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People, hurdles against President Buhari’s reelection bid Innocent Odoh, Abuja

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hree times, President Muhammadu Buhari tried to win an election to become the country’s president. Three times he failed. He succeeded at the fourth try and now he wants to try for the fifth time but the ghosts of the past have resurrected to align against him again.

The presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is faced with the battle of his life to get re-elected in a race that The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which in 2015 predicted Buahri’s victory, is now predicting he is likely to lose.

When he emerged president in 2015 after three previously failed attempts, the president was seen like a ‘superman’ who was coming to banish corruption, fight insecurity and boost economic prosperity. Recalls of his 20-months stint as a military president who fought corruption and tried to instill discipline in Nigeria in the years 1984 and 1985, fed into his popularity.

But no sooner had Buhari takContinues on page 34

Inside Nigerian banks eye Eurobond recalls as dollar lending opportunity P. 2 shrinks

Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede (m), founder and chairman, Africa Initiative for Governance (AIG), with 2017 and 2018 AIG scholars after his special address at the Master of Public Policy graduation ceremony of the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. L-R: Emmanuel Taiwo; Emokiniovo Akpughe; Tobechukwu Nneli; Oluwapelumi Simpson; Abdul-Fatawu Hakeem; Prosper Amuquandoh; Louisa Chinedu-Okeke; Efosa Trevor Edobor, and Adetola Adegbite.

Minimum wage fall-out: FG faces N1.25trn rise in personnel cost Not all public servants to benefit from wage hike T

LOLADE AKINMURELE, DAVID IBIDAPO, Lagos & TONY AILEMEN, Abuja

he acceptance on Tuesday of a N30, 000 minimum wage by the Nigerian government raises prospects of a fiscal crisis, which could plunge the country into deeper debts.

President Buhari approved the wage increase after a pro-

tracted negotiation with labor unions, but analysts warn that the government may be heading for a tough time, ahead of the 2019 general elections.

BusinessDay analysis shows that the minimum wage hike by 66 percent will raise personnel cost by N1.25 trillion, taking

personnel costs to N3.1 trillion, 14 percent higher than the government’s 2017 revenue and 34 percent of the 2018 budget.

The Federal Government earned N2.7 trillion in oil and non-oil revenue in 2017, the lowest since 2011 when the government earned N2.56 trillion. That

implies revenue to GDP ratio of 2.3 percent, the lowest in at least a decade.

Already, the Federal Government’s total non-debt recurrent expenditure of N2.8 trillion in 2017 was more than its total 2017 Continues on page 34

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Dangote Refinery to start producing petrol, diesel by 2020

... Dangote Cement IPO on LSE set for Sept 2019 ANI MICHEAL & DIPO OLADEHINDE

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liko Dangote, Africa’s richest has said that the oil refinery he is building in Lagos designed to process 650,000 barrels a day of crude, should start producing fuel in the first quarter of 2020 and be at full capacity within six months of that year.

“We will ramp up very quickly,” Dangote told Bloomberg in an interview at the New Economy Forum in Singapore. “There are so many challenges but we are going very fast.”

With Nigeria a country of almost about 200 million people currently consuming roughly 35 million litres’ of petrol daily; Dangote’s Refinery facility is expected to produce about 50 million litres’ a day of petrol which implies the refinery will have about 15 million litres of excess output for export.

The long awaited London listing of Nigeria’s largest company, Dangote Cement plc is also scheduled for September 2019, according to Dangote.

Dangote said he is waiting for Nigeria’s election in early 2019 and for a sell-off in emerging markets to pass before starting an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Dangote Cement Plc. “The planned listing of the Dangote Cement shares on the London Stock Exchange by way of an IPO is another welcome development for investors both local and internation-

al given the giant strides made by the firm over the years in deepening its presence across the markets where it operates,” Gbolahan Ologunro an Equity Research Analyst at CSL stockbrokers, a subsidiary of FCMB Group said in an emailed response.

Ologunro said the London IPO will not only provide the company with much-required funds for its continued expansion, it will also increase its recognition in the global construction market, enhancing the ability of the company in becoming a top global construction materials company.

Adetola Adelu, Financial Analyst at Fides Capital Partners said the basic reasons why a company launches an IPO, is to raise fresh capital, which will boost the company’s expansion, broaden its investor’s base and create more investors’ confidence which in turn will make their share price rally.

The company had approached investment banks about arranging the IPO, people familiar with the matter said in February. The share sale could raise about $1 billion, they said, adding that the cement maker is more likely to raise that much cash in London than Lagos due to the deeper pool of investors.

Dangote cement’s revenue grew to N685billionintheninemonth2018period, compared to N603 billion in 2017.

•Continues online at www.businessdayonline.com

Nigerian banks eye Eurobond recalls as dollar lending opportunity shrinks LOLADE AKINMURELE

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or Nigerian banks, finding quality dollar lending opportunities in an economy still recovering from a recession in 2016, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

The lack of lending opportunities in foreign currency and rising interest rates in the United States- which has made foreign loans more expensive- is forcing the country’s largest banks to either redeem outstanding Eurobonds or recall obligations.

Not a single bank has raised a Eurobond this year, in a sign of shrinking dollar-denominated lending opportunities.

“When banks are recalling or redeeming their Eurobonds, it is a signal that there aren’t many dollar lending opportunities in the economy,” said Wale Okunrinboye, head of investment research at Lagos-based Pension Fund, Sigma Pensions.

“The oil and gas sector, which accounts for a third of dollar loans on banks’ balance sheets, is not completely out of the woods yet, never mind the rally in oil prices, so there is little appetite for dollar loans and the banks are finding less need for dollars,” Okunrinboye added.

Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Nigeria’s largest bank by market capitalisation, on Monday November 5, redeemed its $400 million Eurobond, sidestepping the option to roll over.

Zenith Bank Plc, the country’s largest lender by assets also plans to redeem its $500 million Eurobond which matures in April 2019. Diamond Bank Plc is the only other bank with a Eurobond maturing next year but it is unclear if the tier-two lender

will opt to redeem its $200 million Eurobond come May 2019.

The yield on Zenith Bank’s 6.25% $500 million Eurobond maturing April 22 2019 closed lower at 5.80 percent while its shares listed in Lagos, climbed 0.63 percent to N23.85 Tuesday, according to NSE data. The yield on the tier-one lender’s 7.37% $500 million Eurobond maturing 2022 also closed lower at 6.98 percent.

Diamond Bank’s 8.75% $200 million Eurobond maturing May 21 2019 closed higher at 14.60 percent while its shares were down 1.7 percent to N1.18. Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday cut the Carlyle-backed lender’s rating to CCC+/C from B-/B, citing pressure on capital and foreign- currency liquidity.

Access Bank Plc and First Bank Holdings told analysts in separate investor conference calls last month that they planned to recall some Eurobonds next year.

Accesshasa$400millionEurobond maturing June 2021 and a $300 million foreign bond maturing October of the same year. The latter closed lower at 7.67 percent Tuesday, while yields on the former climbed slightly to 10.52 percent. Accessbanksharesweredown 1.25 percent to N7.9 Tuesday.

First Bank’s 8% $450 million Eurobond maturing July 2021 closed lower at 9.13 percent. The bank’s shares closed 1.4 percent higher.

If Access Bank ($700 million) and First Bank ($450 million) recall their Eurobonds, and Zenith bank redeems its $1 billion Eurobond next year, it shaves $2.15 billion off the $3.45 billion total non-sovereign outstanding Eurobonds in Nigeria.

•Continues online at www.businessdayonline.com

L-R: Paul Farer, NASCON Allied Industries plc managing director; Olushola Shosanya, NASCON Allied Industries plc, head of sales; Joy Akpan, director, Majo Group, from Uyo Akwa Ibom State, and Fatima Aliko-Dangote, NASCON allied industries plc, executive director, commercial, at the unveiling of the New Dangote Stew mix & Curry powder, in Owerri, Imo State, recently.

Poor funding, fragile pharma industry underpins Nigeria’s healthcare crises ODINAKA ANUDU

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nyone looking at Nigeria’s health budget in the past three years and the fragile state of its pharmaceutical industry can easily decipher why the country has 12.4 deaths per 1,000 population and the third highest infant mortality rates in the world.

Nigeria has allocated only 2.9 percent of its total budget to health in the last three years, as against South Africa’s average of 14 percent over the same period.

The Federal Government allocation to health was N250.1 billion out of the total budget of N6.06 trillion in 2016, representing 4.13 percent; N303.9billion of N7.44 trillion in 2017, representing 4.08 percent and N356billion of N9.12 trillion in 2018, which is 3.9 percent of the total.

Budgetallocationstothehealthsector in the last three years represent 0.2 percent on average of gross domestic

product (GDP), assuming modestly thatNigeria’sGDPstandsat$420billion.

Both Nigeria and South Africa are yet to reach the 15 percent of the national budget for health reached at Abuja Declaration, but the latter’s consolidated health expenditure varies between 3.7 and 3.9 percent of GDP, according to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).

“The World Health Organisation has a standard benchmark that should be followed by developing countries with high rates of diseases.

Compare that ratio with what we have in Nigeria and you will see why we still struggle with health issues,” Okey Akpa, chairman of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), told BusinessDay by phone.

“This is a global benchmark that is a product of research,” Akpa added.

Larne Yusuf, a Lagos-based general practitioner, told BusinessDay in an earlier interview that government

must plan more for the sector as low health budget in the face of disease outbreaks means crisis.

The WHO puts standard health budget allocations at 26 percent, especially for developing countries.

Many African countries do not reach this mark, with Ethiopia allotting 4.9 percent and Angola setting aside only 3.3 percent in 2016.

Nigeria has demography of 198 million, which presents a market opportunity but also a health burden on the government. The year 2017 was marred by outbreaks of diseases such Lassa fever, with occurrence of 718 cases wherein 68 persons died.

Between January and July 2018, there have been 115 deaths in confirmed cases and 10 in probable cases. Cerebrospinal meningitis was suspected in 14,518 cases, across 181 local government councils, with 1,166 reported deaths.

•Continues online at www.businessdayonline.com

Pressure mounts on pension funds over quest for independent PFAs ... as ASSU concludes establishment of PFA … confidence erosion heightening Modetus Anaesoronye

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he continuous request by government agencies and other institutions to independently manage their employee’s pension contributions either in or outside the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) supervised by the National Pension Commission (PenCom) is putting pressure on the industry.

Beyond transition challenges that go with establishing a new pension fund administrator (PFA) and moving existing managed funds to new PFAs, as well as consequent administrative bottlenecks, there is the problem of confidence erosion.

Latest is the ASUU PFA, which is on the verge of taking off, having been granted approval by the Federal Government during one of its

strikes a few years ago. Another is the reluctance of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to collapse it’s internally managed Defined Benefit Scheme (DBS) into the CPS overseen by PenCom. The Nigeria Police it will be recalled had in 2014 got license to run its own PFA, specifically for pension contributions of personnel of the Nigeria Police, which were managed by other 20 Pension Fund Administrators.

This led to expected transfer of over N300 billion to the NPF PFA, while some police personnel have refused to transit four years after.

A top official of one of the PFA who confirmed the recent developments said “As far as I know, NNPC runs majorly, a defined benefit scheme through their internal management structure. But there has been a dis-

pute over the years with PenCom, to ensure that there is a proper actuarial valuation for the scheme and ultimately have it collapsed into the Contributory Pension Scheme.

The official however confirmed that ASUU has been granted a license to run its own PFA. “This is an agreement that was reached with the Federal Government during one of their strikes a few years ago. They are in the final stages of establishing their PFA.” Longe Eguarekhide, managing director/CEO, AIICO Pensions Limited commenting on the development told Business Day that “I think that, as a licensed operator, we have to simply focus on doing our job the best and most efficient way we can.”

•Continues online at www.businessdayonline.com

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comment Small Business handbook

Emeka Osuji Dr Emeka Osuji School of Management and Social Sciences Pan Atlantic University Lagos. eosuji@pau.edu.ng @Emyosuji

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he frightful consequences of lack and the hopelessness it brings are already here with us. With well over 12 million children who should be in school but are everywhere else but school, mostly roaming the streets and looking for trouble they can inherit and dispense as they like, and the despicable toga of the poverty headquarters on planet earth now covering our country, it does appear that the days of sleeping and snoring away are numbered. And this is not an exercise in amateur doomsday prophesy. It is actually an honest evaluation of things as they turn out. These developments, together with others closely related to them, such as insecurity and petty crimes, are evidence that all is not well with our socio-political system. They are the main reasons for the attention we have given this topic, over the past few weeks.

They are also the good reasons we cannot overemphasize the need to eradicate extreme or abject poverty from among us. Accordingly, we have, for the third week now running, been discussing poverty in the context of prosperity that is not shared, governance that has failed the critical tests for its being and, institutions that do not deliver on their mandates. We render the final part of this effort today, which

DANIEL OLAGUNJI Olagunji is a public affairs analyst and writes from Abuja. He writes via daniel.olagunji@gmail.com

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ight now it looks as if the 2019 presidential election is a straight contest between incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the APC and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar of the PDP. But please remember the phrase “right now”. A week is a long time in politics. The conventional wisdom was once that the advantages of incumbency would return Buhari to power despite his weak performance.

Then the gale of defections from APC to the PDP left the APC looking weak and defensive. Much will yet happen between now and the polls in midFebruary. Contrary to conventional wisdom today, the PDP will not win the 2019 presidential election.

I am not clairvoyant. But a deeper analysis of the presidential politics of 2019 that goes beyond the “obvious” wisdom and the (already fading) “atikulation” bounce Atiku has enjoyed after emerging the PDP flagbearer tells me that the 2019 presidential election will be won by an “alternative candidate” outside of Nigeria’s two main political parties. That candidate

Wednesday 07 November 2018

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Governance and institutional failure as recipe for mass poverty (2) centres on institutional failure and its contribution to the current sad predicament of Nigeria.

It has been said in high places that the future of Africa and indeed, the black world depends on Nigeria.

The proponents of this thesis argue very forcefully that as soon as Nigeria makes its way out of underdevelopment, Africa and all the failing nations of the black world will equally succeed. Some have even put it more metaphorically by saying that going by its shape, and slightly rotated clockwise about 45 degrees, Africa assumes the shape of a gun (not the rampant AK 47 causing mayhem all over the continent) whose trigger is in Nigeria. Brilliant thought, apparently supported by Mother Nature that gave Africa its shape. Well, all guns have triggers but not all guns go cracking when their triggers are pulled. The only guns that crack on the pulling of the trigger are those that are properly loaded. If Africa is to be a gun and Nigeria the trigger, then what is inside Africa becomes an important issue. It is the gunpowder and the bolls or high calibre live bullets that will do a good job when the trigger of a primed gun is pulled So even Dane guns that use gunpowder must have sufficient bolls that do the damage when fired.

A Dane gun filled with gunpowder and groundnut may crack a loud sound but may not hit the target. The groundnuts will melt before the gun actually booms. Nigeria and the rest of Africa will therefore need to do more than hosting the oldest leaders in the world, and generating the largest number of extremely poor people, if the trigger and reversed gun thesis is to come to reality.

‘ It is the failure of institutions that makes INEC threaten electoral offenders, as if we have no law enforcement agencies and a criminal justice system

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It has also been said in many places that the presidential system is curse on Nigeria, and that more and more Nigerians will join the ranks of the terminally poor, while more children will be out of school, for as long as we continue this system of government.

This system guarantees too much power and discretion to whoever wins the contest for public office, in an environment in which laws are obeyed more in breach than otherwise; where those entrusted with the job of protecting the sovereignty we all surrendered to the state make deals with our sovereignty and also make sure we have no power to correct them either by recall or removal for non-performance. This system handicaps institutions and projects personalities. It may mean well and work well elsewhere but as long as we have laws that are not meant to be invoked and individuals that are stronger than the institutions they run, the Presidential System ensures that poverty continues to run wild.

If the story coming out of many departments and agencies of government, as well as some states, where ordinary people become emperors in four years of leading institutions and states, and establish dynasties of stupendously rich kids and relatives, are true then today is still early morning in our journey to the poverty of the masses and affluence of the few.

The consequences are as yet indeterminate.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) propose zero tolerance of poverty, among its 17 headings.

Luckily, Nigeria has been honest enough to give a warning that it may not meet the targets. But did anybody really and truly believe Nigeria was going to meet the goals? For the avoidance of doubt, the true definition of poverty is the absence of a sensible disposable income. When a country pays its civil servants a monthly minimum wage of N18,000 naira (often disputed by states and rejected), which is less than $50, then there is no need to discuss some of the SDGs. This is more so when the private sector, as though to spite those leaving school, has joined and even exceeded the public sector in paying subsistent wages to their workers. Graduates are paid N15000 a month in many private establishments in Nigeria, and one wonders how these people cope with inflation and the high cost of living in Nigeria. Is there any wonder why prostitution and internet fraud have become second nature for many otherwise well-raised Nigerian youths.

The Presidential system ensures that institutions do not work and that there is never enough money to do anything after paying for the frills of office it generates.

To whom do we apportion the blame? The private entrepreneurs who have been stripped of their most important role in the economy – job creation – through anti-production policies of governments are only managing to survive. The absence of sensible disposable income among the people ensures that companies have low sales and high inventories.

Even illiterate traders understand that a contracting economy (income) spells disaster on their sales. Governments do not create jobs; the private sector does.

The failure of our institutions has meant disaster for Nigeria. It has heightened the division among us as powerful ethnic groups marginalize the weak in everything of benefit in the country. It is the failure of institutions that makes INEC threaten electoral offenders, as if we have no law enforcement agencies and a criminal justice system. Some institutions like the Federal Character Commission have become laughable as the executives at all levels ride roughshod over them. Some no longer exist beyond the paper on which their names are written. As Nigeria suffers growth deficit due to unbridled population growth, and six of us get extremely poor every minute, the need has become urgent to take another look at our development and poverty reduction strategies. Doing the same thing all the time and expecting a different result is less than idiotic - apologies to late Minister of Transport (including bicycle transport) Ojo Maduekwe.

Send reactions to: comment@businessdayonline.com

Kingsley Moghalu: The wild card of 2019 will most likely be Professor Kingsley Moghalu, the presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party (YPP). I am not the first person to make this analytical prediction. Femi Aribisala, the influential columnist did so several months ago while endorsing Moghalu for President.

In fact, Aribisala concluded that Moghalu will emerge as President after an unprecedented run-off election for the presidency.

A former United Nations official and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Deputy Governor who led the controversial reforms of the banking system initiated by then CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (now the Emir of Kano), Moghalu was an international star that Sanusi helped bring back home and into national reckoning when he discharged his leadership responsibilities at the CBN with professional distinction. After his tenure in the CBN from 2009 to 2014, the central banker was appointed Professor of Practice in international Business and Economic Policy at Tufts University’s prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Many of the world’s top diplomats, national politicians, spies, leaders

of global business corporations and military generals are alumna of The Fletcher School. It is achievement enough for an African to attend such an institution as Moghalu did. But to be made a full professor in such a hallowed institution, as he also was, is a rare distinction.

Today, Kingsley Moghalu is seen as the leading alternative candidate to Buhari and Atiku. The alternative candidate universe is a crowded one that includes former Cross River State Governor Donald Duke, former Education Minister and World Bank Vice-President Oby Ezekwesili, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, Sahara Reporters publisher Omoyele Sowore, and motivational speaker Fela Durotoye.

Both the APC and the PDP are nervous about the unlikely traction Moghalu has gained since entering the presidential race in February and embarking on nation-wide town hall tours to create awareness of his message and candidacy. The PDP is more worried about Moghalu’s potential to rob the mega-party of votes in Nigeria’s southern regions especially the Southeast, and many top party leaders believed that the former central banker, had he pitched his tent with the PDP, would have been a superior choice as vice-

presidential mate to Atiku than the latter’s eventual choice of Peter Obi, the former Anambra State Governor. But Moghalu stuck to his vision of a paradigm shift rather play second fiddle in the ranks of Nigeria’s recycled, corrupt political elite. He joined the YPP, which until he did was a little known newgeneration party, and won the party’s presidential primary in September.

That’s principles based politics, not the stomach-oriented sort.

The odds against Moghalu and other alternative candidates would appear insurmountable at first sight. APC and PDP, for all the present and past failures, are counting on electorate that is largely poor and susceptible to vote-buying. These voters, mainly rural peasants, have been intimidated by the hardy mystique of the two parties and their large financial war chests of largely stolen public funds they deploy to maintain their hold on power. Many Nigerians have long voted for political parties and not their candidates, and the APC and the PDP have the kind of name and brand recognition across the country that newer parties such as YPP can only dream of.

Buhari’s popularity has sharply declined to a point where it is obvious he can’t win the elections if the polls

are free and fair. His government’s failure to manage the economy well and the rampaging killings by Fulani herdsmen across the country especially in the Middle Belt have weakened him politically, not to speak of the roiling internal crises inside the APC. But he remains popular among many in the core North. Many among those opposed to a Buhari second term, including our still-influential former generals like Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdulsalami Abubakar and T.Y. Danjuma are believed to be backing Atiku because he is seen as the only opposition candidate with a financial war chest to match and defeat the Buhari political machine.

It does not help the likes of Moghalu that the youth vote is divided among the various alternative candidates, although he appears to have a large part of that vote behind him. And there is a widespread belief that the presidency is still the “turn” of the North for another four years.

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comment Character Matters with Daps

Dapo Akande Graduate of the University of Surrey, UK, author of the acclaimed book: “The last fight: A personal journey to discovering values.”

Contact: dapsakande25@gmail.com

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t has long been asked what the purpose of education is. What is it really meant to achieve?

Why is it even necessary? We touched on this in Part One. Varying answers have been offered to these questions, going back to the ancient thinkers and right up to this present day. For the purpose of this discussion though, I will pay particular attention to one. Some posit that the purpose of formal education (better known as classroom education) especially for children is to learn to accommodate others (classmates) and their interest, by not expecting to always have their own way. On the other hand, education in the traditional African communal existence, which represents one form of informal education, was to inculcate virtues intended to mould each individual into becoming an ideal member of the community. Virtues which place an obligation on every individual to be his brother’s keeper.

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Education revealed... Part 2 Virtues which create synergy of purpose among all members leading to the sustenance of the community.

Virtues which place on leadership a demand to deny self when necessary, for the purpose of serving the common good. At this juncture I would like say a good leader looks at the common good, not the “me good”, knowing very well this will imminently produce the “me good”; at which point, no reasonable person will have any reason to murmur.

Instructively, both forms of education, the formal and the informal, establish the importance of considering ‘the other’.

I’m not sure if people generally recognize it as such but religion is in fact a major form of education because like most transcendental religions believe, you can only attain the ultimate prize of making it to heaven if you learn the ways of God and obey Him. This is in itself a continuous learning process where you continue to err, but hopefully with less regularity, until you eventually find yourself six foot under. An end none of us can avoid. To this end, the holy books are in fact manuals for correct living.

Contrary to the lie our political elders have self-servingly sold us over the years, King David, tells us in Psalms 119:100 how he discovered he could actually gain greater understanding and wisdom than the elders, simply by obeying the word of God. Fascinating. “And what

‘

Education, whether formal or informal ought to dictate fairness

’

are these commands?” You may ask, as there are so many. Jesus summed them all up into just two. He said in Matthew 22:37 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it; Love your neighbour as yourself.

All the law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

In no way would I wish to diminish the value of experience gained over the years but if we are to look at the state of our nation, putting all sentiments aside, would you conclude the elders, with all their supposed wisdom have served us well? According to the word of God, a man who neither fears God nor loves his neighbour is not wise. No matter his age. End of story.

Kindly forgive me for often reaching out to pull a word from my religion to validate my points because I know many of my readers profess other faiths. I just believe one’s

faith, no matter which it is, should transcend every area of one’s life.

Nothing and no act should be set aside from your professed belief no matter how ‘beneficial’ it may appear to be. Your faith should be the harbour from which you set sail and to which you always return as your anchor is permanently set there. So just as we have educated illiterates; those who went to school but refuse to allow education to influence their world view or their reasoning; so do we have what I call Christian Atheists.

Those who profess Christianity but whose unrepentant behaviour makes it obvious to all they don’t really believe God exists. Or how else can we explain it?

To digress a little while still harping on the same point, I want to ask this question; how many of us know what the national policy on education is here in Nigeria? The policy actually outlines five national objectives which also double as the philosophy of Nigerian education.

These objectives summarize the worldview which the national educational policy is meant to project: 1. A free and democratic society 2. A just and egalitarian society 3. A united, strong and self-reliant nation 4. A great and dynamic economy 5. A land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens.

So if you ask me, “what is the starting point of education?”. Without

any hesitation, I will reply, “love thy neighbour as thyself”, as non of the above can be achieved without that.

For to serve the interest of others ultimately results in you serving yours too. What can be smarter than that?

Permit me to further buttress this point by making reference to an African tradition many of us could be familiar with. Your mother gives you, the children, a big piece of meat to share. Oddly, she gives it not to the eldest but the youngest to share.

Remarkably, he painstakingly breaks it into equal pieces. Why? Because he knows as the youngest, he will pick the last piece and the best way to serve his interest is not to be blinded by greed but to serve the interest of others too. After all, the admonition was not to love others only, just as it wasn’t for you to love yourself only. It was to love others as yourself. Some may argue his apparent fairness actually had him in focus all the time but I believe, over time, this practice is bound to leave its mark on him anyway.

The principle behind this is not too different to John Rawls’ idealistic “veil of ignorance” theory which suggests placing a veil over those asked to make laws and policies on behalf of the society.

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Devil in the detail: Implications of the tier based minimum solvency capital PETER OLUFEMI-EKUNDYO Olufemi-Ekundayo is currently the MD of POBEK Advisory Ltd – an actuarial and financial advisory consultancy in Lagos.

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he tier based minimum solvency capital (TBMSC) is a new legislation in Nigeria aimed at setting capital levels for insurance businesses. It supposedly starts 1st January 2019.

The prescriptive capital levels are set by tiers (1-3). Each tier groups types of insurances for the life and non-life sectors. For instance tier 3, for non-life, includes insurance companies underwriting no more than fire, motor, general accident, agriculture, engineering (mandatory). This tier requires the insurer to have a minimum capital of N3 billion; tier 2 will include all these types of business (in tier 3) plus more and so on; requiring those insures in tier 2 to hold more capital - N4.5 billion, and N6 billion for tier 1.

