Nigeria Content Online

Jonathan promises support for ECOWAS ambassadors

Nigeria will
continue to work with Mali and other member-countries of the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to ensure the speedy
realization of the sub-regional organisation’s objectives, Goodluck
Jonathan said yesterday in Abuja.

Speaking during an
audience with Mali’s new Ambassador to Nigeria, Mahamane Amadou Maiga,
who was at the Presidential Villa to present his letters of credence,
Mr Jonathan said his administration will give “maximum cooperation” to
ambassadors of ECOWAS member-countries in the collective effort to
achieve greater economic integration and development in West Africa.

“Nigeria and Mali
have a lot in common,” he said. “We all have to work together to
strengthen our political and economic ties. We will give you maximum
cooperation to ensure that our sub-region moves forward,” the
president, who is the current Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads
of State and Government, told Mr Maiga.

At an earlier
audience with Nestor Padalhin, the new ambassador of the Philippines to
Nigeria, Mr Jonathan stated that the existing cordial relations between
Nigeria and the Philippines could be further strengthened with
increased bilateral trade.

The new ambassadors
thanked President Jonathan for receiving them soon after their arrival
in the country and assured him that they will do their best to enhance
existing relations between Nigeria and their countries.

They also used the opportunity to congratulate the president on Nigerian’s forthcoming 50th independence anniversary.

Emir of Kano nominated for Green Award

Emir of Kano nominated for Green Award

Ado Bayero, the
Emir of Kano, is among several individuals and corporate organizations
nominated for this year’s Green Award, Chairman of the Green Award
organizing committee, Ayegbeni Omonhimi, said yesterday in Benin.

Mr Omonhimi, who
paid a visit to the Edo State Deputy Governor, Pius Odubu, said the
idea behind the award is to sensitize Nigerians to be environmentally
conscious and safeguard our natural heritage.

He said the awards
are given to individuals and organizations that were environment
friendly, and for their immense contributions to the conservation of
ecological resources.

Mr Odubu, who
described the proposed award as an essential motivation to the
awardees, however, advised against building the gesture around serving
politicians whose positions are transient.

The Deputy Governor
observed that identifying politicians with the Green Award could create
the impression that it is politically engineered, and may discourage
rival politicians from being part of the event.

The national award
will be given to Mr Bayero; while the International Award goes to the
president of Friends of the Earth Worldwide, Nimmo Bassey.

Other recipients are Olayinka Omoregbe, (International Award);
Awake! and Watchtower magazines, (published by Jehovah’s Witnesses),
nominated for the International Media Award, and Catherine Oronsaye for
the Inner City Award.

Lagos warns against dereliction of duty

Lagos warns against dereliction of duty

The Lagos State
government, last week, warned officers against dereliction in the
treatment of official correspondence and files, just as it advised
ministries and agencies to reduce their line of reporting for effective
service delivery.

This was contained in a circular issued on August 25 by the head of service, Adesegun Ogunlewe.

In a bid to make
the civil service more efficient, the state government issued a
directive early this year giving officers in the state public service
48 hours within which to treat and complete assignments on
correspondence and files.

The HOS, however,
observed that the long line of reporting system adopted in most
ministries and agencies of government where supervising officer minutes
assignment to subordinate officers, who in turn minute the same
assignment to two or more low ranking officers, was not only causing
undue delay in the treatment of correspondence but also made it
difficult to track officers responsible for any delay.

This long chain of
command, according to Mr Ogunlewe, “is rendering the 48 hours deadline
on completion of assignments ineffective and of little or no
significance.”

He, therefore,
advised supervising officers to reduce the line of reporting in their
respective MDAs and take steps to put appropriate tracking mechanism in
place.

According to him,
“supervising officers are enjoined to cultivate the habit of minuting
mails and files to a particular officer in charge of a given
responsibility for effective action, rather than passing it down a
chain of command.”

In order not to
leave room for any lapse, he further added that in the absence of the
head of the MDAs, mails and files should be handled by the next most
senior officer, in accordance with the laid down regulations.

Mr. Ogunlewe warned
that any form of ineptitude or outright dereliction of duty on the part
of supervising and subordinate officers in the treatment of official
correspondence and files would attract appropriate sanctions.

Nasarawa youth protest over lamp posts

Nasarawa youth protest over lamp posts

A group of young men in Lafia, Nasarawa State,
launched a violent protest on Tuesday over the sudden removal of street
lamps in their neighbourhood.

