Tekedia Institute welcomes another big corporate entity – Infoprive, a leader on cybersecurity and digital forensics, to Tekedia Mini-MBA. Infoprive is a consulting leader when it comes to PCI DSS Compliance and broad digital security. Welcome.

I just got a call from Paypal: “Fasmicro, we have working capital for you”. Yes, Paypal has been asking us to take out a loan. But as I have said many times: “we have the best investors and lenders – customers – and we do not need money”. Today’s call was from a senior person. No luck for him, as we do not need any capital. Our advisory and design business are largely prepaid.

As Paypal pushes, our bank’s online account has a button with this description – You are approved for a loan, click to accept. Then, below is another one, from the U.S. Government. Simply, American financial institutions are doing everything to give us capital with no credit checks – our sales have qualified us!

My mother was a petty trader in Oriendu market in Ovim, and I used to help her in the garri store: great customer service can unleash free working capital. Those who have prepaid for Tekedia Institute Mini-MBA for 5 years are great lenders!

Now, the interesting question: can the Nigerian banks do this to its customers?

Comment from LinkedIn Feed

Comment #1:

No surprises, even Nigerian banks can do same! How? Because lenders usually want to lend to those who don’t need capital or those who are already wealthy.

The same way you are more likely to spend more money when invited to an event by one of your rich friends, as against the small guy who really need that money; that’s if there’s even a chance of honouring the small guy’s invitation, without citing security concerns and other paraphernalia…

Our world is full of head-turning paradoxes, and no vaccine is capable of curing this malady; it’s as old as man.

Just tell PayPal that one Obi here is seriously in need of that loan, then watch how the guy will squeeze his face immediately.

The world only pays attention to those who have already succeeded and are known, so all we can do is to fight to be known.

Comment #2:

I think the problem is that there is too much Cash chasing few investment. Your USA Federal Reserve has pumped in above 3 Trillion Dollars since last year into your economy. Another 1.9 Trillion Dollars planned for this year. Your interests rates are negative and yield at all term low. Where will all that money go that is productive. With nearly zero percent Savings rate, it doesn’t make sense to hoard cash due for fear of inflation.

By contrast as you said yesterday, our lot in Nigeria is asking us to devalue our already declining currency. How much cash injection did we get into our economy in dollars terms, since the pandemic. Even as our main stay of the economy is decimated. That is the story of where we are. 5 Trillion Dollars free money versus none in Nigeria. How can Banks in Nigeria lend. Your banks borrow at negative rates and have done so since 2008. Ours as you rightly pointed out borrow at 14 percent APR.

The stage is not the same and the players unequally yoked. Hopefully, one day we will fine. When you are down, the only way is up no matter how long. God Bless Nigeria.

World of wonders!

“Brilliant”, “world-class”, “shaping my understanding already”, “ wonderful experience”, “fresh knowledge”. These are some comments from our community as Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 4 begins Week 1. Registration continues for those who want to join our academic festival. You can join here . Next week, we will begin the live sessions.

We will graduate more students than any university in Africa in 2021. But our core driving philosophy, besides the number of members, is to bring more impacts in cities and communities. That is why we are bringing innovators and growth makers together.

Learn from the best and connect with others at hub.tekedia.com which is growing daily.

Thank you Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO) – Africa’s finest university – for honouring me as one of the four notable alumni of the university. There is never a greater honour than the one that comes from home. It remains like yesterday when I landed from the village of Ovim to Owerri, to begin a journey, in one of the finest technical universities in the world.

The first core homework I did in Johns Hopkins University was on a course – Computer Aided Surgery – and the assignment was to develop a mathematical model to guide a robotic needle going through a laryngoscope during minimal invasive surgery of the throat.

My series and calculus courses in FUTO went into action. Within days, I received a Fellowship from the professor. Later that work became a patent. And later, the United States Government acquired some rights.

I want to thank my FUTO seniors, our university and all FUTOites for the honour.

The near-term future of Nigeria is tethered on crude oil because oil still generates more than 80% of our foreign earnings. So, to improve Nigeria, you need to look at the business of crude oil production, distribution and marketing. Because Nigeria as a nation is more connected at the production level, a big component becomes how much does it take to produce a barrel of crude in the nation. We have no control on how much it sells!

Nigeria’s junior petroleum minister, Timipre Marlin Sylva, noted thus: “Currently, the average total cost per barrel is below $30/barrel for Joint Venture (JV) agreements & below $20/barrel for the Production Sharing Contract (PSC). We need to optimise our unit cost of production in order to sustain our way of doing business”.

In the startup world, we talk of unit economics; it describes a business model’s revenues and costs in relation to an individual unit. If the unit economics does not look great, the business model could be imperiled irrespective of the execution capabilities.

Looking at Nigeria, our business model runs through crude oil. So, the question becomes what is our unit economics since the unit economics of crude oil could be extrapolated to the national unit economics. Pure and simple, Nigeria must not relax at $30 per barrel when it costs Saudi Arabia less than $9 to produce a barrel.

Nigeria needs to modernize and improve security, transportation, logistics and technologies to ensure that Nigeria’s crude production drops below $12 per barrel. If that happens, we will extract more $billions from waste to fund the future. That is the biggest opportunity to bring efficiency in Nigeria but the nation must be ready to invest to make that happen.

People, Nigeria needs to improve its unit economics with the fierce urgency of now.

HMSPR at #NUCOPLaunch:

"Currently,the average total cost per barrel is below $30/barrel for Joint Venture (JV) agreements & below $20/barrel for the Production Sharing Contract (PSC). We need to optimise our unit cost of production in order to sustain our way of doing business" pic.twitter.com/5QwU45CXYG

— NNPC Limited (@nnpclimited) February 9, 2021