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Home Blog Page 6732

Women Are Gold

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Women are gold.

Yes, I mean women are a special being given to the world as a gift from God. The best gift I ever had was my mother and she is a woman. In fact, I can say the next to God is women. If you doubt this, try to go to bed with an indigestible stomach, then you will understand how it feels to carry a pregnancy in the womb for 9 months. Remember, they also breastfeed for one year and a half. Indeed, women are everything.

I do wonder if we can survive without them in our society. Our president once said they belong to the kitchen but I can boldly say it is not true. The fact that President Buhari said it doesn’t make it true.

Although women can be so frustrating at times, that doesn’t mean they should be treated poorly.

How will you tell me you love your wife but slap her at every slightest bit of disagreement?

That’s so absurd. Some men are so comfortable with beating their wife at any form of misunderstanding.

Often times, I do wish it is possible for God to change man to woman for just a year so that men can understand the stress women are going through.

They said behind a successful man there is a woman. This saying is true. Let’s take the former president of Nigeria as a case study.

Goodluck Jonathan is a learned person and a successful man to crown it all. But I found something outrageous about him, he doesn’t care about what people think of his wife, Patience Jonathan. Even when the masses were condemning her spoken English, he keeps putting her in front of everything he wants to do. This is what true men do.

Of course, every marriage or relationship has its own problems but should not result in physical abuse. Often times, I have seen men beat their wives. In fact, I was in my room last week when I heard a man beating his wife. I couldn’t condone it. I had to go to their room to make peace. He said the wife knew he was going to have his bathe at 6 o’clock in the morning but she failed to fill the drum with water.

But the poor woman brought out the drugs she had been using for the past three days as she wasn’t feeling too well. I turned to the man and asked if he knew anything about it. He said that doesn’t stop her from filling the drums with water.

That was an inhumane response. Considering the woman has to fetch the water with a bucket from downstairs and take it up to the three-storey building on her head. This a task the man couldn’t even do by himself. He had barely carried a bucket when he started panting and feeling remorseful. He couldn’t look into my eyes.

That’s when I started counselling him.

Nigerian men, enough is enough. Stop the women slavery mentality. No house chore is meant for women alone. That’s where the word – partner comes in. Assisting your wife doesn’t reduce your value as a man. It is treating your wife poorly that reduces your value as a man. Our African norms and customs are killing us.

Women are being reduced to nothing. They are meant to take up all the chores. Common!

Croatian president is a woman.

To every woman out there, don’t let any man treat you poorly. Place a value on yourself. How you present yourself determines how you will be treated. You are what you think you are.

Note: Until you place value on yourself, you don’t know who you are.

The Biggest Challenge in African Agriculture

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As we get ready to converge in Abuja for Sterling Bank’s Ag Summit, I want to share this perspective which I left in the comment area on LinkedIn. Agriculture in Nigeria is very challenging for farmers and investors. Unfortunately, things will NOT change overnight. Simply, until we make farmers businesspeople from just ancestral custodians of culture, nothing significant will happen in our agriculture. Most people do not farm to make profit – the gold standard of any venture; they farm because that is a way of life with making profit a secondary nexus. 

Because of that, if you do the numbers, you will have no strong correlation between input and expected output. So, you see a man who has been farming for 10 years and yet is still poor. With blazing irony, a man in the community of farmers will expect government to send him food! 

Nonetheless, he will continue to farm even though the “business” is not working. In other trades, the man could have moved from selling corn to pure water or something else. But in farming, the output does not drive the next year strategy. 

That is the biggest challenge in  Nigerian agriculture – inability to make farmers businesspeople. I work with many of them in our business – and I have seen things. Do not think anyone can reprogram culture overnight. It is tough! Your motive for profit is secondary – what matters to most is that the way of life is strong, irrespective of the mass poverty it is creating in the community!

I hope to continue this conversation during Sterling Bank’s Ag Summit Africa; I am one of the speakers. By 2030, everyone expects African agriculture to hit $1 trillion mark. It has to happen if opportunities must abound in the continent.

The Agriculture Summit Africa is one of the continent’s leading platforms dedicated to creating a convergence of private and public sector players, investors and agriculture practitioners across the entire value chain.
This year’s conference is themed ‘Agriculture: Your Piece of the Trillion- Dollar Economy’. This theme was inspired by the World Bank’s projection that the agriculture sector will exceed 1 trillion dollars within a decade and will facilitate debate on key issues including access to capital by investors across the value chain, access to electricity, better technology and digitization methods and well irrigated land to grow high-value nutritious foods.
The benefits of this are enormous as the growth of the sector will help increase exports and income levels, create employment, reduce poverty, boost growth rates, and promote food self-sufficiency across the continent while concurrently safeguarding the environment.
The Summit will take place under the distinguished Chairmanship of His Royal Majesty, Emir Sanusi Lamido, the Emir of Kano State, with His Excellency, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria delivering the keynote address.

