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Okhai Akhigbe
They say in today’s world, there is an App for everything. In fact, in 2019, the Google Store alone hit a record breaking 2.9 million apps. Some of the most popular apps like Facebook, messenger, Instagram have been downloaded by two billion users.
Imagine that! You want to find a former lover, track a new one? There is an app for that…or in the making. So, it’s all about interests – which is all about information. You want information? Then google it! Tech is changing the way we speak, and newbies keep checking the urban dictionary to catch up. You might need to add a new word, it’s called remtracking, and its all about following the moolah.
Its an age of information revolution of sorts – to those who understand the true nature of information. If there is anything that the study of history has shown, it would be about the irony of life, or better still, life’s absurdities: the paradox of poverty amid plenty. Not just the Nigerian plight of being the 8th largest exporter of Crude Oil in the world and at the same time, ranking as the leader of, not just poverty, but an extreme case of poverty. That’s no longer in the news. Let’s focus on the larger picture: the world of increasing possibilities.
Someone once said that the root cause of poverty is lack of information. If you think about it long and hard for a while, it makes a whole lot of sense…for a while. Truth be told, that seemed logical years ago until people started coming up with apps for everything. Today we are ‘drowning’ in too much information that is creating psychological issues. So, a new root cause of poverty in this era may be in terms of an inability to apply open source information (OSINF) to achieve our objectives. This is probably why online dating sites have tens of millions of subscribers looking for love and shifting through terabytes of information in search of the dream partner. Information, it would seem, is like a two-edged sword. It can work for you or against you. Information is like crude oil, you must get your hands dirty to get to it, then you must process it, the end product is incredible!
So, what are your objectives? And what information do you need as your crude oil?
Are you politically motivated and interested in social justice, wanting to see that communities and everyday people thrive? Is your objective a business interest, that you aspire to build some enterprise, or is it about making a career decision – about how and where to invest time and resources? One central thing we need to understand in this dispensation of time, and especially in the developing economies such as ours, is the infinite value of information. Information is more valuable than crude oil. Seismic information will lead you to oil and not the other way around.
So, in a nutshell, apps, whether mobile or web apps, these are vehicles that drive you along a particular information highway along which there are a series of exits that connect to other parts of the transportation infrastructure that we call the internet.
Let’s bring this home
Remtrack is an app conceptualised to provide information on transactions in the oil and gas industry in the first phase. The larger picture is to follow transactions in the mining sector of which Nigeria is currently only exploiting an estimated 2 per cent of its potential. Someone would ask, what interest should I have in the oil and gas sector when I don’t work or do business in the industry?
It’s all about the Benjamins, and who isn’t interested in information about the greenback. Wealth starts to manifest with the information trail. RemTrack is about providing transparency and this translates to accurate figures, facts and objectivity. And in this time and age, the word sexy should imply having information that empowers, whether in the political, social or economic spheres; we could all do with some extra leverage.
Illustrate with an example?
The best place to start would be with a most recent example. It was smiles all around the conference table in Abuja, on December 26 as Nigeria through the Nigerian Natural Liquefied Gas (NNLG) Ltd. signed a $10 billion contract to produce the 7th train of NNLG. What’s the 7th train of Natural Liquefied Gas? This is another reason you might want to consider downloading RemTrack, so you can stay informed and intelligent. This ground-breaking contract is supposed to create an estimated 10,000 direct jobs, and a possible 40,000 more in the value chain over the next few years. The import of this project also implies that certain essential infrastructure needs to be put in place between Bonny Island and the mainland to ease logistics.
Are you an active politician or thinking of signing on to the Not too Young to Run initiative? Are you involved with a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) or thinking about setting one up? Are you an artisan or an entrepreneur? Do you live in Bonny Island, any one of the South-south states, or you live in the South west or further north and may be interested in tapping into the opportunities that will emerge? If yes, then RemTrack was created to empower you because this is what information has the potential to do. However, there is requirement for you to go to the next level of what could be called open source information engineering (not information technology engineering), which would consist of the ability to use information to design and build a life plan or achieve objectives.
On the flip side, we all need to become more politically aware. This will mean being more proactive with searching for information that is strategically important to us as a nation. Some of the questions that may pop up on this project would be: how much revenue is expected out of a $10 billion investment? How are the gas cargoes sold and what checks are in place to ensure all monies are remitted to the Federal Government.§ How will this generated revenue be expended over time?
We need to wake up to the realities of our time. The blame game has got to cease so we all take responsibility for our corporate destiny. We must change the conversations and start new ones. We have millions of conversations on the premier league every month and this translates to billions of pounds for the league because of the interest and the information that circulates.
