Five people who went missing off Australia’s coast when their boat drifted away were rescued after a search plane spotted a large “SOS” scrawled into the sand.
THE IGBO GIANT STRIDES AGAINST ALL ODDS
11 years ago
Showing posts with label Be Inspired. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Be Inspired. Show all posts
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On your Birthday, I wish you have the courage
to live at least one more dream,
fulfil one more wish
and make one more person’s life beautiful.
Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday, my friend.
I dedicate these songs to you.
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I’m waiting for Aliko Dangote. Everyone is. Africa’s richest man, worth $24.7 billion (more than Carl Icahn, George Soros and any number of lesser Western billionaires) is probably the most in-demand person at the World Economic Forum here in Abuja, Nigeria. He enters the Hilton on a red carpet, a mere 30 minutes late, with minders, the head of his foundation, and the second of his three grown daughters in tow. The hotel employees literally bow before him, lesser oligarchs wave and backslap, and the merely rich try to bum rides on his private plane. “I don’t know what to do, my wife really needs to get home,” says an Indian businessman to one of the numerous Dangote staffers hovering nearby, who smiles sympathetically and promises to look into things.
Dangote himself is unassuming. A 57-year-old man with an almost shy smile, he’s a practicing Muslim that acquaintances call “generous” and “prayerful.” He’s also a sharp elbowed business titan, the 24th richest in the world, who has survived ten different regimes in Nigeria, building a $2 billion empire on cement, sugar, salt, and more recently, energy. Dangote sat down with me in his suite at the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja Wednesday to discuss wealth, power, politics, and the future of Africa. Below are lightly edited excerpts from our talk:
TIME: I hear you haven’t taken a vacation in 20 years. Is that true?
Dangote: It used to be. I was working very hard for a long time to build up my business. Now, I try to take a week’s vacation every two weeks. We live in Lagos, on Victoria Island, but I like to go to Miami with my family. I used to own two homes in Atlanta. But it was a lot of trouble. There are leaky roofs, you have to call people. It takes up too much time to own property everywhere. Now I stay at the St. Regis. I used to like cars a lot, too. I had 25 of them, Porches, Ferraris. I would drive from Lagos to Kano at 180 miles per hour. But I stopped that after I had my second daughter.
You came from a certain amount of wealth. What was your upbringing like?
My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader, and the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death. My father was a businessman and politician. I was actually raised by my grandfather. It’s traditional in my culture for grandparents to take the first grandchild and raise it (Dangote’s older sister died as a baby in a car accident). I had a lot of love, and it gave me a lot of confidence.
You started with a loan from your uncle and built the most successful locally owned business conglomerate in Africa. What were the turning points?
I always tried to move up the food chain. I started with cement, and then moved into textiles, and banking. When I was trading sugar, I added salt and flour, so that then we could do pasta. And then I thought, why not make the bag for it too? So, we started making packaging.
This is a very entrepreneurial culture, but not a lot of people have your kind of success. What did you do differently?
We had a lot of capital, and we were able to build out our own power grid. The number one thing that kills businesses in Africa is power, or the lack of power. We wanted to have our businesses completely independent, with our own grid. So we built it. It took $1.2 billion. That’s a lesson I took from the financial crisis. It’s so important to have capital. At that point, we had about $2 billion in debt from expanding so quickly, so we had to scale back. But if I had more capital [in hand] in 2008, I could have bought so many things – homes, airplanes, land – so cheaply.
Now you are going up the food chain again, getting into energy, and in particular oil and gas refining. Nigeria has a lot of oil, but not a lot of refined gas. A lot of people feel that Africa could grow a lot faster with more of its own refinery capacity.
Yes, we’ll finish our refinery in 2017, and with it a petrochemical factory. This should take us to the next level. It’s all about integrating what we have. From the sugarcane we use, we can make ethanol. People say, “why get into agriculture?” but there is huge vertical integration between food and fuel, and Africa has both. Our rice and sugar business will create 180,000 new jobs in the next four years. We want to have a market capitalization of $100 billion by 2017. It’s my goal for my 60th birthday!
What’s your goal for this World Economic Forum meeting?
