HOW TO AVOID BUSINESS COLLAPSE IN 2021

 KEY STEPS TO PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS FROM DISASTER

Small businesses make up the bulk of the Nigerian economy with most firms falling into this category employing an average of 5 to 30 persons; most persons go into business due to the economic nature of the country; that is a lack of white-collar jobs and other job opportunities.

Most of these businesses comprise artisans, small-scale farming enterprises, and other business ventures with a small chance of growth beyond the primary level. The COVID-19 the pandemic of 2020 exposed just how fragile most businesses were, with several MSMEs folding up and many more on the brink of extinction. With the condition and economic nature of the country losing one’s business is almost certainly a path to poverty and lack.

This article will enlighten you on the steps to take to protect your business from collapse in the New Year in the advent of another disaster (God forbid).

1.    ASSESS YOUR BUSINESS RESILIENCE

Accessing the resiliency of your business is very important, what we mean by resiliency here is how strong and flexible your business is at the moment. Some key questions you need to ask yourself is:

1.      Do you have a team of individuals in your firm that know all the key operations of the firm and can provide insight when planning for disasters?

2.      Have you made sure all the critical documents of your business are secured? This includes documents like registration documents, account books, statements of account, etc.

3.      How do you access your data or document if you are not able to access your physical shop? E.g. how do you get access to your account book or order books if you are on lockdown?

4.       Have you identified possible problems that may arise for your business e.g. if you own an earth fish pond, have you taken into consideration a scenario when your farm is flooded?

Answering questions like this expose how strongly prepared your business is for a disaster.

2.      KNOW YOUR RISKS

Know the risks associated with your business, these risks could both be in the production phase, transportation phase, or even delivery phase, and have a second option or try to mitigate these risks from happening. For instance, Okeke runs a logistics company, he has a fleet of vehicles that he uses to deliver goods to his customers, the biggest risk he faces is the threat of accidents due to bad roads, having identified his risk, Okeke can approach an insurance company and has his fleet insured?

Knowing your critical business resources would also allow you to plan better on how to mitigate any disaster or recover from such if they do happen.

3.      KNOW YOUR OPERATIONS

Knowing your operations mean knowing the key functions your business performs, it is not just enough to have employees but you should also know what is required to run the business. Identifying critical departments and functions you cannot do without will help you to be able to better protect your business.

4.     KNOW YOUR EMPLOYEES

This is very important to the survival of your business, in the event of a disaster, your employees are either going to help you survive or flee, knowing their capabilities and characters can help you identify and recruit those who would be invaluable assets during a crisis.

Having up to date contact information is very necessary and a means of communication.

5.      KNOW YOUR KEY CUSTOMERS, SUPPLIERS, AND VENDORS

Knowing your key customers can help you to plan your recovery effort, you know whose needs you should meet first in the event of a disaster, who you should try to retain, they need to know that you will bounce back stronger than ever and you have them in mind.

Your suppliers are also very important, in the case of a disaster having a trusted supplier could be the difference between bankruptcy and recovery, also try to have alternative suppliers in the event your key suppliers disappoint you.

6.      KNOW YOUR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Identify all IT systems your firm would be using (both software and hardware). In the event of a disaster, which can be easily recovered or re-purchased? Is your data backed up properly? What are the alternatives in terms of machine failure?

Also, try to identify any process that could be made faster by IT and implement it, document all procedures, and keep in close contact with knowledgeable employees in the event of a disaster.

7.     UPDATE, MAINTAIN AND TEST YOUR PLAN

As your firm progresses and you hire new employees or employ new technologies always update the resilience plan, train your employees to be aware of such a plan, maintain and ensure it is followed, and regularly test your plan, by conducting audits.

On a final note, disasters are not something we pray for, but they do happen and it would be better for us to be prepared in other not to lose our livelihoods. Following these simple steps could save our business from collapse or at the very least help our recovery effort.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

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GABBARD GETS BASHED FOR VOTING PRESENT AT TRUMPS IMPEACHMENT

Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is facing fierce backlash from her party after the presidential candidate was the only lawmaker to vote “present” on impeaching President Trump.

Her Democratic colleagues in Congress called her vote a “cop-out,” “difficult” and “beyond anything that you can really understand.”

While Democrats expressed some sympathy for the handful of vulnerable members in competitive districts who voted against impeachment, they appeared to be mystified and irritated by Gabbard’s vote. 

Strategists said that Gabbard’s position is unlikely to play well in the Democratic presidential primary, where she was already considered a long shot. She failed to make Thursday’s debate after falling one poll short of the qualification requirements.