Whilst some in the industry have poured scorn on the legislation, citing high capital base and tight implementation deadlines as drawbacks, others welcome it as long overdue for an industry lacking in analytical and

risk managing directives. Whatever the reception, the fact remains the implications for the regulated and the regulator (the insurance industry and NAICOM) are huge.

The single most significant impact for the insurer is the need to have/maintain the minimum level of capital for the tier operated in. The first huddle for some companies will be the raising of the capital. Once raised however, the challenge will be in sustaining this solvency capital taking into account their risk profile.

To do this, it will require concerted efforts and investments by the individual insurers in ensuring that their operations and management processes along with reports are streamlined and efficient. In effect, they will need to invest/improve their analytical and reporting processes (from source data, through analyses to management reports) to enable effective quantitative (numerical) insight whilst ensuring qualitative (decision-making) strategy. All this whilst maintaining a structure for disclosure to all stakeholders.

Companies will have to improve their risk management process.

Ultimately, it implies ascertaining the levels of capital required to keep their businesses solvent (regardless of the tier minimum) before ensuring it exceeds that minimum level.

This requires discernment of the risks their businesses are exposed to, inevitably requiring sophisticated mathematical models and analytical

tools. Companies will also conduct high levels of automation and streamlining of business processes to ensure timely & accurate reports.

Similar to the banking sector’s introduction of the capital re-basing over a decade ago (that saw the merger and acquisition of so many banks), lesser insurance companies will be susceptible to take-over. As such, some companies will have to raise new capital.

The ability of decision makers of these companies to manage the businesses and steer it on sure-course in the environment of risks will also be tested. They must manage their own risk self-assessment. Management will require financial models for scenario analyses, stress testing and ultimately simulations to assess financial impact of varying risks in a controlled environment. This ensures companies are steered on the correct risk mitigating route and guide the direction of the business as required, such as when market conditions indicate clear and present concerns.

Lastly, insurers must have the structure in place for good governance, clear audit trail, accountability and disclosure. They will have to keep sight on the future with forecasts and projections. Big data analytics is a cutting edge technology that will help with these.

In the case of the regulator, the Insurance Core Principles (ICP) by the International Association of Insurer Supervisors broadly defines some of

its roles. These include identifying underlying trends within the insurance sector (by collecting economic and cross-sectoral data), performing market analysis on historical trends as well as the current risk environment, performing both qualitative and quantitative analyses on the data so that macro risks are properly assessed, and analyzing the extent to which economic vulnerabilities/risks impinge on prudential safeguards for the financial stability of the insurance sector. To carry out these, NAICOM must have the capable analytical tools and competent experts to decipher them. This should include big data analytics (for fraud detection/ prevention and product innovation) as well as the stated aforementioned models (required by the insurers) for their own reporting and analyses.

NAICOM must also have a streamlined process of diagnosing the financial “health” of regulated companies, and swift automated actions based on these findings (quantitative and qualitative).

The regulator must be steps ahead of the curve to prepare for some rigidity & lack of robustness inherent in this legislation.

During the transition from the Solvency I regulation to Solvency II in Europe, some issues (such as inadequate focus on individual risk management) were significant. This regulation’s main driver for capitalrequirement is “business-type” not “risk”. This might seem alright

initially, however dangers of insolvency potentially lie in anomalous events occurring where the risk impact in a period (claims incurring on a particular business-type say) exceeds the set-aside capital.

In such an event, a company would have stood in far better stead had its inherent risks driven capitalrequirement calculations.

Business internal processes also bear operational risks and these must be reflected in the regulation.

Take the claims or underwriting departments in insurance companies as examples. Either one can adopt prudence or less prudence in their approach. If the claim-reserve is calculated with accuracy and prudent margins, that company is more likely to meet its obligations than a less accurate/prudent one. Similarly, a less prudent approach to underwriting will result in cavalier risks and potential exposure to huge future claims. A mechanism should exist to directly incorporate these risks in the capitalrequirement calculations.

In conclusion, the implications of the TBMSC are much further reaching than most in the industry realize.

The key requirements to making the legislation work are sophisticated analyses, risk-based models & simulations for decision making and structured approaches to regulatory disclosure.

Send reactions to: comment@businessdayonline.com

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Editorial Publisher/CEO

Frank Aigbogun editor Anthony Osae-Brown DEPUTY EDITORS John Osadolor, Abuja Bill Okonedo NEWS EDITOR Patrick Atuanya EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS Fabian Akagha EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DIGITAL SERVICES Oghenevwoke Ighure GENERAL MANAGER, ADVERT Adeola Ajewole ADVERT MANAGER Ijeoma Ude FINANCE MANAGER Emeka Ifeanyi MANAGER, CONFERENCES & EVENTS Obiora Onyeaso SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER Patrick Ijegbai CIRCULATION MANAGER John Okpaire DIGITAL SALES MANAGER Linda Ochugbua

Wednesday 07 November 2018

Own goals or fifth columnists in government policy direction?

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inance Minister Zainab Ahmed clawed back some respectability for Nigeria recently at the Nigerian Economic Summit when she admitted the error in the government’s approach to dealing with MTN Communications Limited. She promised that Nigeria would change its ways and assured foreign investors that it would not happen again. About time, indeed, that someone puts on a thinking cap to see longer term rather than the short-term lenses most have worn.

Mrs Ahmed correctly described the sanctions placed on MTN Nigeria by the Central Bank of Nigeria asking it to refund $8.1b exported out of the country as a “very damaging one” for the country. The apex bank is now in talks with the investor and dominant player in Nigerian telecommunications to resolve the issue. This happened after the CBN went to court not only to ask for return of the money but also to demand a 15% surcharge.

As the Minister further observed, there are more internal issues of lax regulation and su-

pervision. “The MTN incident was a very damaging one for us and that was one of the reasons why we have been out trying to engage our investors. But you see there is a tendency for big businesses to take regulation and government for granted.

“Only after that incident happened, all of the information that the CBN had been trying to get for months actually came out. Now, I think they are up to a point where they have almost solved the problem,” she said.

Lax regulation led MTN to contravene the rules on SIM card registration. The Nigerian Communications Commission then insisted on following the books leading to imposition of a fine of $3.9b on the firm. It ranked as the largest regulatory fine in the world at the time. The fine also equated to more than twice MTN’s annual average capital spending over the previous five years.

Nigeria later cut it down to $1.7b and arranged a payment schedule for the firm.

The Central Bank of Nigeria also imposed and collected fines of N5.8billion against four banks for working with MTN on the matter. Three of the banks are foreign investors in the country.

The MTN sanction is one of several steps taken by the Federal Government that leaves local and foreign observers wondering. Why does this government score own goals or are there fifth columnists working against the government?

Only last week, two global banks closed their representative offices in Nigeria. UBS is a United States-based bank while HSBC operated out of the United Kingdom. While the banks had very small operations in Nigeria, their exit sends a negative signal.

In the case of HSBC, it is even more complex as various Federal authorities and spokespersons mounted a negative campaign against it for speaking against the economic policies of the Buhari administration.

At about the same time as the CBN sanction on MTN, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice usurped the functions of the Federal Inland Revenue Service and began issuing tax demand notices to companies.

It was strange. The affected firms as well as other players in the economy wondered what it was supposed to achieve.

Well, one of the unintended goals of the actions has been

some confusion as to the policy direction of the federal government. There is also trepidation about the locus of power. Then a summation that there is evident lack of coordination of policy and action in the federal government.

These actions come at a time when the Federal Government desperately seeks to grow the economy and provide jobs for the people. All indicators on the economy are down. One of the secure routes to funding of an economy and job creation is to lure and bring in foreign direct investments. According to CBN records, FDI to Nigeria declined by 29 percent to N379.84billion ($1b) in the first half of the year from N52.63b in the same period in 2017.

Perceptions drive economic actions even more than the cold hard facts. A perception of uncoordinated and even irascible actions does not promote the cause of our quest. It disturbs existing investors and frightens those looking in. Someone should take charge of the business of coordinating messaging and action on the economy. It falls on the president through the ministers.

Take up the challenge, dear Mr President.

GM, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (North)

Bashir Ibrahim Hassan

GM, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (South) Ignatius Chukwu HEAD, HUMAN RESOURCES Adeola Obisesan

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Dick Kramer - Chairman Imo Itsueli Mohammed Hayatudeen Afolabi Oladele Vincent Maduka Keith Richards Opeyemi Agbaje Amina Oyagbola Bolanle Onagoruwa Fola Laoye Chuka Mordi Mezuo Nwuneli Charles Anudu Tunji Adegbesan Eyo Ekpo

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BUSINESS

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Inlaks, Temenos win Core Banking Project in Cameroon

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Asharami Synergy CEO explains IOC’s divestment from Africa downstream market MICHEAL ANI

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he African downs t re a m ma rk e t which was heavily dominated by International Oil Companies (IOCs), has in the past years witnessed a tough operating environment with many of the international firms divesting their downstream assets, Moroti Adeyinka, managing director, Asharami Synergy, a subsidiary of Sahara Group company with focus on the downstream sector of the economy said.

The divestments were done to reduce their exposure to the rapidly thinning margins caused by increased competition and regulations in the African downstream market.

“Over the years, the downstream sector in Africa has been characterized by; progressively thinner margins, increased sectorial regulations and increased competition in the market”. Adeyinka said while giving a keynote speech at the 12th Oil Trading and Logistics (OTL) Africa Downstream Week, held in Lagos last week.

The African downstream sector was majorly dominated by the international oil companies (“IOC’s”) like

BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Total, Shell and others but over the last 20 years, most of the IOC’s have divested their downstream assets in Africa .

Shell for instance has significantly reduced its downstream footprint and investments, exiting several African countries to reduce its exposure in the downstream sector.

As at 2017, few IOC’s still had downstream interests in Africa preferring instead to focus on upstream activities and offshore trading which have lower risks across the region.

KPMG reports that “With a weakened global economy, volatile oil prices and globally reducing margins in downstream business, multinationals were reconsolidating their balance sheets to maintain shareholder value by shedding assets that are marginal and where cost and operating risk are high.

Adeyinka noted the IOCs’ exit has changed the competitive landscape in the downstream sector in three major ways, including the increased Involvement of Indigenous Independents, increased participation of national Oil Companies and has increased investment by trading companies alongside Private Equity (PE) in Africa’s downstream sector.

GenesysIGNITE offers $30,000 seed funding to budding entrepreneurs JUMOKE AKIYODE-LAWANSON

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raduates, undergraduates and budding-entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to pitch their start-up ideas to a panel at the GenesysIGNITE an annual Tech convergence.The top innovative ventures will be granted a seed fund of up to $30, 000. in cash and support.

The annual Tech convergence that seeks to congregate young entrepreneurs/ startups, industry leaders, visionaries, innovators, CTOs, CIOs, engineers, developers, designers, and technology enthusiasts, with a main objective to explore latest technology trends and its role in building national economy and to proffer professional insights particularly for the participating startups, is aimed at helping startups to realise growth opportunities in the sector.

The second edition of

G enesysIGNITE which is scheduled to hold on November 16, 2018 in Enugu State, has the support of partners and key stakeholders in the technology and business space, such as; the office of the Vice Presidentresponsible for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Federal Minister of Science & Technology, Huawei, Google, HP, Dell/EMC, Microsoft & IBM. The German Consulate, delegates of New Economy & Startups, German Industry and Commerce and other government functionaries have also shown keen interest in what is said to be one of the biggest tech convergence in Nigeria.

GenesysIGNITE is organised by Genesys Technology hub, an ideas, creativity and knowledge-based platform.

The hub is a people and business capacity-development initiative designed to drive innovation, productivity and economic output in Nigeria with base in Enugu, Nigeria, in collaboration with CFAtech.ng.

L-R: Taiwo Afolabi, chairman, Skyway Aviation Handing company Plc (SAHCO); Alex Okoh, director general, Bureau of Public Enterprises, and Basil Agboarumi, managing director, SAHCO, during SAHCO’S Initial Public offering/signing announcement of acceptance list and media briefing in Lagos.

On increased Involvement of Indigenous Independents, she noted that with the exit of the IOC’s, smaller independent companies that focused on specialised segments of the downstream market were created. However, some of these companies have since emerged as significant regional players through aggressive growth

and expansion plans as well as the acquisitions of existing IOC’s assets, she added.

The exit according to her also increased the participation of National Oil Companies (NOI), with many of these national companies increasingly taking on significant roles in the sector.

“These National Oil Companies (“NOC’s”) are also

Heritage Bank asks entrepreneurs to embrace partnerships HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE

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eritage Bank Limited, has advised entrepreneurs and youths to embrace partnerships in their quest to succeed in business Ifie Sekibo, managing director/CEO stated this while speaking to a group of youths and entrepreneurs in Lagos saying partnership is very key to a successful enterprise because others might have information you don’t have access to.

According to him, “Learning from people and forming partnerships is one the keys to achieving success in any business enterprise. Trying to do things alone or hiding your vision from others might not give adequate results in any given enterprise” “As a person, I have never done things on my own.

Though I have my ideas at every point in time in life but I have always done partnerships because most times, other people are privy to information you do not have.

Partnerships have also helped in my propelling my visions and aspirations in life. So, I

am urging entrepreneurs not to keep their visions to themselves” he stated.

Sekibo further said, “After working in oil company for years, I was bored and I feel like doing something else. So I saw an insurance company and I decided to buy it. As at the time I was buying the insurance company, it was located somewhere in Ikeja in one office, no window, no toilet and the company was owing about N150 million. I said to myself if we buy this business, we will be able to employ people and give them a life. I went ahead to borrow money, N7 million from my brother’s friend and went to the bank to borrow another N7 million and bought the insurance company. And holding on to God and with the help of other people I shared my aspiration and visions with, within a year and half, we were able to grow the company to a tune of N12 billion”.

Sekibo also advised the youths to brace up for the challenges of life early enough just as he asked them not to allow poverty mentality deter them from making headway.

encouraging Public Private Partnerships with independent companies to invest in the much required infrastructure to support the downstream sector.

“It has also encouraged joint venture participation that has helped greatly in supporting the market”, she added On increased Investment

by Trading Companies and PE Firms in Africa’s downstream, Adeyinka said the exit of the IOC’s made multinational trading companies to increase their participation in the downstream sector through mergers with existing downstream entities or with private equity firms to form new downstream companies.

Diamond Bank empowers women through BETA Savings

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inancial Literacy is an important step in promoting Financial Inclusion.

It is an action geared towards bridging the gap between the banked and un(der)banked. In a determined effort to reduce the number of financially excluded individuals in Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria has set a target of achieving at least 80 percent inclusion of the adult population by the year 2020. The strategy is to drive financial inclusion through commercial and micro finance banks pan Nigeria that are nearer to the people. With 70 percent of adult women in Nigeria still unbanked, Diamond Bank sees financial inclusion for women as a goal that must come to fruition.

Speaking recently at an event tagged “BETA WOMAN BETA NAIJA” organized by Diamond Bank Plc in partnership with Amazing Amazon in Kaduna, Uche Ben-Uzoebo, group head, Agency & Merchant Services, Diamond Bank, highlighted the objectives of the event, which was

to enlighten the women on the importance of savings; help them understand the value of accessing formal financial services; and aid them in planning to meet their financial goals through one of the Bank’s Financial Inclusion products BETA Savings Account.

The women in Kaduna trooped in droves to Arewa House, the venue of the event, to witness this initiative first hand.

Several Northern celebrities and social media influencers, and entertainers with huge followership from Kannywood were in attendance to grace the occasion.

The event was introduced with a drama/play themed “Your Money is Always Safe in Diamond Bank”, which focused on saving wisely through the formal financial sector in a BETA savings to avoid indelible loss. The informal saving methods such as Adashi and Ajiya where a local money collector goes around to collect daily savings has no guarantee.

The women were educated on choosing the better (BETA) way to save.

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Business Event

Inlaks, Temenos win Core Banking Project in Cameroon

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eading system integrator in Sub-Saharan Africa, Inlaks, and banking software company, Temenos recently secured a Temenos deal in a Francophone country, Afriland First Bank Cameroon.

A statement from Inlaks informed that the bank will power its digital transformation journey using Temenos T24 Core Banking and additional solutions including Temenos’ Front Office Suite, analytics and reporting, payments solution, risk and compliance and Islamic banking capabilities.

Femi Adeoti, managing director, Africa Operations of Inlaks said, “We are delighted to partner with Temenos in

executing this landmark deal which will see Temenos T24 replacing an entrenched core banking application in Francophone countries across Africa”.

According to him the project would be implemented in seven countries comprising Cameroun, Côte d’Ivoire, São Tomé and Príncipe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, South Sudan and Guinea at its first phase.

Inlaks would implement the Temenos software and would enable the bank to introduce new products and services more quickly, support its growth ambitions and continue to pursue its vision to become the most innovative bank in Africa.

“The bank will also offer

market-leading services to its customers through enhanced digital channels”, he said.

Inlaks had implemented a similar project in six countries of the West Africa Monetary Institute comprising Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The project was an African Development Bank (ADB) sponsored project in collaboration with West African Monetary Institute (WAMI).

Inlaks is a leading system integrator in Sub-Saharan Africa. The company partners leading OEMs in the technology industry to provide world-class information technology solutions that exceed the needs of its customers.

Mixta Nigeria partners Edo to build 1400-unit Emotan Gardens Estate CHUKA UROKO

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s Nigeria clamours for new investment in its housing sector to address identified deficit, Mixta Nigeria has partnered Edo State to build 1400-unit Emotan Gardens Estate in Benin City as part of efforts at enabling the state exit the league of states grappling with inadequate housing.

According to a statement obtained by BusinessDay in Lagos, the investment Mixta Nigeria is bringing to Edo is substantial and it is hoped that the estate will help to address housing need in the state.

Lawrence Korede, Head, Business Development & Sales at Mixta Nigeria, told journalists in Benin City, Edo State capital, that his company, with its partner, Edo Development and Property Agency (EDPA), had hit the ground running with an

initial release of about 400 housing units.

“We are doing 2 and 3-bedroom housing units first which really are the lower priced products; our first release is somewhere around 400 units”, Korede disclosed, assuring that subscribers to the estate would enjoy value for their money in terms of estate infrastructure.

“For us, value is what is on the table. I will go back to our pedigree.

We have done this in Nigeria and we are in other countries in Africa including Senegal, Ivory Coast, among others; we have experience in this field. Depending on where we build an estate, we inculcate some amenities and something to change that environment and give value”.

Emotan Gardens promises onehectare lake which is man-made.

This will allow residents to relax. It also promises huge road network

and 24/7 electricity which is a traditional feature of Mixta Nigeria estates.

“It is what we do and what we have done. All of these obviously come at a cost. The plan is that, within that community, in whichever direction you go, you should be able to either go five minutes to leisure or five minutes to an area that is planned specifically for commercial activities,” Korede assured.

He disclosed that there was a range of people that wanted to bring their businesses to the commercial areas such as hospitals, shopping malls and so on. “The truth is that it will be a town within a town. That is what an estate is. An estate is that location where you comfortably obtain everything that enriches your life without moving. That is what we want to bring to Emotan Gardens,” he assured.

L-R: Cheng Fuller, assistant vice president marketing and corporate sale, Hubmaert Stores Limited; Murat Bektaslar, CEO, Hubmart Stores Limited; Onyeka Onwenu, special guest of honour, and Joy Okuna, assistant Director, Lagos National Lottery Regulatory commission, at the Raffle draw of the Hubmart Awoof promo in Lagos.

L-R: Alex Goma, managing director, PZ Cussons Nigeria, Tadese Fatai of Abibat Mogaji Millennium Senior Secondary School Agege, winner of PZ Cussons Chemistry Challenge 2018, Charity Ilevbare-Adeniyi, group brand development and activation manager personal care PZ Cussons Nigeria, and the , Iwuala Chibuzor of Abibat Mogaji Millennium Senior Secondary School, Agege second runner-up, PZ Cussons Chemistry Challenge 2018, during the courtesy visit and factory tour of PZ Cussons in Lagos .

Lagos State as regional hub drives digital solutions

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he use of digital technology to create new solutions that drive economic growth is on the rise in Nigeria. Much of this growth can be attributed to the emergence of Lagos State as a regional hub for technology driven innovation, catalysed by bold and revolutionary ICT initiatives of the Lagos State Government. The need to optimise this potential for digital technology to drive economic transformation in the State for the benefit of the entire country has birthed KITE@Yaba, a project aimed at transforming the Yaba technology cluster into a leading source of technology innovation. KITE which stands for “Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship” seeks to provide

an enabling environment that will facilitate and support the development of a technology and innovation ecosystem within the Yaba District (and its surrounding environs) of Lagos.

The project kicked off earlier this year with the establishment of the Project Steering Committee (PSC). The PSC is a 6-member committee comprising representatives from three Lagos State ministries namely Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Wealth Creation and Employment and the Ministry of Physical Planning & Urban Development as well as three representatives from the private sector.

To support the Project Steering Committee, a consortium

of notable technology industry experts was inaugurated as the Industry Advisory Board (IAB) in June 2018. The IAB which includes organisations like Google, Microsoft, MainOne, Andela, General Electric (GE), CcHub, Flutterwave, University of Lagos, Lagos State University and Ibile Broadband, will in the coming months provide project direction while ensuring the project focus areas are realized. The focus is on improving the enabling environment in the areas of Access to Funding; Access to Market and Demand; Infrastructure; Policy Regulation & Governance; R&D; Talent; Skills & Education; Networks & Collaboration; Advocacy & Marketing; and Strategic Partnerships.

L-R: Oluwasike Ibiwoye, senior manager, Tax Services, EY; Adedotun Adejumo , human resource officer, Sunu Assurances Nigeria Plc; Akeem Ogunseni, senior manager, tax services, EY, and Atinuke Alakija of Drudge Consulting, at the ‘optimal payroll management & audit readiness’ training, organized by EY Nigeria in Lagos.

How digital banking is shaping consumer behavior SEYI JOHN SALAU

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ith different factors influencing human socialization, the dependency on technology for multiple functions has provided people with the most value for consumption. Technology seems to be taking everyone through a constant reformation of how they live their lives and manage their time in the process.

It is hard to imagine that at some point, all banking was conducted over-thecounter with rigorous processes, queues and form filling even for tasks as little as balance enquiries. Today, thanks to technological advancement, people can perform almost all banking transactions from the comfort of

their homes.

In truth, consuming habits in Nigeria have greatly been influenced by the existence of e-banking. Online banking has blurred the line between consumer decision and consumer action. More often than not, the time required to make a decision to purchase is eliminated with how quick and convenient it is to make an online transfer. The ability to manage time because of electronic banking is one of its pivotal advantages to humankind, along with direct bank transfers, utility bills and miscellaneous expenses that can now be sorted out with ease.

With the ways consumer habits have been shaped so far due to the significant increase in the application of

e-banking in Nigeria, we cannot help but examine the varying levels of customer experience. These personalised online banking experiences vary, as there is a mix of what works best for each individual consumer. Studies have thus revealed that the objective of delivering a positive customer experience has become secondary to other bank priorities, resulting in an almost unsavory, transactional banking relationship for the customer. It is therefore pertinent for banks to take note of these distinctive experiences as a benchmark to learn customer preferences, and the ways to improve their services. This way, the issue of managing customer expectations is easily addressed.

L-R: Adeyemi Adetunji, managing director, NNPC Retail; Adesuwa Adewole, general manager, sales & marketing, Total Nigeria Plc; Henry Obih, COO/ED NNPC downstream; Godfrey Ogbechie, executive director, Rainoil; Chizor Malize, CEO, Brandzone & Tsuwa Thompson, Juwel Energyat the 2018 Oil Trading & Logistics Expo/Conference in Lagos recently

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CityFile Navy seizes over 3000 bags of illegal rice in C’River MIKE ABANG with agency report

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Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in a chat with some petty traders, during the inauguration of TraderMoni in Ketu Market, Lagos.

A’ Ibom comes hard on rapists, jails 7 offenders ANIEFIOK UDONQUAK, Uyo

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kwa Ibom government has come hard on perpetrators of violent crimes targeting at vulnerable groups with the jailing of seven persons convicted of rape while 30 cases are pending in courts.

The conviction was secured between 2017 and this year while the victims have been rehabilitated by the state government.

Glory Edet, commissioner for women affairs and social welfare who made this known in an interview in her office said the domestication of the Child Rights Law by the state government has facilitated the resolution of cases affected children and vulnerable groups in the state.

“So far between last year and now, seven persons have been convicted and jailed while we have 30 cases in courts. I want to thank the judiciary who has been sending their lawyers to assist us in court, court assessors, the women lawyers and other Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) for their supports in the course

of trying these cases.

“We have created a lot of awareness in schools, churches and other public places on the punishment associated with rape, child trafficking and other child abuses. We do not publicize rape cases so that the victim should not be stigmatized; in the Child Rights Law, you have to protect the child from trauma and psychological stress,’’ she said.

According to her, the awareness created by the state government has helped in recent times as the reported cases especially of rape have reduced drastically adding that, the fear of offenders being sent to jail has also helped in this direction.

The commissioner who lauded the commitment of Governor Udom Emmanuel in addressing issues affecting women and children said 5000 women have benefitted from interest free credit facility through the intervention of the state government.

“The governor has made it easier for women to have access to loan. The governor paid the

interest for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) loan scheme. The money has helped them to start their businesses,’’ she said.

She added that the state government gives quarterly grants of N250,000 each to five women in each of the 31 local government areas of the state while women with multiple births are also given financial assistance.

The commissioner who disclosed that 180 lunatics have so far been evacuated in the state and given medical attention lamented that about 80 percent of them were not from Akwa Ibom State adding the state government was not only taking care of lunatics from the state but for those from other states.

She said more than 500 NGOs have been empowered by the state government to work in the area of child protection and rehabilitation.

On child trafficking, Edet disclosed also that 80 children have been reintegrated with their families after they had been abandoned with many of them trained and equipped by the state government.

Obaseki orders arrest of BEDC officials for removing transformer from community

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overnor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has ordered the arrest of some Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) officials, for allegedly removing a transformer bought and installed by a community in the state.

The governor gave the order when a delegation from Ihovbor community, Uhunmwode Local Government Area led by Tony Otakpolor, paid him a protest visit in Benin on Monday.

