Nigenius is a smart digital assistant which enables Nigerian teachers to improve their students’ performance and learning outcomes by providing quality teaching and learning contents. It is the premier teaching and learning solution for private and public, primary and secondary schools, in Nigeria and the West African sub region. It wants to be the medium for school administrators to maximize the productivity of their teachers in the classroom.

Nigenius provides teachers with access to well researched lesson plans and teaching resources quickly and efficiently through their mobile devices via the Google Playstore. Teachers with Nigenius  spend less time searching through multiple web pages and rather devote it to engage students with quality content from the app. To solve the common problem of outdated teaching and learning content which is prevalent in the Nigerian educational sector resulting in inefficient teachers and students, Nigenius updates its content regularly so that teachers are abreast with the latest developments in efficient teaching.

It provides teachers with the ability to search and access content which is specific to their teaching and learning objectives with quality assurance on the lesson plans by different teachers which is regularly updated for positive classroom engagement.

Nigenius operates a monthly subscription service with single and multi user subscription packages. It’s goal is to create a classroom leveraging technology for teachers to have access to the best teaching and learning resources on the go.

 As a result of ill trained teachers, Nigeria has had to grapple with a high illiteracy rate because an inefficient teacher cannot impact the pupils with knowledge to make them globally competitive. With Nigenius, it is hoped that the standard of education in primary and secondary schools in the country will be bench-marked positively in line with global standards for the 21st century.

PundiX is a leading provider of blockchain-enabled solutions which include the world’s first Point Of Sale (POS) solution. The POS solution enables merchants and consumers to  perform transactionary commerce on the blockchain in physical stores. It has the first blockchain enabled smartphone, Xphone, which is powered by the Function X OS which transmits users communication, media sharing and browsing  data to the blockchain which they are connected to.

Its POS, the XPOS, has been shipped to over 35 markets including Argentina, Australia, Columbia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA with over 100,000 targeted at the global retail market in 2021.

Its Open X platform supports blockchain developers, digital asset issuers and businesses to freely apply and list their custom digital assets unto PundiX’s payment ecosystem which includes XWallet, XPOS & XPass cards. It will first support ERC20 tokens before late expansion to digital assets of other blockchain.

The XWallet application connects regular digital asset wallets with the PundiX payment ecosystem. It allows users to easily make payments in physical stores with the XPOS. The XWallet can also be paired with XPass making it a digital payment app for usage at one’s convenience.

Blockchain developers and other merchants can now easily make their digital assets available to serve various online and offline payment scenarios.

It recently launched its XPhone in Rwanda at the GSMA Mobile 360 Africa event.  With the Chinese e-commerce and mobile payments processing transactions of over $3 trillion annually and the USA recording similar volume as well as the recently integrated African Continental Free Trade Area  to create the largest single economic market in the world, and blockchain’s grand promise to redesign the global commercial and financial system, Pundix is well prepared ahead of the harvest.

To plant or not to plant?  There are moments in the life of a farmer when it seems as though planting more may not be so desirable. They earn a living by planting, so why not?  Increasing food production leads to abundance, we all know that. So what do we not know? Well, maybe you already know or have seen or experienced something close to the scenario I’m about to describe.

Once I was on transit across a particular highway linking a major farming community with a small town . Our vehicle got to a bus stop just beside the road, and not so far away from a nucleated settlement. I looked through the window to see a heap of farm produce rotting away in a major dump site. I looked a bit closer only to discover that fresh and still edible produce was among the dumped items. I inquired only to find out that the local farmers usually dump some of the produce there after failing to sell them within a particular period, or at a price they think is commensurate with their efforts or inputs.

I once travelled to a community in the interior parts of Abia State for a ceremony and I discovered there were lots of mangoes in that community. They were so much that primary  schools were littered with a whole seasons mango all on the ground . It was everywhere! As we were leaving the community dwellers offered those mangoes to us at extremely low prices that many like myself didn’t feel comfortable buying from them at the price they offered since we knew what they sold for from where we were coming.

These are not just stories,  this is the reality of many farmers. Yes there are farmers, entrepreneurs, and commercial agriculturists . These are not the ones I’m talking about. Most of the agricultural produce products consumed in developing countries are cultivated by subsistence farmers of whom most are poor.  Yes, poor farmers are feeding the rich and middle class and are yet struggling to break even.

The illusion that cultivating more will make farmers rich is not backed by reality or any economic principle.

The truth is the more food supply they produce, the more the markets are flooded with with agricultural products, and the more this happens, the more the price of their commodity falls. And complex problems arise when supply pulls the price far below their total input putting them at a loss.

This is just basic demand and supply. Price goes down when supply exceeds demand.

This has led many farmers into both financial and psychological crisis. According to this ozy.com, the ” Indian government data shows 12,602 Indian farmers killed themselves in 2015 alone, mostly owing to economic distress. Indebtedness was responsible for 38.7 percent of suicides, while crop failures or the inability to sell produce led to another 19.5 percent of suicides.”

