₦airaland Forum

Redman44: How many British-born Nigerians are actually moving back to Nigeria? We need facts and hard figures on this forum. The post only talked about 4 people who decided to go and try their luck in Nigeria. And from what I grasped from the stroy, the four of them still want to come and spend their summers in the UK . I know 2 brothers who were born in the UK and attended the same Secondary school in Nigeria with me. They moved to the UK in the late 90's while I moved to Britain in 2007. One of them is back in Nigeria and has been staying there for close to 2 years now. What I am trying to say is British-born Nigerians know they have the freedom of movement due to their British Passports. A good number of them also hold Nigerian Passports, which they use to travel back to Nigeria without the need to apply for visas. We can't compare them to Nigerians in the UK who are Students, Work Permit holders, overstayers or downright illegal immigrants. These are the set of Nigerians who remain in Britain because they want to achieve something before returning home.

And what is there to really return to in Nigeria? How many people in Nigeria can look at you and give you common 5,000 Naira without getting something back from you? Some people talk about Nigeria as if it has the same economy like Germany or Canada. Nigeria cannot even compare with the UK even in its worst state. Many so called big guys in Nigeria are pretenders. People will do anything to look 'successful' in Nigeria. In the UK, no one really cares what you are putting on because anyone can get good clothing if they can get a job that guarantees them at least £200 a week. The UK is not a perfect place but if you're ready to work, you will get a job even if it is not the kind of job you want. I was surprised to discover that some councils in the UK e.g London Borough of Newham, provides free meals in schools for pupils and students who come from disadvantaged homes. How many Local or State Governments in Nigeria do this? Those that returned to Nigeria and got good jobs are in the minority. Our competitive nature as Nigerians is destroying our moral compass and is putting undue pressure on youths to do the wrong things in order to become wealthy. All of the 4 returnees in the story have UK Passports. What does that tell us ? This means they can easily return to the UK if things do not work out for them in Nigeria. If they really want to maintain their stand that they love Nigeria, they should renounce their British Citizenship. Anyone can succeed in Britain. It is just a matter of patience and time. Cheers.

Yes, hard number not anecdotes.

How many are going back? ten thousand every year? One irrefutable fact: For every one returning, lots more are applying everyday for U.K.visas.

This article will only generates the usual Naija vs. abroad yabbis; nothing more. By tomorrow everyone retreats to their bunkers and keep hustling for dollars, pounds, francs or Naira

So many funny comments to read. Do Gambians, Ghanaians,or Egyptian have this kind of arguments? or is this a uniquely Naija thing

Princek12: I was thinking the same thing. It is due to incompetence.

and use of tokunbo machine. also they still mix tar with shovel

Billyonaire: This is another excuse to ban importation of cloths from China. E no go work. Fix Electricity so we can manufacture our cloths before banning importations.

The classic excuse. You can't sell stuff, blame the Chinese

so it's this ancient caterpillar they are using to build road? will the road be good? I tire o.

Naija and trickery sha. See this girl open thread to bring traffic to her yeye blog or site. don't know what to call it self. Nonesense!

all her rant is to bring folks in here so they can click on the link.

[quote author=A-40]Hehehe the ESPN wankfest on Lebron is starting to become unbearable! justified but unbearable

The biggest thing about Lebron for me is how multi-dimensional he is becoming! He's become a better shooter! His jump mechanics which used to be an achilles heel is now a strength! He's posting up and capitalizing on his size advantage and his basketball IQ seems to have gone up 20 ticks. Let's see if he can sustain it[/quote]more like Suffocating. but the dude is putting up insane numbers. He's making the game much easier for his team mates. This means they'll win it all,AGAIN in June. Can any team stand up to this Heat? I don't care anybody

[quote author=Mynd_44]The Spurs rule!!!!!


Lakers drool[/quote]In regular season only. we'll see if they can handle OKC this year

ngozievergreen: Its not true ,occam's razor is a medical terminology. U wan job me

It's a scientific principle and approach to problem solving.

Occam's razor "When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better".
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html

I believe a lot in this principle. I'm glad you like it too

Pathetic & cruel

I detect a slight Naija accent from the beater. Maybe some guy that's lived too long in the ghetto

Sincere 9gerian: A Nigerian is anyone, male or female, who has his or her origin in Nigeria. Are you a Nigerian? I am a Nigerian by birth. I expect that over 90% of persons who open this thread are Nigerians, mostly by birth.

Being a Nigerian means we have a responsibility towards Nigeria. If we want Nigeria to be great, and I expect every Nigerian to so want, then the responsibility is on you and I to do things that will make Nigeria great.

