bharkarh:
thank you for this. Can any company sponsor one in the UK?

Yes. Any company can sponsor after applying for the license and paying the fees.

koonbey:
No it's around 1,099 for one year - 2,555 max for 5 years.

License application fee - £536
Certificate issuance - £199
Immigration Skills Surcharge - £364 per year

I agree with what someone said that it's a matter of sensitisation - most companies think it's a bigger deal than it is.

Mine had to apply for a license just to sponsor me and I made the effort to present it as clearly as possible. Even sent the fees and timeline in tabular form to the HR so it was seemed simple as A B C, and it eventually took less than an hour for the whole thing.

I did a bit of digging as my company sponsors a few people I’m aware of and I’m pretty sure it was given as an excuse when I was hiring a direct report last year and wanted to get them to sponsor the lady. Apparently the costs differs based on company size (medium and larger companies) pay more. If you look at the table, employers can easily fall into the higher bracket. I won’t ordinarily classify my company as medium or even large but our asset base is way more £5m so I guess that’s why we had to pay the higher rates.

You do have a valid point on the sensitization. Sponsoring candidates has its benefits a lot of employers aren’t aware of. Typically the employees are locked in for 5 years so risk of attrition is lower. Also, they can’t be too aggressive in asking for a raise as well. Sadly I’ve also seen this happen with some employers who won’t give a reasonable raise or promotion for this reason. In my case, I eventually went for someone on the Ukrainian visa scheme who was equally as good.

hustla:


LOL So companies that are willing to pay £70K/yr salaries won't be able to afford 5K?

Affordability isn’t the only issue. Why should a company pay at all when you can hire someone else that doesn’t require sponsorship? Also, some firms have to hire a law firm to deal with this which is additional paper work. That’s why it’s difficult to get sponsorship for non-technical roles as supply is abundant.

hustla:



Getting the license /paperwork required for Sponsorship isn't that much of a big deal as you're making it seem

Problem is those companies also think it's a big deal and a lot of hassle so they just totally stay away from it

I believe the additional costs is a main challenge. I hear it costs anywhere from £5k and above in fees.

Viruses:
Hey guys, how were you able to secure car finance with less than 3 years address in the UK. All the lenders I've seen are asking for 3 years UK address history.

You may be able to put your Nigerian / out of country address. It’s also easier if you called the finance company on phone and got them to handle it for you. Once your score is good you should be fine.

baralatie:

Inec will have to draft a proper guideline for primary to include guidelines for omissions and additions.
If a party under convention to elect candidates must must have received legal documents that allowscthat candidates name to only appear in one register to contest.immediately the particular candidates name appears in two registers.it automatically denotes fraud and the candidates disqualified.leaving the second name on the list to be duly nominated etc

Ok. This makes sense.

garfield1:


Before a case is heard on merit,you must first tackle the technicalities which is equally germane...
The case was rightly trashed but it cannot be refiled as time has lapsed...
Secondly,the legality of the primary or who monitored it was not in contention

I see. It’s very likely to me that should Lawan win the loser will raise the legality of the primaries up in court as a point of appeal.

femu:


If you read the whole judgement you will see justification for the technicality.

There was conflict in what Machina presented which couldn't be addressed without a proper trial

Yes. That part made sense. However, he should have been given the opportunity to refill using the proper channel is my point. It wasn’t his fault his lawyers used the wrong channel. Also, how does INEC interpret this judgement since recognizing Lawan also means they are flouting the Electoral Act.

garfield1:


Oga,you can't build something on a faulty foundation

Agreed. But this judgement leaves more questions than it answered.

1. How does Machina proceed? The judges should perhaps have thrown out the case and asked for it to be refilled with the lower courts using the right process.

2. How is this judgement to be interpreted by INEC in light of the electoral act 2022 which states that primaries that aren’t observed by INEC are not valid. Ahmed Lawan did not participate in the primaries monitored by INEC. Doesn’t this recognition of Lawan not float the law in this case?