On Monday night, men claiming to be under the
direction of Mustapha Agwai, the Emir of Lafia, removed the street
lamps in the Tudun Amba area of the city. The move roused the anger of
the local youth, who barricaded the road leading to the governor’s
house.

Manyi Adamu, who was among the protesters, said that
the road will remain closed until those who removed the lights replaced
them.

“The light has been helping the community, preventing
the prevalence of accidents at this junction,” he said. “Only for these
men to come and begin to remove them.”

The managing director of the Nasarawa Urban Development Board
(NUBD), Jafaru Ango, arrived on the scene to calm the young men. He
explained that the lamp posts were removed in preparation for the
expansion of the Lafia-Doma road. He pledged that as soon as the work
was completed, the street lamps would be replaced.

UNIBEN students protest non accreditation of courses

UNIBEN students protest non accreditation of courses

Academic and economic activities yesterday stood
still for several hours at the University of Benin and the entire
Ugbowo area of Benin City as students of the university, particularly
those from the College of Medicine, protested the non accreditation of
the faculty and that of dentistry by the Medical and Dental Council of
Nigeria (MDCN).

The students, who numbered several thousands, refused
to speak or talk to journalists until they meet with the vice
chancellor of the university, Oyuki Oshodin. The few who volunteered
comments said those of their colleagues who are to graduate in few
weeks’ time would not get their licence to practice as medical doctors
and dentists, despite the more than seven years they had spent in the
school.

“It is sad that the school authority had shown a
nonchalant attitude to our plight,” one of the students said, adding
that her colleagues are in despair over the future of their education.

Vehicular and human traffic along Ugbowo/Lagos road
were blocked by the protesters, even though the protest was peaceful.
It, however, made travelers to go through a hectic time finding their
way out of the city.

When NEXT visited the school premises, the entrance
gate was closed. The vice chancellor was also prevented from coming out
of the premises. The camera man attached to DBN Television was
manhandled by the visibly angry students who refused to say anything to
journalists.

When contacted on phone, Osaze Osarenren, public
relations officer of the university, said the students protested out of
ignorance, as the school had already put machineries in motion to meet
the demands of the MDCN.

“It was suspension of accreditation and they gave us
12 months to put those things right, and if we didn’t do, they can now
sanction us,” he said.

“We have been meeting with the ministry of education
on this matter, and things are being put in place. Before the end of
the ongoing examination, which is not even the finals, all these things
would be done. In fact, the vice chancellor and some senior officials
are airborne on Arik Air (3.05 pm) to Abuja on the same matter,” he
said.

Medical council seeks intervention

Meanwhile, the state chapter of the Nigerian Medical
Association (NMA), yesterday, in a statement signed by its chairman,
Philip Ugbodaga; secretary, Emmanuel Ighodaro; and public relations
officer, Kennedy Alohan, urged the council of the university and that
of Igbinedion University, which was also affected, to quickly meet the
demands of the MDCN so as not to create vacuum in the profession.

“As a responsible association, we support efforts by
the council at ensuring the maintenance of standards in medical
education in Nigeria Universities. The loss of accreditation by these
universities to train doctors has very serious implications for the
already comatose health sector in our state and country,” the council
said.

“We, therefore, call on the authorities of the affected universities
and the respective heads of the colleges of medical sciences to work
very closely with the MDCN, with a view to quickly addressing the
issues that led to this unfortunate situation,” it said.

Nsukka university trains staff on Google tools

Nsukka university trains staff on Google tools

Ahead of the formal
inauguration of its N3b Wireless Infrastructure project lead-sponsored
by Google Inc, faculty and staff of the University of Nigeria Nsukka
(UNN) commenced training last week on integrating technology in course
design, teaching and research.

Google is one of
the key facilitators of the course in collaboration with the Innovation
Centre, UNN and human capital development firm OrgLearning Consult
Limited.

Chidi Onyia of
OrgLearning Consult Ltd, the lead facilitator, said the programme seeks
to prepare the first batch of staff on the use of the enhanced
technology tools that would be available to the university from
September this year. UNN plans to inaugurate its Information and
Communication Technology project that has the sponsorship and
partnership of about 10 leading players in ICT.

