Indigenous Talent, Energy, and Multinationals

I was reading somewhere recently about Nigeria's lack of indigenous energy and construction firms. I happen to work at a rather big engineering, construction, & project management company in the US and I can see some of the issues Nigeria is facing in terms of not having an indigenous multinational company - at least from this side of the fence so to speak. Nigeria desperately needs a "Fluor" or a "Kellogg Brown and Root"! Every big project that could potentially employ a large sector of white collar Nigerians gets contracted out to he who can handle the so said "contract" and the associated accelerated schedule. In Nigeria's case this is usually a "Julius Berger" or some other multinational company. The country desperately needs to develop it's in house talent and hopefully over time create increasing employment opportunities for all Nigerians. At this point in time, Nigeria is shipping in ex-pats left and right for every single thing. We all know these ex-pats cost a lot of $$. The privatization initiative should be an opportunity to really develop our talent base in Nigeria. If we were paying out in naira instead of dollars, it would definitely help and not hurt the Nigerian economy.

Furthermore, the power issue (Energy) hurts me the most. It is imperative that Nigeria get its act together with its energy initiative. I have read different articles recently about proposed power plants to be erected all over different parts of the country. I recently worked on a big $2.3 billion power project in Turkey. The project added almost 4000 megawatts to the Turkish power grid. Now consider the total cost and the amount of power that was added to the Turkish grid. For some perspective, Turkey has a population roughly of about 70 million people, and we were adding in 25% of their total power output. Can you believe that? 25%! Now consider Nigeria....We can use the last official figure of 120 million people as a base. Now what is our total power generated you ask? - not even 4000 megawatts. We consistently run on anywhere between 1500 - 2500 megawatts. I believe Nigeria has a total generation capacity in the neighborhood of 3500 megawatts. Although, recent reports have us generating a few more megawatts due to some recents upgrades in generation ability.

The company I work for would probably not have won the Turkish project if it were not in a joint venture with a Turkish company. A part of the contract was to ensure that the Turkish people benefited from the project. Thus, the company had minimal ex-pats over from the US and mostly local (Turkish) engineers throughout execution. If Nigeria has a company that can compete with the foreign firms, and/or go into joint ventures with them, the country stands to benefit immensely in the long run. It would eventually build up the talent in the company and possibly make inroads into the local projects of other West African countries. Almost all foreign countries do the same thing - they support their own! When an American company like Fluor or GE is bidding for a job in Germany, you can bet your a$$ that Siemens is in on it - the German government will do everything in its power to ensure they (Siemens) get the job - competitively of course.

My point here I guess is that I applaud the idea to get a Nigerian (multinational type) energy and construction company going. Yes, it could be regarded as an opportunity for some in government to embezzle money and yes, some of the eventual big guys in this company would be in a position to rake in a lot of money. However, the big picture here is that the company will be there years after these folks are long gone. At that point a lot of people will have moved up in the company, and our young talented Nigerians from all our Universities and polytechnic should have a place to go right out of school. This is truly what we need.

There will always be the super rich, so we should not loose sight of the big picture when it comes to developing a base for our own talent.

Salmon or Sea Bass?

A friend sent me an e-mail a while back about a Nigerian article on why men cheat on their wives. The article centered on a discussion among five mutual friends in regards their marriages. The youngest of the men just turned 40, while the oldest was 50. The article goes on to elaborate about the difficulties each of them were having in their marital lives.

The article goes into how each of the men either had a girlfriend(s) outside of their marital homes or were planning on marrying these young ladies or "first generation university graduant" as one of the men put it. Anyway, the reasons each man gave for cheating on his wife varied from a lack of attention from his wife, a lazy wife that did not cook, a wife that ignored his emotional needs, a wife that showed no interest in what the man was doing, to a purely sexual affair.

It must be noted that none of the men have plans to divorce their wife. They were prepared, however, to battle it out with their wives if they ever found out. Anyway,...I thought the article was quite interesting and humorous at the same time, so I forwarded it on to a few female friends. As expected, cheating is a very sensitive subject matter, especially to the Nigerian woman. A compilation of their responses are as follows:

1. Men cheat because they lack self control and they are spoilt. (bottom line) They marry a salmon, they know that they are marrying a salmon, all of a sudden they want sea bass, mahi mahi, rockfish, halibut and the list goes on. They also go out looking and don't stop till they get another type of fish. For the most part they know they love their salmon, but they want a sea bass as well, and won't stop till they HAVE both. By nature women (well most, as women cheat too) don't have that problem, we just accept that we married a shark and deal.

