BusinessDay 15 Nov 2019

businessday market monitor Foreign Exchange

Biggest Loser

Biggest Gainer GUINNESS N26.00 9.70pc

FMDQ Close

Everdon Bureau De Change

Bitcoin

NSE

MTNN N121.90

26,843.11

-0.12pc

Foreign Reserve - $40.078bn Cross Rates - GBP-$:1.29 YUANY-N 51.49 Commodities Gold

Cocoa

US$ 2,669.00

₦3,111,757.97

Crude Oil

I

N300

Sell

$-N 357.00 360.00 £-N 459.00 466.00 €-N 390.00 398.00

-0.46pc

$1,472.63 $62.36

news you can trust I **FRIDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2019 I vol. 19, no 436

Buy

g

www.

Market

Spot ($/N)

I&E FX Window CBN Official Rate Currency Futures

($/N)

fgn bonds

Treasury bills

362.79 306.90

3M 0.00 8.59

NGUS JAN 29 2020 362.99

6M -0.86 8.31

0.00

10 Y -0.08

30 Y -0.21

12.28

12.95

13.34

5Y

NGUS APR 29 2020 363.96

NGUS NOV 25 2020 366.22

@

g

g

Pension Bill compels PFAs to open offices in 6 geo-political zones

…operators, PenCom in dark about new Bill Modestus Anaesoronye

A

Bill for an Act to amend the Pension Reforms Act, 2004 seeking to compel Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) to have an op-

Continues on page 34

His Royal Majesty Emeka Okezie, Oka Ije II of Okija; group executive director, Nestoil Group, Nnenna Obiejesi; group managing director, Nestoil Group, Ernest Azudialu-Obiejesi; and the Ooni of Ife, His Imperial Majesty Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, at the official unveil of the new Nestoil corporate identity in Lagos.

SAA: We have nothing to hide, says oms chairman, Okunbo

Stocks jump most in 6 months E as investors swoop on banks

....asks npa to thread with caution AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE

xecutive Chairman of the Ocean Marine Solutions, OMS, Capt Idahosa Wells Okunbo, has dismissed allegations of fraud

Oluwasegun Olakoyenikan & Segun Adams

T

he stock market on Thursday gained the most since late May as institutional domestic investors who are facing limited investment options returned, pushing the

Continues on page 34

Inside

N605bn in liquidity to fuel equities rally to Dec. Globus will target path

banking index to highest daily gain since January 2016.

The banking index rose 7.04 percent, while the main equity gauge advanced 1.91 percent as attractively priced banking

stocks returned much-needed liquidity to one of the worst performing stock markets globally.

Guinness gained 9.7 percent to N26 per share to lead the advancers by naira gain. GTBank

rose 6.79 percent to N29.9 per share, Zenith Bank surged 7.58 percent, while Dangote Sugar and Access Bank inched up by

Continues on page 34

where big banks fail to tread - CEO P. 18-20

2

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news Nigeria to earn $7.05bn revenue in 5 years on development of national fleet …create 131,304 direct and indirect jobs AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE

N

igeria is expected to earn over $7.05 billion in revenue generated by government from corporate income tax within a five-year period if it develops fleet of vessels that are owned and crewed by indigenous players, according to the National Fleet Implementation Committee (NFIC) survey.

The NFIC survey, a copy of which was exclusively obL-R: Eniola Abosede Obe, group head, education, Sterling Bank plc; Mojisola Babatunde, representing the wife of Lagos State governor; Michel tained by BusinessDay, furPuchercos, chief executive officer, Lafarge Africa plc; Linda Ayade, wife of the Rivers State governor; Bamidele Abiodun, wife of the Ogun State ther said over $5.42 billion is governor, and Mobolaji Balogun, chairman, Lafarge Africa plc, at the Lafarge Africa National Literacy Competition in Lagos. expected to be added to the country’s and in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while over $1.63 billion would be generated into the Federation Account as corporate income tax paid by indigenous shipping firms within have been violence-ridden. A ing his first tenure. makin publicity secretary of five years.

INIOBONG IWOK (Lagos), In terms of job creation, final report on the 2019 genBello would be challenged the pan-Yoruba socio-political SAMUEL ESE (Yenagoa) & the survey also estimated VICTORIA NNAKAIKE (Lokoja) eral elections by the European in the election by Musa Wada, organisation, Afenifere, said.