Google is lead
sponsor of the project under its University Assistance project. UNN is
the first recipient of the Google sponsorship of a major programme that
helps to avail African universities and young people with 21st century
productivity tools. Google is providing 150mb of international Internet
bandwidth to the University of Nigeria as well as support with
applications and training.

The institution’s Vice Chancellor, Bartholomew Okolo, said at the
opening ceremony of the programme at the Enugu campus of the university
that the programme is “in consonance with the vision of university
management to provide an enabling environment for realisation of the
new vision of making UNN a global centre of learning”.

Money

Starcomms introduces special Islamic phone

Starcomms introduces special Islamic phone

In the spirit of
celebrating the holy month of Ramadan, Starcomms Plc is offering its
Muslim customers the opportunity of purchasing and owning a unique
handset, the Qiblah, exclusively equipped with integrated features that
are tailor-made to meet the needs of fasting and praying Muslims.

The new phone has
an indicator setting which points to Mecca and comes complete with a
compass and prayer time alarm functions. The Qiblah indicator uses an
inbuilt longitude and latitude orientation or city references that,
when used in comparison to the magnetic north, indicates the direction
of the Qiblah so that the Muslim can, from any place he is, know in
what direction to face and pray. The Qiblah in Islam is the compass
that shows the direction that Muslims face to pray wherever they are.

Speaking on the
functionality of the Qiblah phones, Tushar Maheshwari, Chief Commercial
Officer of Starcomms noted that very often it is difficult to determine
the four cardinal points when one is constantly on the move.

Therefore, it may
not be easy to determine the Qiblah when it is time to pray for a
Muslim whose routine requires moving around. With the aid of the
compass installed in the phone, a Muslim customer of Starcomms can
easily know which direction to face at prayer time.

The Qiblah phones are designed with colourful Islamic visual
features, such as lovely wall papers and screen savers as well as
inspiring ring-tones. The phone is also a channel for the customer to
enjoy the Listen-To-Quran service of Starcomms, which is the first of
its kind in the country.

Money

Guinness commissions water project in community

Guinness commissions water project in community

Guinness Water of Life project was commissioned in Odigbo Local Government Area of Ondo State on Wednesday, August 25.

The commissioning
ceremony was attended by members of Odigbo community, neighbouring
towns, and villages as well as traditional rulers from these towns.

Governor of Ondo
State, Olusegun Mimiko, represented by the Commissioner for Adult
Education and Vocational Studies, Florence Kehinde Momoh, commended
Guinness Nigeria for the gesture. While calling on other corporate
organisations to emulate Guinness Nigeria, the commissioner, who hails
from Odigbo, described the projects as a good example of public-private
sector collaboration in the development of the rural communities of the
state.

The Lisa of Odigbo,
Godwin Akindileni, said “It is like magic. Guinness knew what was
bothering us and responded to the needs of the people in this area. The
Odigbo community is happy over this project. We hear banks declaring
billions as profits all over the whole place without touching people’s
lives in any way, Before now, you could not count up to 10 boreholes in
the town, there was serious stress for people whenever they seek to get
potable water, but with this project, Guinness has done a great thing
for this town and it is marvellous in our eyes.”

Unveiling the
project, the representative of the Managing Director, Guinness Nigeria,
Rory McMillan said “Providing potable water to communities in Nigeria
is an integral part of our corporate citizenship agenda.”

The Odigbo project
is made up of boreholes, overhead storage tank, a water treatment
machine, a distribution network and a standby power generating set.

Money

The best mobile browser

The best mobile browser

It is possible some
people may not have heard of browser wars. This term is used to
describe the rivalries for the control of the web browsing market,
specifically between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape’s
Navigator in the 1990s (Internet Explorer won that one hands down), and
the resurgence of rivals to Internet Explorer since 2003. The major
competitors are Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and more recently,
Google’s Chrome.

All this is in the
desktop computing space however, and Opera, a Norwegian software maker,
has always been one of the ‘little’ boys in that battle. But in recent
times, the mobile browsing space is becoming more significant and more
important, and when it comes to that space, Opera is king. Today, we
are going to take a look at their browser for mobile phones, Opera Mini.

First things first,
Opera Mini is free. Simply go to Opera.com and download it. It is
supported through a partnership between the Opera Software company and
Google.

The browser is
designed primarily for mobile phones, smart phones, and personal
digital assistants. It uses the Java ME platform and as a result,
requires that the mobile device be capable of running Java ME
applications.