I want people to understand what’s really here. I feel Nigeria is like Colombia. People think about it based on information from 20 years ago. You think about Colombia, and all you think of is drug cartels, but really, there’s a lot of investor interest. It’s the same here in Nigeria. It’s not the 1970s. Things have changed.
But isn’t that the crucial juxtaposition here? You have growth, but no security. You have 8 % GDP growth, and over 200 missing girls that have been taken from their homes by Boko Haram.
It’s true. It hasn’t stopped business, but the situation is out of hand. I think the government is trying to get themselves together [around this issue]. I think they have been taken by surprise – there are people in places like Spain saying “where are these Nigerian girls?” It’s good that they’ve asked the US and the UK to help. And it’s important that the private sector do its part, too. Unless we create more jobs, we won’t eliminate Boko Haram. Even if we do, another such group will come. We have to empower our people.”
SOURCE TIME
It’s true. It hasn’t stopped business, but the situation is out of hand. I think the government is trying to get themselves together [around this issue]. I think they have been taken by surprise – there are people in places like Spain saying “where are these Nigerian girls?” It’s good that they’ve asked the US and the UK to help. And it’s important that the private sector do its part, too. Unless we create more jobs, we won’t eliminate Boko Haram. Even if we do, another such group will come. We have to empower our people.”
SOURCE TIME
school.
The social and behavioral gap between boys and girls begins as early as kindergarten. Girls are more attentive, persistent, eager to learn, flexible, organized, sensitive and opinionated than boys in kindergarten. The gender gap in behavioral skills at that tender age is even bigger than racial or socio-economic gaps: Boys score an average of 42 percent on a behavioral skills, while girls score an average of 58 percent—a 16 point differential. That’s larger than the 13 point differential between poor and not poor, and the 13 point differential between black and white.
So by the time boys and girls reach middle school, girls have attained an academic advantage over the boys. By the eighth grade, 48 percent of girls receive a combination of As and Bs or better on their report cards, while only 31 percent of boys do. That’s a big gap considering eighth grade grades are a better predictor of college completion than standardized test scores. Students who earn mostly As have almost a 70 precent chance of completing college by 25; those who earn mostly Bs have just a 30 percent chance of completing college, and less than 10 percent of students who earn mostly Cs will graduate college by that age.
The reasons for the grade gender gap are still, for the most part, a mystery. There’s a behavioral deficit for boys before they even enter school. But the authors of the study also point out that boys are more negatively affected than girls by classrooms with a bad or distracting environment. Boys also feel pressure to adhere to old stereotypes that dictate that academic achievement isn’t cool. And boys can have a harder time understanding the connection between effort in school and success later in life.
Culled: TIME
Evolution tells it straight: Some people make more desirable partners than others. Current theories on mate value go a little like this: People who have it all, including good looks and status, can land a partner who also has it all. The people who don’t, well, they’re going to have to settle. But new research published in theJournal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests what anyone who’s fallen for a pretty face knows: finding the ideal partner for you is much more complicated. In fact, the more we get to know someone, the more our opinion of their desirability changes.
To reach these findings, the researchers at the University of Texas at Austin conducted three studies in which they asked participants to rate a group of people for their perceived value. Some of the factors were basic, like how attractive they are, or how outgoing. Other factors went deeper, with participants ranking whether a person seemed likely to be a good, committed partner.
In the first study, participants rated people they’d never met; in the second study they rated people they’d known for a few months; and in the third study they rated people they had known for at least three years. When people ranked individuals they didn’t know, people tended to agree on who was a catch and who wasn’t—it came down to superficial markers like good looks and likability. But researchers also found that as people got to know each other, perceptions changed and people tended to disagree about who seemed like a good partner and who didn’t.
“[As we spend more time with someone] we stop agreeing on how desirable or undesirable they are,” says study author Dr. Paul W. Eastwick, an assistant professor in the department of human development and family sciences. “We start to have very idiosyncratic opinions of one another.” The findings show that who we ultimately determine to be an ideal mate is unique, and we can greatly differ in our opinions of who is attractive, intelligent, popular, and who would make a good relationship partner.
