Sunday, November 05, 2006

The heart of Africa

According to the Heart of Africa website, Nigeria has only the one brand asset. His name is Kase L. Lawal, and he lives in Texas. He used to work for Halliburton.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:46 pm

5 comments:

Anonymous,  2:19 pm  

I suspect that the website is still being updated or this might just be another haphazard job done by the folks. Kase Lawal is only a role model to aspiring capitalists.

I guess the site is just warming up before they put names like Bayo Ogunlesi(Credit-Suisse), Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Jonathan Majiyagbe, Fela Kuti, Hafsat Costello, Jeremy Weate etc etc etc

Aaron Rowe,  2:41 pm  

hmm,

What about good old Mike Adenuga?

St Antonym,  3:25 pm  

This is very tangential, but here goes anyway:

Aaron, I looked at that Mike Adenuga link. Nigerian reporting drives me nuts. Take this typical sentence:

"Michael Adeniyi Isola Adenuga had his secondary school education at the Ibadan Grammar School, Ibadan, Oyo State, before proceeding to the North-Western University in Oklahoma and Pace University, New York..."

It looks fine. But there is no "North-Western University in Oklahoma." What actually exists are "Northwestern University" which is in Evanston, Illinois, and "Northwestern Oklahoma State University." Yes, I know this sounds like nit-picking, but "University of Lagos" and "Lagos State University" are two different institutions. Just ask their graduates.

My problem is that there are errors of this kind in virtually every single Nigerian newspaper article. The details don't matter; they just print any semi-coherent crap. Two seconds of fact-checking on the internet would have told the author of that article what he needed to know. But he or she couldn't be bothered, and neither could the editor.

That's why I think our air disasters are not really about aviation. They are about a very widespread attitude among the people: "almost good enough is good enough."

Anonymous,  4:13 pm  

Kase Lawal is a fantastic role model for anyone , not just those interested in business.

His company is the most successful black-owned business in the US and turns over $1.5bn a year(he's an oil trader, owns refineries etc) and that figure will rise considering the run on commodities.

I think it's fabulous to see Nigerians competing and achieving on the world stage, and not doing 419 or stupid Nigerian politics. I'd love to see more of it.

houstonmacbro,  2:08 pm  

i'd like to emulate his model. i don't know much about his politics or contributions to the motherland, but from what i have read, he seems to be a very good capitalist.

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