Obaseki bemoaned BEDC’s alleged lawlessness, noting that it was uncharitable for the company to remove a transformer that was procured by the community and put the people in total darkness.

The governor who gave approval for the purchase of another transformer for the community said: “I am ordering the arrest of officials that have done this.

“If you can’t arrest them, arrest the managing director and get him or her to explain why they will remove a transformer bought by the community, throwing them into darkness for 16 months.”

He said the state was having power challenges because it had an “inefficient” electricity distribution company which was holding back progress in the state.

“They will not supply light. When we make alternative arrangements to help ourselves BEDC will do everything to truncate them.

“We have reported the matter to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and I am sure that very soon something positive will be done,” he said.

The governor said his administration was working to make Ihovbor community one of the largest single producers of electricity in Nigeria as it hosts NIPP and Azura power plants.

The special adviser to the governor on politics and community affairs, Osaro Idah, said that community barricaded the facility of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in Ihovbor.

Idah said the removal of the transformer bought by the community to an unknown location necessitated the action by the people.

He said: “this act angered the people, who

used traditional means to barricade the facility hindering the transmission of electricity.”

Idah said the community bought two transformers two years ago and alleged that BEDC removed one while the other went bad.

He said that all efforts made by the community to make BEDC return the transformer fell on deaf ears, as the people have remained in darkness for 16 months now.

Tony Otakpolor had earlier said that the delegation was at the Government House to lay a complaint about their experiences with officials of BEDC. The leader of the delegation told the governor that the distribution company had put the entire community in darkness for the past 16 months.

He later thanked the governor for his intervention, promising that the community believed in his administration and would continue to maintain peace.

“I want to thank you for your kind gesture today by ordering the purchase of another transformer for the community,” Otakpolor said.

uthorities of Nigerian Navy Ship, NNS Victory, said they have seized over3,039 bags of contraband rice valued at N46 million in Bakassi local government area of Cross River.

The commander of the ship, Julius Nwagu, stated this while conducting newsmen round the goods at the state government’s warehouse in Calabar.

He said that the seizure was the largest so far by the Navy in the state, and that the consignment came in from the Republic of Cameroon and was to be sold in the open markets in Cross River.

Nwagu said the parboiled rice was smuggled through Effiong Nsung community, adding that a suspect had been apprehended over the seizure.

He said that four trucks used in conveying the rice had been handed over to the Nigerian Customs Service.

“The value of the rice is about N46 million and this is outside the 257.50kg bags we equally seized just some days ago,’’ he said.

Nwagu said that the Navy had zero tolerance for all forms of criminality in the nation’s waterways and would continue to collaborate with other agencies to end such illegalities.

“This seizure is remarkable as this is the first time the Navy will extend its tentacles to the Bakassi waters with a view to adding momentum to the war against banned rice.

“The Navy will soon move into the market to mop up banned foreign rice. I want to use this opportunity to advise our traders that sooner than later we are going to move to the market, shopby-shop, to get every foreign rice that is banned.

“The Navy will continue to ensure that we implement government’s policies and there is no going back on it,’’ he said.

He said the navy was presently waging “serious war’’ against smuggling, adding that the command was going after those who owned the products rather than the boat drivers.

Woman nabbed for locking housemaid inside toilet

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he police in Lagos have arrested a 35-year-old mother of two (name withheld) who allegedly locked her housemaid inside a toilet and left for church.

The 14-year-old maid was said to have been rescued by policemen who broke the toilet door.

Imohimi Edgal, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police (CP) said that a concerned neighbour reported the matter to the police.

“Based on the complaint, the DPO of Ipaja division visited the house at Baruwa estate and forced the door open to rescue the girl.

“During interrogation, the victim told me that since she had been living with her madam, she had been going through one form of maltreatment or the other,’’ Edgal said.

He said that police saw various degrees of injuries on the body of the victim.

“On close examination of the girl, wounds of various forms were seen all over the victim’s body,’’ the CP said.

He called on parents to be careful of who they give their children to.

The suspect, however, said that she lock up the victim in the toilet for refusing to follow her to church.

“On the fateful day of the incident when we woke up, I asked her to get prepared so that we can get to church early, but stayed in the toilet doing something else.

“After waiting for her for a while, I went into the toilet to check her only to see her doing some irrelevant things. Out of annoyance I spanked her for avoiding going to church.

“In order to punish her for her action, I locked her inside the toilet and went to church.

“It was when I came back from church that I was told my neighbour reported the incident at Ipaja police station.

“I was told that police broke the door to bring her out of the toilet,’’ she said. NAN

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Why farmers need education on aflatoxins Stories by Josephine Okojie

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igh levels of aflatoxin content in food is harmful to human health and responsible for the loss of billions of naira Nigeria would have generated from non-oil exports.

Aflatoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by certain fungi and moulds that are a threat to food and feeds for human and animal consumption with regards to long term poisoning. They are produced by the mold Aspergillus Flavus and related species that cause destruction of contaminated crops.

According to the United States National Cancer Institute, aflatoxins are a family of toxins produced by certain fungi that are found in agricultural crops such as groundnuts, maize, cottonseed, sesame and tree nuts among others.

The impact of aflatoxins is so devastating that it accounts for a high percentage of all liver and cancer cases worldwide.

“Aflatoxins have harmful effects on humans and animals. They are very cancerous and suppress the human immune system. The African environment favours the development of the poisonous compound. It is found all across Africa,” Abiodun Obaleye,

research supervisor, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) said during a media tour.

It is estimated that Nigeria loses up to N68 billion annually in export revenue because agricultural commodities such as groundnuts contain aflatoxin levels unacceptable

for European and other markets.

In 2017, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) said that a total of 24 food products were rejected by the European Union (EU) because of high levels of poisonous chemical compounds. Groundnuts were among

Canadian model points way for Nigeria’s livestock development, expert says …to address farmers-herder clashes ...says Nigeria has capacity to supply meat, milk, hides, skins to African countries RAZAQ AYINLA, Abeokuta

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ichael Ozoje, professor of quantitative and statistical genetics and animal breeding, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB) says Nigeria can adopt the Canadian model of national record keeping for livestock, to tackle its farmer/herder conflicts and development of the livestock industry.

Ozoje proposed a strategic national planning of livestock to develop the sector, while providing a lasting solution to the decades’ long farmer and herder conflicts, saying biometric data and records of all livestock will help

provide an effective feeding model for wandering cattle that usually destroy farmlands.

Speaking at the 58th Inaugural Lecture of FUNAAB held recently in Abeokuta, Ozoje declared that 90 percent of livestock in the country are owned and bred by pastoralists and peasant farmers.

“These animals are not identified because they are not tagged and indiscriminate breeding goes on uncontrollably and Nigeria must encourage ranching so we can monitor the performance of our livestock and develop breeding criteria and techniques for their improvement,” he said.

Ozoje, who is the second inaugural lecturer from the Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, spoke on the “Chronicles of Livestock Improvement: Excerpts from the Memoir of a Geneticist,” canvassed for the setting up of a record keeping center to keep the records and evaluate the performance of the nation’s livestock industry.

“Nigeria does not even have accurate records of its livestock numbers, let alone of the performance records of the breeds of livestock in Nigeria. Pedigree record of performance is needed to define a breeding goal and develop a

sustainable breeding programme for improvement. It is the responsibility of government to set up the national record keeping centre if the livestock industry must develop,” he added.

The professor, who was for four years a visiting scholar to the University of Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana, said about 1.3 billion people are being engaged by the livestock industry in the world, with about 600 million small holding farmers in developing countries.

He frowned at policy somersaults as one of the banes of the country, just as he added that efforts must be made to float research funds through designated agencies, adding that:” every developed country of the world excelled on the basis of research findings.

The inaugural lecturer advised government to compel companies in the country to float and fund research locally, lamenting that Nigerian companies and organisations sponsor research in other countries on products they want to sell to Nigerians.

Ozoje, said added that formation of breeding societies must be encouraged by policy makers, noting that the Kenyan government, through the Boran cattle breeding society has “almost doubled the milk production capacity of the country in less than 25 years since the society started.”

the food products rejected because of the high presence of aflatoxins.

“The importance of aflatoxin in our agricultural products and their attendant implications on the safety of foods and feeds, trade and health, cannot be over emphasised. Food and feeds sold in our open markets are neither regulated nor traceable and this has made the zero rejection program of the Federal Government an uphill task,” Folasade Bosede Oluwabamiwo, president, Mycotoxicology Society of Nigeria (MSN) said at the association’s 2017 annual conference in Lagos.

Despite the severity of aflatoxin effects on human and animal health, many farmers in the country have never heard of aflatoxins and their effects.

“I never knew the moulds on groundnuts are dangerous to human health and I have not heard about aflatoxins before,” Salisu Mohammed, a groundnut farmer in Bindawa Local Government in Kastina State told BusinessDay. This shows the widespread dearth of knowledge about aflatoxins and such lack of farmer understanding has continued to fuel the rise of aflatoxin levels in food across the country.

Aflatoxins, which are a natural occurrence, can be reduced to the barest minimum with farmers’ education and training on good agricultural practices and storage.

According to experts, farmers’

education on the dangers of the fungi, public awareness, appropriate infrastructural facilities and aflasafe intervention, will help prevent and control aflatoxins contamination.

Isaac Ogara, secretary, MSN and a lecturer at the department of Agronomy, Nasarawa State University, said that the aflatoxin content in crops can be reduced by mainstreaming control strategies in the country’s farming systems along the value chain.

“Farmers need to have awareness that there are deadly chemical substances that occur naturally.

One of the strategies through which farmers can protect their crops from these toxins is to harvest their crops early. Harvesting early helps reduce the incidence of aflatoxin,” Ogara said.

“Farmers must also ensure that they carry out good farming practices by ensuring that they carry out all the cultivation practices according to recommendations and dry their crops properly. Crops must be properly dried with moisture content of about 12-14 percent,” the secretary added.

He also stated that the use of Neem tree and Jatropha extracts also help to reduce levels of toxins in foods. He noted that the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has developed a product called aflasafe which farmers can adopt to reduce the occurrence of the toxicogenic fungi.

How IITA addresses food security in Africa

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esearch outputs the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and its national partners are helping farmers to come out of poverty, creating jobs and demonstrating the possibility of having a prosperous African continent, the international institutions says.

Nteranya Sanginga, directorgeneral, IITA disclosed this while addressing stakeholders at the Food Security Future Summit held at the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, recently.

He stated that the continent needs both political and collective will to act and ensure food security for its fast growing population.

Sanginga notes that Africa could achieve the zero hunger of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 if governments on the Continent made a departure from mere rhetoric to taking action.

Looking at global trends, the IITA director-general said that by 2050, Africa’s population will double.

“What that means is that we will have to feed more people. We will need more jobs for our youths. We will need more land, water, among others to produce food.

“Clearly, if we continue with a business as usual approach, we will be in trouble,” he added.

The director-general also spoke on the disturbing trends of youth unemployment in Africa, citing that in Nigeria, between 2001 and 2010;

22 million young people entered the labour market in search for jobs,” he said.

“Some of these young people end up without decent jobs. In spite of our arable land, majority of African farmers are poor—most of them living on less than two dollars a day. Again malnutrition is widespread. So, we need to act and change this narrative!”Sanginga who was represented by Godwin Atser, IITA Communication & Knowledge Exchange Expert, said.

Sanginga, however, says that there is a ray of hope for the continent and he cites some of the achievements made by IITA which culminated in the winning of the Africa Food Prize as a centre for research excellence.

He states the youth program at IITA, that is providing decent jobs for young people in agriculture, was a model that African nations could embrace and replicate to solve youth unemployment on the continent.

He also notes that some of the breakthroughs if scaled out, could lift Africa out of poverty and bring the continent on the path of prosperity.

These include IITA improved varieties of cassava, maize, soybean, yam, banana/plantain, and cowpea that are resistant to pest and diseases, and high yielding.

“Besides, we also have several other initiatives/projects that have demonstrated how countries can transform agriculture.

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ag@businessdayonline.com

Examining GAIN’s initiatives in reducing malnutrition

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ama Mercy is a local farmer who grows sweet potatoes and tomatoes. Though Mama Mercy sells these crops to others in open markets, her own child is malnourished and stunted because all she manages to feed her with is tuwo, a plain rice meal.

Many of the children in the community are stunted and wasting due to a poorly diversified diet that lacks adequate essential nutrients such as proteins, iron and Vitamin A. Jennifer Pepple, busy and upwardly mobile banker, has to resume working after two months of maternity leave, but this causes her child to miss out on months of exclusive breastfeeding and cuddles from the first most important months of life.

After one year of struggling through the traffic, leaving home early before the child wakes, and returning home almost at bedtime, handing over a huge amount of time to caregivers, the child finally gets enrolled in school, and another cycle of poor feeding routines continues, as the mother has no time.

What do Mama Mercy and Jennifer Pepple have in common?

They represent the reality of two core groups of Nigerian mothers: One which can be described as the rural dweller and the other, the urban or semi-urban dweller. Both of them have something in common: Lack of time and knowledge to provide sufficient nutrition for their children from exclusive breastfeeding and complementary foods in their first 1,000 days.

O ver 2.5 million Niger ian children have been reported to be malnourished, according to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2016 conducted by UNICEF and the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The World Bank 2016 report states that only 10 percent of Nigerian children of between six months to five years are fed based on the appropriate guide for Infant & Young Child Feeding (IYCF).

The report says that the rate of malnutrition among children and women in Nigeria has been on the increase, showing that 37 per cent of children, representing over six million are malnourished; 43.6 per cent of estimated 40 million Nigerian children under age of five years (from estimated population of 197 million) are stunted, while 19.4 per cent of children in the South-West suffer same deficiency.

The Global Alliance for Improved Nu t r i t i o n ( G A I N ) i s a Sw i s s Foundation and the UN World Food Program (WFP) funded organisation, with a presence in Nigeria and other countries.

A look at GAIN’s Large Scale Food

Fortification Programme shows that since 2007, after the food fortification mandate by the Federal Government, GAIN supported the activities with grants and a Fortification Assessment Coverage Tool (FACT) to evaluate the impact of the food fortification programmes to reach as many Nigerians with staple foods that fortified with essential nutrients.

It also has provided a grant to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for Phase 2 of the project entitled, ‘Social Marketing, Capacity Building, Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Assessment of Fortified Food’ which would run till year 2020.

With improved advocacy and policy implementation for fortified staple foods, women such as Mama Mercy are able to make informed nutritious food choices by using fortified staples and other available food crops around her to make nutritious foods for her malnourished children and family.

For Pepple, one of GAIN’s focal points is to advocate for workplace support to promote infant and maternal nutrition by providing nursing corners for young mothers and possible extension of maternity leave periods.

Other projects by GAIN in Nigeria include the Universal Salt Iodisation, strengthening the compliance of salt industries to salt iodisation, and the Home Fortification, which was launched during the National Maternal Newborn and Child Week, to reduce iron deficiency using micro

nutrient powders.

In enforcing the fortification mandate, Osita Anthony Aboloma, d i r e c t o r- g e n e r a l , S t a n d a r d s Organisation of Nigeria (SON), while presenting a paper in Kano in September 2018, said it was incumbent upon the organisation to let the public know the dangers inherent in the consumption of unfortified products.

Ab o l o ma ma i nt a i n e d t hat awareness and nutrition education on food diversification and identification of fortified foods by families could go a long way in ensuring the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Goal 2 targeted at ending hunger in African nations by 2030.

T h e S c a l i n g - Up Nu t r i t i o n Business Network (SBN) is one of the initiatives of GAIN funded through the government of the Netherlands.

Amongst other activities, SBN canvasses for the membership from nutrition-based small, medium and large businesses, getting them to make commitments as one of their corporate goals to provide safe and affordable nutritious food solutions.

The commitments are in line with increasing better diet qualities, partnerships and frameworks such as creating more affordable food packs, creating awareness on exclusive breastfeeding, reducing post-harvest losses using technology and generally championing innovative ideas to provide safer and more nutritious foods.

In July 2018, a Nutrition Business

Pitch Competition, otherwise called Nutripitch, was organised for SMEs working in the nutrition sector to pitch for investment and scaling up opportunities within Nigeria and Africa.

The pitch programme also involved investment-readiness t r a i n i n g s a n c h o r e d b y Fa t e Foundation, a Nigerian business growth NGO. The entrepreneurs were trained on key growth areas such as marketing, corporate culture, and building sustainable business models that would position the enterprises to bridge the gap of knowledge and convenience in access to nutritious foods.

O lugbenga Ogunmoyela, a professor and senior technical advisor, GAIN, said that the training was necessary to equip the entrepreneurs manufacturing food-based products to become ‘nutripreneurs’. This meant that they needed to be equipped with the food safety and nutrition knowledge to enable them to tackle malnutrition with their business, while still generating income.

Adenike Adeyemi, executive director, Fate Foundation, noted that nutrition might not be tackled adequately if businesses providing the nutrition-based products and services were not empowered to scale. She mentioned that the training programme was coordinated under the NGO’s Scale-up Lab (Health).

Out of 450 outstanding entries, 21 SMEs were shortlisted from national pitch competitions in Nigeria,

Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia.

A final competition was held at the Nutrition Africa Investor Forum (NAIF), a high level forum attended by over 200 business leaders policy makers and prominent development campaigners focused on unlocking the business potential of small and medium enterprises working to improve the nutritional quality of the food system across Africa.

The pitch competition ended with five award winners who had outstanding solutions and growth track record to solve key nutrition issues.

The Grand Prize Award was won by Kennie-O Logistics, a s olar-empow ered cold chain logistics company owned by Ope Olanrewaju. Another Nigerian SME, Augustsecrets, a children’s food company, won the Graca Machel Gender Lens Award, amongst others.

Concurrently, there was a ‘Nutrition Deal Room’ for larger investment opportunities. Fokko Wientjes, vice president, Nutrition in Emerging Markets of Royal DSM, a purpose-led, global sciencebased company active in nutrition who participated in the initiative, reported.

Wientjes said that the companies featured in both the Pitch Competition and in the Nutrition Dealroom comprised part of GAIN’s pipeline of companies improving access to nutritious food. GAIN will be following up on these exciting investment opportunities as part of its New Nutritious Foods Financing Programme.

Speaking on the influence of the forum, Uduak Igbeka, Nigerian country lead for SBN, stated that the winners from Nigeria had gone through rigorous trainings on positioning their businesses for growth.

She said the training and experience would directly help them influence the nutrition sector with education and awareness, using technology to solve key nutrition problems such as post-harvest losses.

According to her, SBN would continue to bridge the gap between ensuring better government policies that would support businesses to fight malnutrition and food waste.

She admonished that advocating for adequate nutrition is everyone’s business.

Oluwatoyin Onigbanjo is the founder of Augustsecrets, A Nigerian complementary food and nutrition enterprise. She is also a Child Nutrition Advocate and Cookbook Author of the Augustsecrets Meal Plan Book.

Augustsecrets is a recipient of the Graca Machel Gender Lens Award and the Royal DSM Nutrition and Food Safety Award for their child nutrition advocacy and innovation.

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2019: INEC disenfranchises 300,000 Nigerians James Kwen, Abuja

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o fewer than 300, 000 Nigerians have been disenfranchised ahead of the 2019 as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it had removed their names from the voter register last week.

Mahmood Yakubu, INEC Chairman said the names were removed from the voter register after Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) was carried out on the biometry data of registered voters.

Yakubu stated this Monday when he received a delegation of ECOWAS Pre-Election Fact Finding Mission, led by the Chairman of Sierra Leone’s National Electoral Commission, Mohamed Conteh, at the Commission headquarters in Abuja.

He disclosed that INEC has started cleaning up voter the register while it will be displaying the voter register at all polling units across the nation between November 6 and 12(Tuesday - Monday) for claims and objections and urged Nigerians to make use of the oppor-

Mahmood Yakubu

tunity to assist the Commission to identify names of ineligible voters for further clean-up.

Yakubu stressed that, “for the

Display of voter’s register: Secondus charges massive voters turn out OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja

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s the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) displays voters register at Polling Units across the country from Tuesday, the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Uche Secondus has charged Nigerian voters to troop out to their various polling booths to check their names.

Secondus said that the desire to rescue Nigeria from the APC government would be meaningless if everything pertaining to voting is not sorted out.

According to a statement from his Media Office signed by his Media Adviser Ike Abonyi, the National Chairman said the essence of the four days display as stipulated by the Electoral Act is to ensure that no

Uche Secondus

voter is disenfranchised.

He explained that cross checking and confirming the details ahead of the election is a mechanism put in place to reduce attempts to manipulate the system.

“By cross checking and re-cross checking, the voters wittingly would have begun the battle to frustrate rigging of the election,” he said.

Secondus urged voters who notice issues with their particulars to cry out loudly immediately by going to the electoral centers to complain for rectification.

He alleged that part of the rigging strategy of the APC working in agreement with some INEC staff is to doctor voter’s lists in the opponent’s strong holds to reduce their electoral advantage. He added: “Please note that if you have a PVC and your name is not on the register, you are as good as a person who has gone into a contest he did not register for and expecting a positive result.

“If your team is going into a match you are sure you are better than your opponent and you are not sure of the neutrality of the referee, you need to play well to win fair and square and block any room for manipulation”.

He charged INEC to ensure that the registers are not only displayed at the polling booths but that the correct ones to be used for the election are the ones on display.

registered voters, we have been cleaning up on our own, using the AFIS. As at last week, before I traveled, I was told that over

300,000 names were dropped after the automatic fingerprints identification system.

“But the cleaning of the voter register is not the sole responsibility of the commission; it is also the responsibility of every Nigerian.

That is why the law says that we should display the register for a period of six days between Nov. 6 and Nov. 12. We will display the voter register in 120, 000 polling units nationwide.

“I will like to use this opportunity to appeal to the citizens to check when we display the register, so that they can draw the attention of the commission to the prevalence of any ineligible voter on the register so that we can further clean up the register”, he said.

The INEC Chairman who told the delegation that the Commission was prepared for the 2019 general elections said, “we have finished the strategic planning; we have finished our strategic programme of action; and we have completed the election project plan. We have issued the timetable and schedule of activities for the 2019 general elections”.

He announced that INEC would

by Friday or Saturday this week release statistics of political parties that nominated candidates for governorship elections to be conducted in 29 states and the State Houses of Assembly in all states of the Federation.

Earlier in his speech, leader of the ECOWAS Mission, Conteh said they were in Nigeria to gather relevant information and see how prepared INEC was for the general elections and where they can offer assistance.

He said, “as you are aware that it is common before we start any election, organisations such as ECOWAS come and see the condition under which election is to be conducted and gather information in respect of the elections.

“More importantly, meet with you as a major stakeholder, as Election Management Body that is responsible for conduct of election to discuss with you and see how prepared you are for the election” he stated.

Conteh thanked ECOWAS, ECONEC and the Federal Republic of Nigeria for the assistant rendered to Serial Leone during its elections conducted in April.

Olawepo-Hashim to create 4trn dollars GDP in 10 years ...Blasts APC for poverty in Nigeria James Kwen, Abuja

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benga Olawepo-Hashim, Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Trust (PT) has announced a blue print for new Nigerian Economic Development plan that will create $4 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 10 years.

Olawepo-Hashim said his policy document targets to net 5 percent of Global infrastructure funds in 10 years by removing obstacles to investments, rapidly increasing the ease of doing business in Nigeria as well as promoting an innovative economy by protecting proprietary rights of innovators and the sanctity of agreement.

He promised to integrate Agriculture, Solid Mineral Sector with industries and increase manufacturing share of the GDP to 40 percent and then tackle unemployment through industry based jobs.

The PT Presidential candidate in an interactive session with journalists in Abuja said his mission is to transform, “Nigeria’s economy from a poor 510 billion dollar economy to a 4 trillion dollar economy within 10 years, the reduction in poverty and the restoration of peace, unity and

stability in Nigeria, a country that the ruling party has badly mismanaged.

“I am therefore better placed to bring the country back together. I am most assured I can get the job done given my record of accomplishment I will restructure the economy from a dependent one to a self-reliant economy by investing in iron and steel, research and development and in other critical sectors.

“These critical sectors will include chemical and machine tools, so as to generate the production of capital goods, local capital and to bring in prosperity, through the needed multipliers. I will implement a New Economic Development Programme (NEDP) which will lead to the expansion of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“Besides, the NEDP will also increase the Per Capital Income (PCI) of the average Nigerian to between 16,000 to18, 000 US dollars within ten years as well. This will make Nigeria to be at par with middleincome countries like Malaysia with whom we had comparable income level at independence.

“NEDP would target an estimated 2 trillion US dollars into infrastructure within ten years. It will also create jobs from manufactur-

ing, industrialization and then link up industries with solid minerals and the agricultural sector.

“The agricultural sector will be integrated with the industrial and solid mineral sectors to create sustainable jobs for youths employment and it will also be accelerated through the promotion of innovation and the knowledge economy”, he stated.

Olawepo-Hashim lampooned the poor economic management strategy of the governing All Progressive Congress, APC which has led to greater poverty amongst Nigerians and regretted that APC’s woeful failure has put 88 million Nigerians into acute poverty.

According to him, Nigerians are getting poorer because of the woeful economic management strategy or lack of strategy of the APC government, saying, though Nigeria was not a prosperous economy when President Buhari took over, Nigerian economy has now gone from bad to worse.

The PT Presidential Candidate stressed that the recent revelation by the Brooklyn Institute that 88 million Nigerians now live under acute poverty is disappointing, especially that a new 1 million more Nigerians moved into the poverty bracket within the last four months.

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Your endorsement a fraud, Lagos PDP attacks Sanwo-Olu …Vows to expose APC guber candidate …PDP is a drowning party - APC

Iniobong Iwok

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he Lagos State chapter of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has described the reported endorsement of All Progressives Congress (APC), governorship candidate in the state, Jide Sanwo-Olu by forty political parties has a fraud that was initiated in a desperate move by the APC because it was clear that the party would lose next year’s election as Lagosians were tired of the party.

The PDP in a statement signed by its Publicity Secretary, Taoffek Gani, noted that the controversial emergence of Sanwo-Olu was a clear desperate move by the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu to have someone who would fund him.

The party further described Sanwo-Olu as an emergency can-

Sanwo-Olu

didate that is unprepared for the job, stressing that the PDP was confident of winning next year’s

Who wins Kogi West senatorial district: Dina Melaye or Smart Adeyemi?

