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Special Nelson Mandela Commemorative Edition

§     Find Your Inner Mandela

§     His 8 Lessons of Leadership

§     Mandela’s Many Names

§     Mandela in the Movies: 10 Films About Apartheid

§     Interview with Denis Goldberg (Accused No. 3 in the epochal Rivonia Trial of 1963)

§     Verbatim – In His Own Words

Sebeccly - October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

For the third time in a row, Sebeccly has rolled out her breast helplines, social media and online information centre. The cancer information centre is a cancer information resource, whereby callers can make enquiries on breast health and cancer. Callers are educated on cancer screening guidelines,provided with available cancer information and facilities available. Callers with breast abnormalities are free to walk in to our office for a free consultation/checks and are referred to an approved institution.

info@sebecclycancercare.org
Breast helplines 0810-205-6467, 0808-107-6764

The breast helplines will run throughout October 2013, 10am-2pm while the email and social media run throughout the year, 24/7

The Nigeria I See

The Nigeria I See

Share with us your dreams of a better nation

Its Nigeria’s 53^rd anniversary - the celebration of the independence of any nation should mark a progressive development in all indexes of growth in the said nation. That may not entirely be the story of Nigeria. Year in and out, we have read countless articles of how things are not working out in the country. Usually, it is the same story; no power, unemployment, bad roads, corruption, tribalism and insecurity. But that is not all there is to us. Our independence should celebrate who we are; our strength, unity in diversity, our rich culture and heritage. We should beam the light and embrace us as we are while forging ahead. Yes, nothing may be working but e go better.

Muttallab aside, (Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab is the 23year old wanna be terrorist who failed to detonate a bomb to blow up a US Northwest Flight 253 with hundreds of passengers on board traveling from Amsterdam-Schipol airport to Detroit, Michigan, USA), we still have many great men and women who have done us proud as a nation.

We have the likes of Soyinka, Achebe, Ben Okri, Ola Rotimi and Chiamanda Adichie  who have done us proud in the literary world. Just this year, we became African sports champion after a team of home based players beat other world class players to win the African Nations Cup. The list is endless.

There’s always something to smile about no matter how dark the clouds maybe. Though it hurts that over fifty years since the colonial masters left, we are still grappling with many self afflicted problems. While some quarters hold that corruption is the main cause of our problems, others say we shouldn’t have gotten our independence when we did. Our leaders today simply do not share the ideals and values of our freedom fighters and over fifty years, we can’t beat our chest yet to a job well done.

In our hypocritical nature, we hide under the blankets of religion. Even that is no longer working and has equally backfired in our faces. Truth be told, the average man may not see a reason to celebrate because nothing has changed and the future looks bleak.

But we must move on. Giving up is not even an option. What is the Nigeria you see? Share with us the Nigeria of your dreams for publication in the upcoming October Independence Anniversary edition of TIMELESS Magazine.

God bless

Brian Tracy in Nigeria for the ''The Remarkable Leaders’ Conclave''

US-based leadership and personal success expert, Brian Tracy, will be in Nigeria from August 26 to 31, 2013 for The Remarkable Leaders' Conclave and Business Workshops organized by Brimass, one of Nigeria’s fastest growing business support company.

The conclave and seminar tour, which has the theme “The Making of Innovative Leaders: Winning Leadership Strategies for Building World-Class Organisations and Societies” will hold in Lagos, Abuja and Benin.
While in the country, the world-renowned speaker and business thinker will share his time-tested tips on issues that continue to advance management science and develop cutting-edge tools and frameworks to help businesses transform their ideas into products and successfully bring those products to market.

According to the founding partner and Chief Operating Officer of Brimass, Stephen Ojji, during this event, over 4,000 delegates including entrepreneurs, business executives, political leaders, decision makers in government agencies, students and emerging leaders will have the opportunity to listen to and interact with Brian at six different summits over a two day period, in addition to more than 10 exclusive sessions and private seminars for interested organisations.

Ojji said the workshop, which will also provide opportunity for participants to network with leaders from public and private sectors as well as non-profit experts “is going to be an exciting and dynamic event that will allow participants to become professionals with keen insights into what makes a strong, innovative and successful leader whether in business or in politics. Attendees of this conclave will make the leap to extraordinary performance, innovation, and influence at work and in life.”

Explaining the objective of the conclave, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director of Brimass, Ogho Emore, said the Remarkable Leaders' Conclave aims to help Nigerian business and political leaders to rise above the expectations of the people while also equipping ordinary people to be the best and brightest tomorrow's business and political leaders.

Emore said the 2013 Remarkable Leaders' Conclave will help participants to become more productive entrepreneurs and employees, adding that Brian will be teaching his best productivity secrets and giving ideas that will help delegates take their leadership in business and politics to the next level.

