Let Nigeria Dissolve into 6 Countries

Nigeria is Africa's most population nation and by extension the most population black nation on the planet.  About 50 years ago, it was projected that we were going to be one of the most advanced nations along with Brazil and India.  These two have gone ahead and we are worse than the smallest nations around us.  Today, the leader of Africa's economy is South Africa.  What advantage do we have for our population?  Our huge population is suffering while a few are getting richer.  Our leaders do not have the capacity to lead a huge population.  They don't think well enough to plan and lead a great nation.  So our first problem is a leadership challenge.

The next is our polarized ethnic diversity that is so loose to form a nation-state.  We regionalize everything.  Indigene or this state or indigene of the other state.  These are divisive tendencies.  Next to tribal regimentation is our sharply divided regions on religious basis.

During the Constituent Assembly of 1995, the people came up with six (6) geo-political zones of North West, North East, North Central, South West, South South and South East.  These regional groupings have served the nation well in the case of proper delineation and identification.  

Over the years, there has been tension in the land over where a leader should come from.  The issue of rotational presidency came up but only parties talked about it.  It wasn't embedded in the constitution.  But because of the lopsided educational divide where the South is more educationally aware than the North, it is difficult to interact without creating conflict because there seem to be no proper communication.  The North appears to have a fixed position and the majority of its people are not educated.  So, they are at the whims and caprices of their leaders who use them to their advantage.  They are used to the political advantage of the leaders' since they do not have the capacity to reason out stuff by themselves.  The average southern citizen queries everything and does not follow leaders hook, line and sinker.  The same cannot be said of the northerner.  

The leaders of the states up north have not done much to fast track the education of its people.  They have used religion to cause the people to remain ignorant.  Islam is good as a religion, but its adherent must live in a multi-religious society where they must engage in commerce and do general business.  Life is not about staying up all day reciting the Quran.  If you must eat and be able to mix well with people, then you must learn how to relate by getting knowledge in schools where the world's most acceptable language for transactions are taught.  It is that education that Boko Haram says is sin...

Before Boko Haram, there is this intolerant attitude of the average northern moslem.  Then they feel they cannot be ruled by a Christian President.  I saw how they reacted when President Goodluck Jonathan won the election.  They were deluded to believe that General Buhari, a Moslem Northerner won.  It ignited protests in violent formats and the targets were Churches and Christians... 

Now as I write, Boko Haram has gone totally wild and I believe it would have been different if we had a Moslem Northerner in the Aso Rock Presidential Villa.  So besides the bombing across the country, Boko Haram says they want to install an Islamic Style Government.  They don't seem to have visible support from Moslem leaders but it is not a hidden that they have the sympathy of the big guys in the North.  Recently, a Senator was implicated by one of their spokesperson.  He is in court.  The evidence against him is daunting.  So we cannot rule out fifth columnist in the corridors of power who share the sentiment of the north that a Moslem President should have been our leader.

The bombings have been incessant and sustained.  Targets have been more of Churches.  They seem faceless but they really are not.  They have succeeded in making the country ungovernable.  If indeed they operate a guerilla style warfare, then the security agencies will find it difficult nipping them in the bud especially if they have insiders in the security agencies and I guess that is what it seems.  

This is my honest proposal before the entire country goes up in flames.  I had suggested this in a subtle way during the post election violence earlier in the year and I did intimate that Goodluck Jonathan may be the last President of a United Nigeria.  This is what all these may come down to.  It is better to have peace and have people's lives safe in a restructured-nation-states than to have a bogus country without security of lives and properties.  I deliberately didn't talk about the economic problems insecurity can cause because I assume we all know that.