You see how my point on basing a judgement on technicalities is a very weird thing to do when the law clearly states how these cases should be judged.

Disgraceful judgement to say the least. How is it fair or equitable to ignore the merit of a case and base a judgement on a technicality that can’t be faulted to Machina. Does this mean a murder suspect is to be set free because the prosecution appealed using the wrong process?

The Supreme Court judges need to stop these technicality based judgements and give judgements that the lower courts can learn from and refer to. It’s appalling no one can predict how the Supreme Court will judge a case as their judgements are no longer based on the law but in the technicality of court rules and processes.

thebosstrevor1:


You act like it is only Facebook, Google and Microsoft that exists in the world of tech.

The subject of the matter isn't about google or microsoft, those companies are bureaucratic corporations that are profitable because of a tested business model

The subject matter is about the various startups with outrageous valuations, no business model but have thousands of employees.

1) What is the aim of having thousands of employees without a single revenue or profit. Traditionally business is built on cutting cost and making profit but the way VC run companies do their biz, it is all about hyper growth, selling to competitors and ipo. When the bubble burst, lot of people get sacked and the cycle continues.

In regards to talent, most tech companies with Vc funds attract talents with outrageous salaries and perks because of competition, when there is a downturn in economy, these people are sacked all in the name of down sizing.


2) Fyi...there are lot of small companies beating facebook and the rest large tech companies in new technology and innovations. The larger a company becomes, the less innovative the company becomes because of bureaucracy.

OpenAI has 375 employees created ChatGPT for students and professionals. Google has 100,000 employees and is still doing catching up to OpenAI

3) As at 2019, twitter had 4900 employees, after elon took over, twitter has about 2,300 employees. The employee count will continue to reduce until the company is profitable.

Elon has showed what a waste their bloated corporate architecture is. Do more, with less, that is the slogan of elon, That’s what every business should strive to do. For a long time, tech companies just throw money and people at every problem.. which is not a smart way to build. Twitter is in a better place with a tenth of the people.

Let us say your argument is correct. Google and the likes are now profitable and have become bloated. I don’t disagree with the bloated part.

You are still not getting the point that the reason why VCs exist is to provide a source of funding to tech start ups that are otherwise unable to raise funds due to their business models. Nearly every tech company starts off unprofitable and starts off with an untested business model. The WhatsApp you use everyday has never been profitable, without VCs they won’t exist up until Facebook acquired them. Amazon took over 10 years to become profitable. Even Twitter you mention only become profitable after several years. Without VCs these companies would not exist. They would have died a natural death without getting the chance to even IPO. Most tech business models take scale and network effects to generate a profit. You need to invest to generate those network effects. Your balance sheet will look negative up on till that point.

A company can only raise funds through Debt or Equity. A start up can’t take debt because debt is expensive and they have no revenue to support interest payments. However, allowing a VC take a % ownership of the company at a certain valuation in exchange for money isn’t a bad bet. You should also know the VCs take a huge risk in this model as less than 30% of VC investments lead to a profit for them.

Your point on OpenAI even supports this. They have raised billions of USD without making a profit till date. OpenAI is led by Sam Altman who was previously President of YC the worlds most well known Tech VC.

Employees are a cost center so If every company could generate USD 100 billion in revenues with only 400 employees, don’t you think they would be doing so? The reason why no one has ever done this is because you need people to make money. And that’s the conundrum every CEO has to face. You hire employees in anticipation of business growth. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean adding employees is a bad thing in of itself. Mind you each person laid off is someone who was hired at some point. The average google employee makes about $300k in salary and stocks annually. Is it morally better to hire people and pay them, then let them go when you no longer need them? Or to not hire at all and keep the extra cash in your balance sheet sitting pretty? These laid off workers have earned enough, learned enough and hopefully saved enough to be okay for the next 6 months. They will end up using those savings to start up their next idea or join other start ups and help them build the next Google.

Regards OpenAI, it is in its nascent phase. Building out and validating their technology. As they go into a commercial phase which they are already entering (partnership with Microsoft and the $49monthly fee for premium access) they will need to ramp up on their employee count to drive this.

