Feature/OPED
Ortom and Public Interest
By Jerome-Mario Chijioke Utomi
Looking at the number of politicians in Nigeria that play politics with neither ideology nor principle, it will not be characterized as hasty if one concludes that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist, had Nigerians, particularly politicians in mind, when he, many years ago, remarked that seven things which have to do with social and political conditions would destroy a man.
Gandhi, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign against the colonial master in India, named these seven sins to, include; Wealth Without Work, Pleasure Without Conscience, Knowledge Without Character, Commerce (Business), Without Morality (Ethics), Science Without Humanity, Religion Without Sacrifice, and Politics Without Principle.
Indeed, this piece need not search far to know that a great number of Nigerians are, in their social, economic, religious, moral and political endeavours, guilty of these sins.
While this state of affairs remains unpalatable as well as condemnable, there are, however, some hopeful signs that not all politicians in Nigeria are without principle.
Going by the recent news report that Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, a member of the People Democratic (PDP), lately threw his weight behind the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, in the forthcoming elections, barely 48 hours after former President Olusegun Obasanjo released a six-page letter endorsing the former Anambra State governor, one will to a large extent believe that Ortom is among the very Nigerians that presently play politics, not for private gain but the purpose of the greater good for the greater number, politics laced in principle.
Governor Ortom, according to the report, strongly recommended Peter Obi to Nigerians as the man who has the capacity to effectively tackle the economic, security and other challenges facing the country, noting that Obi possesses the qualities of a leader who will be a true President of this country by guaranteeing justice, equity and fairness for all Nigerians.
Essentially, apart from being reputed for possessing nation-building prowess and laced with a burning desire to see Nigeria transform into a nation where equity, justice and peace shall reign supreme, Ortom, by the latest declaration, has demonstrated that his sense of nationhood, public good, national cohesion and development is stronger than ethnic, religious and political consideration.
In addition to the above, there are other traceable indices and critical, creative leadership feats and ingenuity that vividly qualify Ortom as outstandingly famous in the present circumstance.
First, he is one of five aggrieved governors of the PDP known as the G5 or Integrity Group. Others are Nyesom Wike (Rivers), Seyi Makinde (Oyo), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu) and Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia).
The governors have refrained from campaigning for the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, amid opposition to the party’s National Chairman, Senator Iyorchia Ayu, coming from the same region as the standard bearer. Ortom in the opinion of this piece, is a believer in fairness, equity and justice.
Also remarkable is the fact that the Benue state Governor did not hide under the cloak of ‘party supremacy or anti-party activity in his presidential endorsement of Peter Obi.
Another area of interest that is worth commenting on is the news that the Governor threw his weight behind Obi of the Labour Party without minding whether such action would affect his (Ortom) senatorial ambition on the platform of the PDP.
Again, before the latest support to Mr Obi, Governor Ortom has scored so many firsts in the time past as a result of his well-foresighted leadership strategies.
Take, as an illustration, he spearheaded the anti-open grazing campaign. In the wake of the farmers/herders crisis across the country, many were against Governor Ortom’s position on the matter, as it were.
Like a prophet and a lone voice in the wilderness, he cried persistently that the need for solutions to insecurity has become more urgent at the present because the problem is far more serious now than it was a few years ago.
At a different time and place, he called on the Federal Government to address the deteriorating insecurity in the country, which manifests in killings, kidnappings, arson and other acts of banditry and terrorism.
Worsening the situation was the fact that his calls came at a time when someone outspoken, with a different set of ideas, values, or organizing techniques, was viewed as ‘the enemy within’. And the constructive debate is perceived as unnecessary, messy and divisive, and differing political ideas and strategies are perceived as destructive to the nation’s interest.
For Nigerians with critical minds, Governor Ortom’s ban on open grazing in his state is important because open grazing is the first line of conflict between herders and farmers. The friction caused untold hardship as farms worth millions were destroyed, and farmers were killed for resisting herders’ influx into their farmlands; consequently, many farmers were forced to flee from their farms, farm yields dimmed, and food inflation was gaining ground across the country.
Today, there is progress across the board. At the National Assembly, both the upper and lower chambers have finally seen reason and presently align with his position on insecurity in the country.
Ortom’s demonstration of objectivity, truth and patriotism in Peter Obi’s endorsement glaringly confirms that Leadership holds the key to unlocking the transformation question in Nigeria. Only a sincere and selfless leader and a politically and economically restructured polity brought about by national consensus can unleash the social and economic forces that can ensure the total transformation of the country and propel her to true greatness.
Without a doubt, the country, as Ortom recently argued, is on the verge of collapse, owing to leadership failure and its attendant consequences of poverty, heightened insecurity with banditry, kidnappings and other acts of terrorism threatening the very foundations of the nation.
Ortom may not be alone in the present circumstance as well-foresighted Nigerians have before now argued that the President that Nigeria needs at this challenging time in the country’s history should be one who understands the urgent need to unite the people and speedily initiate policies and actions to redirect the ship of the nation on the path of growth and development.
In line with the above belief, this piece, as usual, calls on Nigerians to use their Permanent Voters Cards (PVC) to jettison the present socio-economic system that has bred corruption, inefficiency, primitive capital accumulation and socially excluded the vast majority of our people.
Just as the only way this can be done is to work to build a new social and political order that can mobilize the people around common interests, with visionary leadership to drive this venture. Only then can we truly begin to resolve some of the socio-economic contradictions afflicting the nation.
Finally, as noted in my earlier intervention, there are, in fact, two striking attributes worth mentioning that stand Ortom out; first and very fundamental, he is a national leader that is well respected by all.
Secondly, Ortom is among the few public office holders in the country that have played politics using global rules and dictates. He is, in the opinion of this piece, a clear thinker and belongs to the class of those that can cull everything down into the right points irrespective of political divides.
Jerome-Mario Chijioke Utomi is the Programme Coordinator (Media and Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), Lagos. He can be reached via je*********@***oo.com/08032725374
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
