In college when I was running for a position as the Director of Research, SEEES, I went to the Student-President of the engineering School, Ezeoba, and asked him on how I could run an effective campaign. Ezeoba had just run a very effective campaign, ascending to a prestigious position where he was to lead the engineering student body in FUTO.

My opponent was a better candidate, and certainly was more qualified. He was also a mentor, being a highly respected brilliant student. He was also ahead in class; I was contesting a year earlier, not waiting for my turn!

Ezeoba explained the secret: (1) you must address students by their first names if you want them to vote for you, (2) on the manifesto night, make them laugh and (3) be bold on your vision. I executed and won!

This video reminds me of #1: this politician knows the names of all Nigeria’s army chiefs since 1979 and could recite them with ease. No wonder, he was a former governor: he is a people-builder and -connector. Listen to Shettima. They said Obama kept contact with classmates.

What is the secret sauce in your trade? Work on it.

(please ignore the politics in the video)

NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo [read Adetokunbo] has agreed to a five-year contract extension with the Milwaukee Bucks. The supermax deal is worth $228.2 million and is the largest deal in NBA history.  Along with the last year in his contract, Giannis will earn $256 million over the next six seasons. Giannis, born to Nigerian parents in Greece, is one of the finest all-ballers, leading his team in practically all positions.

I wrote about him a few years ago.

I just finished watching our young brother Giannis Antetokounmpo profiled on CBS’ “60 Minutes”, the best in American television. Giannis was born in Greece by Nigerian parents.  He plays for Milwaukee Bucks, an NBA team. In 2016–17, he led the “Bucks in all five major statistical categories and became the first player in NBA history to finish a regular season in the top 20 in total points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks”. He is a top five NBA star.

Giannis is a Greek. The Greeks rent trucks to see him play. He is a very humble young man, always joining them to sing their anthem. His story is very inspiring.

But watching news commentators reminds me of the double standard in this world. Giannis is profiled as a European but children of immigrants who run into troubles are always Nigerians.

The story of Giannis is the African story.

We wish him more wins.

Today, we received our first payment for Tekedia Mini-MBA via a cryptocurrency. Many young people have asked us to offer that option for months, but I ignorantly refused. But today, Chinenye Okenze pushed hard: he educated me!

Quickly, I called one of our startups, Bitfxt to provide guidance. Bitfxt focuses on conversion of crypto to fiat currency, offering debit cards which simplify the use of cryptos to pay for basic things. I had felt that it was a smarter idea to invest in the exchange, infrastructure, etc without getting into the coin itself.

But you know what? I was scoring own-goals by not offering a way for people to pay via crypto. But we have corrected our errors: starting immediately, you can pay for our programs via BTC, ETH and LTC besides other options like bank transfer, Flutterwave, Paypal, and debit/credit cards. From the little research I did, BTC, ETH and LTC seem to be on the money. Yes, those are the only coins I can trust for now. As we have more confidence, we will activate more. You need to use our automatic registration option to do that.

• Crypto payment: Pay with Bitcoin (BTC), ETH, and other coins by checking out here; select the product, add to cart, and select Coinpayment at checkout.

When we finished the integration – it took less than 10 minutes – Chinenye registered and our team sent him his login details. This is the message: listen to young people; they are smarter!

Tekedia Institute offers an innovation management 12-week program, optimized for business execution and growth, with digital operational overlay. It runs 100% online. The theme is Innovation, Growth & Digital Execution – Techniques for Building Category-King Companies. All contents are self-paced, recorded and archived which means participants do not have to be at any scheduled time to consume contents.

It is a sector- and firm-agnostic management program comprising videos, flash cases, challenge assignments, labs, written materials, webinars, etc by a global faculty coordinated by Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe.

Go here and register.

Tekedia Academic Programs

In all the editions we have run in Tekedia, there has been one huge missing link: translation of business frictions into components, and through Design Thinking fix them, practically. Our members come with business challenges and want to graduate with a clear methodology on how to fix them. To deal with that missing link, we are introducing a new course, right from Week 1 called Design Thinking and Innovation Lessons. 

Mr. Aderinola Oloruntoye (we call him Dean) will lead that course. In SAP, the global technology giant, he was the digital transformation & innovation lead in West Africa. Besides the course which is already ready, there would be five Tekedia Live sessions to help members through the processes. Those five sessions will deal with a methodology he has postulated on designs and innovations, within a contextual framework of Africa and emerging regions. His course on innovation remains a special moment for many.

It is a very great course and I look forward to the knowledge excursion with him guiding us. Click here to visualize our curriculum.