Shiro Olawale Oreoluwa M.Sc.

@gtbank, is there a reason my account has not be credited?

EASY PLACES ARE FULL: What my Lebanese friend taught me about business in Nigeria By Kemi Adeosun Before you scroll off in anger: calm down. He is real. He has been in Nigeria longer than some of you reading this have been alive. His children go to school here. His grandchildren may well be buried here. The Lebanese community in Nigerian business is not a rumour, not a colonial hangover awaiting apology, and not going anywhere. They are woven into the fabric of commerce in this country. So pour yourself something cold and read on. I will not name him — that was the price of the conversation, and I paid it gladly. As part of my work on Nidacity, I put together a board of advisers and concluded it would not be honest or representative without input from the Lebanese business community. So I assured him he would only ever be identified as ‘my Lebanese friend,’ and in exchange he gave me something rare: the kind of unhurried candour that only becomes available when a man is not managing his reputation. I had expected the usual litany: the generators, the customs officials, the phone calls from people whose names you never quite catch. I thought I knew what he was going to say. I was wrong. Intentionality His family did not end up in Nigeria by accident or desperation. They chose it. After careful study conducted over generations — cousins sent ahead like scouts, findings reported back, sectors analysed for structural need. The question was never “Is Nigeria easy?” “We don’t come to easy places. Have you been to Lebanon?” he said. “Easy places are full. We look for places where there is need and where many are too fearful to take on.” A conscious decision, renewed deliberately, to believe in the upside of a place that some investors treat as a risk footnote. Compare that to the Nigerian entrepreneurs I have encountered who entered sectors because they fell into them — because an official had briefly left a door open. Circumstantial businesses, built not on a view but on an accident. There is nothing wrong with opportunism. But it is not the same as intentionality, and in a market as volatile as Nigeria’s, the difference reveals itself quickly. Preparation and Optimism — Held Together I have watched enough foreign investors arrive in Nigeria with optimism, survive the first six months on momentum, and then — somewhere around the fourteenth week a container sat in Apapa, or a promised approval went quiet — curdle into bitterness. Undone not by a single disaster but by the accumulated weight of friction. My friend’s answer was almost offhand. Before any member of his network opens a business in Nigeria, there is a period of what he called “mental loading” — an acceptance, in advance, of the specific costs Nigeria will impose. The generator will fail. The duty will change. The official will need to be managed. These are not surprises to be absorbed; they are variables to be budgeted. “When it happens,” he said, “we are not shocked. Shocked people make bad decisions.” But here is where it gets interesting. You might assume that a community which prepares for friction would develop a siege mentality. The opposite is true. The mental preparation does not produce pessimism — it liberates optimism. Because the difficulties have already been priced in, he is free to focus entirely on the upside. “The problems here are the opportunities. Every broken thing is a business waiting to be built. We just have to decide we are staying long enough to build it.” Two hundred million people with needs the formal economy has consistently failed to meet is not a crisis. It is an unserved market. Most people who fail in Nigeria fail not because Nigeria defeated them, but because they were surprised by the Nigeria that actually exists. Pre-acceptance of the cost is what turns friction from a shock into a schedule. Nigeria Is Not Lebanon Lebanon’s economy has contracted by more than 38 per cent since 2019. The pound has lost over 98 per cent of its value. Banks are effectively insolvent, having accumulated losses north of $72 billion, with depositors locked out of their own savings for years. The country defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2020 — the first time in its history. The economy that was $54 billion in 2018 was worth around $28 billion in 2024. I asked him, as carefully as I could: is the loyalty to Nigeria strategic, or is it simply that going home is no longer an option? “Nigeria is not our consolation prize. Lebanon happened to Lebanon because Lebanon had no size to absorb the shocks. Nigeria can always absorb the shock. That is the asset you people keep undervaluing.” Lebanon’s commercial model depended on openness — the banking sector, tourism, remittances, regional transit. When those foundations cracked together, there was nothing structural underneath. Nigeria’s famous problems — its infrastructure gaps, its institutional friction — are also, viewed from the right angle, the moat. They keep out the faint-hearted and make the businesses built here difficult to displace. “Lebanon has no moat,” he said. “Anybody can come in and anybody can leave. That is why everybody left.” The Money Never Goes to the Bank Then I made the mistake of mentioning banks. His expression shifted in a way that only good manners prevented from becoming a laugh. His community does not put its money in banks. Not as a cultural quirk but as a lesson paid for by people they knew personally — depositors who worked forty years and could not withdraw their own savings from a machine on the street. So they use banks as transaction rails, nothing more. The actual capital circulates within the network. “We lend to each other. If my cousin needs capital, I give it to him. If I need to bridge a gap, someone gives it to me. We know each other. We know who is good for it.” I told him Nigerians would recognise that — ajo, esusu, the thousand small arrangements by which money moves between people who trust each other more than they trust institutions. He shook his head gently. Correctively. “You call it helping. We don’t see it that way. Helping is emotional. What we do is structural. If I put my money in a bank and the bank fails, I have nothing. If I put my money in my nephew and his business fails, I know where he lives. I know his father. That relationship is the security. The bank was never the security — it was just the place we pretended the security lived.” The $72 billion locked behind Lebanese bank counters belonged largely to people who trusted the institution over the network. The people who kept their capital in the family, in the cousin’s trading account and the nephew’s warehouse, lost far less. Not because they were lucky. Because they had decided, long before the crisis, that trust was the only bank that does not fail. This is not a piece about why foreigners understand Nigeria better than Nigerians do. Indeed my work interviewing Nigerian entrepreneurs suggests otherwise. There are Nigerians putting serious capital to work in Nigeria and making money. The Lebanese community did not invent discipline or patience or long-term thinking. What they have done is systematise it — intentionality over accident, preparation over surprise, the network over the institution, and a generational commitment that outlasts any single political weather change. The good news is that what is transmitted can be learned. It is the decision, made in advance and renewed daily, to stay. -Adeosun is a former Minister of Finance of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and former Commissioner for Finance of Ogun State. She is the founder of Nidacity.com. #KemKem

