A man sat quietly reading his morning paper one Sunday morning. Suddenly, he is knocked almost senseless by his wife, who stands behind him holding a frying pan in hand.

Man: “What was that for?”

Wife: “Why do you have a piece of paper in your pocket with “Daisy” written on it?”

Man: “Oh honey, don’t you remember two weeks ago when I went to the horse races? Daisy was the name of the horse I bet on.”

The wife was satisfied, and apologized for bonking him. Three days later he is again sitting reading the paper when once again he is bonked on the head.

Man: “What’s that for this time?”

Wife: “Your horse called.”

Time is 9pm and the program on TV is NTA Network News. I had hardly settled down on my seat when my eyes caught a scrolling message on the screen.

Can all these come to past? The ball is in our court. This is the time for us to take charge of our future and Year 2006 is an opportunity for us to lay the foundation of the GREAT NIGERIA. As for me and my house, I would not only see the good of Nigeria, I would also eat the fruits of this good. HAPPY NEW YEAR in advance!

Orascom of Egypt has won 51 per cent stake in the Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL) with a $256.5 million offer.

However, the offer failed to excite government officials and staff of the telecoms firm present at the bids opening session on Thursday. NITEL workers who gathered at the Congress Hall of Nicon Hilton Hotel, Abuja venue of the bids opening with high hopes went home disappointed with the winning bid for the ailing company.

Orascom beat Newtel’s $154.9 million offer to emerge winner even though its price was well below the reserve bid. It is also about four times lower than the $1.3 billion offered by Investment International of London Limited (IILL) three years ago. IILL could not, however, pay the amount due to sundry reasons.

Officials of the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE) and the Technical Committee of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) who expressed determination to dispose off NITEL and thus end a tortuous six-year journey towards the privatisation of the company said they would negotiate with the Egyptian firm in a bid to reach acceptable figure.

Only Orascom and Newtel returned technical and financial bids out of the six firms — including MTN, Telkom, Celtel and Huawei earlier pre-qualified to enter the final leg of the privatisation process. The other four companies are reported to have backed out due to various reasons, including claims that the initial bids to remove SAT-3 from NITEL had weakened their resolve.

At the first round of the unveiling of the sealed bids by BPE officials and the announced figure by NCP Technical Committee Chairman, Akin Kekere-Ekun, Newtel made a higher bid of $154,961,802 as against Orascom initial bid of $127.5 million. Kekere-Ekun, who said government would not give out its assets free, gave the two companies 30 minutes break to go for another round of offer with a view of reviewing upward their initial bids. He said the previous offers by the two companies fell short of the reserved price.

After the break, when the companies were asked to submit their revised bids, only Orascom showed up. Newtel chickened out. BPE’s Director-General, Irene Chigbo, was to offer an unofficial reason for the failure of Newtel to come up with a new bid at the second round. According to a source, failure by Newtel’s technical partner to assure the company of more funds may have weakened its resolve.

Both Chigbo and Kekere-Ekun who expressed disappointment over the Orascom figure said government would negotiate with the company with the hope of getting an acceptable fee that meets the reserved price. They declined to confirm the reserved price, which some indicated was not above $500 million.

According to them, only President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar are competent to disclose the amount. Though Orascom was eventually declared winner of the bid, Kekere-Ekun said, as a matter of procedure, the figure would be presented to government for consideration and the outcome communicated to Orascom.

But Federal Capital Territory Minister Nasir el-Rufai who witnessed the process said he hopes that with further discussion “ Orascom will offer better price”… I dont know how this will be achieved sha. Only time will tell.

Reltelwireless has rolled out a package of incentives for call center operators on the network to enable them increase their daily profit margins. The gesture comes at a time when many of the call center operators are closing shop due to an unprofitable tariff regime put in place by some telephone networks in the country.

Kierian Enechi, chief marketing office, Reltelwireless, announced the package in Lagos at a ceremony to unveil a range of value-added services introduce by the company for subscribers on the network. Enechi said that call center operators can now make a profit of about N3,000 per week, using a minimum of three Reltel N500 special discount cards, called Bonuscard Plus, while operators who invested up to N7,000 on the cards could make up to N70,000 per month.

He noted that the incentives were fallouts of the company’s re-branding programme, following the technical support provided to Reltel by the Chinese Telecommunications giant, Huawei, which is now powering the network to sustain its position in the market. According to him, the new partnership with Huawei has yielded new products and services, these include, the Reltel digital wireless fax terminal which has effectively made the company the first fixed wireless operator to deploy fax services in Nigeria. He said the fax facility goes for N30,000.

