The Nation Newspaper

Tag: birds

  • Birds of a feather

    An interesting study was conducted by Solomon Asch in 1951 to test how people’s beliefs affect one another. He invited people to sign up for a psychological experiment. When the volunteers arrived, he allowed a person to enter into a room where six people were already seated, with an empty seat left for the newcomer.  All the participants were shown a standard line and allowed to examine it.

    Sometime later, they were shown three lines and asked to select among them the standard line they had seen earlier. The first participant chose a wrong answer, the second participant chose the same wrong answer and so did third up to the sixth participant. When it came to the turn of the newcomer, he probably reasoned that six people could not be wrong though he felt differently, so he also chose the same wrong answer to avoid being the odd one out. He was, however, not aware that the other six participants had earlier agreed on their answer because they were part of the experimental setup. The newcomer’s opinion was the only one being measured, and his action confirmed that human decisions tend to be affected by that of the people around them.

    Supposing someone tells you that the people you have around you everyday are directly related to your success or failure, how many of those people would you keep around us? If the newcomer in the experiment above could be influenced within a limited period of interaction and in such a subtle manner by people he never knew, imagine what happens to us through the people we see, listen to and interact with everyday? Here are a few suggestions of the kind of people we need around us:

    1. We need mentors: Les Brown usually puts it this way, “Always have someone in your life who sees things in you that you cannot see in yourself, because you can never see a picture when you are in the frame”. A good mentor should be able to identify our potentials and help us develop them.
    2. We need change-oriented people: a wise man said,”If you change things but you don’t change people, things will return to the way they used to be”. Remove termites from a room, clean out the debris, re-stock the room with new books and furniture then put the termites back in the room. What would you expect? Unless people change, nothing really changes.
    3. We need positive minded people: Life is full of challenges, we all know that, but it is also full of blessings. It is what we look for that we find. Les Brown told the story of someone who saw a man about to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. He rushed to the man and said, “Please don’t jump; tell me about your problems”. Two hours later, however, they both jumped! Don’t let anyone offload depression on you; you need a joyful spirit to see opportunities. It is alright to listen to people’s problems, but make sure they have a positive disposition about the problems being solved.
    4. We need people who value us: a lot of people always feel inferior or unimportant, but that is because they are not with those who value them. If we stay around those who merely tolerate us, we will feel unwanted all the time. If we stay where the demand for our skill or talent has been “over supplied” by other people, we will merely be “another one”. However, if we go to where we are needed, we will be “the one” and feel wanted. You are too valuable to be treated as an option; you are the real deal.

    Thanks for reading my article today. I would really love to hear from you. So, do share your views with me by sending SMS to 07034737394, visiting www.olanreamodu.com and following me on twitter @lanreamodu. Remember, you are currently nothing compared to what you can become. This can be your year if you want it to be!

  • 1.2b birds consumed yearly, says expert

    1.2b birds consumed yearly, says expert

    Approximately 1. 2 billion birds are consumed yearly in Nigeria, an expert, Alaba Yunusa, has said.

    Speaking at Awe, Oyo State, during a tour of Amo Group  Farms, Data Analyst and Farmer  Satisfaction Representative (FSR), natnuPreneur broiler outgrower scheme, Yunusa  said only 30 per cent of the chicken consumed in the country are produced locally.

    He  said there was a huge market for chicken production and supply, with smuggled ones covering a consumption deficit of about 70 per cent.

    Explaining that there is massive opportunity for farmer’s profitability in poultry farming under natnuPreneur, Yunusa said: “Our assumption is that if 10 per cent  of 170 million Nigerians consume six  packs of chicken a month, a total of 1,224,000,000  pieces of chicken would have been consumed in 12 months.“

    His words: “From a retail perspective, a piece of chicken average sales price is N1,000. So, N1,000 multiplied by 1,224,000,000 will give us a value of about  1.224 trillion. Now, the question is how much of this money is getting to our farmers? This is one question natnuPreneur seeks to give positive answers to. We want to ensure that a good chunk of that figure gets into the pocket of poultry farmers through a reliable off-taking arrangement, effective poultry management trainings and capacity building.”

