Feature/OPED
2023, Nigeria’s year of Ghen-Ghen
By Prince Charles Dickson PhD
Someone who has sold an old woman before knows the price of an old man
Yes, like Prophet Jeroboam, of Wole Soyinka’s famed Jero Plays, I danced with eyes closed and spoke in tongues not known to me and asked the higher powers what was in store for Nigeria; the clouds I saw were misty; it was moving like this and like that and ghen-ghen.
I saw that Nigeria would not break; Nigeria will not fail or fall because it already has. We are not united, but we are one in corruption, one in greed, one in maladministration and misgovernance. And very well united in our religious and ethnic brinksmanship.
The year 2022 was a long year, a year that a lot of us want to forget for so many reasons, and others would not forget for obvious reasons. But either way, what more can we do than be happy that we were finally able to navigate it somehow? There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic this year as well as a lot to be pessimistic about; a lot of us will be watching with an eagle eye as events unfold towards the general elections; on the international scene, the drama will certainly continue from where it stopped last year.
This essay would be a thrust of all I expect would be confronting us this year as a nation and as a people; it would be a confabulation of issues that, if tackled, can take us closer to the promised land and, if neglected, as usual, will only be ingredients for disaster and a continued slide towards doom. And the signs show that the latter is inevitable!
From the beginning of this year, we will be battling against poverty, of the mind, of pocket and sensibilities; despite seven years of reforms by the outgoing Buhari administration, we will still remain one of the poorest in the globe, despite our natural and human resources, due to human mismanagement we would be battling to sustain meaningful development, and growth that is equal to the expectations of our people.
With the emergence of the Obis, Tinubus, Atikus and co., again though subtly, we will still be concerned about tribal sentiments, ethnicity, and religion and thus, to a large extent, none of or few of us are thinking nor discussing meritocracy. Around these three evils and many more, we are likely to be subjected to more political irresponsibility, rascality and political arithmetic that further alienates the rulers from the ruled.
We shall again be fighting against negative statistics of reality; we still are likely to remain one of the poorest; the statistics would be against us, whether corruption or malaria, but we will still remain and continue to feature amongst nations with the worst badly run economies, a lot of ghen-ghen (events of crazy proportion) would occur.
We are insecure as a people, we are once more going to be constantly dependent on others after 63 years of paper independence; despite all that really and imagined rice pyramid, the rice we eat would still come from Thailand, any land but not our land, our drugs both fake and original, we have India, Germany and co. to thank for them.
This year, will we be able to make sense of our economic policies, both micro and macro, with currencies that bleach when washed mistakenly in a jean, while we say alhamdulillah for Innoson Motors, our cars, computers, clothing, ballpoint pens, all from obodo oyinbo. Will we shed off the skin of a nation that is full of contradictions, a nation of millions of school leavers without jobs, a nation of millions sick with curable diseases and ailments, a nation yet blessed with fertile land, with intelligent men and women in abundance? But being punished by a handful of crooks called leaders, being ruled by mediocres. A nation where amidst this poverty, a man would steal billions.
The issues that stop us from attaining nationhood again would include the fact that we are all hypocrites, constantly waiting for any opportunity to better Judas Iscariot in the act of betrayal, go ask Wike, Atiku and Co. Topmost is, we shall again see leaders who grew up in Oshodi, schooled in Oshodi, lived there all their lives and get elected to serve Oshodi, and the first thing on their card would be a familiarization tour of Oshodi. Our Leaders would still be exploring all means and any means necessary to steal from us.
With looting, corruption and insincerity, the ball again would be played on the pitch of underdevelopment and to think otherwise would be deceitful. In a world experiencing a time and season of global recession, our cry would still be trying to catch the Asian Tigers, even West African puppies have gone too far for comfort. Our life expectancy would likely drop further, even as more roads are likely to be unmotorable. We shall lose more kids at birth due to a lack of infrastructure while leaders and the affluent treat their stomach disorders in Paris.
