By Ajayi Joel

Finally, I decided to push out this post. If you’re my friend on this space and you’re from another African country apart from Nigeria, please signify with your country.

Entrepreneurs, educationists, freelancers and all, there’s a whole lot to learn from this.

I have been pondering on this for weeks, so I decided to lay my back flat to write this. I tell you it will be an eight series post on different topics, and it is not in any way to throw insult at the government. Rather, it is poised to identify how our system of government is ruining our economy.

I will be using Nigeria as a case study and I already have five sub-topics documented which I will list and once I begin the series, it is open for discussion, debate and contribution. Matter of fact, I will love contributions from most of my friends outside Nigeria here, relating each post with the state of government in your country of residence.

I personally feel there are few conversations going on about this at our level which seem intellectual. I will not only talk about the problems but give possible solutions from my angle.

The sub-topic includes:

The Education Disgust

In this post, I’d identify the role of good education in the progress of the economy and relates it with why Africa is still slowly progressing because the governments are hitting the nails on the heads with a piece of paper.

We will examine how the development of teachers is more important than erecting classrooms in every nook and cranny of the society. And how the government needs to understand the role of technology in education and how they have not begun action. Lots of insights to share!

Infrastructural Rottenness

In this post, I will address how we have not prioritized the development of infrastructures. How our government is running after the wind. I will point out how internet and electricity are two major infrastructures that should be addressed.

For our economy to thrive in the 21st century then those two must be prioritized as well as road networks. What drives economic growth is the success of small businesses which mostly depend on those.

Taxes and the Death of Dreams

No country can ever get rich on taxes. Fine, taxes are very important but exorbitant taxes ruin businesses and send them to bankruptcy.

I will give insights into how the governments of other African countries have placed taxes on the internet which is not a good move. That will reduce internet operations hence reducing cash flow for the country.

I will also explain how the government is amassing debts in the name of economic growth which is a death pill to the future of the continent. No government can ever get rich by amassing debts. Neither can they get rich through aids from world organizations.

We will examine how they need to pay attention to industrialization within the country and drive production.

Lack of Structural Ecosystems: Its Contribution to the Success of Un-scalable Business

It is hard to build an industry in Africa. There are so many disadvantages, and lack of structural ecosystems is a major cause. We have too many un-scalable businesses.

How businesses are built for survival and not scaling, and how those do not readily add a coin to the GDP. Why structures need to be put in place in order to help real businesses grow and stand.

Structures are needed in every sector to drive growth.

We Cannot Win Without the Government

Over my past 1 year of trying to found a company, I was optimistic that we could do a lot without the government. However, I have realized that there is so little we can do. There are so many policies that should be addressed, and we cannot do those except the government.

How the government needs to be economic-driven, and focus less on fighting corruption just like my president feels is the best approach but pay more attention to setting up structures which will drive economic growth.

A perfect case is focusing more on quality education and employment, and watch crime rate reduce. Fighting crimes by employing more police officers is a fire brigade approach, and it doesn’t work in the development of a country.

By Nnamdi Odumody

TradeLens is a blockchain platform by IBM and Maersk which empowers businesses and authorities along the supply chain with a single, secured source of shipping data for efficiency in operations. It tracks shipments in real time with greater precision via 120+ dynamic events published direct from source, improves data sharing and collaboration with shipping partners through blockchain encryption and powerful permission based sharing, as well setting up subscriptions to be notified when events occur which matches your subscriptions.

SECURE:Improve data sharing and collaboration with shipping partners through blockchain encryption and powerful permission-based sharing.

TradeLens allows you to manage the documents involved with a consignment. Submitted documents generate events for your documents adding to the view of activities involved with your consignment or transport equipment. TradeLen’s document functions can be used as part of the process of submitting filings for the import and export of goods by enabling end users to securely submit, stamp and approve documents.

