Nigeria Content Online

Cement manufacturer
Lafarge SA plans to retrench 13 percent of its workers at its
Lichtenburg plant in South Africa, a union said on Wednesday.

The union,
Solidarity, said it had been served with a notice by the company
indicating its plans to retrench about 80 of its 600 employees by the
end of October.

“Lafarge Cement
maintains that the shrinking of the construction industry owing to the
recession and the rising cost of electricity is the reason for the
planned layoffs,” the union said in a statement.

Ebonyi State plans
a 20 billion naira bond to finance infrastructure development, the lead
issuing house said on Wednesday, the latest of several states to
announce bond plans in recent months.

Cowry Asset
Management said the bond would be a 5-year paper issued in two tranches
of 16.5 billion naira and 3.5 billion naira before the end of the
month. It said the bond would have a coupon of 13 percent.

The issuing house
said the south-eastern state would use the proceeds to repay existing
bank loans, build an international market, water project, roads,
bridges, an international hotel and a rice processing factory.

The state is awaiting exchange commission’s approval for the bond.

Wema Bank said on
Wednesday it had placed 9 billion naira ($60 million) worth of new
shares with two local investors to boost its liquidity ratio and
increase its branch network.

Wema Bank was one
of nine lenders bailed out last year in a $4 billion central bank
rescue because their weak capital bases posed a systemic risk. The
central bank has given Wema until the end of September to recapitalise.

“The bank in its
bid to recapitalise has offered 9 billion of its shares to special
investors, which has been taken up,” said Wema’s spokesperson Amaka
Okpala.

Wema Bank in May
detailed plans on how it intended to recapitalise ahead of the central
bank deadline. It said over 25 billion naira worth of non-performing
loans had been recovered by the end of July.

It will also package around 37 billion naira worth of non-performing
loans for purchase by the state asset management company (AMCON) when
it becomes operational. Nigeria is in the process of setting up AMCON,
which will buy up non-performing loans in exchange for government bonds.

Nigeria
needs $5 billion annually over the next 10 years in order to achieve
stable power supply in line with the Vision 20:2020.

Barth
Nnaji, special adviser to the president on power and chairman of the
presidential task force on power, said the bulk of this fund would have
to come from the private sector. While applauding the recent effort by
government to privatise the power sector, Mr. Nnaji said, in an
interview at the weekend, in Lagos, that the move will stimulate
private sector interest in the sector.

“We
require foreign investment in this sector, but foreign investors are
skeptical as they have the entire world to invest in. But Nigeria is
now saying, we are going to make the various indices for investment
such that they attract what an investor would be looking for
internationally,” he said.

The
N300 billion intervention fund initiated by the Central Bank for power
and aviation sectors, was to encourage private participation in the
sector.

“It
is good, but it is not enough and it shows the will of government. But
there is a lot more the government is doing in terms of policy
approach,” he added.

He
said Nigeria was ready to get things right this time by carrying out
the reforms, as contained in the Electricity Power Sector Reform Act of
2005.

“A
lot is different this time around. First, this government has produced
a holistic plan on how to drive the reform process to completion. So,
government now has a plan for electricity and includes everything from
generation of the power, transmission of power, to distribution of
power, to the regulatory issues surrounding all these,” he said.

Power reform roadmap

President
Goodluck Jonathan launched the power reform roadmap last week as part
of efforts to revive the sector, which has performed below expectations
over the years. As part of the strategy, the government has
reconstituted the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to
regulate private sector operators in the sector.

“The
Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission will, therefore, be
undertaking a major review of the tariff regime, which will be
completed before the end of the first quarter of 2011, with a view to
replacing the national uniform tariff with a new genuinely
cost-reflective ceiling on end-user tariffs,” said Mr. Jonathan at the
launch in Lagos.

Mr.
Nnaji, a professor of robotics engineering and a former science and
technology minister, said one of the challenges of the sector was the
inefficiency that has made it difficult to achieve optimum output.
While installed power plants have capacity in the region of 5,000
megawatts, only about 3,500 megawatts is available on the national
grid.

“Sometimes,
you have available generation but you are not able to evacuate it due
to the network platform. What we would like to have as government is
for the actual capacity to match installed capacity,” Mr. Nnaji said.

All
these, he said, will be corrected with the involvement of the private
sector. He, however, refused to give a definite timeline on when
Nigerians would begin to enjoy stable power supply. “I will not give
you data, but you will begin to see improvement. We will continue to
see improvement. It is better to see improvement than promise and get
disappointed,” he said.

He added that competent management of the sector will eventually translate to improvement in power supply.

Six hundred farmers
in Ondo State are currently being trained by the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID) on cassava cultivation, the
Cassava Value Chain Manager of the agency, Ifeanyi Ojiako, has said.

Mr Ojiako, who
stated at a programme on the premises of Matna Foods Limited, Ogbesse,
to train the farmers on the latest techniques in cassava farm
management, said USAID was interested in assisting Nigerian farmers to
boost cassava production and at the same time help local
agro-processing firms to grow.

He said that
through its Maximising Agricultural Revenues and Key Enterprises in
Targeted Sites (MARKETS), the USAID has also distributed 50 bundles of
high yielding cassava stems to each of the farmers to plant on a
hectare of farmland allocated to each of them.

Source materials

The programme, he
added, was also aimed at helping agro-based processing firms source
materials from ready markets, while at the same time, link the farmers
directly with the processors to increase their earnings.

