Tag Archives: JJ OMOJUWA

Corruption, wealth creation and the Nigerian elite – By JJ Omojuwa

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Nigeria is a tough place to start a business, and even a much tougher place to run one. When you check the World Bank’s annual Ease of Doing Business Report, you’d actually see that doing business in Nigeria that was a tough ordeal has only got tougher over the years. From its best ranking of 120 in 2008, the country sank to the depths ranking 170 in 2014 and 2015. There was actually a downward spiral between 2012 and 2014 when in 2012 the country was ranked 138. The 2016 number at 169 was just an insignificant movement from 170. The poorest ranking is about 190 with the best country ranked 1.

Capital is very expensive in Nigeria yet we need capital amongst other factors, to create wealth. Accessing loans for your new or active business is a tough ordeal. For most people starting small businesses, they are more likely to get help from family and friends than they are to get loans from the banks. But when friends and families themselves have fallen on hard times, it then means we need a new wave of helpers more than ever before. With interest rates as high as 24 per cent and collaterals as unreasonable as documents of landed properties – from someone looking to get started in business – things are not looking pretty at all.

The current Muhammadu Buhari administration through the office of the Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, has committed to a timeline of improving the ease of doing business but while they get on that and we continue to put them on their toes, a certain group of Nigerians must stand up to be counted!

Nigeria’s elite must do better. We need to prioritise giving, give intentionally and strategically for the purpose of expanding opportunities and creating wealth. There are two main types of giving in a certain sense. There are those that give in such a way that the receiver continues to depend on them and then there are those that give for the sole purpose of empowering the giver. We need to do more of the latter. Even with a governance system that works – ours still doesn’t – we’d still need to do a lot more than depend on government to fix our poverty challenge. It is a massive problem. One of the reasons certain countries continue to be prosperous over centuries is not only because of their system of governance but because private citizens committed to using their wealth for the purpose of development; endowing universities for the education of a certain group of people, empowering businesses via soft loans or equity contribution, covering several other gaps left by the government. No system has ever thrived solely because its system of government worked. Ultimately, we need change to happen from top to bottom and bottom to top for it to be wholesome and enduring. Ours is a double whammy challenge because whether top to bottom or bottom to top, we haven’t even started at all.

Corruption has cost us a lot more than the shortage of public funds. I have always believed that Africa’s challenge with corruption is not as much about the fact that a lot of its resources are stolen by some of those trusted with power, as it is about the fact that virtually all the stolen money gets transferred mostly to Western countries. In other words, not only are we denying ourselves resources to build public institutions and infrastructure, we also export jobs and value when our stolen money gets exported. A thief is a thief of course but a thief who steals billions of naira without carrying a gun is a bigger thief than one that steals N5m by brandishing a gun. You are probably aware of all the monies being returned to Nigeria from Switzerland, being proceeds of corruption. Whilst Nigeria gets to collect the exact money stolen some 18 years ago in certain cases – if charges are not deducted for consultants and the likes – the truth of the matter is, the returned money is a lot less than the wealth the initially stolen money must have created over almost two decades. Those returning the money know this, it is why everything is done to delay the return as long as possible. It helps for us to know this too.

There is no need to sing to the choir about Nigeria’s challenges, we know them, we talk and sing about them and we always trust in the next election or next government to fix these things. We also know that more often than not, our trust gets betrayed. We need to do better. Government is critical to our development but we need to think beyond government. Someone posted a tweet during the week about how a former minister – who recently lost some $153.3m of the total money she allegedly stole – comes from a part of the country where poverty remains a prevailing reality as this person has done almost nothing to improve the lives of those who share kinship with her. It is why those who defend corrupt people defy logic. Someone even said it was better to ignore corruption stories for now as we focus on insecurity issues. That is also anti-logic because on the one count, the human brain has the capacity to deal with more than one issue at a time and on the other, these things are interlinked. Corruption begins a cascade of tragedies that lead to the shortage of infrastructure, drugs in hospitals, resources for the training of police officers and whatever else you can think of. All of these shortages have consequences and Nigeria is a breathing reality of those consequences.

A lot of us must be used to this picture; a big rich man in a poor neighbourhood who is ever ready to give a token to the poor just so they can feed and survive for two or more days or weeks before they return to beg the big rich man again. The rich man also gets a sense of his wealth when he looks out at night and sees his house is one of the few lit houses in the neighbourhood, while in the day his house stands out in a neighbourhood that reeks of poverty. This picture must change; enough of giving to the poor or needy for the purpose of keeping them alive to beg again. We must now begin to give strategically. Give N200,000 to four enterprising small business owners whose businesses will get a major lift with N50,000.00 than hand N1,000 to 200 wailers and hailers. N200,000 in the hands of four value creators could become N500,000 in a matter of months.

