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Four months ago,
news broke of the deaths of 163 children in Zamfara State, Nigeria.
Interestingly the cause of death, attributed to lead poisoning, was not
ascertained by Nigerian health officials but by an international
humanitarian NGO, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

Since that
announcement we have received reports of the death toll rising to about
400 kids. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions.

So far the
responses of government have been twofold: a quick announcement
reiterating the banning of illegal mining, and also that the area was
being decontaminated. What has been termed illegal mining is actually a
demonstration of unseriousness on the critical issue of resource
management as well as environmental management and protection. Mining
of any sort is a hazardous activity. This includes legalised oil and
gas exploitation that grimly sends many Nigerians to untimely graves
through pollutions and through violence. This suggests that the issue
is more fundamental that the legality or otherwise of the activities.

We are also
concerned about claims relating to the decontamination of the
environment of the polluted communities. The sort of reported casual
announcements give a sense of false security to the hapless local
people and also a false impression suggesting the existence of
acceptable government action. With years of unregulated artisanal
mining in Zamfara State and other mineral rich areas, there is an
urgent need for relevant government agencies to conduct serious
environmental investigations with a view to mitigating the impacts.
Outlawing artisanal mining without provision of employment to the army
of the unemployed will neither stop the activity nor detoxify the
environment.

The tragic
decimation of the children of Dareta Village in Anka LGA and Yar Garma
in Bukkuyum LGA must be treated with the seriousness it deserves and
steps taken to halt it. It should also be understood that simply
closing down artisanal mines does not mean that the environment is not
longer toxic. In fact, the impacts being noticed now could have
resulted from historical lead poisonings in the area. This also
suggests that disaster possibly lurks in those poor and neglected
communities.

Some community
people do not even believe that the deaths are results of lead
poisoning or any other fall out of mining activities. Muazu Marafa, a
community spokesperson at Yar Garma, for instance, told environmental
monitors in June that they do not belief that lead used in the mining
process was responsible for deaths in the community because they had
been using it for over many decades. In a nation where post mortems are
rare and where people are content to say that their relatives died
after a brief illness, we see that much work needs to be done to
realign attitudes to the realities of available modern knowledge.

Where are the regulatory agencies?

Besides struggling
with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control
(NAFDAC) over who has oversight over what territories, it is essential
for the Standard Organisation to take a serious look at an existing
threat to public health from further lead poisoning in Nigeria. For
one, many countries have phased out leaded petrol and in Nigeria the
toxic product is the norm. This means that apart from the visible smoke
bellowing from the ancient automobiles on our streets, people are
inhaling invisible toxins from even the clean exhaust pipes.

Another sore area
that needs the focus of the SON is the unacceptably high level of lead
in the paints manufactured, sold and used in Nigeria. A recent study by
some non-governmental organisations revealed that Nigerian paints
contain levels of lead several times above acceptable limits set by the
World Health Organisation and that they rank among the highest levels
of lead in paints in the world. The paints tested in the exercise
include samples from the biggest multinational paint manufactures in
Nigeria. What this means is that the threat of lead poisoning is
everywhere in Nigeria, on the streets, in our schools, homes,
hospitals, everywhere. We have heard of the death of over 400 children
in Zamfara State. It is known that lead can absorbed by ingestion,
inhalation, and via the skin. Its impacts range from minor irritations
and fatigue to others such as gastrointestinal disturbances,
neuromuscular dysfunction, personality changes, cerebral oedema, renal
failure, and gout.

How many more kids are on the throes of death? How many more are
still being poisoned even today? How about the adults who are more
resistant to the poison and so remain alive but have their mental
capacities severely compromised? Decontamination of the polluted
communities requires more than simply closing the mine pits and carting
away top soils from obviously impacted areas. There is urgent need for
deeper examination of even the soil strata to ascertain the reach of
the elements. The fact that water ponds on which the local people
depend are also impacted means an urgent need for safe water supply.
Shallow wells will simply spread the deaths further. The communities of
Zamfara State require proper pipe borne water supply as life saving
measures that go beyond political party logos painted on crumbling
walls of community huts. Indeed, with the level of pollution and the
deaths recorded and still expected, it would not be a radical idea to
relocate the communities to safer locations. No effort should be spared
in tackling the lead menace and save the lives of the kids of Zamfara
State.

Farmers in Ekiti
State are to access the N2 billion federal government agricultural
intervention loan, Joseph Ogunjobi, Chairman of the local chapter of
All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), has said.

Mr Ogunjobi on Wednesday said that the state government had concluded arrangements to ensure that farmers accessed the loan.

