Benefits of Committing your Goals to Paper

By Bayo Ogunmupe Having a goal isn't enough. You have to write it down on paper and plan how to execute that goal. By outlining the steps you can take to accomplish your dreams you will know exactly what to do and be able to approach your goals from a practical point of view. The worksheets upon which those goals are written will also help you identify any obstacles you may encounter, so you are prepared to deal with them and you will not be surprised by unexpected problems. This is all the more important if you shared your goals with someone else such as your spouse, business partner or your team. Goal setting worksheets will delineate each team member's responsibility, making sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to achieving the ultimate goal or embracing a plan of action. Goal setting worksheets provide accountability and allow you to monitor your success. Life has a lot of distractions, sometimes making you lose sight of your dreams, so it is beneficial to have a way of keeping track of your progress. Check your worksheets regularly to mark off the objectives you have successfully reached. Recognising your accomplishments boosts your self confidence, motivating you to continue despite daunting discouragements if any. Continuous monitoring will help you identify where you went wrong so you can make adjustments along the way. Remember, your plan provides you with the direction and framework to work, but at times, circumstances may require you to be flexible in making changes that will improve your plan of action. Goal setting worksheets help you achieve your dreams faster, the clear plan keeps you focused and motivated particularly when your short term goals are realistic, measurable and allowing you to celebrate successes on a regular basis. The worksheets always provide timeframes and deadlines. Breaking large goals into smaller sections, determining which steps to be taken, allowing for the setting of a completion date, is a great formula for success. Assigning a deadline is the best way to eliminate procrastination. It is even beneficial for you to be accountable to someone who will check to ensure you met your timeframe guidelines. By mixing dreams with a practical approach you bring clarity and focus to the achievement of your goals. Though much is taken, much abides. Though we are not now with that strength which in the days of yore moved Earth and Heaven. That which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate. But strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield is the secret of success. Goal setting is undoubtedly the most powerful tool you can ever use to achieve your dreams. Therefore, if you want to achieve amazing results of success, you must follow the footsteps of great people by setting goals. In setting achievable goals, your goals must be exciting and empowering. Your goal must be stretching to force you to think out of the box. Working hard and putting more effort isn't enough to achieve a goal. You must stretch yourself and think out of the box to achieve your heart's desires.

Why Corruption is killing Nigeria

By Bayo Ogunmupe Of the myriad of problems Nigeria faces, corruption is the biggest. And corruption is the cause of our backwardness, insecurity and underdevelopment. The collapse of the 21 storey Ikoyi skyscraper was caused by corruption. Sadly, many of the solutions devised to move Nigeria forward are based on lamentation rather than sober reflection and normative analysis. And perhaps the solutions offered have not worked because the challenges themselves have been misdiagnosed. However, we have existing data on responses given by Nigerians on these issues. Since 2017, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in collaboration with the United Nations Office, have conducting the Corruption in Nigeria Survey. So far, two editions of the survey have been released, the first in 2017 and the second in 2019. The surveys are based on responses of more than 33,000 Nigerians aged 18 and over across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The survey is about corruption as manifested by bribery; the data contain a section named: Perceptions of Corruption and other concerns. The section measures the perceptions of Nigerians on corruption relative to a myriad of other problems. In both surveys, 13 of Nigeria’s problems were identified. Among them are ethnic conflict, crime and insecurity, drug abuse and drug trafficking and environmental degradation. Others include high cost of living, unemployment, housing deficit, and lack of healthcare and infrastructure. In 2017, Nigerians regarded unemployment and high cost of living as the two pressing problems; corruption itself came third. Also in 2017, the crime of insecurity came 6th, with only a fifth of the respondents considering insecurity as the major problem of the country. For the 2019 survey, few things changed. But unemployment retained its preeminent position as the biggest problem of the country. The second change was crime and insecurity which advanced from 6th to second in 2019. Consequently corruption in Nigeria fell further from third to fifth in 2019. As we await the third survey by the end of this year, the Ikoyi Building collapse has exposed flaws in the surveys. Engineer Sikiru Adebowale in a video clip claimed muslim engineers were excluded from employment in the construction of the collapsed building. Consequently, the founder of Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) Professor Ishaq Akintola challenged the Afenifere and the Coalition of Independent Nigerian Groups, saying the video clip is an undeniable evidence of alienation, marginalization and persecution of Yoruba muslims by no other than their fellow Yoruba who happen to be Christians. Similarly, a columnist, Professor Farook Kperogi also raised issue in a column entitled: Ikoyi Tragedy and Casual Bigotry Against Yoruba muslims. Kperogi said: “The truth is that famed religious ecumenicalism and tolerance of the Yoruba people is often achieved at the expense of Yoruba muslims.” Even the complainant Sikiru Adebowale felt compelled to say that 95 percent of his friends are Christians and that he hadn’t closed off the possibility that he could convert to Christianity at some point in his life. The silent persecution of Nigerians by some other religious or ethnic Nigerian groups is rampart according to reports gathered over decades. Some strong tribal or military groups, apart from making the Southerner fronts, thereby becoming millionaires, this makes groups vulnerable and compromising. Such contrived weaknesses can only become strong by developing the strength which he frittered away out of greed for filthy lucre. In ancient times they used to say, men are slaves because of one man, an oppressor. Nowadays, this has been reversed. One man is an oppressor because there are many slaves. The truth is that the oppressor and the slave are cooperators in ignorance. While seemingly afflicting each other, they’re really afflicting themselves. The oppressed may only conquer his weaknesses by putting away selfishness, second fiddle mentality in accepting to be fronts. Power belongs neither to the oppressor who opposes power shift nor to the oppressed. Power belongs to God. The underdog can only attain equality in Nigeria by lifting his thoughts above slavish, and greedy animal indulgence. For men whose thoughts are bestial could neither think clearly nor plan methodically to free themselves from political domination. There can be no progress nor achievement of any kind without sacrifice. The universe does not help the greedy, and dishonest tribalist. He who would accomplish much, must sacrifice much, he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly. Thus, as opined earlier, the Nigerian problem is misdiagnosed. Nigerians might have become docile, greedy and lazy because of decades of easy money via oil wealth encouraged by greedy military and civilian leaders. Or perhaps we’re just not up to the task, that the Wole Soyinka victory 35 years ago was a mere fluke. We aren’t as smart as the Germans after World War 11 or South Korea after the Korean war. Let the Academic Staff Union of Universities diagnose Nigeria’s backwardness for us. The NBS and World Bank are not asking the appropriate questions