Finally, your comment on small companies besting larger ones is a common observation. Companies tend to develop an inertia as they add head count. This doesn’t mean they can’t innovate, but bringing that innovation to market will require a lot more considerations. Google Lambda has existed before ChatGPT but they never exposed it to the world because of the potential reputational damage to Google. Chat bots built on language models have been known to have biases (misogyny, racist, etc.). A small company has no such worries. If there is a reputational damage its effects are not as widespread. So yes, this inertia or bureaucracy is a reason why small companies will be more agile. Before Facebook you had MySpace, before Apple and Google, you had Nokia, Ericsson, Sagem and the likes. This is a natural cycle with tech…it’s all in phases.

Bebigiby:
Do you know the damage Emefiele has done to CBN? No matter the political merit you think the naira shortage is achieving. CBN still remains a monetary regulator by law and not a political tool to fight corruption or insecurity. It is a shame that we have educated people in this country who support the lawlessness and impunity perpetrated by this government....

You do have a point there. As soon as Emefiele declared for president he should have resigned or been made to resign. That is a major reason why the CBN’s policies have a political connotation.

Security agencies and their operations, especially at the state level, are generally funded through cash advances and direct table payments of allowances to operatives during elections,”

Now the truth is coming out. Before it was about the poor masses. Now the CBN has extended by 10 days and it is about protecting the state governors and security agencies who don’t want to go electronic as monies otherwise untraceable will now have to pass through a auditable system. The CBN is smartly not producing enough cash in a bid to force people to go electronic and the reps know it.

Why can’t the security agencies transfer these allowances to their employees? What’s so hard in doing that? This is how we continue to maintain mediocrity because no one wants to change whatever it is they are currently doing.

thebosstrevor1:
Like literally, most of the global layoff all over the world including Nigeria have been in the tech industry, from twitter, coinbase, amazon, jumai to Quidax.

Seems like tech businesses aren't recession proof.

First and foremost the businesses in tech are over valued because of speculation and ipo purposes, they employ a lot of people and then when recession comes, they are always the first to layoff lot of workers.

Till today, i still dont understand why tech companies will have 5k to 50k workers.

Back in the days, you only need 5 to 10 employees to run a very successful tech business. And most of these businesses were profitable.

I think you mean to say generally most tech companies are over bloated, not that they can be run with only 10 employees.

There are a few reasons why companies like Google and Microsoft end up with 100k employees.

1. Keeping the lights on: A few employees can write the lines of code for the MVP product (for example, the very first version of Uber was written in a few days and used by Travis and his friends). Now as a business scales you need to add more layers to handle things that come up. Bug fixes, Infrastructure maintenance, Customer support all this can not be done by a few employees. Each of these tech companies can receive 1,000’s of support requests on a daily basis. Also, as the software or app gets used on a variety of platforms (think mobile, desktop each with different OS’s) the product needs to continuously adapt to the requirements of these platforms for optimum performance. You need specialists who understand these platforms and can bring out the best in your app on them.

2) Innovation: it’s not enough to build a product, at some point you need to think ahead otherwise your competitors will do so and best you (I.e. Apple and blackberry). Innovation falls in two brackets - ongoing product improvements based in customer feedback, product discovery and next Gen innovation where you come up with something out of the ordinary like ChatGPT. If you don’t have employees worrying new ideas, your business will die very soon.

3) Business operations: every business needs people who will run it. These aren’t engineers but think of roles like HR, Legal, Risk and Compliance and people managers who ensure you don’t run foul of ever changing regulations in countries around the world. Companies like Google and Meta keep getting fined millions of USD by the EU and other regulators around the world for one of the other. Now imagine they had no one focused on these areas. They would probably have been shut down or fined more heavily as ignorance isn’t a reason to violate a law or legal requirement.

4) Sales: this one is straight forward. You need a marketing org and sales org to get the $$$ coming in. Especially in a B2B setting.