He said the money
was still with the Central Bank, and attributed the inability of
farmers to access the loan to the “uncooperative attitude” of the
immediate past leadership of AFAN in the state and the government.

He said, however,
that Segun Oni, the state governor, was doing his best to facilitate
the disbursement of the loan to all registered farmers in the state as
soon as possible. Mr Ogunjobi said the association was also working in
conjunction with the government to ensure that only genuine farmers
benefitted from the loan.

He said the governor had directed both the Ministries of Finance and
Agriculture to liaise with the leadership of AFAN to accelerate the
disbursement of the fund.

Eyo Ekpo, a member
of the Presidential Task Force on Power (PTFP), says the high level of
infrastructure decay and wide gap in investment are major impediments
to effective power supply.

Mr Ekpo, Head,
Regulatory and Transactions Monitoring Unit of the task force, said
this on Wednesday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in
Lagos.

He said that the
nation’s power supply had been hindered for years by limited
generation, transmission capacities, obsolete equipment and unreliable
distribution network.

Mr Ekpo said that
over-bloated and inefficient workforce were also obstacles to meeting
the national power demand approximated at between 10,000 and 15,000MW.
He said that the power generation level had even declined while demand
was on the rise.

“This problem has
apparently trickled down to the transmission and distribution arms of
the sector. The manifestation is the perpetual power failure and
shortage being witnessed across the nation. But in all fairness, I
think this is simply unacceptable if we consider the fact that
countries like South Africa, Egypt and Ghana enjoy better generation
capacities,” Mr Ekpo said.

He added that the
lack of investment in power generation, transmission and distribution
were the major factors inhibiting the growth of the sector.

Ghana’s inflation
eased for the 15th month in a row in September, data showed on
Wednesday, but analysts put much of the latest fall down to seasonal
effects and were cautious on prospects of fresh interest rate cuts.

Annual inflation
fell to 9.38 percent from 9.44 per cent in August, extending a run that
has seen consumer price growth more than halve from its June 2009 level
and confounding market expectations of a slight rise.

But, weeks before
the scheduled start of oil from Ghana’s Jubilee offshore oilfield and
with concerns growing over the West African country’s public finances,
future price pressures were hard to call.

“It is difficult to
forecast inflation for the next month — all depends on how the
government handles the pressures,” government statistician Grace
Bediako said of moves to implement a new public sector wage structure
seen as raising spending.

Barclays Bank of
Kenya has entered a partnership with telecoms firm Safaricom offering
its mobile phone-based money transfer service M-Pesa to the bank’s
clients, both firms said on Wednesday.

M-Pesa is the main
way of transferring small cash amounts in Kenya, mainly because it does
not require users to have a bank account. Millions of people in east
Africa’s largest economy do not have access to banking services and the
deal is seen as a way of addressing this.

“This partnership is in tandem with our strategy of stretching
M-Pesa’s footprint beyond the regular agent outlet,” said Safaricom
Chief Executive Officer, Michael Joseph.

Port operator APM Terminals, a unit of Danish shipping and oil group A.P.

Moller-Maersk, said on Wednesday it had signed a 25-year concession agreement to run the Port of Monrovia in Liberia.

APM Terminals was named the preferred bidder for the port management and modernisation project last March, it said.

“The now formalised agreement for the port’s privatisation will
result in the investment of $120 million in the facility over the
course of the contract term,” APM Terminals said in a statement.

The value of
equities at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) improved marginally
yesterday as 0.03 per cent recovery was made on the market measuring
indices.

The NSE market capitalisation closed at N5.988 trillion from Tuesday’s figures of N5.986 trillion, reflecting N2 billion gains.

The market had gained N55 billion or 0.93 per cent on Tuesday.

The All-Share Index also gained 0.03 per cent or 9.17 units yesterday, up from 24,430.20 basis points to close at 24,439.37.

The NSE sectoral
indexes recorded mixed sentiments as the NSE-30 Index, which basically
measures the performance of blue chips in the market, dropped by 0.71
per cent. The Food/Beverages subsector gained the highest points by
1.80 per cent; the Insurance gained 1.57 per cent, followed by the
banking sector which reclined by 0.64 per cent while the Oil/Gas
subsector closed flat.

David Adonri, chief
executive officer of Lambert Trust and Securities Company Limited, a
stock broking firm, said the market performance has been “improving
because some investors are beginning to return to the banking sector”
which usually drives market activities.

Mr Adonri said
investors’ confidence in the sector “is not unconnected with the recent
victory the Central Bank had over Oceanic bank.”

