High Cost of Governance

PAC members, had during a visit to the President on January 20, advised him to reduce the cost of governance by either merging or cutting down the number of MDAs.
The Danjuma group stated that this would enable the government to direct more spending on infrastructural development.

Danjuma, after the visit, told journalists that one of the suggestions made to Jonathan was “reducing the number of ministries and where there are functions they should be rationalised.
“We made a number of far- reaching recommendations to government to take remedial actions to correct all these problems. We realised that we are on the eve of elections and that there is going to be a transition, however we think also this is the right time we raise these issues.”

The President had welcomed the suggestions of the group and promised to continue working with the PAC members, whom he described as people of good character.

He had also said that a robust economy was crucial to the survival, growth and well-being of any nation, adding, “Issues of the economy are critical, since you can’t provide education, health or security without resources generated from a robust economy.”

Apart from PAC, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Lamido Sanusi, had last December raised the alarm over the high cost of maintaining public officials.

He lamented that such a high cost made it difficult for government to invest in the critical sectors of the economy. Culled from the Punch 17/05/11
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If you pay a man 100,000naira and delivers value of 500,000naira will there be a need to request for a reduction in Salary? The answer is NO. If all the ministers whether 43 or 37 are creative, resourceful and innovative perhaps we will not be requesting for a reduction in ministers but asking for more.

We want a Minister of ideas, creativity and innovation. We want a Minister for project follow through. We want a Minister for waste management. We want a minister for accountability.

Yes this are the ministers and ministries we need right now. We need people who can bake cake. we have had enough of people who come to cut and share the national cake.

Note: where they come from do not matter.

ISSUE ORIENTED CAMPAIGN

Paul Summerville, a visiting Associate Professor of History from the United States who has been in the country for six months said it is appalling and ahistorical to see a bunch of politicians who want to rule a complex and dynamic nation like Nigeria not having a clue on how they intend to address fundamental issues that are at the core of the unity of the country.

“I am yet to see the aspirant that has told Nigerians how much the country makes from crude oil sale daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly; how he intend to move Nigeria forward when close to 70 percent of the annual budget is spent on recurrent expenditure and how he hope to use the remaining 30 percent or less to ‘make Nigeria great’ again.

These are the fundamental issues that Nigerians should impress on their leaders to explain.” Summerville added.

Rauf Aregbesola

The Court of Appeal in Ibadan has finally decided the case between Action Congress candidate and former Lagos State commissioner, Rauf Aregbesola as the legitimate winner of the last bgubernational elections 3 years after the elections held. It will be remembered that the Federal High Court had dimissed his case.

Mr. Aregbesola is now the governor of the state and People’s Democractic Party candidate Olagunsonye Oyinlola has been removed

Governance Metrics

Super Falcons....Shabby Reception

Investment Club: Vehicle for Wealth Creation

Investment Club: Vehicle for Wealth Creation

We all aspire to be rich and retire comfortably someday. What are you doing about this?
In addition to having personal savings and investment or registering with an Asset manager or Pension Funds Administrator, I will suggest that you form an investment club with likeminded people. The beauty of an investment club is that it helps you to be disciplined enough to save and invest consistently.

An investment club is a group of people( 5 or more) who pool resources together on a regular basis ; preferably monthly to save and invest. It is similar to a Cooperative society but here you save to invest for the long term i.e. 10 years and above. The club may allow members contribute an equal amount of money monthly (e.g. N5,000) or different amount in multiples of the minimum monthly contribution permissible for ease of valuation.

Experience shows that if 20 people begin an investment club, by 2 years later only 50% or 10 of them will be left. So you may need to get on board more people than you need to make room for dropouts. However, you must be very careful and selective in your choice of members to ensure only people of like mind are invited. You must also ensure you have some members with useful skills and or experience. E.g If possible, it is advisable to have a lawyer as a member to provide legal advice and guidance. It is also advisable to have someone with accounting or book keeping skills to ensure all the financial records of the club are properly kept.


I advise that for the first year the club should just focus on savings, registration, exploring different business ideas/proposals and working out the blueprint.

An investment club should have executives i.e. chairman, vice chairman, treasurer, fin sec, investment director etc. members of the executive must meet at least once in a month hence the need to have sacrificial and passionate people on board. To help members remit payment faithfully, it is advisable post dated cheques are collected on an annual basis. This enforces discipline and reduces the chance of default in contribution.

The investment club should have an investment plan and stick to it.


An example of an Investment Plan

Total Contribution = 100%
Capital Market (Preferably via a well managed mutual fund ) =20%
Money Market (Savings for opportunities) =20%
Investment in real business (Education; Agriculture; Commerce etc) = 50%
Soft loans to members = 10%


The club should have a bye law or constitution guiding members conduct, signing up of new members, exit procedure e.t.c. Members must be fully involved and engaged. Beyond prompt contribution of money, members must be willing to contribute their ideas and time to the club for her to be able to realize its objective. Knowledge sharing is critical. Fines might be introduced to compel members to attend meetings.

An investment club could serve as a safety net for members in times of dire emergencies, a loss of job etc. it also provides a platform for horning entrepreneurial skills. It is good to allow members who bring up ideas to champion its implementation. Members who offer to manage a business idea should be given an incentive E.g 10% of the profit to serve as a compensation for productivity and motivation for success.


Business set up by an investment club has a high rate of survival. It is not easy for a group to give up. The club also serves as a board of director for businesses set up which encourages good governance; accountability and best practices. This is something that most SMES lack and is partly responsible for their high rate of failure. Two good heads are always better than one.


Oluyemi Adeosun is an executive member in 2 investment clubs. He has 6 years cumulative experience in Investment Club Management. He is an Investment Club Consultant.
08025320606 http://www.yemiadeosun.blogspot.com/ oluyemiadeosun@gmail.com

Kind Or Clever by Jeff Bezos founder of AMAZON (Princeton Commencement Address 2010)

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?
I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.
Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!