Recently I came across the story of the Wall Street shoe shine boy.  A story of an event that happened a long time ago. It is such a shame I got to hear of it just recently. Anyway, it is better late than never.

It happened that one day a Wall Street mogul was having his shoes shined. Along the line, a casual conversation sparked off  between this businessman and the boy who was cleaning up his shoes . Unexpectedly, the Shoe Shine Boy began to intelligently discuss various stocks and their potential to generate great profits.

At that very moment, the stock market was the hottest thing in town . Everyone from Cobblers to Gardeners to Plumbers to Taxi drivers were all thinking, talking, buying and selling stocks. They were all also giving tips. At that moment, he knew it was time to get out.

Mr. Joseph Kennedy immediately withdrew his investments from the Stock Market. Shortly afterwards,  the Stock Market Crashed in 1929 . Everyone including Businessmen, Stock Brokers, Bankers and even Cooks, Taxi Drivers and Shoe Shine Boys, lost all they had put in. This culminated in the Great Depression which affected not just the United States, but the rest of the world.

It’s just about knowing when to get out many would say.  The stock market and the ponzi scheme has got a few things in common, but hold on a second!  I have never been involved in any ponzi scheme and would never advise anybody I know to join one. The similarities could be in the area where a crash looms the moment the “shoe shine boys” start getting in.

I remember the MMM crash of 2016, prior to the crash even people who were initially sceptical about the whole scheme had started putting in their money into the scheme. Bankers, the clergy, housewives, students, practically everyone now wanted to cash in and out of the new “miracle” money.  The risk part was gone as people had seen others get paid over and over again. Then came the crash.

I could write down a few things as to what the red flags for a bad business could be as a result of the number of lessons this story holds.

• Once the obvious risks are gone, the business opportunity may also be gone. Every good business possesses some good risk.
• If you must take a business risk, take it very early.
• Watch out for the “shoe shine boys.”If every Tom, Dick and Harry are now getting into a business line, just know that that field may now be saturated.
• Pay attention to what you hear and observe.
• If a deal is too good to be true, then know that there are likely hidden heavy consequences.

In the end you have to be cautious before getting into any business deal, if really it’s a business.  Gather enough information as you can, ask enough questions . You can also consult the experts in the field.

Experts are important, but it is also important to keep an eye on them.

I went for a seminar presentation at Chuwkuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), Igbariam Campus, on 17th October, 2019. There, I went to their famous Green Canteen for some plates of rice and met the food costlier than it was. The owner of the canteen complained that the cost of rice in the market is going up on a daily basis (and it is local rice for that matter). In fact she was antsy because the enquiry she made that morning (concerning the price of rice in Achalla in Anambra State) revealed to her that a bushel of rice, popularly known as Mars (hope I got the spelling right), was #9000, while a bushel of the one known as 14-14 (fourteen-fourteen) sold at #10,000. She wasn’t comfortable because there were predictions that the prices will still shoot up.

Here in Enugu, a bag of foreign rice (50kg) sells at #21000, while a 25kg bag of Abakiliki Rice sells at #8500. I asked someone in Awka about the price of rice over there and she said that she went to Eke Awka market some days ago to buy rice but the person she usually buys from only had beans to sell.

The way I’m seeing it, rice will be scarce very soon. But I believe it will only be temporary because I have this strong feeling that a lot of people are right now working on how to bring this commodity back into the market (I trust Nigerians for this). But as we wait for rice to come back into the market, we need to eat and keep our body and souls together. I have some suggestions on how we can survive this waiting period.

TIPS FOR SURVIVING THIS RICE SCARCITY PERIOD
I’m not an economist, but I’m a Nigerian who believes there is a practical solution to every problem. Well, for us not to notice the absence of rice in our markets, here are some things we need to adopt:

1. Switching to other African Dishes: I know a lot of people are panicking right now because of their over-dependence on rice; they need to know that before rice came into this country, people were eating. Different tribes in Nigeria have several local dishes that are richer and tastier than rice. There are even many that are also as easy to cook as rice, if not easier. We need to start going back to all those foods.