Gabbard has repeatedly framed her position to vote "present" on impeachment as an attempt to rise above the partisan fray — a stance that has again prompted questions of whether she will try to run as a third-party candidate.

Gabbard dismissed the idea that she would run as a third-party candidate, telling Hill.TV in an interview that the suggestion was “ridiculous.”

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“It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely baseless. People should actually listen, listen to the words that I’m saying and how I came to this decision,” she said. 

Gabbard claimed that she was “standing in the center” with her vote and called on lawmakers to consider her resolution to censure Trump instead.

While she said that she believes Trump is “guilty of wrongdoing,” she added that she “could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting president must not be the culmination of a partisan process.”

But Democratic lawmakers and strategists were all scratching their heads over Gabbard’s campaign strategy.

Gabbard is the lone Democratic presidential candidate to not back impeachment, as well as the only House member remaining in the race. She has said she will not seek reelection to Congress to focus on her presidential bid.

Only three other Democrats — including New Jersey Rep. Jefferson Van Drew, who switched to the GOP the next day — did not vote for both articles of impeachment. But all represent swing districts that Trump carried in 2016.

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) voted against both articles of impeachment, while freshman Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) voted for the article of impeachment accusing Trump of abusing his power in pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political opponents but not for the other on obstructing Congress during lawmakers’ inquiry. 

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) reacted to Gabbard’s position late Wednesday night just off the House floor by saying it was “beyond anything that you can really understand.”

By contrast, Cohen expressed more sympathy when asked about Golden splitting his votes.

“He's got a tough district, I can understand that,” Cohen said.

But he warned that Golden’s position risked alienating both parties by only partly backing the impeachment articles, saying that “if he was trying to find a middle path I think he found a worse [one].”

“And that's unfortunate because he's a nice guy,” Cohen added.

Gabbard’s independent streak frequently pits her against the establishment and has not made her especially popular among congressional Democrats. 

She raised eyebrows after traveling to Syria in 2017 to meet with the nation's president, Bashar Assad, and for meeting with Trump after his election in 2016.

And she clashed with Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) earlier this year after implicitly accusing her home-state senator and other Democrats in an op-ed published in The Hill of having “weaponized religion for their own selfish gain” in their questioning of a judicial nominee.

Hirono was similarly unimpressed by Gabbard’s vote on impeachment.

“She apparently can't decide whether the president has shaken down the president of another country for his own political purposes,” Hirono told The Hill as she walked to Senate votes on Thursday. “She hasn't been able to decide whether that's okay or not.”

When asked if she was concerned that Gabbard might try to launch a third-party bid for president, Hirono replied dismissively, “I don't worry too much about whatever she's doing.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she thought Gabbard’s vote was “a bit of a cop-out.”

“Voting ‘present’ on the most consequential vote in our recent history — and probably in future history — seems like a very bad political decision at a minimum,” Jayapal said.

Another top progressive, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said that “to not take a stand in a moment that is so consequential I think is quite difficult.”

Strategists said that Democratic primary voters — who by and large back impeachment — are also unlikely to rally behind Gabbard.

“It makes her look indecisive and in some ways very weak,” said Democratic strategist Basil Smike Jr. “I don’t think that this helps her presidential aspirations at all.”

Strategist Jon Reinish agreed, saying her decision makes “literally zip, zero, zilch sense” for either her congressional district or Democratic presidential primary aspirations and said he believed it was meant to be “disruptive.”

“It’s absolutely purposeful to sow confusion and chaos,” Reinish said. 

Gabbard has struggled to break out of the crowded Democratic presidential field and is polling at less than 2 percent nationally, according to polling aggregation website RealClearPolitics. 

It’s not the first time she has made waves in the race. Hillary Clinton suggested in a podcast interview that Gabbard is “the favorite of the Russians,” drawing a sharp rebuke from Gabbard, who accused the 2016 Democratic nominee of being the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

Strategist Michael Starr Hopkins, who worked on the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, said that between Gabbard’s “present” vote and her frequent clashes with other Democrats, he doesn’t believe she has a future within the party. 

“What she did was literally show up and do nothing,” Starr, a contributor to The Hill, said of her impeachment vote. “I think this is a signal that she will not be a Democrat in the long term.”

Gabbard defended herself against the backlash in a video posted on Facebook, arguing that “my ‘present’ vote was not passive.” 

