Nigeria Content Online

The Gombe State
government is to spend N118.36 million as subsidy for the accommodation
of 2,500 pilgrims in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The executive
secretary of the State Muslims Pilgrims Welfare Board, Umar Abdulsalam,
told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Gombe that the government
would subsidise each pilgrim with 1,076 Saudi Riyals (N47,344).

He said the 2,500 intending pilgrims comprised 1,510 males and 1,003 females, to be accompanied by 13 officials.

Mr. Abdulsalam said
the state’s pilgrims would be transported from Gombe International
Airport in five days, starting from October 20.

Georg Kell, the
Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact, will lead
other business leaders and leaders to resolve issues concerning
corporate governance and its direct bearing on national growth and
development at the CEOs Forum of the 16th Nigerian Economic Summit
taking place at the Transcorp Hilton on October 21.

This gathering will
examine the necessary corporate governance codes, barriers to complete
adherence and its effects on companies’ bottom-lines. Chaired by Mr
Kell, it will be attended by CEOs such as Stephen Onasanya of
FirstBank; Mutiu Sumonu of Shell Companies in Nigeria; Alain D’Kat of
Siemens Nigeria and Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru of the Federal Inland Revenue
Service, among others.

The agenda focuses on strategies for building business models that will enable Nigeria achieve the Vision 20:2020.

The summit,
‘Nigeria @ 50: The Challenge of Visionary Leadership and Good
Governance’, is expected to attract key players in government and
business who will seek progressive steps in moving our economy forward.

The CEOs Forum, which is part of the series of events billed for the
16th Nigerian Economic Summit, scheduled for October 19 to 21, is
organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group in conjunction with the
National Planning Commission. It will also feature other sessions such
as the Presidential Policy Dialogue, Election 2011 Debate, Emerging
Leaders Forum, Policy Dialogues and Dialogue with the Economic
Management Team (EMT) amongst others.

Algeria’s liquefied
natural gas (LNG) production capacity should return to normal in a few
months after an accident cut capacity by as much as 20 percent,
Algerian energy minister, Youcef Yousfi, said on Thursday.

Algeria is one of
the world’s biggest LNG exporters, with a capacity of 30 billion cubic
metres (bcm) a year, but output has dropped due to a problem with one
of its facilities, he said, ahead of an OPEC oil exporters’ meeting in
Vienna.

“We had (LNG)
capacity destroyed due to an accident,” he said, adding that the
capacity lost was equivalent to around 5-6 bcm/year.

He did not say when the problem occurred or give a more exact timeline for when it might be fixed.

Zambia aims to
double the contribution of mining to gross domestic product by 2015 by
attracting greater investment in the sector, the president of the
southern African nation said on Thursday.

Rupiah Banda said
in a statement that Zambia, Africa’s top producer of copper, aims to
have mining contribute 20 percent of GDP by 2015. That compares with an
11 percent contribution from mining to GDP now, according to ministry
of mines data.

Mr. Banda said he would ensure stability in the mining industry in order for the country to continue to attract investment.

“The vision of my
government is to have (the) mining industry contributing more than 20
percent to the Gross Domestic Product…in the next five years,” he
said.

The Central Bank is
yet to offer any clue on the interested bidders for some Nigerian
banks, months after officially declaring them up for sale and open to
investors.

However, five or
six of the banks rescued in a $4 billion bailout last year will
announce negotiations with potential investors in the coming weeks, the
Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, said yesterday, according
to a Reuters report.

“In the next two to
three weeks, you will hear announcements from five or six institutions
about negotiations on registered acquisitions,” the report quoted him
as saying.

The Central Bank
has over the months, indicated that it has been receiving bids from
interested local and international investors in the rescued banks. It
also gave indications that it had received bids for four of the rescued
banks and that foreign institutions were involved in the bidding
process, as well as several local banks and private equity firms in
partnership with foreign banks.

The Central Bank
rescued nine banks last year, which it deemed undercapitalised and
posing a risk to the other banks in the system. It has since been
seeking new investors to recapitalise them.