I have already started this adjustment. Honestly, I started introducing a lot of African dishes into my family menu long before the border closure. Now that rice is ‘doing shakara’ I don’t even feel it. For example, my family staple food includes more of potato, beans (including moi-moi and akara), fio-fio, dried akidi, abacha, okpa, yam, plantain, Igbo soups (bitter leaf, okro, ogbono, egusi, oha, etc.), nri oka and so on. We eat rice only twice a week, so you can imagine how long a bag of rice will last for us. And if I don’t have any rice to cook, my family may not feel it.

2. Going for Pastas and Noodles: Luckily for us, a lot of pasta-making companies are located in Nigeria. Now is the time for those that can’t do without rice to switch over to pastas. While in the North, I found out that there are so many types of pastas in Nigeria – the one I’m missing most right now is couscous. I even found out that people make their own pastas using wheat flour (like the Hausans make ‘talia’ in their homes). So, what are we waiting for?

Personally, I’m not a pasta person, but we have to make do with what we have. So, time to stock our houses with spaghetti, macaroni, couscous, and so many others that I don’t know their names.

For those that love noodles, well they are there for you too; but try to eat healthy.

3. Farming: The farming I’m talking about here isn’t subsistence farming. What I want to say here is that farmers should be encouraged to go back to farming. I know a lot people will say that rice farming is the in-thing right now; but I think that isn’t proper. Farmers should be encouraged to plant every kind of food. If these farmers focus more on rice, it may flood the market and the farmers may not really profit from their sweats. So I believe that as farmers are cultivating rice, they should also plant other crops (especially our local crops).

So, dear Nigerians, let’s stop lamenting about the high cost of rice, we have many other kinds of food. If you don’t know how to prepare most of these local dishes, ask the sellers of these foodstuffs for direction or go to Youtube to search for a video tutorial. Don’t depend so much on rice, at least for now.

Remember, before rice came, Nigerians were eating, and they were eating well then.

In this Afrocentric piece, Amara Sesay makes a case for the witch child or housemaid in the family and concludes that our ignorance of the strange gifts of these young stars has deprived our continent of many great minds.

If the much feared old woman in your  village had the same nurturing and encouragement as Einstein, your village, country and continent would have never been the same afterwards.  If we never feared, mocked and suffocated the strange gifts and talents God gave them…If we accepted their weirdness as their ability to think differently and not some form of organized rebellion against society, something great could have happened to scientific and technological advancements in Africa.

A comparison of the childhood of some of the world’s finest thinkers and inventors- Edison, Shakespeare, Einstein inclusive- and that of the “child witches” we exorcised of curiosity and appreciation for enquiry goes to show why we lost out in Science and  Technology in the past 200 hundred or so years. The interesting thing is that those who were lucky to escape the “witch hunt” either by relocating to the West or by being discovered by a talented teacher or scout, turned out to do great things for themselves and humanity.

A deep thought on some of the women and young girls  we despised for “eating our babies, ” or hindering our growth in life  will uncover how our ignorance conspired in decimating some of the fine talents we needed for advancement on the continent. Some of these talents right from childhood were feared for “seeing” more than the ordinary eyes can  see, and for the almost near precision of their predictions.

We feared them because we could not withstand them. Their electromagnetic beings burned out our  happiness any time they came around us. They made us feel uneasy, belittled and powerless. Their magnets drained us of energy and because we thought of them in negative, rather than affirmative terms, our thoughts became the things we feared. Truth be told, most times those very thoughts were the witches we mistook our young  geniuses for.

We could not be their Sullivans so we became their victims,  psychologically. They killed our babies, they prevented our destinies, they inflicted our parents with the diseases that led to their demise, they even prevented us from giving birth after many years of marriage. Remember the bold young house maid we blamed for the poor performance of our kids in school. That was so because even when we  denied her education, she always looked more productive and far more intelligent than our entitled and spoiled kids. Such was the fear that even the powers the Almighty reserved for Himself were attributed to these witches. They certainly were masters of mind and they could control us because they had such access to our minds that we ourselves did not have.

My sense here is not a justification for the evil forces that exist in our villages, and the world at large. Or to deny the existence of  witches altogether. I am only asking that we reconfigure our mindsets with regards to how we perceive strange gifts and talents in our families and societies. Don’t beat the brain out of her only because she thinks differently from all the other kids in the house. Don’t scoop bravery out of her because she is too intimidating for your liking. It is okay for you to be ignorant about some aspects of child upbringing, so find the courage to ask those who know more. Learn from the experts and do not deprive your family, country and continent of another Einstein.