I want to see a Nigeria where the battle goes from which rich man or woman had the party of the year, the biggest car or house to one where the conversation is about “Who is doing more to support small businesses?” Trust me, if we don’t get this right, things will continue to get worse. We need to be more intentional, creative and strategic about our giving so that when we give, we give to create more wealth. There will always be room for everyday giving, the ones that keep food on another’s table or helps another to feed for yet another day. But as Tony Elumelu  noted, “we need to give from the perspective of empowering the recipient, instead of making them dependent on us.”  That powerful statement deserves the last word on this.

“You don’t need an award to know you are doing great work”, JJ Omojuwa comments on #TFAA2016

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The Future Awards Africa, also popularly known as The Future Awards, are a set of awards given by The Future Project (TFP), a social enterprise set up with a strong, practical commitment to human and capital development, especially in Africa.

 

It just concluded it’s 2016 episode of the The Future Awards and of course the aftermath of the programme has always been a mixture of emotions for participants and nominees. This year has clearly shown that such aftermath is always an eventuality and of course, this year’s version is already pouring in.

 

So much is being said about the event on Social Media and so much more is expected to be said. One of the early submissions is from a social media expert and commentator, J.J Omojuwa who took to one if his Social Media Platforms (Instagram) this morning to share some gems on awards, nominations and eventual winners.

 

We caught up with him on his IG Page and below is a transcript of what he shared which we found quite inspiring:

 

I want to address an issue that comes up every year about The Future Awards. I should do a blog post but this is how the Spirit has led me to do it. When you are nominated for ANY award, whether you win it or not is not the issue, that you have served humanity to the point of being recognized is the issue.

So, to those who were nominated and didn’t win, you won when you already got nominated. You were already called out out of many. Someone goes home with the plaque in each category but every nominee must learn to go back home with their heads held high because they are a generation’s honourables. To those who expected to be nominated but weren’t, don’t join those who make up conspiracy theories and stuff looking to throw up negative energy.

Not being nominated doesn’t mean you aren’t doing great work, it just means those running this particular award haven’t noticed you yet or they had a lot of people doing just as much great work. No system sees everyone, even the FG doesn’t know some of us exist. So, you don’t exist for the validation of awards and recognition, you exist for significance, to make your essence a telling difference in our world.

You don’t need an award to know you are doing great work. But if you think you really do need an award to feel good, apply to an award organization and tell them about your work. But really and truly, just focus on what you do, evolve and continue to do good. Rewards are natural, they always come. And to the winners, congratulations. Winning this award is great, it is like winning an age grade competition.

The award is not celebrating you because of what you have become, it is celebrating you for what you are becoming. Don’t get it twisted, you have only just started. Make sure we see you do even greater things in the future because the award you just won became history as soon as you received it. To all of us, let us celebrate one another.

Let us push one another. A simple “you are doing a great job” is the difference between someone giving up and the person gaining renewed strength to do better. Africa needs us and we can’t make change happen if we don’t see these things the right away. #TFAA2016 #ShapingTheFuture

 

 

It is not clear what inspired the write-up but we suspect that there might have been some grudges from some nominees who did not win or who do not agree with the choice of winner in their various categories.

Nigerian Artists And International Collabos: What’s Next? By JJ, Omojuwa

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I might as well digress from the start. I ought not to be the one writing this because for starters, I am not an artist and I am definitely not an expert of the music industry or any industry for that matter. But someone has to say something and I’ve got the microphone now. We have put our super stars in a box where they can hardly share their opinions on an issue without such opinions being deemed as them hating on the successes of others or being condemned as some sort of subliminal. That leaves us in a place where such people would rather keep their thoughts to themselves. In writing this, one sought the opinion of some top artists, all of whom currently have songs on the top ten and one also got the opinion of some soon to be great performers too. Some of their thoughts are crystallized in my own words below.