Opera Mini was
derived from the Opera browser for personal computers, which has been
publicly available since 1996. It began as a pilot project in 2005 and
after limited releases in Europe, it was officially launched worldwide
on January 24, 2006.

Easy interface

Opera Mini has an
easy interface with an address bar and a Google search bar. Mobile
users do not need more than this really, and Opera manages to put them
in a short column that requires little scrolling. A pop-up menu
available from any screen brings you directly to any of these basic
navigational components, no matter how deeply you are in a site. A
Settings tool opts in or out of image loading, forcing the screen to
jump to the first available text, font size changes, etc.

For me, the killer
feature of Opera Mini is that it requests web pages through Opera
Software’s servers. The servers are configured to process, and then
compress them before relaying the pages back to your mobile phone. This
compression process makes transfer time about two to three times
faster, and the pre-processing smoothes compatibility with web pages
not designed for mobile phones.

Some websites are
not yet compatible with mobile phones, so do not render well on your
Blackberry’s native browser, but render quite well on Opera Mini. All
this is done without taxing the phone itself, and most crucially for
me, in a way that is very friendly to the Nigerian pocket. Images on
the websites are scaled down so you can see them on your phone, but
they do not use much of the 100MB that Zain (what’s their new name
nowadays?) allocates on what I consider to be the most reasonably
priced mobile Internet plan in Nigeria.

For someone like me
who does most of my mobile browsing on a Blackberry, this browser is a
must have. The only problem I had with it was that it kept crashing
each time I opened more than four tabs at a time, but that was probably
a function of the kind of websites I visit.

However, it beats
RIM’s own Blackberry browser hands down, and neither the Android’s
native browser, nor Safari on the iPhone are nearly as good as what
Opera has put out in the Mini. This browser is a must-use for anyone
who is serious about having access to the Internet on the go.

Money

Bidvest financial year profit rises, upbeat on outlook

Bidvest financial year profit rises, upbeat on outlook

South African
industrial conglomerate Bidvest posted higher full-year profit on
Monday as solid demand from emerging markets offset a stronger rand,
and said it was looking for potential acquisitions.

Bidvest, whose
businesses include auto retailing, shipping and food distribution, has
been helped by exposure to fast-growing markets such as Asia, which
have largely escaped the worst of the global downturn.

It also expects a
boost from decades-low interest rates at home, and as economies in
Europe and South Africa make a gradual recovery.

Bidvest, which has
a market value of around $6.2 billion, said in a statement it is
budgeting for “real growth” in earnings in the coming year.

“Our capacity to do deals is quite significant,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Joffe said in a telephone interview.

“We obviously have to put our balance sheet to work over the next short while.”

He declined to say
how much Bidvest would be looking to spend on a potential acquisition.
The company has said it is looking to expand its food service business
in Europe.

The company’s
current leverage ratio stands at around 30 percent, Joffe said, adding
that could “easily” be boosted to 40 or 50 percent.

Overseas profits

Bidvest, which
makes more of a quarter of its sales overseas, said full-year results
were boosted largely by stronger auto sales in South Africa and rising
demand for catering services in Asia.

“It’s a good
quality set of results and shows that something is happening in the
economies it operates in,” said Mark Hodgson, an analyst at Avior
Research.

But the company was also hit by the strengthening rand, which eats into the value of overseas earnings.

Earlier this month
the rand hit a 2-1/2 year high against the dollar, prompting South
Africa’s finance minister to say he was concerned about the rise of the
currency.

Bidvest’s Joffe
said the soccer World Cup, which was expected to lift earnings at home,
failed to deliver due to fewer than expected foreign visitors.

Headline earnings per share rose 15 percent to 1,070 cents in the year to end-June.

Headline EPS, the main gauge of profit in South Africa, strips out certain one-time items.

Revenue fell 2.3 percent to 109.8 billion rand, hit in part by the stronger rand.

Bidvest’s cash
generation increased 18.3 percent to 8 billion rand, debt fell 7.3
percent to 3.8 billion rand, while finance charges dropped by around a
quarter.

Shares of the
Johannesburg-based company, which are little changed so far this year,
gained 1.2 percent to 130.50 rand as of 1110 GMT, slightly
underperforming a 1.6 percent rise in the blue-chip Top-40 index.