In this piece, Amara Sesay contends that the reason why most people are not considering a role in technology is because of a limited understanding on the scope of Technology. He argues for a new understanding of technology. 

Don’t be confused when people tell you they are into tech. Tech is not a world people enter into and leave the rest of mankind waiting for crumbs that drop from that world, high above. Tech is the ENABLER  for everything there is to life. The very medium through which we came this far as humans. So, all of us made this happen together! It is the collective heritage of everybody as long as they once breathed in a place called earth.

Tech enhances and brings ease to what could have been an improbable or  even impossible to achieve. It gives meaning and adds flavour to the laborious Science of  Everyday Survival. Tech is our collective effort at injecting ease injected into an otherwise difficult process of learning, moving, doing business, etc.

So, what Techies do with these  high sounding phraseologies from Coding to Machine Learning  is to keep off the less courageous men and women from a field that could have  otherwise been the choice of everyone. The same trick has been used by people in the legal profession over the centuries to create a facade of a world that is broadly and brutally divided between learned (read: legal minded) people and laymen. If you take your time to study all those  jaw breaking Latin words and phrases that mostly spice legal discourse, you will discover that they are saying the same things your mother always told you: stay out of trouble!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, you are a techie short of the jargons and a rucksack!  Damn the Silicon Valley hype, you don’t even need a hoodie or a garage. You need you, all of your brain/mind. That’s all! You are just a mentor, two courses and three months away from techie guy you always wanted to be . But it  takes a lot of commitment, asking, peer learning and resilience. Many things will go wrong in the beginning and that is where persistence and emotional support of mentors come to play. Now, are you still sitting there. Get up and get stupid about learning new codes and designs. When? Now!

Considering the current population growth, and the ever increasing demand for energy and the obvious inability of our energy sector to meet up with all these components, I don’t think there will ever be a time when steady power supply will be achieved in Nigeria as a result of government investment. This isn’t me being pessimistic, this is me being realistic. In some ways, one can conclude that the government has given up building more or upgrading existing refineries to meet up with local demands, going by the emphasis and attention being given to the refinery project by Dangote. A lot will be solved by that project when it eventually gets completed.

There are so many reasons why getting complex things done by the government get eventually complicated along the line given the very complex nature of our socio-political space.

Take public water supply for instance.  Public water supply existed in Nigeria before independence until it gradually wound down around the 80’s. And then the era of chronic inefficiency where water boards would supply water to towns and villages say once every week or as it pleases them.  This continued until gradually though painfully Nigerians began to supply their own water by sinking boreholes. Today practically every home owns one or has access to one, and the water board is no more. The death of public water supply was caused by inefficiency and negligence.

We can also have a look at what happened in telecommunication. The collapse of NITEL  for instance was as a result of how redundant they became when the GSM market opened up in Nigeria, bringing in competitors like MTN, GLOBACOM  and many other pioneers in those early days. Today NITEL is gone, and Nigerians are communicating better.

You can add NIPOST and Nigerian Airways  to the list if you like. Then we have our primary education system. It was pioneered by the government in the past, today whoever wants quality basic education would send his or her ward to a private school.

So maybe I can say that capitalism is taking over the country. Or could it be that in our own case capitalism encroaches to replace inefficient systems? We’ve seen it happen.

So could it be that the inefficiency in the Power sector is a good sign?  A sign of the looming taken over by the private sector or the fact that soon the average Nigerian will be able to power his home and workplace from a source outside the national grid?

Considering the trend, I think it’s a good sign. Renewable energy is getting more available though the immediate initial cost is high. But that was exactly what happened in the telecom sector but today most Nigerians can afford a mobile device . The prices of mobile devices fell drastically in the years following its introduction to the Sub-Saharan African market.

The same is expected to happen with photovoltaic cells. In fact, it has been happening constantly for months and years now, as the technology gets better and the efficiency of the PV  cells increases.

These graphs below from IRENA (International Renewable Agency)  shows a steep decline in prices of PV cells in different countries.

As you can see, they are all pointing downwards.

So hopefully it will get to a point where just like mobile phones, most Nigerians can own a PV Panel which could ultimately lead to the total collapse of the government-anchored power sector.

I would expect also that big industry players would also start investing in power for business.

Largely, as we continue to further our journey into true capitalism, expect a lot of government owned agencies to become redundant.