industry

Essays, Writers

“There is Money in the Entertainment Industry” by Aaron Livingstone.

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My very good friend called me sometime in 2017, “Aaron, there’s a new system we can use to make money, YouTube.” She explained to me how Mark Angel and Emmanuella became celebrities and Millionaires all of a sudden through entertainment, uploading comedy skits to YouTube.  It was mind-blowing. It was phenomenal. Well, the typical me would have jumped at it immediately, but I had just had a session with my financial mentor, where he had told me to only build a business on passion and meeting a need. Quite interesting points, he added that as important as making a profit is, I must make sure I focus more on adding value to society.  I took these words to heart, so immediately my friend brought up the YouTube comedy business, as a means to make quick money, I called her bluff. It doesn’t blend with my core values.  That said, it is no doubt that the Nigerian entertainment industry is raking in billions in profit annually. The industry has undoubtedly made a lot of people millionaires in a very short time.  The entertainment industry comprising the music, movie, arts, and also comedy industry has been the major source of the Nation’s celebrities, as it is quite easy to build a strong fan base in Nigeria.  But there’s a question that’s begging to be asked, and that’s “what inspires our Entertainers?”   My analysis of the entertainment industry in recent years has shown that a good number of Nigerian youths seek to become financially independent, famous, and influential. They want to “blow” so to say. But really, there’s nothing wrong with seeking to make a profit out of a trade. It’s just fair that a labourer should receive wages for his labour.   What poses a challenge is when you place money above the values you should promote and see profit as your major driving force, neglecting the fact that as an entertainer, you have the propensity to hold your audience spellbound, you have a hypnotizing effect over them that could influence their beliefs, their thought patterns, their view of life and even their sense of purpose and their motivations.   Entertainers are the biggest influencers in today’s societies and maybe they’ve not noticed but the people believe in them much more than they believe in the government.  At the end of the just concluded Big Brother Naija show, some said and I quote, “I commend the supporters of Laycon, popularly called Icons as they’ve shown an unrelenting commitment to their love and trust in him and I would recommend they with immediate effect, set up a political party.”   That statement would seem like a joke gone too far, but looking at the underlying facts, one would say that entertainers can one day take over the government, but that’s not the focus today.  Now, seeing how the masses love their celebrities, I begin to wonder, do these entertainers care so much about their fan base?  I go back to my initial question, “What motivates, inspires, and drives our entertainers?”   Materialism could be seen as a self-seeking act, where a person raises the need for profit over adding value and promoting positive change and morals.  A quite interesting fact is that the Nigerian entertainment industry has become a hotspot of materialistic quests and self-seeking entertainers who only look out from themselves while they create their content.   There was a time where entertainers like Onyeka Owenu, Fela Kuti, and the likes would stand to promote good governance and unity.  There was a time when the entertainment industry was seen as a revolution and an avenue to stand against bad government policies and political misgivings.   Well, in today’s Nigeria, the entertainment industry is still a revolution, but a revolution that promotes greed, materialism, the love for money, sexual vices, and negative morals and speaks nothing about matters that concern their audience.  Our entertainers so much want to make us forget our sorrows but never want to use their platform as a means to reach out to the government.   It’s disheartening, nevertheless, we are proud of Celebrities. They are doing the nation proud.  Not less than 80% of Entertainers in Nigeria are below the age of 40. This strikes a note, letting us know that the Nigerian youths are in control of the entertainment industry.   This also stresses out the fact that our youths have been overly drawn to materialism. One wouldn’t point an accusing finger at them, because the situations in the country make one want to live differently, but if that’s the case then we are not ready for a better Nigeria.  So much can be done through the entertainment industry by the youths, with their energy but it would require a re-channelling of their drive, motivation, and purpose from Materialism to Value addition.   The Nigerian people need at this point people who can speak on their behalf, not just people that would help them drown their worries. The Nigerian populace needs people who won’t just see them as a target market to monetize skills, but to them, as a people, yearning for a change and the Entertainers take up the banner of change and neglects the drive for profit.  Materialism and materialistic drives will in no way make any positive impact and with such, our Entertainers would only keep on encouraging negative values and immoral vices in the youths.   The Nigerian youths see the entertainers as Hero’s and they let themselves be willfully influenced by them. So, the entertainers must live up to this standard.  Entertainers should not be driven by materialism.  They have the key to promoting positive values in Nigerian youths.  The Love of Money is the root of all evil!  Aaron Livingstone is a final year Industrial Chemistry student of the Federal University of Technology, Minna. He has a great passion for gaining knowledge and loves to read. He wrote in via livingstoneaaron41@gmail.com      

Blog, Essays, Monishots

Aba: Rediscovering The Abused Pearl Of Africa.

