Yours truly received a letter yesterday that the Council of Experts (European Union) meeting in London UK has entered my doctoral work and the patent which came out of it for Top 100 Achievers in Minimally Invasive Surgery practice. I invented a special mechanism to build dexterous robots during my PhD in the Johns Hopkins University. The United States Government acquired licensing rights on the patent last year.
By Martins Eke
It is superfluous to mention that interlocutions relating to the minimum wage in Nigeria have unfortunately received little or no concern. For a fact, Nigeria’s minimum wage talks are as messy as the Brexit talks. Perhaps, the sparing attention lent it is the better of two conditions: What is more is that in times where minimum wage issues motivate some conciliatory attention, there appears to be disconcerting variation in the ends of both the Federal government, Nigerian Governors Forum and the Nigeria Labour Congress. What this sloppy condition means is that Nigeria may continue to whirl in circles – one that is immensely attributable to the unfathomable doggedness of the Nigerian Government Forum which has refused to agree with the threshold of 30,000 Naira minimum wage and the near justifiable insistence of the Nigeria Labour Congress, the effect of which is the irremediable nationwide strike.
It is logical to admit that the government of Nigeria cannot, or strongly ought not to put a flat minimum wage across the states in the Nation. An action in this direction reeks of two neat indices of feigned naivety: first, that every state in Nigeria has equal economic strength and a deliberate absentmindedness to the asymmetrical output of states over the years serving to unfairly cover for the inequities of some states in terms of their returns to the Gross Domestic Profit of the nation.
While we concede that a flat minimum wage cannot reasonably be made across board, we however express dissatisfaction at the lacunae in constitution – the originating source of all laws, contemplates a minimum wage that cuts across all states of the federation which in for our money, is the genesis of this vicious circle which promises no revelation of amity. Whether it pleases us to hear, the interplay of factors such as cost of living and income generation will always interface to determine what a state can pay and we must admit that the effect of these factors do not apply across board in similar fashion. One may ask, is it not foolhardy to then consequently react in similar fashion across board?
For some inexplicable reasons, it is apparent, if not intrinsically true, that Nigeria which ought to be a federal state has always gravitated somehow to centralization. This is perhaps as disconcerting as it is unforgivable, considering the prodigious amount of literature including the constitution that theorizes the government of Nigeria as a palatable federalism. This organic hypocrisy perhaps is borne out of the caution to not become a confederate state. We are best suited to work like the United States of America but we are stuck to the cleavages of our colonial masters who do not even practice a federal system.
The United States of America adopts a minimum wage based on a state basis and also has a federal minimum wage. Facts and verifiable statistics have it that, 29 states in the U.S enjoy a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage while states like Georgia are a bit below the threshold.
If Nigeria is to take a cue from such idealism then maybe we may have had a reasonable head way presenting a more printable panacea than any cockpit fight between the Federal Government alongside the Nigerian Governors Forum and the Nigerian Labour Congress can possibly provide the citizenry without a choice but to remain at the unfortunate end of a meaningless tussle of unimaginable grandstanding.
The National minimum wage brawl is sheer wickedness on the citizens and governors who legitimately cannot pay or at best is a nearsighted fight of the Nigerian Labour Congress to either flutter settled waters or just for what it is worth. How prudent is it to ask of Lagos state that which can be reasonably asked of Sokoto state which has 81.2% poverty rate?
By and large, the controversy has lingered this long not because the NLC and Federal Government have held doggedly to their jealous ends of bargain but because somehow, the Nigerian Governors Forum has not reconciled with paying 30,000 naira minimum wage and of course, they wear the shoe and know the attendant consequences of assenting to a figure that they cannot pay. In fact, how many governors have religiously kept the extant minimum wage of 18,000 naira and are not owing its civil servants? Although, corruption is a contributory factor to this failure, nonetheless, we cannot say the plaint of the Governors have no bearing. No doubts, they all admit to top up the existing 18,000 naira minimum wage but not by almost a 100% as demanded by the Nigerian Labour Congress, a good number are within the threshold of 24,000 naira as its minimum wage and in fact, that is the amount proposed by the federal government.
Furthermore, the implication of imposing a minimum wage which is difficult to maintain is often felt more by the labour force who are often at the behest of their employers. The likelihood of reduction in the workforce is too strong to be dismissed quickly, consequently leading to an increase in unemployment rate and its far-reaching negative effect on our economy and society at large and even those who would be fortunate to retain their job will have to live with the fear of job insecurity and of course, battle unpaid salaries. These indices are not mere speculations but are the challenges that we battle presently even at 18,000 naira minimum wage.