So when it comes down to it, sure: At “hello,” some people have a leg up on others. But once someone is a known quantity, their desirability isn’t so clear-cut: Attractiveness and social status give way to compatibility and how suitable someone is for an actual relationship. “These findings are a good thing if people don’t care about getting the [conventionally ideal] mate, but care about finding the mate that is good and compatible for them,” says Eastwick.
Culled Time
Five people who went missing off Australia’s coast when their boat drifted away were rescued after a search plane spotted a large “SOS” scrawled into the sand.
Their trouble began after they set out for a fun day of snorkeling Monday near the Whitsunday Islands. After they dropped anchor to explore, their boat drifted away, leaving them marooned on a rocky island without food, water or cellphones.
After nine hours, the group grew desperate, hoping their message wouldn't be washed away with the tide. Lyn Forbes-Smith, one of the rescued snorkelers, worried about her safety.
“We did suspect that we would be bunkered down on those rocks for the night so that was a fairly grim prospect,” she said.
Helicopter crewman Damien Kross said he wasn’t hopeful. But in a stroke of luck, another boat spotted the drifting vessel and alerted authorities.
Rescue crews set out to find the missing group. Eventually, the group’s giant message emerged.
“We saw the 'SOS' in the sand and knew that it must be them,” Kross told ABC News.
Rescue crews lowered down to the island’s rocky surface and whisked the marooned snorkelers to safety.
Apr 24, 2014 1:47pm
When it comes to the job hunt, they say, it’s all about who you know.
And one little girl, a guest at the White House’s annual “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day,” seized the opportunity to get her father’s resume into some powerful hands on Thursday.
When Michelle Obama called on her during a question-and-answer session in the East Room, instead of asking a question, the child gave the first lady a copy of her dad’s resume.
“My dad’s been out of a job for three years and I wanted to give you his resume,” said the girl, who the Associated Press identified as 10-year-old Charlotte Bell.
“Oh my goodness,” murmured Mrs. Obama as she wrapped the little girl in a hug.
“Well, it’s a little private, but she’s doing something for her dad, right?” the first lady said to the audience, children of Executive Office employees.
“Got it,” she said to Charlotte, brandishing the resume.
Mrs. Obama took the resume with her when she left the event.
In an event held inside the Sokoto hall of the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja on May 29, 2013 as part of the children's day celebrations, the African Street Writers unveiled the 2013 KOLA award.
We both lived on the 400 series of Eni-Njoku Hostel in the University Of Nigeria, Nsukka and all the while I knew him, Dubie as we call him back then always cut the image of a boy on a mission
Na wa for WAEC is a common refrain uttered every now and then by exam candidates who have been subjected to the turbulence of horrendous paper-marking of the West African Examination Council.
(Reuters) - Shortly after his election on Wednesday night, Pope Francis shunned the papal limousine and rode on the last shuttle bus with other cardinals to go back to a residence inside the Vatican for a meal.
I actually got to know Dr Oronto Douglas 0n 8th December 2009 when, as the then Senior Special Assistant on Economic Matters and Strategy to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, he represented and delivered a speech on his behalf at the maiden edition of the 2009 Justice Chukwudi Oputa Awards ceremony in Abuja.
In that speech, he noted that the energy and creativity of Nigerian youths was a satisfactory indication that the birth of a glorious future was undeniable.The Nigerian youths he went on, have at no time undermined our aspiration for a greater and better society. We must continue to support them so that they can continue to make us proud.
Thrilled by his perfect rendition of that speech, I sent him a Facebook friend request which he readily accepted and so the bond of friendship was established. Subsequently, we exchanged phone numbers and kept in touch from time to time even though we had never met face to face. Within the course of my short interactions with him, he did not leave me in any doubt as to his convictions on the necessity for empowering the youths for the challenges of the battles of the future which he rightly noted will be fought and won based on the superiority of ideas.
Barely 30 minutes of this very interesting encounter, Dr Oronto had to leave and attend to urgent office matters but not before I redeemed a pledge of two books published by my employers, Evans Publishers Ltd which I made to him during one of our Facebook chats. The Books were Wale Okediran's Tenet's Of The House ( a fiction on the intrigues and power play in the National Assembly) and Through My Eyes ( an insight into how Barack Obama emerged the first Black US President). It was actually from the latter book that I coined the title of this article: Through The Eyes Of Oronto Douglas.