As a lifelong @chelseafc fan, I did have a discussion o egg the weekend with a younger person about how Caceido isn't elite yet and ranks below all tlwe had from Claude to Kanye, through Michael and Obi. Glad he listened but I know he's shocked as I don't engage in such alot

@Onsogbu , I

Early last month, I went into keke business with a yoruba guy. Dude has been all over my posts, begging me for keke, that he will be remitting money to me, every weekend, so much so that I started noticing his comments. That fateful day, I replied him to find out how much it cost, that I will go into the business with him, then told him to send me a WhatsApp message. We finalized, and I sent him money to buy the keke. I did this, without signing any agreement with him, knowing fully well that this guy might block me and not remit any money, just like my past experiences with uber guys 🤦‍♀️. In my mind, I helped a guy, whether he remitted or not, wasn’t my big concern, I spent money I knew I could easily let go. To my surprise, dude wrote me the first weekend to ask for my account, to send the first payment, exactly the amount we agreed. Since then, he has not failed. Today, after I received his payment, I sent him a message and told him not to send me any more money any longer, that he should move on with his life. It was yesterday I found out he is a married man with 2 children. He was so happy and sound so blessed. You see yoruba people, they are many, many good. I’ve never had a bad encounter with anyone of them. Main reason I trust them instantly, without any fears, they never disappoint me. 🤗 I know the world, especially where we come from, is full of bad people, but the good ones still exists and they are in large numbers. I’ve encountered them all, both the good and bad. Nothing will make me stop being generous, absolutely nothing! 💯 % Okorokwo Ejike

@HEDAgenda @larryk371

If your laptop is slow and keeps hanging, do this NOW. I hope this helps you as it has helped me:

THE OFFICIAL CIA MANUAL OF TRICKERY AND DECEPTION I will link the PDF download below this post. Enjoy.