Medcera Begins Serving Sierra Leone

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We have a framework we use to build solutions in my business. We like to create products that will work across Africa on Day One. Yet, we only want customers to see one and only one portal. We do not design portals; we program portals. By doing it that way, we enjoy cost-efficiency because once first country is built (typically Nigeria), building for other nations is purely marginal on cost.

In Medcera, we built a solution that activating our electronic health record (EHR) to work in any country simply means switching a button in the Admin area (see below). Once I switch the button for that country, the platform will configure itself with country phone code, currency, etc dynamically. So, as you look at medcera.com, you see one website. But behind it, we have one platform that can support 50+ African countries with each additional country setup requiring less than 10 seconds of work.

This evening, I activated Sierra Leone. We now have a local partner that will handle basic training to help doctors, nurses, labs, imaging, pharmacy, insurers and patients use our solution. To do that, I logged into our Admin area and switched on the button for Sierra Leone.

Once that was done, I checked the registration area, and I saw that Sierra Leone has been added (see below). With that, we have now Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe and Botswana in places customers can use Medcera. We continue to look for local partners across Africa.

Welcome the good people of Sierra Leone.

Update: Nigeria Backs Down, Decreases Visa Fees for Americans

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The visa reciprocity increment announced 2 days ago by the US Mission Nigeria, for Nigerians, has prompted a policy review by the Ministry of Interior. According to the statement from the office of the Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, captioned: FG Decreases Visa Charges Payable by US Citizens in Line with Reciprocity Policy.

The Ministry of Interior had engaged the US Embassy as soon as the announcement was made, and a committee was set up to conduct due diligence in line with the Ministry’s extant policy on reciprocity of Visa fees.

The outcome of the “due diligence” conducted by the committee was approval of decrease of Visa charges payable by US citizens.

And the Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Muhammad Babandede, has been directed to implement the decision of the committee effective Thursday, August 29, 2019. That means that US citizens can now pay $160 as Nigerian visa fee.

The decision of the Ministry of Interior to review downward, the fees of Americans citizens applying for Nigeria visas has been applauded. However, it beckons on the US Government to reverse their decision. The reciprocity policy was introduced by the US Government in 2018, and Nigeria was duly informed.

But the Ministry of Interior was too slow to act on the US Government’s letter until their decision to reciprocate was announced on Wednesday.

However, there are other concerns: the duration of Nigerian tourist visa for Americans is 2 years, while Ghana and South Africa issue the Americans 5 – 10 years tourist visas; and get the same in return. It is a situation that has reciprocated 2 years tourist visas for Nigerians also.

Concerned Nigerians are asking the Ministry of Interior to do a thorough review of the visa process as it affects Nigeria and other countries, especially developed countries.

The US government is yet to respond to the decision of the Ministry of Interior. However, there is hope that it will be reciprocated as well.

The Government Should Pay Pensioners At Due Time

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They say rest is sweet after labour. But it’s not the case with pensioners. Their struggle continues after retiring. What do we say about the government who owes retirees?

It’s a bit strange provided these people made a living from the peanuts they were paid. Many never enjoyed the fruit of their labour because they had to invest all their meager salaries on their child/children’s education.

Meaning, their best lives were lived serving the government in other to cater for their children. Of course, training their children also means they are building the nation. But why do they have to suffer to be paid their pension? It happens a lot in the country. It hits me from the bone to the marrow.

Come to think of it, these parents have a few years to live after retirement, so when will they be given their entitlement or gratuity. I know of many retirees who died while waiting for the pension or gratuity. Some who are still alive never got paid a dime. The process to go about it is so unbearable and frustrating.

I know many would say, didn’t they train their children? Perhaps, they should be taking care of them at old age.

Yes, they did train their children. But we all know the situation in the country, getting a job is an uphill battle. It takes a miracle to get one faster. Besides, it’s their sweat. They are entitled to it.

If past governments were given their entitlements and rights at the appropriate time, I wonder why the citizens should die before they receive theirs.

Hence, my plea to all the state governments in the 36 states of Nigeria, pay the retirees. Give them the reward for their labour.

All fingers are not equal. Some of these people rely solely on the little monthly pension. Not all got a big paycheck during service, so they could not build an empire from it or start a side business that could sustain them.

Why starve them?

Why put them into avoidable depression?

I hope this article will get across to the governments.

God bless Nigeria!