In a facebook post, Chinmark an investment company in Nigeria pacifies their investors. They wroe:

Thank you for being here with us, for staying stronger and believing in us.
These early months of 2022 has been very challenging for our organization, against this background, our company doubled down on its efforts to grow sustainable value for our customers, our employees and you, in the other sectors that we currently serve (Hospitality, Transport, Food and Logistics), and hence, most of our financial performance indicators improved.

From the proceeds of our business (Hospitality, Transportation, Food and Logistics) despite our operational bank accounts being frozen by Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) on December 21, 2021 till date, we resumed payment to our partners on March 16, 2022; so far, out of 4966 partners, we have been able to pay 500 partners following an arithmetic order from our backlogs.

In a bid to show transparency in our dealings as always, full names of paid partners ought to have been published today but several calls/messages/emails from our distinguished partners have further restricted us from doing this.

Let me reassure you that your money is safe with us and we remain committed to repaying all partners soonest, update on partnership repayment will be provided always and your Managers will call to follow up; untill then, I would humbly request you to kindly bear with us.

With our operating performance growing strong, we will be providing timely updates in all areas as it affects your pending partnerships with us and other sectors that we have business presence in. We look forward to fully resolving this matter against the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), and we are determined to learn all that we can from this incident to be smarter, stronger and better as a company.

We might not be able to fully purge ourselves soonest from the negative effects that this crisis caused our businesses in the other sectors and our customers mindset, your loyalty is reflected in our Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures the likelihood of customers recommending Chinmark Group (Transportation, Food Services, Logistics Services & Hospitality) to others; this score has significantly and steadily improved over the years and we humbly ask that you keep patronizing our businesses to enable us pass through this phase successfully.

In a world that looks increasingly fragile and challenged to deal with existential threats to our health, environmental, social and economic future, we at Chinmark Group will keep living up to our purpose for 2022 and beyond; Chinmark Group solidity and value creation power remains strong and keeps growing.

For all the inconveniences and frustrations that the delay in the repayment of this capital has caused you, we are very sorry and we apologize for all. We understand that people’s dreams and a lot of plans has been on hold by this delay, please accept our sincere apology.

We have received lots of petitions from Government agencies by aggrieved partners, we truly understand how you feel; we humbly ask that you remain calm and exercise more patience while we sort out these repayments and pass through this crisis as these petitions are affecting timely execution of our business operations – which we depend on to make repayments.

On behalf of our leadership team and all Chinmark Group employees, we thank you for your trust and ongoing support. Thank you for trusting the Chinmark Brand. We do not take it for granted, and once again, we reassure you that your funds are safe.
All our branches are fully open to serve you.

At TStv headquarters in Idu, Abuja, we consume 45,000 litres of diesel every month. The Idu facility seats on 1.6 hectares of land. We have over 200 ACs to power, we have transmission equipment, our 150- Channel Network Operations Center, TSTV studios, our Satellite teleport, our Tier III data center facility and many infrastructure all in Idu HQ that must never go off for one second. When we complement with AEDC, we consume between 36,000 and 38,000 litres. There are several months we have relied on generators to run our 24 hour operations. In most part of 2021, we spent between 12m and 14m monthly on diesel. Last december 2021, it rose to 14.8m. AEDC takes on the average 3m to 4m monthly. So in a month, we incur between 15m to 17m on power. This is outside generator servicing.

As a company, it was never convenient spending 17m monthly on power in abuja HQ of TSTV alone. From our finance records, TSTV bought 769,300 litres of diesel Jan 2021 to Dec 2021 for TSTV headquarters and its affiliate offices. From Jan 2021 to Dec 2021, TSTV spent 232m (Two Hundred and thirty two Million Naira) on diesel purchase alone. That includes all the other offices of TSTV. The unfortunate thing is that the actual need of TSTV monthly is 68,000 litres and this covers other offices of TStv and our affiliated businesses across Nigeria. TStv HQ, Idu alone runs 24 hours on generators since July 2021. TSTV HQ, Idu consumes 45,000 litres monthly and that is no joke.

In January 2022, the 17m monthly rose to 24m monthly. I cried. This March 2022, I am so pained that diesel for TSTV headquarters operation alone has climbed to 36m for the same 45,000 litres we buy at 14m in October 2021.

Yesterday, I received a request for the usual 68,000 litres of diesel for TSTV HQ and other offices of affiliated companies and guess what the cost will be, 54,400,000 naira for March 2022 alone. Imagine 54.4m Naira for the month of March alone. 54.4m is 23% of our total spending on diesel in 2021. How can 20.4m Naira monthly that we spent in most of last year for diesel climb to 54.4m monthly. If this issue is not resolved by Government, it means TSTV should be prepared to look for 489m Naira (Four hundred and eighty nine million naira) to power its generators for the next 9 months.

I am seriously pained. TSTV will sure continue to serve Nigerians with uninterrupted pay TV service but this is coming with extreme pain and discomfort. I am pained and I know a lot of SMEs are going through this crisis too.

The Government should save Nigerian businesses.

