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The Senate has
joined the House of Representatives in passing the Freedom of
Information Bill, which makes access to information the right of all
Nigerians. And though the Senate President, David Mark, warned that his
chamber would be passing a watered down version, the bill is in many
essentials like the one passed by the lower House. In the end, none of
the versions is exactly what we wished for, and this is not just
because they changed the name to Right of Information Bill.

The bill excludes
economic and defence matters from the areas to which the public might
have full access. The government shall refuse access to “(a) trade
secret, financial, commercial or technical information that belongs to
the government that has substantial economic value or is likely to have
substantial value; and (c) proposal and bids for any contract, grants
or agreement, including information which if it were disclosed would
frustrate procurement or give an advantage to any person.”

It is difficult to
understand how the lawmakers arrived at the conclusion that Nigerians
have no right to know exactly how the money budgeted annually is spent,
who and who are getting the contracts, what the parameters for
allocating resources are. It is equally sad that the legislators have
thrown a blanket over military spending, at the very least suggesting
that the army is above scrutiny.

Yes, we wish the
bill has not placed those inexplicable caveats but there is little we
can do now. Yet what we have is not so bad. It is a bill that
substantially gives citizens the right to investigate public officials,
to hold government to account. As stated in the preamble, “Every
citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has a legally enforceable
right to, and shall, on application, be given access to any record
under the control of a government or public institution.” In effect,
the so-called civil service rule that practically makes it a crime to
give out any information, and covers up great crimes in the name of
procedure, has now become moribund.

It would be naive
for anyone to assume that with the passage of the bill, things will
automatically change and government would become more transparent.
Decades of hiding secrets, and a mindset that considers anyone who
seeks information about government activity a troublemaker, cannot be
easily changed. It will take time for public officials to finally
realise that they are there at our behest, that it is their obligation
to explain every action they take in the course of their official
duties. But like everything, the grounds will begin to shift gradually,
and more information will get into public domain.

The recent
publication of the WikiLeaks cables on Nigeria by this paper shows more
clearly how our public officials operate in secret, the base instincts
that motivate them. It also shows how the same people, who consider it
beneath contempt to tell Nigerians how their country is run, grovel
before foreign ambassadors, eager to divulge the most sordid details.
In the end, they all come out looking tainted, and their profiles by
the American ambassadors are universally derogatory. It’s a humbling
picture.

We can only hope
that with the passage of the FOI bill, the citizens of this country
will get to know what their elected leaders and other public officers
are doing – before the Americans do. The law also places a burden on
the media to use any information they get responsibly. It behoves
journalists, who are probably the major beneficiaries of this bill, to
use the opportunity wisely so that the next time our laws are reviewed,
those restrictive clauses will be expunged.

As the chambers
conclude plans to harmonise the versions of the bill, it will soon be
left for Goodluck Jonathan to give his assent so that the law can
become operative. One of his predecessors, Olusegun Obasanjo, failed to
do that in 2007 when the bill was first passed by the Assembly.

But there is every indication that President Jonathan will sign it.
He has done very few things to commend him to the critical mind that
one cannot see him throwing away this historic opportunity. It is not
only good politics for him to sign as we go into elections; it is also
good policy.

I read a news
report in the media recently about Toyosi Akerele, the founder of
R.I.S.E, a youth development organisation. She was quoted as saying her
organisation can mobilise about 60 million youth.

I gave her comment
serious thought and was beside myself imagining how it could happen.
However, it is possible, as R.I.S.E network has been a veritable
platform for youth networking. The organisation utilises social media
as a potent tool to reach out to millions of youth out there and has
achieved huge success through this platform.

Social media has
become an integral part of our daily existence. With consumers getting
more sophisticated, companies should begin to refocus their marketing
strategies. It is actually the ‘in’ thing and has definitely come to
stay.

Companies now use
social media, such as blogs and community sites, to market their
brands. Popular social sites such as Linked In, Facebook, Twitter,
Flickr, and You Tube have more than five million visitors daily. In
Nigeria, bellanaija.com, Naijapal, Linda Ikeji, and others have become
veritable channels of engagement.

Promoting brands
using these sites is very attractive and will definitely reach the
target audience. This is due to the huge amount of human traffic that
passes through the sites on a consistent basis. Social media helps
brands maintain a consistent and constant presence in the lives of
consumers, bridging the gap between the two.

This platform is
also attractive to brands, as it is a low cost investment when compared
to other available options. Conventional methods of advertising cost a
lot more, while effectiveness and reach are achieved with social media,
which guarantees consumer attention and loyalty to brands. Social media
fosters a two-way communication and builds meaningful connections with
the target audience companies intend to reach.