“It was an active protest against the terrible fallout of this zero-sum mindset that the two opposing political parties have trapped America in,” Gabbard said.

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Kalu wants bail, respite from prison due to ill health

A former governor of Abia State, Orji Kalu, who was on December 5 convicted of N7.1bn fraud and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment, has urged the court to grant him a post-conviction bail.

Kalu, who has been sent to the prison since the day of his conviction, said in an application on Tuesday that he was battling with serious health challenges that the medical facilities in the prison cannot handle.

 

He said since the offences he was convicted of were bailable offences, he would like to be released from the prison while he goes to the Court of Appeal to challenge his conviction by Justice Muhammed Idris.

In the application moved before Justice Mohammed Liman at the Federal High Court in Lagos by his lawyers, Chief Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) and Awa Kalu (SAN), the convict stressed that as the Chief Whip of the Senate and the senator representing Abia North Senatorial District, the interest of his constituents would be in jeopardy if he was kept behind bars.

He said he had gone and appeal and he was very sure of success.

“The applicant’s appeal is brimming with substantial grounds of law with great chance of success.

“The health condition of the applicant is in great jeopardy and the prison facilities cannot adequately cater for his health needs.

“The need for the grant of this application is also of utmost importance, considering the fact that the applicant has the mandate to represent the good people of Abia North Senatorial District in the National Assembly for the period of 2019 and 2023.

“The applicant’s mandate to represent his people at the Senate is still extant and cannot be taken away unless he exhausts his constitutional right of appeal.

“The refusal of the applicant’s application for bail pending appeal will hinder the proper representation of the good people of Abia North Senatorial District.

“The Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is mandated to sit in a year for a minimum period of 181 days, out of which a senator is constitutionally compelled to attend at least an aggregate of one-third of such sittings in a year, otherwise the seat may be declared vacant,” Kalu said in the application filed by his lawyers.

But counsel for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mr Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), vehemently opposed the post-conviction bail application, saying it was strange to the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015.

After entertaining arguments from both sides on Tuesday, Justice Liman adjourned till December 23 for ruling.

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TRUMP LEADING ALL BUT BIDEN IN POLLS

Former Vice President Joe Biden is the only Democratic presidential candidate to maintain a general election lead over President Trump, a new IDB/TIPP poll released Monday shows.
Biden, who is also holding on to a relatively comfortable lead over the Democratic field in the poll, is shown beating Trump by 5 percentage points. While that's decent news for the former vice president, Trump actually cut into Biden's lead from IDB/TIPP's previous poll last month. Still, it's a better look than Biden's top two challengers at the moment, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who fell behind the president after leading Trump by 7 and 8 percentage points in the November poll.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also trailed Trump, but like Sanders and Warren remain within striking distance.
The IDB/TIPP Poll was conducted over the phone between Dec. 5-14. The sample includes responses from 905 adults and the margin of error is 3.3 percentage points.

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New bill approves U.S SPACE FORCE, targets ASSAD

The United States Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to pass a $738bn defence policy bill, sending it to the White House, where President Donald Trump has promised to quickly sign it into law.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted 86 to eight in favour of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. The Democratic-led House approved the bill by 377-48 last week.

Trump said on Twitter last week that he would sign the bill as soon as it passes, saying it included all his priorities.

Because it is one of the few pieces of major legislation Congress passes every year, the NDAA becomes a vehicle for a range of policy measures as well as setting everything from military pay levels to which ships or aircraft will be modernised, purchased or discontinued.
"It is safe to say that many have misgivings about one provision or another. but there are so many other positive provisions in the bill that it is a legislative success ... that helps the military and the American people," said Democratic Senator Jack Reed.
"It's one of the few authorisation bills that does pass year after year. And that's because everyone knows how important it is. It usually doesn't get bogged down in partisan fighting," said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe, a Republican. "This year, the process of getting to a final conference report was certainly tougher than most. It took a few months of hard-fought negotiations, but the end result is a great bill that we can all be proud to support."