Enechi re-affirmed that Reltel had started providing short message services (sms) to other networks within and outside Nigeria including mobile networks. Others value added services, he noted, include call waiting, forwarding, locking and conferencing which had been perfected on the network.

He said that the company has slashed calls to GSM lines in order to give every telephone user an opportunity to talk, and that Reltelwireless had also maintained its round-the-clock free intra-network calls policy. The Reltelwireless CMO added that the company had also introduced Internet recharge card in its determination to encourage more people in the country to use and explore opportunities on the Internet without difficulty. It would be recalled that Reltel invested about N3 billion recently in its network expansion deal with Huawei to position itself as the first among equals in the fixed wireless business in the country.

The company has since commenced services in Port Harcourt, Nnewi and Onitsha in addition to Lagos, Nigeria’s business hub.
Reltel has also launched an ambitious expansion programme that would soon take its services to more Nigerian cities, including Abuja, Ibadan, Enugu, Sokoto, Kano, Kaduna and Benin.

Ernest Ndukwe, the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Director of the Pan African University, Pat Utomi, have both come out to extol the phenomenal growth of the Globacom brand.

Speaking at the presentation of four more cars to winners in the Globacom Second Anniversary Promo in Lagos, recently, Utomi said that Globacom is a virgin brand, which has never existed anywhere before, but was built in Nigeria from the scratch and has now become a phenomenal brand, being a pride to niche marketing and inspiring vision.

He said this as Ndukwe affirmed that Globacom had surpassed expectations by coming from the rear to do very well in a dynamic industry. Commenting on the presentation of cars to Nigerians picked technologically at random, Ndukwe who had been an observer at the early draws concluded that the process of picking the winners is “transparent not prearranged, not discriminatory“.

With this latest presentation of four more cars to winners in the Lagos zone of the Draws, Globacom as at December 22, 2005 had given out 24 exotic brand new cars to Nigerians from diverse strata of the society.

The latest recipients of the cars include Taiwo Epe a caterer in Okokomaiko area of Lagos who received a Mercedes Benz E240 car, presented on behalf of Globacom by. Ndukwe, . Jinadu Bolatilo, drove home in a Kia Sorento Jeep presented by Ajoke Mohamed, wife of the former head of state, Gen. Murtala Muhamed, while Flora Azuka collected the keys to a brand new Kia Rio from Grace Egbagbe of the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA).

Another winner,. Jimoh Ayuba collected the keys to a Honda City from. Pat Utomi. This brings to eight the number of cars given to winners in Lagos, four in Enugu, four in Port Harcourt, four in Kano and four in Abuja Zone of the Promo draws. Pat Utomi lauded Globacom’s gesture in giving out the cars noting that “Globacom has shown a social face“.

After the presentation of the cars, there was a fresh draw for a Volkswagen Polo and Honda City cars. Subscribers with numbers 08055808163 and 080551987060 emerged the lucky winners in the new draw.

The winners all thanked Globacom for redeeming its pledge saying that this kind of integrity was rare. Epe who won the Mercedes Benz had initially threatened to call the Economic and Financial crime Commission (EFCC ) when she was called and informed of her prize, but was full of praises for the company after receiving her prize.

Atos Origin, a leading international information technology (IT) services company, and Airwide solutions, a global leader in providing mobile infrastructure software to enable, enhance, and ensure mobile communications for wireless operators, have announced that they have been selected by Vee Networks Nigeria Limited (Vmobile Nigeria) to deploy a USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) Gateway, aircode, to launch GPRS services.

Aircode makes it possible for Vmobile Nigeria to rapidly deploy interactive applications such as Vmobile’s Call-Me-Back service, TV voting, or transactional services like m-banking that will significantly improve revenues. Aircode works on the majority of legacy handsets and offers a seamless end-user experience, ensuring mass-market penetration and rapid increase in voice and data usage.

A further benefit of aircode is the enhancement and simplification of customer care services such as account balance inquiry and account recharge which is currently performed using the IVR (Interactive Voice Response). aircode complements the existing IVR, offering an efficient and cost-effective self-care alternative to Vmobile subscribers. Atos Origin offered and integrated airwide’s aircode solution to Vmobile Nigeria.