More children would fail their qualifying exams, especially with all the strikes of the preceding year. With less than 50 cents a day, only the Almighty and our perseverance can keep us going.
We shall suffer the rule of idiots because sages are kept in the dustbin, maybe we will have exceptions here and there, Insha Allah, but again, it is going to be like it was; while Tafawa Balewa wanted to be a broadcaster, the powers that be thought otherwise, Yakubu Gowon was not intellectually, psychologically, temperamentally, ready but the oligarchy said it must be him. Then we had an all-knowing OBJ in his first coming who was forced on us by Danjuma, Shehu Yaradua and co.
In Shagari, it was no different, as the man that wanted just to be a Senator, a man that was not even at the Row Park venue of the NPN primaries, emerged as the winner without his consent; he was not even aware that his name was on the ballot. In 1998 fresh from prison, the Baba of Aso Rock had asked, “how many Presidents did Nigeria want to make of him” but we did not listen. We witnessed a crying Mr Buhari, who says he cannot wait to leave; he has done his best whether it is good enough will be debated because, after all, the shoeless one before him from Otueke is revered now.
The Emilokans, Unifiers, and Obidients, men who crave it, with the exception of one. These are the specs that we have to navigate this new year. INEC would be in the eye of the storm, as well as the Police, the ruling APC, PDP, the G5, EFCC, and many ruffians that the government has created.
Things could be better; Nigeria can be great if only these institutions, if men and women of goodwill, can take the bull; if only you and I can make a concerted effort at being right in our own little way and fight in our own small corner.
The nation must emerge, or else we are wasting time again, we must fight for liberation from tribal loyalties, ethnic jingoism, religious parapoism, monetary godfatherism and many more. We will have to move a ladder up from hope and expectation to reality.
In this New Year, we have to move towards Nigeria, with Nigerians, we either continue the self-deceit and watch the nation crumble like cookies. As I welcome us into this new year, let me say that this is our nation, we are the only ones that can stop the drift; people that claim to love us are few, and many nations are watching and waiting. Let us remember that we cannot continue to massage the ringworm and leave the sore. Almighty Allah, we as a people thank You for a New Year and ask for the best, but are we working towards it—Time will tell.
By Winston Osuchukwu
The average Nigerian borrower is widely considered high-risk – a claim repeated in credit committees, priced into retail loans, and largely treated as settled fact. Every credit market accepts that an individual loan may not be repaid; this is ordinary, priced risk. The high-risk claim, however, is applied to whole segments – the informal trader, the gig economy earner whose income is steady but split across several accounts, the remote worker paid by an overseas client into a fintech FX wallet. What the assessment establishes is not whether they are likely to repay, but how they fit into an arbitrary segment. Having spent years building decisioning systems for this market, my thesis is a specific one: “high-risk” does not mean “no credit” – it simply requires that the lender embrace alternative datasets to price the risk appropriately.
This is not a criticism of the institutions that built their frameworks around collateral and documentation; those were rational responses to the tools available at the time. When data is scarce, prudence means defaulting to the status quo. The limitation is not that this approach is wrong, but that it leaves a blind spot – excluding fundamentally sound borrowers whose economic lives simply are not captured on the bank’s ledger. A market trader who has moved consistent, growing volumes of cash through mobile money for three years is not, in any meaningful sense, unknowable. Their financial behaviour is observable and patterned; it simply occurs outside the traditional banking system, rendering it invisible to conventional underwriting.
This is the gap technology is now positioned to close – not by replacing institutional judgment, but by augmenting it. When AI-driven analysis is applied rigorously to the financial behaviour these borrowers generate, a far more complete picture of their repayment ability emerges – and a meaningful share presents a risk profile that compares favourably with segments the traditional system has long considered safe. The “high-risk” label, applied broadly to an entire category of borrower, was never a risk pricing tool so much as the limit of what the available tools could see.
