Much ado about BRT (Part 2)

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Despite advice and warnings to the contrary, the Lagos State Government is hell bent on putting a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lane on Ikorodu Road in Lagos State. And unlike the attempt at a BRT lane on the 3rd Mainland Bridge, this one will have a physical barrier to prevent other motorists from using the lane. But just like burglary proofing, this barrier will also prevent LAGBUS buses from leaving the lane as well.

Obviously not well thought out, a single flat tyre on one bus will hold up all the other buses coming behind it. This seems simple enough to fathom and foresee but someone in Government House is not thinking this through. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, this is a good idea on paper but as with most things Nigerian it is not being properly executed.

Ikorodu Road has only three lanes on most sections so taking out one lane will leave the rest of us with only two lanes. Peradventure a trailer breaks down in the middle of the road, this will create the ever present Lagos traffic snarl. Just the other day, a rickety vehicle was trying to avoid the main lanes' traffic and decided to take the BRT lane. As expected, the car overheated and prevented other vehicles from going past (these vehicles were also illegally taking the BRT lane). I just hope we won't point at the BRT lane one day and laugh saying "remember BRT" the same way we now do with the City Bus scheme.

For now, the mad traffic continues!

HYIPs and the greedy Nigerian

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I've been listening, watching and reading a lot about HYIPs (High Yield Investment Programmes) in the last year or so. Two years ago, the only HYIP in existence was NOSPETCO with monthly interest payments of N40,000 on a N450,000 investment giving an annual yield of 107% . Then all of a sudden, all sorts of HYIPs from Ibadan and other obscure areas of Lagos sprung up claiming to be able to pay up to...10,000% in 10 weeks (Penny Wise Royal Heritage promised N250,000 within 10 weeks of "investing" N2,500. There are so many others which I'm sure you all know:

Hazonwao Ventures Limited
Brickfield Associates Limited
Treasureline Interlink Limited
Wealthzone Limited
Sefteg Nigeria Company
Wealth Solutions Limited
Nospetco Joint Venture Management Services
Flagship Specialties and Investment LTD
Nomex Micro Finance
Beraca Oil
Greenminds Investments
UpHenry
Wealth Spinners
Generis Financial Solutions

We also know about Uncle Charles Ponzi.

His ghost never seems to leave us.

I did a quick calculation using Penny Wise and Wealth Solutions as an illustration. The results show that Wealth Solutions will return 24,300% of whatever you put in while Penny Wise will return 1 trillion % if you continue to roll over for a year. Did I hear you say 419? Magic? Juju? Incredible?

Yet everyone keeps putting their money into these investments that claim to invest in Oil and Gas, global stocks, and anything else that seems so far removed and mysterious that most Nigerians will not ask questions. Some people are aware that this is a scam and that the last investors are the ones that will lose their money.

One of my colleagues said that history has shown that risk adverse investors are always the last ones to invest and will always lose money once the bubble has burst. He told me that he had "wisely" invested and quickly pulled out as soon as he made his money back. In other words, some suckers are going to lose and I'm going to gain.

There lies the moral dilemma. Should I invest in a programme that could be illegal or unethical knowing fully well that it's going to crash some day. Should I just say "some poor mugus have lost their money! At least I made mine back before cashing out. This is the same IBO (I before others) mentality that has left Nigeria in this state. You might be the sharo guy today but you can be sure that your turn as "mugu" will soon come. It's just a matter of time. If everyone was a smart guy there will no mugus. You might even be the mugu right now.

For more information see Should I Invest In HYIPs- by Tayo Odukoya, High return investments in Nigeria by Deolu Akinyemi and NOSPETCO! by Dipo Tepede. Deolu seems to think we should invest in HYIPs since he runs one, Tayo thinks we should do what I mentioned above which is to go in quickly so you can be a smart guy and not a mugu (if you go in late) and Dipo is completely against them.

As for me, I will become wealthy through clearly legitimate means. Do you think anyone on the Forbes list of the world's richest people got there by investing in HYIPs? Use your head!

Four months already

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The last time I posted to this blog was in March 2007. The last time before that was in April. The rate at which I'm going, it may be another 1 year before I post again. I was checking out a couple of blogs; http://verastic.blogspot.com/, http://deoluakinyemi.com/ and http://www.tayoodukoya.com/ and immediately observed that these guys have a lot of passion for what they do. Vera's site is always fun to visit, a bit crazy though. Tayo's site is simply awesome and Deolu seems to outdo himself all the time. I ask myself if I'm a true blogger or just another one of the pack. There must be tons of blogs out there but only a few are worthy of mention. So I have to decided whether I want to do this consistently and properly or if this is going to be another abandoned project. I will be updating my blog more regularly and improving the layout over the next couple of weeks.

So watch this space!