Paid parental leave, pay increase, Space Force

This year's legislation included a 3.1 percent pay increase for the troops; the first-ever paid family leave for all federal workers; and the creation of a Space Force, the first new branch of the US military in more than 60 years and a top military priority for Trump.
Trump has crowed about the "US Space Force" provision, which mostly reorganises existing personnel into a new branch of the Air Force. The House had passed the idea in previous years under Republican control only to see it die in the Senate.
The Democratic-led House and Republican-led Senate each voted for a version of the NDAA earlier this year. Then negotiators from both parties and both houses of Congress, and representatives from the White House, worked for months to reach the compromise version of the bill passed by the House last week and the Senate on Tuesday.
Democrats were forced to drop a provision to block Trump from transferring money from Pentagon accounts to construct a fence along the US-Mexico border. They also dropped protections for transgender troops and tougher regulations on toxic chemicals that are found in firefighting foam used at military installations.
Negotiations broke free, however, after Republicans agreed to accept a Democratic demand - endorsed by Trump in end-stage negotiations - for the landmark parental leave provision, which provides 12 weeks of paid parental leave to federal employees.

Syria, Russia, Iran

Democrats also let go of House-passed provisions to restrict Trump from waging war against Iran unless Congress approves; ban deployment of new submarine-launched, low-yield nuclear weapons; and ban US military assistance for strikes by Saudi-led forces in Yemen.
The bill contains a measure called the Caesar Act, which had failed to gain congressional approval in several previous attempts. It applies sanctions to supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's military efforts in the country's civil war, which include Russia and Iran. It also grants authorities to the US secretary of state to support those collecting evidence and pursuing prosecutions of people who have committed war crimes in Syria.
The popularity of the annual defence policy bill reflects strong support among members of Congress for military personnel and the economic boost that military installations and defence contractors provide back home. Recent defence increases have been a boon for contractors such as Lockheed Martin, lead manufacturer of the F-35 fighter.
Despite broad bipartisan support, a few left-leaning Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans voted against the NDAA because it did not include policy planks that would have restrained Trump's war powers, including the ban on support for Saudi Arabia's air campaign in Yemen.
Some also objected to the 2.8 percent increase in military spending, as the national debt is skyrocketing.
"Conservativism is about more than supporting military spending at any cost," Republican Senator Rand Paul said in a speech before the vote.

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ANALYSIS- CAN TRUMP WIN IN 2020?

Impeachment news stifles media coverage of an economy that last month produced 266,000 jobs with unemployment holding at 3.5 percent, a 50-year record low. The impact of those numbers and what they say about an incumbent president’s hold on the White House is the subject of this column.
Modeling based on the economy already has experts like Yale University professor Ray Fair, political scientist Alan Abramowitz, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, calling the 2020 election for Trump. Zandi qualifies his prediction with some “ifs” that could change the equation like a recession, a dip in Trump’s popularity, or a big Democratic turnout.
Nobody knows how impeachment will play out politically, but Democrats are trying to move on with Speaker Pelosi announcing almost simultaneously with articles of impeachment that she had reached a deal with the White House on passing the USMCA, the reworked Trump trade deal, showing Democrats won’t let impeachment keep them from doing the people’s business.
Dems Think Their Day of Whiplash Is Just Perfect
 
“There is a route for Trump to win re-election that goes something like this,” says Jim Kessler with Third Way, a moderate Democratic Group: “I don’t like Trump and his tweeting and the way he behaves, but Democrats have gone too far left. That’s his route.” Medicare for All and the Green New Deal should be flashing red lights for Democrats, Kessler says.
The way to counter Trump’s strength on the economy is to focus more on jobs. The economy is not as strong as you would think, says Kessler. The growth has mostly been on the coasts and in a few big cities. Between 2012 and 2016, half the counties in America lost jobs. Between 2000 and 2016, the borough of Queens gained more private sector jobs than Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin combined—and that was without Amazon.
When Amazon pulled out of Queens, people cheered.  “A week later, when GM left Lordstown, Ohio, people cried,” Kessler told the Daily Beast. “The economy is going well in certain places, and it’s kind of muddling along for everybody else. There still is anxiety. A Democrat can win if they can persuade voters they can be as good or better on the economy than what they’ve experienced under Trump. But if they think a Democrat is a risk to the economy generally and to local jobs, they’ll hold their noses and vote for Trump.”
For another perspective, I called Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. “I’m not at all despairing,” she said, although she acknowledges having to boost the spirits of those suffering from what she calls “PTSD among Democrats” shell-shocked by what happened in 2016 “and worried it could happen again.”
 
