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When I headed to
the Gulf of Mexico, I had a lot of expectations. Above all, the trip to
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was a quest to see the remains of
oil spill that held the attention of the world right from when it
erupted on April 20.

One thing that
stood out is that there has been a strong wedlock between the oil and
fisheries industry in the Gulf of Mexico. Apart from the strong
Vietnamese community in Louisiana who work almost exclusively in
fisheries, others are cyclic in working in both the oil and fisheries
sectors. Many fisher folks shift into the oil sector during off seasons
when fishing was not much of an option.

It was, therefore,
not very strange to find them taking up jobs as cleanup agents for BP
after the gusher erased any hopes of fishing in the short term and
raised huge doubts as to when they will hurl their nets into the Gulf
once more. Stories of health impacts are rife, with reports of
respiratory and skin diseases routinely dismissed by doctors as being
caused by exposure to heat while engaged in the cleanup exercises.

Groups such as the
Gulf Coast Fund are said to have offered the cleanup workers breathing
equipment, but BP disallowed their use and threatened to fire anyone
who used the protective gears. Why would BP do that? To present a
picture that the exercise of cleaning the crude was harmless and thus
lessen their liability, was the routine response.

This pattern has
created in the minds of some of the people a conviction that they are
so tied to the oil industry that they cannot live without it. This
relationship, described by LaTosha Brown of the Gulf Coast Fund as
incestuous, is a big impediment to building a critical mass of citizens
for long-term defence of their environment. Ms. Brown read this sort of
perception as counting of pennies, rather than considering the value of
life.

At Port Sulphur, I
joined a community meeting in a local church with visiting local
council officials from North Slope, Alaska, who are considering
allowing oil extraction in their area. The Alaskans heard tales of how
the Gulf spill decimated the livelihoods of the local people and how
they could not return to fishing just yet due to the fear that their
business may be permanently harmed if they introduce polluted fish and
shrimps into the market.

Suspicion remains

There was strong
conviction that although BP and the government swear that the coast is
all clear of the spills, the chemical pollution of the Gulf will
persist. The suspicion exists that BP is merely trying to avoid
liability by telling the public that the Gulf is clean without
convincing proof. The people believe that a lot of scientists have been
bought over and that laboratory results were viewed with suspicion.
They cited an example of the announcement that percentages of the crude
oil released into the Gulf had been dispersed, evaporated, or eaten up
by microbes. They were referring to reports such as the one produced by
US Federal and independent scientists (BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget:
What Happened To the Oil?
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/posted/2931/Oil_Budget_description_8_3_FINAL.844091.pdf).

Who pays the piper

“Whoever owns the
laboratory, owns the science,” one local stated. One of the
participants at the meeting was Riki Ott, a marine biologist,
fisherwoman, and author of ‘Not One Drop’, who was embedded in the post
Exxon Valdez oil spill struggles and who has been in the Gulf of Mexico
shortly after the present disaster. In a recent article she wrote in
the Earth Island Journal (Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon
Valdez Oil Spill), she posited that BP’s cleanup is more like a cover
up and holding the company accountable will require digging for the
truth.

The Gulf of Mexico
is said to have over 3500 abandoned oil wells and about 4000 oil and
gas platforms in the industrial archipelago. All these continue to pose
threats.

Most people I spoke
with said that leaving the oil in the soil is the ultimate solution to
these sorts of incidents. What they could not agree on was what the
economic implication would be. They also agreed that the health of the
environment directly affects the health of the people.

But I was
determined to see some tar balls on the beaches or on the waters
somewhere in the Gulf. I was not going to be deterred, even though it
was on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Katrina and it was
raining heavily. With an equally determined friend, we drove from New
Orleans to Gulfport and to Dauphin Island in Alabama. This island had
witnessed a lot of cleaning up actions and a local fisherman assured me
I would see some tar balls here.

We got there,
stepped out in the heavy downpour, and walked along the beach. A couple
of folks were out fishing and one offered me a catch he did not quite
fancy. A few folks were enjoying a swim in the rain. We walked the
beaches and searched the earth piled against private property by BP’s
bulldozers. My colleague even dug a hole in the sand with driftwood to
see if some crude would pop up. I must say that our search did not
yield any tar ball. We drove back drenched to our boxers, but assured
that we could not have stayed back from our mission for the day.

Yes, we could not
spot any tar balls, but Derrick Evans of Gulfport was quick to remind
me that when the hurricanes come, many things hidden beneath the
surface may show up.

Bassey is Chair, Friends of the Earth International

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

The African
Development Bank (AfDB) expects to lend $2.2 billion to the private
sector in 2011, up from the $2 billion forecast for this year, a senior
bank official said on Wednesday.

The bank’s
president said earlier this year that he expected overall lending to go
up after the AfDB’s backers gave it a three-fold increase in its
capital base, partly in recognition of its role in softening the impact
of the global slowdown.

“In 2011 we have
many projects for the private sector in infrastructure, energy,
transport, telecommunications and agriculture,” Tim Turner, director of
the AfDB’s private sector department, told Reuters.

AfDB President
Donald Kaberuka said last year the AfDB would lend about $7 billion to
African governments and firms in 2010. The bank’s shareholders are
Africa’s 53 nations and 24 non-African donor countries.

Equinox Minerals
Ltd. plans to start exporting stockpiled uranium from its Lumwana mine
in Zambia in about two to three years, when prices rise, the head of
the company said on Wednesday.

Chief executive
officer, Craig Williams, said Equinox had so far stockpiled 4.2 million
tonnes of uranium at the mine and would continue doing so until prices
rise to commercially viable levels.

Equinox estimates
that the Lumwana ore body has about 8 million tonnes of uranium as well
as its copper resource of 900 million tonnes and is mining them
together, he said.

The company
produced 109,413 tonnes of copper at Lumwana in 2009, and Mr. Williams
said it was maintaining the production estimate of 135,000 tonnes of
copper at the mine for 2010.

Equinox said in
January 2009 it was delaying construction of a uranium processing plant
at Lumwana, due to low uranium prices and difficulty in raising finance.

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.