A Central Bank
staff, who asked not to be named, said worries on whether there are
bidders should be put to rest, assuring that the interested investors
would be named soon.

“At least three
investors, both local and foreign, are in talks with each of the
rescued banks. Negotiations are on,” he said, adding that it is when
choices have been made and due processes have been followed, that the
regulatory body would make the names public.

Awaiting Asset Management Company

The Central Bank
also stated that the Asset Management Company (AMCON), set up to
purchase non-performing loans and chase the recovery of bad loans,
would begin purchasing assets in the next “two to three weeks. By the
end of this year, we will have put the banking problems behind us,” the
report said.

Finance experts,
however, said there still remain some blurred aspects on the
administration of the company, which is expected to acquire eligible
bank assets from eligible financial institutions, purchase, or
otherwise invest in eligible equities among others.

Bismarck Rewane,
managing director of Financial Derivatives Company, for instance, said
there are still some unclear issues regarding the administration of the
company.

“Issues on the
funding of AMCON remain unclear, though the AMCON executives have been
cleared by the Senate and investors are already scrambling for deals
and steals. The AMCON CEO, however, remains upbeat to deliver on
mandate.

“Biddings have
closed for rescued banks, and announcements of the preferred bidders
will be made in October. AMCON should be in a position to absorb a good
level of toxic assets in 2011. The final negotiation and central exit
is expected early 2011, existing shareholders are to be carried along
in the process,” Mr. Rewane said.

The nine bailed out
banks made provisions by the end of September of more than 2.2 trillion
naira for loan losses. Potential investors are anxious to see how
quickly the AMCON can be set up to soak up bad debts and make the banks
attractive.

As
the financial industry awaits modalities for the Central Bank’s
decision to help banks in power generation, the move has been described
as unnecessary and off the track of functions of the regulator.

Toyin
Dawodu, managing partner, Capital Investment Group, a United States of
America based investment company, said the Central Bank should instead
focus on its primary function of managing the monetary policies of the
country.

Lamido
Sanusi, the CBN governor said recently that it was working at reducing
the overhead cost of banks by 30 per cent by working towards
establishing an independent power project for power supply to all banks
operating in Lagos as a pilot cluster. All these initiatives, Mr Sanusi
said,

would lead to drastic reduction of overhead costs and ultimately reflect positively on the cost of funds.

Not Central Bank’s responsibility

Mr
Dawodu, however, said it is not the responsibility of the CBN to make
sure commercial banks have power, nor its responsibility to reduce
commercial banks’ overhead.

“That
is between the banks and their shareholders. How does the Central Bank
intend to distribute the power it generates to these banks? The current
road map does not allow for direct private distribution to end users.”

He
added that the new power reform agenda which allows for private
participation in power generation and distribution means that each
company still has to sell to the proposed bulk purchase company and
distribute through one of the independent distributing companies.

“It is not part of the road map to pick out selected private companies by the government to supply them with power,” he said.

He
said sector specific power generation amounts to discrimination as
there are no criteria for determining which sector deserves more power
supply than others.

“We
should be planning to supply power to all Nigerians and all industries.
This is why the government should give incentives to attract private
investors, and if you look at the road map, there is no single
incentive in the roadmap besides tariff liberalization.”

Mr
Dawodu said instead, the Central Bank should be more concerned about
getting power for all of Lagos State, which will be of benefit to the
banks since most of them are located in the state.

Establish participatory system

The
Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC), a non-governmental
organisation for the protection of social and economic rights in
Nigeria, believes that the foundation for sustainable power reform in
Nigeria rests on the establishment of adequate participatory system. In
a concept paper to its forthcoming roundtable, with the theme ‘The
Right to Access Stable Electricity’, scheduled to hold on October 27 in
Lagos, it said there was need to strengthen the accountability
structure in order to create an efficient system for power generation
and distribution.

SERAC
added the shortage of indigenous manpower to deal with the
sophistication involved in modern power production is a clear and
present danger.