Bola Tinubu, The Kingmaker Becomes King

Thank you for highlighting for Nigerians to read, Bola Ahmed Tinubu's chances of becoming President in 2023. First of all I wish to inform you that Tinubu deserves to be President in 2023. Through his sincere desire for change, he brought together three tribal parties namely the Action Congress of Nigeria (Yoruba), Congress for Progressive Change (Fulani), All Nigeria Peoples Party (Minorities), APGA (Igbo) and the new PDP, the intellectual wing of the PDP as a mega party the All Progressives Congress. It was through his political sagacity that this merger of the tribes won the Presidency in 2015. This was achievable because unlike the Fulani and the Igbo he had no domination agenda. By now, Knowledgeable Nigerians would have learned tribal domination from Aguiyi Ironsi, through Ibrahim Babangida's weakening of the tribes via the creation of unviable states and Mohammed Buhari scorched earth nepotism. Which is why Tinubu's sincerity stands him out as a most competent man to succeed President Buhari. His age is immaterial, for it encapsulates experience: a two term governor of Lagos; a former senator and a wealthy businessman. Age didn't work against President Joseph Biden of the USA who became president at the age of 78 and the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad who became Prime Minister in 2018 at the age of 93. Those disqualifying Tinubu because of his age are mischievous people with ulterior motives. On his health, those of us, his admirers know his sojourn in London is more educational rather than for health reasons. It is our prayer that Jehovah grants him many more decades in the service of our fatherland. For his backgrounds, being born poor and later attaining a higher status in life makes him people friendly, a self starter a face to face leader and reformer. As governor, Tinubu increased local governments from 20 to 57, created Neighbourhood Watch and street sweepers, thereby boosting employment. Moreover, he is a federalist, not one of those offering tribal domination as their hidden agenda. People finding fault with him are religious fundamentalists who know from his antecedents that he could not be cajoled into religious sectarianism. Tinubu is eligible because the Constitution provides for immediate successor if he dies in office. With muslim hypocrites practising Islamic jihad via banditry, kidnapping and Boko haram insurgency and Christian prelates serving both God and Mammon Tinubu is the best replacement for Buhari. In Nigeria, prosperity churches have been booming for decades. They promise financial rewards on earth and eternity in heaven. God has been reduced to a money doubler in a theology that preaches whatever you sow, you reap. And Nigerians borrow to give unscrupulous pastors with no qualms feeding fat on the ignorance and misery of the people. With the way he promoted his Attorney General Yemi Osinbajo to Vice President; we will all be there to support him to end the exploitation of man by man. We know he never betrays his friends and his supporters. He is the only Nigerian politician with that trait of benevolence. Chief Bayo Ogunmupe, journalist, author, blogger and economics columnist on The Guardian, Lagos.

