It has been three days since the cataclysmic collapse of the Super Eagles at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium, Benin City, Nigeria and the triumphant fightback from the Leone Stars.
Now the war of attrition will be more psychological on Tuesday – will the Eagles seek redemption by improving their performance or will the Leone Stars be so buoyed by their fightback they will give over 100%?
Before last Friday’s encounter between the two countries – their 15th meeting in 59 years, the Leone Stars had only ever scored 11 goals against the Eagles but in one fell swoop, they scored four times against the Nigerians – scoring the last three in 16 frantic second half minutes.
Football has a lot to do with crunching data, but the 4-4 result last Friday was totally unexpected.
After the collapse last Friday, Eagles defender, William Troost-Ekong said, “Even if we had won the game 4-0 yesterday there are things that we still have to improve.”
According to Adebayo Gbadebo, a Nigerian coach managing in the Thailand league, the team needs drastic improvement, especially in the middle of the pitch.
He told PREMIUM TIMES from his base, “the No.8 [Oghenekaro Etebo] and No.10 [Joe Aribo] did not play as progressively as they should have. They attempted and completed too many sideways passes.
Mr Gbadebo also believes the technical team could have helped the team much more, especially after the Eagles conceded the second goal to the Sierra Leoneans. “The team needed more stability in front of the back four because they were continually exposed as the Sierra Leone team sensed the fragility of our centre backs.”
After the match, Nigeria Football Federation’s president, Amaju Pinnick, tasked the team to quickly redeem their image by beating the Sierra Leoneans 4-0 on Tuesday, an appeal Mr Gbadebo called a pipe dream. “Tuesday’s encounter will be an uphill task for the Eagles, and they need to be at their best to get a positive result from Freetown. These Sierra Leoneans have got the taste, even though the Eagles have much better players in their ranks.”
There are some injuries and suspensions that will hamper the preparations of both Gernot Rohr and Sierra Leone’s John Keister.
Victor Osimhen has gone back to Italy to treat his dislocated shoulder while Umaru Bangura will be missing for the Leone Stars after picking up a yellow card last Friday.
One of Nigeria’s scorers last Friday, Samuel Chukwueze, reiterated that the team had since moved on from the disappointment of last Friday and they are looking forward to putting things right on Tuesday.
“What is important now is to beat them right there in Freetown and we are ready for the task ahead,” he said.
Nigeria still leads Group L of the 2021 Nations Cup qualifiers and if they beat Sierra Leone on Tuesday and Benin cannot beat Lesotho – the Eagles will pick up their ticket for the tournament that the country has won three times.
Leaders try many strategies to get the most from teams – praise, perks, and of course, money. The counter-intuitive truth: Focus on relationships, not transactions
When it comes to motivating teams, there’s so much advice out there, it’s hard to find the motivation to sift through it all.
Does money work, or not? Is it all about public recognition, or how frequently you acknowledge achievement? Intrinsic or extrinsic rewards? Titles and status? Connecting to one’s life purpose? Thank-you cards? Competitions? Employee of the month?
Can someone please tell me how to get the best from my team!
The truth about motivation
I have tough news for you: There is no best way – or even a consistently effective way – to motivate people. In fact, it’s fair to say that you, as a manager, can’t motivate your team.
Wait – what? Isn’t motivating people one of the core competencies of a good manager?
Motivation is something we feel, not something someone does to us. This is perhaps why there is so much advice on how to motivate people: None of it works, so we have to keep coming up with new tricks.
Some of them might seem to work – for a while. Some even have neuroscience on their side, invoking neurotransmitters and the like (the famous “dopamine hit” concept, for instance). And here’s the thing: These ideas aren’t wrong, exactly, and the science is certainly real. So what’s the problem?
The problem is that any attempt at making motivation transitive – something another person does to you – also makes it transactional. Here’s an interesting tidbit: Want to make someone less likely to do you a favor? Offer to pay them. Want to make someone less likely to do you a favor? Offer to pay them.