The economy is a variable, but it is not predictive, and another variable, job approval, matters as much as the economy, “and Trump doesn’t have the discipline to get out of his own way,” says Kamarck.
His job approval hovers in the low to mid-40s, and if he had listened to his advisers in 2018 and talked up the booming economy instead of ramping up immigration and the crisis at the border, he might have blunted the Democrats’ blue wave, she says.
There is not one state that Hillary Clinton won that the Democrats will lose, and the key states that she lost—Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—will return to the fold with increased black turnout. The falloff in the black communities in Milwaukee and Detroit was much larger than the number of votes she lost by, “which means all you have to do is boost the black vote,” says Kamarck.
Democrats took the black vote for granted in 2016, and that won’t happen next year, she says. “Democrats do a lot of dumb things, but they don’t do the same dumb things in two election cycles.” She expects to see a vigorous campaign to turn out black voters in 2020.
Trump is unique among presidents because he has never tried to expand his base. Holding onto his base the way he has would make sense if he had won with 53 percent of the vote, says Kamarck. But he was elected with 46.1 percent, and his base is too small to insure reelection.
Kamarck’s advice to Democrats is to get over their obsession with health care. “The problem with that obsession, In America if you have a good job, you have good health care. Democrats should spend more time talking about good jobs.”
American University history professor Alan Lichtman has correctly predicted the last nine presidential elections, including Trump’s upset win in 2016. “I’m certainly not calling it (the 2020 election) now,” he told the Daily Beast, “If you were basing it on the economy, you’d call it for Trump—but you would have called it for the Democrats in ’68 and in 2000 and in 2016.”
Lichtman’s 13 keys look at a range of factors from internal party fights and social unease to foreign policy wins and losses, and the charisma of the incumbent and his challenger. “Impeachment turns a key, but just one,” he told the Daily Beast, “though it could trigger others depending how it plays out. “
Lichtman points to one piece of history that could be predictive. The next election after the impeachment of a president, the party in power loses. The Democrats lost the election of 1868 after Democrat Andrew Johnson was impeached. Republicans lost the White House in 1976 following Richard Nixon’s resignation. George W. Bush won in 2000 after Bill Clinton’s impeachment cleared the way for Bush to run on restoring honor and dignity to the oval office.
“There are only three examples, and they’re not positive for the party holding the White House,” says Lichtman

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Arteta will struggle at Arsenal- Guardiola

The Gunners look set to appoint their former star as their next manager but he will have his work cut out for him

Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola hinted Mikel Arteta may find it difficult to turn a "struggling" Arsenal around if he is to become their next manager.
Arteta has been strongly linked to the position with Guardiola confirming the Gunners did meet with their former player over the past few days.
Though in no doubt over his assistant's managerial skills, Guardiola casted some doubt over whether any manager can help turn the tides for a Gunners side currently sitting 10th in the Premier League.

“I think Arsenal [are] always one of the best teams of the last 20 years,” Guardiola said. “When Arsene [Wenger] took over the team, he raised the club to another level and now they are struggling a little bit the last years.
“When the club takes a decision to replace the manager or buy players it’s always to rise to be better. Whether it’s going to happen or not, I don’t know.
“You know my opinion about Mikel. He’s a professional human being and a person, I don’t have doubts about that.”
While there's some confusion over Arteta's immediate future, Guardiola stressed communication between the pair has remained forthright.
“Mikel was honest with me,” Guardiola said. “Arsenal - we were there two days ago. They were talking with our sporting director, the CEO and didn’t say anything.
“I don’t know if the meeting was at one at night because they didn’t want to make it public, but in the end it was public.
“I think Arsenal want to do the best thing possible. Sometimes it’s not easy to handle this kind of situation. We cannot deny that all the clubs around the world make behind the scenes the first contact to try to avoid the clubs that are in charge.
“All I can say from what I’m concerned is that Mikel was clear with me and that’s all. Perhaps there is a problem with the chairmen and the CEOs - they have to talk to each other.”
Guardiola conceded Arteta may struggle to turn down the chance for his first head coach role and declared he won't stand in his way should he decide to leave.

“It is a good argument. Why not [go]? It is uncomfortable for me. It is a question for Mikel, I am not in his brain," Guardiola said.
“We talk about it a little bit, but his feelings are his feelings. He knows we are delighted to work with him. Hopefully he is delighted to work with us. We would like to continue, but it is not in our hands.
“I said many times, it’s the same with the players, if they have other desires or wishes whatever, what can we do? We are not going to tell him, ‘stay, stay stay,’ if he doesn’t want to stay.

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“He knows exactly what we think about him, at the club, after that, we cannot do more. I think the club has done everything and we cannot do any more.
“If he stays I’d be happy, incredible, because we all work together really well. Hopefully he can feel the same as me or with us.
“If he decides to move I’ll wish him all the best, for him, his family and for his professional future. I will beat him! That’s a joke. The best of luck.”

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