2. Basically, the pressure is on a woman to keep her husband, since he lacks self control. She has to become a sea bass, a mahi mahi, a halibut (although she is a salmon) to please him since he (through no fault of hers) has decided that he wants another type of fish. Unfortunately, not all women have the uncanny ability to do so (i.e. be someone/something else). Some women stay EXACTLY as they are. They have no desire to improve or reinvent themselves. They are not forward thinking (which is ok). Unfortunately, this is just the way God made them and they have no desire to be anything else but the same boring Sade that Supo married. Unfortunately, Supo may decide that he cannot take boring Sade anymore. Albeit, she was boring when they married.

3. As the head of your house hold, it is unacceptable for your wife to be rude to you. (per the article) If she is, you, as a man need to check yourself. If your wife respects you, trust me, she will do what it takes to please you. Women need to feel protected, men need to be cow-tied to (i.e. feed his ego). If a woman does not feel you are holding your own as a man, she may become rude etc. Per the article, the man's solution is to cheat. I think that is a sign of weakness on the man's part. Since I can't handle my salmon, let me go and handle this halibut (who is too young to see my flaws) she may respect me. No doubt some women are just bad. This is why I say know what you are attaching to before you do so.

4. Men change (become worse) in the marriages too.....Women do not decide that they are going to cheat because of that. However, if a man losses his wealth and becomes a looser, if he married a woman that wants a lot in life, trust me, she will cheat.

5. Most men (people) get married due to pressure (no clue what they were getting married to....That my spouse "will do" attitude when really they are not satisfied). They never really look inside and ask (self) what they want from life and whether the person they are about to marry will fit what they want to be in life. If you are nice, is she nasty?, If you are fun and deary, is she boring and will not take risks? Are you getting what you want? This is why no matter how bad Bill Clinton is or can be....Hillary will never leave him. They are soul mates. Is Bill spoilt? Yes! He married for ambition and gets all else outside. He has always (even after 3 years of marriage) cheated on Hillary. She has always accepted it. He knows that. He knew that when he married her. His eyes were open.

Nigerian Secondary School System

I read an article in the Nigerian Tribune this morning about the changing of Nigeria's Primary and Secondary education system from the 6-3-3-4 system that I grew up knowing to what is now called the 6-9-3 system of Universal Basic Education (UBE). I remember a time way back in 1986 when the Federal Government also had a similar idea of changing our educational system and succeeded in increasing the length one of my secondary school years from a regular 12 month cycle (two terms) to a 16 month cycle (three terms), only to change it back again after about a year.

The change back then succeeded in doing nothing! Instead of moving ahead in class, I ended up wasting about 5 months marking time in the same grade and basically learning nothing. All that being said, I fear that the Federal Government is going about revamping our educational system without looking at the past mistakes of prior governments nor correcting the core problem of undereducated and untested pupils.

There has been no information to the public as to how this new system is going to be handled nor what the curriculum is to be composed of. It is my belief that the role of the Ministry of Education is not the periodic revision of the educational system, but rather setting up checks and balances in the testing of our wards in all arms of the educational system. I do agree that the curriculum needed to be revised and made more in line with a 20th Century education. However, what good is this new curriculum if the students are not properly tested along the way.

Furthermore, what role does the West African Examinations Council play in this new curriculum? Are the new guidelines for examinations going forward been discussed? Who should be the blood hound to the government on education? Is there an independent educational body like WAEC that would administer large exams? Or is WAEC still in the loop?

I truly believe that the testing of our wards should in fact be the focus of the Ministry of Education. Too many times as evident in most of the country, a majority of the students passed out of our numerous Federal Government colleges are not fit to start a University education. There should be no reason why we would need to scrap the "JSS" exams. The role of this exam was to ensure that students were competent in the basic education needed for everyday life. By getting rid of this weed-out process in the educational chain, we pose the risk of leaving students behind.

This is truly a concern for me - I guess we all have to just wait and see.