It can be utilized directly through REST APIs or through the Shipment Manager UI. The Shipment Manager(SM) component provides a web user interface to interact with the platform. Users can view the events relating to a consignment and perform operations on documents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QgPQzwyrCA

TradeLens is committed to the promotion and adoption of industry standards and interoperability of platforms. It will work closely with the TradeLens Industry Advisory Board, TradeLens participants and standard bodies to help the industry coalesce around the use of widely adopted codes and data models. The TradeLens data model and access control scheme will align with the UN/CEFACT model. It is committed to openness with all functionality surfaced via non proprietary, publicly available APIs that are designed specifically for consumability and ease of integration. TradeLens will also increasingly offer standard integrations for ERP, TOS, TMS and WMS packages.

The Blockchain network topology will ensure segregation across carriers.

By Mutiu Iyanda

In the previous analysis, the argument was that the consequences of watching the Big Brother Naija show by the youths are enormous despite the tolerance, creativity, fame among other benefits claimed by the organisers and supporters of the show. The tolerance, creativity and fame may be beneficial to the individual participants. But, in the long term, they undermine morality of other youths capable of leading to committing antisocial behaviours such as rape, cybercrime, rituals for money making purpose among others.

The stance in the analysis was that the programme should be banned from the Nigerian broadcasting space. This position attracted mixed feelings from the Tekedia’s Community. Some members of the Tekedia community want the immoral parts/scenes from the programme be expunged, while others prefer that organisers and other broadcast content providers offer alternatives, analysis of the comments reveals. In the current piece, there is a need for us to reflect on the previous actions and those surfaced in the last 11 days of the show.

The Hard Reflections

Big Brother Naija is an offshoot of the Big Brother Africa which derived its name from the Big Brother Shows in America and Europe. In the early days of the BBA, the show attracted an average of 30 million audiences. In the previous edition, “The Nigerian representative, Ofunneka was first, thought to be the most morally decent. She, however, incurred the wrath of viewers when footages of the show revealed that she was involved in an act with the eventual winner, Richard, who was shown having some suggestive and amorous contact with her.

“Information has it that already there were 4,584 clicks on the video of Richard and Ofunneka escapades on YouTube. MNET (which transmitted the program) had earlier apologised to the Nigerian government over the sexually offensive video clips on the Big Brother Africa reality show. However, the deed had been done and its effect on viewers is not reversible.”

In his reaction to the BBA, Professor Wole Soyinka, the renowned playwright and social commentator, described the show as ‘banal, lacking anything to offer for the continent.  All we need is just getting some prostitutes on the streets and lunatics to go naked for nothing’. For the Nigerian version of the show, the public criticism trailing it has also been documented.

Despite all the criticisms from the public analysts and renowned social commentators, some Nigerians still believe that the show does not constitute a threat to the country’s social and cultural values.  George Orwell wrote his 1984 novel in 1949, describing a society in which “whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth” and “the Ministry of Truth” promotes “doublethink” and “newspeak.”  As Orwell observed, with the show, we are embracing dangerous idea in the name of globalisation! Yes, we can’t afford to be bench-warmer in the global space, but, we also need to realise the long term negative consequences of short gratifications we are enjoying today.

Indeed, BBN is a social experiment. It is impossible for everyone to avoid watching. If you decide to remove the channels from your Cable Television, it is impracticable to always follow your children, tracking their viewing behaviour. If Cable Television is not available for the children, what about the YouTube? Instead of addressing the negative consequences of our present actions, we are whipping up popular feeling of do not spoil someone’s business through propaganda.

BBN is a strategic tool for long term antisocial behaviour. This position has rightly been supported by a recent study, which reveals that sampled students of the Lagos State University who watched Big Brother Africa had higher mean sexual behaviour, indicating that it influences their sexual behaviour.

BBN and Public’s Sexual Information Seeking in 11 Days

Now, let us make sense of the emerging results of the ongoing edition. Before that, it is imperative for us to understand that 78% of 925 respondents within the age group of 21 to 25 years studied by the Business Day reported that they used the Internet for social or personal interests, while 58% watched television on any device and listening to music (57%).