Let habit catapult you to power

By Bayo Ogunmupe

A few years ago shortly after Mohammed Buhari acceded to power, Nigeria replaced India as the poverty capital of the world. There are many reasons for it. Nigeria’s poverty is due among others to ignorance, false religion and laziness. For instance, Nigeria has the world’s largest breweries, but few libraries. Nigerians don’t read. Our fastest growing industry is procreation leading to a growing but impoverished population, where malnutrition is rampart. Our laissez faire habit makes us the highest buyer of motor cycles and tricycles after their producer, India. But our ignorance precludes us from mandating India to produce these cycles in Nigeria; requests which they will gracefully accede to. We glamorized poverty into an ideology, ignorantly putting the blame on God. Poverty as an ideology is driven by certain habits. Nigerians procreate even when they are unemployed and without any skills. We attend churches and mosques even without love of God. Kidnapping, factories producing babies for sale and banditry are crimes committed by people who don’t believe in God in spite of our love of religion. We pray for money thereby mistaking laziness for faith in God. One reason Nigerians are poor is because they are looking for money. But you are not likely find money you didn’t lose. Instead of looking for money you should look for wisdom, acquire a skill with which you earn a living. Which is why the fastest way to conquer poverty is to teach people how to become prosperous. To conquer poverty you need a mentor. From the scriptures we learned that no one became great without having a mentor. Having a mentor shortens your journey to prosperity. Jesus the Christ taught Peter how to fish by telling him which side of boat to fish in. Peter thereafter caught surplus fish. Which is why life without a mentor can be harrowing. Therefore, to become successful, study your mentor. Know the difference between needs and wants. You should know your strengths and weaknesses. That way you won’t allow your enemies to feed your weaknesses in order to ruin you. Have control over your thoughts. Decide what you want from life. Then create plans and goals with dates in order to achieve your goals. The habit of planning ahead of action is very crucial. It is an essential winning strategy for 40 percent of our daily activities are driven by habit. We’re what we repeatedly do. Form good habits and they will create the basis for your prosperity. Back on mentoring: when you have a mentor you literally inherit your mentor’s knowledge and experience. That will quicken your ascent to power. Your personal reading, experience and inspiration will enrich your wisdom and direct you in good decision making. Mentors guide to success. Paul mentored Timothy. Moses mentored Joshua. Nelson Mandela mentored Thabo Mbeki. Obafemi Awolowo mentored Adekunle Ajasin, Lateef Jakande, Bola Ige and Olabisi Onabanjo. In journalism, Babatunde Jose mentored Prince Tony Momoh and Chief Segun Osoba. From the foregoing you can see that the mentee succeeded through the wisdom he gained from his mentor. A pitfall on your road to success is the entitlement mentality. Please get rid of it. Entitlement mentality is a false belief. God never put another person to work for you as your slave. Other than your father and mother, Jehovah did not create persons to live up to your expectations. Neither did He put you on Earth for you to live up to the expectation of anyone. Only your parents owe you education and skill training to enable you make a living in life. So, if you curse and pray for the downfall of those who failed to help you; it is you who is evil and causing bad karma to rebound on you as retributive justice. And who knows, perhaps your poverty is as a result of your evil prayers bouncing back on you. In working with Dr Garba Hamza of Hamza Airways fame I learned that you cannot make people by throwing money at people. Give N10 million to a person who isn’t financially literate today; he will revert to poverty in five years. You simply need to learn the skills and habits of the rich in order to become rich. Which is why how to become rich is not taught in school.