5) Competitive edge: Companies have to keep hiring to keep the best professionals away from the competition. This is something they have to do to lock in talent. this is where you have a point as it can lead to bloated workforce, but some would argue that it is a business necessity as if you don’t have best talents working for you, you might as well not have a business.

There’s a couple more reason but I’ll stop here. I hope you get the gist.

Santa2:
I recall sometime ago(i think last year ), someone did sort of review on property developers for new build family homes properties , I think in that barratt and taylor wimpey came at the bottom in terms of quality and low price, I am trying to find out ones on the other side of the spectrum. I wonder if anyone has a general overview of developers, best ones to go for.

Persimmon, Redrow, Bellway are some of the largest developers in the UK with reasonably good quality. In terms of build quality I do think it varies on the development and sometimes on the property within the same development itself. For example, a persimmon home in Leeds may be rubbish but another in Colcester of good quality.

The key thing is to make sure you do your background work as much as possible, and once the deal is closed get a professional snagger to identify issues and get them to fix it.

New builds will typically come with a 10 year warranty with the developer directly fixing issues within the first 2 years of your moving in.

Japa isn’t a Nigerian thing alone. The Europeans flocked to the UK before brexit. The Chinese and Indians are still migrating to USA, Canada and other countries. Same with Eastern Europeans moving west ward for better opportunities. The citizens of these countries migrate for economic reasons and that is completely normal.

In Nigeria’s case you do have a mix of economic, security, and infrastructural issues to deal with which makes migration even more attractive.

OP does have a valid point around the glorification of it though. People wanting to travel just about anywhere thinking it’s better than Nigeria. The average Nigerian thinks any abroad is better which isn’t true. This leads to people migrating unprepared (either without necessary skills to survive or funding) and then you find them doing odd jobs or illegal activities.

Lastly, topic for another day but Nigerians have a tendency to demarket themselves and the country causing a viscous cycle. This means even foreigners see the country worse off than it really is.

Poor health when it’s time to answer questions.

There’s a number of ways to look at this. I think ASUU are either being short sighted or are drawn too closely towards socialist principles of a government funded university system which isn’t practical if we are all honest.

One benefit of this is that it opens up public universities to more competition. As a student, I can take the rough calculation to take a loan, attend a private university and get better quality education and also graduate faster without strikes. This could mean getting an edge in the Job Search. The public universities will have to step up their services to defend price increases as students who previously couldn’t pay out of pocket for private university or the better public schools can now do so.

Of course the challenge with this is how does a student pay back the money. Also, the macro challenges around employment opportunities being limited for the vast majority of graduates. Finally, how does the government recoup when this graduate japa’s?

A lot more information is needed to properly access this policy. But I do believe it is an initial step in the right direction. Government can’t continue to subsidize education - cause they are doing a terrible job at it. Make each university more autonomous. Allow them charge a bit higher, hire better lecturers and allow each school s’ governing council determine its salary band, build better facilities for students and lecturers, expand the no of students they can take in, etc.

The challenge with all this is it gives ASUU a whole new world of problems to deal with - loss of relevance of a central ASUU being one of them. Something vastly more complex than fighting the government by going on strike every 18 months. Change is tough.

yolkman20:
Hello ancestors,

My wife's about to finish her study so we're planning to relocate to outside of London. I was planning west midlands, anywhere commutable to Birmingham city center, but my uncle is against it because we have no one there to help with our baby, this is because we normally drop her with his wife when our shift clashes.

More so, He advised we get sponsorship first before securing a house, but we really want to leave because we're currently living in a shared apartment and our neighbor is really crazy, I had to call the police on her last week. We can't wait that long as we're still looking out and london is out of it. I believe we should be able to get care or support worker sponsorship within Birmingham or anywhere close, (if anyone can help with plugs, I'd appreciate.)

Another challenge is the house thing, most agent insist because I'm not on full employment and my self employed isn't up to a year, they won't be able to proceed with me. Please, any tricks or ideas to bypass this will be appreciated.

We wish to move in before xmass.

Looking forward to your comments.