It also promotes
the word-of mouth concept which drives visibility for brands. When more
people tell good stories about a brand, it helps build goodwill and
brand acceptability. Companies, through their brands, can make lasting
impact on consumers through the adept use of social media marketing.
Brand advocates are created through the influence of this platform.
Through networking, some causes are promoted online in order to
mobilise support and enlist others.

For instance, on
Facebook, a group is created to advance a particular issue and within
the twinkle of an eye, thousands of people sign up for such.

Imagine if a group
on ‘Good Health is in Our Hands’ campaign of Dettol is created online.
It will massively drive visibility for the brand through its key
messages on why we need to have maximum protection against germs. The
brand will have advocates that will ultimately become consumers.

However, in
adopting social media, there should be a strategic plan to communicate
the brand offerings. This is important in order to maximise the
enormous potentials and leverage that social media offers. The brand
should be properly defined in clear and concise language.

The core target
segment should be identified, while opportunities for the brand are
also explored. A content and engagement strategy that appeals to the
identified needs of the target audience is important.

It is also key to
listen and observe the trend of online conversations. It is not just
enough for a brand to adopt social media marketing. This is because
each target segment has something that appeals to it than the others.

Observation will
enable companies measure the impact of usage of social media. There
should be a tangible reason for doing so. It is one thing to have fans,
but the fans should be turned to consumers and advocates.

The importance of
having the right message cannot be underestimated in social media. This
is because of its effective role in reaching a dynamic audience. Brands
should paint realistic pictures of what they stand for in the
marketplace. There should be a linkage between brand promise and
consumer satisfaction. Social media helps in spreading the good sides
of a brand only when the consumer experience is exciting.

Social media indeed brings new opportunities which should be
leveraged for impact. It helps companies learn how to achieve results.
It also builds brand loyalty and followership. This creates an online
community of brand loyalists and enthusiasts who have had an exciting
experience with the brand.

Splitting the atom
was a major technological feat for humankind. Releasing energy from it
for electricity production was yet another major step towards
supporting the unfolding path of civilisation.

The worst memories
of the deliberate unleashing of the power of a nuclear device remain
the exploding of atomic bombs over Japanese towns of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945, towards the end of the Second World War.

In terms of nuclear
accidents of monumental disaster, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in
Ukraine (then in the former Soviet Union) has no match. Many deaths and
severe health problems followed this accident. The radioactivity that
accompanied the Chernobyl accident was several times higher than what
was unleashed by the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during the Second
World War.

The radiation
spread as far as Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and parts of France and
Italy. The Chernobyl accident was adjudged to have resulted from human
error, including design defects. It was also accompanied by a series of
attempts to cover up the impacts, as well as a shrouding of the
exploded reactors in defective concrete.

Today, the world is
alarmed by the massive impacts of the 8.9 or 9.0 magnitude earthquake
that struck off the coast of Honshu Island in Japan. The combined
effect of the earthquake and the ensuing tsunami has astonished a
watching world, brought great misery to the people of Japan, and raised
a huge question mark about how prepared we can ever be for natural
disasters.

Everyone accepts
that Japan is well equipped and prepared to handle earthquakes, with
building codes and other emergency infrastructure set to deal with such
happenstance. What has added a new twist to the current situation is
the impact that the earthquake and tsunami has had on Japan’s nuclear
power plants.

An explosion at the
Daiichi plant near Fukushima on March 12 raised anxieties. The
explosion blew off the upper exterior walls of the plant. The standby
diesel generator that would have pumped water to cool the plant failed
one hour after the earthquake struck, leading to the overheating of the
water and resulting in the explosion.

The authorities
announced that the reactor core of the plant was safe, and that there
wasn’t a huge radiation leak. Nevertheless, over 100, 000 people had to
be moved, owing to fears of radiation impacts. The evacuation zone
stretched over 20 kilometres radius of the plant. Over the next few
days, the radiation kept below acceptable official levels, although
anxiety levels remained high.

A more severe
explosion early on March 15 raised radiation levels, increasing fears
that the containment vessel of reactor 2 had been damaged. The
evacuation of emergency workers from the power plant signified the
possibility of a nuclear catastrophe.

The nuclear game is
getting a link to soccer in Brazil where there are plans to bring a new
nuclear power plant on stream, early enough to provide electricity for
the 2014 FIFA World Cup fiesta the country would then be hosting. The
country already runs two nuclear power plants that came into use in
1985 and 2000, meeting 50 per cent of the electricity needs of the
state of Rio de Janeiro. Environmental concerns are being addressed
through pledges to adhere to rules. But pledges are not so reassuring
in these matters.