Making your financial freedom inevitable

By Bayo Ogunmupe Many working professionals make financial freedom their goal. But if the achievement of financial freedom is to be made inevitable, within their 35 year career, they must do two things. First you must choose the right and conducive path. Choosing the right path means you become a consultant in your chosen profession or become an entrepreneur investor in your field of endeavor. Secondly, you refrain from choosing the path that leads you to middle class poverty. In attaining financial freedom, good intentions are not enough. You must make your good intentions come alive. Research shows 80 percent of professionals: journalists, lawyers, teachers and architects fail to make their good intentions inevitable by not taking adequate actions to protect and secure their future. Your first step is choosing the right role model. If you want to do a particular thing, find someone who had done that thing for you to imitate. Your right role model is anyone who once shared the same lifestyle with you. The mistake most people make is taking popular success models as Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg or Aliyu Dangote as models. Your model must be one who shared the same circumstance with you. Those mentioned above are businessmen, you can only model them when you enter into business that are similar to theirs. Moreover, unlike you, these winners were never employees, Musk, Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Zuckerberg started their own businesses early in life. They didn’t wait 10, 20 or working for 30 years before going into self employment. Their pedigree doesn’t exist in Africa for they are geniuses, creating their types of businesses. So you must choose a model with a complementary background with you. For me, Afe Babalola is my model. A distinguished barrister who has never worked for government. He was neither a state attorney-general, federal attorney-general or minister. You cannot trace graft or money laundering to him. Yet he’s very successful as a practicing lawyer and senior advocate of Nigeria. He is the founder of Afe Babalola University. As a contemporary of Dangote, his business success is still shrouded in mystery. Many allege he is fronting for politicians which is why they will do anything to protect him. Government is protecting him as a monopoly in oil and gas, cement and more in Nigeria. So, no Nigerian should take Dangote as a model. He belongs to that class of privileged and protected businessmen spread all over Nigeria. Once you understand the actions, the mindset, attitudes, rituals and relationships that produce the desired results in your line of business, continue imitating your model. The more you imitate your model, the faster you will achieve financial freedom. In observing your model, you must write down the key success factors , dividing them into two. The simple likeable category and the hard unpleasant actions. Research shows that unpleasant actions produce the success and easy life we enjoy in financial success. You must model the unpleasant actions which produce results. The second step toward making your financial freedom inevitable is to close the gap between your learning the ropes of success and actually doing what it takes to win. The problem is that there are more learners than doers. The solution is to be a doer. Start a business with your best friend. Gates started Microsoft with his best friend- Paul. Larry Page started Google with his best friend-Sergey; Steve Jobs started Apple with his friend –Steve Wozniak; what are you doing with your friends? A goal without a deadline is a dream. A dream without action steps is fantasy. You can never be insincere to others without being insincere to yourself. When you practice insincerity, it gradually becomes ingrained in you as a habit. Beware for insincerity is a habit that undermines you from realizing your dream of financial freedom. Only sincere doers achieve financial freedom. The only way to bridge the gap between learning and doing is to upgrade your discipline. Discipline is the golden bridge to financial freedom. The only other hindrance is ignorance. When you are an encyclopaedia on your chosen profession and business, active and disciplined nothing can stop you from reaching your goal of financial freedom.

On the Excessive Honorariums for Lawmakers

For the first time in decades, the leadership of the National Assembly disclosed the honorariums of members of the National Assembly(NASS). During the 2021 Distinguished Parliamentarians’ Lecture facilitated by the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies, Abuja, the Senate President, Dr Ahmad Lawan said NASS members were being paid N17 billion yearly. According to him, the yearly running cost for a senator was N13 million per year; while a member of the House of Representatives gets N8 million. Thus, a senator is paid N52 million as running cost per year and a representative takes home N32 million. For the 109 senators and 360 representatives they get N5.6 billion and N11.5 billion respectively. As salary a senator earns N1.5 million per year while a representative gets N1.3 million per annum. This honorarium scale is excessive in a country that is living on loans, a country that is owing pensions at local, state and federal levels. Moreover our educational system is in shambles due to the fact that she cannot honour its obligations to tertiary institutions nor pay her brainbox, the Academic Staff Union of Universities. This high running cost occasioned by huge allocation to legislative houses is self induced. This outrageous allocation to the legislature cannot be justified knowing fully well that the minimum wage payable in Nigeria is N30,000. Worse still, many states of the federation cannot pay the minimum wage. Moreover, legislators don’t have to pay their aides personally. It is an abuse of the separation of powers for legislators to takeover the functions of the executive branch. Where did they get these examples from. It is against the run of play for legislators to abandon the norms of the separation of powers because of petty financial gains. In order to cut Nigeria’s high cost of governance we advice that we go back to paying our legislators part-time as was the practice in the First Republic. It is the principal officers of NASS that get full pay. Moreover, in the financial exigency we are where debt servicing takes 62 percent of our annual budget we cannot afford continuing with our bicameral legislature at the centre. In the First Republic we ran bicameral legislatures in local, regional and federal levels. In the current dispensation, we jettisoned the houses of chiefs in the local and states, there was no justification for us to retain the house of Representatives and the senate at the centre. We need only one as in South Africa. With 21 senators from the North West, let every geopolitical zone/region have 21 senators and scrap the House of Representatives. After all we are not observing the equality of population required for membership of the House of Representatives. Every zone is lying about its true population. Even then, we need full disclosure as regards the true honorarium accruable to legislators. Insincerity has become ingrained in us Christian and Muslim in which case false information has become the norm. There is insincerity everywhere in Nigeria. The executive promised restructuring. This was amplified by Governor Nasir El Rufai Panel, yet 18 months to go, nothing like that is in the offing. Insincerity is undermining our efforts at realizing our dream of a great Nigerian nation leading the African Union and standing behind NATO, China and Russia in a quartet of world powers. At this juncture, we call on the Wages and Salaries Commission and the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission to begin a review of emoluments to various cadre of workers in Nigeria in accordance with their relevance to the current needs of the nation. We cannot be insincere to others without being insincere to ourselves. The excessive honorariums being paid to legislators should be reviewed immediately.