“When queried on the kind of videos respondents watched on their laptops, tablets and mobile phones, TV show episodes/clips accounted for 58 percent of videos viewed Entire movies (downloaded versions) accounted for 51 percent of video consumption. Funny clips and videos constituted 46 percent closely followed by music videos with 43 percent of coverage.”

From these results, it is obvious that the youths cannot avoid using the Internet and other Internet-enabled platforms for entertainment purposes. In the last 11 days (June 30 to July 10, 2019), Big Brother Naija and Sex have been searched mostly by the people in Abia, Adamawa, Sokoto, Ekiti, Ondo, Delta, Rivers, Kwara, Osun, Edo, Ogun, Kaduna, Oyo, Lagos states and Abuja.

Situating this within the context of the Internet users, it is not difficult to understand that youths would constitute the highest percent of the searchers. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the total number of Internet users in the states and Abuja is 64,874,973 (according to Q4, 2018 report). Excluding Sokoto and Kaduna states, where people did not have an interest in BBN, the total Internet users for locations in search of BBN top searches is 58,348,527. Considering the average percent (70%) of locations of search, analysis shows that 40,843,968 Internet users sought knowledge about the show. Using the same approach (average percent=53%), analysis indicates that 28,850,196 Internet users, excluding Abia, Adamawa, Delta and Kwara states where interest in sex was not established, understood sex using the Internet during the period under review.

Source: Google Trends, 2019

These insights look promising. But, they are actually pointers to the need to overhaul the BBN’s contents. For instance, the analysis further shows that the top searches (big brother Naija 2019, big brother 2019 housemates) connected with the top searches (sex videos, sex film, Naija sex video and Nollywood sex) by 98.9% within the YouTube. The BBN’s top searches helped the public in understanding sex activities by 97.9%.  We should not forget that YouTube is the largest video-sharing website in the world and second-most used search engine after Google. Taking into account the platform, analysis further indicates that it is not used by the public to understand creativity, fame and tolerance benefit-claims of the BBN.

Source: Google Trends, Infoprations Analysis, 2019

No De-Marketing: We Need Sustainable Social Behaviour

Source: Google, Infoprations Analysis, 2019

As we are “watching” the show and public criticisms continue stalking it, it is highly essential for us to understand people who are not in support are not de-marketing anyone’s business. We just need to realise that media affects the society, both negatively and positively. It is a powerful tool which could be used for the positive and negative development at personal and societal levels.

There is no doubt Africa and other ‘developing’ continents have to live with the reality of the globalization. Despite this, we need to increase the quantity of African cultural educational content. Failure to do this, the western world will continue to dictate to us the kind of culturally-driven life we must live and the categories of identity we must exhibit.

When it is necessary to solve identified frictions in any society, the most unique and appropriate way of doing that is to consider purpose driven model not emphasizing profit driven one. Peter Drucker famously said, “Profit is not the purpose of a business, rather the test of its validity.” Drucker wants us to know that making profit as the endgame is not only meaningless, but also potentially dangerous for the larger society.

The outcome of the analysis of the Tekedia community’s reaction to the previous article shows a 35.4% connection of the views of those who support the show (including their social capital measured using likes, replies) with those on the opposite of the spectrum. With 6.40 mean score and severity of 9.511 (profit-driven group), Drucker’s message resonates with the supporting camp’s stance on the issue. When we build or join purpose-driven companies that inspire, the potential to improve the world is limitless.

This post is going to be really insightful and you might have to jot things down. It’s on how to work towards increasing your earnings.

Firstly, I’d let you know that anybody can become very successful. I mean anybody can be very successful. Either a dropout, a university first class, last class or even you didn’t go to a university.

So when I talk about becoming a millionaire, or even a billionaire, have confidence. You can fall into this category, and do not look down upon yourself.

To be very rich, it’s mostly you understand financial management very well irrespective of your call. Well, I do not understand financial management in depth but I know that it helps in becoming successful. More like understanding money, investment and all. I really cannot teach being wealthy based on this. Financial education is supposed to be taught in the University anyway.