    He said his organisation introduced natnuPreneur project  to  increase the competitiveness of domestic production and processing of poultry meat and eggs, adding that the objective of the programme is to investigate key factors at the production stage and to showcase more efficient methods of production to increase profitability and attract more investment into the poultry sector.

    “Between 2014 and 2017, the programme has onboarded 1,156 farmers under different categories and clusters; off taken 4,348,640 birds; and paid out N4.352billion to famers.”

    The record, he revealed, has drawn the attention of various financial institutions,  such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Bank of Industry (BOI), Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Sterling Bank, Heritage Bank and others, to partner natnuPreneur and support its famers.

    “Also, because of their well thought out scientific process for broiler farming, natnuPreneur farmers have the ability to do six cycles yearly with mortality rate as low as four per cent.”

    He said: “To ensure farmer profitability, we have developed and tested our processes and have a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to guide our farmers on effective poultry farming. We’ve also developed a detailed economic model for our farmers – a net profit calculator, which guards against pilfer, wastage and fraud. We have also developed a Buy Back Price equation to ensure profitability, created a database that is searchable across various parameters, and have designed an effective customer satisfaction centre for support services.

    “The scheme has the potential of providing employment for over two million Nigerians, within the poultry value chain-feed mills, hatchery, logistics and transportation, chicken processing, chicken distribution and retailing.”

    Group Chief Operations Officer, Mr. Albert Begerano,  said natnuPreneur programme has thrived because of its backbones such as Amo Farm, which produces about 1,900,000 day olds weekly, with broiler chicks being 800,000.

    The integrated plant, which has storage capacity for 500 metric tonnes of feeds and maize, produces between 600 to 1,000 tonnes of feeds daily.

    And  its natnudO foods, where off taken birds are slaughtered and packaged, Begerano  said   produces 30,000 frozen chickens daily in the West, 10,000 in the North and 15,000 in the East, totaling 55,000 birds daily.

    The plant also provides                                                                                                                                                facilities for storage and preservation such as  blast freezers and cold rooms that could take over 600 tonnes of frozen chicken in the west alone.

  • We pray these birds change our lives, say widows

    We pray these birds change our lives, say widows

    Some of the 500 widows empowered to become poultry farmers by wife of Governor Godwin Obaseki, Betsy, have expressed optimism that the 20, 000 birds given to them would make them become millionaires.

    Mrs. Obaseki, as part of activities to mark the International Women’s Day celebration, launched the “Edo Women for Agricultue Programme” in which she doled out 40 birds each to 500 widows after training them on how to rear birds. The 40 birds made up of 20 layers and 20 boilers.

    The beneficiaries described the gesture as a good omen in their lives as it would make them self sufficient as feeds were also given to them.

    One of the widows who gave her name as Juliet Aibangbee said she preferred the birds to money as she would now be engaged in productive venture. She said they were promised during the training programme that a ready market would be provided for their products.

    Another beneficiary, who simply gave her name as Mrs. Glory, said they were told the High breed birds do not die easily and were capable of laying five to six eggs daily.

    Plans to empower widows in the state began during the electioneering campaign of Obaseki when he promised to pay monthly stipend to 100 widows at the first instance. However, there was a change of plan to rather make the widows income earners by making them key into various agricultural initiatives of his administration.

    Speaking at the launch of the “Edo Women for Agricultue Programme”, Mrs. Obaseki said she observed that giving out monthly stipend would just be pocket money for the beneficiaries and such she advised that the money be invested on productive ventures for the widows with a view to ensuring food security.

    Mrs. Obaseki promised that any widow that successfully managed the 40 birds would be further empowered as the initiative was to boost the production capacity of rural women, tackle food shortages and poverty.

    She said the birds were special breed capable of laying five to six eggs daily and would ensure steady income for the widows.

    Her words: “I am not surprised my husband is seeking to collaborate with the church because when we were campaigning, my husband promised to select 100 widows for the next four years, and give them monthly stipend.