The so called advanced countries are where they are today due to the COLLECTIVE effort of their citizens, both leaders and followers. Majority of the citizens of those countries take RESPONSIBILITY for making their country great. It was the Ex-president of America, John F. Kennedy, who made the famous statement- "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country".

Yes, Nigeria may not have done much for most of us. Yes, our leaders, past and present, may have performed below expectation and in some cases woefully. I for instance hold the opinion that most of our founding fathers- including Awo, Zik and Ahmadu Bello- created the dis-unity and ethnoreliguous sentiments we see today. Yes, Nigeria in the past may have hurt many of us. For instance, I feel terribly hurt by the fact that Nigeria, between 1966 and 1970, supervised the massacre of over 50,000 easterners in a pogrom and another 2million in an avoidable civil war.

But not withstanding these mis-givings, Nigeria is our one and only country, and whatever we make of it affects you and I directly or indirectly.

Critical self introspection by every Nigerian, home and abroad, will reveal the connection between our individual BAD BEHAVIOUR and most of the problems plagueing our country. The BAD BEHAVIOUR of you and I will add up to destroy the country while good behaviour by the majority will add up to build the country. For instance, school teachers who encourage examination mal-practices should see the connection between their BAD BEHAVIOUR and multitude of un-employable graduates, high unemployment rate, morally bankrupt/incompetent leaders,etc. The medical practitioners should see the connection between their actions/inactions and low life expectancy in Nigeria (estimated to be 47yrs), high infant and maternal mortality rates,etc. The legal practitioners who unduly prolong court cases should see the connection between their antics and monumental corruption in the country. The parents who fail in giving their children proper upbringing are simply churning out more potential criminals and looters. The moderators on NL who speedily push negative news in Nigeria to the front page should see the damage they'r doing to the IMAGE of this country. And so on and so forth.

Consequently, every Nigerian should take RESPONSIBILITY for creating the great Nigeria we desire. As individuals, teachers, lecturers, legal practitioners, medical practitioners, parents, sports men/women, politicians, students, etc we should DO THE RIGHT THING. The professionals should give 100% at work place and the COMMON GOOD should be top priority. By so doing, you and I will be building the great Nigeria of our dreams

Free Nigerians from the yoke of oppression. Far too many people have internalized mediocrity and accepted the status quo. And when educated people continue to tell us that the ineptitude of the corrupt politicians is acceptable, we'll remain in same spot while other nations advance.

Poverty has destroyed the psyche and aspirations of too many. People no longer aspire to greatness but are contented to eek out a living in a rich and resourceful country. What an irony.

Senate president earns millions of dollars every year, yet the average 25 yr old has never earned a dime in his life.

This your preaching must start with the corrupt and nefarious gang in Abuja and other state capitals. Nuff said!

Maxymilliano: Bros, what killed the sector is liberalization, and Nigeria joining the World Trade Organization, that's why there's influx of foreign product into markets of member countries, especially from Asia and which render local industries less productive and competitive...

Now you come full circle to my point. Lack of power meant they were producing at higher cost vs the Asians and were unable to compete. Liberalization is not a bad thing, but if you have supply bottlenecks in the economy (such as no power) your ability to compete will be severely constrained. All sectors of the economy was impacted by lack of power

Before spending money on revamping, they should do a deeper analysis on why the sector collapsed, what has changed since that time and what are the current/future opportunities.

We know the power situation has not improved significantly since 7 - 8 yrs ago. Let's stop doing things the wrong way. I also want the sector to be revamped but let's get it right.

eGuerrilla: Off the top of my head, the main concerns are...

Vendor lock in - think about not being able to migrate your data when a cloud vendor fails to deliver on contractual obligations

Data Security - the Sony security breach which affected playstation users around the world springs to mind here

Performance (scalability) - thousands of Netflix users were left without a service during the recent festive period simply because the infrastructure could not scale, as a result of extra demand.

Proprietary APIs - a major disincentive

hmmmm so implication: don't use small players cos if they collapse your business grinds to a halt. And the bigger players charge too much

Proprietary APIs - a major disincentive not sure what you mean here. more info pls

orgasticdance: I worked briefly with a local angel investment group and one thing that struck me during my brief spell with the company was the limited scope for ecommerce growth in Nigeria.
Nairaland is arguably Nigeria's top social networking website yet it took the site more than 7 years to get to one million "registered" members ( a good fraction come from the diaspora by the way); for a country that has a population of 160 million, that is hugely disappointing when compared to social and gaming websites in china such as renren and qzone that have well over 100 million active members.

