Business News
Stranded Nigerians reportedly sleeping in Dubai Park
The Nigerians were previously sleeping outside the embassy before being moved to the park.
About 35 Nigerians are currently stranded in Dubai, sleeping in a park as the companies they worked for stopped paying their salaries, making it difficult for them to fly back home.
This was revealed in a social media post by Dubai-based journalist, Ashleigh Stewart in a now-deleted tweet. She said the stranded Nigerians don’t have access to running water even though it is currently the “peak summer in Dubai”.
Stewart added that the Nigerian Embassy is aware of their plight, as the stranded Nigerians were previously sleeping outside the embassy, but were moved to the park after they appealed for help.
READ: Buhari discloses what it will take to reverse US visa ban
She said most of them were working in Dubai, but their companies refused to pay them during the pandemic, forcing them out on the streets.
“They have been appealing to the Nigerian embassy for an aid flight home but have yet to succeed. Around 70 of them were flown home last week.
“One of the women, a former housemaid, has been here 2 weeks. She has 3 children in Nigeria and just wants to get home to them. Another man, a nutritionist, arrived in January to find work and said he had been applying for everything ‘even labourer jobs’ and couldn’t find a job,” she tweeted.
Hi guys- deleted tweets about the Nigerians in the park as we have been inundated with offers of help and can’t keep up.
For now: if anyone wants to help please reach out to the Nigerian Embassy. They, and humanitarian groups as well as the Dubai Government, are working on 1/2
— Ashleigh Stewart (@Ash_Stewart_) August 21, 2020
In a subsequent tweet, Stewart said she had to delete the previous tweet because plans to assist the Nigerians had already commenced. Stewart says that the Nigerians just want to return home, as was informed it would either be via sponsors, airlines, or the embassy. She, therefore, called for support to buy their tickets back to Nigeria.
Stewart later thanked concerned people that have offered to help and said the plan is to reach the Nigerian embassy.
“They, and humanitarian groups as well as the Dubai Government, are working on getting a more formal channel to help them set up in the meantime. I’m told that everything is being done to get them home as soon as physically possible and to get them comfortable accommodation as well,” she said.
READ: Emirates to start daily flights operations to Abuja from next month
Update: 18 people have been helped to get a ticket, a remaining 30 people have been moved to a humanitarian camp in Jebel Ali. Thank you to everyone asking how to help – for now we just need to get the others on a flight. They’re being well catered for in terms of food & a bed 🙂 https://t.co/DrbLgFOuP3
— Ashleigh Stewart (@Ash_Stewart_) August 21, 2020
It would be recalled that since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Federal Government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other agencies have been making efforts to bring back home Nigerians that have been stranded in several countries.
Billionaire Watch
How young Elon Musk started and sold 3 businesses for $1.9bn before Tesla
We look at the 3 successful businesses Elon Musk founded and sold for a collective $1.9bn before starting Tesla.
Success is never an accident. It is most times the result of many years of hard work and consistent effort. Elon Musk is popular today for his electric car company Tesla and his space project SPACE X. But long before these, he was already a multi-millionaire and had founded 3 successful companies which he sold for a collective $1.9bn.
The purpose of this article is to paint a clear picture of what it takes to be among the top 1% of any field. It takes years of consistent hard work to get there. Elon Musk is the perfect example of an individual with a very strong work ethic. His story below will prove that to you.
This article will briefly look at the 3 successful businesses Elon Musk founded and sold for a collective $1.9bn before starting Tesla. Let’s go!
Blaster ($500)
A 12-year-old Elon Musk facing bullying in high school and a not so friendly dad taught himself how to code. According to the Inc. Magazine, he mastered BASIC a general-purpose coding language making use of a commodore PC he acquired himself. He later that year, sold the code for his PC game Blastar to a PC magazine for approximately $500.
This was his first business endeavour which he started and sold.
ZIP 2 ($340m)
After the sale of Blastar for $500, Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal took a $28,000 seed money from their dad and started another internet venture, Zip 2. They rented an office and slept in it because they couldn’t afford a house.
Zip 2 was a web software startup that created online city guides for newspapers. The software was patronized by the New York Times and other notable media companies.
Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal sold Zip 2 to PC giants Compaq for $340m. The year was 1999 and Elon Musk was 28 years old.
X.com/PayPal ($1.5bn)
Elon Musk continued on his journey of starting companies and selling them. He took $10m out of his earnings from the Zip 2 deal and joined the internet boom.
He founded x.com an online platform he envisioned to be the future of internet banking. In 2000 X.com merged with a Fintech startup, Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel, another would-be billionaire. Both companies combined to become what we know as PayPal today. Elon musk was named CEO of PayPal and had the highest number of shares in the company.
In 2002 PayPal was acquired by eBay for a whopping $1.5bn.
What you should know
Elon Musk has often stressed the need to be consistent and have strong work ethics. In a graduation ceremony by the USC Marshall School Of Business, Elon Musk shared his opinion on work ethics according to CNBC.
“You need to work super-hard. Work hard every waking hour,” Musk said in 2014.
“If you do the simple math, and say if somebody else is working 50 hours [a week] and you’re working 100, you’ll get twice [as much] done in the course of a year as the other company.”
We hope this Monday article will inspire you to work harder and strive to get more work done in record time.
Business News
CAC sets 3-hour time line for company registration in 2021
The CAC is prioritising the reduction of the registration circle for new companies to just 3 hours before the end of the year 2021.
The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has said that following the successful deployment of an end-to-end registration module, it was now prioritising the reduction of the registration circle for new companies to just 3 hours before the end of the year 2021.
This is coming after CAC had in November 2020, announced the implementation of new technology that will change the face of business registration including allowing customers to print their certificates with verifiable QR code from anywhere in the world.
This disclosure was made by the Registrar-General of the commission, Garba Abubakar, at a dinner in honour of the Chairman, Governing Board, CAC and Nigerian Ambassador-Designate to the Kingdom of Spain, Ademola Seriki.
In order to achieve this target, the Registrar-General said the commission was making arrangements to empower over 400 approving officers with working tools to process and approve registration applications either from home or anywhere necessary,” the agency stated.
Abubakar noted that the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic had adversely hampered CAC’s delivery timeline.
He, however, pointed out that CAC was resolutely committed to serving its customers despite being forced to operate with less than 50% of its workforce.
While bidding farewell to Seriki, the Registrar-General said he received the news of his appointment with mixed feelings as CAC was going to miss his tremendous support and guidance.
Also speaking at the event, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Niyi Adebayo, described the outgoing CAC Chairman as a man of immense pedigree and endowed with enormous potential to justify the confidence reposed in him by the president.
In case you missed it
- The CAC recently announced the upgrade of its website and online registration portal to include features, which allow for the automation of some selected services and processes, in line with the Federal Government’s mandate of improving the ease of doing business in Nigeria.
- The selected services and processes include Electronic search of company records, Upgraded Companies Registration Portal for Pre-incorporation filings and Post incorporation filings.
The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) says following the successful deployment of an end-to-end registration module, it is now prioritizing the reduction of the registration circle for new companies to just 3 hours before the end of year 2021. pic.twitter.com/mMGjLN1JeS
— Corporate Affairs Commission (@cacnigeria1) April 11, 2021
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