Shortly before leaving, he had suggested that he would like me to travel down to Bayelsa State and have an assessment of four e- libraries located in Yenagoa, Ogbia, Okorogba and Otuoke and thereafter make possible recommendations on how local contents can be installed by my employers in the e-libraries. I was still considering the most auspicious time to make the Bayelsa trip, I received this text message from Dr Oronto Douglas:
"with the kind permission of my elder brother, Mr R.S Douglas, I write to inform u dt our father Pa Obebera Douglas begin a journey to eternal glory. Wake keep:14/12/12 &Funeral service @10am on Sat 15th. Pls join us in Okoroba Bayelsa. if your busy schedule permits. Thk U".
With this development, I now saw the trip as an opportunity for me to kill two birds with one stone: 1. Attend the Funeral of Pa Douglas and 2. Visit the Library Project in Yenagoa. It was an also an exciting opportunity I thought to myself, as it will enable me to get to know the Niger Delta region I have heard, read and seen a lot on the news but never visited before. On 13th December, I left Abuja for Port-Harcourt by road and next day, I left Port-Harcourt for Yenagoa-Okoroba en route Ogbia. Embarking upon
the journey through water was a bit scary being the first time in my adult life that I would be travelling on water. As we boarded the the speed boat at Ogbia government jetty en route Okoroba via Nembe, one woman noticed I was scared and asked me to sit in between her and another passenger. I became a bit relaxed until our boat captain categorically told us that he does not know the route to Okoroba, but obviously driven by the pecuniary reward of the #25,000 worth trip, was ready to gamble his way.
As we cruised past the Joint Task Force (JTF) checkpoint at Nembe where we observed the ritual of raising up our hands in show of non-militancy, we stopped over to refuel our speed boat. But shortly after resuming our journey, we realised we had missed our way as our speedboat engine ran aground along one the creeks we had taken. At that moment, the literal reality of choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea dawned me as a flurry of thoughts criss-crossed my mind. In retrospect, I guess this is a situation Yakowa and Azazzi did not want to experience and so choppered their way by air to Okoroba instead. The rest they say is now history.
Like a man on a mission, I quickly located the newly built state-of-the-art Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan library, a project of the Community Defence Law Foundation (CDLF). Inside the library, I quickly forgot that I was in a remote creek town in the Niger Delta as the library's super fast Wi-fi internet connectivity enabled me to come alive with developments across the globe. In a country where education does not get the requisite attention, this state of the art library is a obviously an exception to the rule.
To have conceived situating in Okoroba and other creek towns, such libraries that are fully digitalised and linked up with Berkeley University in California certainly smacks of a man with a vision given the futuristic dimensional importance of this initiative which obviously cannot be over emphasised. With these libraries around them, today's Niger Deltan child has what it takes to make him/her relevant in the course of world history which Oronto rightly noted will be driven by the battles of ideas that we cannot afford to be left behind in the historic process. It was a real privileged for me to have seen the unfolding vision through the eyes of Oronto Douglas.
I still recall seeing the both of them that morning upon disembarking from the chopper that brought them but little did I know that will be the last time, I would see them. As he proceeded to the venue of the event, Gov. Yakowa beamed smiles all the way and even stopped at the makeshift abattoir where he had a lively chat with his kinsmen hired to butcher the cow for the occasion. Then on the prompting of Gen. Azazzi, they proceeded to the hall but not before I personally took this picture of them, which The Nation Newspaper hurriedly used as its cover picture in their report on the crash without even acknowledging me as their source (intellectual theft).
Well that is by the way and the rest they say is history but what I took away from the my Okorogba expedition is the fact that visionary leaders are a sine qua non in the developmental quest of any nation. Dubai had visionary ruler and the dreams conceived yesterday have turned Dubai into an economic melting point today. The point however is that dreams as lofty as they may appear can only be meaningfully realised if they are domesticated and relevant to the universal need of the immediate environment. That is what Oronto Douglas took into cognizance in championing the movement for knowledge equipment of his people.