Let us not kill ourselves in a bid to live together by force.  We have different ways of life, different destinies, different belief systems.  We can't simply live as a nation... we may fight until we finish ourselves.  Politicians who profit from this arrangement may not like it but we can't carry on for too long.  I therefore call on the National Assembly to summon a summit of the different nationalities... let every region take their destinies in their hands and my proposal for the nations to come of Nigeria is as follows:

North West Region (Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara & 

Northern Kaduna)  COUNTRY NAME:  Bahauria  CAPITAL: Katsina

North East Region (Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Adamawa & Bauchi States)

COUNTRY NAME:  Gombiana CAPITAL: Gombe

North Central Region (Southern Kaduna, Niger, Kogi, Abuja, Nassarawa,

Plateau Benue & Taraba) COUNTRY NAME:  Nigeria CAPITAL: Abuja

South West Region (Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti & Ondo States)

COUNTRY NAME:  Oduduwa CAPITAL: Lagos

South South Region (Rivers, Cross River, Delta, Edo & Akwa Ibom)

COUNTRY NAME:  Niger Delta CAPITAL:  Oghara

South East Region (Enugu, Abia, Imo, Ebonyi & Anambra)

COUNTRY NAME:  Biafra  CAPITAL:  Awka

This is my humble submission.  The time to start is now.  The lives and the economy of the people is dependent on this.

More on this in my next blog.

GOD SAVE NIGERIA and its PROPOSED NATION-STATES.

The Vexed Issue of Oil Subsidy Removal in Nigeria...

 The Nigerian political landscape has been awash with the huge debate on whether or not the government should remove the Oil Subsidy for the past couple of months.  The debate was sparked principally by the desire expressed by the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) in the wake of its outcry that the N18,000 National Minimum Wage was unsustainable by most of its members in their respective states because they do not have the funds to pay their workers.  The Governors had argued that, for them to pay the minimum wage and still have money left in their coffers to run their governments as well as provide basic infrastructures, the Federal Government should increase the allocation to States from the Federation Account either by dissolving the National Sovereign Fund (NSF) or an outright removal of Oil Subsidy.  This writer believes that the Presidency was caught in the middle of the road and had to choose between two undesirable options.  The Oil Subsidy removal was chosen as its best bet out of the situation.  This seemingly politically convenient position has its very far reaching consequences.

            The subsidy on petroleum has been there for as long as the nation has been an oil producing nation.  It has been there even when all our refineries were producing at 100% capacity and there was no need for importation of refined products.  Therefore, the oil subsidy in a nutshell was a benefit of the masses of Nigeria from its government for the blessing of crude oil.  That appears to be the only means by which the ordinary Nigerians were supposed to feel the impact of being an oil exploring nation.

            What really is the subsidy?  What is the government subsidizing?  A little check-up of this reveals that government is paying for the extra cost of producing a litter of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), otherwise known as petrol and Kerosene less the real pump price amount being paid as a retail price to the ordinary consumer.  That is, if it costs the country N10 to produce a litter of fuel, it is selling it at say, N4 to the consumers and bearing the burden of N6.  In this case, N6 is the subsidy. 

            During the military regime of President Ibrahim Babangida, a phased removal of the subsidy began as part of the government’s economic blueprint in order to release needed funds to the system as the international price of oil dropped in the mid-1980s coupled with the desire to fulfill conditionality for the implementation of the IMF-backed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).  However, in spite of the removal of subsidies in those days, as at 1999 when the current political dispensation took root, the pump price of PMS (petrol) was still at N11.00 per litter. 

            The President Olusegun Obasanjo administration constantly adjusted the pump price until it came to N65.00 per liter which the Yar’Adua/Jonathan administration inherited.

            What really has been the reason for this constant removal of subsidy over time?  The truth really is this: government has neglected the oil and gas sector of the economy systematically to the point that all our four major refineries today are either half dead or producing at an embarrassingly low capacity.  This ushered in the massive importation regime of petroleum products.  What has therefore sustained the retention of the N65 pump price over the years is the subsidy that the government has had to pay.  According to a recent statistics as presented by the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the landing cost of PMS per liter is about N145.00.  The government pays a subsidy of almost N90/liter to ensure that the pump price remains at N65/liter. 