However, I’d teach on another method. That’s through your skill, through your knowledge (either academics or any knowledge). I’m aware a lot of people are acquiring skills or lots of skills just to save themselves from the suffering of the present economic system.

Well, if saving yourself from suffering is your goal, then forget it, this post isn’t for you. However, if your goal is to hit millions as soon as possible, then it’s for you..

It has no specific time frame and it depends on lots of factors; location, human factor, cash, mentality and so many more.

So how can you hit millions as soon as possible in your business or skill? Now let me establish this clearly. Becoming a millionaire most times out of many is not by luck. Stop daydreaming that one day you would be lucky.

Check out millionaires and billionaires, a lot of them didn’t acquire it through luck. So get ready to put in the work. What I would be sharing are the steps to take and the knowledge that you didn’t know which is very useful.

Firstly, before I give advice to people on skills, business and all; I always ask how grounded are you in that skill or in the knowledge for the business.

One of my friends reached me yesterday that he wanted to learn many skills; he plans to use two weeks to learn one. Now, because he is a friend, I had to send him over 8 minutes voice note telling him that was a dumb move.

Nobody becomes a millionaire by having half baked knowledge. Unfortunately, half baked knowledge is what lots of youth build themselves on in the name of skill. It can only feed you. So before you start this journey, how well are you good at that skill or that business or even in that course (I don’t mean grade good alone). If you are not very good, stop right here! You can make a screen shot but the remaining contents are not for you.

Mind you, get this straight. That you are very good with a skill doesn’t still mean you’d be rich. That’s the mistake people make. Good skills alone cannot make you successful.

Indeed, make sure you’re very grounded in the academic knowledge (real world wise) or that business knowledge. At least we’d know that one is solved. There are other things to worry about.

Now that you have that skill or business or certificate, how can you convert it to millions in years?

Like I said, it takes time and depends on factors. But does that mean I won’t start earning millions let’s say in a year’s time? Obviously, I would.

Now the first part you need to know is that for the world to know you, you need to sell yourself. Two years ago, I was a pro at sales. Everybody needs to understand sales and sales can only be effective in physical meetings or online meetings

Now, who do you sell yourself to?

That’s the big question you should ask yourself. When you sell yourself, people buy your skills as well. So who do you sell yourself to?

Obviously, you sell yourself to people who can afford you. I said afford you. I have successfully sold myself to you guys on WhatsApp and you have bought me… Do you know the profit I made from the sales?… INFLUENCE

I have succeeded on WhatsApp and Facebook and I have sold myself to those who I can make influence as profit. Influence matters a lot. Whether you are a pro or not, influence is key.

But should I be honest with you, influence cannot make you rich. You can have influence and still be poor. So what’s the next thing or next place to sell yourself?

You need to sell yourself to those whom you cannot influence but they can pay your value. Or they have connections and can recommend you. However, there’s no way you can sell yourself to them if you are not around them.

This means that you need to be among people who are extremely able to pay huge price for the skills or knowledge that comes with you.

Or that can recommend you to those people. Those are the wealthy folks. That’s where you should be. Stay on that circle. Yes, it’s possible to be in that circle. But make sure it’s your niche. Become friends with them and let them become friends with you..

Now you may ask me, is it possible to befriend a billionaire or a celebrity? What is stopping you is the fear of rejection or embarrassment.

You can sell yourself on twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even WhatsApp. But two categories: normal people and wealthy. So seek to be in their circles.

The question you should ask me is that; “is it compulsory to know wealthy people or be in their circles”. Actually, it’s not but it has its advantages, a whole lot of advantages and it accelerates the accomplishment.

You can be a millionaire without knowing wealthy people but you need to know how to do that. So let’s say you have a skill or you have knowledge. You need to find a space where that knowledge is needed and be there.

It could be in a small office or even on social media. The next thing is that you have to be proactive. More like, you need to be willing to share the knowledge (that was why I emphasized that you needed to be good to an extent).

Then share such knowledge. The more knowledge you share, the more your net worth in value increases ether at work, or social media. To bring that money, monetize that audience or influence circle.