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he battle line has been drawn between Senator Dino Melaye currently representing Kogi West senatorial district and former Senator Smart Adeyemi over who takes over the Kogi West senatorial district come 2019. It could be recalled that Melaye left the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015 and joined the All Progressives Congress (APC) and won, and he is now the incumbent senator representing Kogi West senatorial district.

Smart Adeyemi had left PDP and is All Progressives Congress (APC) beautiful bride for the Kogi West senatorial seat in 2019; expectation is that two of them will square up against each other.

Kingsley Fanwo, has said that the emergence of Senator Adeyemi as the party’s Kogi West senatorial candidate was a “historic testimony of a united Okun people.”

Fanwo, who is the Director-General, Media and Publicity to Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State, said Adeyemi is the “most politically grounded” among the contestants and that his election will “reshape the negative conversation about the Okun character.”

“The February 2019 senatorial election holds a historic moment for

Melaye

Adeyemi

the people of Kogi West. As a people, our pride and ideals have been hurt.

We are not what the world thinks we are. For four years, we have to live with a calamitous representation foisted on us by the Buhari tsunami of 2015. In 2019, we will right the wrongs and prove to the world that Okun people are no clowns.

“When Senator Adeyemi was Senator, the entire Kogi West was his home. He was at home in Lokoja /Koto as well as Yagba. He has empowered many Yagba people and people all over the Senatorial District. His entrance into the race has changed the political course of Kogi West and we are hopeful he will win convincingly.”

Fanwo said the Senate has missed the “intelligent, informed and articulate contributions of Senator Adeyemi”, assuring Nigerians that Kogi West people are prepared to return him to his familiar terrain.

Fanwo urged the electorate to concentrate on the message of redemption and avoid joining the “pig in a mud fight”, saying emphasis should be placed on issue-based campaign that is devoid of character snorting.

And Dino Melaye has epistle his constituents, telling them to come out en masse and vote massively for him come 2019 so as to consolidate his modest achievements in the service of his people.

This is coming from a statement from him with the title ‘The Gospel According to Senator Dino Melaye 2019. Arise O Compatriots’, saying he is soliciting the support of all Kogites in the West to reject any imported person that has no bearing with our state and the common man.

election because its candidate had a blueprint which was focused on freeing Lagos since 2006.

S

uleiman Kazaure, brigadier-general and directorgeneral, National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) has urged corps members who will be deployed to work with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to be partisan during the 2019 general election.

Kazaure warned corps members not to be biased for and/or against any of the political parties that will participate in the elections.

During his visit to the 2,265 2018 Batch ‘C’ (Stream 1) corps members at Oyo State Permanent Orientation Camp, Iseyin on Saturday, Kazaure also urged them to build on the integrity already made by past corps members during the 2011 and 2015 general elections.

Kazaure, who was represented by the Director, Planning, Research and Statistics, Bose Okakwu also urged the Corps members to contribute solutions to the problems presently

“Sanwo-Olu, is a ‘bad market’ that cannot appeal to Lagosians even if he ‘buys’ political parties beyond the registered ones in the country.

“Hence, it is laughable that some parties have adopted an unprepared candidate. It is not true that 40 political parties have adopted Sanwo-Olu. “The claim is propagandists and mere prodigal as indeed it is the APC candidate who is giving out huge sums of money to get parties adopt him”.

The PDP further threatened to expose the APC governorship candidate as truly not fit and proper to govern the state at the appropriate time.

“Lagosians are thus alerted that should Sanwo-Olu be mistakenly elected as governor, his urge will be to recoup the election expenses.

We are not shocked because we know Sanwo-Olu and his nominator are desperate to hold on to

Lagos State.

“At the appropriate time, we shall expose Sanwo-Olu as truly not fit and the PDP would defeat APC in next year’s election”.

But reacting to the statement by the PDP, Deputy Publicity Secretary of the APC in Lagos State, Abiodun Salami, urged the PDP to provide evidence that Sanwo-Olu was not fit to govern Lagos State.

Salami described the PDP as a drowning party that is seeking relevance, adding that the APC was not ready to join issues with a party that obviously would lose next year’s gubernatorial election in the state.

“PDP is a drowning party and they know they would lose next year’s election, they are a losing party; let them come up with evidence that Sanwo-Olu is not fit to govern Lagos State or they keep quiet; we are not ready to join issues with them,” Salami said.

Neutrality of corps members is a critical ingredient of 2019 elections - NYSC IFEDAYO OGUNYEMI, Ibadan

facing the country.

According to him, NYSC has not relented in its efforts at building and incorporating young people into the plans to make Nigeria better as a nation, a plan that has kept on going for forty-five years.

“NYSC is a big family and we are happy to be part of the family. We have brought in young people into the family since 1973.

“I congratulate you for being part of the family. It has not been easy for you since when you started your primary education till you finished tertiary education. It all qualified you for service in the NYSC,” he said.

“NYSC is however, getting better, stronger and bigger. You will move higher going forward and you will be among the solutions to the problems facing Nigeria.

“You have nine days left to the end of this orientation exercise, ensure that you put in your best in these remaining days,” he further said.

He further admonished them: “Be disciplined and steadfast in your dealings. Put in your best wherever you find yourself. Write your name know gold.

“We are at the threshold of history and 2019 elections is here. NYSC is not a political party.

“NYSC is not involved in partisan politics and we are neutral. When you are called upon, ensure that you are impartial.

Royal visit: Prince Charles to strengthen bilateral ties, address insecurity Innocent Odoh, Abuja

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he Prince of Wales, Prince Charles will arrive Nigeria on Tuesday, November 6, for his fourth official visit to Nigeria to strengthen bilateral ties with Nigeria, where he is also expected to address the lingering security challenges in Nigeria especially the herdsmen attacks on farmers crisis in Nigeria.

A statement issued by the British High Commission in Abuja, said that Prince Charles, who will be accompanied by his wife, Princess Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, will be welcomed by President Muhammadu Buhari to celebrate the United Kingdom’s dynamic, forwardlooking partnerships with Nigeria on a range of shared priorities.

“Nigeria and the UK are strong Commonwealth partners with a shared interest in developing a prosperous Nigeria. Nigeria is one of the largest and youngest countries in the world and home to the largest economy in Africa. In Nigeria, young people are driving a rich ecosystem of innovators and entrepreneurs,” the statement said.

According to the statement The Royal Highnesses will meet some of Nigeria’s dynamic youth as well as Traditional Leaders, the business community, the armed forces, and people from the arts, fashion and charitable sector during the threeday visit in Abuja and Lagos.

The visit will highlight key themes in Nigeria, UK relationship, including the importance of Commonwealth ties; youth opportunity;

Prince Charles

business and entrepreneurship; educating women and girls; literacy; defence cooperation; and religious and cultural diversity and opportunities for closer cooperation between the Nigerian and UK artists in music, art, cinema, and fashion, the statement added.

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Politics & Policy

We are sorry for our shortcomings, I take responsibility - Oye Emmanuel Ndukuba, Awka

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ictor Oye, National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has apologised to members who were in any way offended by the perceived flaws in the primary election process of the party.

Oye told newsmen in parley in Awka on Monday that whatever wrong that happened was highly regretted as it was not the intention of APGA to hurt anyone.

He said the exercise as a struggle among brothers and sisters where some people won and others lost and that APGA would have loved if there were no disagreements.

“As a political party, we are not proud of what happened, it is a combination of a lot of factors, but I take responsibility.

“I want to say with every sense of responsibility that APGA regrets whatever have happened.

“For those who felt of-

fended in any way; we are very sorry, we are not perfect people, we are human beings who operate in an imperfect environment.

“There was nothing that happened during the primary that was pre-conceived, as the national chairman of the party, I take responsibility for whatever happened, it is not in my character to trade blames.

“We sent people all over Nigeria to go and manage the process and they came back with reports and results which some people are not happy about.

“We did not skew the process to favour anybody, we regret the areas we had problems, the success of APGA was topmost in our agenda; that is why I am offering this apology, I take all the blame.

“We appeal to the aggrieved people keep faith and continue to work with us, if you did not make it today, you can make it tomorrow, let us work for victory of APGA in 2019,” he said.

Oye absolved himself from

Women mobilise to fight corruption ahead of 2019 general election RAZAQ AYINLA, Abeokuta

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s part of efforts to join hands with government against the major socioeconomic cankerworm called corruption, a group of women under the aegis of Women Advocates, Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) is waging a war against corruption and its attendant immoralities in the country, urging Nigerians to stop celebrating corrupt people.

This was the resolution of scores of women drawn across Nigeria, who were the participants of a two-day capacity building training held recently in Abeokuta for women to demand and challenge corruption in all its ramifications with a view to reducing the appalling level of corruption in every community that makes up the country, calling on all Nigerians to join hands to fight the corruption war to a logical conclusion.

Speaking at the two-day workshop organised by Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) in conjunction with Mac Arthur Foundation as well as the Women’s Right and Advancement and Protection Alternative, Non-Govern-

mental Organisations, Abiola Akiyode Afolabi, Executive Director of WARDC, said that corruption “is a global phenomenon” which has become one of the major challenges to economic and political growth of countries where they thrive”.

She told the participants “Corruption is killing us as a country, it is not only the government that will fight corruption citizens must support government in the fight that is why this programme is organised to bring people of the grassroots to fight corruption.”

“For instance, in Nigeria corruption exacerbates and causes conflicts, promotes poverty and impacts negatively on the best use of human and natural resources”, she added.

“While accountability is one of the key best practices in people oriented governance, especially in a situation where government activities centred around service delivery, it is reasonable to consider the process in governance as a threat to development , particularly when it cannot meet the needs of the governed”, Akinyode affirmed.

The participants unanimously agreed that the corruption war must be won and appealed to all Nigerians to join hands to win the war.

Victor Oye

accusation of betrayal saying that all financial proceeds from the exercise was intact in the party’s account.

He blamed the escalation of the situation on fifth columnists and those who wished to undo the party for

no just course.

“The way it is being exaggerated is not what really happened, they are just taking it to an abysmal level.

“Calling people names is not the spirit of APGA, you don’t sit in your room and

begin to insult people, calling them thieves, it is not right, what evident do you have to call them thieves?

“APGA sold forms, people bought them and paid into the account of the party; the money is intact in the account for the growth of the party.

“I had no under-hand dealing with anybody; I want to be quoted, that the money is intact.

“It is unfair for them to claim that they were swindled, it is an irresponsible statement because they money paid voluntarily was for the services rendered to them.

Oye appealed to all members who were aggrieved to sheathe their sword and close ranks, adding that everything that happened was an internal matter and we will handle it internally.

He said the challenge was an internal affair of the party and expressed confidence the ability of APGA National Reconciliation Committee to look at the grievances and recommend appropriate solutions.

Oye urged those with

genuine complain to register their grievances with the committee adding that whoever was found culpable would disciplined according to the constitution of APGA. According to him, part of the problem was pressure persons from every political shades and the 21/21 victory in the Anambra governorship election.

“The pressure was also responsible because everybody wanted a piece of the action, nothing more happened.

“Let us put the past behind us and face the future, what we have ahead is greater than what anybody things have happened, there is a bigger picture.

“That was why we set up the reconciliation committee to gather information, meet with the people, get their reaction to what happened and the party will sit down to chat the way forward.

“Wherever we see that there was miscarriage of justice, we will amend it, to ameliorate the situation.

Liberation Movement presidential candidate pledges economic freedom, fair tax systems KELECHI EWUZIE

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he 2019 presidential candidate of Liberation Movement, Kriz David, has assured Nigerians of his desire to enthrone Rule of law, Economic Freedom, Fair Tax Systems and learning Economy as part of his mandate, if elected.

David stated that he is offering Nigerians Smart Government that will shape the

“Nigerian Dream” and ensure that Nigerians ride progressively in the path of prosperity.

He highlighted that insecurity, corruption, economic stagnation and other ills Nigeria faces as a nation, are merely symptomatic of the unaddressed faulty foundation.According to him, “Nigeria’s root problem is inequality. Inequality is the fragile foundation upon which Nigeria is built; inqequality in the entire design framework

Saraki appeals to FG, Labour over proposed strike OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja

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he Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has appealed to both the Federal Government and the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)/Trade Union Congress (TUC) to work together to avert the industrial action in the interest of Nigeria.

Saraki, in a statement on Monday by his Special Adviser (Media and Publicity), Yusuph Olaniyonu, urged the two sides to demonstrate sensitivity and concern for

the plight of ordinary Nigerians who are already battling with the harsh economic conditions in the country.

Barring any last minute change, the leadership of the NLC and TUC are set to embark on strike over the inability of the Federal and state government to meet their demands of N30,000 minimum wage.

But in a statement, the Senate President expressed appreciation for the patience displayed by the labour leaders, noting that the issue of the new minimum wage could have been resolved long before now.

of nation – reward system, administration justice, access opportunities”, He further stated that if the wrong value of inequality is not addressed, Nigeria will continue to marooned in a cycle of failure and backwardness.

David opines that Nigeria as a nation has not only struggled to realise her potentials but is in search of her identity and place as a nation among nations of the world.

To him, “leadership has not only failed in Nigeria, but that Nigeria has failed as a nation owing to her low moral value quotient bedeviled with ethnic and tribal sentiments, religious bigotry and the quest for wealth at the expense of morality” He promised that when elected into office as the Nation’s president, he plans to engrave into the consciousness of the Nigerian systems and Nigerians in general.

2019: 1.3m PVCs collected, 364, 265 uncollected in Ondo

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head of the 2019 general elections, a total of 1,372,158 permanent voters card (PVCs) have been collected by prospective electorate in Ondo state, bringing the total of all registered voters in the state to 1,736,423.

The resident electoral commissioner(REC) in Ondo state, Rufus Akeju disclosed this on Monday while addressing journalists on the display of preliminary register of voters exercise.

The REC noted that as at last registration, a total of 1,736,423 voters had been registered across the 3009 polling units in the state.

Akeju said 364, 265 PVCs

were still uncollected, urging register voters to collect their cards for them to exercise their civic rights in next year’s elections. According to the REC, the display of preliminary register of voters would commenced between November 6th and November 12th 2018 in all the polling units accross the state,advising residents to inspect their names and raise clams and objections.

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Britain to retain EU rail standards after Brexit Page 22

New Santa-Fe flaunts superb road presence

Stories by MIKE OCHONMA

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yundai Motors Nigeria has joined Europe, North America and the Middle East markets following the test-drive of the fourth generation Santa Fe mid-size SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle) along side other Hyundai models by the motoring journalists last weekend in Lagos.

The few hours road test by the automotive journalists which kic started at the Hyundai Motors dealership under the Stallion group was preceded by a technical presentation of the Sante Fe and other models product lines by the franchisees marketing team led

by Parvir Singh, managing director of Stallion Motors Nigeria Limited.

The arrival of the all new family SUV, dubbed “the lifetime partner for SUV customers who value balance between work and life,” coincides with Hyundai budding accomplishment as the foremost selling passenger-car brand in Nigeria, said Parvir Singh, managing director told journalists in Lagos, at a media preview of the car.

Emerging from a makeover in 2017 with a slight front-end adjustment, the 4th generation Santa Fe is as it is a quintessence of deluxe with a new front-end, reshaped front bumper and new LED fog lights that is standard across the entire line-up.

The new Santa Fe continues Hyundai’s fluidic design tradition that typifies cascading three-dimensional honeycomb patterned radiator grille and a separated-type composite-light. It also incorporates

a newly adopted 8-speed automatic transmission with cutting-edge powertrain and maximized fuel economy.

Its side profile with tough side volume and wheel arches are connected to a stable designed rear bumper to create a progressive SUV image and character line that stretches along the body panel from the headlamp to the rear to add dynamism and strength to its silhouette.

Giving more insight about the vehicle’s interior flair , Gaurav Vashisht, Head Sales and Marketing for the dealership said during his presentation said that the vehicle’s cockpits adopts well-heeled SUV ideals with a shield-shaped control hub flanked by big air vents and undulating dash, dipping low in front of passengers and bubbling up for gauges.

“Simply put, the dashboard design wraps around the crash pad to express three-dimensional image, which maximize a sense of openness to provide the best visibility while enhancing a sense of luxury by covering a large area with PU leather.”

The center stack with large control knobs and audio volume are so intuitively arranged with a larger (7-inch TFT LCD) touchscreen and electroluminescent gauges to add an aura of conviviality.

Also worthy of note is the windshield-type head-up display, which was applied for the first time to provide safety and convenience by minimizing movement of eyes during driving by projecting main vehicle information on the front windshield, Vashisht said.

In terms of fuel economy, the new Santa Fe posts good fuel economy when it’s configured with frontwheel drive. With all-wheel drive, it’s appreciable. And with the automatic V6, the Santa Fe earns EPA ratings of 18 mpg city, 25 highway and 21 combined. Those figures cumulatively sums to 18/24/20 mpg with all-wheel drive.

Every Santa Fe comes with power features, cruise control, a rearview camera, power-adjustable driver seat, dual-zone climate control, AM/FM/XM/CD audio with USB and Bluetooth connectivity, and a 7.0-inch touchscreen.

Also added as standard are 18inch alloy wheels, standard, power passenger seat, keyless ignition, battery monitoring system, wireless smartphone charger, panoramic sunroof, Integrated Memory System (IMS), Electronic parking brake, USB charging ports and a hands-free tailgate.

Developed under the driving concept of stability and comfort while in motion, the all-new Santa Fe offers comfort ride and handling characteristics through stable body behavior, especially when the Santa Fe’s electric power steering with any of the three selectable modes like the economy, normal and sport mode is applied.

Switching the steering to Sport, for instance, adds weight, and helps it keep better in line on highways. And with a front strut and rear multi-link suspension, the Santa Fe makes a good compromise between its calm, quiet ride and rear cargo space. The Santa Fe’s biggest edge here is its length.

Toyota emerges most Googled car brand globally … With an average of 7.8m searches monthly

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part from the Swedes and the French that are very patriotic and totally committed to buying home-made automobiles manufactured in their home country, findings reveal that most of the world seacrhes for car brands across the globe gravitates towards Toyota.

These were just some of the findings in the latest automotive study

by UK insurance company Veygo, which analysed Google search data from the last 12 months to find out which car brands are searched for the most in different parts of the world.

It would be recalled that last year January, British parts company Quickco answered those questions and Toyota enjoys a dominant lead.

The ranking is based on the number of countries (74 in Toyota’s case) rather than the actual number of people that searched for that particular brand.

a anonymous source who is familiar with the local automotive trends, there are very strong indications that, the Japanese brand is the most searched nameplate on google due to its popularity and mass appeal among the middle and high income earners.

BMW also came second in the country rankings globally, dominating the search widgets in 25 countries, closely followed by its arch-rival Mercedes-Benz, at 23, while Honda and Ford were the runners up in outright numbers game, attracting 7 million and 6.4 million searches respectively.

Interesting to note was how sensible brands dominated in the rest of Africa, and the world for that matter, with Hyundai, Honda and Chevrolet completing the top five.

One glaring exception though were the highly ambitious residents of Niger, where Bugatti was the most

From the amount of red on the infographic above, Toyota is the most searched for car brand around the world, coming out tops in 57 of the 171 countries that were surveyed, commanding a global average of 7.8 million searches a month.

Unsurprisingly, Toyota was also the most searched for in South Africa, and the same goes for neighbouring Namibia and Mozambique from the African continent, including the United States, Canada and Australia.

Other land-locked neighbours Botswana and Zimbabwe seem to have loftier automotive ambitions after South Africa, with BMW being the most searched for brands in those countries.

The report did not say if the Toyota brand is the most searched google in Nigeria, but according to

Googled brand of all.

There was hardly a great sense of patriotism among many of the car-creating countries though, with Japan, South Korea and the UK searching BMW, while the US and China followed the Toyota herd.

Some of the European countries were an exception to that rule, with Volvo dominating in Sweden, Renault in France, BMW in Germany and Fiat in Italy. The research did not feature data from any search engine other than Google, for what it’s worth.

Only five countries showed some kind of patriotism in their searches, with Volvo being the most searched for in Sweden, Renault in France, Mercedes-Benz in Germany, Perodua in Malaysia and Maruti in India.

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Local and global rail news as it breaks

NRC resumes Lagos-Kano train service weekend The best apps for rail passengers

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…Free train services begins on Itakpe/Warri corridor

MIKE OCHONMA

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fter one month suspension of passenger and cargo train services as a result of the torrential rainfall which washed away rail lines across the country, the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) said it will on Friday resume the LagosKano express train service along the corridor.

It would be recalled that the service which is well subscribed, especially by traders from the northern part of the country, was suspended following torrential rainfall which washed away rail line across the country.

Making this confirmation recently, NRC’s director of operations, Niyi Ali said that the planned resumption of the service was reached by the NRC management recently.

In the past months of heavy down pour, there have been reported cases of flooding along the rail lines that affected many states including Oyo, Kwara, Niger, Sokoto, among others.

“Following the rainfalls, the rail lines across the country were virtually washed away which made it difficult for trains to operate. This is why the NRC suspended the operations to put the line in order”, a source said.

He said the NRC team of engineers were immediately deployed to the affected locations since the

rain started and they have been able to restore the line.

The Lagos-Kano express train, operating on the existing narrow gauge line, leaves Lagos on Fridays and returns on Mondays.

Meanwhile, Fidet Okhiria, managing director, NRC has said that the corporation would begin free train ride service from Itakpe to Warri.

Okhiria said this recently while inspecting the ongoing construction of train terminal at Ujevwu community in Delta, that the free ride will be for one month.

According to him, the 202 kilometres train journey will connect many communities and improve social and economic life of the people. NRC will start free train ride along AgbhorItakpe corridor for a month to test run the service.

“Government wants to provide good service so that goods and services can be affordable for the communities. We are not going to limit ourselves to passengers alone or to township service but also transport goods and services,” he said.

The managing director said that the rail service would complement road transport to enhance movement of goods and services in the state.

Okhiria said that seven new coaches train will transport over 400 passengers on a trip from Itakpe to Warri on daily basis and advised the residents to make proper use of the opportunity to enhance their social and economic life.

The managing director said youths in the communities would also be employed to maintain the

tracks and in other services.

Alfred Ketekpe, the Secretary Ujevwu Community in Warri, thanked the NRC for the gesture and urged the corporation to provide walk access road to the train terminal. He also said that the communities were facing the challenges of power outage urging NRC to come to their aid.

He begged the corporation to carry the youths in the communities along in the recruitment process to curb high rate of unemployment.

“We need light in these our communities, because no light, no school and we also need job for our youths,” he said.

The Itakpe-Warri train service would serve over 1,000 passengers daily on its test run service for one month.

ith the global number of smartphone users forecast to hit 2.87 billion by 2020, app creators are constantly looking for new ways to tap into the potential of mobile devices. For the rail industry, concepts such as e-ticketing, real-time train updates and online route planning are rapidly becoming the norm, putting the power of technology into passengers’ hands quite literally.

Across the world, the g row i ng p o pu la r i t y o f smartphones has led to the creation of new apps that are changing the way passengers purchase tickets, plan journeys and communicating with rail operators.

From route planners to train simulators, what are the app concepts that are making life better for passengers and rail enthusiasts.

A growing range of apps is making lives easier for rail commuters and enthusiasts.

The following examples are some of the best existing and upcoming apps on the market for regular rail travellers.

Trainline UK ; Currently peddling train tickets across 24 countries, online commerce giant Trainline is making bold moves to expand its online offering worldwide. However, a great deal of the company’s focus has been on its app for UK passengers, which offers access to real-time information, updates on train journeys and houses e-tickets that enable users to skip long queues at gates.

What sets the app apart is its use of historical data

analysis to make ticket purchases even more transparent for users. For example, Trainline’s price prediction tool analyses historic data trends to forecast when the cost of particular train journeys will rise, allowing passengers to book early to beat the jump. Another data-focused feature, Busybot, uses crowd-sourced data to highlight the least busy parts of a train before it arrives.

Conquering rail travel at home can be difficult, but for explorers attempting to book journeys across Europe, spanning several different operators and timetables, the task is much more daunting.

Rail Planner provides timetables for international trains and lets users plan out their trip on an interactive map. The app doesn’t require an internet connection, meaning users can check their route while stuck in a tunnel.

It also identifies train stations near a passenger’s current position, and lets Eurail and Interrail pass holders know if they need to make any additional train reservations on particular journeys.

With the European Union offering 18-year-old European residents a free Interrail pass for travel this summer, now is the time for spritely hostel-goers to add Rail Planner to their roster.

Grumpnow houses the gripes of ticked-off train commuters, giving them a speedy and cathartic way of voicing concerns to rail operators.

Britain to retain EU rail standards after Brexit

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he British government has assured that, it will continue to abide by European Union (EU) rail standards and protocols after it leaves the EU, even in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit, according to a statement issued by the Railway Safety and Standards Board (RSSB).

“Regardless of whether the government strikes a deal with the EU or not, the legal requirements designed to promote common safety and technical principles across all EU railways will still need to be met by UK rail companies and suppliers,” RSSB states.

This means European Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSIs)

will continue to apply during the transition period if Britain reaches a deal with the EU. If no deal is reached, TSIs will be adapted as domestic legislation, published

as National Technical Specification Notices by the Secretary of State for Transport.

RSSB says Network Rail and other main line infrastructure firms, rail

freight operators, rolling stock leasing companies and suppliers should plan to continue using relevant cross-industry standards after Britain’s formal withdrawal from

the EU, which is due to take place on March 29 2019.

European standards are only affected by EU membership if they are referred to in EU directives. According to RSSB, this only affects less than 20% of applicable standards.

The application of European standards from CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, as well as international standards such as ISO, IEC and ITU, is unaffected by Britain’s departure from the EU. The current government’s policy is to maintain regulatory alignment with the EU for goods, which means there is unlikely to be any shortterm-divergence from

EU-derived requirements such as TSIs. “We have been working very closely with the Department for Transport over the past year to ensure that requirements derived from the EU framework are legally fit for purpose for application in Britain with workable solutions in place, even in a potential ‘no deal’ scenario,” says RSSB standards director, Tom Lee. “We want to ensure that day one post-Brexit, the British standards framework is suitably aligned to the EU for immediate continuity and is legally robust, whilst providing for possible future divergence, if beneficial’’.

He stated.

