Nigeria Content Online

Nigerian women
should take up active roles in business, move to relevant positions,
and be the change they want to be, Jesse Jackson, former United States
special envoy for Africa said in Lagos on Thursday.

“Men cannot leave
women at home. We need full partnership. There is nothing women cannot
do. Women are now heading major corporations. What we need now is
business education. If an African American can become the president of
America, then a woman can become the president of Nigeria,” Mr Jackson
added.

He spoke at the 9th Annual conference of the Women in Management and Business (WIMBIZ) with the theme ‘Impact your world’.

WIMBIZ, a
non-profit organisation started in 2001 with a mission to be the
catalyst that elevates the profile of women in management and business.
The organisation just completed the maiden phase of her mentoring
programme as promised, where 72 young women were attached to mentors
for a period of four months in two batches. Its annual conference is a
gathering of women in commerce and corporate Nigeria, attracting
international delegates from different parts of the world.

Nigeria’s structure is problematic

Ben Murray-Bruce,
the chairman, Silverbird Group, and keynote speaker at the event, said
the major problem facing Nigeria is the nation’s political structure.

“The political
structure of the country does not allow talent in any administration,
because of issues such as zoning, ethnic balancing and so on. For
instance, if we have five smart people from Edo state, politically, I
can’t appoint all five of them, so I have one smart guy from Edo state
and four dumb guys from other places. As long as the right talents are
not in government, this is not going to work,” Murray-Bruce said.

Murray Bruce also
said that if you put someone in an environment where there is free
money, “there can’t be creativity, because there is no need to be
creative to earn that money, it is already there. And then the money
needs to be spent, but then, we cannot think and be creative to invest
in technology that is futuristic, because that requires thinking.
Instead, we spend it on a technology that is obsolete.”

People have impacted in my life, and that is why I can also make an
impact in people’s lives. “We may be free, but we have a slave
mentality. In Nigeria today, we may not have to fight for the right to
vote, but we must fight for the right to live. Why can’t we do anything
without bringing someone in from abroad? If our people don’t know how
to do it, why can’t we teach them? You can be somebody if you choose to
be somebody” he said.

Six companies including Swiss logistics firm Panalpina (PWTN.S) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) have agreed to settle foreign bribery investigations and will pay some $236 million in criminal and civil penalties, the Obama administration said on Thursday.

A Panalpina unit has agreed to plead guilty, admitting to paying at least $27 million in bribes to officials in at least seven countries including Nigeria, Brazil and Russia between 2002 and 2007 on behalf of its oil and gas industry clients.

“They did so in order to circumvent local rules and regulations relating to the import of goods and materials into numerous foreign jurisdictions,” the Justice Department said.

Those customers, which included Shell’s Nigeria unit, a unit of Transocean Ltd (RIG.N), Tidewater Inc (TDW.N), Pride International (PDE.N) and Noble Corp (NE.N), admitted to approving or condoning bribes on their behalf, the Justice Department said.

Pride’s French unit is also pleading guilty in the case while the others reached deferred prosecution agreements with the Justice Department. The companies also settled related bribery charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Collectively they will pay $236 million in criminal and civil penalties and disgorgement, with Panalpina paying the largest amount, almost $82 million. Shell will pay almost $48.2 million, according to the Justice Department and SEC.

Shell’s Nigerian unit agreed to settle charges and pay $30 million in criminal penalties, the Justice Department said.

The settlement is the latest in a series by the Obama administration as authorities try to crack down on corporations paying bribes to foreign officials in violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board says it is
determined to enforce provisions of the Nigerian Content Act for indigenous and
international oil companies operating in the country.

Ernest Nwapa, its executive secretary, said Monday, in Abuja, at
the 14th International Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Biennial Conference
on the oil and gas industry in Nigeria, that this is part of government’s
imperative to realise the Nigerian content development agenda.

Mr. Nwapa said until 2004, there was very low local capacity in
Nigeria’s petroleum industry, with about 95 percent of goods and services
imported, while the introduction of the Nigerian Content Policy has improved
local capacity to about 35 percent.

He said government agenda is to identify and close all capacity
gap business opportunities in dry dock integration, shipyards, heavy
industries, pipe mills, equipment manufacturing, and service companies’
training in the industry.

Part of government’s expected impact on the national Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) in the next four years, the NCDMB scribe said, is to
ensure that at least $10 billion of an average annual petroleum industry
expenditure of $20 billion is retained within the local economy, while about
30,000 direct employment and training opportunities are domiciled in Nigeria
through the implementation of the policy.

To ensure that capacity building projects are not stifled by
lack of funding, he said government has launched the Nigerian Content
Development Fund (NCDF), a central pool of financing, in collaboration with the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and commercial banks, for certified beneficiaries.

Cost effectiveness

“Local capacity building will improve cost effectiveness and
certainty of supply by reversing the trend of 100,000 jobs currently created
abroad by the international oil companies, through the continued outsourcing of
service contracts to companies outside the country,” he said.

“Henceforth, government, through the provisions of the NCD Act,
would ensure that no other vessel is allowed to work if a vessel owned by a
Nigerian working in the nation’s oil and gas industry is not put to work first.
Any equipment working in Nigeria must be partly-owned by a Nigerian before it
is allowed to work.

“This is the only way to reverse the current practice where nine
out of 10 cents paid for equipment in the industry are not domiciled in
Nigeria,” he said.

However, John Mpi, manager, business development, Nigerian Agip
Oil Company (NAOC), however, expressed skepticism over the policy prospects, if
government does not pay serious attention to human capacity development issues.

Mr. Mpi said it is sad that the industry has nothing significant
to show for its 50 years of existence, saying there is need for the indigenous
companies to model their operations after the successful international oil
companies, in terms of setting key performance indicators to measure their
success and growth as well as strict supervision.

