Nigeria Content Online

The Dangote Group
says it will invest 3.9 billion dollars (N585 billion) in the expansion
of its cement plants in some Africa countries.

Aliko Dangote,
chairman of the company, disclosed this on Tuesday in Lagos while
signing an agreement between his company and a Chinese firm, Sinoma
International Engineering Co. Ltd.

He said that the
expansion project, expected to be completed in 2013, would produce
additional 16.5 million tonnes of cement to achieve a target of 50
million tonnes in the next two years.

Dangote, represented by Devakumar Edwin, the company’s group
executive director (Business Development), said that the projects
included installation of equipment, mining, quarry, power facilities,
among others.

The Federal
Government has paid 45 per cent of the entitlements of workers of the
Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, the National Union of Postal and
Telecommunications Employees (NUPTE) has said.

Sunday Alhassan,
president of NUPTE, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on
Tuesday that the entitlements included outstanding salaries.

Mr. Alhassan said
that the government had also given an assurance that it would pay the
remaining 55 per cent of the entitlements in May.

He said that the government paid the entitlements in December, 2010,
although some affected workers did not see their money in time due to
the inability of their banks to promptly credit their accounts.

Angola’s foreign
exchange reserves rose to $17.66 billion in December from $15.5 billion
in November, the Central Bank said in a statement posted on its website
on Tuesday.

Angola, the second
largest oil producer in Africa after Nigeria, depends on oil exports
for over 90 per cent of its foreign exchange earnings.

Senegal will likely
launch a debut sovereign Islamic bond in 2011 of around $200 million,
said the chief operating officer at the Islamic Corporation for the
Development of the Private Sector (ICD).

ICD, a member of
the Islamic Development Bank, has been mandated to work on the Islamic
bond, or sukuk, and while the exact size has not been fixed yet, it
will be around $200 million, Ahmed Khizer Khan told reporters on the
sidelines of a conference in Dubai.

“The mandate has
been signed; you have to work with the government to see when the best
time is. It depends on the government but we’d like to do it the
sooner, the better,” Mr. Khan said.

Sources told Reuters in November Citibank is also serving as an arranger on the planned sukuk.

Senegal is one of a
number of African nations looking to enter the nearly $1 trillion
Islamic finance market. Nations from South Africa to Kenya are
revamping laws to accommodate sukuk transactions in a bid to attract
more Middle Eastern funds.

The Nigerian
Accounting Standards Board (NASB) has called for the passage of the
Financial Reporting Council Bill by the National Assembly.

The passage of the
bill would empower the board to implement the International Financial
Reporting Standards (IFRS), which Nigeria has already adopted.

The IFRS is expected to be implemented over a three year period with effect from January next year.

Executive secretary
and chief executive of the NASB, Jim Obazee, said while the board
strives for global relevance in the country’s financial reporting
system, it is handicapped to enforce compliance.

“The right
equipment we need for the implementation of the IFRS in Nigeria
includes the passage of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) Bill.
Otherwise, we may have to identify every piece of legislation, mostly
in the Companies and Allied Matters Act i1990 that are inconsistent
with the pronouncement of IFRS,” Mr. Obazee said.

Cumbersome process

The FRC Bill, which
was passed by the former National Assembly, was not accented to by
President Olusegun Obasanjo. The failure of the successor, the late
Umaru Yar’Adua to sign the Bill three months after assuming office
meant that the Bill had to go through fresh legislative process.

It was again passed
by the House of Representatives in 2008, while it awaited the Senate to
consider the committee report. Before the recess on March 9, the
committee report was listed thrice in the notice paper by the Senate
but it eventually did not come up for consideration before the
lawmakers vacated.

According to the
NASB, the passage of the Financial Reporting Council Bill will help to
address the current institutional weaknesses in the regulation,
compliance and enforcement of standards, and the development of robust
arrangements for monitoring and enforcing compliance with financial
reporting standards.

Mr. Obazee said
Nigeria stands to receive increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
when the bill is passed. “Nigeria will be included in the list of third
country auditors, as unveiled by the European Union. As such, our
professional accountants shall be allowed to audit companies that have
subsidiaries in the EU without limit,” he added.

According to him,
the desired public sector financial management reforms will be realised
with the development of public sector accounting standards, which shall
be issued by Financial Reporting Council.

Enhancing market discipline

The Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, said recently that the
current accounting system by Nigerian institutions was not in line with
global standards, hence the introduction of the IFRS.