Relatively speaking, no internet company in Nigeria is going to crack a billion dollar valuation any time soon for the following reasons:

1. Uncle Sam is eating our lunch, take a look at the top rated websites in every country in the world, they are all american ( Facebook, Youtube, Google) except in china.
2. Most Nigerians do not care about the net: I can't begin to tell you the number of reasonably smart Nigerians who do not know or care about nairaland, dealdey, jobberman, and Iroko Tv, lindaikeji etc These websites to my mind enjoy a huge chunk of their patronage from Nigerians abroad ( I may be wrong)
3. Education standards are falling in Nigeria. You need a web savvy critical mass to market too, we don't have that yet ( Over half of China's 1 billion population use the internet in some way) You'll be hard pressed to get 10% within Nigeria. And there's also no innovation coming thru. All we do is consume. Do Nigerians have the wherewithal to build the next skype, or ebay to serve a world market?
4. Lack of patient capital. Nigerian net entrepreneurs need more patient capital, not just shrewd VC investors, but angel investors who can invest quality funding in the range of 100 to 500 million and give you free rein to run your company. We don't have those yet.
5 Then of course, the usual suspects: phcn, corruption, lack of broadband etc

I can attest to that. I was very surprised at the lack of awareness and knowledge about the web. Even some people working in the banks or service sector, do not get the business potential.

Though Nigeria has 44 million web users, my guess is majority spend less than an hour each day surfing. Bandwidth and connectivity issues still remain

eGuerrilla: @.NET,

If you consider ROI 'a hole', then I suggest you invest more time researching current trends in this area.

I can state, without fear of contradiction, that most vendors aren't making any profit from their cloud offerings right now.


Source

The truth is, cloud technologies continue to pose a challenge for even the most established players in industry.
And as things stand, while some appear to be growing revenue by the week (I won't mention names), only a select few are actually making a profit.

Is data security the main issue here? why are more companies not using the service?

Maxymilliano: Bros we are talking of a 'going concern' entity here, waiting for the government to fully fix the power sector before doing business is plain unseriousness on the path of the investor.

Despite the current harsh business climate, companies are still doing business in Nigeria, the government is working assiduously to ensure that power (gas inclusive) is fully restored.

Thanks

So what killed this sector and resulted in loss of nearly 800,000 jobs?

hoodboi: This is probably the best post I have ever seen on nairaland. I will be brief with my comments.

The problem most developers have in this country is that they are too profit driven, hardly would you see an programmer or web developer create something because they want to invent or create, they do it for profit. I totally agree with what someone said earlier abt going freemium before premium. We also have to learn that there is more to business than just creating a website, putting it online and hoping it would blow up. A website in the current world is thesame as any offline business, it takes planning, time, patience and the right mindset.

Jobberman is a total disappointment if you ask me. There is nothing special or different bout the site, they don't offer any feature that I can't get anywhere else. The only thing that keeps them afloat or distinct is the name. If I were to own jobberman or be given the opportunity at management, I would have copied the ebay model. I would not charge job seekers right off from the start, their charge would be left till when they either get the job or have been contacted by a company. I would also charge the company for posting the job and an extra charge once a candidate has been found and the job given to him. I would also provide a premium service to send the profile or cv of a job seeker directly to an employer which will be paid for by job seekers. Before all these charges are implemented, you need to know how much you wish to make on each deal / transaction that goes through your site, then split this into little affordable bits.

What really makes the difference btw successful .com companies and the not so succesful ones is the business model behind it. Ebay was not the first auction site but the business model behind it is a killer. The fees they also charge are so moderate that you wouldn't feel the pinch in ur pocket. We need to study the successful ones first and take after them. I see a lot of potential in companies like vconnect in the nearest future. The have a wonderful brand. And hopefully I see a lot of potential in my own think-house concepts. You guys should start hearing the name by the end of this year.

.. I believe I have said enough. I am not a professional consultant by the way but I do it freelance for several companies on IT matters. God bless us all and lead us aright.

Words of wisdom. The web is a channel to get customers to buy your stuff or use your service. No demand for the product, no business.

ngozievergreen: leave dese ppl. Tell me d principle of d occam's razor.

Its about demand and supply. Do we have an export market for adire or ankara?

The Asians have made significant stride and cornered the juicy markets - North America & Europe

Maxymilliano: There is already a bail out plan for the textile industry by the government, after a recent interactive sessions with stake holders, it was discovered that the initial N180 billion bail out fund from the present government won't be adequate considering the long years of neglect in the sector.