For banks, this is the opportunity to extend capital with confidence beyond the borrowers who fit their stringent criteria. Nigerian banks are highly liquid; the constraint on credit growth has rarely been capital, but the ability to assess and price the borrowers who sit outside the traditional file. Close that gap, and the whole ecosystem strengthens: banks grow their loan books into segments they have long wanted to serve, and the real economy gets the capital it needs to expand.
This is precisely what we focus on at Mathesis Analytics: building AI-powered credit decisioning that gives lenders a fuller, more defensible picture of the individuals long excluded as high-risk when they were simply misjudged. The Nigerian credit gap has never been a non-lendable population problem, but one of incomplete visibility. By unifying varied data sources and partnering with the institutions that hold the capital and scale to move the market, we translate out-of-ecosystem behaviour into reliable, bank-grade risk scores. Closing this gap is one of the clearest, highest-leverage opportunities in Nigerian financial services today.
Winston Osuchukwu is the founder & CEO of Mathesis Analytics
By Ohore Emmanuel Ufuoma
The Early Years classrooms have effectively become surrogate homes where educators now tie shoelaces, calm separation anxiety, supervise naps, enforce discipline, and provide comfort after minor injuries, which ought to be duties that should be performed by parents.
The extended work hours from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. for six days a week, economic realities, and the proliferation of all-day, weekend-inclusive early learning programs have repositioned schools as the primary environment for early childhood development.
For a typical four-year-old, 9.5 hours in school account for about 75% of waking weekday time. With Saturday sessions added, the home is reduced to a space for meals, sleep, and brief routines.
The mandate of Early Years teachers has expanded far beyond academics. Current practice requires them to handle physical care, emotional regulation, and behavioural guidance concurrently.
Daily responsibilities include toileting assistance, feeding, conflict mediation, fatigue monitoring, and maintaining individual routines for 15–20 pupils.
The parent-child dynamic shifts when parents deliberately delegate care of the child, and even punishment, to educators. While parents set apart evenings and weekends for practical tasks, like food, homework, and bathing.
Psychologists term it “contact without connection.” Although parents are physically present, time is divided and focused on tasks.
Children are more obedient and organised in class than they are at home, according to teachers. Parents describe the contrary. The pattern shows an expected result: the parent becomes the outlet for exhaustion, while the educator becomes the authority figure.
The labour market triggered the transfer of responsibilities between parents and educators.
Dual-income households are now the norm in major cities, and flexible work remains limited outside tech and finance.
Child caregiver costs compound the issue. Full-time caregiver care often costs almost half of a salary. Parents opt for schools with extended hours in order to kill two birds with one stone.
For educational centres, extended-day programs create parent-like responsibilities, and staffing, training, and compensation should reflect that. In leading centres, professional development in attachment theory and stress management is becoming standard.
For parents, the emphasis should be on quality rather than quantity.
Policymakers are beginning to prioritise employment rules that permit parental presence during early childhood and accessible, flexible daycare. Strong early attachment is associated with higher scholastic success and fewer behavioural problems in later life.
The Early Years teacher and the parents have not replaced each other. Both parties are only responding to a system that demands more hours in the workplace with fewer hours at home.
There has been a paradigm shift in the upbringing of children. The teachers now perform functions once meant for the family unit.
Intentional parenting inside the small windows has been left in the hands of caregivers.
Instead of the classroom remaining a place of learning, it has become the only home children know.
Ohore Emmanuel Ufuoma is an MBA student at Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa University, Turkey
By Quintin Roberts
When banks and financial institutions upgrade their physical security systems, they are making decisions that will affect operations for years. Branch formats are changing, cyber risks are increasing, and security teams are being asked to support more sites, more data, and more business functions. The challenge is keeping pace with change in a way that holds up over time.