Union Election Observation who is the candidate of the “Right now, the security that upon the development arely twenty-four Mission had said that the elec- PDP. In the last few days of agencies are not doing their of national fleet, over 131,304 hours to Saturday’s tions were marred by violence campaigns, tension has been job; they are still being con- direct and indirect jobs gubernatorial elec- and intimidation with the role high in both states, while vio- trolled by the executives. It is would be created for Nigetions in Kogi and of security agencies becoming lent confrontations among left for the security agencies rians in the five-year period.

A breakdown shows Bayesla States, Ni- more contentious. supporters of the two lead- to provide a level playing field gerians and other stakeholdSeveral political parties are ing parties have led to some for all the candidates in tomor- the estimated jobs include ers have tasked the security fielding candidates in tomor- deaths. row’s elections,” Odumakin 13,750 direct seafaring jobs and 106,412 indirect jobs, agencies and the Independent row’s gubernatorial election Stakeholders have ex- further said.

National Electoral Commis- in both states. The contest pressed fears that the largeAccording to him, “Our 1,275 direct support service sion (INEC) on credible and is, however, expected to be a scale violence noticed during elections have become more jobs and 9,867 indirect supviolence-free exercise. straight fight between the can- the campaigns across the two violence-prone; it is mafia- port services jobs.

Local and international didates of the People’s Demo- states may affect voter turnout styled and that is because groups have equally called cratic Party and those of the All and cast doubt on the cred- the Federal Government is in for peaceful elections in both Progressives Congress (APC). ibility of the elections. charge of the security agencies; states. The United States, for inIn Bayelsa, the incumbent “For me, it is a misplaced nothing would change if this stance, has threatened to work governor, Seriake Dickson, has expectation if you expect INEC continues. But I don’t expect with stakeholders to identify served out his constitutional to guarantee peaceful election much from either INEC or the Temitayo Ayetoto and sanction politicians who two terms in office and would tomorrow. INEC can’t do any- security agencies; the heads perpetrate electoral fraud or not be seeking re-election. thing when you talk about se- of the security agencies are idening access undermine the credibility of However, his Kogi State coun- curity during elections. But they compromised.” to diabetes the polls. terpart, Yahaya Bello, is stand- have to work and guarantee treatment in •Continues online at Recent elections in Nigeria ing in for re-election after serv- peace tomorrow,” Yinka OduNigeria will rewww.businessday.ng quire deliberate government effort to address the deficit of specialists and technological infrastructure available in hospitals, according to experts. come of fast moving consumer that the increasingly deteBALA AUGIE Olufemi Fasanmade, progoods (FMCG) firms. riorating margins of Nigerian s the earnings season fessor of Medicine at the International Breweries corporates could result in an “High unemployment and is gradually coming to and PZ Cussons are the only economic downturn if the University of Lagos, said with low consumer demand are an end, a snapshot of firms to record a loss among fundamentals fail to improve about 4 million Nigerians hurting many businesses. The third-quarter results stricken with diabetes and the NSE 30, and analysts see a in the near term. banks have benefitted from shows that only three sectors bleak future for the sub-sector Between 2009 and 2014, a less than 100 highly trained the favourable yield environare the major drivers of earnings as the Federal Government total of 322 organised private specialists in the disease ment but the new central bank of the most liquid companies plans to increase taxes on car- sector companies closed shop, management, there is an rules on Loans to Deposits on the Nigerian bourse. bonated drinks, and hike Value citing the harsh business envi- overwhelming human capital (LDR) could result in deteThe Nigerian Stock ExAdded Tax (VAT) to 7.5 percent ronment, according to a World gap which needs to be fixed to riorating asset quality,” said change (NSE) 30, a list of the enhance life expectancy. from 5 percent.

Bank Enterprise Survey.

Johnson Chukwu, managing most capitalised firms, saw If the status quo is mainProfit margins of consumer The report also said that director and CEO of Cowry combined net income increase goods are thinning as cost out of 5,833 firms sampled in tained, it implies one specialAsset Management Ltd. by 13.34 percent to N1.06 trilspikes and revenue grows at the country within the period, ist will be responsible for over Nigerian corporate earnlion in September 2019 from a slow pace. Cumulative net at least 1,136 were reported to 300,000 diabetic patients. ings might have recorded an N939.94 billion as at Septemmargins fell to 5.79 percent in be at the risk of closing down. Patients will not be able to even stronger growth in the ber 2018.