BUSINESS DAY

Wednesday 07 November 2018

Shipping

Logistics

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Maritime e-Commerce

Maersk launches instant booking confirmation …to ease customers’ container booking experience Stories by Uzoamaka Anagor-Ewuzie

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ustomers of Maersk, a shipping company can now complete their bookings within seconds compared to previous waiting times of up to two hours, following the introduction of online instant booking confirmation.

This, according to Maersk, will help eliminate the delay customers experience while doing business with the company. The company says this is a top priority as the delay triggers uncertainty and extra workloads in managing supply chains for the customers.

“We are now making it as easy for our customers to book a container as booking a flight ticket. Instant booking confirmation makes it faster, easier and simpler for our customers to interact with Maersk. It is a milestone

Chibuike Rotimi Amaecchi (m), minister of transportation; Hadiza Bala Usman (r), managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), and Jean Anishere, president of WIMAFRICA, during the 2nd African Women in Maritime (WIMAFRICA) Continental Conference / Annual General Meeting in Lagos recently.

for the entire industry and a concrete example of how we are bringing our strategy to life when we improve

the customer experience through seamless digital offerings,” said Vincent Clerc, chief commercial officer, A.P.

Waterway safety: NIWA MD, entourage escape boat mishap in Lagos

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l o r u n i b e Ma mora, managing director of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), was reported to have escaped death in the Lagos inland waterways last week.

It was gathered that the boat carrying Mamora, who was on tour of the facilities of NIWA in the Lagos area office, collided with an abandoned wreck that was hidden under the brown water.

On the entourage was Muazu Sambo, area manager, Lagos Office of NIWA; Danladi Ibrahim, one time acting managing director of NIWA, journalists and several others.

According to an eye witness, the incident occurred shortly after the team inspected the NIWA CMS office facility, Apapa, Ijora, Oyingbo jetties and was heading to Osborne Foreshore to also inspect Texas connection ferries.

After inspecting Texas connection ferries, the NIWA team called for a change of boat to continue

with the facility tour of other jetties across the state.

Confirming this, Emmanuel Ilori, technical adviser to the MD of NIWA, said that it was an underwater wreck that caused the accident, adding that the present management of NIWA is seriously concerned about safety and security in the nation’s waterways.

“Safety and security of inland water ways is the priority of the present management of NIWA. We will remove wrecks and causes of wrecks and that is what we will be looking at fundamentally. So, to prevent boat mishaps on the inland waterways and to be sure that when wrecks are removed, they are properly disposed.”

Ilori said the authority would also survey under the water and place danger signs on the area where there are wrecks.

“The boat was passing on the water and it went over the wreck. The primary thing is to survey the water and identify where they wrecks are, and if we cannot remove them, we will

ask boat operators to avoid those areas. Wrecks removal is not the immediate solution but to identify where the wrecks are and begin to either remove them or mark them to put people on know.

Recall that there have been several calls for removal of wrecks in the nation’s waters which contributed to mishaps on the waterways.

Apart from wrecks, dirt in the water is sometimes responsible for accidents on Nigerian waters For instance, in August 2018, a boat travelling from CMS to Ikorodu capsised and claimed five lives.

This happened two months after another accident took place on May 25, in which 24 passengers escaped death when two boats collided and capsised in the Ojo area of the state.

Twelve passengers were not as lucky on August 20, 2017. They all died in another boat accident in the Ilashe area of the state. It was gathered that the boat capsised shortly after leaving an unauthorised jetty.

Moller - Maersk.

Clerc said that the new solution will enable customers get visibility of sailing

options with available vessel space, a list of depots with empty containers to choose from and a choice of relevant value adding services.

“More importantly, the customers will get certainty that a booking will not be cancelled at a later stage.

Due to lack of vessel space or equipment availability, around 10 percent of bookings placed in Maersk’s systems were previously either rejected or confirmed for an alternative sailing, often spurring customers to follow up with questions and requests for changes.”

Such follow-up inquiries have accounted for 15 percent of all Maersk customer service calls and chats – and close to 200,000 emails every month.

With the release of instant booking confirmation, Maersk is also introducing online booking via the Maersk App; thereby enabling instant bookings directly from the mobile phone.

This, the company says, is another function that has long been high on Maersk customers’ wish-lists, especially in emerging markets.

“Maersk operates in s e ve ra l ma rke t s w h e re mobile phones make up the primary working tool for the workforce. Here, Instant Booking Confirmation straight from the mobile phone will be a huge improvement for our customers’ supply chain managers. It will further enable trade in these markets,” said Sonny Dahl, global head of Customer Experience & Service of Maersk Line.

Instant booking confirmation is available for all customers through the online booking modules of the Maersk Line, SeaLand and Safmarine brands. This currently covers dry cargo shipments; refrigerated cargo, dangerous cargo (IMDG) while inland container yards are expected to be added in 2019.

NPA assures on attainment of ISO 9001, OHSAS 18001 certifications

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etermined to enthrone efficiency in the nation’s ports system, the management of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), has reiterated its commitment to achieving the ISO 9001 and OHSAS 18001 certifications in its harbour services.

ISO 9001 is the international standard that specifies requirements for a quality management system (QMS). Organisations use the standard to demonstrate the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements.

Hadiza Bala Usman, managing director of the NPA, who gave the assurance, has also issued a 90-day marching order to the relevant divisions and departments in the Authority to accomplish all the identified requirements needed for ensuring the successful attainment of the ISO 9001 certification as regards to the harbour services of the Authority.

Speaking at the NPA management awareness workshop held in Lagos recently on ISO certification, Usman implored all management staff to identify with the authority’s vision of

achieving the ISO compliant and certification.

The awareness workshop, which was managed by the Renner & Renner Training & Consultancy Services, was part of the activities towards getting the NPA certified and compliant to the ISO standards.

Usman, who enjoined all the workforce of the Authority to be committed to the successful actualisation of the certification, said that it would enable Nigerian ports contribute positively to the growth of the nation’s economy.

She said that the certification will further enable Nigerian port to attain relevance among other ports in the international maritime terrain especially in the sub region.

Usman pointed to the need for the NPA to address all the issues involved on the subject, adding that the management will be guided by the outcome of the workshop in its ISO compliant and certification drive.

On the implementation of the ISO project, Usman said that the management would strictly adhere to the timeline and effective tracking to ensure that all aspects of the project are adequately covered.

Ibby Iyama, project manager, who gave insight into the content of the workshop and the project, said that there was an urgent need for change in the way things are done within the harbour services of the NPA especially with a view to improving the efforts to attain the ISO certification.

According to her, harbour services being the bedrock of the authority’s operations, is at the centre of the project and it would also cover the four Pilotage Districts of the NPA and the Communication, Command, Control and Intelligence (3C1) Centre.

Iyama listed the enormous benefits that await the NPA if it achieved the ISO certification to include improved financial performance, quick turnaround time, improved traffic and business processes and other quality assures services to NPA’s vast clients.

The NPA said that similar awareness workshop would be held in all port locations in Lagos, Rivers, Calabar and Warri, within the next two weeks, with the port managers, harbour masters, senior pilots and Health Safety and Environment Officers (HSE) in attendance.

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In association with E-mail: insurancetoday@businessdayonline.com

R-L:Sachin Verma, Core Group Africa iStore country manager; Kolapo Agunloye, iStore manager; Matthew Grose, chief executive Core Group Africa and Kolapo Arogundade, iStore manager at the unveiling of the new iPhone XS and XS Max, (with STI Leasing offering financing) at the iStore Ikeja City Mall in Lagos

Stories by Modestus Anaesoronye

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over nment and stakeholders in the risk management industry has identified increasing role of risk awareness and adoption in nation building.

They believe that some of the challenges facing the nation currently, including natural catastrophes could be turned into opportunities if well harnessed.

Besides, they emphasized the importance of risks managers steeping up in their responsibility through advocacy and cultural integration.

These were the takeaways at the recently concluded 2018 National Risk Management Confab organized by the Risk Managers Society of Nigeria (RIMSON) with the theme ‘Risk Management and Nation BuildingTransforming National Challenges to Opportunities’ held in Abuja.

Winifred Ekanem Oyo-Ita, head of the Civil Service of the Federation who declared the conference open said “Government certainly needs your support as Risk Managers to effectively pre-empt most of the national challenges, be it natural disaster like flash floods ravaging several parts of the country or other socio-

economic problems” She said the application of risk management solutions to the wide spectrum of our national challenges, holds out huge potentials “for proffering solutions that could prevent or turn those adversities to opportunities” Oyo-Ita urged that the task of nation-building is a collective one stating that together we will all continue to strive towards addressing the challenges of our country in their diverse forms.

She noted that RIMSON is uniquely positioned to be one of the collaborators which the Service craves, especially in the area of providing advocacy through its awareness campaign

programmes in the quest to attract counterpart support from both Federal and State Government Agencies for the provision of land and necessary primary infrastructure in order to help reduce the cost of housing.

Sunday Olorundare Thomas, deputy Commissioner, Technical at the National Insurance (NAICOM) Speaking on the theme ‘Managing National Catastrophe Risks’, made vital statements about the imperative for reinforcing the extant disaster management policies while also stressing the need to identify and pre-empt collateral damage if and when disasters occur.

Thomas also recommended adequate and appropriate funding of disaster management and recovery programmes.

Raymond Akalonu, speaking on Enterprise Risk Management-An Overview of the Risk Management took the conference delegates through the risk management process with ample case studies. The ERM paper canvassed layers of responsibilities in ensuring the effectiveness of managing the risks of an enterprise and ensuring the smooth running of the organization with minimal risk exposures.

Jacob Adeosun, president of Risk Managers Society of Nigeria, in his address, reviewed the recent strides of RIMSON, drawing attention to the Society’s objectives, especially the quest towards making RIMSON the hub of Risk Management Education in Nigeria and ultimately in the West African Sub-region through the establishment of the Centre for Risk Management Development (CRMD).

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eading Pan African Reinsurance firm, Continental Reinsurance Plc has announced the panel of judges for the 2019 Pan African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards.

The independent judging panel will be chaired by Michael Wilson, a seasoned freelance Business and Finance journalist. Wilson joined Sky TV at its inception in 1989 and for over 20 years he was a main anchor for Sky’s coverage of major business events. Since leaving Sky, he has broadcast for the BBC, ITV, Fox News, Al-Jazeera and Arise Networks, a global television service aimed at Africa.

Other judges include: Nadia Mensah-Acogny, a Forbes Afrique journalist who was the chair of the 2018 Awards 2018 Pan African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards and Kenneth Igbomor, market news editor, CNBC West Africa. The 2019 edition will see entry of new judges namely Gareth Stokes, a professional freelance Finance journalist, who won the Pan African Journalist of the Year award in 2017 Pan African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards and Special Award in 2018, Jared Obuya, an experienced journalist who has worked with several Kenyan and International news organizations and currently a Communications Lecturer at Moi University and Shiamdass Appannah, an African insurance market expert. Shiamdass is the Founding Partner and Director/Consultant, former CEO and former Chairman of Reinsurance Solutions Group companies in Mauritius, Kenya, Cote D’Ivoire and London, UK. “This year, we bring together a highly experienced panel of judges to adjudicate the submissions. We hope that their expertise will inspire more journalists to improve their writing in matters insurance in Africa to ensure accurate reporting of insurance topics,” said Femi Oyetunji, group managing director, Continental Reinsurance Plc.

2015

Stakeholders see increasing role of risk managers in nation building

Continental Re gets judges for 2019 Pan African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards

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Pension Today

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In Association with

Time to review your retirement plans...

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ing dependency in old age.

But this cannot be achieved without the employee working consciously towards it.

Therefore, if you desire to retire happily, if you truly wish to retire into the good life after a long working career, you need to plan for it. Here are some things you need to consider as you plan for your retirement.

First of all, what is the current status of your Retirement Savings Account (RSA)? If you consider how much you have in your RSA at present vis-a-vis your current age, how long you have worked already, how much time you have left before retirement, and how much goes into your RSA monthly, that will give you an idea of how much you would likely have in your RSA when retirement eventually knocks at your door.

The next question you need to ask yourself is what

sort of lifestyle you want for yourself after retirement. Do you want to live like a king, in relative comfort or as a pauper? Do you want to tour the world to see all the beautiful islands that Mother Nature has generously bestowed on the world, or do you want to simply sit in a dilapidated hut in your village gazing into empty space with no food in your stomach? When you think about this and consider the amount you would have in your RSA on retirement, then you would know certainly whether you are on the right path.

Also, considering the present state of your health, you should ask yourself what your healthcare needs would be when you grow older and when you retire.

Then you should consider your beneficiaries or dependents. Would you want to leave something behind for them in case of death?

RC634453

Diamond Pension Fund Custodian Limited 1A, Tiamiyu Savage Street, Victoria Island, Lagos State.

Tel: 01-4613753, 2713680, 2713954 Fax: 01-2713955 Email: info@diamondpfc.com Website: www.diamondpfc.com

‘ It is incumbent upon you as an employee to research into the available pension payment options (Programmed Withdrawal and Annuity) to assist you in making the right choice when you retire

‘

he Year 2018 will soon be over and will also mark the retirement year for some people who have either reached their retirement age or may not continue with their employment in the New Year. Whatever may be the case, the critical issue is that retirement is real and will definitely come one day. How prepared you are will determine how well you are going to fare in the retirement journey.

Whether you retire happily or sadly, into relative wealth or into abject poverty, everything depends on the plans you make today.

As you make your bed, so will you lie on it.

Thanks to the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) which was introduced in Nigeria in 2004 and recently revised through the 2014 Pension Reform Bill.Pension administration in the country has been made much easier. Likewise, it has become a lot easier for an employee to choose how to retire through proper planning.

The clearly stated objectives of the CPS are: to (a) ensure that every person who worked in either the Public Service of the Federation, Federal Capital Territory or Private Sector receives his retirement benefits as and when due; (b) assist improvident individuals by ensuring that they save in order to cater for their livelihood during old age; and (c) establish a uniform set of rules, regulations and standards for the administration and payments of retirement benefits for the Public Service of the Federation, Federal Capital Territory and the Private Sector.

In other words, the CPS promises every employee minimal basic comfort in retirement, thereby reduc-

What would you want to leave behind for them? Considering the current status of your RSA, do you think you would be able to achieve that? If not, what do you do?

Indeed, the earlier you do the mathematics, the better. This will help you to know exactly the kind of retirement that awaits you, whether or not there is really something tangible to look forward to after these long years of sweating it out in the workplace. It will also help you to know whether your present plan will do or whether you need a change of tactics. And if it becomes very clear that the cumulative accruals into your RSA won’t guarantee you a relatively good life or meet your needs at the end of your working career, then it may be time to begin to consider making additional voluntary contribution.

Additional Voluntary

Contribution (AVC) refers to the additional sum an employee voluntarily contributes to his Retirement Savings Account besides the total contributions being made by him and his employer. AVC is captured in the Pension Reform Act 2004 as amended in 2014, and is meant to afford employees who might have need to plan for bigger pack the opportunity to do so while still in active employment. An employee willing to make additional voluntary contribution is advised to liaise with his employer to remit a certain additional amount of money alongside the statutory pension contribution to his chosen PFA. The money so contributed, alongside the employee’s statutory contribution, is invested by the Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) and returns generated are credited into the contributor’s RSA. Then there is need for every employee contributor to the CPS to ensure the safety and growth of their contributions. Note that your PFA is mandated to periodically forward your RSA statement to you, which helps you to monitor the status of your account. However, you can also monitor the status of your RSA using any of the self-service channels provided by your PFA. And if at any time you discover that your monthly remittances are less than the amount being deducted from your monthly salaries, liaise with your employer showing your RSA statement for the period in dispute and ensure that the differences are resolved.

Finally, it is incumbent upon you as an employee to research into the available pension payment options (Programmed Withdrawal and Annuity) to assist you in making the right choice when you retire.

This section is created to increase awarness and deepen knowledge about the contributory pension scheme.

If you have enquiries or contributions, send to this e-mail: diamondpfcbusday@yahoo.com

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E-mail: insurancetoday@businessdayonline.com

AFDB to boost climate risk financing, insurance for African countries Stories by Modestus Anaesoronye

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he African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved the Africa Disaster Risks Financing (ADRiFi) Programme, the institution’s first climate risk management programme to boost resilience and response to climate shocks in regional member countries.

The comprehensive programme, open to regional member countries, will enhance their ability to evaluate climaterelated risks and costs, respond to disasters and review adaptation measures at both national and sub-national levels. It will also facilitate initial financing for countries in need of support.

The programme’s initial phase is expected to run from 2019 to 2023.

The enhanced resilience and adaptation of countries to the negative impacts of climate change, as well as disaster risk insurance cover, will reduce the vulnerability of the poor to climate change and act as a safeguard against loss of livelihoods in communities, espe-

cially for smallholder farmers.

Nine countries have already expressed interest in participating in the programme– Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.

“Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change, prone to a wide variety of natural disasters including droughts, floods and tropical cyclones.

However, disaster risk management suffers from inadequate financing and challenges in the deployment of available funds”, said Atsuko Toda, Bank Director for Agricultural Finance and Rural Development.

“This programme is a significant step to help reduce exposure and vulnerability of African countries, and will create a system to absorb, adapt and aid recovery of these countries from climate shocks,” Toda said.

ADRiFi will promote disaster response mechanisms such as sovereign parametric indexbased insurance, for which payouts will be disbursed automatically and in timely manner when a pre-defined risk threshold is exceeded. It is estimated that every US$ 1 spent on ex-ante intervention through the pro-

L-R: Jacob Adeosun, president, RIMSON and Mohammed Nasirudeen, vice chancellor, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida University, Lapai, Niger State during the Risk Managers Society Annual Conference in Abuja

gramme will save US$ 4.40 in ex-post disaster relief measures for a response carried out six months after the event.

The ADRiFi programme is directly aligned with the Bank’s ‘High 5’ priorities, particularly “Feed Africa” and “Improving

Insurers seeks to deepen value creation in service offerings

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he Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria is seeking to boost industry capacity with technical sckills that drives value creation in consumer services. This is coming in the form of seminar scheduled to hold beginning from tomorrow to Friday at the Premier Hotel Ibadan, Oyo State.

The Seminar which has been aptly themed “Increasing Insurance Penetration through value creation”, is slated to have as guest speaker, Rector College of Insurance and Financial Management, Yeside Oyetayo; and will also have a sterling line up of discussants which features, Rufus Olubunmi Olumide of NEM Insurance plc; Joseph Oladokun

of Mutual Benefit Assurance Plc, Lekan Oguntunde of Sovereign Trust Insurance Plc and a representative of NAICOM assembled to do justice to the theme paper.

Muftau Oyegunle, chairman of the Education Committee and Council member of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, stated that the theme was borne out of the need to intensify the clamor for insurance practitioners to use value as the focal point of their service offerings. He said “Insurance companies have to revamp their value proposition and hinge implementation on promoting excellent customer experience. This will greatly improve market penetration and equally increase the number of persons who embrace

insurance and have positive assertions. In this age where market saturation is prevalent, offering customers the right value proposition is the difference between just surviving or thriving in the Insurance Industry”. He charged Insurance practitioners to ensure attendance and participation in order to obtain the full benefits of the seminar.

The education Seminar is one of the annual education programmes organised by the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), the body established by statute to determine the standard of skill and knowledge required for the professional and ethical practice of the business of insurance in Nigeria

the Quality of Life of Africans”.

It is also aligned with the Bank’s Climate Change Action Plan II (2016-2020) policy.

The Bank has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with The African Risk Capacity to cooperate in preparing, developing

and implementing projects and programmes in climate change and risk resilience in member countries. As a key partner, ARC will assist member countries with policies on drought risk pools and other sovereign disaster risk.

African Alliance recognised for Service Excellence

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igeria’s foremost insurance company, African Alliance Insurance Plc, has won an award of excellence from the textile workers under the aegis of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN) at its 40thanniversary celebration. As part of the celebration themed “NUTGTWN@ 40: Repositioning Labour and Industry for the Next 40 years”, the Union honoured African Alliance Insurance Plc for its excellent service delivery, partnership and tactical contribution to the Union.

The event took place at the NECA House Auditorium, CBD, Alausa, Ikeja.

John Adaji, the resident of the Union stated that African Alliance has played a major role in the success of the Union. He commended the company’s prompt responsiveness and implementation of policies that have been instrumental in the success of the Union, since 2013.

While commending all the brands that have worked with them over the years, Mr. Adaji acknowledged the Union’s decision to sustain a mutually beneficial relationship with African Alliance Insurance in the last five years. According to the President, when the Union decided to get an Insurance company on board, they chose

two Insurance companies including African Alliance Insurance Plc but made the strategic decision to continue with African Alliance Insurance only because the company showed great understanding of the vision of the company and was willing to give maximum support to its vision.

Adaji said: “We will continue with African Alliance Insurance Plc because they are accessible.

They respond to enquiries and pay beneficiaries as at when due. It is why we made African Alliance the sole manager of our accounts right from the beginning”.

Victor Peters, head of Agency Department, African Alliance Insurance Plc and Mr Ossai, Agency Manager were at the event to accept the award on behalf of the company.

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BUSINESS DAY

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Tax Issues

African economies sustain progress in domestic resource mobilisation – Report IHEANYI NWACHUKWU

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frica has sustained gains in domestic resource mobilisation made since 2000, as tax revenues remained stable in 2016, according to Revenue Statistics in Africa 2018.

Providing internationally comparable data for 21 participating countries, the report finds that the average tax-to-GDP ratio was 18.2percent in 2016, the same level as in 2015, which represents a strong improvement from 13.1percent in 2000.

The third edition of Revenue Statistics in Africa, released today in Paris during the 18th International Economic Forum on Africa, shows that tax-to-GDP

ratios varied widely across African countries, ranging from 7.6percent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to 29.4percent in Tunisia in 2016.

Six countries -Mauritius, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, Togo and Tunisia- had tax-to-GDP ratios greater than or equal to 20percent in 2016. In comparison, the average tax-to-GDP ratio for Latin America and the Caribbean was 22.7percent and 34.3percent for OECD countries in 2016.

Revenue Statistics in Africa is a joint initiative between the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), the African Union Commission (AUC) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its Development Centre, with the support of the European Union.

The publication, which now covers 21 countries, shows that

revenue trends are mixed. Between 2015 and 2016, the tax-toGDP ratios of 11 countries increased while those of 10 countries in the sample decreased.

Botswana registered the highest increase (1.3 percentage points) followed by Mali (1.2 percentage points). The largest decreases (of over 2.0 percentage points) occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger.

The changes in tax-to-GDP ratios were primarily due to economic factors. Declines in oil prices coupled with lower activity among mining and oil companies contributed to the decreases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger, while a significant increase in the sale of diamonds in Botswana has increased revenues. In contrast, the increased tax-to-GDP ratio in Mali is partly explained by improvements to tax

administration.

African economies continue to rely heavily on taxes on goods and services, which accounted for 54.6percent of total tax revenues in the Africa (21) average. Value-added taxes (VAT) alone accounted for 29.3percent of revenues.

However, the contribution of income taxes is increasing: taxes on income and profits accounted for 34.3percent of total revenues across the Africa (21) in 2016 and have contributed the most to growth in tax revenues since 2000, increasing by 2.6percent of GDP to reach 6.2percent of GDP in 2016.

Corporate income tax revenue increased by 1.4 percentage points over this period to 2.8percent of GDP, while revenue from personal income tax rose from 2.1percent to 3percent of GDP in 2016, a historic high.

The report also contains data

on non-tax revenues, which continued to decline across the 21 countries on average in 2016 but remain an important source of income in certain countries. These revenues, which include income from natural resources and grants, exceeded 5percent of GDP in nine of the 21 countries.

Revenue Statistics in Africa is an important part of the African Union’s Strategy for the Harmonization of Statistics in Africa (SHaSA) and is aligned with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and SDG 17.1.

This edition contains a special chapter on SHaSA, identifying its approach to establishing an efficient statistical system that covers the political, economic, social, environmental and cultural development and integration of Africa, as well as the role of Revenue Statistics in Africa in this strategy.

Six steps to manage tax controversy ROB HANSON

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n analyzing our survey results, we identified six areas where organisations can focus to adapt to this changing environment.

Adopt a strategic approach to tax risk management The survey shows long-anticipated drivers of tax risk have become a reality, so it’s important that businesses be prepared to confront whatever form it takes, from responding to aggressive audits or challenges to transfer pricing arrangements, to managing taxrelated reputational concerns, or examining existing business and cross-border structures.

An integrated, holistic, global and end-to-end approach can help businesses stop controversy before it occurs through the use of topdown governance, systems and processes that enhance monitoring and compliance. This approach also helps businesses track for visibility, oversight and risk assessment so they can better manage controversies that do occur.

And choosing the most appropriate dispute resolution mechanism — whether it’s exam management, appeals management, arbitration or litigation — allows for faster resolution so businesses can resume focus on their core mission.

Be proactive in managing tax and reputational risk To cope with BEPS-driven enhanced reporting and disclosure requirements and greater audit scrutiny, ensure your tax department has adequate knowledge, staffing, budget and other necessary resources to meet the new demands on the tax function. Assess reputation risks that may arise and ensure the board and C-suite

stakeholders fully understand that their company’s tax profile is both a financial and reputational issue.

Develop, with the board’s advice and consent, a clear policy explaining the company’s approach to tax planning. In developing this policy, keep in mind that the board, CEO and company representatives must be comfortable with making the policy available publicly and, if necessary, be prepared to defend it.

At the same time, decide how transparent your business wants to be in terms of disclosing the amount of taxes you pay in the countries where you do business; once a decision is made, develop a plan for communicating it to external stakeholders and tax authorities in a consistent way.

Adopt a global approach to managing tax controversy In a world of increased information sharing among tax authorities, aggressive tax enforcement and associated reputational risks, maintaining a global perspective on all the jurisdictions in which your business operates is critical.

Implementing a globally coordinated approach enhances your ability to manage and prioritize risk and could help mitigate the impact of controversy.

Creating a global tax audit management framework, a global compliance platform and a tax controversy management reporting framework and making use of pre-filing tools and economic modeling can bring clarity, confidence and more certainty.

A global approach can deliver benefits across the enterprise: a reduced audit risk, greater control over audits involving sensitive issues, a proactive management of tax controversy and increased knowledge-sharing.

