As most people are currently aware, the world is going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Most people are worrying about the effects the crisis would have on both their company and personal bottom line and are acting accordingly. However one of my colleagues made a comment the other day about how Nigerians are still partying like its 2007. I thought about it for a second and realised he was right. I have been out three times this year, and heard jist and I can confirm that people are indeed rocking. Think about it, there are there are three drivers in the Nigerian economy; oil, financial services and telecoms. The oil price has fallen through the roof, the stock market has crashed and the banks are rumored to be in trouble, telecoms on the other hand is still booming. However everybody rocking cannot work for MTN/Glo/Zain. So who can be doing the rocking? Let's break it down:

Girls in general are fine, after all this is Naij where they are not expected to pay for themselves. So females in their twenties and thirties (prime rocking age) are good. They can even still rock the expensive restaurants on girls night and still be cool. However I predict that guys will start watching their wallets and all that "of course you can bring a friend" will be a thing of the past. Tachers take note :D

Similar to the girls are the Expats. These guys get paid in dollars so no naira depreciation for them. No real bills as everything from housing to car to groceries are provided. So these guys are the true I Feel Alright Crew.

Bankers are not so fine even though they are rocking like they are. There are rumors of layoffs and paycuts, the subsidization of interest rates for bank staff is said to be over and they were definitely over-leveraged on the stock market. Any Banker that is Senior Manager and below should definitely not be rocking.

Oil company peeps are still alright, if they work for the international oil companies that is. If they work for a company providing services, they might not be doing so good. There are tons of rumors flying around about IOCs cutting back dramatically. Now these guys can still rock however only if they've built up substantial saving with all that cash they were earning in the good years. However this begs the question, why would you be using your savings to rock?

Manufacturing peeps should not even think about it. Granted there aren't that many of them rocking to start, mostly kids of rich manufacturing parents. However with the dollar depreciation slamming they hard, they definitely don't have any disposable income for the meanwhile.

Real Estate people can rock right now, but should be saving their money for when the bankers come knocking. Real Estate in Lagos has not softened as much as other assets, so those that deal in real estate still think that the boom times still on us are on us. These guys are banking on the inflated asset prices to continue and they are all in for a rude awakening. Anybody who knows what banks are like right now, would defintely stay away from the real estate guys. After all you don't want to be collateral damage :D I suppose if you funded your real estate with cash then you are alright. However if you did you more truly belong in the next group.

Of course the super rich amongst us will continue to rock without even blinking. After all if you are worth $100 million and you lose half of it you can still rock. I mean you might not be in St. Tropez this year, but you can still oppress the crowd at AutoLounge.

However I'm not saying don't rock, I'm just saying don't rock like it was 2007. Well unless you owe on your margin account, in which case you had better go on home. Yes that mean you Mr. Stock Broker.

In the West Wing episode in which they 'solved' Social Security, they referred to Social Security as the "Third Rail" of American politics - i.e. you touch it and you die. Touch it means try to interfere with the current status quo. This is a reference to the third rail being the electrified rail in old track systems, and thus being the dangerous one that kills you.

It is somewhat ironic that the third rail of Nigerian politics is power. One of the sad truths about Nigeria is that the country would probably go into a recession in the short term if we ever get a long term power solution. This is because the power provision industry is a significant part of our economy. Granted the figures commonly reported are gross overestimates, however even cutting the figures to a quarter of their stated value still paints a pretty depressing picture.

Bluntly put a lot of livelihoods depend on the non-provision of power in Nigeria, and as such there will always be incentives for people to try and blunt any effective solution. This has not meant that people have not tried to solve the power situation, however it has meant that any real attempt one way or another has been stalled.

The first genuine attempt to solve the power situation was the decision to privatise PHCN and have the government get out of the power provision business and become a regulator. Request for bids went out, and sat unopened in Bureau of Public Enteprises (BPE) for months before being trashed. There were rumors that the DG of the BPE almost lost her job over the power thing.

The second attempt was the NIPP scheme. This scheme was wasteful in the extreme but the end result would have been power. There was a National Assembly power probe that recieved a lot of publicity. However the report was never released and the project has been delayed by a minimum of two years, even though the government continues to be commited to completing it.

The third attempt was for the African Finance Corporation (AFC) to take over management of the assets of PHCN in the first step to prepare them for privatisation. No sooner was this announced than were there two separate probes into the AFC. The end result was that the CEO lost his job, and was to be prosecuted. Funnily enough though, once AFC stopped being in the running to manage PHCN we stopped hearing noises about the CEO being prosecuted.