Studies have shown that offering payment (or something of value) in return for a favor actually makes it easier for someone to say no. If I ask you for a ride to the airport, for example, and offer to pay you $20, you are free to say no, because you are saving yourself the effort – and saving me $20. It’s seen as mutually beneficial in some way – even if in the end, I’m left without a ride.
Counterincentives suffer the same pitfall, as shown in this example: A local elementary school recently had a problem – kids were not being picked up on time. So administrators started charging parents a fee for each late pickup, which increased according to how late parents picked up their kids.
Maybe you can guess what happened: Late pick-ups increased. One plausible explanation is that the fee was perceived not as a disincentive, but as a payment for service ($15 an hour is a pretty reasonable rate for short-term childcare).
Even simple praise can backfire. About two-thirds of people say they have experienced a time when praise from their boss actually felt like an insult. Many felt that their boss “didn’t really mean it” or “was just trying to get me to do something.” People see right through superficial attempts to motivate them because they recognize that in those cases “motivate” really means “manipulate.”
Relationships matter most
So, is it hopeless? Of course not. The truth is we do things for people we care about and who care about us because it feels good to do so. We enjoy providing relief, pleasure, and joy to those we value because it adds value to the shared relationship overall. It strengthens the bond we feel with others, which is much more powerful than any simple transactional exchange between individuals. We are naturally motivated to do things that add to the relationships we value. We do things for people we care about and who care about us because it feels good to do so.
How do you create such a bond? Honesty, respect, and transparency are important, but they aren’t the whole story. True connection requires a fundamental acknowledgment of each person’s equal humanity and value. It requires vulnerability and recognition that each side values and cares about the other.
Organizational hierarchies are in reality fictitious. They exist to support effective functioning within the context of workplace roles and responsibilities, but they do not address the relative value or merit of the human beings involved.
That may be the clearest reason that so many motivational techniques don’t work: They emphasize a power differential that denies basic human relationships, which turns value creation into value exchange – the definition of a transactional relationship. To form a true human connection, both parties must actively seek to discard this notion.
Ultimately, the best advice for leading a motivated team is simply this: Know your team members as people and let them know you. That doesn’t mean you need to be everyone’s best friend, but mutually valued human connections are satisfying for many reasons, and we want to do things that keep them in place and make them stronger.
No formulas, no tricks, no sure-fire secrets – just human relationships that are based on mutual respect and accountability rather than transactional or power-driven dynamics.
Few professional situations are more challenging to deal with than a stubborn leader. A boss who debates every point, ignores feedback, and refuses to listen is not only frustrating but also a significant professional barrier. So how do you deal? In my experience, these techniques work best:
Acknowledge the situation. Acknowledging a stubborn leader can be a problem in itself. You may hope that if you ignore it, it will go away. But if you want to deal with the situation, your first step has to be to acknowledge it for what it is.
Work to create channels of communication. Communication is the key to dealing with any difficult situation. And when you’re dealing with someone who’s locked into a mindset, that communication has to be done respectfully and thoughtfully. Start small and try different approaches until you find something that works. Even if it’s imperfect, it’s a start.
Stay calm. However frustrated you’re feeling, don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Your anger and negativity can only perpetuate the cycle rather than breaking it, and your efforts won’t go anywhere. Your leader will be much more likely to listen to you if you appear calm and collected.
Create a partnership. Position your suggestions for change in the form of a partnership that benefits your boss, not a confrontation about what they need to change. For example, you might say, “I think it would be helpful for us establish a channel for sharing our opinions. What do you think is the best way to go about it?” Listen to their ideas and agree with as much as you can.
Keep practicing agreed-upon solutions. When your leader starts to fall into old patterns, try to steer them gently back toward the process you’ve established. Keep your own tone nonconfrontational and neutral.
Reinforce baby steps. In my work as a leadership coach, I have found that stubborn leaders are usually averse to diving into the unknown but instead move slowly toward change. Reinforce every effort, however small, and be prepared for progress to happen little by little. The important thing is maintaining a positive direction.
Smooth the way with compliments. Stubborn leaders often honestly believe their way is best, which is why they tend to view any difference of opinion as a personal attack. One way to help feedback land successfully is to lead off with a compliment. You might say, “That approach is really strong—what if we reinforce it with…?” or “You always have such good ideas, so I thought I’d pitch one to you.”