Titus Osawe, deputy director, Directorate of Inspection and Monitoring; Nelson Anumaka, deputy director, Directorate of Corporate Governance; Daniel Asapokhai, dxecutive decretary/CEO, FRC; Adeshola Amoo, assistant director, Directorate of Auditing Practices Standards; and Vincent Okhiria, assistant director, Directorate of Accounting Standards – Private and Public at the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria inaugural meeting of the audit regulation working group.

CITN meets FRC to review cost of multiple registrations by professionals

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he leadership of the Chartered Institute of Taxation Of Nigeria (CITN) led a delegation to the office of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN) on a courtesy visit. They were received by the Executive Secretary of the FRCN Daniel Asapokhai. The purpose of the visit amongst other things was to request for a review of the cost of multiple registrations by professionals registering with the FRCN and to request for collaboration between the CITN and FRCN in ways that can be mutually beneficial and supportive to both organisations in fulfilling

their mandates.

The Executive Secretary of FRCN assured that effective January 2019, new rates for registration with the Council would be implemented and the concerns of the Institute would be taken into consideration.

Other issues highlighted during the visit are that FRCN would be conducting a training and sensitisation in future while CITN could be involved by contributing resources (facilitators). Specific areas of involvement by both bodies would be discussed in due course, according to CITN in a statement. “FRCN would be requiring input to its codes

from time to time. It would welcome that a mechanism be put in place for a seamless input from the Institute when the need arises,” according to Fisayo Awogbade, Registrar/ Chief Executive, CITN. FRCN noted an ongoing work towards having a geographical distribution of accounting professionals and urged the Institute, if it does not have such data, to work towards having same. This would provide information on whether tax professionals are properly distributed in key commercial centres and the gender spread of the Institute’s membership.

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Feature

Corporate volunteering: Future of sustainability?

Modern organisations are faced with a rapidly changing world in which a new set of criteria that takes into account profit, people and the planet is used to measure a company’s impact. Frank Eleanya writes that sustainability is assuming a new form: corporate volunteering.

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successful year for most corporate organizations is often underlined by how healthy the profit margin for the fiscal year was. Make the shareholders very happy and everything is alright, but is it really? How about a year in which employees feel like they are actually part of something meaningful, something life-changing; like their contributions were really making the dream impact in the lives of everyday people?

Incorporating sustainability into corporate strategy can raise a lot of questions such as how do you measure sustainability?

How do you make sustainability work for your business? How do you define sustainability for your corporation?

Sustainability refers to the ability or capacity of an organisation to endure over a period of time.

Organisations exist in an environment. The ability to endure over time means an organisation adapts to other independent elements in the environment such as employees and other stakeholders.

The Triple Bottom Line is one of the main systems being used by businesses to assess the profits they are making through their corporate sustainability solutions.

The Triple Bottom Line method asks a company to see beyond the traditional bottom line of business to the profits that the business makes socially, environmentally, and economically. Measuring a business using the Triple Bottom Line is one of the best markers of how sustainable a business is, and how profitable it really is.

A survey conducted by Deloitte – Deloitte’s 2016 Impact Survey found that prospective employees would be more inclined to join a company that is not just profit driven but seeks to change people’s lives positively.

Similarly, in the 2016 Cone Communications Employee Engagement Study, almost 75 percent of employees said their jobs were fulfilling only when they were provided opportunities to make a positive impact at work. 51 percent of employees said they would not work for a company that does not have a strong commitment to having a positive social and environmental impact.

It is part of a growing trend, in which prospective employees are looking for more than a steady paycheck from their future employers.

The job fulfillment has gone beyond being financially buoyant to doing something considered relevant and valuable to other people.

That is why companies are focusing on ensuring employees live a more sustainable lifestyle, corporate sustainability has become a buzzword in companies, big and small, have named sustainability as a key priority moving forward.

For many businesses, sustainability has only become a recent priority.

This is partly because corporate responsibility has not always been a major concern for customers, employees or management personnel.

This, of course, begs the question of what exactly sustainability means, Sustainability is most often defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. It has three main pillars: economic, environmental, and social. These three pillars are informally referred to as people, planet and profits.

Corporate sustainability is a new business paradigm. It is evolutionary in some ways but revolutionary in many others. It is evolutionary because it is an intersection among four well established concepts: sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder theory and corporate accountability theory. However, it is revolutionary because it departs radically from traditional business model in which profit maximization is supreme (mono-dimensional) to a business model which is driven by the three dimensions of sustainability: social, ecological, and economical (poly-dimensional). This emerging revolutionary business model recognizes the necessity for corporate growth and profitability.

Its uniqueness and novelty lie in the fact that it requires corporate performance to be evaluated based on a triple bottom line, which comprises: social, ecological and financial components, also known as the three Ps: people, planet, profit.

How does Employee Volunteering tie to sustainability To provide proper sustainability leadership in Nigeria, company executives have to develop a keen interest in sustainability issues through self-development and understanding of the basic principles espoused. This will contribute to the entrenchment of CSR and sustainability practices in Nigerian organizations. That is why one of Nigerians top financial institutions, Access Bank started the journey in 2008 to create a sustainable future for Nigeria, and indeed Africa, after the establishment of the Corporate Social Responsibility function within the bank. Since then, the bank has continued to develop impactful initiatives that have strategically addressed the local community’s key social, environmental and economic challenges, and that is why the bank decided to commemorate the Sustainability Awareness week, a week geared towards deepening the Sustainability culture among its employees.

Giving a week to encourage sustainability is a first in the financial industry, part of the activities will be the workshops and training on sustainability and the employees volunteering day, a day dedicated

L-R: Omobolanle Victor-Laniyan, head, Sustainability, Access Bank Plc; Arshad Rab, CEO of the European Organization for Sustainable Development; Frank Mentrup, Mayor of Karlsruhe; Seyi Kumapayi, Chief Financial Officer , Access Bank Plc., and Amaechi Okobi, group head Corporate Communications, Access Bank Plc. at the Karlsruhe Awards in Germany, recently.

to employees sharing their experience working on projects to give back to communities of their choice in Lagos. Access Bank has encouraged employees to team up and come up with projects to touch the lives of a community or people they chose. This has enabled the employees to make a difference Corporate volunteering is not the same as when employees in their spare take part in charitable activities. Corporate volunteering rather is a structured company policy that not only supports employee’s own efforts but gives them the time and opportunities to do so.

Deloitte’s survey also found that skills-based volunteering presents an opportunity for employees to develop their professional and leadership skills, and often results in increased productivity, and ultimately increased employee retention.

In other words, it could be a major contributor to the company’s sustainability. Notwithstanding it being voluntary, a significant number of big organizations are introducing it and are reaping the beneficial impact on the behavior of their employees. Its growth in the United States, for instance, has led to the formation of the Civic 50 – the fifty most communityminded US companies. 46 percent of them has formally used community engagement activities for professional skill development purposes. Mars Incorporated, the company behind notable brands like Wrigley, M&M’s, and pet brand Pedigree, places a high premium on volunteer programs for their associates. One of the programs they offer is the Mars Volunteer Program (MVP).

The European Community also

promotes it with the Volunteering Awards which has clear guidelines for prospective recipients.

In Nigeria, Access Bank Plc, a chief advocate of sustainability is at the forefront of Employee Volunteering. The bank’s employee volunteering programme – an initiative that empowers more than 11,000 members of staff at Access Bank to give back to their communities – has delivered a number of benefits, with more than 15,000 students, 1,000 vulnerable children and 4,000 hospital patients positively impacted. The Access Bank Lagos City Marathon, meanwhile, demonstrates the bank’s support for healthy living.

How does corporate volunteering impact businesses?

One way corporate volunteering could impact a bank like Access Bank is increased collaboration among its employees. By working together to execute a project, employees can improve collaboration in the workplace. This is quite unlike what an organization will get from having endless meetings.

While volunteering the employees feel uninhibited to relate. At that point they are not competing for a position or gain favors, they are simply working together to change the course of life for an underprivileged. In essence, they are connecting on a human level, an opportunity you do not find in the office environment.

Another benefit of corporate volunteering is potential to change negative narrative or press against the company. Agreed, it may totally transform the company from a black to white, it does certainly help to give people a fresh perspective about an organization.

According to the Pulse Survey, 40

percent of a company’s reputation is determined by volunteering and corporate social responsibility.

Corporate volunteering also imbues a new sense of self-awareness in an employee that goes beyond just the volunteer experience.

This awareness has an impact on decision making, the ability to coordinate and manage conflict.

The awareness could come just from listening to a project recipient express their pains and tell their life stories.

Corporate volunteering is also becoming a major staple for attracting millennials for organizations. A Gallup report found that about half of millennials said they value things other than a fat paycheck when searching for a new job. They prioritized opportunities for growth and development ahead of big salaries. In other words, millennials are most likely to stay with an organization that has opportunities for development.

It is equally important to note that millennials are looking for opportunities to give back in tangible ways. The 2015 Millennial Impact report showed that 77 percent of millennials want to donate skills rather than money. According to an expert, millennials are altruistically motivated, “They want to leave their world better than they found it.”

Finally, corporate volunteering also offers an opportunity for networking for employees. Mick Yates, a HR expert wrote “Corporate volunteering should be done with networking in mind. The opportunity is too valuable to miss.

Naturally, volunteering provides so much more value than just adding contacts to the phone. That being said, the chance for networking to add value is unprecedented.”

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FG plans rail line to connect 36 states of the federation – Osinbajo CONRAD OMODIAGBE

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ice President, Yemi Osinbajo, on Tuesday, announced the federal government intention to connect all the 36 states of the federation by rail, though, working with foreign investors.

Presenting his keynote address to investors tagged “Investment Landscape in Nigeria” at the just concluded Nigeria – Canada Investment Summit in Abuja, Osinbajo stated that through the Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP), key developmental areas have been identified for private and foreign investments to help achieve goals of inclusive economic growth.

According to him, the ERGP focus labs identified about $32.5bn worth of investments in different sectors which can create job

opportunities.

“Also, infrastructure is another key area of investment especially the railway where the Federal Government intends to connect all the 36 states through a railway line and will require investors to key into the project by way of Public Private Partnership to develop the sector through investment and concession,” Osinbajo stated.

Organized by the Nigerian High Commission to Canada and Prime Essentials Development and Investments Limited (PEDI) with the theme: “Fostering Strong Business Partnerships into the Future” the summit provided a viable platform of interaction for both parties to learn about each other, especially for Canadian investors to acclimatize themselves with the opportunities in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, Nigerian Investment Promotion Coun-

cil is working on generating a data base for all investors to discover the abundant business opportunities in the country to further economic ties and development,” the Vice President said.

He also emphasized that the current administration through the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), is working towards removing business bottlenecks encountered by investors.

At the event, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, reiterated call for a Public Private Partnership (PPP) saying that diversification and industrialisation cannot be achieved without private partners working more closely with the government. “Industrialization is the heart of the economy.

Trade drives investment and investment then leads to efficient industrialization.

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BUSINESS DAY

Estate surveyors, others seek new opportunities in mining, extractive industry ...as conference on mineral assets valuation kicks off in Minna CHUKA UROKO

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s part of strategies for building capacity, estate surveyors and valuers are collaborating with relevant stakeholders including Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, Bank of Industry and the Federal University of Technology, Minna to explore new opportunities in the mining and extractive industry in Nigeria.

The land economists who are also the foremost built environment professionals are currently in Minna, the Niger State capital, with their partners for a 4-day conference with focus and discussions on mineral assets valuation.

The conference, packaged by the Plant & Equipment Faculty of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors & Valuers (NIESV), is aimed at opening up relatively new operational spheres for the prac-

titioners that would be unveiled and tapped into as well as vastly enrich the knowledge of the estate surveyors through useful engagement with industry players that the real estate professionals can interact with through the training workshop segment.

A major highpoint of the conference is that valuers and key participants would not only be trained on mineral assets valuation, but also be issued with certificates of competence by the Federal University of Technology, Minna. The conference targets registered estate surveyors and valuers, probationers, students, lecturers as well as professionals in the extractive and mining industry.

“The choice of Minna is strategic because of the rich mineral deposits in the area that would allow participants to have real life experience of physically sighting the minerals being discussed”, explained Osato Rotimi Osa-

waye, Head of NIESV Plant & Equipment Faculty.

Osawaye explained that the presence of the University was also considered along with its Mineral Assets Department and the experienced lecturers who have much to deliver on the subject matter. But the facilitators are not only drawn from the academia, but also from the private sector and industry practitioners, not only locally but also from abroad.

Available records show that, so far, only three countries namely Australia, Canada and South Africa have globally recognized valuation standards in the mining and extractive industry. Osawaye recalled that, earlier in September, some members of the NIESV Faculty had attended a similar summit on mineral asset valuation at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and garnered experience that would be very useful for the ongoing conference.

NSCDC gets new commandant in Anambra, parades two oil bunkering suspects EMMANUEL NDUKUBA

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bianauju Obiajulu has assumed duty as the Commandant of Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) in Anambra State. Obiajulu’s redeployment followed the demise of the former helmsmen who died on September 2, 2018.

Obiajulu who, on Tuesday, paraded two suspects for alleged involvement in illegally dealing on adulterated diesel, said she came with full zeal to rid Anambra of all criminal elements.

She said the suspects were intercepted in Uga, Aguata Council Area on October 30 and were still under investigation, saying that any involvement in the

petroleum sector without proper licensing and approval was an economic sabotage. She applauded the security situation in Anambra, adding that she had come to build on the success with great vigour.

The commandant threatened zero tolerance for crime and corruption and promised to treat residents with respect. “I have come to key into the security architecture of Anambra and want to warn the remaining criminal elements in the state to shift base.

“We are going to work more closely with the communities for better information gathering and sharing; we shall treat everybody with respect just as my officers must be respected”.

L-R: Callistus Obetta, group executive, technology & services, FirstBank; Helen Komolafe-Opadeji, librarian, University of Ibadan; Abel Idowu Olayinka, vice chancellor, University of Ibadan; Adesola Adeduntan, MD/CEO, FirstBank; Olanike Adeyemo, deputy vice chancellor, University of Ibadan and Rosie Ebe-Arthur, group head, human capital management & development, FirstBank during the University of Ibadan (UI) Graduate Recruitment/Career fair held at the university.

Nigeria must raise additional 777m birds to curb imported frozen chicken - PAN RAZAQ AYINLA, Abeokuta

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body of Nigerian poultry farmers under the aegis of Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) has declared that Nigeria must raise additional 777.4 million birds which include broilers, spent layers and cockerels per annum if there must be a drastic reduction in the consumption of imported frozen chicken.

The Poultry farmers also disclosed that 15 billion eggs are consumed in Nigeria annually from 59 million laying birds and accounts for 80 per capita consumption of eggs by Nigerians annually, whereas, South Africa consumes 180 eggs; China, Mexico and the United States consume over 300 eggs per person annually, which queries Nigerian poul-

try farmers capacity to produce more birds and eggs.

Speaking at the 8th Nigeria Poultry Show - Abeokuta 2018 organised by Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) on Tuesday, Mukhtar Yakasai, the deputy managing director of Grand Cereals Limited noted that the production capacity of Nigerian poultry farmers is too low compared to the total annual demands of chicken, eggs and other poultry products.

Yakasai explained that visible shortfall in the production capacity of the poultry farmers and the serious desire to meet local demand for poultry products which stands at 1.24 million metric tons of chicken meat (777,480,000 birds) annually still accountable for imports of all sorts of frozen products.

The situation, he said, does

not only kill the economy but also causes unchecked capital flights and loss of employment opportunities for millions of Nigerians.

“Yes, the Poultry industry is not yet meeting the need of Nigerian consumers for eggs.

Results from research into Animal Feed Manufacturing in Nigeria for 2017 show that 15 billion eggs are consumed in Nigeria annually from 59 million laying birds.

“Although, we have the capacity to produce more eggs as the market opportunity exists, however, dynamics of the market and inefficiencies in the value chain still place eggs at prices unaffordable for the average Nigerian household.

At the same time, farmers periodically experience egg gluts that depress prices leading to losses and thus discouraging new investments.

2019: Credible election will attract foreign direct investment, says Okowa

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elta State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, on Tuesday said free, fair and credible 2019 general elections will attract foreign direct investment and boost Nigeria’s respect in the committee of nation.

Governor Okowa made the disclosure when the recently inaugurated executive committee of the Delta State chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) led by Sylvanus Okorote paid him a courtesy visit in Asaba.

“We need to do a lot more to ensure that our elections are free, fair and credible; I hope that the INEC and security agencies will play their part, but it falls on every Nige-

rian to ensure that we have free and fair elections and stand up and speak the truth; 2019 elections is a critical moment in the history of this country,” Governor Okowa said.

According to the governor, “the Church should pray for our country Nigeria and the state; the Church should make its position known that we can have free and fair elections in Nigeria because, if we have credible elections, the comity of nations will have respect for us in the country and there will be direct foreign investment and the resource base of the country will develop.”

The governor who used the occasion to reel out efforts of his administration

to construct, Warri/Sapele road, especially the Enerhen Junction; trans Warri/ Ode-Itsekiri road and the Ughelli/Asaba road, stated that the continuous partnership between the church and government can only lead to positive results.

He noted that the partnership between the church, traditional institutions and government must be strengthened for the state to develop and grow.

Governor Okowa thanked members of CAN for their prayers and assured that “as we enter the Yuletide season, security have bern beefed up while there are efforts to upgrade the Asaba Airport to international standards.

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Wednesday 07 November 2018

Shaping people into a team

The Former senator and Secretary Of State talks about courage, collaboration and recovering from Setbacks Life’s Work: An interview with John Kerry Alison Beard

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fter a peripatetic childhood and a stint as a naval officer in Vietnam, John Kerry came home to Massachusetts and dedicated his life to public service: as a war protester, a district attorney, a lieutenant governor and a U.S. senator, a seat he held for 28 years. He narrowly lost the 2004 U.S. presidential election but went on to lead the State Department from 2013 to 2017.

What did your time in the Navy teach you about teamwork?

It was the military training from start to finish that taught me management skills, leadership, accountability, hierarchy — all things that are critical to any kind of effective organization and team.

We were trained at length together.

Each person had a job and knew what he was doing. You learned to take care of each other, move quickly and exercise command decisions.

What should every leader do on his or her first day in a new role, whether it’s navy captain or secretary of state?

Listen. But also come in with clearly defined standards and goals that people understand right up front. One of the greatest deficits of leadership is to not command respect for knowing where you want to go. If people have doubts about what the mission is or how it will be carried out, you’ve got a problem. That’s true whether you’re on a military mission or in politics or in business.

But when you’re listening and getting different advice from all sides, how do you set that agenda?

That’s what executive leadership is all about. You collect the opin-

ions, but you’ve also got to have your own instincts and the ability to choose the input most relevant to the decision you need to make.

When the roles get more complex — chairing the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, or serving as secretary of state — how do you prioritize your work?

Well, when you’re a Cabinet secretary, the principal priorities are set by the big boss, the president.

In the Obama administration we had a very, very large agenda: refugees, nuclear weapons, extremism, terrorism, human trafficking. In that role you also have an agenda that’s thrust on the U.S. by virtue of our role as the leader of the free world. We’re in crisis on that right now, because we don’t have the kind of executive leadership we need or deserve. We don’t have the in-depth analysis and curiosity and intellectual capacity and credibility that motivates other people.

You’ve served as a change agent over the course of your career — as a Vietnam War protester and as a senator when your party was in the minority. How do you go into a big bureaucracy and begin to fix it?

You jump in feet first. I’ve always believed that the role of government is to take care of people, to

represent them, to be thoughtful about and responsive to their needs. That’s who you work for.

Unfortunately, we’ve watched a slow, deep, insidious corruption from too much money and a lack of accountability driven by the gerrymandering of election districts.

Right now I think the single most important strategy is to recognize the power of voters to make a profound course correction in the midterm elections. I saw it in 1972.

We took Earth Day and translated it into a targeted campaign. We labeled 12 congressmen who’d voted badly on environmental issues the Dirty Dozen, and we defeated seven of them. Then the survivors knew that this was a voting issue — so what happened? The Clean Air Act, marine mammal protection, coastal zone management. We created the EPA, and Richard Nixon felt enough pressure that he signed it into law even though he obviously wasn’t an ardent environmentalist. That’s what has to happen now.

Accountability for the presidency has to be a voting issue. So does a better, more affordable health care system, and so do workplace issues, particularly wages. When 52% of America’s income is going to 1% of Americans, you have an unsustainable political equation.

You’re advocating for a grassroots uprising. But in

the past, congressmen and senators could find common ground and fix these problems. How can we achieve that again?

Those in power have to decide that it’s important. They have to stand up courageously and say, “I’m not going to get dragged into this party orthodoxy or tribalism in our political structure. I’m going to fight to do what’s best for the country and to keep the bipartisanship of the Senate on track.” The American people elect representatives to go to Washington and get the job done. When you don’t have a budget year after year, when you don’t fix something that everyone knows is broken — like immigration — because you want to create a wedge issue to exploit politically, you are complicit.

You talk in your book about how compartmentalizing can help even archenemies learn to work together.

Yes. Take Russia and Putin. What they’ve been doing in our elections is absolutely unacceptable.

What they’ve done in Ukraine is unacceptable. What they did in Crimea is unacceptable, and we stood up to that with very strong sanctions. But you have to compartmentalize because at the same time, you’re working with Russia on getting chemical weapons out of Syria or the Iran nuclear agreement or the Paris climate change accord. Ronald Reagan compartmentalized when he focused on the evil empire but then asked Gorbachev to meet with him in Reykjavík so they could get out of a wasteful, insane arms race. It’s the only way to run a large nation and make important things happen.

But how can you bring parties or nations locked in terrible conflict to the table?

Create a framework in which they see that their own political survival depends on their participating.

You’ll get the fastest response

c 2017 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate

you’ve ever seen in your life.

You’ve had some huge setbacks in your political life, not least losing the 2004 presidential election. After those experiences, how did you reset and recover?

You look at the alternatives — crying into your teacup, pulling away from the field, becoming a hermit — and acknowledge that those are pretty stupid choices. I was not going to be cowed. I was not going to quit. The issues I was fighting for didn’t all suddenly go away. So I just decided, I’m going back to work.

After your time as a protester and an attorney, why did you choose to enter politics?

Because I felt that the best way to make the government work was to run for office, represent people and build the movement inside Congress. For a long time that path worked. Look at civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Look at what President Obama did with health care. Nothing gave me more pleasure than working in committee to come up with meaningful legislation that could pass and change the lives of people who didn’t have health insurance.

You wrote that while developing that legislation, you were determined not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Yes. Ted Kennedy always talked about how, earlier in his career, he’d had a chance to get a partial health care bill passed, but other members of Congress said, “No, we’ve got to hold out for a fully paid government program.” So instead they got nothing for 35 years. When health care came up again, I and others argued that sometimes you need to take what you can get and build on it. That’s a very important lesson for anybody in anything. You don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

Thursday 08 November 2018

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Interview Nothing is better than government listening, feeling the pulse of investors - Gbededo Paul Gbededo, Group Managing Director of Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc says there is no better way to improve investments in the country than government listening and feeling the pulse of investors. In this interview at the just concluded Nigerian Economic Summit (#NES24), Gbededo also speaks with JOHN OSADOLOR and KEHINDE AKINTOLA on the company’s backward integration programme, and investments in Nigeria. Excerpts:

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hat is the progress report on your backward integration projects across the country?

The philosophy of Flour Mills is to feed the nation every day. Whatever Nigerians eat we will like to put it on their table and in order to achieve that we run five value chains. We have the starch value chain; we have the sweetener value chain; we have protein; we have oil and fats, and then we have the grains. For all these value chains, we do backward integrations. If you take for instance, the starch which mainly is cassava, we have a cassava plantation in Kwara State. We have a 5,000 hectares plantation where we produce cassava tubers.

But what do we do with cassava tubers? We process cassava tubers in our cassava processing plant in Ososa and convert that cassava to high quality cassava flour. We currently also convert cassava to garri and in the near future we are going to convert to starch. So that is how garri was borne out of our backward integration programme. We are making sure that we use local crops, add value and put food on the tables of Nigerians. We have for instance also the sweeteners, you know that FMN has a sugar refinery in Apapa and we are one of the three sugar refineries in the country and part of the sugar master plan of Nigeria is that you should have your own sugar estate doing your own sugarcanes.

So it’s part of our backward integration and you know that recently, in the month of March this year, March 15 precisely, the president of Nigeria commissioned our Sunti Sugar Estate in our plantation. We have a mill there that will crush the sugarcanes, we are developing the sugarcanes in the farm there. So we have these value chains we are driving through backward integration and we are making progress. Even though we may have some challenges here and there but working with government and working with our partners we are overcoming those challenges and we hope that we will continue to improve our local content and ensure that we add value to Nigerian crops thereby putting food on the tables of Nigerians.

You’ve invested in flour, sugar and others, how much will you say FMN has invested into the economy in the last 10 years?

In the last 10 years, we easily have invested a billion dollars and in the next 10 years too, we hope to invest

can always result in flooding in downstream and we are in downstream in Kainji and Jebba. So we are working with these organizations and the presidency to see that we all can work together to have a proper water management that will help not just to generate electricity but also agriculture so that we all come out as a win-win.

that much as well. Our investments have been in the agro-allied businesses majorly. Like I said, about our sugar investment not just in the downstream but also in the upstream, we have our investment in our feed mill, you know we have the biggest feed mill in sub-Saharan Africa located in Oyo State and also Cross River State. And we have vegetable oil refinery that we developed in Ibadan, Oyo state as well and the vegetable oil refinery used to refine kernels, it extracts kernel oil, extracts palm oil and also extracts soy oil and refine it into vegetable oil for the Nigerian people. We have also expanded our flour milling operation over the last 10 years as well. So all these put together is easily over a billion dollars that we have invested in the last 10 years.

Let’s take a look at the Sunti Sugar Company you mentioned. Speak to us about the challenges and how much progress you have made in getting it to standard at the production level you want?

You know developing a sugar estate is definitely challenging anywhere in the world. Because you first of all have to develop the plantation itself, and it takes time to add capacity and increase to the level that you want. In our own case, in Sunti, we want to develop about 10,000 hectares of plantation. As of today we are at about 30% through on that.