Here the Wikipedia explains “…this happens often due to their inability to repay loans mostly taken from banks and NBFCs to purchase expensive seeds and fertilizers, often marketed by foreign MNCs…”

This isn’t just about what’s happening in India, there are issues close to this in so many other places, especially in developing countries.  It is also very important to understand and identify the particular demographics that benefit from improved food supply. The populace seems to be the ones benefiting most from it.  So what about the farmer, who protects the farmer? The truth is the farmer shouldn’t be left alone in all this.

 Protecting the Farmer

In 1933 and later in 1938, the United States Government made deliberate efforts to alter the supply of these farm commodities by creating laws that will benefit the farmer. This they did it by passing the Agricultural Adjustment Act  (though controversial and open to numerous debates) which was further amended by the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938.

“The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States Federal Law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The Government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land. The money for these subsidies was generated through an exclusive tax on companies which processed farm products.”  In other words, farmers were paid to cut down production.

Another way the revenue of farmers could be enhanced  is through Agricultural Value chain. In simple terms, this refers to a whole range of goods and services  required to get the agricultural product to move from the farm to the final consumer or customer. In other words, farmers should be involved in many of the processes along the chain outside cultivation and harvest. From planting tomatoes to canning and selling,  from planting cocoa to producing and selling chocolate, from having a grape farm to producing and selling wines, the farmer should not be isolated from any of these.

In summary, farmer protection could be enhanced by, though not limited to, the following :

1. Enactment of suitable laws aimed at regulating price and or supply.
2. Mechanization and the use of modern technology.
3. Value chain.
4. Provision of suitable and sufficient storage facilities.

Having healthy self-esteem is very necessary. Everyday we hear a lot of messages that encourage us to develop our self-worth but we rarely hear feasible ways we can achieve that, and maintain it.

Lack of a good self-image can be damaging. To start with the person may have challenges relating with people. Some may be so timid that they allow other people to trample on their rights, while others are so arrogant that they trample on the rights of others. Besides, timid and arrogant people are not always good employees because they cannot work without supervision. Truth is, the timid person doesn’t have confidence in himself while the arrogant one feels so over-confident that he will not ask necessary questions nor seek for direction even if he is making a serious mistake (and I don’t think anybody will want him as a team member).

If you ask me what self-esteem is, I’ll say that it is when someone has the ability to find his own space in the world and then keep it. This person neither encroaches into another person’s space, nor allow somebody else to trespass on his own. A person with low self-esteem (the timid) will leave his space for others to take over, while the one with over-bearing self-image (the arrogant) will keep his own space and still encroach into that of another. But a person with a healthy self-esteem is neither timid nor arrogant; he is comfortably in-between the two. But, he is humble. Hope you know that humility is not timidity.

We know that people that have healthy self-esteem have a lot to gain. To start with, they believe in themselves and in others. They develop and maintain healthy relationships with people. They succeed in their careers. They have less pressure and good stress management techniques. The list can go on and on.

But then, for some reasons, people have low self-worth. I don’t believe that this is genetic because no one is born with a low self-image. It all has to do with the society’s influence on the individual. Some of the causes of unhealthy self-image are:

1. Criticisms and Unkind Words: Our society is filled with people who listen to others just because they want to criticise them, and those who use hurtful words on their fellow human beings, with or without knowing the effects of their words on them. These people are everywhere, even in the internet. They talk down on everyone – adult, children, male and female. This case is made worse if the victim made some bad choices or mistakes. Those around him may keep rubbing it on his face at every given opportunity. Why they do this could only be speculated.

Criticism and hurtful words can greatly affect children with negligent parents. Most times children need assurance from their parents because of the unkind words their peers or other adults used on them. When these children find no one to talk to, they feel neglected and rejected, and the hurting words used on them will start affecting their psyche.

2. Financial Status: Nigeria is a society that has high regards for the wealthy and the opposite attitude for the needy. People that found themselves among the financially challenged have to struggle to keep their heads high within the community. In fact, they may not be called upon for any decision making – their voices don’t matter. In my village, I constantly hear statements like, “Who are my? I don’t have money so who will listen to me?” When this type of attitude is allowed to seep deep down the person, bringing him out of it will be very difficult.

Another problem that could arise from low financial status is asking for financial assistance. This could bring different kinds of insult to the person.

3. Social Class: Everyone in the society wants to belong to the upper class. When people strive and make every effort to be among the prestigious but couldn’t succeed, they start wondering what their problems are. Some will tell you that they are not meant to be among the privileged. This is more problematic in societies where someone’s birth decides his class. However, note that social class is not a strong determinant of people’s self-esteem. This is because some people in the upper class may have low self-esteem, while some in the middle and lower classes may have healthy one.

4. Level of Education: In as much as financial status matters a lot in Nigerian societies, the level education is also a very important factor. The truth is that the well educated are also respected in our society. This accounts for the reason the uneducated wealthy Nigerian men strive to acquire higher education, even if it is just to attach the title to their names. What I am trying to say here is that the higher the level of education someone attains, the better his self-esteem, irrespective of his financial status. You will understand this when a rich uneducated person is quick to tell you that he will ‘buy you and your certificates a thousand times’ any time he feels belittled by your academic prowess.