Closer home in
Africa, the drive towards nuclear power is gathering momentum. South
Africa already invests huge sums in this mode of energy generation and
produces 5 per cent of its electricity from nuclear plants. Uranium
rich countries such as Namibia believe that this is a way to boost
economic development. There have even been talks of the possibility of
building floating nuclear plants off the coast of Namibia.

Although Namibia is
not earthquake prone, this does not sound like an exciting or safe way
to go. Apart from the risks involved in operating nuclear power plants,
it is not quite clear to whom the country plans to export the surplus
electricity that would be generated by this plant. One could venture to
say that floating nuclear plants would be dynamic power generators and
may be moved closer to export markets, possibly as far away as energy
starved Nigeria.

The incident from
Japan also underscores the need to move away from mega power
infrastructures that depend on extensive distribution grids. It
suggests that nations should invest in the development of renewable
energy sources from abundant solar, wind, and other resources, rather
than embark on high-risk technologies that we cannot quite control.

It is also a time
to realise the viability of localised energy provision on the basis of
energy autonomy for discrete zones and communities. This would be
cheaper to deliver and ensures better energy supply, including during
crisis situations.

Considering
Nigeria’s emergency response preparedness and capacities in simple
areas like fires, oil spills, and industrial accidents, as well as the
quality of maintenance of our hydropower and other plants, venturing
into the nuclear power arena here is nothing short of courting
disaster.

I recently had
lunch with one of my very good friends and her sprightly white-haired
father who is in his seventies. We had arranged to catch up over lunch
on a weekday and I was surprised to learn that her father, who still
worked in the office with her, would come along as he did several times
a week.

In the course of
the meal, as is usual with people in their 70s, we were treated to many
anecdotes, most of which my dear and indulgent friend had heard many
times over the years. What caught my ear most particularly was the tale
of how she joined the family business, which is a manufacturing concern.

Like his father and
his father’s father, her older brother joined the family business as
soon as he left university. Both siblings grew up visiting the factory
as young children and I recall spending a day there with them on school
holiday when we were all in our teens. If there was any question of her
brother choosing another career,it was never discussed. Soon after she
finished university, my friend also joined the company – continuing a
family tradition started three generations before.

When she arrived to
join the administrative side of the business, she was welcomed with
relief by the staff, much to her father’s surprise. Her brother was
working on the revenue generation side of the business. They felt that
as a person with long familiarity with the business, who had worked
there intermittently, and who was hard-working and well-educated, she
would be a contributor and not a drain on resources.

Twenty years later,
she and her brother have taken over the management of the family firm.
Their father retains his desk in the office in a titular role as
chairman. Their own children, in turn, spend school holidays working in
the factory or lending a hand in the office when their parents need
them to. It would be interesting to see how many more times the
company’s management will pass from parent to child.

Several years ago, Leap Africa Foundation published, ‘Defying the Odds:

Case studies of Nigerian organizations that have survived generations’.

They could only find seven family businesses that had successfully passed from one generation to another.

Examples that I am
familiar with, where the founder brought in his/her children to work,
are common in the traditional professions and in new entrants such as
telecoms, oil and gas and information technology. In most of these
cases, the parents are still firmly at the helm or providing leadership
while the children are in management or on the board. Clearly outlined
succession either to one’s child or to an identified executive is so
rare that it is notable.

Unfortunately, few
of the family firms have truly institutionalized or gone public. So,
corporate governance that would manage succession is absent or
imperfect. In a few cases, succession has been forced due to
irresistible external pressures.

Missing on positives

Where it has
occurred that a parent passes their business or influence onto their
child, how successful has the transition been? Again, from anecdotal
evidence, not very successful! For starters, it is rare for the child
to have grown up with the business as a significant part of their lives
– other than as a source of their parent’s income and pocket money for
them. Then, where the child knows that the business is his/her
inheritance, it is both their expectation and their parent’s plan that
they will take over as workers and not necessarily as management.

The in-depth
knowledge of the business, the day to day interaction with customers
and stakeholders, the ability to relate to and empathize with the
circumstances of their staff – all these things that are necessary to
give them a good probability of maintaining or building on the success
of the business – is mostly absent. To explore the reasons why family
enterprises are failing to be sustainable, let’s start with our history
and culture of running enterprises. Historically, there was nothing
like work/life balance. One’s personal life was involved in one’s work
and vice versa. Farming involved the entire family, and when visitors
came to say, they automatically helped out as well. Children would help
in the farmhouse or on the farm from when they were small, and unless
they were that odd individual who yearns to leave home to discover the
unknown, they would grow into that life and the cycle would continue.

