Stories by Moses Nosike
Babatunde Adesayo Samuel, a Fellow Chartered Accountant (FCA), is the founder and chief executive officer, TGR Limited, a fin-tech service providers. In this interview with Moses Nosike discusses his company’s product, empowerment programme, he exploring telecom services and challenges in the economy. Excerpts.
What is your assessment of the Nigerian economy since the beginning of the year, and government policy on the economy?
Well, the Nigerian economy since the beginning of the year started very well on a good note. But the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic brought up something that has never happened in the history of Nigeria as a country. That we experienced a total lockdown, something I have never experienced since I was born. And you know that the Federal Government wants to prevent meltdown in making sure that our economy is really booming so as to protect the lives of human being and there was a total lockdown. I mean closing down of all businesses in the country. Government decided to close down the sea (water), land borders and air space (aviation) just to ensure that there is safety in the country. But unfortunately, the Covid-19 hit the economy hard. In fact, it hit us badly in all ramifications. You can see that lots of revenues were lost during the Covid-19 period which affected many Nigerians. Again, you can see that a lot of businesses were closed down and a lot of companies even relieved their employees from their jobs which affected a lot of households. But government is trying as much as possible to even give some kind of palliatives to the citizens.
The CBN also helped in reducing lending rate in the country and there was a moratorium for Nigerians who have borrowed maybe for business for six months. They were given moratorium of one year to pay the principal back. Even my own company, when we got a loan from the bank, I was given moratorium of six months to pay back the loan interest and they spread the capital which is part of the way government is encouraging businesses in this country. Also, during the Covid-19 crisis, the fuel pump prices were reduced for Nigerians and this impacted positively on the cost of running generators for business in the country. Government has been trying to make sure the country’s economy bounced back since the pandemic. But notwithstanding, the COVID-19 pandemic really affected the economy in the first set of the year.
Tell us about your company and what you are bringing on board to Nigerian business environment?
Top Up And Get Reward (TGR) Limited is a registered company that started her operation since November 15, 2018. It is a company established to eradicate poverty by even distribution of economic wealth to all partners of our great company; locally and globally through reselling of telecoms products using technology advantage.
I tell you, anything is possible when we are connected, this stems from our company’s core belief that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern, connected life. TGR is a company that is floated with curiosity why many Nigerians especially unemployed and under employed are finding it extremely difficult to live up to their desired dreams. I carried out a research to know whether Nigeria is a dry and poor country. I found out to see that Nigeria is a country flowing with milk and honey. It is a country in which we can all live big and enjoy. It is all about humility and readiness to put in little efforts, the end result will be amazing.
Again, TGR is a company that desires comfort and peace for our great country Nigeria and wishes to see how we can also reduce crimes that can be traced to poverty especially in the post COVID-19 pandemic. TGR desires that all Nigerians should have economic reward from telecom industry asides the value for their money.
What is the economic value of your products in the telecom sector towards leveraging on low earner’s status?
Telecoms industries among others are good companies that we can ride on their products to have fair share of the telecoms profit to better the lots of millions of Nigerians. It is a business of kobo and kobo which can effectively transform someone’s life to his dreamed lifestyle. Nigeria is a populace of over two hundred million people. If one can effectively have only 20000 people interconnected under one’s network; and one is getting N1.50k per person per day from their activities, such person will be making an average of N900, 000 per month and N10.8 million annually. We need to understand that 20,000 Nigerians is 0.01 per cent of the entire population of our great country Nigeria. With this analysis you can imagine how much money is exchanging hands daily. It is time we humbled ourselves and build our future and live a better life. I am not sure we should only humble ourselves abroad to make our lives meaningful by taking any job, we can also do same here and improve our financial status.
TGR platform has started producing millionaires since the beginning of COVID-19. When nearly all businesses failed during COVID-19, it was only telecoms companies that kept flourishing.
What are the benefits of your products in Nigerian ICT?