It is good to know that somebody is making serious efforts rather than the usual rhetoric to revamping the textile industries.

Without power this revamping will just be money down the drain. Lack of power and over dependence on generator drove cost up significantly, so the sector became noncompetitive.

Fix the power sector first. period

PapaBrowne: Are you guys serious? After reading the posts on this thread, I heard to be sure that the article wasn't from 2010-2011.

Haba, there are many Nigerian online businesses doing good.

Wakanow has turnover running into billions of Naira yearly and sorry, they are a web based.

Travelstart is another travel web business and they are doing good too although they came from SA.

Dealdey is doing pretty ok.

IrokoTV is big time and they are rumoured to be worth over 30 million dollars. Plus they received funding to the tune of 8 million dollars.

Nairaland sef dey try, even though I think he is making much less now than previously.

But how can you guys forget two big game changers that arrived in 2012- KONGA and JUMIA(Kasuwa).
I have no idea how much they do in sales, but its obvious with the amount they spend on advertising, they intend to do sales running into billions yearly.

There are a host of others making money. But the draw bag usually is that people have become accustomed to the free web. Almost everything is free online(Facebook, Google search, Email and a host of other services). To get people to pay for the services you are offering, you have to provide a compelling solution to an existing need such that it beats flat out the solution provided by offline businesses.

At least you claim it's a rumour because I don't know what criteria was used in valuation. Anybody can claim anything until potential investors or share holders ask them to open the books.

How many people come to the site? How many of those are buying stuff or using the service? How much ad revenue is the site generating? What is potential future revenue stream? what assets do they have etc. You need this type of info before calculating valuation.

Olodostein: Of course, this shouldn't come as a surprise; where every Aki and Pawpaw is an importer of low standard clothes,etc.

We need to embrace our culture and clothing more. We also need creative fashion designers to set the trend for new designs.

Good sentiment but the business world is cold. Can we compete with the Asians in the world market? If we manufacture for Nigerian market, we should be looking at exporting too.

Years of bad decision in our manufacturing can't be undone so quickly. Can we get back even half of the jobs lost in 5 yrs? No

Fhemmmy: And those are some of the experience that someone that has gone to the Polytechnic to study Office Admin might need. . . . I think you have seen too much of Nigerian students being maltreated that made you to not blv anymore in gaining experience by volunteering.
Chairman, there are some real volunteering, for example imagine an architect that just finish school and have no portfolio at all, and decided to go and volunteer to work with one of Nigeria's biggest architectural company (Dont know one), gain experience, and now on his CV he has such experience on it for a year, that will make companies' looking for experienced architect to give such a person a chance.
Not all volunteers do Suya errands . . . .

Why not put together your portfolio and approach the company that this is what you can do to help reduce costs, increase revenue or bring in customers. If they believe you can help make profit, they'll offer you an incentive. "Show me what you can do for me" is the mind set of most businesses.

Too many people approach this companies thinking they're are good Samaritans. Remember they have to set up an office space for you. Why? just so you can gain experience.

Fhemmmy: We are not talking what the employer is gaining, for an unemployed person, there are few things that could have made the person not marketable, such as:
1. Lack of experience
2. Lack of knowledge of opened position
3. Not well networked
4. So much more.
By volunteering, you will be able to gain experience, yes, you are not getting paid, but experience will work for you later, you will be networked cos you are not staying at home doing nothing and your brain is doing nothing, but being busy while you work, though no pay, and you are networking while out of the house compared to when you home watching movies.
In all areas, nothing wrong in volunteering, even at the office, some people do it to get experience in other areas and be more marketable.
Never see it as slavery . . .

I'll talk about lack of experience:

Volunteering in an office by doing filing, paper work, researching online, creating documents with MS Word etc is not experience. As a volunteer this is the kind of task you're assigned to do. You end up everyday asking "Is there any job I can do?"

Real experience comes from working on a project, identifying problems, finding solutions, meeting with various stakeholders and ensuring the results are delivered. Most volunteering jobs may not expose you to this kind of experience

Fhemmmy: What do you think Industrial Training was supposed to achieve?

Industrial training is different since employers may have the need for that person. Also, there are tax advantages depending on the state/province

Fhemmmy: That is so not true, there is something called gaining experience and instead of staying home with nothing added to your Resume/CV, you could volunteer somewhere to gain some experience/exposures and by so doing some networking as well.