“This is expected
to enhance market discipline, and reduce uncertainties which limit the
risk of unwarranted contagion,” Mr. Sanusi had said.

IFRS are
principles-based standards, interpretations, and the framework adopted
by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Nigeria is
implementing an agenda for the adoption of IFRS by all reporting
entities commencing in January 2012 through January 2014.

After decades of
being challenged by local and foreign industry watchers, the Shell
Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) of Nigeria Limited yesterday
announced that it has signed a contract with Saipem Contracting Nigeria
Limited for a pipeline system that will gather associated gas from
being flared, thus utilising it for use in the domestic gas market.

According to the
firm, some 30MMscf/d of gas from Otumara and Saghara fields in Western
Niger Delta will be gathered, processed, and channelled through the
Escravos – Lagos Pipeline System (ELPS).

“This is an
extremely important project for SPDC in terms of our commitment to
ending routine gas flaring, and consolidating our leadership position
in the domestic gas market. Security and funding permitting, we will
continue to make good progress in bringing on the projects that will
reduce flares and boost gas supply to the domestic market,” the company
said in a statement yesterday.

However, Phillip
Jakpor, media officer of Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the
Earth Nigeria, doubts the sincerity of the oil company to end gas
flaring.

“Shell cannot be
trusted to tell the truth on matters of flare out. We have heard over
and over again about gas gathering infrastructure that they have been
constructing to harness wasted gas while spokespersons continue to
justify why gas flare cannot stop.

“They have
consistently breached our deadlines since 1984 and even their self
imposed deadlines with impunity, so we do not believe their lies on
ending flares,” Mr. Jakpor said.

The project cost
$101million. In January, the Dutch parliament questioned Shell because
of its activities in Nigeria. A lot of criticism was voiced about the
company’s lack of transparency in its activities in Nigeria, and about
the major pollution in the Niger Delta.

Groups such as
Milieudefensie, Friends of the Earth International, and other
non-governmental organisations want Shell to clean the hundreds of oil
leaks it causes each year and to stop flaring gas, which has been
prohibited by Nigerian law since 1984. The associated gas now simply
burned off emits poisonous gasses and CO2, whereas it could be put to
good use, such as to generate electricity.

Deputy managing
director, Saipem Contracting Nigeria Limited, Davide Rossi, said, “We
are committed to executing the contract job and ensure timely delivery
of the project.”

The 42-kilometre
pipeline is of various sizes, ranging from 2” to 12”, passing through a
swampy terrain with a major river crossing.

Late last year,
SPDC Joint Venture awarded a contract for engineering, procurement, and
construction of the gas compression and processing plant to Daewoo
Nigeria Ltd. and it says this work is progressing.

SPDC Joint Venture
has already invested some $3 billion in Associated Gas Gathering (AGG)
facilities which helped it reduce its flaring significantly between
2002 and 2010.

It said militant
activity and funding issues brought many projects to a halt, but it is
now investing more than $2 billion in completing these projects,
repairing damaged equipment, and building new AGG facilities.

The firm says when
completed, these projects will extend AGG coverage to more than 90 per
cent of the associated gas produced in the Joint Venture operations.
The remaining 10 per cent will be covered by Nigerian investors who
would collect associated gas from flare sites for small-scale local
projects.

Ending gas flaring

Last month, the
Federal Government launched a ‘gas revolution’ project which it says
would, among other benefits, put paid to gas flaring in the country and
utilise natural gas reserves aimed at attracting foreign direct
investment worth $25 billion.

Fola Onasanya, oil
and gas analyst, Ciuci Consulting, a management consultancy firm, said
the gas revolution launched by President Goodluck Jonathan holds the
promise of inducing further development and growth in the country’s
domestic gas market.

“With the $3
billion Central Gas Processing Facility (CPF) by Nigerian Agip Oil
Company (NAOC) and Oando Nigeria Plc, a huge sink will be created for
storing and utilising natural gas resources which otherwise could have
been flared, thus providing a boost to the economy both in terms of
value generation and job creation,” Mr. Onasanya said.

Nigeria’s oil
assets have been exploited for more than 50 years. However, while oil
companies have profited from the resource, local communities in the oil
rich but conflict ridden areas live with the daily pollution caused by
non-stop gas flaring.

The country has
lost billions of naira on gas flaring, a process of burning off into
the atmosphere, surplus combustible vapours from oil wells, either as a
means of disposal or as a security measure to relieve well pressure.

Inability to solve the lingering problem has been increasingly
recognised as a huge environmental problem in the Niger Delta region of
the nation.