            The basic idea is to ensure that the subsidy will ensure that life is bearable for most Nigerians.  However, the paradox which the government has hinged the removal of oil subsidy on is the fact that it is paying a fortune for subsidy while a certain cartel enjoys the benefit and the effect is not telling on the consuming public.  The Senate during the first week of December, 2011 reeled out the names of organizations that have continued to feed fat on the subsidy which government says for 2011 stands at about N1.4 trillion.  This it claims is almost above the budget for capital projects in the 2011 budget.  The purpose of the subsidy it claims, is not achieved while a few rich organizations in the oil and gas sector are enjoying the proceeds.  The subsidy removal therefore is to meant to pull the carpet off the feet of the cartel or cabal while the proceeds are channeled to providing basic necessities for the Nigerian public.

            While the argument sounds logical and populist, a closer scrutiny reveals that with the subsidy gone, the pump price of petrol will naturally increase to about N120/per litter.  This will immediately have a spiral effect on every aspect of the economy as transportation cost will skyrocket and costs of goods and service will increase geometrically.  It will effectively put paid to the relief the so-called N18,000 minimum wage was supposed to provide and further impoverished the already over-stretched Nigerian masses.

            This disadvantage of the removal of oil subsidy therefore is huge and the effect on the personal economy of the common man will be disastrous.  The opinion of this writer is that the subsidy SHOULD STAY but government should look for other creative means to source for funds to do its business while ensuring that the subsidy benefits are properly enjoyed by the Nigerian masses.  The remaining part of this write-up is devoted to suggesting how this can be done.

Covering the Subsidy Hole

            The major concern of government is the fact that it spends a colossal amount of money funding the subsidy.  Let us look at this critically.  This money is this much because there are so many holes that monies are emptied into in the process of importing petroleum products.  One major job the government should do immediately is to fix all our refineries and build new ones to totally stop the importation of fuel.  This is the best way to checkmate the cartel or cabal and destroy their back-bone.  How long really does it take to build a refinery?  In the last three years, our northern neighbours, Niger built a world-class refinery.   They are in the process of joining the large number of petroleum exporters to Nigeria!  Is it not funny that we transport crude to Niamey from the creeks in the Niger Delta by trucks through inland roads across the country to Niger and then they in turn return these trucks in reverse to us with refined fuel?  What is really difficult in building a refinery if the old ones cannot be fixed?  The government must be proactive and think creatively in solving a problem that looks like it has defied all solutions.

            Secondly, while it is working on getting the refineries fixed, while supporting the subsidy, the government must look inwards to source for funds to cover up the hole that the subsidy creates. 

            There are so many other sectors of our economy that continue to consume funds without a commensurate contribution to its growth.  These sectors and institutions have merely become drain-pipes.  The idea is to re-channel funds from there for redistribution to critical areas needing urgent resources.  The list here is not exhaustive as there could be more:

a)     Cost of Governance at all levels:  We have reached a point where the cost of maintaining government officials and their respective agencies is becoming unsustainable.  Starting from the executive arm of government, we can free a whole lot of money by rationalizing some offices and cutting down on the expenditure of many.  There is absolutely no reason why we should continue to engage the services of so many Special Advisers & Special Assistants whose duties are merely a repetition of what most ministries and agencies are already doing.  The President should start by cutting down on some of its expenditure profile.  For all intents and purposes, the Presidential Aircraft Fleet should be reduced to at least 5 from the present number of 11.  If a holistic audit is carried out with a view to maintaining only very NECESSARY offices in each sector of government, then billions of naira will be saved and the hole created by the subsidy will be adequately covered. 