Successful people are usually strong-willed, and it’s a fine line between being strong-willed and stubborn. Even with the most challenging leaders, viewing their stubborness as a personality trait you can deal with and work around can help you improve the situation and relieve at least some of your frustration.
Lead from within: Stubborn leaders do exist, and how you deal with them may make the difference in your own success.
Governor Wike also pointed out that politicisation of the issue of security by the federal government has continued to negatively affect the criminal justice system in the country.
The Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has warned that the federal government will destroy criminal justice system in States if the Executive Order 10 is implemented.
Governor Wike, said Executive Order 10 of the federal government, which permits the deduction of funds from each state’s account to finance the judiciary, is politically motivated and geared towards the 2023 general election.
The governor made this assertion in his keynote address presented at the 3rd Annual Nigerian Criminal Law Review Conference organised by the Rule of Law Development Foundation in Abuja on Monday.
He stated that ahead of the 2023 general election, the federal government which has been hostile to judges, now suddenly wants to lure the judiciary to assume it believes in independence of judiciary, by enacting Executive Order 10.
Governor Wike also pointed out that politicisation of the issue of security by the federal government has continued to negatively affect the criminal justice system in the country.
He said the prevailing cases of kidnapping, banditry and armed robbery which threatens the very existence and stability of the nation clearly justifies the establishment of State or Community Police.
He observed that while establishment of state police may require amendment of the extant Section 214(1) of the 1999 Constitution to provide State, the Rivers State Government is of the opinion that community police or Neighbourhood Watch could be established without constitutional amendment.
“The truth of the matter is that with the current strength of the Nigeria Police Force which stands at about 372000 (Three Hundred and Seventy Two Thousand), the Nigeria Police Force lacks the operational capacity to fulfil its primary or core mandate of crime detection, crime prevention and maintenance of public safety, law and order or protection of lives and property of persons in Nigeria.
“To put it plainly, the Nigeria Police lacks the operational capacity to police the nation which is a federation of about 923.768km (356.669 sqm) with an estimated population of 195.9 million. It is this stark reality that informs call for establishment of State Police to provide complementary role to the Nigeria Police Force in crime detection, prevention, and maintenance of law and order.”
He explained that it was against this background that the Rivers State Government enacted the Rivers State Neighbourhood Safety Corps Law, No. 8of 2018 which establishes the Rivers state Neighbourhood Safety Corps Agency as a corporate body and vested with power to establish uniformed Neighbourhood Safety Corps in the 23 local government areas of the state and to prescribe regulations guiding the operations of the Safety Corps and any other local government vigilante group in the state.
In furtherance of this law, he stated that recruitment and training of members of the uninformed Neighbourhood Safety Corps commenced at the NYSC orientation camp , Nonwa in Tai LGA, after obtaining all necessary approvals from the Nigerian Army and other relevant security agencies. But, unfortunately, the exercise was violently disrupted by the Nigerian Army , claiming it was illegal and unconstitutional.
Governor Wike, said despite a competent court of jurisdiction recent ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the Rivers state Neighbourhood Safety Corps, the army has refused to allow it carry out its recruitment and training of personnel.
“The point being made here is that as long as the federal government continues to politicise issues of security whether national or local, so long shall our criminal justice system remain seriously jeopardize. The suzerain power exercisable by the federal government over matters of security is made manifest by the irregular postings of Commissioners of Police to the Rivers State Police Command”, he said.
Given that criminal justice system is inextricably linked with the security, peace and order of the state, the governor emphasized the need for critical stakeholders in the criminal justice sector to rethink the system through reform designed to address current challenges.ADVERTISEMENT
Former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Joseph Daudu, lauded Governor Wike for standing out as one of the pillars of rule of law in the country.