THE END WE NEVER SAW COMING: A GENERATION OF MEN WAKING UP TOO LATE There is a truth almost all men only understand when they are older, a truth that arrives with a sting: 99.9% of us totally misjudged our fathers. Many of us grew up closer to our mothers. We heard her frustrations first. We saw her sadness before we ever understood its source. We believed her stories before we had the maturity to question them. And slowly, quietly, we formed a picture of our fathers that was incomplete. We thought he stayed out late because he didn’t care. We thought he worked late because he didn’t love us. We thought he kept to himself because he was a cold heartless man. Nobody told us he worked late so we could have shoes he never owned. Nobody told us the reason he looked tired most times wasn’t alcohol, it was responsibility. Nobody told us he didn’t choose silence; he chose peace in a world that demanded strength from him every single day. Nobody told us that the little he kept for himself came after everyone else had eaten. Nobody told us that the roof over our heads was not “basic duty” it was sacrifice. Nobody told us he carried storms we never saw. We were too young to know truth. Too naïve to see nuance. Too quick to inherit someone else’s anger. And now, look around. A new generation of men is living the exact same story. Men who promised themselves they would “be better fathers.” Men who swore they would “never be like their dads.” Men who gave their families more than their own fathers ever could; better schools, better homes, better food, better opportunities, better lives. Men who carried the world and called it love. But here they are now……sadly living the same loneliness their fathers died with. The same silence. The same emotional distance from their own children. The same feeling of being unseen in their own homes. The same exhaustion from providing while feeling unnecessary. The same ache of realizing you gave everything and somehow still became the villain in the story. It is only now, in this season of life, that many men whisper the words they once mocked: “My father was not a weak man. He was a tired man.” They finally understand that what they called “coldness” was actually worn-out patience. What they called “distance” was actually pressure. What they called “uncaring” was actually sacrifice no one bothered to explain. A wise old man once said: “You will know your father was right the day life puts you in his shoes.” And that day has arrived for many. This is not about blaming anyone. This is about acknowledging the wounds we inherited, the truths we ignored and the patterns we now see repeating in our own lives. The lonely end of good men did not begin with us. We are simply the first generation willing to speak it aloud. Maybe the lesson is this: Men must learn to take care of themselves, not just everyone else. Men must learn their value before the world teaches them otherwise. Men must learn to speak before silence destroys them. Men must learn that strength without support is just slow dying. A generation of men is waking up today and finally whispering: “Maybe my father wasn’t the problem. Maybe he was the warning.”

@TheBlueDodger 0lpll0pl

@KwabenaPumpkin Fufu

Name a word she can’t pronounce well😂

@GallantDaletian @olabisof_lag23 You are lucky Isese ceremony don pass. Ama fi bo ogun ni. Lol

@olabisof_lag23 Sharp cutlass is available though.........

Say Hi to Gemini or have a terrible November..

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@chaplinez70 P

Can someone please explain to me how this EI Lagos GP benefits the average Lagos resident commercially? The trickle down effect to the disadvantaged.

@ogundamisi Excess Burantashi

The legitimate question to Senator Elisha Abbo, Why always you?

@GallantDaletian @milnewsng Abu Ali!

@milnewsng I see this tank everytime and only one man comes to mind!!!

A Nigerian Army T-72 main battle tank assigned to 271 Task Force Tank Battalion

@lolashoneyin I am sure Rambo is looking good now. How are you you ma?

@LordShiroIV They are fine o. Rambo got into a terrible fight with Solo last week and lost an eye. I have to hold back tears every time I see him. Solo has been rehomed. 😭

Had an incredible time visiting Glover Memorial Hall at Lagos Island yesterday. Thanks to grand dame of Nigerian cinema Aunty Joke Jacobs for having me. Great to hang out with SDP Presidential aspirant Khadijah Okunnu-Lamidi too.

@lolashoneyin Oh wow! An eye? No now!!! I trust Rambo will make it true this period and beyond. Painful to hear o.

@Nig_Farmer @Gugumedia_

Which day Mai Suya start dey do this one?