I'm not saying stay at home but if the vacancy exits why can't an employer pay you to do the job? For charity organisation its ok but not for a business.

If an employer believes you can provide REAL value, they will take that risk and invest in you. As a volunteer, most times the job you do is not very rewarding. Regardless of what you put on your resume, employers recruit based on your past result, hence SARs question (Situation, Action, Result)are very common at interviews. As a volunteer you may not have results to show from past jobs.

serenegroup: i disagree my brother. volunteering is one of the ways experience is gained and also an avenue for being choosen for a job when ever there is an opening any where. when u volunteer u are also training urself for a better opportunity in the future

For non-profit or charitable organisation, yes. If it's a business, NO. Situation may be different in other countries but in U.S.A/Canada, it's no longer an attractive option. So many reasons why it's not a wise option, but I'll cite one.

In summer time, organisation recruit summer students (and usually top students) with a view to developing/mentoring them for future employment. And these are paid jobs. As a volunteer you will be doing similar jobs to these students, so organisations do not see any advantage with bringing in somebody they don't need.

Most volunteer work, generally involve less challenging tasks. Experience is only gained when you're exposed to real challenges and risks.

zangiff: you can also try blogging but its a way of investing ur time

Blogging is very hard work bro and not rewarding

Don't get seduced by all these bloggers claiming success. How many have been blogging for over yrs and making enough money?

Volunteering is just the same as slavery. Don't waste your time working for free. Any company that values your contribution to their bottom line should pay for your effort.

Employers are only after results and profit, not to help pad your resume with "make up" work

ballabriggs: All what he listed above was what lead to the death of the trains and it is the same thing experienced by that brother on his train ride, nothing has changed. How do you spend so much money and what you get is a crap service that will ultimately lead to the death of the trains?

We talk of continuous improvement. If service today is similar to what obtained before the death of the trains in the late 1990s, then I'm afraid, that which killed it in the late 1990s will ultimately kill it today. I expect reasonable people to see his story as a first step in problem-solving as he has identified a problem and then work towards finding solutions and improving quality of service. However, what we have are people looking for who wants "to bring them down", pathetic!

[b]And that is why I say privatize the trains [/b]and let the NRC focus on maintaining and building the rail tracks. Take the NRC away from the Ministry of Transport, let it run independently of that 'Alhaji Minister'. Let it run like a business, driving quality and continuous improvement of service. Quality should be at the center of everything within the NRC. It should be a language and there should be a 'taken-for-grantedness'.

Who will invest their money in this? Credit is very tight world wide and there are more profitable ventures than a derelict rail system in a very corrupt country

This should be a top priority by Nigerian govt. They know this, but corruption and greed continues to blind their vision.

What has changed? With the old trains Minna to Lagos was almost a day's journey. Carriages were overloaded with people standing, and train moved at camel speed.

I took that journey once and will never repeat that mistake.

Nigeria! what a country.

Even when the news is good, we still find a way to make it bad news. One day of pure ecstasy and pride and just like that we're back to same ol, same ol

Keshi, the first indigenous coach to win a cup for SE.

sleekch1c: Some of the responses on this thread shows the average Nigerian IQ.....even jobless, anti-social and very depressed individuals are telling a female comedian who is doing well for herself that she is fat. Are you ppl dat daft and bereft of ideas? What is your business in how the lady looks like? She is making her money and all u sad and pathetic individuals are here typing crap with ur cheap phones and antique laptop computers. Pity!

But who is Helen Na? yes I'm jobless today and have time. And she's on front page

Since you know her who is she? Is she wife material?

[quote author=A-40]I don't know if Dwight didn't do his research on just how ornery Kobe could get! Kobe also plays with injuries so people tend to listen when he talks. On this issue he does have a point especially as Dwight has still not committed himself to the Lakers going forward so he has not endeared himself to the members of the team who probably see the possibility of him leaving in the off season anyway! However I do sympathize with Dwight in the sense that his shoulders are the most important part of his game. They do the most work and receive the most punishment from the opposition! Its easy to tell people to suck it up but not everyone has the same pain threshold

Lakers vs Celtics tonight[/quote]Oh yes, the big one. The most exciting match up in basketball or even in all sports. Maybe Barcelona vs Real Madrid is more intriguing

Anyway, I say Celtics win because:
- KG is playing championship ball and nobody to challenge him with Howard & Gasol out. Dropped 27 on Raptors last night
- The Celtics back court of Lee & Bradley have steeped up with Rondo out. They've hardly missed Rondo

Ok need to get my court-side seat asap. In front of my TV of course
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