For professionals,
parents would heavily influence the choice of training and career,
sometimes only paying tuition for the course they want they child to
follow. Of course, there are cases where the children admire their
parents so much that they want to be exactly like them.

The missing link

Why doesn’t succession work?

Major contributing factors on the side of the parents are parental interference,

refusal to
relinquish authority, inability to view their child as a competent and
capable adult, resistance to institutionalization, unrealistic
financial demands and expectations, unwillingness to transfer key
stakeholder relationships,

favouritism between
children, sabotage to prevent the child from outshining their own
achievements and more. The crux is agreement about ownership of the
vision and the assets of the family business.

Yet with all the
difficulties, sitting with my friend and her father over lunch, all I
could think about was how blessed they both were to be working together
in relative harmony.

If I didn’t
understand Yoruba’s musically intoned words, I would imagine ila cocoa
to be the perfect marriage between something sweet and something
savoury, or the name of a beautiful country. I’m allowed to imagine.
But ila cocoa is a soup made from young cocoa pods. I love the way food
becomes animated when introduced to words. Even if you don’t speak
Yoruba, there is an expectation of a treat when you hear ila cocoa. The
words are resonant and soft and sexy, especially the ‘cocoa’ that
knocks twice on the roof of your mouth. Better than mundane recipes are
descriptions of how flesh and blood and food interact. What you get are
engaging stories; muscular images that connect the mind to the emotions
to the gastric juices.

The story of ila
cocoa belongs to Festus Adetula who insisted that his wife, Oyebola,
must never cook him okra soup in that lazy Yoruba way. The Yoruba cut
up or grate okra pods, stir them into boiling water with salt and
potash (‘kaun’ is the bell-like Yoruba word for potash), serve the
briskly cooked okra with pepper stew and a choice of gari, pounded yam
or fufu. This simple treatment of okra is scandalous to people from
other parts of Nigeria who dress up the vegetable with as many as 10
other ingredients. Mr Adetula considered it an abomination for a strong
brewed Owo man from Ibami Mose’s farm to eat such spiritless food.

As a child
approaching his adult years, Mr Adetula’s life moved seamlessly between
work and hard work; from school to the farm and back to school. When he
and his wife moved into their marital home, one of the first things he
did was to plant his own cocoa trees. His wife thought that he grew
them for the childhood sweet treat of sucking on cocoa beans, or to
beautify the garden, but he grew them for the nutritious mucilaginous
ila cocoa soup. He taught his wife how to harvest 20 to 25 very young
pods of cocoa. The green, grooved elongated pods of cocoa are like
oversize okra pods, and perhaps this is what inspired the Yoruba to
cook them down into soup. The cocoa pods are wrapped and tied in glossy
green cocoa leaves and steamed until the skin of the cocoa is very
soft. They are then mashed in a mortar, not with heavy pounding but
with a measured firm back and forth movement of the pestle. This
produces a mucilaginous coarse mash of cocoa skin, beans and pulp.

In a pot, the stock
for the ila cocoa is put together from ground pepper; chopped onions;
boiled stockfish that flakes under the pressure of a fork; periwinkles;
iru pete (fermented locust beans processed into a mushy consistency);
ogiri (fermented sesame seeds) and the holy grail of Yoruba delicacies,
the legendary eja osan. Eja osan is a freshwater knife shaped fish. It
is so highly esteemed that King Sunny Ade immortalised it in song.
Forty-two pieces of fragrant smoked eja osan are presented by the groom
to the bride’s family during traditional Yoruba weddings. Stewed eja
osan is a strong aphrodisiac and a recognised ‘husband-bewitching’
device. Mrs Adetula uses the smoked eja osan.

Water is added to
the stock ingredients and everything is brought up to boil. The mashed
ila cocoa is added to the stock with salt and a little palm oil.
Shredded ugwu may be added at the end, just before the soup is taken
off the fire.

This soup’s
ingredients are so dear that it is really only practical as a meal for
one or two persons. It must be served with authentic pounded yam made
from yams grown specifically for pounding. The yams must be worked in a
mortar and must at the end of pounding give a smooth supple texture;
otherwise, Mrs Adetula says her husband would not eat it.

A few years ago, I met a Nigerian pastor who lived in Houston,
Texas. He confided in me that there was no question of him coming back
to live in Nigeria because he won’t be able to buy his sausages here. I
was so astounded, my mouth hung open in anticipation of the punch line.
I can’t resist contrasting the shallowness of living in a foreign
country because of cheap sausages to the integrity of being opinionated
about nutritious home grown food. If Mr Adetula had not turned his nose
up at a dull bowl of okra soup, what sort of ila cocoa story would we
have to tell?