leads to an over-reliance on existing ideas already in the company, and results in knowledge structures being slow to iterate.
“In order to avoid this trap, I gradually came to a decision over the last six months to take on a new role at ByteDance. I believe I can best challenge the limits of what the company can achieve over the next decade, and drive innovation, by drawing on my strengths of highly-focused learning, systematic thought, and a willingness to attempt new things,” he said.
Yiming led ByteDance through its toughest period, characterized by former US President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed to end TikTok’s operations in the United States. TikTok scaled the challenge, recording unprecedented growth.
ByteDance has a range of social media platforms including Douyin, China’s version of TikTok that powers creation of short-form mobile videos. There is also Toutiao, one of the most popular content discovery platforms in China that offers users a unique, personalized and comprehensive content experience, enabling them to discover and explore topics of interest, ranging from sports and entertainment to agriculture and history.
Others are Xigua Video, Helo, Lark, the Indonesian news content app – Babe and research and data analytics tools Byteplus.
Yiming said Rubo, given his versatility, and leveraging his strengths in management, organization, and social engagement, will be able to lead ByteDance in many fronts.
“There are still many things that we need to improve, and I think someone else can better drive progress through areas like improved daily management. The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager.
“I’m more interested in analyzing organizational and market principles, and leveraging these theories to further reduce management work, rather than actually managing people. Similarly, I’m not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and daydreaming about what may be possible,” he said.
Reinventing Citizen Journalism Practice in Nigeria: Egbemode and Our Analyst’s Propositions
Over the years, the argument has been that citizen journalism broadens participatory democracy, enables strict adherence to accountability and transparency principles by the political and business leaders. As good as the genre of journalism is, there are concerns that it drives social and political disturbances. Some countries have experienced and still experiencing these.
In Nigeria, a navigational search on the Internet will give one a number of citizen journalists who are using varied blog platforms for dissemination of what they consider newsworthy and need to be reported to the public. However, Mrs Egbemode Funke, the Commissioner of Information and Civic Orientation in Osun State, is another contributor to the ongoing conversation on the negativity of the journalism practice. According to her, citizen journalists are bastardizing the present-day journalism. Her hypothesis is that if there are no citizen doctors, there can’t be citizen journalists.
Examining Egbemode’s position, our analyst notes that the current crop of citizen journalists pay attention to monetary value more than societal value, which can only be created when they understand the nitty-gritty of generating, analysing and writing newsworthy events or happenings. Our analyst further states that majority of citizen journalists and bloggers started not because they have specific value to add to the journalism profession in Nigeria, but they want to earn money like renowned bloggers at the expense of writing and reporting news as a product.
Exhibit 1: Estimated Revenue [US$] of Select Blogs in Oyo, Osun, Edo and Lagos States
Source: Worth of Web, 2021; Infoprations Analysis, 2021Journalism Not Only About Speaking Grammar
“It’s either you’re a journalist or not. We have rules and regulations guiding every profession and if these rules are not being followed, we will get into trouble.
“Some people woke up one day because they speak English and have phones, then called themselves citizen journalists. We woke up one day and found people who are angry, just typing breaking. Because they are angry with somebody, they think that’s enough reason to start a blog and you call a blogger a journalist.
“If there are no citizen doctors, there can’t be citizen journalists. It’s the fault of all of us recognising those who were not trained for the job, who do not have passion for the profession, who see it as a tool of attack and think being a journalist gives them some kind of weapon to fight their enemies. It’s fine to be an activist but being an activist is different from being a journalist.”
Mentorship and Training Issue
“People are not willing to be mentored, they want to be CEOs on the day they graduate, they want to be called editors two years down the road but it doesn’t work like that.
“We went to journalism school apart from going to the university. You find out that what we were taught in school is not what you find in the news. You learn on the job how to ask questions, conduct interviews, how to soften the personality you’re interviewing, how to even stalk them and balance your stories. But that’s not what we are doing these days. Someone finds a story, doesn’t confirm it yet spreads it.”
What to Do?
From the insights provided by Mrs Egbemode and our analyst, it is clear that citizen journalists, especially bloggers need to stop being unprofessional. As noted, they need to learn, unlearn and relearn from journalism school and professionals in the mainstream media. These are not enough. Having a sustainable business model, which entails value creation, delivery and capturing processes will go in a long way of averting identified unprofessional conducts. In this regard, anyone who considers the journalism genre as imperative for sustainable building of democratic and industrial institutions should seek and apply emerging knowledge.