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Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. ~Dale Carnegie As a proud ‘Aba brought up’ I was thrilled to see the short clips from Aba boys hyping the street credibility of those who grew up in the good old Enyimba city, so I added mine and enjoined other homies to do so. Some of the videos went viral and in no time people from other southeastern towns who felt challenged made their own videos to diss Aba more than to hype their own unique characteristics. The incident elicited some sharp exchanges and even though some took things a bit too far no harm was done. Rather it mostly gave us a few days of some healthy banter that was needed in a period of lockdown. Nevertheless, any forthright observer who is conversant with the south-east will tell you about the uniqueness of Aba. The resilient spirit displayed during the Aba women’s riot never left the town. Ojukwu himself cited this while professing his love for the town which he described as the “Igbo Heartland” and requested that his remains must be taken to Aba before interment. Combined with the entrepreneurial skills of her artisans and the quick wits of the everyday people these peculiar traits have placed Aba youths among the most successful Igbo people around the world. For us, survival is a must and impossible is nothing. My friends from the University of Maiduguri can attest to how I survived by selling clothes made by a tailoring genius named Colchoclob. Wherever you come across an ‘Aba brought up’ you won’t need a second guess. In any case, one cannot blame those who have an erroneous impression of Aba, after all, it is now reputed to be the dirtiest city in the South East if not the entire nation. It has come to represent all that is the failure of governance embodied in many Igbo leaders. Aba did not become the jhuggi it is now in just one day. As one who lived there during her glory days, my heart continued sinking as I watched the deterioration from the turn of the new millennium. Her dramatic social and economic decline can be likened to a lethal injection administered through many years of consistent misgovernance by leaders and pervasive abuse by residents. And even though this can be traced back to the military era, it must be said that our current democratic experiment spelt the death knell. I mean as of 2000, I was still able to muster friends from different parts of the country to grace the maiden graduation ceremony of my mother’s school. But I would later relocate her to Abuja in 2010 after the kidnap of her friend and several threat messages sent to her by men of the underworld. It may be difficult to find any Aba resident sending invitations beyond the town these days. I was born in Enugu and raised between Enugu and Aba. In that time I visited Owerri severally and lived in Onitsha so I know the major cities in the south-east like the back of my hand. Enyimba city back in the 80s was what you can rightly describe as the typical Igbo man’s dream town. It had a balanced mix of a busy commercial centre and the serene ambience of a suburb. The sprawling metropolis was literally divided into two halves, a densely populated commercial part known as ‘town’ and the newer, more residential half aptly named ‘over-rail’ because of an imagined boundary created by a traversing rail line. There is a massive motor park strategically located in the city centre yet a few metres away you can relax at the nearby Rotary Park or in the shades offered by the rubber plantation also within a strolling distance. In Aba town, you usually find the proletariat while the elites reside in ‘over rail’. The various intersections in the ‘town’ like East by Azikiwe, Kent by School road bear a quaint similarity with those in Piazza Garibaldi Naples while the massive Plazas that dot Park and Pound roads by Asa road remind me of the Haussmann buildings that line the boulevards of Paris. When Owerri could boast of only two major roads in Douglas and Wetheral, Aba already had dual carriageways like Aba-Owerri, Factory, Azikiwe, Ikot Ekpene and Port-Harcourt roads. Having crisscrossed the South East I am yet to see a better quality road than Margret Avenue financed by PZ Industries in the early 80s or the Okpu Umobo road done by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the time Enugu had just the Nigerian Bottling Company located at the suburb of 9th mile, Aba had a purpose-built industrial layout within the metropolis. It was professionally mapped with solid paved roads constructed during the colonial days. Together with the commercial factory road, they hosted industries and major multinationals like NBL, Lever Brothers, International Equitable, UAC, UTC, GB Ollivant, RT Briscoe, SCOA, Bata CFAO and John Holt. Local enterprise equally thrived because Ariaria market which is one of the biggest in West Africa provided a ready ground for the production and trade of technical, textile and leather wares. It was not surprising that Aba topped the nation in indigenous production as companies like Star Paper Mills, Starline Industries, Onwuka Hi-Tec were leading manufacturers. It was also home to Ejinaka and Thornber which was the biggest private farm settlement east of the Niger. While Rufus Obi Chemist, Presidential tailors and Moneme bookshops gained national recognition in their various industries. The economy of the town boomed and traders trooped in not just from other parts of the country but also from across West Africa thereby earning her the nickname “Japan of Africa”. The senior staff of the multinationals ensured that the residential part of ‘over rail’ was impeccably clean and tranquil. Our station avenue residence at GRA Aba shared a common