Be that as it may, how then does the present struggle improve the lives of the labour force if it comes with the attendant consequence of job insecurity? Isn’t the Nigeria Labour Congress being overly short-sighted in this struggle? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that NLC victory over the minimum wage will spell tomorrow’s doom? can we then say such victory is laughably pyrrhic.
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These are the Zenvus Loci concept designs as we move into production – prototype already done and solid. Concept 2 wins here for Loci Max. There is another design, not shown here, for Loci Mini. Loci is an IoT designed for the African market. We are creating everything from scratch through PCB to production.
We’re Launching A New Hardware Product (Loci), Distribution Partners Wanted
I have received many feedbacks on the ‘Getting paid” post from the community. After scanning few, the questions are along this line – “How do you position to get people/firms to pay for those services?” This is my answer: to get people to pay you, make them to see a business and not you (the person). If you can structure to have that distinction, between you and the business, you will get paid.
See it this way: if your landlord calls you to come and fix his computer, he expects you to do it free. Yes, the same landlord that collects rents from you and never gives you waivers. But your computer skill is free and should be accessed for free. (Get the context, I am not saying you should not help people or support your community). But if that landlord contacts a company for the same job, he will expect to pay for that service.
Personally, I have a non-profit, African Institution of Technology, which has a decent annual budget to do many things in African universities. Everything we do there is FREE. Simply, I advocate that you have a mindset to support communities and not just live on packing more money. Yet, it is important to know when you need that payment to actually make it happen.
To move from You to a company in Nigeria, all you need is a Business Name. It costs N5,000 (last quarter, government did bonanza by cutting it from N10k to N5K for Business Name registration). With a Business Name, you can position your service as coming from a company to get people to open their wallets to pay you. But when you parade all as YOU (the person), you will run out of luck.
Develop a strategy around this and work on it. What you are doing already is work. It does not have to be within NNPC or Dangote Group or Federal Ministry of Finance to be called work. Just ask to be paid when you want to be paid! Good luck.
Google+ (personal) has moved to museum and is now history; call it Google-. In announcing the closure, Google noted that “our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 [was] due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations”. Simply, Google+ failed.
In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.
On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted. You can download and save your content, just make sure to do so before April. Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.
The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted
Oh yes, Google+ experienced low usage and was a ghost town after few days of effervescence. Facebook had won the same business category and it was not possible for Google+ to bulldoze itself into the domain. This is consistent with all that we have known: winner-take-all per category. In this case, Facebook had won and all Google efforts failed.
A winner-take-all market is a market in which a product or service which is only slightly (1%) better than the competitors gets disproportionately large (90%-100%) share of or all revenues for that class of products or services. It occurs when the top producer of a product earns a lot more than their competitors.Examples of winner-take-all markets include the sports and entertainment markets.
The failure of Google+ reminds me of a piece I wrote in Harvard Business Review last year. I had written on the challenges before African startups in a world dominated by Google and Facebook in the digital space. Largely, if Google could not successfully challenge Facebook, who can in Africa, in any territory, Facebook does business? You can run the reverse: Facebook has no chance in domains like public search which Google has won.
Yet while ICT has produced great gains, the internet itself could cause massive dislocation in local economies. The unbounded and unconstrained nature of the internet has made it possible for competition to become global. Online, geography does not protect a company from competition. That unbounded competition is a challenge for local entrepreneurs. African consumers know about the best global products, and local ones are expected to match them on price and quality. The elite global technology firms typically offer better solutions at zero cost.
[…]
Across Africa, consumers may be thrilled to get free high-quality products from global ICT utilities. But local entrepreneurs still struggle to compete. Without these emerging companies, there would not be functioning economies in Africa
What is happening here is typical even in the offline world: if a business has perfected processes in a sector, new entrants will have huge barrier of entry. I explained that, on an Indomie Noodles piece, where the noodles maker won over Dangote Noodles by doing typical moves Dangote Group would have deployed to dislodge the company in the noodle business. With Indomie Noodles having improved and nearly perfected those processes, Dangote Group was unable to find anything to improve upon for competitive advantages in the noodles business in Nigeria. With no success, Dangote Noodles was sold to the company behind Indomie Noodles.
Market positioning is strategic, and the construct of winner-take-all is alive in the digital space. Google+ (personal) is history because Facebook had done anything Google could have hoped to do. The first-mover-advantage worked here. We need to understand that, not just in the digital space, but also in the physical domain – Indomie Noodles won over Dangote Noodles purely on the same principle.
Sure, while your scale may not be at the level of Google and Facebook, the lesson is the same: secure your flanks as the ageless book The Art of War noted. When you secure your flanks, Sun Tzu will remind you that you have a great chance of victory in any battle: commercial or military. Facebook had secured its flanks and Google+ (Google plus) became Google- (Google minus).