The National Assembly recently came under fire by the Nigerian public because of CBN Governor’s outcry that it consumes about 25% of the national budget.  Whether the figure being bandied was 25% of recurrent expenditure or it’s a percentage of the total budget is not really relevant.  What has become important to the public is the fact that the cost of maintaining members of the National Assembly is too expensive.  There should be a bold step taken between the Executive and the Legislature to drastically cut their pay and allowances.  If indeed they are serious about making necessary sacrifices for the survival of the nation’s economy, then they should show examples by taking a pay-cut of at least 50% and cutting down on the pecks of their offices.  They should not expect Nigerians who are already over-stretched to continue to pay high for fuel while they continue to drive around in gleaming cars and feed fat by attending plenary sessions for just screaming “nay” and “yea”. 

b)     Checkmating Corruption

The government is paying a steep price by funding corruption at the highest places.  Contracts are inflated; awarded contracts are poorly executed while state officials just line their pockets with money for no just cause.  It must take urgent steps to institutionalize the nabbing of corrupt officials to avoid the leakages that presently pervade the system.  If this singular step is taken and corruption is brought to a minimal level, a huge sum will be freed to enable government have what it takes to fund infrastructural development across the length and breadth of Nigeria.  If the government does not develop the will to exemplify sacrifice by cutting down the cost of governance and take further steps to stamp out corruption, it should not expect cooperation from the masses to further impoverish them by taking away the subsidy which promises to bring them to further poverty.

There is palpable anger in the air amongst Nigerians.  The youths are in their most dangerous restive mood across the land.  Unemployment is higher than admitted figures in the media.  There are millions of families who cannot afford a square meal a day.  There are many whose hopes of surviving is so deem that the only rational thing they think about is how to hurt others to get to survive.  This is not the kind of population the government should be thinking of dropping another burden upon with a subsidy removal.  They should look somewhere else to cover up the gap.  If they look very well enough, they will find enough leakages to cover up and we can be on track to economic emancipation.  Leadership is not about dumping responsibilities on others but by taking the bull by the horns and finding creative solutions to intractable difficulties.  I agree with someone who said a while ago that the office of the Nigerian President is the most powerful in the black world.  Why should the most powerful black President shirk from the responsibility of confronting a cabal that seeks to sink the ship of state?  Except that high office is collaborating with the cabal, it is time to show how powerful it is.  God bless Nigeria.

Competition and Customer Loyalty

     

Introduction

It takes about 20 times more energy to get a new customer as you will need to keep one you already have.  To keep a customer is to treat him with a measure of quality and excellence.  Whether the customer is an individual or organizational buyer, they all have expectations of the firm they deal with.  The basic determinant of whether they will become loyal to that firm or to a competitor is premised on whether those expectations are met or not.  This discourse is targeted at helping the participating firms to meet and exceed their customers/clients’ expectations.

The Effect of Competition

Who is a competitor?  Someone who produces and/or sells similar products to yours is your competitor.  All such companies involved in similar trade are in competition.  You are all in competition for the customers’ money; striving, trying to outperform one another, etc; but the choice of who to stay with, is the call of the customers to make, but you can help them.  Never let your competition shows your customer a better product than yours!  Do you want to avoid losing your clients to your competitors?  Then help them avoid seeing a better product in your competitor’s.  How?  Make your product the best in the market.  The same principle applies to both new and existing products/sellers in the market.  There are key areas you must focus on to keep your customers.  These will be examined shortly.

Why Customers Quit

1% die

3% move away

5% other friendships

9% competitive reasons (price)

14% product dissatisfaction, but

68% quit because of an attitude of indifference towards them by some employee.

A research conducted by Stanford University revealed that, money made in any endeavour is only 12.5% by knowledge, and 87.5% by your ability to deal with people.  John D. Rockefeller said, “I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun”.  Besides several other factors that could take your customers away and give them cheaply to your competitors, the attitude of your employee, or people who relate with customers matter the most.  Customers consider themselves your most priced assets, and they want to be treated as such.  Anything short of this, meets with a beckoning from competitors.

The single most important ingredient to the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.  Always realize that, any activity you engage in is capable of being a benchmark with which customers evaluate you, particularly in the earliest stages of their contact with you.  That is the customer’s privilege, not yours.

Do you want to have an edge over your competitors with regards to the battle for customers, then have an edge first, with your company attitude.  The customer has no business differentiating one person from another in your firm, every singular misbehavior by any one is seen as company misbehavior.  Customers don’t even see their own wrong, the company must just have a perfect attitude.