Gone are the days where the Nigerian or African music consumer is excited about a collabo between our artists and those from across the ocean, mostly from the U.S. Hip-Hop community. We have seen 2face and R-Kelly, we have seen D’Banj and Snoop Dogg, P-Square and Rick Ross, Vector and Movado, Akon and everybody, Davido and Meek Mill and down to the most recent one, Wizzy, Skepta and Drake. Some of the tracks that came off such collaborations came off as great, some just there somewhere above mediocrity and for some others, their place in oblivion will never be threatened. Best forgotten.

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This piece is hardly about the art as it is about the business end of such collaborations. Whether the featured artist phones in his/her part of the track or actually gets into the studio to do the recording, at the bottom of each move is the desire to make a name for one self and also cash some money. One for the money!

We can take it from the point of an artist who is already doing great numbers on the continent. When such an artist features say a Jay Z on a new track, the purpose has to then go beyond being recognized or respected on the continent. At the point D’banj and Don Jazzy had Snoop Dogg on Endowed remix, they were arguably bigger on the continent than Snoop was so one cannot claim that the collaboration was to make the then Mo’Hits artists bigger. It raised their street cred no doubt but Snoop Dogg will not make Africans buy an African artist they are already very much into. It did help D’banj’s resume that he had some relationship with Snoop when Kanye West came calling; that feature had bolstered his resume. Akon has been on tracks with WizKid, P-Square, D’Banj, Davido (and others too numerous to mention) and many would probably even consider him some sort of African artist now. But today, virtually all the artists who featured Akon are doing better in African clubs than Akon is. Does featuring Akon boost your resume? Of course yes! Does it add to your popularity in Africa if you are say a P Square or Davido? Not much.

It is a false assumption to think that by featuring T.I. you have broken into the American market. Not that easy except T.I. goes out of his way to put that song on his own album and you are on tour with him to promote the said track. How have featured International artists treated virtually all the collabos with African artists? Like something they’d rather forget as soon as the production was done. You don’t see them tweeting links to the song as they would features with their contemporaries in America. You do not see them big up such tracks on Hot 97 or other respected Hip-Hop platforms in America.

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At times, it does feel like a relationship between a guy and a sex worker. You pay for the service, she serves you, and you are out. The hooker does not reference you, your relationship ended after you paid. The sex was nothing but her doing her job. You had fun, she had money! The relationship between our artists and these International acts is not as graphic but anyone who is sincere enough would get the drift; the International artist gets his/her cash, does the motions and is off. No promotion, no sustained acknowledgement on social media and zilch mentions on U.S. radio on television networks.

There is a next step to these transatlantic collaborations. Let me state that we are closer into breaking into the U.S. market today than we were say five years ago. I mean, even Jay Z used Nigeria’s Hip-Hop market to prop up some reputation for his Tidal! So we are close but we could remain close for the next five years and not actually break in if we are just okay with featuring these artists and not looking to cash in on such collabos in the American market.

Collaborations should come with agreements that include expectations on the featured artist’s post-studio work. Why feature an artist who’s got a combined 10 million Twitter, Facebook, Instragram and YouTube fans if such will not sign up to post links to our feature across all those channels on an agreed number of times? Our artists also need to commit the artists to TV and radio mentions. This music business is more of a business today than it is music; is that not why those involved in the business are making more money than most of those making the music?

We are desperate to see a home boy or girl break into the U.S. market. It is more likely to happen via a collabo with an established star (say Rihanna) than with a solo effort. See what the Beyonce feature did to Chimamanda Adichie and Aunty Ngozi no be artist o. Breaking into the U.S. market is one thing, sustaining it is another but we can have that discussion after we break in.

According to PwC, the global music revenue for 2015 is expected to be $48 billion . That is some $18 billion above Nigeria’s average yearly national budget. The U.S. market share of that is $15 billion. Note that revenue is not the same as investment. Our industry is not yet a $1 billion industry . Can we offer the featured artists more than the cash they get paid? We cannot at the moment. The African music industry is still at an inchoate stage at best and the numbers are not juicy enough for an established U.S. artist to want to commit to. The potentials are vast and with increasing Internet penetration, our artists and other stakeholders can start making top dollar from the digital sales of their content. For now, what the International act gets is the cash at hand, but can our artists start making their dollars count beyond being able to say “I have featured several International stars” in an interview to saying on U.S. TV, “I am not a one hit wonder. I have produced several hits in Africa and I am sure I will add more hits to my current track enjoying airplay across America.” It is possible if we start thinking along that line.

Japheth J Omojuwa is a Nigerian blogger, socio-economic and political commentator, environmental consultant, and social media expert. He’s the curator of Omojuwa.com.