Bright Echefu
MD/CEO, TSTV Africa pay TV

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Lagos Business School of Pan-Atlantic University are considering forging a partnership that will result in developing customised capacity building interventions and overhauling of existing training courses offered by the LBS to address critical areas of needs of the Commission’s human capital development.

The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, emphasized the imperative of such collaboration during a visit of an LBS delegation led by the School’s Director, Executive Education, Victor Banji, to the Commission’s Head Office in Abuja recently.

The EVC spoke through NCC’s Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder Management, Adeleke Adewolu, who received the LBS delegation (alongside other senior management staff of the Commission) on behalf of the EVC.

Addressing the visiting team, Adewolu said NCC constantly engages in staff training as part its strategy to build managerial and technical skills required to manage the ever-dynamic telecoms regulatory environment in Nigeria.

Adewolu said while LBS, has been a training partner of NCC over the years and currently provides some classes of capacity building to staff of the Commission, it has become necessary to expand the training scope by ensuring that other customized programmes that target specific needs of Commission’s human capital are designed by the School in collaboration with NCC team to meet strategic objectives and enhance the relationship of the two organisations.

Among the areas of interest to the Commission are courses on performance appraisal management, policy formulation and execution, risk management, technical report writing, telecoms-related training, tariff and competition management, as well as basic training on policy formulation and implementation, social media training, audio-visual editing, among others.

“I thank the LBS for its collaboration with NCC over the years in the area of human capital development. However, we expect that LBS will work with NCC to see how we can collectively overhaul the existing courses and bring new course to NCC’s attention which we would, in turn, subject to our training need analysis (TNA). This may result in a review of ur existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) towards making our relationship much stronger and more mutually beneficial,” Adewolu said.

The Executive Commissioner also explained that though NCC is a regulatory agency, it has seen the need for indigenous digital skills development in Nigeria, and that explained the creation creation of the Digital Bridge Institute (DBI), by the Commission to meet the human capital needs of the burgeoning telecom, and broadly, the ICT sector.

According to Adewolu, other areas of focus in meeting educational needs of the sector, include indigenous digital skills development, sponsoring of hackathon, provision of research grants to the academia, endowment of professorial chairs in universities, and the acceleration of digital infrastructure deployment across the country to boost digital literacy and skills for Nigeria’s socio-economic development.

Speaking earlier on the purpose of the visit to the Commission, Banji of LBS, said the business school wishes to serve as a strategic capacity development partner to NCC for its teaming staff; revisit LBS’s existing MoU for necessary enhancements; as well as offer corporate governance, board leadership and management development programmes to enhance corporate effectiveness.

Banji also commended the NCC for its role in ensuring effective digital transformation in Nigeria. “As the Commission responsible for creating an enabling environment for telecom operators and allied stakeholders in the industry, as well as ensuring the provision of qualitative and efficient telecommunications services throughout the country, NCC has earned a reputation as a foremost Telecom regulatory agency in Africa,” Banji said.

In addition, the LBS Executive stated that while his organisation will continue to play a prominent and leading role in building leaders with integrity for Nigeria, Africa, and the world, it also believes that with effective directors and leaders in the public sector organisation such as the NCC, Nigeria will be managed more efficiently for greater value and sustainable growth.

“Our conviction at LBS is that telecommunications penetration is one of the critical developments required to transform poverty into prosperity. Our thesis is simple: the access to and use of mobile telephony contributes to the health of the population and efficiency of the economy. It is equally a lever for poverty reduction as contained in Goal One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Banji declared to emphasize the centrality of telecoms as an enabler of development.

I hear CNN and CNBC financially uneducated journalists parroting the need to delist Chinese and Russian companies from the American stock exchange, in addition to the sanctions already placed on these countries. This is despite the fact that those companies a deep into the credit systems of America and they are interfaced with big American banks that are not essentially owned by Americans but by global shareholders. These parroting journalists forgot that economies are built on faith, especially that of America that depends largely on M2 and is debt prone. By doing what they are advocating, they are alerting everybody that it is time to look elsewhere and to divest from America and other western economies since they are now weaponizing global instruments of business that they brought for every country’s use; they are chasing the world away from the west.

America is unconsciously shutting herself out of global relevance with the uncautionable acts of sanctions and the pulling out of her businesses from other countries. Mind you, there are millions of companies from China, India and other countries waiting for American businesses to leave so that they can take over and there are alternative products to replace them. Importantly, this is an opportunity for indigenous Russian companies to spring up and for Russia to strengthen her self sufficiency program; thereby making it a resilient economy. These American businesses are the ones that will lose money and market share.

Again, these reckless sanctions are going to drive monies away from Western economies over time. Most business men from middle East, Asia and Africa will stop banking their money in the western world because of this reckless behavior. With what happened to the owner of Chelsea football club they now understand that the west can steal your wealth from you without blinking. Yes I mean steal!

It is important to make it known that the entire western world is not up to 1 billion human beings. This is a world of almost 8 billion people. As most of these other countries are getting increasingly appalled by the western HYPOCRISY they will begin to avoid western systems and market, including SWIFT and other related instruments. That share number distancing itself from the west will cause a decline and the emergence of other powers.