The lastest attempt was the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) trying to exercise its authority. This one will take a little bit of explaining. Lagos State apparently agreed with PHCN that PHCN should deduct money from its Federal Allocation to provide funding for PHCN to build a power plant. The agreement was so that PHCN would dedicate the power from the plant to Lagos State. So according to the state Lagos State FAC was being deducted every month, and PHCN was not providing the necessary power. Lagos State went to court to either get its money back or get the power it paid for. The Chairman of NERC said that the commission could hear the case. There was nothing more heard about that but suddenly "Light in Lagos" got a whole let better. When "Light in Lagos" gets better, the diesel suppliers suffer greatly as Lagos is the major consumer of diesel. So two weeks later, the EFCC arrested the heads of the commission on corruption charges. The wierd thing was that the initial charge reported was N5 billion, but was further reduced to N1.5 billion. However a few days after the arrest, "Light in Lagos" started getting worse.

Having all said all this, I remain optimistic that we will find a way to beat the special interests involved in the power situation. I know, I know, these interests are protecting their livelihood and to them it is a fight to the death. However the pressure on the government to do something is continuing to grow, and later rather than sooner (unfortunately) one or more of these attempts will succeed. Whether it is serious state governors building power plants for their states, or the NIPP scheme finally coming on stream, or privatization happening; all it takes is one breakthrough to show that it can happen. The next candidate for breakthrough status is the Geometric Power Plant in Aba. So we will be watching this one with closely. Here's to hoping y'all.

P.S. minus 100 cool points (but bragging rights) to anyone who can say why its ironic that power is third rail.

Some of you may not think you know what Retoasting is, but I am here on very good authority to inform you that you do. So let's break it down:

Picture this scenario if you will; a guy meets a girl at a house party of a mutual friend. They get to talking and sort of hit it off. No sparks fly or anything, but there is enough there that they exchange numbers and such. They talk on the phone a few times, maybe even meet up once or twice. However like flint and damp tinder, sparks never really burst into flame, and things peter out - he stops calling, and they stop hanging out etc. Flash forward a couple of months. The guy is looking through his phone and sees girls number. Optimism kicks in and he thinks that maybe it is possible that this time would be better. He rings her up to find out what's going on with her.

This my dear readers is the definition of the retoast. Obviously there are a lot of variations around the theme but the general outline is that same.

Now I can say without fear of contradiction that all straight guys (Can't speak for the gay relationship dynamic) are retoasters by nature. Take me for example. While I wouldn't identify myself as a chronic retoaster, I have been known to indulge in the phenomenon on occasion. I mean my personal record for retoasting is a year after we stopped talking. While it didn't work out, I would definitely say that it seemed like a good idea at the time :D

Here is one of the fundamental differences between women and men. Men generally think that retoasting is a good idea, women... not so much. I mean the inspiration for this post was two women I know complaining about retoasters that had just resurfaced. Well to be completely accurate, one was really annoyed and the other was ruefully amused.

As a seeker after knowledge, I wanted to know what women found so distasteful about the retoast. It turns out that to the mind of the woman these things peter out on purpose. That is they are actively discouraging the guy until he goes away. So while the guy is not exactly an irritant, he is not exactly a desired toaster either. So him chosing to retoast comes across as an irritation. To them the retoaster has become a bugaboo, to be put in the same class as those that mark register at 10pm every night. To me it sounded weird until it clicked that girls seem to put people in two classes - those they want to call them and the others.

The other reason that women aren't fans of the retoast that it is often confused with the re-up. The re-up is the practice where a guy goes cold on a girl who likes him because he is engaged in other interests only to then return when he is "disengaged."Obviously I cannot sanction the re-up as valid male activity :D Though it is a shame that it is bringing the retoast into disrepute.
In the words of a smart woman that I know, here is a simple way to distinguish between the retoast and the re-up - "if you are clearly into a guy and he is blowing hot and cold, he has other interests." So ladies keep that in mind the next time you shoot a retoaster down thinkin he is a dog. Though I suppose certain situations could be a retoast to the girl and a re-up to the guy but lets not complicate things :D

I suppose that with all these obstacles it is clear why retoasting generally ends in failure. There are obvious exceptions to the rule, but then again that's why they are called exceptions. I would argue that women are too rigid because of their general exclusion of retoasting, however when they have the options that they generally do they have no real need to re-examine that which was already rejected (say that last sentence five times if you dare) In closing I would say that for the guys that choose to continue retoasting, you might have better luck if you wait until you "run in" to the person again as opposed to random calling with the intent to retoast.