Low volume, high value

At the close of
yesterday’s trading, a total of 268.36 million shares valued at N2.654
billion were traded in 5,903 deals as against the 274.82 million shares
worth N2.508 billion exchanged in 5,716 deals on Tuesday.

The banking
subsector maintained its lead on the most active subsector chart
yesterday with 198.59 million shares worth N1.65 billion traded. The
shares of Access, United Bank of Africa,

Diamond, First Bank, and Guaranty Trust were the most active in the subsector in terms of volume.

The Insurance
subsector followed, trading 17.12 million shares valued at N18.44
million. Transactions in the subsector were largely driven by the
shares of Continental Reinsurance which accounted for 60 per cent of
the subsector’s volume.

The Food/Beverages subsector came third with investors trading 10.21 million shares valued at N249.60 million.

Investors in Dangote Flourmill and Cadbury enhanced activities in the subsectors in terms of volume.

More gainers The
prices of 32 equities appreciated in value on Wednesday while 24
depreciated. Nestle led the price gainers, appreciating by N17.95 to
close at N377.05 per share. Cadbury gained N1.43 to close at N30.32 per
share while African Petroleum grew by N1.26 to close at N26.53.

UACN topped the
price losers’ chart, depreciating by N2.58 to close at N75.55 per
share. Conoil shed N1.96 to close at N37.39 per share while Nigerian
Bottling Company lost 99 kobo to close at N34.01 per share.

Meanwhile, Custodian and Allied Insurance yesterday notified the
Exchange that the closure date for the payment of its interim dividend
of six kobo is October 14, while the payment of the dividend will
commence on October 20.

Egypt’s Housing and
Development Bank (HDB) and state-owned Egyptian Arab Land Bank (EALB)
are being restructured with an eye toward a possible merger within the
two next years, the head of the two banks said.

Chairman Fathy
El-Sebai completed a capital increase at HDB earlier this year that
reduced the government’s stake to between 62 and 64 percent and is in
the final stages of restructuring EALB, Egypt’s fourth-biggest state
bank by assets.

“I have a strong
feeling there is the viability for them to merge and add more value to
the two institutions,” Sebai told Reuters in an interview.

However, the ultimate decision whether to merge them was the government’s and not his, he added.

A combined entity would be Egypt’s sixth or seventh biggest commercial bank in both the state and private sector.

Sebai is among a
group of bankers brought in by the government from the private sector
in the early part of the decade to reform state banks.

These include Bank
of Alexandria, which was sold in late 2006 to Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo,
and Banque du Caire, whose planned privatisation in June 2008 was
aborted after offers did not meet the government’s minimum price.

At the time of the
Banque du Caire offering, many Egyptians criticised the government’s
privatisation programme, saying assets were being sold off too cheaply,
and since then the government has not tried to sell any other major
state assets.

Free float

HDB’s 450 million
Egyptian pound capital increase boosted the bank’s free float to
between 36 and 37 percent from 10 percent, Sebai said.

“This was the idea, to make a kind of a privatisation, not for an anchor investor, but for the public, for everybody.” The bank,

whose capital is
now 1.15 billion pounds, will use the new funds to install an advanced
IT system and expand its branch network to 100 by the end of 2013 from
57, he added.

Sebai said EALB’s
restructuring had been more complicated because much of its lending had
been to tourism and residential projects that stalled when an Egyptian
real estate bubble ended early in the decade.

“The owners didn’t want to put more money in the tourist projects and the banks also stopped funding,” he said.

EALB shareholders
agreed in 2005 to delay plans for merging with HDB until EALB’s
finances could be straightened out. Sebai plans to finish the bank’s
restructuring by June 2012.

“The target is to have the bank ready for the merger, which can be done at any minute by the shareholders,” he said.

“But my plan is to
finish the restructure process and finish all the problems in the bank
to be ready now, either to continue to stand alone or to merge.” Sebai
said rising property values meant HDB’s loans, mainly in mortgages and
credit to individuals,

have been profitable despite a slow judicial process to gain control of homes when borrowers default.

HDB’s assets were 17.85 billion pounds at the end of December, while EALB’s assets were about 20 billion at end-June.

The Lagos State
government has claimed that there is no multiple taxation in the state
and has urged that tax payers be enlightened to ensure they are not
unduly extorted by touts, in the name of taxes.

Governor Babatunde
Fashola said this at a forum organised by a group, Women In Management
and Business, held at the Lagos City Hall for chief executives of
corporations. The business executives lamented that indiscriminate
charges, poor infrastructural facilities in some areas in the state,
unemployment, multiple taxation, and harassment from state officials,
especially the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), among
others, are part of the challenges of doing business in Lagos State.
Participants alleged that multiple taxes, a situation where the same
income is subjected to more than one tax treatment; unauthorised and
unclear charges, is fast killing businesses in the country’s major
business district.