How Rhetoric Despoiled Nigerian economy in 2021

By Bayo Ogunmupe In spite of the disruption of the world economy by the COVID19 pandemic from 2020, the Nigerian economy exited recession in the second quarter of 2020. However, Nigeria’s GDP grew by 0.51 percent in the first quarter of 2021. But Nigeria’s inflation rate slowed for the first time since 2019 in April 2021. But this brought no substantial relief to consumers who still had to contend with high prices. Even with little respite from price inflation, Nigeria’s ill advised border closure started in August 2019. It merely exacerbated inflation like a measure instituted to despoil a people in order to cow her. Southern border closure was ostensibly crafted to boost local production of goods which we import. We never planned any import substitution industries, neither did we build any infrastructure to accommodate such strategies. Whereas it is hitherto cheaper and faster to ship asbestos from London to Kano than to ferry rice from Lagos to Kaduna. The mindless closure of the southern border skyrocketed inflation to 18.12 percent in April 2021. It is a lesson in how to impoverish a people in order to dominate her. The World Bank reported that inflation pushed 8 million Nigerians into poverty between 2020 and 2021. The report was made all the more incontrovertible when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) stopped the sale of foreign exchange to Bureau De Change (BDC) operators. The bank explained that the parallel market had become a conduit for illicit forex flow, graft and money laundering. It therefore stopped processing applications of BDC licenses. Thereafter, CBN channeled weekly dollar sales through commercial banks to meet legitimate demands. A week after the new foreign exchange regime, the Naira fell from N505 to N525 per dollar. And according to data from Nigerian Security Tracker (NST) there were 2,943 abductions and 5,800 deaths due to insecurity between January and June 2021. According to an intelligence report by S. B. Morgen (SBM) an estimated N10 billion was demanded by kidnappers in the first six months of the year. Thus, the high risk Nigerian business environment continues to discourage inflow of foreign investment into the economy. But seven years ago, the Rand Merchant Bank ranked Nigeria the second most attractive investment destination in Africa. Sadly, Nigeria now ranks 14th. What’s more, Nigeria’s public debt rose to N38 trillion in the third quarter of 2021, according to the Debt Management Office. The data include both external and domestic debt of the federal government, the states, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The DMO explained that increase in debt was largely accounted for by the $4 billion Eurobond issued by the Federal Government in September 2021. Indeed, the breaking economic news is the acquisition of my bank the Union Bank of Nigeria by the two year old little known Titan Trust Bank. The FGN injected N300 billion to stabilize Union Bank sometime ago. Another N239 billion was used by AMCON, an agency of the FGN to buy off toxic assets in the bank’s books. It is therefore incorrect for the FGN to end up with only 21 percent ownership of Union Bank while foreign investors walked away with a 64 percent stake when it only invested $500 billion in 2011. Union Bank has now been sold for a fraction of money sunk into it. If Parliament isn’t asking questions, we the people are demanding accountability. Tunde Lemo was CBN deputy governor during the transactions. Isn’t he disqualified by corporate insider information provisions as chairman of Titan Trust Bank at the moment? In 2011, Union Bank was a conglomerate of seven companies; now reduced to a single entity without recourse to satisfying the provisions of Company and Allied Matters Act. What happened to the assets of the subsidiaries? Who acquired what and under which terms? Faruk Gumel is the current chair of government owned NSIA; at the same time he is Group Executive Director of TGI, the core shareholder in Titan Bank. This transaction doesn’t qualify under the relevant corporate provisions. It should be investigated. We need clarifications from AMCON, the CBN, the Federal Ministry of Finance and the erstwhile Managing Director of Union Bank, Mr. Emeka Emuwa. Politicians have deceived Nigeria enough, we will not allow them befuddle the nation this time around.