By Nnamdi Odumody

About 600 million Africans are without electricity, hampering overall economic productivity. Bongajum Lesley, a young Cameroonian, grew up in his village where inconsistent power supply caused his lecture notes at school to be destroyed by tears as a result of this critical paralysis. A couple of his colleagues lost their homes from fire accidents caused by candles, and fuel generators. He managed to graduate despite this mishap while others who couldn’t study under darkness, unfortunately, dropped out from school along the way.

Having developed series of non communicable diseases which also affected other members of his family, and being predisposed to being obese and diabetic at as young age, exercise was his only solution. He started working out at the gym and loved the spinning sessions, seeing positive results a few months later in his physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

After he had lost 10 kg in three months since commencing exercising, and wondered where the energy lost at the gym was going to, he remembered the law of energy conservation which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but transferred from one form to the other. Immediately, an idea to develop an exercise bike which connects the mechanical energy from pedaling, by its user, to electricity while building muscles, emerged. He shared this vision with his gym mates, friends and family members and those who developed interest lent their support on how to make it better.

With this, he developed a working prototype. The classic version of the bike which is more affordable harnesses energy from the sun, and pedaling by its user, storing it in a portable battery. This is designed for those whose main need is electricity. The second version is a virtual bike featuring a 15 inch touch screen filled with pre-recorded spinning classes, choreographed to meet its user’s fitness and energy needs with plans to include more entertaining and educative features.

Lesley’s Bonga Power Bike is his third entrepreneurial venture as a serial entrepreneur having founded ventures in healthy beverage and cosmetics (Le Havre which scaled to 10 African countries within two years). His plan is to do to electricity what mobile phones did to communication while making workout fun, educative as well as productive.

By Nnamdi Odumody

According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation December 2018 monthly report, Nigeria lost $295 million as a result of shut down in production linked to leaking pipelines which carry crude oil from oil wells to flow stations in the Niger Delta.

The Bonny Terminal was shut down for two days due to pipeline leakages with a loss of about 26,000 barrels per day, worth $1.4 million, while at Okoloma and Imor facilities, 16,000 barrels per day for five days were lost due to planned maintenance.

Brass Creek and Trans Ramos pipeline which had been shut down, since April 24^th 2018, due to leaks in a creek flowing into Odimodi resulted in a loss of 35,000 barrels per day production into Forcados terminal.

About 2,730,000 barrels worth $156million were lost when the Akpo terminal was shut down for 26 days for full field maintenance, the Usan terminal lost 1,299,000 barrels due to north loop pigging scheduled downtime, and also maintenance activity for a period of 2-13 days.

More so, 340,000 barrels worth $19million were lost on Brass terminal as Addax shut in production for four days due to operational issues while it stopped delivery into the Nigerian Agip Oil Company facility due to leakages in November. The Qua Iboe terminal witnessed a 12 day shutdown in Asabo & Ekpe field due to Distributed Control System|Electronic Safety Shutdown System (ESSDS) upgrade which caused a loss of over 568,000 barrels worth $32 million while the Abo terminal was shut down for nine days maintenance, resulting in another loss of 108,000 barrels worth $6.1 million.

The Okwuibome field at Tulja terminal was closed for the whole month of October due to flooding at Beneku flow station which resulted in a loss of 22,000 barrels per day, worth $1.2million.

The NNPC needs to adopt Smart Connected pipeline technologies such as drone monitoring, distributed acoustic sensing, robotics, blockchain and 3D printing which will help in optimization for efficient pumping activities from its oil wells to flow stations. This should be supported with predictive maintenance of pipelines in real time, monitoring equipment failure and leakages, monitoring pipe thickness, temperatures and erosion, detection of cracks in pipelines and corrosion to minimize losses which leaking pipelines cause the Nigerian economy in crude oil earnings.

This is one way it can become profitable like peers like Saudi Aramco: “No one knows how much NNPC makes but we do know that Saudi Arabia’s equivalent of NNPC, Aramco, is making real money: Arambo generated $111 billion for the kingdom in 2018!”

It is really hard – typos mess people up. There are red faces after $2.3 billion worth of currency has a misprint of the word “responsibility” in the banknote’s ‘micro-text. Australian treasury people will never forget the spelling of responsibility again: the Australian $50 note, printed 46 million times, used “responsibilty’ [sic].

46 million of Australia’s new $50 notes have been printed with a typo, the Reserve Bank has confirmed.

The “new and improved” $50 banknote was rolled out in October last year, with a host of new technologies designed to improve accessibility and prevent counterfeiting.

But the yellow note also contains a typo that misspells the word “responsibility”.

[…]

The small error occurred on Cowan’s side, in the text of her speech.

“It is a great responsibilty [sic] to be the only woman here, and I want to emphasise the necessity which exists for other women being here,” it says.

Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele returns – President Muhammadu Buhari has nominated him for second term, Vanguard reports. My big congratulations to Governor Emefiele.

President Muhammadu Buhari has nominated Godwin Emefiele for a second term in office as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), reports have revealed. Vanguard recalls that Godwin Emefiele was first appointed in 2014 by former president Goodluck Jonathan and was retained by Buhari when he came to power in 2015.

It was gathered Thursday morning that the President has sent a letter nominating the CBN governor for another term to the Senate President in line with the CBN Act. Emefiele, 57, was the group managing director of Zenith Bank Plc. Before he was appointed in 2014 by Former president Jonathan.

They have changed the venue of the LinkedIn Local Lagos event to a larger one. I will be speaking therein on Saturday. This will be a conversation on career, accumulation of capabilities, and executing your mission. It is not about just money – rather, creating optimal equilibrium to have a fusion of passion and fulfilling career. The luckiest among us are those whose hobbies are their jobs. What is your mission? How do you discover it? What drives that passion? How can that passion pay the bills? I hope to make good use of your attention on Saturday. Click and let us connect, in the beautiful Lagos.

Greetings! Many came from all over the nation to connect at the Platform. But it was not possible. To make up, I have accepted to keynote LinkedIn Local Lagos on May 11. Let me say that my role is simply to come there, and speak, and possibly inspire some young people. Send all questions to Kayode and his team. There is a link to register to attend the event.I will arrive early with my team and will try to meet as many as possible.

Venue is now  SATURDAY, MAY 11, 2019. 11AM   |RADISSON BLU ANCHORAGE HOTEL, VICTORIA ISLAND, LAGOS