MAY YOUR ROAD BE ROUGH By Tai Solarin, (Jan. 1, 1964.)

I am not cursing you; I am wishing you what I wish myself every year. I therefore repeat, may you have a hard time this year, may there be plenty of troubles for you this year! If you are not so sure what you should say back, why not just say, ‘Same to you’? I ask for no more.

Our successes are conditioned by the amount of risk we are ready to take. Earlier on today I visited a local farmer about three miles from where I live. He could not have been more than fifty-five, but he said he was already too old to farm vigorously. He still suffered, he said, from the physical energy he displayed as a farmer in his younger days. Around his hut were two pepper bushes. There were Coco yams growing round him. There were snail shells which had given him meat. There must have been more around the banana trees I saw. He hardly ever went to town to buy things. He was self-sufficient.
The car or the bus, the television or the telephone, the newspaper, Vietnam or Red China were nothing to him. He had no ambitions whatsoever, he told me. I am not sure if you are already envious of him, but were we all to revert to such a life, we would be practically driven back to cave dwelling. On the other hand, try to put yourself into the position of the Russian or the America astronaut. Any moment now the count, 3, 2, 1, is going to go, and you are going to be shot into the atmosphere and soon you will be whirling round our earth at the speed of six miles per second. If you get so fired into the atmosphere and you forget what to do to ensure return to earth, one of the things that might happen to you is that you could become forever satellite, going round the earth until you die of starvation and even then your body would continue the gyration!

When, therefore, you are being dressed up and padded to be shot into the sky, you know only too well that you are going on the roughest road man had ever trodden.

The Americans and Russians who have gone were armed with the great belief that they would come back. But I cannot believe that they did not have some slight foreboding on the contingency of their non-return. It is their courage for going in spite of these apprehensions that makes the world hail them so loudly today.

The big fish is never caught in shallow waters. You have to go into the open sea for it. The biggest businessmen make decisions with lighting speed and carry them out with equal celerity. They do not dare delay or dally. Time would pass them by if they did. The biggest successes are preceded by the greatest of heart-burnings. You should read the stories of the bomber pilots of World War II. The Russian pilot, the German pilot, the American or the British pilot suffered exactly the same physical and mental tension the night before a raid on enemy territory. There were no alternative routes for those who most genuinely believed in victory for their side.

You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, throughout the world, there is no paean without pain. Jawaharlal Nehru has put it so well. I am paraphrasing him. He wants to meet his troubles in a frontal attack. He wants to see himself tossed into the aperture between the two horns of the bull. Being there, he determines he is going to win and, therefore, such a fight requires all his faculties.
When my sisters and I were young and we slept on our small mats round our mother, she always woke up at 6a.m. for morning prayers. She always said prayers on our behalf but always ended with something like this: ‘May we not enter into any dangers or get into any difficulties this day.’ It took me almost thirty years to dislodge the canker-worm in our mother’s sentiments. I found, by hard experience, that all that is noble and laudable was to be achieved only through difficulties and trials and tears and dangers. There are no other roads.

If I was born into a royal family and should one day become a constitutional king, I am inclined to think I should go crazy. How could I, from day to day, go on smiling and nodding approval at somebody else’s successes for an entire lifetime? When Edward the Eighth (now Duke of Windsor) was a young, sprightly Prince of Wales, he went to Canada and shook so many hands that his right arm nearly got pulled out of its socket. It went into a sling and he shook hands thenceforth with his left hand. It would appear he was trying his utmost to make a serious job out of downright sinecure.
Life, if it is going to be abundant, must have plenty of hills and vales. It must have plenty of sunshine and rough weather. It must be rich in obfuscation and perspicacity. It must be packed with days of danger and of apprehension.

When I walk into the dry but certainly cool morning air of every January 1st, I wish myself plenty of tears and of laughter, plenty of happiness and unhappiness, plenty of failures and successes. Plenty of abuse and praise. It is impossible to win ultimately without a rich measure of inter mixture in such a menu. Life would be worthless without the lot. We do not achieve much in this country because we are all so scared of taking risks. We all want the smooth and well-paved roads. While the reason the Americans and others succeeded so well is that they took such great risks.
If, therefore, you are out in this New Year 1964, to win any target you have set for yourself, please accept my prayers and your elixir. May your road be rough!

Tai Solarin (1922-1994) was one of Nigeria’s foremost social activists and front line educationists, his evergreen legacy includes the famous Mayflower School, Ikenne and Molusi College Ijebu-Igbo Ogun state. This article was first published in Daily Times Newspaper of January 1st, 1964.

The Etisalat Example by Dr. Kazeem Bello.

The Abu Dhabi Government that owned Etisalat pulled the company out of Nigeria last week and gave the Nigerian ex-partners 7 days to change its name and drop its Trade name. That has been complied with. Etisalat Nigeria changed the name this past week. The news information about this I monitored on my travel to Dubai on the local news which indicated that the Nigerian Etisalat claimed it invested over $20 billion on equipment and facilities in Nigeria. The news Analyst from Dubai Business New Network TV insisted that it is not possible. The parent company invested $13 billion in Gulf Area to attract over 40 million subscribers, with high world class services , how can Etisalat Nigeria invest $20 billion for 22 million subscribers with epileptic services and a debt ridden company?