“The high quality and reliable solutions from airwide made it the obvious choice for Atos Origin to answer Vmobile’s new GPRS initiatives and we are delighted to be working with a flexible, dynamic and committed company like airwide” said Alain Michel, Managing Director of Atos Origin South Africa.

“Airwide and Atos Origin have supplied us with a solution that will enable Vmobile Nigeria to offer a whole range of new interactive services and more importantly, a significant increase in voice and data revenues,” said Eric Valentine, Acting Chief Engineering Officer for Vmobile Nigeria. “Aircode is a proven solution offered by a team of experienced and dedicated people. This combination convinced us to choose aircode.”

The Vmobile project extends airwide’s footprint into the African market. “The deployment of aircode at Vmobile marks a significant milestone for the operator and for the Nigerian market in general. It demonstrates the strong growth of telecommunications in the region and the commitment from Vmobile Nigeria to provide innovative ways for its subscribers to use new services,” commented Peter Balchin, President of the EMEA region for airwide solutions.

No matter how busy you are, try to find some time over the next two weeks to reflect, think, give and plan.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is the ideal time for this. Try to slow things down. Spend time with the ones you love and care about. Take some time to talk with your spouse and kids (if you are married) about goals and dreams for the year 2006. If you are not married, spend this period to work on your goals and dreams for year 2006.

Use this as a time to recharge your batteries, not just by watching TV the entire time, but to seriously and with excitement think about a handful of changes or additions you want for your life in 2006.

I believe you will find the act of reflecting, thinking, dreaming and planning (with your family) to be one of the most important exercises you can do that will positively impact the next 12 months.

And remember, do not neglect to commit yourself to set this time aside or you will find that the business of life can and will get in the way.

So let’s all take a moment to gather up the past year of victories and defeats, growing as well as those times of stagnation and use it to wipe a clean slate and thoughtfully design the next year the way we truly desire it to be.

It is that time of year again. Yuletide! Christmas in the air. Nostalgia, goose pimples and casting off all financial discipline. It was originally meant to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ - Joy to the world, and good will to all men… I found this piece below useful and I decided to share it with all.

This is the biggest sales season of the year. Shops prepare all year for this moment. To boost sales, some shops in victoria island, ikoyi and ikeja offer some tantalizing price reductions, 30% off, buy one get one free etc. Woolworths is doing a clearance sales of 50% to 70% off.

They work on your psyche until you give up the fight, switch your brains off and give in fully to your emotions. There is a nice sounding word for this victory: consumer confidence. In plain english - Buy now, regret later.

You must buy new clothes for every member of the household, especially the kids, take them to see ‘father Xmas’, send gifts/hampers/cards to relatives, friends and foes. You must decorate your living room with lighting effects even if only for the 30 minutes NEPA will afford you electricity, renew or upgrade your cable subscription, spend on more cooking, kill a chicken, turkey or goat depending on your purse etc.

You must let the village folks know that your foray into the city paid off after all. It is the law. If you break the law, your reputation is gone. Shame the devil by splashing out for those in the village.

WHAT OPTIONS DO YOU HAVE?
How do you withstand this massive onslaught against your fragile purse strings…… this war against the soul of your finances?

Simple, befriend your budget. Run back home and make friends with your budget. Period. The standard moneywise advice is, “Make a budget and stick to it”.

A key advantage with budgets is that it lets you know where you stand. So how do you give joy to the world without digging your own financial grave?

AVOIDING THE TRAP AND STILL GET IN THE GROOVE
If your pocket is looking a little bit bare this holiday season, I would advice you plan to make your gifts all by your self and tag it “personally made for you,” You end up giving a great gift - spending less and discovering skills you never thought you had.

According to Bunmi Tukuru, she has been teaching her sisters to limit their expenses during Christmas by improvising on greeting cards and Christmas gifts by recycling old calendars, especially those with pictures of scenic spots.

For personalized Christmas cards, she said one can use his or her photo. It could be pasted on a bondpaper and with some designs, the finished work could serve as a personalized postcard.

As for Christmas gifts, used but still presentable clothings or things could pass as presents.

OTHER IDEAS TO HELP CUT THAT BILL
Homemade cakes, cookies and pies for those that know how to bake would save you a lot of money. The ingredients to make a medium sized cake cost about N600.00 and if you want to make it rich with mixed fruits or special coco-nut or apple cake, an extra N200.00 would just be okay. Buying it off the shelf goes for between N2, 500.00 and N4, 000.00.