“There
is no guarantee that local skills and resources will be available for
installing, managing and sustaining the services planned.”

The
body said growth in the power sector over the years has been stymied by
the absence of platforms that allow for broad-based participation of
the majority of the population in issues affecting electricity
generation. According to the organisation, this “puts a big question
mark on the reform programme’s promise to improve the delivery of
electricity supply, and bolster socio-economic services that advance
wellbeing and quality of life.”

‘Make or break’ factor

Razia
Khan, head of macroeconomic research, Standard Chartered Bank, United
Kingdom, said power supply was the single ‘make or break’ factor
driving growth in Nigeria. “Powerful vested interests have so far
resisted any meaningful change, and with elections on the way, many
observers will want to see evidence that ‘reforms’ go beyond the
near-term opportunity for increased political patronage.”

Nigeria’s cocoa grinding capacity has slumped over 75 percent to
about 25,000 tonnes per annum in the last two years due to falling
demand for processed products from Asia and the West, an industry body
said on Thursday.

The Cocoa Processors
Association of Nigeria (COPAN) said capacity utilisation has dropped
from over 100,000 tonnes since 2008, with only eight factories
partially operational.

The world’s fourth-biggest
cocoa grower had about 18 grinders processing around 230,000 tonnes a
year in 1986 when the sector was deregulated, but the industry has
since fallen on hard times.

Before the global economic
meltdown, the biggest problems cocoa processors in Nigeria faced were
erratic power supply from the national grid and the high cost of
fuelling generators.

“Nigeria’s processing capacity
is now down to about 25,000 tonnes per annum due to a lot of issues,
including the bad global economy,” COPAN secretary Felix Oladunjoye
told Reuters in an interview.

The global credit crisis had
led to a big cut in demand for cocoa products — butter, liquor, powder
and cake — from Western and Asian markets, Oladunjoye said.

He said most European chocolate
makers had changed their buying strategies. Instead of stockpiling
products as in the past, they now prefer to buy raw beans to crush in
their own factories.

“Most factories have now
changed their buying strategies because there is not enough money to
tie down stocks. This is affecting demand for products and also
international orders,” Oladunjoye said.

Lack of EU trade hits sector

The failure of Nigeria to sign
a trade deal with the European Union since 2008 has also all but
crippled local processing, he said.

The EU imposed tariffs on cocoa
products and other exports from Nigeria after Africa’s top oil and gas
producer declined to sign an economic partnership agreement, EPA, by a
Dec 31, 2007 deadline.

This has badly hit the Nigerian
cocoa sector’s ability to compete with regional rivals Ivory Coast,
Ghana and Cameroon, all of whom had signed trade deals with the
European trade bloc to maintain preferential access for their products.

Local processors are losing a
minimum of $400,000 (N60million) monthly or nearly $5 million a year in duty
liabilities, a burden Oladunjoye said was too heavy for COPAN members
to carry.

Nigeria has held fast in its
refusal to sign an EPA, which the EU demanded to make its
long-preferential trade with Africa, Caribbean and Pacific former
colonies compliant with the World Trade Organisation.

Nigeria argued that its fragile
manufacturing industries were simply not ready to compete on a more
equal basis with imported European goods under EPA.

But the Common External Tariff
of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which allows
duty-free cross-border movement of goods, seems to have eroded whatever
benefits Nigeria had hoped to derive by rejecting the EPA.

Another factor that has nearly
killed domestic cocoa crushing is the long delays in the payment of the
Export Expansion Grant (EEG) by the government, Oladunjoye said.

The EEG is an export promotion
incentive that seeks to promote local industry by offsetting 30 percent
of production costs on all processed exports.

“The late payment of the EEG is
causing a lot of problems. That of 2008 has just been released, nobody
knows when that of 2009 will come, not to talk of 2010,” Oladunjoye
said.

The COPAN secretary said
because of the numerous challenges confronting the sector, most
Nigerian grinders had turned to the export of raw cocoa beans, which is
more profitable.

REUTERS

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.

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.

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.