September 2019 from 10.54 The economy has been see doctors more than three third quarter but for one sector The growth was largely unpercent the previous year. growing sluggishly since the times in a year for regular playing the spoiler. derpinned by a 12.14 percent, “Our overall outlook for the country exited its first recession check-up. And when emerDeteriorating consumer 18.24 percent and 40.722 perconsumer goods sector in Q4- in 25 years, and GDP growth gency cases arise, some depurchasing power, hike in cent uptick in the cumulative 19 is not overly positive due to slowed to 1.90 percent in the gree or tendency for delay petrol price, and decrepit inbottom lines (profit) of banks, myriads of macro bottlenecks second quarter (Q2) of 2019, might be inevitable due to the frastructure that has made it cement makers, and the oil that continue to weigh on oper- from 2.10 percent in the first shortfall in manpower and practically impossible for comand gas sectors to N731.18 ating performance,” said Yinka quarter (Q1), and 2.38 percent in an overwhelming number of panies to transport their goods billion, N174.13 billion, and Ademuwagun, equity analyst the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2018. patients. to the factory warehouse are N75.85 billion, respectively, To bridge the untended with United Capital Ltd. •Continues online at gap, “we are trying to train responsible for a 21.54 percent according to data compiled by Analysts are of the view www.businessday.ng more and more people so that drop in the cumulative net inBusinessDay.

Kogi/Bayelsa: Nigerians task INEC, security agencies on credible, violence-free polls

B

After the demise of the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), the government-owned company, in 1995, Nigeria has not been actively involved in shipping business estimated at N2 trillion annually. This automatically left the shipping aspect of crude oil lifting in one the world’s largest producers of the product to foreign vessels.

“Owning of Nigerian registered, flagged and crewed ships would have an immeasurable effect on the economy because Nigerian ship owners have been losing by allowing foreigners to own and operate ships on the nation’s waters,” said Hassan Bello, chairman of NFIC, who gave insight into the survey.

Bello said it has become very important that Nigerians own and operate ships because shipping business, together with other aspects of maritime, could finance Nigeria’s annual budget if properly harnessed.

Bello emphasised the need for government to incentivise the private sector to encourage them to invest in vessel acquisition, saying the maritime industry wants a private sector-led national fleet.

He listed the fiscal incen-

Continues on page 34

Nigeria must fix specialists, tech deficit to strengthen diabetes treatment - Experts

These 3 sectors drove NSE 30 profit growth in Q3

A

W

MARKETS

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

even if you are not a diabetes expert, you can have sufficient knowledge to handle patients”, Fasanmade said in a keynote address at the second edition of ‘Diabetes Demystified’ in Lagos.

“We have brought into the fold several other doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare workers,” he said.

Daniella Apkakwu, the convener and founder of Wellness Patron, urged for increased awareness on the illness, considering the growing rate of detection and its role as a catalyst for other health complications to build on.

Apkakwu, who veered into public education on lifestyle diseases in 2017, laid emphasis on inculcating lifestyle habits that prevent the occurrence of diabetes and tackle the disease to a standstill.

“The more diabetes cases increase, the more the need for awareness on lifestyle measures and changes. Nutrition is a cornerstone in tackling diabetes and I think Nigerians don’t really know much about nutrition and lifestyle. That is why we came up with Wellness Patron to help educate people,” she said.

•Continues online at www.businessday.ng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

3

4

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

5

news

Experts decry deepening malnutrition among Nigerian children, women ... urge integration of multi-vitamin components in school feeding programme GODSGIFT ONYEDINEFU

S

ome key stakeholders in public health have decried that malnutrition is still highly prevalent in Nigeria with women and children being the most affected due to poor access to basic micro nutrients.

The stakeholders, speaking on Thursday at a workshop on public health by Vitamins Angels, pointed out that poverty, lack of functional primary health care centres across the country, illiteracy and poor access to multiple micronutrient supplements were some of the key factors deepening malnutrition in the country.

Francis Ohanyido, a public health expert and country director, Vitamins Angels, speaking at the workshop in Abuja, noted that Nigeria had been identified as the poverty capital of the world, which had put millions of people in a space where they cannot eat quality food, and as a result a lot people were malnourished.

He said despite efforts of Vitamins Angels, in collaboration with its 144 partners in supporting government expand access to micronutrients, especially in low income countries, the challenges were still enormous.

“Our Primary Health Care (PHC) system is not doing its work, we hope that the new Ba-

sic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) will prompt states to strengthen PHCs because that’s where the problem is, if they are working these challenges will not be there,” he said He expressed concern that women and children tend to bear the brunt of the menace as women were often forced to go through pregnancy with inadequate or optimal level of nutrition, which might cause complications during pregnancy, while death, stunted growth, poor response to diseases were some consequences of malnutrition among children.