The itinerary of the visit released by Brimass show that on August 26 (Day 1), Brian will speak at two sessions at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel Abuja. On the second day, he will be in Lagos at the Lagos Intercontinental Hotel, Victoria Island, where he will also speak at three sessions. He will also be speaking to Alumni members of the Lagos Business School on Wednesday morning. He is billed to speak at the Benson Idahosa University on Saturday morning which will bring the seminar tour to a close.

Brian Tracy is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, a company specializing in the training and development of individuals and organizations. He has consulted for more than 1,000 companies and addressed more than 5,000,000 people in 5,000 talks and seminars throughout the US, Canada and 55 other countries worldwide. As a Keynote speaker and seminar leader, he addresses more than 250,000 people each year.

Power Sector Reforms: Lessons from Vietnam

The Vision 2020 economic plan was launched in 2009 to drive Nigeria towards becoming one of the top 20 economies in the world by the year 2020. This plan had several goals including the generation, transmission and distribution of 35,000MW of electricity by the year 2020. In 2009, Nigeria’s average daily electricity generation was 3,700MW, which was hugely insufficient for the 157m people living in Nigeria at the time. Ideally, power generation capacity should correlate with the population of a country. For instance in 2009, South Africa generated 40,000MW for a population of 50m, Brazil generated 100,000MW for 192m people and the United States generated 700,000MW for 308m people. In this light, the Nigerian power sector clearly needed reforms.

Four years have passed since the Vision 2020 plan was birthed and there is already a massive gap between the planned and actual. The plan was to achieve 16,000MW by 2013; however, Nigeria is still struggling to maintain a generation of 4000MW mid-way through 2013. The dependence on thermal generation and inability of management to ensure a steady supply of gas has kept the country behind some of its peers. The slow progress in increasing power generation in Nigeria is not new.

Preceding Vision 2020 was the Electric Power Sector Reform Act of 2005 (EPSR) which was the foundation for power sector improvements. However, no major improvements have been made as Nigeria’s installed generation capacity has grown from only 6000MW to just over 8000MW in the last decade. This is very disconcerting considering that the contents of Nigeria’s reforms are similar to those in some other countries which have seen better results. So why has there not been a surge in Nigeria’s power generation?

Case Study of Vietnam

Vietnam is a Southeast Asian country with a deep history of conflicts and war. Originally colonized by China, Vietnam won its independence before France colonized it once again. The Japanese invaded Vietnam during World War II and this led to the First Indochina war in Vietnam between 1945 and 1954. By 1954, Vietnam fought off the French to gain its independence at the cost of its unity. Northern and Southern Vietnam began a war in 1954 that would last for 21 years (compared to two and a half years of the Nigerian Civil War) leaving millions dead and the economy ravaged. Unified under the Communist government in 1976, Vietnam began a series of economic and political reforms that would set the foundation for future growth.

By 2012, Vietnam had a GDP of $123.6bn and a population of about 90m, representing approximately half of both Nigeria’s GDP and population. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) key economies to watch in the next five years, Vietnam ranks fifth (Nigeria ranks 2nd on this list). Vietnam is also a member of the Next 11 Economies as in Nigeria. The Next 11 economies are countries with high potential to become the world’s largest economies in the 21st century along with the BRICS. Vietnam recognized the need for power improvements to support its growth over the years. As a result, the country embarked on power reforms which started in 2005 when a new electricity law came into effect.

Through the establishment of the new electricity laws, Vietnam aimed to:

·      Expand and improve the power system (resource development)

·      Enhance the transmission lines

·      Reduce transmission and distribution losses

The Vietnamese government created competition in the power sector, which drove the expansion and improvement through:

·      Investment by the state-owned Vietnamese Electricity

·      Generation and distribution companies became different units under a holding company (similar to the Power Holding Company of Nigeria)

·      Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) by granting concessions for construction and development Independent Power Projects (IPP) through the participation of private capital

Vietnam’s installed generation capacity was able to grow from 11,578MW in 2005 to 24,500MW in 2012, with a reduction in transmission and distribution losses by an annual average of 0.6% within the same period. The growth in installed capacity was greatly supported by IPP development. The addition of approximately 13,000MW between 2005 and 2012 may be viewed as meager but that of Brazil, another emerging economy and the world’s 10th-largest electricity producer, increased by the same amount within the same period. In contrast, the generation capacity in Nigeria, a country that can be grouped with those above, has remained flat throughout this same period.

As stated earlier, the Vietnam government recognized the need for power reforms to support its growth. Corruption is one of the major issues in Vietnam, just like in Nigeria. In 2006, a new anti-corruption law came into effect in Vietnam and this helped to reduce corruption in Vietnam over the years even though corruption is still a major problem. The reforms in the power sector led to improved management in the sector and when coupled with reduced corruption, this led to increased efficiency and growth of the sector.