But the challenge also is you do not just develop the plantation, you have to also think about the mill, the crushing mill that will extract the sugar from the plantation. That

is what we have also put in place in Sunti, so it is agriculture meeting up with the processing plant, and it’s a marriage that brings about employment, it’s a marriage that brings about value addition, and thereby creating wealth. It’s a marriage that develops local communities, because you have a vast plantation, you have a mill, economy will grow around that as we have seen in Sunti. So we are making progress and continue to develop, add capacity in the cultivation.

However, we have our challenges, because it’s always difficult to convince people about the economic advantage or benefits in siting our industry in the community. So it took us time to really have the community on our side. At Sunti today we are happy because we can see that their lifestyles, their community have improved as we empowered them with electricity, we provide them with water, we have to provide them with roads, we have to provide them also with health centre because of our siting the estate in their community. So those benefits are creating economic and social development in their community and that is helping to really keep them align with our investment.

We have had our challenges in flooding which has been a major setback for us in Sunti, virtually every year we have flooding in Sunti sugar plantation. We are working with Ministry of Water Resources, we are working with Ministry of Power because we know that we have dams in Kainji, we have dams in Jebba and lack of proper control

How is Apapa traffic situation impacting on your activities?

Apapa problem is almost a perennial problem, not just for Apapa Port but for the Tin Can Island Port. Infrastructure has been almost non-existent ; we have had massive deterioration in our infrastructure along Apapa axis that has developed into logistic nightmares for those of us in the Apapa axis. That led to ourselves, Dangote Industry and NPA taking it upon ourselves to fully reconstruct Wharf Road and that project started middle last year and about concluding now, and the quality of work has been very good; it’s a 2km dual carriage and it’s almost completed. By the end of October I’m very sure that that road will be handed over. However, what do we do with the bridge?

The bridge has been locked down now for six months because the outbound bridge from Apapa has been very bad, in state of disrepair, and the federal government is trying to repair the bridge but work has been very slow. But now that that Apapa-Wharf Road has been completed, we could not use the bridge because the bridge is locked down. So it is our appeal to the federal government to really expedite action to see that the bridge is repaired and open for business As a major participant in the previous NESG annual summit, how has the outcomes impacted on your business and the larger economy?

You know policy advocacy and working with government to craft the policy that will enable investors to be able to operate freely, sustainably and predictably is like a sine qua-non for investment.

You know we want to see sustainable policies that are inclusive and enforceable, that is what NESG is all about in pleading with government, being like barometer for government and to tell government this is what is going on in the organized private sector, this is what policies will be required to ensure that we can grow our economic development in the country.

That is why we have continued to

support NESG and the activities of NESG has really helped to put the problems and the challenges to the front burner for government. This has also helped the government to craft policies that will help to do business better, especially the Ease of Doing Business that government came up with. It has been very helpful, not just for the new investors but also for old investors, because we get things done quicker now with government, than ever before and that is helping to grow manufacturing capacities and investment in other sectors.

What do you think government should do differently for the real sector?

There is nothing better than government listening, you know listening to investors. Feeling the pulse of investors and getting to know how to enable businesses do better than it is today. I think this particular government is listening and we need to do more and ensure that we work with private sector and NESG in particular to see that proper policies are put in place and enforced. It is one thing to have policy and it’s another thing to enforce policies. It should not just be allowed to take the carrots of the policy and not the sticks. So it is very important that you have a policy and if someone flouts the policy he gets the stick and of course if he aligns with the policy, he gets the carrot.

I think that is very important and government should focus more on that. And then in the finance sector, making sure that funding is proper to the investments in the country especially in the agro-allied space, single digit funding is very important. We also want government to continue its steadfastness in improving infrastructure in agriculture, we have dearth of infrastructure and we need to improve what government is doing ; it needs to do it more to ensure that at least we have enough power in the country, that we have roads. It’s very important to ensure that we have good roads and look at ports and ensure that we have effective and efficient port operations that we allow both import and export to thrive in the country.

What is the employment generation like across the value chain?

The FMN Group employs 12,000 directly but if you look at indirect workers they run into millions. In the flour operations only, we produce raw materials for the baking industry, for the confectionary industry, for the pastry industry and for the biscuit industry. These are huge industries creating jobs all over the place, so the indirect jobs are in millions.

34 BUSINESS DAY NEWS Minimum wage fall-out: FG faces N1.25trn...

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revenue.

An exit from recession in 2017 and higher petrodollars failed to translate to improved earnings for the government, as revenue earned in 2017 is a 9.6 percent decline from the N2.939 trillion earned in 2016.

This may leave the government no choice but to borrow, just to meet personnel expenses, without adding statutory transfers, overhead costs, debt service and capital expenditure.

This is despite International Monetary Fund (IMF) warnings about the unsustainability of its rising foreign debt stock, which has failed to translate to economic growth.

“The shortfall in government revenue is a fall in income, if the fall is temporary, then you can borrow but you can’t solve a lingering revenue slide with short-term debt,” Ayo Teriba a leading economist in Nigeria said.

The Federal Government’s domestic and external debt (excluding states) is up 73 percent to N18.9 trillion as at June 2018 from N10.9 trillion in 2015, according to the Debt Management Office (DMO).

Despite high levels of debt and government spending, economic growth still appears to be slowing down.

FGN and state government spending in 2017 according to report released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) amounted to N10.3trn, equivalent to just 9.0 percent of GDP limiting the capacity of the government to spur economic growth.

Reasons are not farfetched as more expenditure is directed to recurrent services as shown in the country’s budget than capital projects which can spur economic growth.

Iso Nyeh, Union Capital Markets Ltd, explained “The government

People, hurdles against President Buhari’s...

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en over power in May 2015, did

the ‘Buhari myth’ start unraveling.

There was the delayed appointments of key personnel into key offices, and when the appointments eventually came, they were mainly disappointing and ‘lopsided’ as he was accused, with some level of credibility of favouring the North to the disadvantage of the South.

Of particular interest, was Buhari’s appointment of the heads of the security agencies who were mostly from the north and mostly Muslims.

This seemingly favouritism attracted a lot criticism but the president remained unfazed by the criticism and condemnation that has followed his appointments. It is one of the issues that people now hold against him, the fact that he looks unconcerned and unperturbed in the face of strong and credible criticism.

Speaking to our correspondent in a recent interview, a former Buhari loyalist, and Second Republic lawmaker from Kano state, Junaid Mohammed, said President Buhari’s “nepotism is unprecedented “ in the history of the country and further described Buhari as “ the most incompetent and corrupt Nigerian leader with a record of failure not seen in the nation’s history “.

Mohammed warned that it will be a great mistake for Nigerians to vote President Buhari again, alleging that the President has divided the country along ethnic lines.

President Buhari had also been accused of bias in handling very sensitive issues especially security. A former Chief of Army Staff, Theophilus Danjuma, who is said to be one of the power blocs that made Buhari realise his dream of becoming president, recently showed his anger over Buhari’s alleged bias in the killings allegedly perpetrated byFulaniherdsmenacrossthecountry.

The usually taciturn Danjuma alleged that the military under Buhari are colluding with Fulani herdsmen and offering them logistic support to attack communities in Taraba. He went ahead to warn that if the people of Taraba do not rise to defend themselves, “ they will die one by one’’ in the hands of the killers.

There is also former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who committed much energy to the Buhari 2015 presidential project, but in February wrote an open letter asking Buhari not to seek re-election.

Obasanjo has now become one of the ardent critics of the Buhari reelection bid such he made up with his arch ‘enemy’ former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, and endorsed

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Wednesday 07 November 2018

wasn’t generating enough revenue to pay previous minimum wage and now to meet up with new minimum wage the government will need to borrow more, this is likely to inhibit economy growth”.

“This is not just a minimum wage hike,” said Andrew Alli, former CEO of the Africa Finance Corporation and now a director at private-equity firm, CDC Group.

“After it is done there will be agitation that differentials will need to be maintained, meaning that virtually all govt employees will have a pay rise.

“This is part of our habit of not adjusting things continuously meaning that we then have to adjust through economy-crushing massive hikes (think exchange rates, fuel prices, government salaries), to name but a few,” Alli said in a tweet response to Business Day. Analysts argue that the impending minimum wage hike could also reduce the ability of states to fund

capital projects and infrastructures as they will now grapple with larger wage bills.

According to FBNQuest, “states can deliver a long-term development agenda only when they raise sizeable internally generated revenue (IGR) and are not dependent upon the monthly pay-outs from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC)”.

BusinessDay analysis of total internal generated revenue (IGR) of states revealed that in 2017 IGR stood at N936.47 billion excluding the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) while total revenue stood at N3.57 trillion. This shows IGR accounted for just 26 percent of total revenue in 2017.

However, some analyst are of the opinion that the positive effects of the new minimum wage outweighs the negative effects “The new minimum wage of N30, 000 will increase the purchasing power of people which will also increase economic activities in the country. The previous N18, 000 minimum wage was not a living wage,” said Ayodeji Akinwunmi, Head of Research, FSDH. “Major drivers of inflation are currency devaluation, food price shocks and adjustment of tariffs to electricity so the fact that Nigeria has a weak purchasing power mean government spending and new minimum wage will add a little point to inflation,” he added.

In September, headline inflation accelerated for only the second time since an 18-month long disinflationary trend, printing at 11.28 percent as base effects waned and food prices soared, according to data by the National bureau of statistics (NBS).

“In funding infrastructure, government should involve the private sector as government doesn’t have money to fund infrastructure even at federal level. Failure to do this may hurt economic growth,” Akinwunmi concluded.

“We need fresh sources of income, the government wants to boost tax receipts to make up for the revenue shortfall, but that is a mirage because the private sector is also hit by weak economic activity,” Teriba supported.

However, the Federal Government says it will consider a selective implementation of the new 80 percent wage increase to different categories of workers in the federal public service.

The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this to BusinessDay on the side-lines of the presentations of the report of the Tripartite Committee on the new minimum wage.

The Minister admitted that the new wage bill was going to be “heavy” on government, but said that “there will be no across the board implementation “of the new minimum wage.’ She disclosed that government will now sit to work out the modalities for implementation.

“Of course, we cannot pay 80 percent wage increase across the board for all categories of workers,” Ahmed said.

President Muhammadu Buhari while accepting the report assured that government will forward to the National Assembly for immediate consideration and passage.

“As the Executive Arm commences the review of your submission, we will continue to engage you all in closing any open areas presented in this report. I therefore would like to ask for your patience and understanding in the coming weeks.”

He also appealed to the Nigerian “workers and their leaders not to allow themselves to be used as political weapons” The President while reviewing the process that culminated into the agreement, said the government side was concerned with “affordability”, adding that “today many states struggle to meet their existing salary requirements” “On the side of labour, the points raised focused on the need for any increase to be meaningful.”

“In a way, both arguments are valid. I want to assure you all that we will immediately put in place the necessary machinery that will close out these open areas. Our plan is to transmit the Executive Bill to the National Assembly for passage within the shortest possible time” However, he assured that he is fully committed to having a new National Minimum Wage Act in the very near future.

him for the president against Buhari.

Obasanjo in his letter has suggested that Buhari has failed and such failure should not be “reinforced”.

Buhari perhaps also lost the goodwill of other politicians such as President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara; influential Kano politician, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, and many federal lawmakers, who backed him in 2015.

Some state governors such as Waziri Tambuwal of Sokoto State, Samuel Ortom of Benue state and Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara state and many other lawmakers have all dumped the ruling party and pitched tent with the opposition.

Buhari case for re-election has also not been helped by the fact that the economy has not performed very well under his watch. In the last three and half years of the Buhari administration, GDP growth has not exceeded 2.0 percent. Figures from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that 7.9 million people lost their jobs with the period, the naira has lost 60 percent of its value and inflation has remained in double digits.

These figures have now culminated into the unenviable record of Nigeria now regarded as the global capital of poverty in the world, where nearly 90 million of Nigerians are said to be now living in extreme poverty.

Ordinary Nigerians, who offered the strongest support to Buhari in 2015, have been hit hard by the hardship, hunger and suffering in the land and feel disappointed that the promises made by Buhari and the APC have not been fulfilled.

But Buhari has responded with some positive measures such as; the Anchor Borrowers programme that has helped farmers to improve their output in agriculture, the Social Investment Programme, the School Feeding Programme, and measures to stabilize the naira. But these measures have largely had little impact on the wellbeing of many Nigerians.

And Buhari’s re-election bid has also been rocked by the lingering crisis in the APC. The party has been harbouring aggrieved members but the crisis deepened after the party’s primaries held in October. Some of the critical stakeholders including state governors have been side lined including, Buhari’s staunch supporters such as Governor Rocha’s Okorocha of Imo state, Abdulazeez Yari of Zamfara state, Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State and Senator Shehu Sani of Kaduna state.

They have been engaged in a war of words with party chairman Adams Oshiomhole, who they have accused of dishonesty and insincerity. The crisis is deepening with elections less than 100 days away. To show how bad the situation may be, Okorocha recently raised

analarm,thoughlikelyexaggeratedthat “five million people are already leaving the APC as a result of the crisis.”

The crisis and uncertainty in APC is creating a funding challenge for the party. Sources have told BusinessDay that the big wigs who funded the party in 2015 are now unwilling to dish out the money to do so again.

This is more so that a sizeable number of them have also joined opposition PDP, particularly former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who unconfirmed reports said singlehandedly sponsored Buhari’s election in 2015 with N7billion. Former Governors of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi; Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso and Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola as well Bukola Saraki were said to have made substantial contributions then.

Besides, party member members fear they could be tagged corrupt by the corruption-fighting Buhari administration if they commit substantially funding to the elections.

A member of the party, who preferred anonymity told BusinessDay that, “most of the party faithful are scared to bring out their money to fund the party because there are growing signs that the party may lose the election, coupled with the fact that most of them have not benefited from investment they made before. Some of them have also had their candidates denied tickets so they want to pull out.”

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2019-2021 MTEF: FG to prioritise security, infrastructure, non-oil sector KEHINDE AKINTOLA, Abuja

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ederal Government has reiterated its resolve to bridge the infrastructure gaps by improving investment in eight critical sectors of the economy as well as increase the ratio of non-oil tax revenue from the current rate of 6 percent to 15 percent in the medium term.

They are Security, Infrastructure (including power and transportation), Agriculture, Manufacturing, Housing and Construction, Education, Health and Water resources.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration also assured of its resolve to reduce support job-creating opportunities which will in turn foster greater and diversified economic growth.

The roadmap was captured in the 2019-2021 Medium term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Policy (FSP) submitted to the National Assembly.

According to the document obtained by BusinessDay, the administration is to strengthen the tax system by improving collection efficiency, enhancing compliance and re-organising the business practices of tax and revenue agencies.

“The whistle-blowing policy, which will not only recover stolen funds but deter diversion of public funds for personal gains, will be sustained. Government will also identify and plug revenue leakages, improve tax compliance, and broaden the tax net by employing appropriate technology.

“In addition, government will ensure that more businesses in the informal sector are formalized,” the document read in part.

According to Speaker Yakubu Dogara, who confoirmed the receipt of the 2019-2021 MTEF/FSP documents from the President, the transmission of the document was in compliance with the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007.

Key assumptions proposed for 2019 budget include: $60 oil price benchmark; 2.3 million barrels per day; $305/$1 exchange rate and 3.01 percent GDP growth rate. Buhari in the letter solicited for the cooperation of the House towards fast-tracking the consideration and approval of document.

Federal Executive Council (FEC) had on Wednesday, 24th October 2018 approved a budgetary proposal of N8.73 trillion for 2019 fiscal year,

N400 billion lower than N9.12 trillion for 2018 fiscal year.

As captured in the MTEF/ FSP document seen by BusinessDay, 500,000 graduates have so far been employed into the N-Power scheme while Anchor Borrowers Programme (which has contributed significantly to the expansion in output of rice and other agricultural products).

CHANGE OF NAME I, Ogodo Okpobrisi Thompson state that I am the biological father of Othuke Gideon Okpobrisi, Elohorzino Lerroy Okpobrisi and Oghale Princess Okpobrisi (my “children”). I confirm that the surname “Ogodo” is the family name which I also bore from birth, and took the decision to have my children bear my first name “Okpobrisi” to the exclusion of the family name “Ogodo”. From their birth till date, my children have borne my first name “Okpobrisi” as their surname/last name. All former documents remain valid. General Public please take note.

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Cracks in Buhari’s camp as Pasali attacks Keyamo over contract scam JAMES KWEN, Abuja

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here are emerging cracks in the reelection campaign structures of President Muhammadu Buhari.

This group known as Buhari Campaign Organization (BCO) has demanded an apology from the Director of Strategic Communications, Festus Keyamo for linking it to the leaked letter soliciting contracts from the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing to fund the President’s reelection campaign.

The Good Governance Awareness Campaigner Arm of the BCO, in a letter addressed to the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Power, Works and Housing dated September 20, requested for a contract to supply and install Road Signs along Federal Highways to cushion the Financial Pressure on them as they intend to move the campaign train to the grassroot in the Six Geo Political Zones of the country.

Keyamo while reacting to

the letter which went viral said, “Buhari Campaign Organisation’ does not have the authority or mandate of President Muhammadu Buhari to solicit or raise funds from public institutions, corporate bodies or individuals for any campaign activity whatsoever. “This is also a notice to all such public institutions not to honour any such requests as the one from the amorphous Buhari Campaign Organisation”.

But Danladi Pasali, BCO National Cooordinator, on Tuesday in Abuja, distanced the organization from the letter describing it as fake, and insisted that BCO self-funded and peopled by persons of verified Integrity.

Pasali in a statement made available to journalists in Abuja said, “we wish to state unequivocally that the letter to the Ministry did not emanate from the headquarters of Buhari Campaign Organization but from fraudsters, scammers and enemies of progress of the achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari.

“For the purpose of history, Buhari Campaign Organization was established since ANPP and CPC time as a nonpolitical, non-governmental organization with a clear-cut objective of showcasing and promoting the good leadership qualities of General Muhammadu Buhari prior to him being elected as Nigerian president in 2015 general election”, he stated.

“The National Executive Committee of Buhari Campaign Organization is in possession of a copy of a letter emanating from a sister Campaign Organization, Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organization (MBCO) signed by the Director, Strategic Communication, Festus Keyamo, SAN on disclaiming BCO. “The reading public should disregard his publication because he is uninformed about Buhari Campaign Organisation (BCO).

It is on record that BCO has visited and has met with President Muhammadu Buhari and the First lady, Federal Republic of Nigeria”, he stated.

Trader Moni: FG targets 2m beneficiaries by December JOSHUA BASSEY

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ederal Government says it targets to reach about two million beneficiaries across the country under its special enterprise and empowerment programme otherwise known as TraderMoni by December 2018.

The government has extended the scheme to three additional markets in Lagos.

The TraderMoni scheme, which is a collateral and interest-free loan for petty traders, had earlier been launched in some markets in the state. The three additional markets the scheme was launched in by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday include Ketu, Bariga and Oshodi markets.

Osinbajo was accompanied by Akinwunmi Am-

bode, Lagos State governor and Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Lagos governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 elections. The trio, who also inspected the implementation of the scheme, took time to interact with petty traders in the affected markets, assuring that government was working out more innovative initiatives to benefit the critical mass of the population.

Laolu Akande, senior special assistant to Osinbaj on media and publicity, said close to 800,000 petty traders have so far benefited from the scheme, explaining that the programme had been structured for traders to borrow up to N50,000 and pay back seamlessly.

“The TraderMoni scheme is part of the socio-investment programme of the President

Muhammadu Buhari-led administration and the plan is to ensure that between September and December this year, two million petty traders receive the first payment of N10,000.

Once they are able to return it within six months, they get additional N15,000 and when they return that, they get another N20,000 until they get as much as N50,000.

“The whole idea is that the President wants to ensure that traders that are at the bottom of the ladder; people whose wares and businesses are just about N3000, N5000 and so on; people who normally don’t get any kind of financial assistance, people that the banks do not give any kind of credit because they have no collateral are not left out in what they are doing in our micro credit scheme.

‘Nigeria needs transitional leadership to ensure socioeconomic growth’ SEYI JOHN SALAU

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aced with the burden of fixing its huge infrastructural deficit amidst a growing youth population that continues to bit hard on the productive level of the economy, the need to encourage a transitional leadership has been identified as a sure way of ensuring Nigeria’s socioeconomic growth at the Future Leadership Conference (FLC) 2018, held recently in Lagos.

Chidi Okpaluba, the group MD/CEO Quartermasters group said the greatest gift of a transitional leader is to invest in educa-

tion; hence there is a need for the government to make frantic effort to develop human resource; promote free expression and move the nation forward.

According to Okpaluba, Nigeria’s education system do not allow student to think. “The creative ability of man is infinite; while every oil barrel is finite… therefore, the wealth of a nation is not measured by the number of natural resources but by its population multiplied by the power x; where x represent the infinite creative minds,” said Okpaluba stating that no one can be successful without a succession plan.

Mark Idiahi, convener of the Future Leadership Conference (FLC) said there is a need to change the narrative, and move away from the status quo.

“When we get it right with our leadership, every other thing will begin to work the way it should. We are having this conference to disabuse the minds of the youth that the sooner we get involved with the process; the easier it will be for us to change our narrative as a nation. The way things are now is not the way it ought to be, but we all have a role to play; so that is the essence of this conference,” he said.

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Ekweremadu: Senate probes poor response of police OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja

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he Senate has directed its Committee on Police Affairs to investigate alleged poor response by the Police when the residence of the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, was attacked on Tuesday morning.

It equally cautioned the Police against partisanship, stressing that the country would suffer serious consequences for this.

This was sequel to the formal complaint on the Senate floor on Tuesday about the forceful entry into his residence by armed men.

At the commencement of Senate session, Ekweremadu had drawn attention of his colleagues to the event saying: “It is with gratitude to Almighty God that I will like to tell my colleagues, my constituents and the general public that myself, my wife and my son narrowly escaped assassination in the early hours of this morning.

“It was about about 4am

this morning, that some people evaded the security in my house and got all the way to my room where I was sleeping with my wife - there was a struggle, there was a fight with heavy commotion and by the grace of God we eventually caught one of them and the rest escaped.

We handed that one over to the police investigating the matter.” The lawmaker said he made distress calls to the Inspector General of Police as well as the DIG Operations but received no response.

“I then asked my people to invite the DPO in charge of Apo Police Station. We didn’t see him till about 5:30am, he sent his second in-command who came and he saw the dangerous weapons that they left behind; he left and said that the DPO was coming until I left my house by 9am, the DPO had not come”, he added.

In his ruling, Senate President Bukola Saraki, who presided over the session, said: “It is unfortunate having this security situation in Abuja.

What is more disturbing is

the poor response of the police. I hope the police is not being partisan with the way they treat cases. I hope the chairman of the Senate Committee on Police will find out what happened”.

Meanwhile, the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has raised the alarm over plot to assassinate key opposition leaders in the country. While accusing the Buhari-led government of desperation and being behind the wave of growing insecurity, the Coalition called for the sack of the Police IG, Ibrahim Idris.

In a statement by CUPP Spokesperson, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, he said: “The CUPP views this act as shameful considering the number of policemen on duty at the time of this foiled attack. It is also worrisome that this attack is coming months after a previous failed attempt on the life of the Deputy Senate President which was formally reported to the police but has not been investigated talk less (sic) of arresting the culprits.

All set for second edition of Nigeria Annual Automobile Award

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ll is set for the second edition of Nigeria Annual Automobile Award (NAAA), designed to recognize outstanding companies and individuals in the industry, organized by Autosearch Magazine.

According to Ogunyemi Joseph, head of the award screening committee, the award categories have been expanded more than what it was in 2017. These include: automobile Personality of the year, Automobile Friendly Governor of the year, Automobile investor of the year, Automobile truck of the year, Nigeria Automobile Insurance company of the year 2018 and Automobile Governor of the year.

Others are Nigeria Automobile tools company of the year; Nigeria Haulage Transporter of the year, Nigeria Passenger Transporter

of the year; Nigeria Automobile workshop of the year; Nigeria automobile tyre of the year, Nigeria Car of the year; Nigeria Agricultural Tractor of the year and Nigeria (Tokumbo) engine dealer of the year.

The NAAA is slated for November 24, at Villa Angelia Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos. According to Ifeanyi Obasi, the publisher/CEO, of Autosearch Magazine, for ten years, Autosearch Magazine has established a track record of guiding buyers in their choices, offering maintenance advice, and expert vehicle analysis from experienced automobile engineers and editors, which has resulted in significant sales by automobile and logistics companies. “We provide exciting vehicle news, facts and information on automobile acquisition and mainte-

nance which has made Autosearch Magazine, the No.1 choice for Nigerian automobile enthusiasts. Our solution oriented articles and exciting industry news have captured the minds of our esteemed readers” Obasi said.

Autosearch has offices and representatives in Kano, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Lagos has supercharged our circulation in Nigeria. Autosearch magazine is now “poised and well positioned to increase the visibility and market share of your products” Ifeanyi Obasi said.

Vincent Akhuetie, chief marketing executive, Annual Automobile, added and that the distribution of the Magazine has extended to the National Assembly, major super-markets, airports/ industry regulatory bodies and social clubs in Nigeria and Ghana.

L-R: Emeka Ogbu, vice president, Nigerian University Games Association; Sola Fijabi, director PACE Sports and Entertainment Marketing; Ebuka David, HiFL 2018 best player; Demola Sogunle, chief executive officer, Stanbic IBTC Bank, and Stephen Hamafyelto, president, Nigerian University Games Association, at the courtesy visit of UAM Tillers, winners of the 2018 Higher Institutions Football League Season to the Stanbic IBTC Headquarter in Lagos.

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Costliest US midterms split voters as they head to polls Trump admits election is a referendum on his presidency as he scrambles to hold Congress Courtney Weaver, Demetri Sevastopulo and Kiran Stacey

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ne of the most divisive political contests in modern US history will be decided today as voters head to the polls for midterm congressional elections widely seen as a referendum on Donald Trump’s presidency.

Even before Americans arrived at polling stations two years after Mr Trump’s ground-shifting victory, his polarising policies and rhetoric had prompted more than 30m to cast their ballots in early voting, according to the Catalyst consultancy, shattering records for normally staid midterm elections.

Mr Trump used the final hours before the polls open on a threestate barnstorming tour through the Midwest where he continued his vituperative attacks on rival Democrats, warning of an immigrant “invasion” and a “socialist” economy if Republicans lose control of Congress.