5. Physical Appearance and Attributes: Our physical attributes can affect our self-esteem. Some people feel inadequate because they believe they needed one physical endowment or another. I know of someone who doesn’t feel comfortable coming out to perform in the public because she considers herself fat. I have a relative who is afraid to talk in the public because he was made to believe that he has the ‘wrong type of voice’ (and he truly would love the opportunity to engage in public speech). I know someone who complains that people laugh at him because he limps. I know someone who doesn’t want to come out during the day because he had a domestic accident that disfigured his face. What about those that bleach their skins because they want to have a different complexion? There are so many of them out there. Our society has made them feel so inadequate because of their physical attributes. But they need to come out of their shells and concentrate on their beautiful sides.

In order to build our self-esteem, we have to develop both our inside and our outside. This is because self-esteem is a thing of the mind, but it exudes from the inside and showcases itself on the outside. Anyway, let’s look at some ways we can achieve this.

• Read a Lot and Feed Your Intelligence: The importance of reading can never be over-emphasised. Reading exposes us to a lot. The knowledge we acquire from the things we read can do so much for us – it helps us to hold intelligent conversations and it teaches us how to manage problems in our lives. Sounding intelligent boosts our morale and increases our respects in the society. The easiest way to gather knowledge is through books. So, read up anything you can lay your hands on.
• Evaluate Yourself Objectively: In as much as we don’t have to let negative things people said about us affect us, we still need to be honest with ourselves and tell ourselves the areas that need to be changed. We are human, so we are not 100% perfect. This means that we have some characters that may be affecting others negatively. We need to find out these attitudes of ours and find how to change, modify or re-channel them. Honestly, when you have an honest and objective evaluation of yourself, you will turn out better. It will even help you in your career development because you will know your strengths and your weaknesses. This means that you will know where you will excel in.
• Try not to Compare Yourself with Others: This has been a common saying these days, but it is actually easier said than done. Truth is that you will continue to compare yourself with your contemporaries, but you need to keep reminding yourself of your strength which is what makes you unique.
• Replace Envy with Admiration: Envy is an emotion that can creep up on you and consume you if you allow it in. The only thing I can say here is that you should find a way to learn from the person you envy. Look at it as a business strategy and it will help you a lot. You can read the article I sent in earlier on learning from your competitor here.
• Find Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Everybody has something unique about him or her. Your strength and weakness both make you unique. Sharpen your strength and work on your weakness. I always tell people that their strength is their active part while their weakness is their passive side that drives the active one. For example someone that is considered stubborn but innovative can re-channel that ‘stubbornness’ to resilience while working on his new inventions. So, he doesn’t need to be ‘over-submissive’ all he needs is to use that part of him that people complain about to bring up something positive. So, have you found your strength and weakness? Have you planned how to re-channel it? If you are a busy-body and talkative like me you may enjoy teaching, lecturing or research jobs (*smiles*).
• Dress-Up: People always think it’s hilarious whenever I say that there is a difference between ‘putting on clothes’, ‘wearing clothes’ and ‘dressing up’. Some people wear clothes just to cover up their nakedness, some do because the community demands them to wear that particular clothes, and then there are the ones that wear clothes because they want to look good. Please, be among the third group. I’m not saying you should be a ‘fashionista’, or that you should break a bank, what I’m only saying is that you should always look your best. It has a way of making you feel good about yourself. Don’t overdress, but don’t under-dress either. Package yourself very well.

• Work on Your Carriage: Our posture gives out certain impression about us. The way we carry ourselves can determine how people treat us. Like one beautician said, anytime we are walking, sitting, standing, eating and the rest, we should pretend that we have a thousand cameras fixed on every part of our body. In other words, we should be conscious of how we walk, stand, sit and all. Let us develop good postures, it says a lot about us. I will come back later with an article on this.
• Work on Your Language: There is already an article on how to improve our speaking skills. You can access it here. When we work on our language, we should also consider our choice of words, manner of speech and pronunciations. They say so much about us and encourage or discourage positive attitudes of people towards us. Truth is, the way we talk displays our level of education, family background, financial status, social class and so many others.

• Financial Independence: Knowing that we don’t have to beg people for money for our basic needs does a lot of wonders to our self-image. So, don’t wait to be told to find something doing no matter how little. You can find a side hustle to augment your income. A list of side hustles that can easily be engaged in Nigeria can be found here.
• The People around You: I know a lot of people advocate that negative people should be cut off from our lives. That is necessary, to some extent. But we still need those people that keep us on our toes. So I’ll suggest that you look for people that will be honest with you so that they can tell you where should improve on. The difference between these people and those that try to put you down is that the latter will always complain without making any constructive suggestions except the ones that will benefit them. So be careful with people that you bring into your circle. Look out more for those that will encourage you one way or the other to come up.

Remember, nobody is born with low self-esteem. If you find out that you don’t have much confidence on yourself, it is not your fault, so to say. But if you have the opportunity to make some changes and you failed to grab it, then it becomes your fault.