“The recent demographic and health survey report shows that malnutrition is still a major problem in Nigeria. This is a critical problem that people tend to overlook. For example, if a malnourished woman experiences bleeding during delivery, it further worsens, because her body might not cope with,” he said.

He added, “It also affects her immune system response and makes it difficult for her system to ward off ordinary diseases, and because she is poorly nourished too, the quality of nutrition plays on the foetus.

“If women and children are not well nourished it can affect brain growth especially in the first 1000 days of the child and

www.businessday.ng

the quality of brain and output of that child later in life.”

The country director said in addition to ensuring that women and children get the right nutrients and vitamins, exclusive breastfeeding and deworming are also critical.

According to him, when children re not regularly dewormed, they end up competing with worms for nutrient, but deworming will ensure that whatever they take in terms of nutrient is optimally utilised by the body. He added that exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months will also boost a child’s resistance to diseases.

“Breast feeding is fundamental, because of the poor literacy level, people don’t know the value. A child who is not well breaded has about 11 times more chances of dying of diarrhoea,” he noted.

In an effort to curb the problem, Ohanyido called on government to develop policies that would favour exclusive breastfeeding, to encourage women to breastfeed.

He also urged government to ensure that health facilities have adequate micronutrients, because according to him, “even if the child is well breast fed, the environment has a large amount of soil transmitted worms which the child is exposed to.”

FG begins process to regulate social media Godsgift Onyedinefu, Abuja

F

ederal Government of Nigeria has announced that it has kick-started the process to regulate social media. Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, disclosed this during a meeting with Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) in Abuja on Thursday.

The minister said the Federal Government was exploring different options to regulate the social media, saying in addition to enacting new laws, the government can leverage on technology and work with the big techies like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram to check the spread of fake news and hate speeches.

According to Mohammed, a committee will be set up to determine the best option to regulate the social media space.

“Let me announce here that we have just kick-started the process. We have dispatched letters inviting representatives of the media, civil society, technology and security experts, online publishers, bloggers, relevant agencies of government, etc., for this purpose,” he said.

Mohammed explained that the process will not be unilateral, but will involve all stakeholders coming together to chart the

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

path forward, saying countries around the world were as concerned as Nigeria, and were doing something about the social media. The countries, according to him, include Germany, UK, Singapore, China, South Korea, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, among others.

He noted that the Federal Government’s plan to sanitise the social media had generated intense debate, saying while some had supported the plan, others had opposed it.

He stressed that no criticism would stop efforts to sanitise the social media space.

“An interesting part of the debate has been that even those who oppose the regulation have acknowledged the dangers inherent in the irresponsible use of the social media, especially by anarchists and non-patriots.

We thank everyone who has spoken out, and we hope the debate will continue,” he said.

Mohammed added that those who opposed to the planned regulation had argued that the nation already had enough laws to deal with those using the social media to purvey fake news and hate speech, and that the plan was aimed at stifling free speech and muzzling the media, especially those critical of the administration.

@Businessdayng

According to Mohammed, “It is premature for anyone to say there are enough laws already to deal with social media deviants.”

He reiterated that there were no plans to stifle free speech or muzzle the media, saying the government welcomes criticism from social media. “We have no such plan. As we speak, people are on the social media criticizing the Administration.

We have no problem with that, because it is part of democracy.

“People are using the traditional media to criticize the Administration. Why not? This is a democracy and there should be plurality of opinions. But our concern has to do with the abuse of the social media by those who are bent on spreading fake news and hate speech, and the dangers inherent in that for our national peace and unity. We have no hidden agenda.

“As I have said many times, no responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space, because of the capacity of this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against each other and trigger a national conflagration”, he said.

The minister solicited the support of the GOCOP in the National Campaign for fake news and hate speech.

6

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

7

news

AIB releases three preliminary reports on incidents involving Air Peace IFEOMA OKEKE

A

ccident Investigation Bureau (AIB) Nigeria has released the preliminary reports on incidents involving three aircraft owned and operated by Air Peace Limited.

The bureau in a statement Thursday says the preliminary reports are not the final reports as they contain details of the initial facts, discussions and findings surrounding the occurrences, which include information gathered from witness statements, flight recorders, Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS) Data, Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) data, and preliminary inspection of the accident sites and the wreckages.

Therefore, the investigations on these serious incidents are still ongoing and final reports on these occurrences will be released at the conclusion of these investigations.