Leading economies should consider adopting a modified global
gold standard to guide currency rates, World Bank president, Robert Zoellick,
said on Monday in a surprise proposal before a potentially acrimonious G20
summit.

Writing in the Financial Times, Mr. Zoellick called for a
“Bretton Woods II” system of floating currencies as a successor to the Bretton
Woods fixed-exchange rate regime that broke down in the early 1970s.

The former U.S. trade representative, who served in several
Republican administrations, said such a move “is likely to need to involve the
dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and (a yuan) that moves towards
internationalisation and then an open capital account.

“The system should also consider employing gold as an
international reference point of market expectations about inflation,
deflation, and future currency values,” he added.However, analysts were
cautious.

“Going forward, that would be something that we could look
towards, but it’s not going to happen within a short period of time,” said Ong
Yi Ling, analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore, adding that gold prices
barely reacted to the comments.

Gold briefly hit a record high of $1,398.35 an ounce in early
trade on Monday on concerns of a continued weakening dollar trend, after the
U.S. Federal Reserve last week acted to resume buying treasuries.

Summit acrimony?

That policy has fed acrimony among leading economies in the
Group of 20 in the run-up to their summit in Seoul on Wednesday and Thursday.

China and Germany, major exporting nations, have both decried
the Fed’s quantitative easing – effectively printing money – which is weakening
the dollar.

Investors are pumping dollars into emerging markets in search of
higher yields, and the potentially destabilising impact of this, along with big
current account deficits and surpluses, as well as China’s reluctance to let
the yuan appreciate faster, are set to dominate the G20 debate.

France, which takes over the G20 chair after this week’s summit,
says it plans to work on a new international monetary system to bring greater
currency stability.

Beijing’s central bank chief has suggested an alternative
monetary system based on using the International Monetary Fund’s Special
Drawing Rights, a notional unit of value based on a basket of major currencies,
instead of the dollar as the sole global reserve currency.

Mr. Zoellick was a senior official in the U.S. Treasury at the
time of the 1985 Plaza and 1987 Louvre Accords on rebalancing currencies among
major industrialised nations. He noted that that phase of currency coordination
helped launch the Uruguay Round of world trade liberalisation negotiations.

While his opinion article in the Financial Times did not
represent either U.S. or World Bank policy, it may reflect a greater openness
in Washington than in the last two decades to some form of international
currency cooperation.

“The dollar is losing its relevance, especially with the
emergence of Asia economies, so a more neutral benchmark may be required. Gold,
amid all the recent uncertainty, is proving its worth,” said ANZ’s senior
commodity analyst, Mark Pervan.

Gold retreated to around $1,390 an ounce by 1000 GMT as
speculators booked profits.

Mr. Zoellick said a new monetary system would take time to
develop and should be part of a package approach, including possible changes in
IMF rules to review capital as well as current account policies, and linking
IMF monetary assessments to World Trade Organisation obligations.

The dollar rose sharply on Monday as unwinding of dollar short
positions that began with solid U.S. jobs data snowballed, pushing down the
euro to its lowest level since the Fed embarked on fresh easing last week.

The burden of monitoring how states disburse proceeds from the
bond market remains that of the citizens. This admonition is coming as more
states have approached the bond market in the last few months to raise funds
while others are lined up to also access funds from the capital market.

Abraham Nwankwo, the Director General of the Debt Management
Office (DMO), said even though the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has
the primary responsibility to ensure that states utilize such proceeds for the
purpose they are meant for, the citizens are empowered by the Constitution to
question government on how state funds are utilised.

According to the figures from the Nigerian Stock Exchange, 12
states, from 1999 to date, have raised about N374.6 billion from the bond
market. In the last one year, Imo, Bayelsa, Kaduna, and Ebonyi have approached
the capital market to raise N18 billion, N50 billion, N8.5 billion and N20
billion.

The Act

“The Fiscal Responsibility Act gives you as an individual or
organisation the locus standi to go to court to ask a public officer or
institution to explain why he is in contravention of the law. We are tired of
Nigerians complaining in the air. Once you have your facts, go to court and
complain,” Mr Nwankwo said

Part 12 (52) of the Act states that “A person shall have legal
capacity to enforce the provision of this Act by obtaining prerogative orders
or other remedies at the Federal High Court, without having to show any special
particular interest.” Mr Nwankwo said no state can raise funds from the bond
market without meeting the guidelines of SEC.

Lanre Oloyi, spokesperson of the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), however, said state governments that raise funds from the
bond market are expected to deploy the proceeds for that which they stated it
would be used for. “There have not been any issues about funds
misappropriation,” he said. “The market is rule based and due process must be
followed and complied with. If there are instance of states not acting
responsibly, they would have been so advised.” He added that SEC has the
responsibility to ensure that states use the funds judiciously, adding that the
commission conducts monitoring exercise and on-the-spot assessment.

Self regulation

Mr Nwankwo said there should be self regulation and self
monitoring. “That is why we are trying to help every state to have a capable
debt management office so that in the next two years instead of asking us, you
should ask the debt management office in your state,” he said. “It is the
responsibility of all of us to demand explanation of how funds are managed.”

He also explained that 13 states spread across the six geo-political zones
have completed their domestic debt data reconstruction (DDR) exercise working
in collaboration with the DMO. This provides a harmonized computerized total
debt data base which indicates total state debt obligations and other state
commitments at a specific period in time. He said the 13 states so far have a
cumulative debt profile of N200 billion. “By the end of December 2010, the DDR
exercise will have been completed for 16 states while by year 2012, the
exercise would have been completed by all the 36 states of the federation,” he
said.