The Abu Dhabi home office is struggling to remove the negative effect of the news on the company's stock market performance. It is being very difficult because the numbers are not adding up. The questions in Abu Dhabi is what does Etisalat Head quarters know about the mammoth fraud that prevailed in Etisalat Nigeria? How can the company claim to have spent so much in investment and infrastructure and yet come out with huge debts?

While Etisalat Group is facing serious backlash at home over this monumental fraud, in Nigeria, our CBN is not even asking any question to unravel why the company suddenly went bankrupt. Instead, our CBN and Ministry of Finance from the above are struggling to take over the company's debts and pass it to the unsuspecting tax payers under the umbrella of the debt ridden AMCOM.

The Chairman of the Board and all Board members of the defunct Etisalat Nigeria resigned and walked away free leaving Nigerians with another private sector mismanaged debt ridden company.

Actually, the major reason for my worried contribution here is on the Banking System in Nigeria and the financial mess we may have found ourselves in. Many Nigerians may not know this for a fact because the authorities will never tell you the truth, just like it took several years of noise for the NNPC to admit that the corporation is debt ridden and bankrupt. The Government of Nigeria will not admit it that the CBN of Nigeria is currently running at a Deficit Financial Model. This is called a DEF Model operations in Central Banking structure and practice. For references, you can google " Greece Monetary Collapse" and also the great fall in Brazilian financial system in the 90's. The CBN is almost at those crescendo from all indications going by several body languages, utterances and news from the international financial circle.
The CBN may not be able to cover import bills for more that 15 days from now as we speak which is a huge red flag! The CBN is currently not in any position to bail out the Government in any form due to distress in its liquidity-money creation matrix. CBN cannot perform its role as lender of last resort to the Government of Nigeria as we speak, a major function of Central Banking system. This may be the reason why last week, the Hon Minister of Finance addressed a press conference to tell Nigerians that they are in trouble but most Nigerians just did not understand how to interpret her unspoken words. She said clearly that Government will have to aggressively borrow money from abroad to implement the 2017 budget. Her reason was predicated on the wrong and super inferior analysis that Nigeria has a low debt-capital ratio hence there are rooms for more external debts. We better find a way to stop her from running a huge debt that OBJ was able to clear up during his regime but was kept low during Jonathan's regime due to oil windfall which makes borrowing unnecessary then.

Now with disappointing and falling oil prices, low income-revenue generation by Government, NNPC totally broke running at huge deficits, CBN's inability to bail out Government, we seem to have no choice than to go back to external borrowing at premium at all cost.

Something is pathologically wrong with the Nigerian system. I have written about this in early December 2016 when the budget estimates came out. I pointed to the totally wrong budget appropriation and tagged it a budget of " Economic Contractions". I mentioned that by 3rd quarter of the year, the bubble will burst if something is not done and the Economy may slide into a full blown depression far worse than recession. It is not known what the facts are right now because there are various attempts to hide facts and give erroneous figures to the unsuspecting public. The situation is really bad based on International Analysts facts and figures especially with perceived not admitted dire financial crises at the CBN. We may see an Economic Emergency Bill very soon showing up at the desk of the Senate President but with the current face off between the Acting President and the Senate leadership, it is doubtful if such required bill will ever come to surface. That will be an instrument for the " hawks" in the Senate to roast the Acting President and blackmail him further of incompetence. In the fight between two giant elephants, the grass will have to pay dearly and suffer for it. Nigerians will grow in more poverty, no power, no infrastructure, high inflation, and low economic activities and no salaries for work done.

Back to the Etisalat case, this is the fact of the matter and CBN has not deemed it fit to raise any probe on the huge bank lending to one single company without adequate collateral. Indeed what asset does Etisalat own aside from its license that will be worth the amount of debts being cited? I don't live in Nigeria but at least on my visits, I have not seen any such assets except power masts all over the place.

The same Nigerian Banks gave billions to all the debt ridden GENCOs AND DISCOs with no collateral and yet we have no power. Again, I have written on this issue before. How the power system in Nigeria was defrauded by the collusion of the so-called investors, Nigerian Banks and some officials in the defunct FGN. Nigerians are very prayerful people, we are still trooping to the worship places to pray for steady power supply when some are swimming in billions from the fraud in the sector. Our dream for steady power supply is daily becoming a mirage, to say the least.

The other day, I was having a discussion with a Chinese group of investors on telephone and internet network projects. They mentioned that with about $5 billion dollars in investment in highly powerful telecom equipment and satellite infrastructure, they will supply over 120 million in Nigeria with highly efficient phone and internet network service with super easy, small and latest technology. So why is Etisalat with $20 billion in investment not able to supply good phone and internet network service in Nigeria? Yet poor Nigerians are paying for poor services and will again pay the company's debt through our taxes.
The same way the same people buy and pay for banks and goes around to liquidate the same bank while the tax payers takes over the debts through AMCON.