Today, I want to wish everyone Happy Independence.  Our nation needs leaders to “restore the dignity of man” [thanks UNN] with the “fierce urgency of now”. Yes, leaders who are unimpeachable, diligent, and pragmatic, with traits of decency, honor and service. With them, Nigerians will rise to the mountain-top, experiencing the unbounded promise of Oct 1 1960 as Green White Green rose even as British’ Union Jack was lowered.

People who can engineer Nigeria into rebirth and restoration to offer a prosperous nation that is colorful, fluidic, vibrant, and open for change. May Election 2019 deliver that promise even as we celebrate the sovereign liberation from Britain. The fangs of evil are still evident around the land as corruption, tribalism, and nepotism are derailing a once-dynamic nation. Nigeria must be independent from them before Nigeria can experience the true promise of Independence.

We need a Leader – a person of integrity, broad knowledge, enormous vision and solid experience; one that can stimulate more vibrancy in the private sector and move the public sector out of its stasis. With that leadership, Nigeria will witness changes in trade, education, and commerce as battalion of knowledge workers emerges to give us the needed clout in the global arena.

I re-share a message last year that our generation has a moment on this Day.

In Nigeria, everyone is a victim. The rich, the poor, the welder, the banker, and everyone. The rich citizens believe they have paid taxes and nothing is returned through government services. The not-so-rich citizens believe the nation has rigged opportunities against them. From the north to the south, east and west, everyone has a problem with Nigeria.

Take a trip to Bayelsa State’s Kolo Creek. You will see wealth out of the sands, but walk few kilometers from the flow stations, you will see poverty. As an intern for Shell, I slept inside one of those Kolo Creek buildings. I had the best food possible, but was troubled in the evenings when the villagers would gather looking for crumbs to gather for dinner. I wept; it was painful to see mothers with daughters eating from crumbs in the midst of unbounded wealth in their lands.

Then I was sent to an Akwa Ibom village close to the aluminum smelting company. We had gone to mount telecom equipment. As far I could see, the waters were polluted. Yes, waters everywhere but not a single drop to drink. That day, we went through Ogoni, connecting with boats to Akwa Ibom. The villagers needed water, but could not find any, even when living nearly on top of water. Very painful.

Then I left the East/South for NYSC, and went to the North. I was stunned. What I saw in southern Nigeria was even manageable. As a student that grew up in the East, the mindset was that North was a paradise and the Southern part was marginalized. I am not saying otherwise here. I saw small kids begging for food, at scale, in Bauchi. That was not a possibility in Owerri. My heart broke because everyone is really marginalized in Nigeria. I had a different perspective of Nigeria.

Yes, everyone is a victim, in Nigeria. The difference is the form. The kids I saw in Bauchi were marginalized just as the villagers in Bayelsa.  Nigeria needs to work for them. Let men and women be selfish enough to fix our commerce and markets even as they get rewarded for doing so. Let the greed of capitalism work in the land. We are positioned and we have opportunities, far ahead of many of our people. If things are this bad now, imagine the post-petroleum era when our small national budgets cannot even be funded

The full statement

GOVERNORSHIP PRIMARY STATEMENT

30th September, 2018

Tomorrow, our party and the people of Lagos will have an encounter with destiny. We shall hold our governorship primary.

With the holding of direct primaries to elect governorship candidates in Lagos and other states, the APC takes a groundbreaking step toward greater internal democracy and progressive governance for the benefit of all people.

While our party is young, it has grown fast and has travelled far in a short time. This speaks well of the character of you, the party’s rank-and-file members.

What, in other nations, has taken political parties generations to achieve, we have done in a few brief years. No other party in Nigeria dare attempt what we have already dedicated ourselves to do.

I thank and commend all APC members and all Lagosians who have lent their support to this historic and humane mission upon which our party has embarked.

We are democrats in the truest sense of the word. As such, we forever search for what is good and right for the people. With this ideal as our guide, tomorrow’s primary cannot be shaded by selfish ambition or the perceived personal grievance between this or that person. Something much greater waits in the balance. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of the people of this state and how we can best maximise our collective destiny.

By resort to direct primaries, the party places the people’s future soundly in their hands. As democracy would have it, you shall be the authors of the party’s nomination and hopefully our next state government.

I trust in the wisdom of the people and will abide it. However, as a leader of the party and as a former governor of our beloved and excellent Lagos, I would be remiss if I did not make a few observations regarding the primary.