Lessons for Nigeria

There is a lesson for Nigeria to learn from Vietnam’s power sector progress. Just like Vietnam, Nigeria’s on-going power sector reforms involve changing the structure of the sector to separate generation, distribution and transmission units. However, Vietnam was able to effectively create competition in the sector while Nigeria has not succeeded in achieving this so far. The defining factors that have differentiated the two countries over the past years are reduced corruption in the sector and improved management.

The government of Vietnam was able to display better management of the power sector, which attracted the much needed investments. Even though Vietnam is still viewed as one of the most corrupt nations in the world (ranking 123rd while Nigeria is ranked as more corrupt in the 139th position according to the Transparency International Corruption Index), the government was able to cut down on this corruption in the power sector to allow progress to be made.

Corruption and poor management have been highlighted as some of the causes of the poor state of power in Nigeria. Addressing these issues will hasten reforms and attract the needed investments which would create competition, diversify the generation mix and aid in the development of the human capital needed to support the reforms.

The above article is an excerpt from the July 2013 Bi-monthly Economic & Business Update published by the Financial Derivatives Company.

Email: fdc@hyperia.com; Website: www.fdcng.com

The African Crisis

Revisiting the Nigerian...(African) issue

In this month’s cover feature, we decided once again to look at the issue of what we have termed the African crisis, the crisis of having abundant natural resources and yet remaining the world's poorest and most underdeveloped continent.

In Nigeria’s case, 53 years after independence, 13 Heads of state, 2 systems of government and various reform programmes and a population approaching 150 million people, Nigeria is still ranked 142 out of 169 nations in the Human Development Index, (a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide.) Other indices indicate that the population living below $1 per day (PPP) stands at 30%. That number goes up to 70% at population living below $2 per day. For ease of doing business (Nigeria ranks 137 / 183); Economic freedom index (rank) 111 / 179; Corruption perceptions index (rank) 134 / 178; Press freedom index (rank) 145 / 178. Infant mortality rate stands at 86 deaths per 1,000 live births. Life expectancy at birth is 48 years on the average. All these despite being blessed with natural gas, petroleum, tin, iron ore, coal, limestone, niobium, lead, zinc, arable land and human resources.

Since the mid-1990s, Equatorial Guinea has become one of sub-Sahara's largest oil producers. With a population of 650,702, it is the richest country per capita in Africa, and its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita ranks 69th in the world; however, the wealth is distributed very unevenly and few people have benefited from the oil riches. The country ranks 136th on the UN's 2011 Human Development Index out of a total 187. The UN says that less than half of the population has access to clean drinking water and that 20% of children die before reaching five.

Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea are just two examples of the paradox in which Africa has found itself. African nations are the richest in terms of natural resources but its people continue to live in abject poverty. This is the reason why we cannot stop talking about these issues.

One of the reasons why we are where we are is because everyone is pursuing personal interest to the detriment of national interest. Greed and corruption is rampant. Corruption does not take place only in government. At religious organisations, private offices, schools, even our homes, corrupt practices are endemic. Everyone is struggling to grab their share of the so called ‘national cake’. Political appointments have become an opportunity to ‘eat and settle' the boys and the families and communities of such appointees. The ‘carnival’ that takes place at the State House during the swearing-in of new ministers is a pointer to this.

We have had poor, uneducated, uniformed, visionless, uncommitted leadership by largely selfish and ignorant people who lack proper training and character. Apart from our covetous, barren and unproductive leadership, another issue is our equally greedy, impoverished and apathetic following. During the January 2012 fuel subsidy crisis, you could hear a lot of people saying ‘thank God, I didn’t bother to come out and vote.’ That kind of sentiment must change. You must be ready to get involved at whatever level, starting with yourself and your immediate environment and community.

There must be a willingness to leave the past and move into the future. Change cannot happen if the people are stuck in a time warp unwilling to move forward. Processes in our educational, religious, electoral, and legislative and governance systems that will bring about change must be put in place. If someone has tried a process that works that brings about a desired positive change, that process must be documented and taught to others and replicated across all spheres of our society. We must be ready as a people and as a nation to endure the hardships and the consequences that the change will bring about. Change is not always easy. People naturally will always want to remain in their comfort zones. They have to be forced to change their thinking, their attitude, their way of life. We must be faithful as a nation to such changes.

I think that it is possible to have an organised society, to have a responsive government and to have a responsible people and to begin to do things the way they should be done. Nigeria has the potential to rise but must get certain things right such as Power Supply; Security; Rule of Law; Infrastructure and the Right Leadership. It must unleash the economy and encourage a system that brings the best out of people, a system that rewards excellence over mediocrity. A new set of leaders and thinkers who will engender a new mindset, re-orientate and re-educate the citizenry, and act as a voice of reasoning and pressure point must be sought out, trained and developed.

Nigeria has the boldness and character to rise to the top but lacks the moral fibre as corruption and greed is quite rampant and must be rooted out. Needless to say, Nigeria is moving at a painfully slow pace with a desperate need for improvement.