    “But I think it is better to empower the widows than to give them money. Therefore, we have developed an empowerment project for the widows by collaborating with Bank of Industry and Edo state will be lucky to be the pilot scheme.

    “We will create a revolution in rural poultry production that will increase productivity and income for rural women and empower them to transform access of poor households to source animal protein.

    “I brought the best company in poultry business to ensure food security. The demand for chicken and eggs is very high. We will create market for the widows to sell the birds.

    “After we succeed with this, we will extend it to thousands of women. I will churn out initiatives for women to have opportunities to be rich.

    “We are not doing politics, we are doing governance. Edo indigenes are allowed to join this administration. We will not behave like people with small minds. This is no time for politics.”

    Deputy Governor Philip Shaibu said the widows might have been expecting to go home with sewing machines, motorcycles and hair dressing machines, but the governor’s wife, working in line with All Progressives Congress (APC) change mantra gave them chickens, which they could rear and make money.

  • Birds of a feather

    An interesting study was conducted by Solomon Asch in 1951 to test how people’s beliefs affect one another. He invited people to sign up for a psychological experiment. When the volunteers arrived, he allowed a person to enter into a room where six people were already seated, with an empty seat left for the newcomer.  All the participants were shown a standard line and allowed to examine it. Sometime later, they were shown three lines and asked to select among them the standard line they had seen earlier. The first participant chose a wrong answer, the second participant chose the same wrong answer and so did third up to the sixth participant. When it came to the turn of the newcomer, he probably reasoned that six people could not be wrong, so he also chose the same wrong answer to avoid being the odd one out. He was, however, not aware that the other six participants had earlier agreed on their answer because they were part of the experimental setup. The newcomer’s opinion was the only one being measured, and his action confirmed that human decisions tend to be affected by that of the people around them.

    Supposing someone tells us that the people we have around us everyday are directly related to our success or failure, how many of those people would we keep around us? If the newcomer in the experiment above could be influenced within a limited period of interaction and in such a subtle manner by people he never knew, imagine what happens to us through the people we see, listen to and interact with everyday? We need to assess our relationships in 2015 and see if they are the kind of relationships we need for where we are heading in 2016. Please understand that I am not suggesting that we only keep around us people we can “use”, “take advantage of” or “get something from”, no! That will make us selfish and ultimately miserable. Here are a few suggestions of the kind of people we need around us:

    • We need mentors: Les Brown usually puts it this way, “Always have someone in your life who sees things in you that you cannot see in yourself, because you can never see a picture when you are in the frame”. A good mentor should be able to indentify our potentials and help us develop them.
    • We need change oriented people: a wise man said, “If you change things but you don’t change people, things will return to the way they used to be”. Remove termites from a room, clean out the debris, re-stock the room with new books and furniture then put the termites back in the room. What would you expect? Unless people change, nothing really changes.
    • We need positive minded people: Life is full of challenges, we all know that, but it is also full of blessings. It is what we look for that we find. Les Brown told the story of someone who saw a man about to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. He rushed to the man and said, “Please don’t jump; tell me about your problems”. Two hour later, however, they both jumped! Don’t let anyone offload depression on you this year; you need a joyful spirit to see opportunities in the year. It is alright to listen to people’s problems, but make sure they have a positive disposition about the problems being solved.
    • We need people who value us: a lot of people always feel inferior or unimportant, but that is because they are not with those who value them. If we stay around those who merely tolerate us, we will feel unwanted all the time. If we stay where the demand for our skill or talent has been “over supplied” by other people, we will merely be “another one”. However, if we go to where we are needed, we will be “the one” and feel wanted. You are too valuable to be treated as an option; you are the real deal.
    • We need friends: we need people who simply love us for who we are and not for what we are or what we have. We need people who can correct us in love, not those whose criticism will leave us with low self-esteem.
    • We need a cause: we need a reason for existence that is beyond us. It is important to invest into the lives of people around us in any way we can. We should give someone a reason to thank God for creating us. We should let some people keep praying that God would keep us alive and well, so that we can continue to be a blessing.