Present at the occasion were the Attorney General of Rivers State, Zacchaeus Adangor, the Attorney General of Kogi State and other eminent lawyers
According to the confirmed and reliable information received from the Ethiopian state emergency fact check news its currently reporting that the national defense Army has fully encircled across the mekelle surrounding areas in addition to this the report has confirming that the Ethiopian national defense Army has tightly encircled in evry direction across the mekelle city specifically Ethio defense Army using different types of aircraft and helicopters and other imperative air forces which has currently encircling and flying over four directions of mekelle
Meanwhile as per the recently referenced reports from the Ethiopian state of emergency fact check news it has been notified and confirmed that tonight were fully controlling across the evry direction of mekelle city
Therefore as allready the reality and confirmed updated news released referenced by the Ethiopian state of emergency fact check news has mentioned were strongly considered that tomorrow morning the Ethiopian national defense Army…
Describing journalism as a creative profession can cause discomfort for some reporters: we portray journalism as a neutral activity — “Just the facts” — different to fiction or arts that appear to ‘create something from nothing’.
But journalism is absolutely a creative endeavour: we must choose how to tell our stories: where to point the camera (literally or metaphorically), how to frame the shot, where to cut and what to retain and discard, and how to combine the results to tell a story succinctly, accurately and fairly (not always the story we set out to tell).
We must use creativity to solveproblems that might prevent us getting the ‘camera’ in that position in the first place, to find the people with newsworthy stories to tell, to adapt when we can’t find the information we want, or it doesn’t say what we expected (in fact, factual storytelling requires an extra level of creativity given that we can only work with the truth).
All of those are creative decisions.
And before all of that, we must come up with ideas for stories too. The journalist who relies entirely on press releases is rightly sneered at: it is a sign of a lack of imagination when a reporter cannot generate their own ideas about where to look for news leads, or how to pursue those.
Recent waves of research on innovation in the industry are also often concerned with the barriers to, and enablers of, creativity that makes innovation possible. This is an era that requires creativity from the industry.
The challenge for journalism educators and trainers, often, is how to transform that raw communicative impulse into something more journalistic than the formats it tends to express itself in: writing opinion pieces, for example, or video blogs.
Something, actually, more creative.
First, then, it’s important to separate those three forms of creativity and explore each separately:
Creativity of story ideas
Creativity in problem-solving (newsgathering and production)
Creativity of storytelling (communication)
Creativity of ideas
Image by Denise Krebs
Creativity of ideas is perhaps the form most highly valued by employers. A regular complaint when hiring is that job applicants may have technical skills, but no good story ideas.
So where do good ideas come from? Among other things, wide and regular reading. People who don’t read or listen to much news reporting make things difficult for themselves in three ways:
Firstly, they are more likely to come up with basic ideas that are already being done;
Secondly, they have less raw material (inspiration) to work with; and
Thirdly, they are less likely to know what a good idea looks like.
So one of the most basic things we do in journalism education is to expose students to a wide range of journalism. We might do that through assigned readings, through regular newsletters and recommendations, or in-class.
Asking them to reverse-engineer a story is one particularly useful teaching technique to help students to understand where a reporter might have got a story lead from, and then developed that into a published or broadcast story.
A common mistake that journalism students make when brainstorming story ideas is to suggest a topic, not a story:
“I am going to write a story about climate change”.
A good tip is to be as specific as possible, and return to those 5 Ws and a H to help:
Who can you write a story about? Is there a specific person who is doing something newsworthy?
Where might a story be taking place, or have taken place? Is there a location which is experiencing some sort of change – or will do – or has done and this has topical relevance?
What is new, or surprising?
When is something taking place? Is there an upcoming event you can report on?
How can you report this story in a way that is interesting? Could you do your interview in an unusual way? Is there a first-person experience you could write about? (‘A day in the life’)
Why would a particular story be newsworthy now? Why would it appeal to your audience?
Mark Lee-Hunter’s Story Based Inquiry method, where the journalist outlines a hypothesis to guide their newsgathering, is another useful technique to use to help refine more investigative or in-depth story ideas.
So, for example, you might try some of the following:
Find an article you like and substitute an element (e.g. same interview approach, different person). Or substitute the form (change an interview to a news article, or a report to a liveblog)
Combine two ideas (e.g. do an FOI request and a first person story)
Adapt an idea: what can be added to it? (more interviews, some data, a gallery?)