How to gain customers’ confidence and keep them

1.      Establishing contact with customers is a vital part of any company’s success.  The ability to maintain a welcoming environment involves a combination of the physical environment and the way the staff members communicate with the customers.

2.      Make sure you acknowledge and greet your customers within 3-4 seconds, as this is how long it takes for them to make a first impression on you and your business.

3.      Greet your customers with a smile and a ‘hello’; this will make a huge impact on the rest of your service.  If a customer is not acknowledged and does not feel welcome, they will leave the business and go elsewhere.

4.      Keep in mind the quality of customer service can never outweigh the quality of the people who provide it.  By making sure you keep those who work for you happy will ultimately improve the quality of service and experience your customers have.

5.      Treat your customers how you would like to be treated; its an easy principle.

6.      Management should lead by example, and set the standard.  If the management leads in excellent customer service, the customers will notice it every time.

7.      Try to remember your regular customers; welcome them back; make small talk of how they are; what have they been up to?  This builds rapport and makes them special; use their name.  Their regular attendance pays your wages.  Treat them with the respect they deserve.  You will keep them happy and returning to your business.

8.      Go out of your way for your customer, if they are after something specific, do everything you can to get their needs met.  For example, if a customer wants a specific product and you don’t have any left, make the effort to track one down from the warehouse or another store.  They will be really impressed and happy with the excellent service they have received and will return to your business again.

9.      Train your staff in proper customer handling procedures so everyone in the business is consistently providing the same high standard of service.  All staff needs to be trained how to handle difficult situations as this will add an overall good impression of the customer service your business provides.

10.  When you are hiring staff for your business, you want to make sure you are employing people who can fit in with your customer service standards.  Someone who can is not afraid to talk openly, smile, and be approachable.  The mistake some companies make is hiring people because they are desperate.  In turn, employ people who are not suited for the customer service industry, which in turn will hurt your business and reputation.

How to Sell Yourself to the Top

Mastering Your Products:   The Salesman Talisman

Introduction

Good sales actually begin with a good knowledge of the product to sell, and with good presentation, everything sells.  A terrific salesman is adept at both knowledge and presentation of his products and services.

By the way, let us establish first that a product is anything that is offered to the market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a want.  That implies that, even you are a product.  Second, a product is the consumer’s solution.  The market is anywhere the product is presented for sales.  This includes the office where you go to submit your CV for a job opening. 

Third, everyone is a salesperson.  The world we live in is altogether a marketplace.  Your demeanour, vocal-ability, etc. are all part of the presentation process.

Mastering Your Products: To have a magic wand by which you can achieve exceptional sales level, the following keys are essential.

a)      Know Your Product

The first statement in this discourse already gives impetus to this point.  A man cannot give what he does not have; you cannot sell what you don’t know about.  Every salesperson must first take time out to understand the products that he is expected to sell.  Your knowledge must be convincingly deep.  If you are supposed to sell a variety of products, you have to pick the ones that appeal best to you, and study them deeply, knowing all that their functional dimensions.

b)      Be convinced about your product and constantly increase your confidence level:

Your customers can no more be confident about what you sell than you are yourself.  Do not try to talk anyone into buying anything that you are not sure of yourself, except you are ready to make a tool of yourself.  The confidence you have in the product will give you some measure of pride about it, and then influence the way you talk about it.

c)       Be versatile, understand your competition

A major highlight in any salesman’s presentation is when he (she) has to compare what he/she has to sell with the competitors’ products.  You must know about your competitors have to offer and be sincere enough to examine whether they are better than yours.  Whatever information or knowledge you get from this is a major point for you. 

d)      Be enthusiastic about your product

No matter what your competitors think about your product, it still has the potential to succeed in the market.  The onus is on you to love, cherish and be proud to present that product.  Your own enthusiasm will go a long way to help sell that product to the most important customer.  Note:  Your most important customer is the one sitting or standing before you at the moment.

e)      Understand what is unique about your product

To make good sales, to start with, your product must have a unique identifiable feature.  There must be something that distinguishes your product from your competitors’.  One of your sales pitches should be competitive advantage of that product compared to the competitors’ product.  Whenever you sell, emphasize the competitive advantage your product has, however, DO NOT bad-mouth your competition.  De-marketing your competition does not improve your own product or services.  Another sales pitch should be the benefit of that product to the customers, in other words, the solution that product offers for their problems.