The reports released by AIB included the serious incident involving Air Peace Limited B737-300 aircraft with nationality and registration marks 5N-BUK at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, on May 15, 2019.

Findings from AIB show that the flight crew were certified and qualified to conduct the flight in accordance with applicable regulations, the captain was the pilot flying while the First Officer was the pilot monitoring, the aircraft landed on runway 18R at 19:34h. and was taxied to the apron and the passengers disembarked normally.

AIB was notified three weeks after the occurrence via a phone call by a passenger that was on the incident flight, a post-incident inspection of the aircraft showed substantial damage to the aircraft structure and its No. 2 engine cowling and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) recording of the occurrence was overwritten.

AIB also released the report on the serious incident involving the airline’s B737500 aircraft with nationality and registration marks 5N-BRN at Port Harcourt International Airport, Port Harcourt on June 22, 2019.

Findings on the incident show that the aircraft has a valid certificate of airworthiness, the aircraft drifted left of runway 21 and touched down with the left main wheel on the grass verge and its right main wheel on the runway shoulder, at a distance of 1,260m from the runway threshold, and the aircraft came to a stop at a distance of 1,620m from the threshold of runway 21 with the landing gears stuck in the mud.

Hope rises for 1,350mw Abuja IPP as NNPC secures $1.16m US grant Olusola Bello

T

he hope of making the 1,350 megawatts Abuja Independent Power plant getting off the ground received a boost as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) have concluded arrangement to sign a $1.16 million grant as part funding for the project.

This was disclosed at a business meeting between the management of NNPC and the US Trade and Development Agency at the NNPC Towers,

www.businessday.ng

Abuja, on Thursday, where both parties agreed to close out the deal on December 1, 2019.

When the project is completed it is believed that it would help alleviate the power challenge in the country.

The group managing director of the NNPC, Mele Kyari, said the plan by the corporation to build the 1,350mw power plant in Abuja was part of the national strategy to monetise the abundant natural gas resources in the country.

A statement signed by Samson Makoji, acting group general manager, Group Public Affairs Division, stated

that the USDTA grant was to complement the ongoing feed project in order to make the Abuja IPP initiative more bankable for strategic investors’ participation.

“As a state-owned oil company and enabler organisation, we know that our investment in the Abuja 1,350mw IPP will increase energy supply level with great impact on the nation’s economy. Therefore, the USTDA grant is timely to make it a bankable project that would attract foreign direct investment into the country,” he said.

The NNPC boss assured

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

the US team that every money given as grant to the corporation would be fully utilised and accounted for.

“This company is focused on making our systems and processes transparent and accountable and that is why we are engaging world class institutions with good track record in execution of our projects,” he explained.

He called on the USTDA to look beyond feasibility studies to actual delivery of the project, stressing that the power plant project has a lot of viable investment opportunities for all investors.

@Businessdayng

In her remark, the country manager, Power Africa and the leader of the USTDA delegation, Jullian Foerster, stated that her organisation was determined to work with the corporation to sign off on the grant not later than December 1, 2019.

She said USTDA was open to other business opportunities in the coming year, 2020, noting that NNPC’s strategic role as a key player in the oil and gas industry made the US Agency to “jump at the opportunity to work on this deal” of providing support in the form of a grant.

8

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

9

10

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

comment

comment is free

Send 800word comments to comment@businessday.ng

Poverty capital of the world THE NEW WEALTH OF NATIONS

Obadiah Mailafia

L

ast April the international charity, Oxfam, revealed that the number of extreme poor in Nigeria had skyrocketed to 94.4 million people, with 3 million having been added to that unhappy lot in a span of six months. As some of my gentle readers would recall, in 2017 Nigeria overtook India for the dubious prize of being the world’s poverty capital. India’s destitute poor number some 70 million, 5.124 percent of a total population of 1.36 billion.

Nigeria’s 94.5 million poor constitute 47.2 percent of our current estimated population of 200 million. Nearly a half of our population are virtually condemned to the nightmare of the Middle Ages.

In our context, poverty has strong regional and gender dimensions. The majority of the poor are women and vulnerable groups. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that the North is the poorest region in the country, with Sokoto having the worst record of 81.2 percent. Adamawa and Gombe both have a poverty rate of 74.2 percent. Lagos and the south fare better. Our commercial capital has a poverty rate of 48.6 percent while Bayelsa has 47 percent.

Poverty in our context is defined in terms of those who live below the threshold of $1.90 or N684 per day.