Government’s response

“There are no
instances of multiple taxes in Lagos,” said Mr Fashola. “There are
either legal or illegal fees or levies. Multiple taxes don’t exist in
Lagos. We have three levels of government in the country. There can be
multiple taxes only if all three levels of government are charging for
the same thing. Take for instance, taxes for operational results go to
the federal government, advertisement goes to the local government, and
taxes on employees go to the state. Every party have their own distinct
charges.”

Though the origin
of ‘multiple taxation’ is not clear, complaints as regards the menace
became more prominent and rampant in the 1980’s. Experts say the
declining rate of disbursable funds by the federal government might
have led the state and local governments to seek alternative sources of
internally generated revenue. Multiple taxes confront the manufacturers
and private sector under different umbrellas through import duties,
export and excise duties, sales and VAT, withholdings and income taxes,
mobile advertising and billboard levies, educational levies, social
responsibility charges among others, which the participants say is
telling on the state’s business environment.

Drawing the battle line

The governor said
that there are levies imposed on business men and women by touts, which
must be addressed by the individuals themselves, because the aim of the
state government is to maximise revenue without imposing a burden on
the people. Mr Fashola, who gave phone numbers to be called in an event
of unclear taxes, urged the business community in the state to take
their destiny in their own hands and address illegal levies. “Engage
that system more vigorously,” he said. “We have come up with the list
of things that can be taxed, which is available. We have also urged
officials to stop collecting cash, the instruction is that you pay into
the bank.”

Participants at the event urged the governor to create more
institutional structure to be able to engage in interactive sessions
regularly, where people are given the opportunities to factor in their
own opinions on the state policies before and during implementation.
“We need institutional structures where we would be able to factor in
our own perspective, as regards the state policies,” said Segun
Oshinowo, a participant at the event. “We shouldn’t have a situation
where the meal has been prepared and we are being forced to eat only to
discover that there isn’t salt in the middle or key ingredients are
missing.”

Operators of domiciliary accounts are lamenting the charges on maintaining such accounts, saying that the arbitrariness of the charges makes them unjustifiable.

Some bank officials, however, say though the charges are steep in some cases, running a domiciliary account is not essential unless it is absolutely necessary.

“Bank charges on domiciliary accounts cannot be fixed,” says a senior staff of Afribank.

“The charges are dictated by the market. This thing is being regulated by the market. There is nothing you can do about it.

“Savings rates, currents account rates are regulated. If you give money to the bank to keep, you know what the banks would give; it can’t go below a certain rate or higher. But in terms of foreign denominated accounts, exchange rates also swing. It’s not stable, it’s always moving. So the rates cannot be static. If they say five percent, for instance, and the rates fall, there would be no basis to hold onto that rate. It’s a matter of supply and demand,” the Afribank official said.

“When you use credit cards, for instance, you know it is foreign currency denominated. When you are to be debited, we are going to look at the rates at that time. Take the Mallam who buys a dollar at N155 today, and a buyer says he wants to buy at N152 today, because that is what he bought a dollar the previous day, it won’t work. He has to look at the rates of that day,” he said.

A domiciliary account is an account in any foreign currency. It can be operated by customers upon fulfilment of all ‘know-your-customer’ requirements by the customer.

No benefit for the charges

But some bank customers argue also that banks are not offering services to justify their charges.

“I personally don’t see any problem in an individual having such an account, because I have one myself,” said Olufemi Ade, a former staff of Bank PHB.

“The only issue is that the charges are not justified and in most cases, one doesn’t get good features with the products,” Mr. Ade added.

Daniel Demilade, a customer of Guaranty Trust Bank, said charges on domiciliary accounts could be better regulated.

“Without prior notification, the bank withdrew about N8000 from my savings account with the bank, for charges related to my domiciliary account,” Mr. Demilade said.

“They said it was for the deduction of a new Dollar master card for my domiciliary account. They said they sent prior messages, but I didn’t see any,” he said.

A source at Spring Bank said that the charges should be regulated, to avoid irregularities and the issue of banks taking advantage of their customers.

“It is supposed to be a fixed amount. One bank is not supposed to be charging higher than others,” he said.

Customer care services of various banks that were visited said that there are no fixed service charges of domiciliary accounts.

“It’s a system charged account, it has random charges, not fixed” a staff of Zenith Bank stated.

At Intercontinental Bank, $20 is usually charged on withdrawals or transactions on domiciliary account, which must have at least $15 dollars in balance.