A modern physical security strategy needs to go beyond protection. It needs to give teams a clearer view across branches, support consistent governance, and provide the flexibility to adapt as technology and operational needs change. The following considerations focus on foundational choices that help banks build security operations that are resilient and can grow with the business.
Choose open architecture to preserve long-term flexibility
Banks and financial institutions often manage a mix of legacy systems, newer technologies, and location-specific requirements. A proprietary system can limit scalability, options for devices, and which systems can connect across the organisation. Over time, this can increase costs and make it harder to modernise without replacing infrastructure that still has value.
Open architecture gives decision-makers more choice and preserves flexibility. It allows financial institutions to select the cameras, access control devices, sensors, analytics, and other technologies that best fit each location and adapt them as their needs change.
This allows teams to modernise in phases. For example, an institution may standardise video management across many sites while keeping existing cameras in place, then replace hardware over time.
Decide how to deploy your security system
Some banks want to keep core systems on-premises at major sites. Others prefer cloud-managed services for smaller branches, remote locations, or new sites that need faster deployment and less local infrastructure. Many need a mix of both. Deployment flexibility gives them the freedom to choose where systems run, how data is stored, and how services are managed.
This is especially important for institutions with different regulatory requirements, bandwidth limitations, and internal IT policies. A flexible deployment model helps banks modernise at their own pace while maintaining control over performance, cybersecurity, compliance, and cost.
Unify operations to improve visibility across branches
Managing video surveillance, access control, intrusion, and other systems separately slows down response time and makes investigations harder. Operators may need to sign into different applications, search through data in different ways, and manually piece together what happened. Across hundreds of branches, these inefficiencies can add up quickly.
A unified security platform gives teams one operating picture across systems and sites. A local team can respond faster to an incident at a single location, while a central security operations centre can monitor trends, support remote sites, and apply consistent procedures across the network.
A unified system that creates a shared context makes incorporating analytics or AI-driven capabilities more effective, further accelerating searches, identifying patterns, and reducing overall investigation time.
Put cybersecurity and governance at the forefront
Physical security systems are connected to the broader IT environment. Devices all need to be managed as part of the bank’s cyber risk profile. If systems are outdated or inconsistently configured across branches, they can create unnecessary exposure and make long-term management harder. When cybersecurity and governance are a foundational part of the system, encryption, authentication, user permissions, system updates, audit trails, retention policies, and privacy controls are applied consistently across locations.
A centralised approach makes this consistency sustainable. It provides accountability for banks, helping teams keep track of who accessed which systems, who changed permissions, how long video is retained, and how evidence is shared. This is important for meeting regulatory expectations and adapting security operations over time. Further, consistent policies make organisational risk management more effective by standardising how risk is handled across the organisation, adding to future resilience.
Automate workflows for better risk mitigation and investigations
Investigations often involve information from several systems and locations. A suspicious ATM transaction may need to be matched with video, or an access event may need to be reviewed alongside intrusion activity. If that information sits in separate systems, investigations take longer and are harder to document.
Unified systems connect the relevant context across video, access control, license plate recognition, and other systems. This supports faster investigations and helps teams share evidence internally or with law enforcement while maintaining the chain of custody.
Improve business operations using physical security data
Physical security systems collect valuable operational data every day, from occupancy levels to device health. A unified platform can turn this data into useful insights, helping security teams identify recurring issues and improve resource planning. Other departments can use the same information to improve customer experience, branch operations, and facility management.
For example, occupancy and queue data help banks understand when branches are busiest. Device health monitoring enables teams to identify maintenance needs before systems fail. And with centralised reporting, leadership can see patterns across the full branch network rather than relying on isolated site-level reports.
Making the right choices for the long term
As banks modernise their physical security infrastructure, long-term resilience will depend on foundational choices. Strategies based on open architecture, deployment flexibility, unification, cybersecurity, governance, and data all help financial institutions build systems that can adapt well into the future.
Quintin Roberts is the Regional Sales Manager for Genetec Africa