Poverty is not a sign of virtue; it is, in fact, a curse. Neither is it a situation determined by our destiny or DNA. On the contrary, it derives from the failure of governance and inability of our government to generate those public goods that promote collective welfare for the vast majority.

Nigeria’s current status as the world

capital of poverty is a great national embarrassment. We are supposed to be OPEC’s sixth biggest oil exporter and Africa’s biggest economy by far.

And we are richly endowed with natural resources. It is damaging to both our national honour and our external image and standing in the world comity of nations.

Poverty is popularly defined as lack of sufficient material resources to live a decent life in society. Distinctions are often made between absolute poverty, which refers to the complete lack of access to basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing; and relative poverty, which refers to a condition where people cannot meet their own basic needs relative to the minimum standards that obtain within a society. The concept of relative poverty highlights inequality and exclusion as critical elements in the poverty equation. The father of economic science, Adam Smith in his classic work, The Wealth of Nations, underlined the relative nature of poverty in terms of not only those “commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without.”

In our day and age, poverty is not only an economic and financial phenomenon; it has various other dimensions. It includes things like literacy, access to information, access to basic social services such as health, education, social protection and sanitation.

The Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen drew attention to the role and importance of political empowerment and freedom as essential elements of development and human welfare. Sen conceptualises poverty in terms of lack of access to basic entitlements, defined in terms of the “various bundles of goods and services over which one has command, taking into cognizance the means by which such goods are acquired…and the availability of the needed goods.”

According to the World Bank, other dimensions of poverty include: abuse by those in power; dis-empowering institutions; gender relationships; lack of security; limited capabilities; physi-

cal limitations; precarious livelihoods; problems in social relationships; weak community organisations; and discrimination. Quite often hunger and malnutrition are among the most visible symptoms of poverty, in addition to diseases such as preventable diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. There is also the gender dimension, illiteracy and lack of access to education and the politics of exclusion. Linked to this is lack of access to financial services and to public utilities such as electricity, public utilities, health and sanitation.

The poor tend to live in remote villages as well as in urban slums. They are often disproportionately exposed to violence and insecurity and the vagaries of climate change. Grand corruption and poor governance by power elites aggravate the condition of the poor by robbing them of those resources that could have improved their livelihoods while excluding them from participation in those decisions that shape their future and that of their children.

In the Nigerian context, the roots of poverty derive poor governance; low economic growth; macroeconomic shocks and policy failure; unemployment; urbanisation; lack of investments in human capital; and violence and insecurity.

Poor governance is one of the key drivers of poverty. Poor governance as manifested in corruption entails robbing the public of budgetary resources that could have been channelled into infrastructures and economic development. Equally important is low growth and macroeconomic failure.

Economic science has established a strong causal relationship between growth and poverty alleviation. Growth stimulates expanding opportunities for jobs and collective welfare. When growth accelerates so does collective welfare. With the recent recovery from recession, growth remains sluggish and uncertain. We would be lucky to achieve 2.0 percent at year’s end 2019.

Under the current dispensation, the incidence of poverty is reaching harrowing proportions, in addition to youth unemployment that is as high as 70 percent in the poorest regions of the North. An estimated 45 million

‘

Nigeria’s current status as the world capital of poverty is a great national embarrassment.

We are supposed to be OPEC’s sixth biggest oil exporter and Africa’s biggest economy by far. And we are richly endowed with natural resources

Note: The rest of this article continues in the online edition of Business Day @https://businessday.ng Dr. Mailafia is a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, a development economist and public finance expert with a DPhil from Oxford obmailafia@gmail.com; 08036590990 (text messages only)

The USSD billing flip flop

I

t’s interesting how a simple SMS, which costs N4 to send, would make the Minister of Communication, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the Body of Bank CEOs, to sing discordant tunes. Call them the Three Musketeers of Policy Flip Flop and you won’t be wrong.

On October 19, 2019, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) company, MTN Nigeria, sent out an SMS to its over 61 million subscribers informing them of plans to begin charging them directly for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) access to banking services, beginning from October 21, 2019, and asking them to contact their individual banks for more information.

Unsurprisingly, as it is with many political appointees, the Minister of Communication, Isa Ibrahim Pantami, in his reaction, took to playing to the gallery. He claimed ignorance of the proposed charge and directed the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to ask MTN to suspend the plan, and for an investigation to be carried out. The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, would join in, saying the CBN and banks “will not allow this to happen.”