In using uniqueness of your product as a tool, examine these two things:

-                    How that uniqueness will appeal to your target consumers.

-          

            What particular problems that uniqueness will help solve for your customers.

We will continue this discussion next time.  Keep a date with me.

Nigeria: Are we on the brink?

These are not ordinary times in Nigeria.  We are on the brink, to put it mildly.  Yet some people who claim to be our leaders are carrying on like we have no emergency in our hands.  I never really stuck my head out for anyone during the last elections but I had a soft spot for President Goodluck Jonathan and I don't know why.  I didn't like him that much but I felt for the sake of continuity, we didn't need a fresh person in Aso Rock.  Besides, he cut a picture of a person who somehow knew what he wanted to do and was ready to run Nigeria with a paradigm shift mentality.  But I was wrong obviously.  Nothing seems to suggest to me right now that Mr. President is different from our previous leaders.

I had expected by now that he would have sent an Executive Bill to the National Assembly to do a death blow on extravagant expenditure in government.  He didn't... The cost of running government is much higher today than it was 5 years ago. 

I had expected that the President would be very proactive with security matters by picking highly skilled security people and not follow the traditional pattern of appointing service chiefs on the basis of "next in line".  We have chiefs in our security services who are all confessing that the Boko Haram phenomenon caught them "unawares".  Security people using the word "unawares"?  It can only happen in Nigeria.  In saner societies, that statement alone can earn them an immediate sack.  That is why I like President Babangida for his security proactivity.  I was a mere teenager when a one-time Governor of Benue State (for 3 days) made a careless statement to the press.  The man was fired the next day and retired from the Nigerian Army.  You don't make statements like that in security circles in public!  Not even when you entertain the thoughts and entertaining such defeatist thoughts are even uncalled for!

The other day, the President told the nation that he was not a "general" nor was he "Pharoah of Egypt" and that we should not expect him to confront the challenges we have with a military mentality.  My question is?  Who then is the Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces?  If the president cannot think and act as a Commander in Chief, who does he expect to think? If we have a President who speaks in this manner, why would Boko Haram not become more audacious with their attacks?  Why should we have Damaturu turn into a killing field last week?  If the security services were on top of their jobs, wouldn't it be good security sense for them to become proactive in neighbouring states to Borno where the sect is operating from as its headquarters?

When the nation is reeling under heavy economic challenges, we have a government that should be protecting the defenseless citizens even thinking of taking away from them what they have as a cushioning effect.  Petrol at N65 is even expensive for a nation living on generators which is powered by fuel!  If we take the price above N100 per litre through subsidy removal, now that there no electricity, are we saying the ordinary Nigerian should not even fuel their generators again?  Are our leaders thinking?  If you are removing subsidy, can you correctly account for the funds that have been entrusted to you in the past? 

In my facebook page today, I have been advocating that the President and his team should take a pay cut by 50% and the National Assembly members should forgo 50% of their allowances and lead by example by engaging in deliberate sacrifices.  The truth is this:  these leaders do not really care about what happens to the ordinary Nigerian.

Ordinary citizens who try to galvanize others to protest the injustice and misgovernance are now being hounded by the State Security Service (SSS) wasting valuable man-hours that should have been spent working on the real criminals who are ravaging our streets with bombs.  Poor managers always major on the minor.  That is what is happening. 

Without sounding so pessemistic, I want to state clearly that we are heading for the status of a failed state without even taking a closer look to confirm this.  We must not forget that the average Nigerian is becoming restive daily through consistent frustration.  When a government fails to live up to its name and responsibility, it may end up bearing the brunt of the consequences from a population pushed too far to the wall.  A word is enough for the wise.