    I would love to hear from you. Please send me a message on what you think about the article, questions you have or any topic you want us to discuss. Thank you.

  • Of beasts and birds

    Of beasts and birds

    A tiny creature she was. At about 8:35pm, in leaps and bounds, she replaced one leg with the other, the left hand bracing her tray and the right firmly locked onto her skirt – keeping it from succumbing to the gravitational pull of the earth. The lass of not more than six years and hardly standing beyond three feet above ground level declined the offer of a lift.

    Where are you headed?

    “Agelaso.” She replied, a tiny suburb of Ajara, Badagry.

    I took a second look at her and the two wraps of Agidi left in her tray kept me wondering whom to direct my silent indignation at. Is it her parents whose difficulty in sustaining the family was so extreme that their ward had to join them in the bread winning adventure, or the country whose sons and daughters have become no more than vermin whose existence is irritable to the aristocrats?

    She sells each for N10 and with the size of the metal on her head, hardly would she have left home with the edible corn extract of a worth above N200.

    Can you identify your house on a bike?

    Yes, she said.

    As the discussion went on – perhaps as a sign of warning never to converse with strangers – she leaped on with giant steps.

    Wait, let me get you a bike.

    No, she retorted.

    I walked to catch her at the same time trying to get a bike. On getting one, I pleaded with her to ride on it, yet she refused. And that was the end of it.

    As she disappeared into the umbra of the artificial lighting from bulbs and lamps, every step took her a step toward a possible disciple of ritualism – those sick souls who see dollars in intestines and bulletproof in skulls – and every movement, a step closer to a bleak future. Now she will be beaten, not because she misplaced her school bag which children of her age are wont to do but because she lost track of time and sold till dusk. She was supposed to be asleep – entertaining the household from the dream world with sonorous replay of live events on the playing ground – but the “drive for wealth,” which Robert Heilbroner, in The Worldly Philosophers, says “is the most worldly of all man’s activities” has pitched her against an odd world at an odd age, carrying out an odd trade at an odd hour of the day.

    It was an acquaintance of this sort that a 20th century American senator made which prompted his April 1934 address titled: Every man a king. “Is that a right of life,” wrote Huey P. Long “when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 than is by 120 million people?”

    He continued: “That you must not let any one man be too poor, and you must not let any one man be too rich; that the same mill that grinds out the extra rich is the mill that will grind out the extra poor, because, in order that the extra rich can become so affluent, they must necessarily take more of what ordinarily would belong to the average man.”

    A nation can be forgiven for the murder of mothers but never for reducing their children to chaff. I beamed my thoughts on this tale in order that it may serve as a precursor to the foundation of the rot that has reduced a once promising nation of ours to this Hobbesian state.

    They have stolen that which belong to previous men as they continue to steal those of future generations. They inflate contracts and apply for loans, all in a bid to satiating their insatiable appetites, thereby reducing the citizenry to pigs and worms.

    Ours is a b-space. In algebra, the intelligentsias’ in that arcane field of study calls it b-tuple. As one spent billions to run computer software, another allotted huge amounts to the sinking of a few boreholes. It’s a huge mess they’ve made of the country, one that although the new government is fighting to set a template of sanity, only a miracle will make the fruits blossom in this generation.

    What could make a man steal so much while his neighbors die of thirst? The lanky activist, whose heroics made him a father of sensitive activism, summarized it all. “Turn to the birds and beast, and what do you find?” says Mahatma Ghandi, “They never eat merely to please the palate, they never go on eating till their inside is full to overflowing. And yet, we regard ourselves as superior to the animal creation. Surely, those who spend their days in the worship of the belly are worse than birds and beasts.”

    They stole so much that they began stealing what they did not need, making their bellies gods’ and anuses, their Satan. As Ghandi wrote, even the birds don’t do that. May sanity reign in this nation.

    • Modiu Olaguro, NYSC, Jebba.