The third musketeer, the Body of Bank CEOs, followed with a statement riddled with so many contradictions, contradicting themselves, Emefiele and Pantami. On one hand they said

PIUS OKORUWA

they (banks) did not ask MTN to start charging customers, but went on to say how they’ve been engaging MTN to bring down the cost of USSD for over a year.

According to the statement, “MTN is the only Telco that is yet to implement end-user billing.”

The statement admits that this is the standard practice for customer-initiated transactions.

Which means that every other Telco has been implementing it, aside MTN. The question then is, why is the minister of communication, the CBN Governor, and banks opposing MTN. For the unassuming mind, the crust of this revelation is easy to miss. However, from my little understanding of the banking sector, there is only one reason why MTN had for a long time refused to implement the end-user billing like other Telcos.

From the statements by the CBN, Body of Bank CEOs and MTN, minus the Minister of Communication, whom it appears either does not understand the workings of his ministry or was yet to be briefed; the first point you should note is that every other Telco, except MTN, has been charging their subscribers for USSD every time they use their banks services.

Also, there’s no time that the banks or CBN said, either explicitly or in passing, that the USSD charge was illegal. The CBN’s argument is that they’re looking for a way to see that the other

www.businessday.ng

of our youths are either unemployed our under-employed. To make matters worse, rural banditry has been on the increase, in addition to kidnapping and the nightmare of random, nihilistic, violence.

Climate change is one of the catastrophic realities of our world today.

Scientists tell us that we have entered a new Anthropocene Age. For the first time in millennia, human activities can independently alter the physiognomy of the biosphere and eco-system of planet earth. Linked to this is the inevitable challenge of natural resource depletion. Expanding population will trigger greater competition for increasing scarce strategic natural resources.

In Nigeria we face the prospect of the drying up Lake Chad and the challenge of desertification which has been encroaching at the rate of 6.5 km per annum. In the south there is the challenge of erosion, floods and massive oil pollution, all of which impact negatively on human livelihoods. Climate change is partly responsible for the Boko Haram insurgency and for the atrocities committed by herdsmen militias in the Middle Belt. Violence and conflict have led to greater poverty and greater humanitarian disaster in terms of millions of internally displaced people.

The good news is that we can do something about it. We can take bolder and more original initiatives to reverse the path-dependence towards deepening poverty in our country. The great scientist and sage, Albert Einstein, famously noted that the mark of madness is to continue doing the same things while expecting a different outcome. We need bolder leadership, institutional reforms and more effective governance if we are to effectively tackle poverty in our country.

Telcos (this is excluding MTN that has refused to burden its subscribers with end-user billings) reduce the USSD charge to the barest minimum, or stop it outrightly.

The reason why banks, in cohort with the CBN, “have engaged MTN over a period of more than one year to try and bring down the cost of USSD to aid financial inclusion”, is because all the while the banks were complaining of the cost of USSD, MTN, was transferring the cost from you the enduser to the banks. USSD charges can be grouped into two; one is corporate USSD for the banks and the other is what’s known as the end-user billing.

Presently, MTN offers USSD service to businesses as corporate reverse billing, which implies that when a USSD short code is dialled by bank customers, it is the corporate customer (in this case their bank) that is charged. For other Telcos, it is their subscribers that is charged. The banks’ grouse with MTN is that rather than charge you their (banks) customers, MTN had chosen not to burden you with the fees but to charge them (banks) instead.

So, you see, while the banks were after your money, MTN has had your best interest at heart from the start. The shocking part is, just as the banks have for years remained secretive about the exact charges they deduct from your accounts for every transaction, they’ve not been transparent about the whole USSD service brouhaha, even to

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

the point of lying.

The Body of Bank CEOs outrightly lied in their statement that they were not the ones that told MTN to begin charging you for USSD. A leaked memo showed that they proposed to MTN “an orderly implementation of end-user billing for bank customers.” According to them, this would help the process of “aligning with the standard practice for USSD billing.”

The way in which the Three Musketeers of Policy Flip Flop went after MTN, one would think that MTN has the power to make a decision as important as this without the approval of the industry regulator, the NCC. But, that’s not the case. MTN’s plan to move the USSD charge from the banks to the customers was inspired by the NCCs new USSD regulation stipulated in a document titled “Determination of USSD Pricing” dated July 23, 2019.

While the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) have defended the Telcos as committed to Nigeria’s growth, the NCC which should normally have their backs have left MTN to the dogs. If like many others you’re wondering why the NCC is acting double faced, let’s just say that the commission, in cohort with the Three Musketeers of Policy Flip Flop are all looking for a scapegoat, and MTN appears the perfect fit.