“A vote for Republicans is a vote to continue our extraordinary prosperity,” he told a rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where a Republican challenger is running neck-and-neck with Democratic incumbent Senator Joe Donnelly.

“A vote for Democrats is a vote to bring this economic boom crashing down very rapidly.”

Mr Trump, who has put himself at the centre of the Republican campaign, has acknowledged focusing on retaining his party’s narrow majority in the Senate, with most polls showing Democrats favoured to take over the House of Representatives. The president closed out his two months of campaigning in Missouri, home to Senator Claire McCaskill, one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election.

The election is a crucial test for Mr Trump. Should Republicans lose control of the House, it would grind the White House’s legislative agenda to a crawl and give House Democrats the power to launch congressional investigations into White House behaviour, with subpoena power. It could potentially open up Mr Trump to impeachment proceedings, which are run by the House.

Should Democrats defy polls and win back both chambers, Democrats would amass enormous congressional oversight powers, allowing them to block Mr Trump’s nominees.

The consequential vote has already electrified both parties’ voters. Democrats have shown strong voter enthusiasm and turnout in primary races ahead of the midterms. But Mr Trump has also drawn big numbers to his “Make America Great Again” rallies over the past two months.

“You know, the midterm elections used to be like boring, didn’t they? Do you even remember what they were?” Mr Trump said during a Monday campaign swing through Cleveland. “People would say midterms. They say, ‘what is that? What is it, right? Now it’s like the hottest thing.”

The elections have also become the most expensive midterms in history, as a record number of new candidates spend money to turn out their base and reach out to disillusioned voters on both sides of the political aisle. In Texas, Beto O’Rourke, a charismatic Democrat trying to oust Republican Senator Ted Cruz in the most closely watched Senate race in the country, raised an unprecedented $38m in the third quarter of the year.

Michael McDonald, an early voting expert and a political-science professor at the University of Florida, noted that three states — Arizona, Nevada and Texas —

Women prepare to make their mark in US midterm elections Record number of female candidates expected to translate into places in Congress

Courtney Weaver and Fan Fei

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record number of female congressional candidates are poised to win their elections on Tuesday night, polls show — the latest sign that #MeToo and the reverberations of the 2016 US election will alter the political landscape in Washington.

Two years after Hillary Clinton lost her bid to become the country’s first female president, the US House of Representatives is expected to see the most female representatives in office in its history. The move is a byproduct of the high number of women who have run for office during this election cycle, and the female donors and voters who have helped propel them to victory.

The contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh also appears to have energised voters and donors on both sides.

Emily’s List, the political action committee, which seeks to get more Democratic women elected to Congress, has raised more than $110m this cycle, supporting more than 570 female candidates running at the state and local level. On Tuesday 70 female congressional candidates supported by Emily’s List will be on the ballot, 53 of them the running in key Republican districts that the Democratic party is targeting to flip.

Overall, 476 female candidates ran for Congress this year, of whom 239 advanced past their primary to Continues on page A8

Donald Trump, US president, waves to supporters at a campaign rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, on Monday © Reuters

had surpassed their 2014 midterm turnout numbers — just counting the early voting numbers alone.

While those three states are notable for their highly competitive senate races, other states with less competitive contests were also seeing higher numbers, Mr McDonald said, citing North Carolina as one example.

“Something is stimulating higher turnout — at least in early voting — in places that we wouldn’t expect it,” Mr McDonald said. “And the only explanation I can think of is Donald Trump.”

To prevent against a potential “Blue Wave”, Mr Trump spent the final days of the campaign, crisscrossing the country in support of the Republican governors and senators fighting in competitive districts.

He has focused his campaigning on migration issues, including the so-called caravan of mostly Honduran immigrants heading north to the US border through Mexico.

But the relentless focus has generated backlash even within his loyal

base; the normally sympathetic Fox News decided to join other major television networks in pulling a Trump-endorsed political advert that incorrectly blamed Democrats for allowing an undocumented Mexican immigrant and convicted murderer into the US. While much of the president’s rhetoric over the past week has focused on immigration and border security, some of the most crucial House races to watch are in suburban districts where Democrats believe they can win over white, educated Republicans — particularly women — who have been turned off by Mr Trump.

In the suburbs of Virginia’s capital of Richmond, Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, has seen success in courting independents in her effort to oust Dave Brat, a rightwing Republican who in 2014 shocked his own party by defeating Eric Cantor, then House majority leader, in the Republican primary.

“This election is remarkable,” said Cindy Harper, a Virginia in-

dependent who intends to vote for Democrats in the midterms and showed up at a rally for Ms Spanberger on Monday. “There are more people engaged than a normal vote . . . Everybody is juiced up for this.”

Ms Harper’s daughter Katie voted for Mr Trump in 2016, but said she had been shocked by the tone he had struck while in office.

“I voted for him in 2016 because he was different, he wasn’t a Washington politician,” she said. “But his comments about women in particular have made me change my mind.”

Others at the rally for Ms Spanberger said Mr Trump’s raciallytinged rhetoric had persuaded them to become more politically active. Peter Vinci, a former Marine in Virginia, said he had not always voted for Democrats, but had been persuaded to do so this time by the president’s demeanour in office.

“This is the first time I have been this involved,” he said. “His rhetoric, his racist comments — I did not serve my country for this.”

Mozambique to hand over gas revenues to fix ‘tuna bond’ dispute Resolution of debt scandal extracts heavy cost from one of world’s poorest countries Joseph Cotterill

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ozambique will hand up to half a billion dollars of its future offshore gas bounty to bondholders to resolve a dispute over controversial debts that triggered a financial crisis.

The finance ministry for the southern African nation said on Tuesday it had agreed to pay 5 per cent of its yearly revenues from key gasfields to restructure a $726m bond linked to a $2bn scandal over hidden loans.

Bondholders will also receive back their initial investments and almost all unpaid interest in $900m of new bonds under the deal, in return for pushing back repayment by a decade to 2033.

Their share of the gas revenue will be capped at $500m.

The restructuring terms underline the heavy cost to one of the world’s poorest countries from a scandal over the concealment of state-backed loans to companies controlled by the national spy agency. The terms are more generous to bondholders than a proposal by the government earlier this year that sought to impose 50 per cent haircut in the bonds.

The ministry said it had agreed with bondholders controlling most of the debt “to work in good faith” to conclude the restructuring “as soon as possible”.

The sovereign bond being restructured stems from a loan to finance a state tuna fishery that

rapidly soured amid claims its true purpose was hidden.

The restructuring of the tuna debt into a government bond in 2016 led to the discovery of other loans by the International Monetary Fund and international donors, which cut off direct support for Mozambique’s budget and demanded answers over where the funds went. It triggered a currency collapse and a slowdown in what was once one of the fastestgrowing economies in Africa.

Investigative firm Kroll found that $500m raised from the loans could not be accounted for. No one in the Mozambican government has been made responsible for approving the loans without parliamentary oversight.

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FT Women prepare to make their mark in US....

Ex-Wall Street banker gets insider trading conviction overturned

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the general election and will compete on Tuesday. Of the 239 women on the ballot, 187 are Democrats and 52 are Republicans.

“We will see a record number of women in Congress overall in the House,” predicted Kelly Dittmar, a political scientist at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, who has been tracking gender dynamics in the 2018 midterms.

Currently, there are 84 women in the House and 23 women in the Senate. Based on data from the non-partisan Cook Political Report, 91 women are already favoured to win in Tuesday’s House races, while an additional 18 women could potentially win in toss-up races. This suggests that there will be an additional seven to 25 women in the US House of Representatives next year, Ms Dittmar said.

In the Senate, 10 of the 23 current female senators are not up for re-election this cycle. There are 11 female candidates who are running in races they are favoured to win and an additional five women who could join if they win their toss-up races, meaning there could be a maximum of 26 female senators.

On the Senate side, there are more Republican non-incumbent female candidates than Democrats; while on the House side, Republican women have been vastly outnumbered by their Democratic counterparts.

Indeed, even in the best-case scenario for Republicans, only 15 to 20 Republican women are likely to win their House races, meaning there will be between three and eight fewer Republican women serving in the House next year, Ms Dittmar said, citing the Cook Political Report data.

Here is a look at some of the women running for both parties: The firsts In Georgia, Democrat Stacey Abrams is in a statistical dead heat to become the state’s first black governor. In Michigan Rashida Tlaib is expected to win her congressional race and become the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress and one of the first female Muslim lawmakers to serve in the House.

Two Democratic House candidates — Sharice Davids of Kansas and Deb Haaland of New Mexico — are both vying to become the first Native American women in Congress.

In Massachusetts and Connecticut, Democratic candidates Ayanna Pressley and Jahana Hayes respectively are vying to become the first black women to represent their states in Congress.

O n t h e Re pu b l i ca n si d e, Young Kim, a House candidate from California, and Pearl Kim, a House candidate from Pennsylvania, are both vying to become the first Korean-American woman in Congress, with Young Kim in a particularly close race.

The veterans In Texas, Democrat MJ Hegar, a Purple Heart recipient, who was shot while serving as a pilot in the Air National Guard, is looking to defeat Republican incumbent John Carter and has become a viral sensation for her campaign videos.

Sean Stewart told his father about deals he worked on at Perella Weinberg and JPMorgan

James Fontanella-Khan

A Wang Qishan: ‘China and the US will both gain from co-operation and lose from confrontation’ © AFP

China open to trade talks with US, says vice-president Remarks come a day after Beijing took a swipe at Trump’s ‘law of jungle’ policy Stefania Palma and Tom Hancock

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eijing remains ready to talk with Washington to resolve a bitter trade dispute, a top Chinese official has said a day after President Xi Jinping lashed out at a “law of the jungle” policies that was seen as an attack on the approach of Donald Trump.

“The Chinese side is ready to have a discussion with the US on issues of mutual concern and work for a solution on trade acceptable to both sides,” said Wang Qishan, vice-president and close confidant of Mr Xi who is one of the country’s top officials responsible for relations with Washington.

“China and the US will both gain from co-operation and lose from confrontation. Our relationship will have a direct impact on global stability.”

The trade war between the US and China has seen the world’s two biggest economies slap duties on more than $350bn worth of trade, rattling global financial markets.

The remarks by Mr Wang at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum came after Mr Trump buoyed global markets last week when he disclosed that he and Mr Xi had “a very long and good conversation” by phone. That raised hopes of a possible deal, with the two leaders scheduled to meet on the sidelines

of the G20 meeting in Argentina later this month.

Asia-Pacific stocks had a mixed response following Mr Wang’s comments on Tuesday. The Hang Seng China Enterprises index of major Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong closed up 0.8 per cent and the CSI 300 index of Shanghai and Shenzhen-listed companies fell 0.6 per on Tuesday.

Beijing and Washington have held multiple trade discussions this year, but differences over issues such as China’s state involvement in the economy and industrial policy have proved difficult to resolve.

“China and the US have always maintained communication on the trade war,” said Lu Xiang, a professor at the China Academy of Social Sciences, a state-run think-tank.

“Wang Qishan’s comment indicates that the communication is getting somewhere”.

Despite the conciliatory tone, Mr Wang echoed Mr Xi’s opening remarks at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai, a highprofile event intended to portray China as a champion of open trade.

“Negativity and anger are not the way to address the problems that have emerged in economic globalisation,” said Mr Wang, as he reminded the audience of China’s historical grievances of being “bullied and op-

pressed by imperialist powers” in the 19th century.

In a sign of warming ties, China said it would hold an annual diplomatic and security dialogue with the US in Washington on Friday.

The meeting, originally planned for last month, was abruptly cancelled

by Beijing after the US imposed sanctions on a Chinese weapons company and flew bombers over the East and South China Seas, which Beijing claims most of as its territory.

Liam Fox, the UK’s international trade secretary, told reporters on the sidelines of the expo that a “clear timeline for liberalisation” was needed for relaxing of foreign investment restrictions in China’s fast-growing healthcare and education sectors.

China should “deepen its opening efforts”, he said, adding that the easing of investment restrictions and ensuring that government procurement followed World Trade Organization rules were among the top priorities.

George Xu, chief executive of Airbus China, on Tuesday welcomed hope of a fresh dialogue. The trade war “had damaged a lot of commercial expectation of many private” companies in China, he said at the Zhuhai Air Show. “This will cause a lot of unemployment. This will also threaten middle class incomes.”

China’s Ping An rules out foreign M&A interest Country’s largest insurance group prioritises growth prospects in home market Oliver Ralph and Don Weinland

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he chief executive of Ping An has ruled out an immediate big overseas acquisition, emphasising that the domestic market is a priority for China’s largest insurance group.

The Chinese financial services conglomerate, which has a market capitalisation of more than $170bn, has this year been linked with a number of possible M&A targets.

They include Prudential’s Asian life insurance business, which analysts value at more than £37bn, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s general insurance business.

But Ping An founder Peter Ma said his company was focused on its domestic market. “As of now, we don’t have aspirations to make acquisitions overseas,” he said. “The Chinese market has the best growth prospects.”

Ping An’s Chinese business is expected to grow rapidly over the coming years. Analysts at Macquarie expect profits at the group’s core banking and insurance operations

to increase by 64 per cent between 2017 and 2020.

Net profit for the first nine months of this year grew by 20 per cent from the same period a year earlier to Rmb79.4bn ($11.5bn).

For its life and health insurance business, the value of new business — a growth metric that reflects the expected profits to be made from policies sold — rose 3.2 per cent during the period.

“Ping An is the pre-eminent insurance franchise in China and continues to extend its advantage,” Macquarie said in a recent note.

Sally Yim, associate managing director at rating agency Moody’s, said Ping An would face challenges in any attempt at a bold overseas acquisition.

“Regulatory approval would be a big hurdle. We’ve seen a slowdown in overseas acquisitions by Chinese companies,” said Ms Yim. “The funding would also be a big question. It takes time to approve any debt issuances offshore,” she added.

Nevertheless, Mr Ma is keen for some parts of his conglomerate to

expand beyond China. Ping An has invested heavily in technology at home, and Mr Ma sees scope for that knowhow to be used elsewhere.

He said: “We want to go into Asia Pacific with our healthcare and financial technology, which helps to improve efficiency and control risks.

We’re interested in partnerships with other companies.”

In the past year, Ping An’s affiliates have entered into healthcare and pharmaceuticals joint ventures in Singapore and Japan and are planning to expand in south-east Asia.

The health sector is a particular priority, with Ping An’s systems already in use in hospitals across China.

“It took us 10 years to develop our healthcare technology. It is core technology for us,” said Mr Ma. “We hope our disease prevention system can be exported around the world.”

Mr Ma is also keen to improve Ping An’s global profile: “The international recognition of Ping An is still lacking because we haven’t done enough to promote ourselves.”

former Perella Weinberg and JPMorgan Chase banker has had his insider-trading conviction overturned by a US appeal court, which determined evidence that could have influenced the jury’s deliberations was wrongfully omitted from the trail.

Sean Stewart, 37, had been convicted in 2016 on nine counts related to allegations of passing tips about undisclosed pending healthcare deals to his father, Robert Stewart, who traded on the information.

The appeals court in New York confirmed that Sean Stewart had shared insider information with his father during his time at JPMorgan Chase and PWP. Robert Stewart pled guilty to a conspiracy charge in 2015.

However, the appeals judges ruled on Monday that Robert Stewart should have been granted immunity from additional charges and forced to testify during the trial, since the defence case was that he had traded without his son’s knowledge.

Robert Stewart, who was sentenced to four years probation, avoided giving testimony by claiming his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination — despite efforts by his son’s attorneys to compel him to appear.

During the trial, Sean Stewart said that his father had taken advantage of their close relationship and claimed that he had no idea his father would eventually trade on matters they had discussed confidentially.

The decision to reverse Sean Stewart’s conviction on technical grounds is the latest example of an insider trading case getting overturned.

The former US attorney for southern district of New York, Preet Bharara, who represented the US government in the case against Sean Stewart, has repeatedly complained about how insider trading rules are stacked against the interests of investors and favour the rich and powerful.

Sean Stewart first told his father about a deal he was working on in 2011 when he was at JPMorgan.

The deal involved the $232m sale of Kendle International to INC Research. Sean Stewart also passed on information about the sale of Kinetic Concepts to Apax Partners ahead of the deal announcement in July 2011. At that time, Robert Stewart also recruited a business associate Richard Cunniffe, who later became a co-operating witness for authorities.

Sean Stewart left JPMorgan in October 2011 to join PWP. From 2012 to 2014, he tipped off his father on deals including the acquisition of Gen-Probe by Hologic, Linde’s takeover of Lincare Holdings and the sale of CareFusion Corp to Becton, Dickinson & Co. The profits from these five investments totalled $1.15m.

Cunniffe made about $1m, while Robert Stewart received $150,000.

There was no evidence that Sean Stewart directly profited from the trades.

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Opinion

Atiku versus Buhari (2) OPEYEMI AGBAJE opeyemiagbaje@rtcadvisory.com

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n the first part of this column, I characterized the 2015 election of Muhammadu Buhari as a historical error not supported by his antecedents in policy, administration, economic management, democratic norms and human rights or national ethos, but could only be understood or permitted against the context of then Goodluck Jonathan’s administrations weakness and naivety. I also described the Atiku Abubakar candidacy as complicated on account of his branding (particularly by former President Olusegun Obasanjo) as corrupt and his perception as a typical Nigerian politician.

There are two dimensions of the matter that I reserved for this second part-beyond the “irresponsibility” inherent in asking Buhari to continue his destruction of the Nigerian economy and polity beyond 2019, are there any benefits associated with an

Atiku presidency on its own merits? And secondly, what of the ostensible alternatives to Buhari and Atiku? Could Nigerians vote for these others on offer?

It seems to me, and I think most objective obser vers of Nigerian politics that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is the only viable alternative to Buhari in the 2019 presidential elections. There are four major strengths of the Atiku candidacy and potentially presidency, to the Nigerian nation in contradistinction to his opponent-unlike Buhari, Atiku has played the role of uniter and consensus builder since his entry into Nigerian politics. Atiku came into Nigerian politics on the platform of his mentor, late General Shehu Musa Yar’adua’s Peoples Front (PF) which later became Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM). PF/PDM sought allies all over Nigeria and acquired the character of a pan-Nigerian movement with strong membership and support in the South-West, S outh-East, S outh-S outh, North-Central and all across the Northern States. No one could credibly accuse Atiku of playing an ethnic, religious (not to mention sectarian!) or regional card in his political

practice since the early 1990s when he came into national reckoning as a presidential candidate of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) of the Babangida transition.

It was Atiku by stepping down for the late M. K. O Abiola who made Abiola’s presidential candidacy of the SDP possible and in effect his victory in the aborted June 12 1993 elections. He has since then cemented his image as a national and cosmopolitan politician with friends and allies all over the country.

Atiku is also very competent in policy, economy and administration. He is a well-known and successful businessman and employer who understands markets and economic management, as he proved as Vice President under Obasanjo. It was not co-incidence that the arrowheads of the economic team of that era (Ngozi OkonjoIweala, Oby Ezekwesili, Nasir El-Rufai, Chukwuma Soludo, Fola Adeola, Nuhu Ribadu etc.) were either recruited by or gravitated towards Abubakar who also facilitated the mostly successful privatisation and liberalisation agenda of the Obasanjo government.

As a student of economic policy in Nigeria, I have ob-

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As a student of economic policy in Nigeria, I have observed that Atiku is one of the few politicians of that generation who can identify with free enterprise, investment, deregulation and liberalisation, and markets as core elements of economic policy and management

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served that Atiku is one of the few politicians of that generation who can identify with free enterprise, investment, deregulation and liberalisation, and markets as core elements of economic policy and management.

Atiku has also become the only national contestant for the presidency who has anchored his aspiration on a firm undertaking to restructure Nigeria’s con-

stitution along the lines of federalism. He has clearly thought through the issue and understands why federalism is imperative for economic growth, national unity and cohesion, and sustainable development in Nigeria. Another benefit of an Atiku candidacy or presidency is that it offers a much-need transitional figure who can be a bridge across Nigeria’s generational, regional, religious and ethnic divides. You can easily picture Nigerians of all ages, sexes, religions, regions and ethnic groups around Atiku, unlike his main opponent who has not been able to transcend his provincial and sectarian inclinations.

As much as we need a transition of national leadership to a younger, more educated, less ethnically-focused and more urbane generation, Atiku strikes one as a figure who can bridge that transition and hopefully help identify and nurture that future leadership class. It does not hurt that Atiku Abubakar has the material resources and network of relationships to mount a strong, determined and effective challenge to the APC’s looming political hegemony! As I wrote in the previous part, he has already

transformed a race that may have been written-off in favour of Buhari into a balanced and competitive contest. The point of all these is that there is some substantive merit in an AtikuAbubakar Presidency beyond “anyone but Buhari!”

Finally we must consider the case for considering the so-called alternativesOmoyele Sowore, Fela Durotoye, Donald Duke, Oby Ezekwesili, Eunice Atuejide, Kingsley Muoghalu et al. I have thought long and hard on this issue…and I would have to conclude that there is no reasonable pathway to the presidency for any candidate other than Atiku or Buhari. None other has the platform, network, resources or organisation to mount a credible challenge against Buhari. In effect their strategic positioning would amount to a de facto undermining of the Atiku candidacy as well as implicit support for Buhari!

In any event, many of the alternatives either bear some moral responsibility for the Buhari error of 2015, or lack the moral credibility to attack the PDP, which they either served happily under or benefitted tremendously from! In some notorious cases, both disqualifications apply!

Minimum wage: I stand with Labour!

FRANKLIN NNAEMEKA NGWU Dr. Ngwu is a Senior Lecturer in Strategy, Finance and Risk Management, Lagos Business School and a Member, Expert Network, World Economic Forum.

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iven our available natural and human resources, the demand by labour for a higher monthly minimum wage of possibly N30, 000.00 should not be questioned. I think that they have been very considerate, they deserve it and it should be paid! Under normal circumstances, minimum wage increase should not be characterized by the kind of bickering going on between the government and labour unions. It should be dictated by an agreed framework that will smoothly and periodically trigger when certain socioeconomic variables change. But alas, this is Nigeria! As we always like to compare ourselves to other developed and developing countries, using the ongoing exchange rate, N30, 000 is about $83.00. While the monthly minimum wage in South Africa is $277.00 (N100,000), it is $287.00 (N103,320) in Brazil, $382 (N137, 520) in Shanghai China, $260.00

(N93,600) in Jakarta Indonesia, $141.3 (N50,868) in Mexico, $513 (N184,680) in Turkey, $176 (N63,360) in Russia, $1,160 (N417,600) in USA and $1,606 (N578,160) in United Kingdom.

If all these countries that we like comparing ourselves with are paying higher monthly minimum wage than us, we should ask why our government is unwilling to pay a higher minimum wage that can be described as a pitiable wage (N30, 000 in a month)! Another interesting question is why all the countries paying a higher minimum wage are more developed and growing than Nigeria? The answer to the questions above cannot be disassociated from the absence of effective and visionary leadership, innovative thinking, planning and execution.

A more worrisome situation is our governors who even with the huge monthly allocations they get from FAAC have been unable to properly exploit the resources of their respective states to achieve visible development including the payment of minimal wage to their employees. As I listened to them last week when they maintained their inability to pay the N30, 000.00 demanded by labour, I took further pity on Nigeria and deeply wondered if our Excellencies really understand their

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As shareholders of our states, the 2019 election presents us with an excellent opportunity to elect the appropriate kind of CEOs who will understand the job requirements and expectations. This is the time for labour unions to demand a written commitment from the key governorship candidates on their willingness and commitment to pay the demanded new minimum wage

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jobs and responsibilities. I think that they need to appreciate that they are elected as CEOs of their respective states and that CEOs are expected to use the initial capital of a firm to grow the firm to sustainable profitability

and expansion. Under normal circumstances, a CEO who is unable to grow and develop a firm, unable to pay his employees a decent wage or pay dividends to his shareholders year after year should be sacked. If it is a publicly listed firm, the shareholders will sell their shares to trigger a hostile takeover if the CEO refuses to step down.

Lamentably, we have a worse situation in our states.

We have CEOs who even with abundant human and natural resources littering our states in addition to monthly federal allocations of billions of Naira are unable to visibly grow and develop our states or even pay basic salaries. Our CEOs lack vision, strategy and commitment to develop their states but are busy pilling up debts and squandering both their internal generated revenues and the huge monthly allocations from FAAC. Imagine a governor who on resumption of office buys 48 brand new Prado jeeps to share to his commissioners and members of the state’s House of Assembly whose majority could not afford a 2002 Toyota Camry before their appointments and elections! Expectedly, such wasteful governor will not be able to pay N30, 000 monthly minimum wage.

As we have such CEOs as

our governors, the question we need to ask is; what we can do as shareholders of the firms (states) to change the sad situation? Given the time we are in, I think that the current demand for a wage increase by labour is a kind of serendipity.

As shareholders of our states, the 2019 election presents us with an excellent opportunity to elect the appropriate kind of CEOs who will understand the job requirements and expectations. This is the time for labour unions to demand a written commitment from the key governorship candidates on their willingness and commitment to pay the demanded new minimum wage. However it should not stop at just signing a commitment.

The signing should be accompanied with a detailed achievable and measurable plan. Those that pass this test should be voted in. Incumbents seeking a re-election that did not pay the old wages as at when due should be voted out to teach incoming ones a good lesson. Governance is serious business and should be left for serious minded people. It is a job that its actions and inactions determine the existence of present and future generations.

With the resources littering our states in addi-

tion to the monthly allocations from FAAC, our states should be able to pay a monthly minimum wage of N50, 000.00 if governed by effective and visionary leaders.

All that is required is for each state to properly focus on two to three key revenue generating projects. For instance, while Enugu state remain unserious with Adani rice project, Kebbi state earned N150 billion from local Kebbi rice in 2017. Not only is Kebbi the highest producer of rice in the country, they are also the highest producer of onion and pepper. Interestingly, the pepper from Enugu state (Ose Nsukka) lamentably neglected can be argued to have the best flavor in Nigeria.

The Enugu/Kebbi comparison is a good example of what committed and visionary leadership can do. It will also be recalled that when other states were struggling to pay salaries with many unable to pay, Anambra state increased the workers’ salary by 15% in 2015 with a promise for a further increase this year. Where there is committed and visionary leadership, a monthly minimum wage of N30, 000 and higher is achievable! Let us elect such leaders in 2019!

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