Being a member of TGR will enable an individual to continually get commission on every purchase of all telecoms products (Airtime & Mobile Data) together with a fair share on electricity bill payments. Every member is interconnected to one another, this makes it feasible for every member to get commission from the transaction of other members in TGR. At least ten members will benefit from a single transaction of a member. We can imagine how frequently people buy both airtime and data every day. These products are not negotiable; you might discover that most Nigerians would prefer to miss their lunch instead of being offline for some minutes. Being a member will make you to consistently get commissions from telecom products whether you are awake or you are sleeping since purchase of airtime and data is done every minute. Nigerians need to join TGR to improve their financial lots.
As a member you will be able to build your own network team that will give you continuous residual income as long as telecom industries last in Nigeria. It is an empowerment opportunity that will make you to be independent and financially stable if you are ready to work the work and use our platform.
We are aware that the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down global economic progression with Nigeria inclusive, what is your assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 on Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?
Yes. It really affected us in terms of our GDP. It affected everybody because the companies one is hoping to be running businesses during Covid-19, they were all in lockdown.
Of course, revenue generated by government during this period reduced drastically with the concurrent falling in the price of crude oil at the international market. More than billions of naira were lost to Covid-19. When you look at the aviation industry, sea (water) and land border, they were all lockdown during the pandemic. No importation, no exportation even in the production of goods in the manufacturing sector, so everything stopped working. No doubt, it really affected the economy. Individually, it really affected us severely. Most people that are into service businesses like transport business, food production and others also were hit. So nobody was moving around at that period and the economy of households was really affected and reduced. This makes life a bit more difficult for Nigerians even to sustain in their means of daily lives.
We are in the last quarter of the fourth quarters of the year, do you see Nigeria’s economy exiting into recession based on the forecast of World Bank, IMF and others?
Based on that fact, I believe we are already in economic recession, because everything has gone up even the cost of foodstuff in the market is high now. Government has removed subsidy from petroleum product, causing price of fuel to go up beyond N150 per litre including increase in electricity tariff, VAT among others. So how do we survive this hardship.
We are already in recession in Nigeria. And people are finding it difficult, and a lot of Nigerians have been relieved of their jobs and those still working had their salaries cut. What I’m saying is that we are already in economic recession. So it is now time for government to start plans on how we are going to get out of it. I think that is what will be the question in this fourth quarter as economic analysts will be keenly watching the federal government on the direction it will take to get Nigerian economy out of this doldrum.
The Services sector has remain the driving force of the Nigerian economy in the non-oil sector, what is your assessment on the performance of the country’s ICT sector in contributing to the country’s GDP growth?
I think since the beginning of this lockdown or Covid-19 pandemic, the ICT has been the major economy player that is contributing to the economy of this our great country as it has been sustaining our economy positively. You know when everybody were out of jobs, under lockdown, staying at home, you won’t believe that in the first two weeks, three weeks, we were all depending on the telcoms sector for survival as everything were going on online, data being bought, air time being used since we cannot move around. It has contributed immensely in the growth of our GDP. According to my findings, it is over 14 per cent in the early quarters of the year that the ICT contributed to our GDP. So, the ICT has been the one majoring on the economy because you don’t need to go out before you do anything. They can do anything provided it is online services. Unlike agriculture, food production, you have to go out and provide their services. But this one, you can do it online so ICT has contributed to the growth of the economy.
Recently, the federal government finally deregulated the country’s downstream sector with the removal of fuel subsidy arising in increased in fuel prices. Also, government jerked up electricity tariff in the country. With these, should we expect increase in call rates, data and airtime pricing from Telcos with energy cost increments?
Yes, the way am looking at it, all the telecom companies are not operating outside Nigeria rather they are operating within the Nigerian economy. And of course, when the cost of production is increased, it will affect them unilaterally, on how much is the price of data or airtime, it will affect periodically. When there is action, there will be corresponding reaction and that is what will affect the cost or the price the telcos is giving to his consumers because in the course of all this, they need electricity to run their businesses and the cost of electricity tariff has increased. They need to move around with fuel despite the pump price increment, so they need these services for business growth and expansion. And once all these energy costs are included in their cost of production, it will be transferred to the final consumers automatically. So, it is very possible that the price of calls rate may increase as we go into the year end (2020).
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