America seem now to be driven by ego and envy against China and Russia. They are becoming too hysterical about these nations and are always looking for ways to harm them or to bring them down. And spiritually such a thing makes a nation lose favour before God. Pride goes before fall.

The devastating one that is coming is that many countries will start bypassing the dollar in business engagements and will start dedollarization policies to avoid the nonsensical behavior being witnessed. And to make matters worst, dollar is a fiat currency that is not backed by gold, at best it is a worthless paper built by faith of the global world. But since it has been weaponized against those that placed their faith in it, it has lost its glory and will no longer be trusted. Most countries will move their foreign reserves from Dollar and other countries will create currencies of reserve that will be backed by gold. Already Saudi Arabia is bypassing the dollar in their business deal with China. Russia is doing with China. Iran is doing the same. Pakistan is doing the same with Russia and many more are going to happen.

Already UAE invited Putin to Dubai. Saudi Arabia Prince is refusing to pick Joe Biden’s call. China Unionpay has replaced America’s Mastercard. Russia has switched from SWIFT to China’s CIPS. Russia created her own system called SPFS. India has negotiated new oil deal with Russia that will bypass dollar. Qatar has just had a long term deal with Russia. Brazil has refused to sanction Russia and is going on to have deals with Russia. Pakistan has a new deal with Russia and they will be bypassing dollar. Pakistan is buying 2 million metric tons of wheat from Russia and oil gas. China has new oil deal with Russia worth over 120 billion dollars by they are bypassing dollar. This is in addition to earlier 400 billion dollars worth of deal that bypassed dollar. India Russia are creating Rupee-Ruble for trade. Belarus left dollar systems. Turkey says it will continue to do business with Russia despite being member of European Union. Hungary is NATO and EU member but are going on with a deal with Russia. Maxico right at the backyard of America is proceeding with business with Russia. America is begging Venezuela and Iran (both allies of Russia) that they sanctioned for years and sought to destroy their countries. What do you think is happening?

Britain and France should get ready to leave Africa, they have been enriching their countries by stealing Africa’s resources. Especially, France has been forcefully OCCUPYING African economies and has killed over 20 African leaders through coups and through their forced Pact For The Continuation Of Colonization. With this they make over 200 billion dollars annually from Africans. Yet they are destabilizing the continent by sponsoring wars and insurgency. Today ISIS, Boko Haram and many others sponsored by the west is ravaging Africa and young generation of Africans now know this.

There is going to be realignment and many countries are going to demand equal standards. Even for the UKRAINIANS there will be equal ground. New security architecture will emerge and the demand for security gurantees will be the irreducible minimum.

Joe Biden and Nancy Policy’s children business interest in Ukraine led America into this matter. Selensky is their puppet and he overstepped the bounds by killing over twenty thousand people in Eastern Ukraine, refusing to implement MINKS AGREEMENT and neutrality. He landed his country in war. All his emotional blackmail to draw the world into the war is to stop Putin from exposing the dirty things they were doing in Ukraine, money laundering, the biological weapons development and the gold racket. Logic is necessary and not emotions.

Even the American people will suffer severely the backlash of all these sanctions. Already prices of goods are going off the roof in Europe and America, inflation is still raising and with huge American debt induced by greedy North Atlantic Financial order recklessness could lead to another great depression.

I bet you that it is the beginning of global realignment, the rest of the world will use this opportunity to yank themselves off western apron. Common sense is required.

Imo Jonathan

One of the amusing retortions I have received since I expressed readiness to set off from Okpoko is, “why Okpoko?”. There seems to be some sense of self-centred prioritisation from a few who believe there are more pressing issues than heading to Okpoko on a rescue mission. When you probe further to situate their dissent in context, what you get is that innocent desire in all of us to always “begin charity from home”. This may not be totally bad, especially when we all agree where home is or should be.

For me, it is One Anambra, one People, one Agenda.

If this be the case, it then follows that the often taken for granted but real assumption that “every system is only as strong as its weakest link” must then apply. This makes Okpoko a priority for starters and should worry every onye Anambra how a State that prides itself as the light of the nation would keep a deafening silence as Okpoko dies, yet spreading infectious social, economic and environmental malady that leaves Onitsha as a City in self-destruct.

Ụmụnnem, ife dị na Okpoko; the Genius, the unemployed and the criminal. The challenge before us is to decide whether to continue ruing the ugly situation or turn the flipside that will provide us enormous opportunities for the development of our Homeland.

Okpoko is the largest Urban slum in Anambra State. Therefore, we have to begin our urban renewal effort from our weakest link. Like my now 16 year old daughter once asked me when she was just 14, “it is not enough to wish change or show the will to cause a change. How are you sure, Daddy, that the people themselves want to change?”

Of course, this is not so easy a question to be answered without far-reaching consultation with the people. So far, the people of Okpoko and residents, from Ndikpa to East Niger, are more in a hurry for a change than we can ever be.

That trip I made in 2009 to Okpoko where I was accosted by a little boy, who raced towards me and audaciously demanded, “Soludo nyem ego” still occupies a better part of my memory. That boy, and millions like him need much more than money. They need a life.

May God help us!

CC. Soludo