NB: Do not expose yourself to ridicule if you are not good in the kitchen. This one is not for trial cooks.

Personalised hampers might just be the place for you to show your talents. The difference between ‘Gbekere’ and plantain chips is in the packaging…. So also are the hampers displayed in the shops. Interested? Good! You can get the baskets in the market, buy the various items you can afford, place everything in the basket (well arranged), decorate the basket with red and green satin ribbons and your hamper is ready.

For the discerning lady, this is your opportunity to keep it real, home made and send the right message. Simply get a small cute basket and fill it up with cute gifts like designed handkerchief, male roll-on, shaving cream, boxers, cufflinks, tie, and his favorite musicals all recorded in one CD would not be a bad idea for your loved one. The key is to make everything in the basket blue and personalized.

The result – a completely won-over man swept off his feet by the industry of his woman. He would be thankful that you took notice of his hurting wardrobe. This you achieved without emptying your pocket. For the gentlemen, same goes, make everything pink, feminine and personalized. She will love you for life.

For me, I am set on doing something very creative and good with my hands. I intend to string very beautiful beads for my aunties and sisters. For those interested in this, one advise though – try and get the colour combination right.

PASSING SHOT
The whole idea is to encourage you to participate in the season blues, spread some love, and enjoy yourself without being in the red and green with envy!

While, at it remember that it is wise to know that your November salary is for December expenses and your December salary is for January expenses. It is so easy to forget this in the midst of the battle for your emotional attachment towards the season, especially as some employers pay December salary mid month. If you mix it up, you will join the bandwagon of people that believe that January is the longest month in the year.

Merry christmas and my best wishes to you for a prosperous 2006.

Africa’s biggest food retailer, Shoprite, will today officially open its first Nigerian supermarket at the multi-billion naira shopping mall, The Palms, located in the Lekki area of Lagos, just as Game, another South African discount store operator opens Monday.

Although the official opening ceremony of The Palms, expected to be performed by President Olusegun Obasanjo, is slated for March 2006, the two stores are among the anchor tenants of the shopping mall which has 20,000 square metres of let-able space.

The Palms Mall, when completed would become the biggest shopping mall in Africa and it is being built by Mr. Rob Ray, a South African who built substantial part of Sandton, the commercial nerve centre of Johannesburg, South Africa.

According to the leasing agent of the mall, Mr. Ladi Adegbite, while Shoprite has taken 4000 square metres of space, Game is taking 6600 square metre and the third anchor tenant which are being used as a test run prior to official opening, Nu Metro, a cinema operator with six screens, has taken a space for 1200 seats.

Speaking on the mall which is owned by a Nigerian entrepreneur, Mr. Tayo Amusan, Adegbite disclosed that “it has been a long journey as work on the mall started about six years ago.”

He disclosed that the mall would provide an alternative avenue for Nigerian shoppers who would not have to travel abroad to shop, expressing satisfaction at the opening of Shoprite and Game.

Shoprite is Africa’s largest food retailer which operates 780 corporate outlets in 17 countries across Africa, the Indian Ocean Islands and southern Asia, and reported turnover of R29,813 billion in its 2004/2005 financial year.

The company’s head quarters is situated in the Western Cape province of South Africa and it is a public company listed on the JSE Securities Exchange, with secondary listings on both the Namibian and Zambian Stock Exchanges.

Game Stores is a subsidiary of the listed holding company Massmart and was established as Game Discount World in Durban in 1970, where it opened its first store in cramped premises in Smith Street in the city’s CBD and rang up sales of R78,000 in its first month of trading.

Game was born out of the belief by its founders that shopping had become a tedious and boring pastime and they conceptualised retailing as a game and then pooled their limited savings to turn the concept into reality by creating a fun environment for shoppers, who were attended by staff in shocking pink, a corporate colour which has prevailed to this day.

As investigators sift through the wreckage looking for the cause of Nigeria’s second air disaster in less than two months we’re asking, are Africa’s skies safe?

So far this year, there have been 57 air accidents and 1,229 fatalities, according to the Aviation Safety Network which monitors air crashes worldwide. Out of those, 15 happened in Africa and 390 people died.

And in 2004, a quarter of all accidents occurred in Africa - a region where air traffic is growing rapidly but which still accounts for only 4.5% of global traffic, according to the International Air Transport Association.

So, why is Africa prone to air accidents? As air companies rush to take off are they and governments ignoring safety? Should some pilots and planes not even be in the sky?