Child care costs are ridiculous. If you have a baby, listen to your uncles advice. You can move further out of London but somewhere where he can still be of help to you guys with the baby.

Keep searching and you will find a landlord willing to rent to you with your condition. You may also need to downscale so it doesn’t appear large for your finances. Finally sponsorship opportunities are better in and around London in my view.

You can actually enter nigeria with an expired passport. According to the new policy. I can’t guarantee immigration won’t hassle you though. But I’ve heard a few people do that and sort their passport when they land. The choice is yours.

You need the NIN to renew. Also, it needs to be ready before you can do capturing at the embassy. Trying calling the guys in NY to see if they do same day NIN - I very much doubt this but worth a try. Usually your NIN needs to also be verified in Nigeria before immigration lets you proceed with the passport renewal application.

greenermodels:
All these videos been circulated online are probably government propaganda to garner public support for their badly thought out Naira redesign policy. Who in his right mind would keep rotten money in his home or in a lorry? Nigerians should wise up.

Possibly. But it’s also common for money to decay if it isn’t well kept - especially if it’s paper notes and not polymer. Here’s a link from Pablo Escobar who ran out of space he kept money in the walls of houses and they ended up decaying when found - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54280467

sgtponzihater1:


I worked for one of the top 20 universities in the world. A section of workers went on strike and were not paid for the days they were off work.

Strike is still common in advanced Countries but not the Osadeke's entitled strategy of going off work for months and demanding to be paid for the time off work

One day Nigerians will have sense and know that lecturers in advanced climes are not paid humongous wages like ASUU is making Nigerians believe.

Shame on ASUU. You delay and sabotage children's future and put parents in debt and want to be paid fully for your evil.

If you ever get paid, may the underserved wages speak against you.

PonziHater

ASUU members won’t see reason in what you’re saying. But if we called a spade a spade, a striking worker doesn’t deserve to be paid for a striking period. It speaks of unfairness in every ramification and lecturers are no different.

In fact we could also argue Students have paid for a service that isn’t rendered in a timely manner and so are due compensation from the universities. But alas no one is pushing that argument in the media.

We want to become a developed nation but don’t want to do the things that developed nations do. Paying striking workers has incentivized long strikes over the years. A strike becomes a paid vacation. Who wants to work when they can stay home for 8 months and receive accumulated salaries at the end. There is a valid reason strikes in the western world don’t last months like we’ve had with ASUU, the impact will be significant on the members on strike.

There is also a different angle to look at this from. If ASUU members are so against the present working conditions why not resign? Resigning en-mass is perhaps a stronger way to show the government there is a problem and their skills are in demand. ASUU should do their jobs or resign, rather than pretend to be freedom fighters and activists.

Doing this in the midst of political season is a smart move and commendable. No more bringing cash out from soak aways to buy votes. It will also impact kidnappers and terrorists who collect cash for ransom. Hopefully the CBN to begin to mandate banks to ask questions on suspicious deposits as well.

santos247:
Hello guys,
I just registered with Mashmallow insurance with my Nigerian Drivers license. I indicated that I have driven for 4 years and no claims before coming to the UK. Now the vehicle insurance is requesting for a "Proof of your No claims discount". How do I go about this?
Your kind advice is needed. Thanks

Did you own a car in Nigeria with genuine insurance? If yes reach out to your contact and get them to issue you a letter stating you had no claims. I did this with Marshmallow and had no issues claiming NCD. My insurance broker facilitated the letter. It’s also not true they don’t recognize proof of NCD from Nigeria.

If you can’t provide this, they will revert your insurance pricing to what it should have been without NCD which is most likely higher by some margin.

ugoonuoha:
Hi House,

For someone who's working in central London (Zone 1). What's the most cost-effective place to live currently?
I know there's a lot of options but here are some factors to consider:
- 3 days onsite / 2 days remote
- Safe family oriented area
- 2 bedroom / 2 bathroom ideally (new build preferably)
- willingness to travel approx. 1hr to work. (2hrs to/fro)

Some areas being considered;
- Reading (benefiting from new Elizabeth line)
- Maidenhead
- St Neots
- Luton
- Watford etc.