Modify it: what can be changed? (the location? The timeframe?)
Put an idea to another use: can you repeat a story from elsewhere in your local area, or field, or just update it?
List the elements of your story and eliminate one or more to make it more focused
Can you reverse the order of the story, or the elements being used?
Variety is important: a story from one field can inspire an approach in another; connections can be made across time and space.
Some educators have created card decks to help stimulate just these sorts of creative processes. Journalism+Design‘s card deck forms the basis for students working in situations based on a combination of prompts (e.g. “make a mind map”) and limitations (e.g. time, audience) in .
Andy Dickinson‘s journalism.cards “aims to encourage critical and creative thinking when developing ideas”. Key to these cards, argues Dickinson, is the building of confidence:
“A working sense of how these ideas play out gives you the confidence to challenge them, play with them and mould ideas to fit — confidence and experience allow us to be creative.”
Creativity in problem-solving
Image from Skyword
Journalism often doesn’t go to plan: an interview may be dull or an interviewee pull out, events may be cancelled or underwhelm, a dataset is limited, or fails to show the pattern we were expecting. As I wrote in a previous part of this series: this is why persistence and tenacity is so important.
The difference between the journalist and the non-journalist is that we still find a story to tell.
When an event is cancelled, for example, a journalist has the problem-solving creativity to come up with a new idea.
It might be to write a new story about why it was cancelled, or the challenges facing this particular event organiser, or events organisers more generally. Or there is a piece to be written about the cost of security for the event.
Or the decision is made not to write about this event at all but go to a list of backup story ideas (always have one!)
When an interviewee pulls out we have to think creatively about ways to solve that problem: is there a way to persuade them to change their mind? Where can we find alternatives? How can we re-angle the story around a different interviewee and still use some of the material we’ve gathered? (This to some extent comes under the quality of adaptability.)
Working through some of these scenarios is a useful exercise in developing the sort of resilience that editors want from reporters.
A live news day is one of the most common ways that educators create situations for these obstacles to occur, as students are ignored by, or turned down by, potential interviewees.
The key is to frame this for students as a creative process, not a linear or binary succeed-or-fail situation. Role-playing some of the most common scenarios (the reluctant or boring interviewee; the cancelled event) may help give students more confidence in approaching those situations.
We can also introduce students to ways in which professional journalists have adapted to similar situations: the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has provided endless examples of journalists’ creativity, for example.
In terms of expression, creativity allows us to recreate and work with the forms of news and feature genres in different media.
Like any form of expression, the first step is to look at lots of examples and learn the unwritten rules of those: the inverted pyramid, the fact-quote-colour rhythm of the feature, the kabob structure of the longform article.
But right now we are living through what must surely be the most creative era in the history of journalism: reporters are no longer constrained by their primary platform (print, radio or TV) and to one medium (words, audio or video). The addition of online as a platform has required reporters to creatively adapt to the challenges of multiple media and genres.
Moreover, the creation and ongoing development of new genres — the blog, the liveblog, the interactive, the podcast, the datavis, the infographic, the tweet, the audio slideshow, the social video, the livestream, the 360 video, the VR experience, the Snapchat/Instagram story — means a journalist’s creativity doesn’t stop with the ‘mastery’ of one particular form: there is always another to explore.
Image by eliztesch
There is a risk, however, that this leads to too big a focus on technical creativity — the skills of storytelling — at the expense of time spent on the other forms.
For that reason it’s important to devote time to exploring these new forms editorially: what is generic about the liveblog or social video for example? (Answers might include a bullet list of key updates; or the use of text captions).
At Birmingham City University I’ve created a module dedicated to exploring new formats in exactly this way with MA journalism students, with its own Medium publication where students independently explore how professional storytellers have tackled the creative challenges of different formats before reporting their own stories across multiple platforms.
Of course, our enjoyment of creativity can stray into indulgence: we may be tempted to use long words to show off our vocabulary, where in fact shorter simpler ones may be more effective and more easily understood by our audience; or we might use a new storytelling form such as VR just because we can rather than because it works best for the story.