Blog, Essays

Data and the oil industry by Thisday

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Thisday newspaper takes a critical look at the shameful opacity in NNPC in this editorial. Read… —————————————————————————————————————————— It is shameful but rather typical that even when Nigeria was able to provide the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Country (OPEC) with some credible data, the country keeps none for its own reference. “I am ashamed we didn’t have data source on Nigeria. I think as we provide data for OPEC, we should address the question of churning credible data to be consumed in-country. It is a pity when students are looking for data we have to go to OPEC to get data about Nigeria,” said Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum Resources. Unfortunately, such concerns no longer seem an anomaly as the Nigerian oil and gas sector operates more or less in secrecy and obscurity. The dearth of data has remained a major challenge in accessing and in assessing the operations of the state-owned behemoth, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that is notorious for its institutional opacity. Indeed, for the entire gamut of the industry – from exploration to crude oil production to oil lifting, exports and sales – the data value chain is unreliable and weakened, giving rise to lack of transparency and rabid corruption. According to a recent policy briefing by the reinvigorated Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the NNPC owes the government a backlog of unremitted oil revenue running into billions of naira. Although the state-owned oil company has started making public a detailed overview of its finances, the reports are said to be deficient because they do not delineate “the operational and financial performance of NNPC subsidiaries, including sales-level data.” It is also noteworthy that one of the most valuable oil block contracts, OPL 245 – an opaque contract better known as the Malabu Oil – was awarded by the NNPC. The contract, which is still a subject of headlines and litigations, has cost the nation several billions of dollars. All this merely confirmed what the London Economics wrote about the country’s oil industry some few years back: “Information about Africa’s biggest oil industry is an opaque myriad of numbers. No one knows which ones are accurate; no one knows how much oil Nigeria actually produces.If there were an authoritative figure, the truly horrifying scope of corruption would be exposed.” That the lack of accurate data has made many to raise doubts on the accuracy of payments made by oil companies to the government with respect to tax and royalty is an understatement. Nigeria reportedly loses about N2.2 trillion annually to inaccurate measurement system adopted across all sectors of the economy, especially in the oil and gas sector. According to the CEO of Nigerco Nig. Ltd, Mr. Yagbagi Sani, Nigeria’s exact crude oil production is not correctly known based on the fact that calculation is usually done on estimates and comparison of temperature and pressure at the well heads. He added: “No one actually knows what comes out of the well and what happens between the well and tank farms.” For decades, there have been efforts to address the institutional and regulatory framework weighing down the NNPC and indeed, the oil industry. The present administration vowed to redress the wrongs. It was also the need to bring integrity, transparency and accountability to bear on the operations of the problematic oil sector and indeed the entire economy that made the country to recently join the Open Government Partnership. But there cannot be openness in darkness and that is why availability of data is important not only to aid planning and research, but also for transparency and containing impunity. When there are gaps in essential information – as there are today in the oil and gas sector– and the accuracy and validity of the data is widely questioned, it is easy to game such a system.

Blog, Resources

Opportunities for SMEs at Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

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As Nigeria took a huge leap into the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) index, the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry has announced some programmes on capacity building for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) through its Business Entrepreneurship, Skills and Technology (BEST), Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, the Chamber’s Vice President in a statement signed by Mr Gena Lubem, Media and Protocol Officer of the chamber in Abuja on Wednesday said that modules had been developed to cater for the basic and core areas of SMEs development, management, and sustainability. The statement read:   “The main aim of the programme is for us to comprehensively take into consideration the major concerns of the SMEs with a view to holistically address and place them on the pedestal of sustainable development. The target markets for the BEST centre are entrepreneurs, business owners, artisans, entry-level graduates, professionals, government agencies and investment promotion agencies. Others are captains of industry, hotel owners, retiring public or private sector employers, among several others,”  “The BEST centre investment promotion training is already being introduced to governments and agencies at the federal and state levels that are involved in the investment and Foreign Direct Investment processes. The training on custom processes will be targeted at upcoming businesses involved in import and export activities”. Interested SMEs can participate by sending an email to secretariat@accinigeria.com , alternatively you can click on the contact page of ACCI and fill in the requested details using ‘Best’ as the subject in both cases. As usual, you can thank me later.

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