I have already done some research but looking for more "qualitative" inputs based on personal experience.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

You didn’t mention your budget. In addition to other suggestions, you might also want to consider East London and Essex towns on the C2C line. Barking, Dagenham, Rainham, Purfleet, Grays Tilbury, South Ockendon, Chafford hundred, Aveley, Basildon etc. You should get an apartment to your spec for £1.1 to £1.3 per month in some of these areas. Travel time to central London is 35 mins on this line from Grays of course excluding. time from your house to the train station.

Thamesmead, Erith, Dartford, Gravesend, Greenhithe, SevenOaks are also very good options in Kent with good transport links into central London.

Lastly, if you have kids you’ll want to also consider an area with good schools more strongly than your transit time.

Reference:


Exactly what I have been saying for years and shouting from the roof tops when we they were flying Mr. Buhari's anti corruption toga like a kite. We told them that corruption was not the problem of Nigeria but STRUCTURE, one not attuned to productivity.

Can you remember the infamous Obi's debate with Mr. Osinbajo and the tale of the rats in the shop....
I bet Mr. VP will be gobsmacked at what has befallen Nigeria after their anti-corruption crusade and the 'wealth' it has brought Nigeria....

And where will revenue come from if not productivity, the productivity primarily anchored in the roots of industrialization from which all other branches of the economy spring forth.

And where will industrialization come from, what will trigger it, yes, big budget infrastructural expenditure and here lies the twin follies of poverty that has crashed our economy today.

Our industrialization drive and infrastructural spending failed to meet our biggest wasteful expenditure, we did not invest in petroleum refining insisting on railways instead and after borrowing heavily for that, we gave everything over to the chinese to build robbing us of the industrial trigger required to build a productive economy.

This is where intelligent, visionary leadership is critical. Leaders who know INDEED how to create wealth, how to build economies from scratch, how to wean this country from consumerism, rent-seeking and round tripping....

100% agree. One aspect of our problem stems from a lack of identity. Are we a socialist economy or a capitalist one? On one hand we seem to want to run things from a socialist perspective, for example, keeping refineries that haven’t generated income in decades, or operating our health and education system strictly on Government funding, petrol subsidies and the likes. Challenge is we don’t have revenues to support these things at a decent level and it further discourages productivity as you’ve rightly said.

Also, the citizens themselves seem to want intellectual leaders but we don’t end up voting for any. Without becoming political, we’ve never had a truly intellectual President in my opinion. This is a problem as politicians will only make decisions that serve their interests even if it is against the greater good. Putting in a productivity based structure means vested interests can no longer induce votes with money, garri and rice. It makes power/elective positions less attractive to individuals who want to enjoy the largesse of power, rather than work for the good of the nation.

We need to wake up as a people and begin to make the tough decisions needed to move forward.

NOwazobia:
Then first eradicate corruption before talking of taxes.

Well yes. The lower corruption there is the more confidence citizens have towards taxes. However, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg as eradicating corruption will always be an ongoing activity.

The government needs to be very very intentional around both and do them simultaneously.

mrvitalis:
Nigeria makes less than 25 billion dollars a year from oil .......for a country of 150 million that's nothing ...that should be Lagos revenue

Until every Nigerian pay average of 150,000 naira in tax its impossible to develop this country

You’ve hit the nail in the head. We are too many for the revenue being generated by the government. I do think the fallacy of oil money means the average Nigerian think we are rich.

Even if we eradicate corruption 100%, Nigeria will not turn to Dubai until the government increases revenues significantly.

Zonefree:
The complete table shows 9ja no try at all. A country of over 200 million people struggling with just 35 medals. Scotland with just 5 million people got 49 medals.

What of India with over 1 billion people?

Good suggestions all round. Sadly we have a dead FG led by a disinterested president. These Governors must have gotten a consultant to come up with these ideas. No way those men thought of all these ideas on their own.