And that is where the sixth of the seven essential qualities of successful journalists — discipline — comes in: the subject of the next post…
The #endsars campaign marked the beginning of a new era in the country. For the first time,youth rallied together to protest against police brutality and bad governance . This protest is born out of dissatisfaction with the current way the nation is run .
Every change comes with resistance. There are conservative who prefer to stick to the status quo . There are those who benefit from the system and would do everything to continue to enrich oneself. There are those who stay on the fence. Neither here or there . There are the observers who agree with the visionaries but are unwilling to lift a finger . They want to benefit from the success but are not willing to loose anything. They are risk aversive. There are those who would say ” what is the use?” “Why make an effort”?
Here can be no growth unless one is discontent with the present situation and an attempt to envision a new possibility. The vision guides him all through the protest . Protest is a decision to let go of the unwanted ways. Brutality and injustice awakens the desire for transformation.
Visionaries face lots of obstacles in their first attempt . The resistance is much . Many at times,they do not live to withness the ideal come to life. They are aware their ideal may come at the detriment of their lives. They loose their property, yet they persisted .Jesus is a visionary. He died yet Christianity lived . The numerous youth who have lost their lives are matyrs.
Visionaries know that transformation does not happen overnight.He is wise enough to be content with the gradual progress . perfection is not his goal . Seeing an improvement no matter how little gives him fulfilment
Georgia Recount Uncovers 2,600 Uncounted Ballots in One County, Most for Trump
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden addresses the media at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 10, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images); (Right) President Donald Trump turns after placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider as he attends a Veterans Day observance in the rain at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on Nov. 11, 2020. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) Georgia
Thousands of ballots were not tabulated in a Georgia county during the normal vote counting process, state officials announced Monday night.
The 2,600 uncounted ballots in Floyd County were mostly for President Donald Trump. The new discovery cuts Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s lead in the state by about 800 votes.
The ballots weren’t counted because officials in the county did not upload them on Election Night, Gabriel Sterling, who manages the state’s election system for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told reporters during a virtual press conference.
“This is why you do the audits. There’s no issues with any of the equipment or anything, they just didn’t scan these ballots, it looks like, or the card was not put through properly,” he said.
“So the secretary says this is such an amazing blunder.”
Raffensperger wants Floyd County’s elections director to step down because of what happened, according to Sterling, “because this was too important of an issue to have allowed to happen this way.”
Dr. Tom Rees, chairman of the county’s Board of Elections, told The Epoch Times via email that “We are trying to reconcile our hand count with our election day results.”
“We have narrowed the problem to our one advance voting location and are focusing on that. The hand count went very well and I am certain that it is accurate,” he added.
Requests for comment sent to the Floyd County Board of Commissioners and the Trump campaign weren’t returned.
The Floyd County Republican Party said in a statement that the county “deserves better.”
Employees of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections process ballots in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 4, 2020. (Brandon Bell/Reuters)
“This cannot happen, ever,” it said.
No similar situations have arisen so far during Georgia’s recount, which was ordered because the margin between Trump and Biden, with what officials said was all ballots counted, was smaller than 1 percent.
According to the unofficial count, Biden leads Trump by just over 14,000 votes, or 0.28 percent. That was before the uncounted ballots were found.
Officials are looking into a reported water leak in Fulton County that halted the counting of mail-in ballots on Election Day and are also probing why officials there appear to have asked poll observers to leave.
David Shafer, the head of Georgia’s GOP, has repeatedly said officials in Fulton County asked poll observers to leave on election night only to continue counting ballots “in secret.”
Fulton County also had to re-scan ballots last week because of an issue related to reporting on the vote counting that was conducted.
Even with the snafu that was discovered on Monday, Sterling said the Biden win will probably not change.
“We have no reason to believe that anything is coming to a point where it looks like it was really a substantive change in the outcome,” he said. “The Floyd County situation was unfortunate. It was you know, bad management practice. They just—we haven’t investigated to get to the bottom of what exactly happened. But that doesn’t seem to be replicated anywhere else that we’ve seen so far.”
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