My goal is and shall always be a better Lagos. To this objective, I have dedicated the greater part of my public life. Roughly 20 years ago, a corps of dedicated and patriotic Lagosians, put aside personal interests and rivalries, to put their minds and best ideas together for the good of the state. Out of this collaborative effort, was born a master plan for economic development that would improve the daily lives of our people.

Bestowed on me was the honour of a lifetime when I was elected to be your governor in 1999. My administration faithfully implemented that plan. The government of my immediate successor, Tunde Fashola, also honoured this enlightened plan.

Where state government remained true to that blueprint, positive things happened. During my tenure and Governor Fashola’s, Lagos state recorded improvements in all aspects of our collective existence, from public health to public sanitation, from education to social services, from the administration of justice to the cleaning of storm and sewage drains. Businesses, large and small, invested, hired millions of workers and thrived.

All Lagosians were to fully participate and justly benefit from the social dividends and improvements wrought by this plan. From the common labourer, to business leaders, to professionals and our industrious civil service. We all were to be partners in a monumental but joint enterprise. None was to be alienated. None was to be left out. And none were to be pushed aside. This is especially true for those who contributed so much to our development, whether as a business leader who has invested heavily in Lagos, the homeowner who struggles to pay his fair share of taxes or as someone employed in the hard work of keeping our streets and byways clean so that others may go about their daily tasks unimpeded.

I make no pretence that the master plan is perfect. It can always be fine-tuned. However, whenever a government departed from this plan without compelling reason, the state and its people have borne the painful consequence of the improper departure.

To ignore this blueprint for progress in order to replace it with ad-hoc schemes of a materially inferior quality contravenes the spirit of progressive governance and of our party. Such narrowness of perspective does not bring us closer to our appointed destination; it takes us farther from that destiny.

For reasons unknown to me and most Lagosians, we have experienced such deviations from enlightened governance recently.

This trend is that which most concerns me as the primary nears. We must arrest this trend before irreparable harm is committed against the people and their future. For the record, let it be known that I shall vote in this primary because I see it as one of extreme import to our state and our party. Just as I shall vote, I equally urge all party members to do so.

We must vote in a manner that returns Lagos to its better path, the one that promises a just chance for all to enjoy the fruits of our prosperity. We must always pursue our goal of a Lagos energised by creative dynamism, tolerance of others, and guided by a leadership capable of extending a collegial hand to all stakeholders, far and wide.

I am encouraged by the emergence of a candidate in this primary who has served the state in senior positions in my administration, the Fashola administration and even in the current one. While possessing a wealth of experience and exposure, he is a young man endowed with superlative vision and commitment. Most importantly, he understands the importance of the blueprint for development. He esteems it as a reliable and well-conceived vehicle for the future development of the state. He also knows the value of reaching out and working with others in order to maximize development and provide people the best leadership possible.

With people like him at the helm, the state will write the proper history for itself.

When the final word is given let it be said that we want all Lagosians to look to the future with the hope and optimism that our best days remain before us and not behind us.

We walk into this primary strong and confidently believing in the right course we are to take. We shall emerge from this primary even stronger and more confident that we have taken that course by returning Lagos and our party to their finest path.

Signed:
Aswiaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu

This week, I had a two-part interview series with Financial Times (FT) London. They had wanted my insights on precision agriculture innovation for a special report they are working on. I do believe that the Cambrian moment is here for agricultural technology and this redesign is unbounded by geography. Any decent-talent engineer can combine many of the APIs, software systems, IOTs, etc and come up with something that can have real impacts on animal and crop farming. Yes, even the local free-range chickens across African villages can be advanced to deliver more with technology.

The real challenge though is making money doing it: working with price-sensitive customers like most African farmers requires new business models. You have to invent something from scratch because anything they have abroad will not work. Why? The natures of our farming systems are totally different for the models and processes to be adopted without drastic adaptations.

Agtech remains one of the main areas I have noted which people can explore as they look for business ideas in Nigeria. Here is the complete list of exciting business ideas in Nigeria at the moment. Read them for some insights and perspectives as you plan for a mission into gross margins.

• Agro fintech: creating financial solutions geared for the agriculture sector with the use of technology like apps, web apps, AI, blockchain, etc. These will include agro-lending, agro-insurance, agro-trading, etc. FarmDrive, a Kenyan enterprise, connects unbanked and underserved smallholder farmers to credit, while helping financial institutions cost-effectively increase their agricultural loan portfolios

Finally, when FT runs the piece, I will share. Of course, they can put it under paywall cutting out many of us, including my humble self, as FT is a subscription-based newspaper.