“USAID, through
MARKETS, engage some local based consultants to organise the farmers
into cluster groups so that they could be empowered with modern
technology and inputs that would be funded by the agency, to plant the
correct way so that they can supply the processing firms.

“We also fund the
consultants to supply improved planting materials in bundles to each of
the farmers, to enable them plant a hectare of cassava farms.

“We also fund the
training of their leaders by taking them to demonstration farms to
learn new planting techniques, and the knowledge they gain will be
transferred to their colleagues.

“For now, we have
assisted 600 farmers to cultivate a hectare each and, at maturity, we
also assist them to supply to the processors at a competitive amount
that would definitely improve their lifestyles.”

The upbeat trading
recorded at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Tuesday could not be
sustained at the close of Wednesday’s proceedings.

The NSE market
capitalisation and the All-Share Index, the two market measuring
parameters, were down by 0.09 percent yesterday after appreciating by
0.39 percent on Tuesday.

Stock analysts
attributed the free falls to investors’ low-confidence in the market
following the recent development in the banking sector.

Dimeji Akintayo, an
equity analyst at Resource Cap, a portfolio management firm, said the
past few weeks have witnessed mass selloffs of bank stocks in line with
the Central Bank directive that banks must reduce their capital market
exposure to 10 percent by September 1st (yesterday).

“This development
has further created more uncertainties in the market because investors
really don’t know what direction the market is heading. We are all
trading with caution,” Mr. Akintayo said.

The market
capitalisation of the 199 First-Tier equities closed yesterday at
N5.941 trillion, after opening the day at N5.946 trillion, reflecting
over N5.19 billion losses. Meanwhile, about N23.15 billion was gained
the preceding day. The All-Share Index also shed 21.19 units on the
previous day’s figures of 24,268.24 basis points, to close at 24,247.05.

At the end of
Wednesday’s trading, the number of gainers closed lower at 31 compared
with the 36 recorded on Tuesday, while losers closed higher at 30
against the 26 recorded the previous trading day. African Petroleum
topped the gainers chart for the day with 5 percent price appreciation,
while Livestock topped the losers chart with 5 percent depreciation.

Sectoral review

In spite of
investors’ low patronage in the market, the banking subsector still led
the most active subsectors’ chart yesterday with 129.20 million volumes
of shares, valued at over N1.31 billion exchanged in 3,392 deals.
Volume in the subsector was driven by Guaranty Trust Bank, Zenith Bank,
Access Bank, and United Bank for Africa.

The breweries
subsector, yesterday, recorded one gainer to one loser, just as one
gainer to one loser was also recorded in the last two trading days. The
share price of Nigerian Breweries inches up by 2.01 percent while
Guinness share price lost 1.22 percent after Wednesday’s trading.

The conglomerates
subsector recorded three losers to two unchanged prices, compared to
two gainers to three unchanged prices recorded on Tuesday. The share
prices of PZ, UAC Nigeria, and Unilever Nigeria all lost by 3.99
percent, 2.00 percent, and 0.41 percent respectively, while the share
prices of Transnational Corporation of Nigeria and AG Leventis Plc
remained unchanged.

Meanwhile, the
management of the Exchange on Wednesday marked down the price of NCR
Plc for a dividend of 5 kobo; the payment date is 30th September. Also,
the price of National Salt Company Plc was marked down for a dividend
of 50 kobo; payment date 4th October, while the price of Associated Bus
Company Plc was marked for a dividend of 3 kobo.

The federal government on Monday announced plans to create a certification system for unskilled labour in Nigeria. Musa Abdullahi, chairman of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), made the announcement at a meeting on the National Vocational Qualification Framework. Mr. Abdullahi said the traditional system of qualification does not appropriately address the informal sector, though most jobs and vocational trainings were located there.

“National recognition is not given to the skills and competencies acquired in this important sector,” he said. “The system does not allow individuals who might not have any certificates, but have gained useful relevant experience or competence, to secure formal qualification for additional improvement.”

Lifelong learning

Mr. Abdullahi said the framework will improve vocational education and training while providing incentives to individuals to continue learning through life.

“This implies that mechanics, vulcanizers, carpenters, caterers, tailors, will be tested based on their competencies and issued certificates by the federal government which they can use even outside Nigeria to get jobs, when the relevant legislative procedures are in place.” He added that Nigeria needed skilled craftsmen, technicians and technologists in large numbers, if the country was to be one of the top 20 economies of the world by 2020.

Ade Aimola, acting executive secretary of NBTE, said that, “the education system is facing a lot of challenges, chief among which are quantity, quality and relevance of training and training opportunities in both formal and non-formal sector.” It is against this backdrop that the National Board for Technical Education is seeking to introduce and develop the national vocational qualification framework,” Mr. Aimola said.

Need for the system

The framework has to do with the development, classification and recognition of skills, knowledge and competencies acquired by individuals irrespective of where and how the training or skill was acquired.

“The system gives a clear statement of what the learner must know to be able or be able to do whether the learning took place in a classroom, on-the-job, or less formally. The framework indicates comparability of different qualifications and how one can progress from one level to another.” Mohammed Aminu, a director at Industrial Training Fund, said there was a need to certify artisans in the country, because this lack of certification has deprived them of certain privileges. “This framework meeting is timely. It is going to help not only the Fund but other organizations and help for the development of the country,” Mr. Aminu said.