@Businessdayng

Ekwegh is a private legal practitioner with over 15 years

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

comment

11

comment is free

Send 800word comments to comment@businessday.ng

Village matter at 50 HumanAngle

Femi olugbile

R

ecently, the talking drums were rolled out to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of “Village Headmaster”.

Many of the millennials who make up a large percentage of the population of Nigeria would be forgiven if they do not recognise the brand “Village Headmaster”.

But Nigerians of a certain age would remember Village Headmaster as the pioneer and flagship television drama series on television. It mirrored the lived experience of a rural population somewhere in the SouthWest of the country. It was family entertainment for a Nigerian television audience whose experience of drama up till then were British and American staples like “Bonanza” and “Hawaii 5-0”. To see colourful local characters they could identify with – people like Kabiyesi Oloja of Oja (the inimitable Dejumo Lewis) with his rustic drawl, verbose, occasionally cantankerous Chief Eleyinni (Funsho Adeolu), Amebo – the village gossip (Ibidun Alison) on their screens every week living out a communal life they fully understood was a new and delightful experience for them.

Once a week the families lucky enough to own television sets, and their invited neighbours, would sit down and watch the residents of a fictional Oja village play out the

drama of their lives.

It was not just drama to entertain.

It was a platform to educate and to inform.

The mind behind the creation of Village Headmaster was Mr Segun Olusola. He has since passed on to the world beyond, but his creation has continued to survive him in the minds of many of his countrymen.

In your mind, the golden jubilee of Village Headmaster was a chance to see how the past could inspire the present and guide the future.

The celebration began with a well-attended evening of Drama at Terra Kulture. Most of the surviving members of the cast of Village Headmaster got up on stage in a play titled ‘No Vacancy’. It was mostly the old story all over, with a slight modern twist. Amebo was about to be declared Iya loja General. That, among other matters of earth-shaking importance generated hot discussion in the palace of the Oloja, who was conspicuous by his absence due to an unnamed illness.

As the drama wound to a close, it was revealed the Oloja was recovering from his illness. Life was returning to normal.

But that normalcy was an anachronism. Surely life had since moved on in Oja, as in the rest of Nigeria, as in the rest of the world.

If there was going to be a “New Village Headmaster”, and there was much talk of it, it would have to be about an Oja where many of the characters had retired from active life, and their children were carrying on their conflicts, or inventing their own.

But the real heart of the celebration was a seminar the next day, where the grandees of the Entertainment and Information industry were to gather the topic “Drama as

a tool for National Development”.

One panel, led by veteran broadcaster Danladi Bako, would focus on “Economic Development”. The second, led by you, would focus on “National Unity”.

The proceedings took off with the arrival of the Director General of Nigeria Television Authority. He had one of his predecessors in tow, as well as Ambassador Christopher Kolade- one of the founding fathers of Nigerian broadcasting.

After the nice speeches, you got down to brass tacks. There was a sense among the younger generation of actors and producers that government and “the old breed”, represented by the NTA establishment, were dismissive of the talents and achievements of the young ones, and not willing to acknowledge them, not to speak of mentoring or promoting them. Kemi Lala Akindoju (actress, producer/ director – famous for ‘Dazzling Mirage’, ‘Fifty’, ‘The CEO’) lit the fuse, declaring that the new generation were breaking new grounds at home and abroad, despite their much-advertised limitations, and should be commended. Instead, older people seemed to thumb their noses at them.

To illustrate, she said, there were very few young people in the audience. It was the establishment talking to itself. She mentioned how the facilities of the NTA behemoth were lying waste all over the country, and yet they would not allow private producers to use them. She mentioned Funke Akindele, the creator of the “Jenifa” character and its spinoffs, and how she had created a huge industry single-handedly, even building her own studio. Such efforts should be celebrated and embraced, instead of being scoffed

‘

Summing up was tough, you reflected, as you took the microphone. The NTA had to get real and accept it could not “control” Drama and the industry it had spawned.

More people were watching “private” Drama – films, television, Netflix, than were watching NTA Drama

at for her character’s rotten English.

In any case, these were the Drama the Nigerian people preferred to watch, instead of expensive, government sponsored NTA productions.

Nobody could force them to do otherwise.

The heat and passion spilled over into your session. Taiwo Ajayi Lycett felt it was the duty of Drama, whether government or private, to have a positive social message. Professor Duro Oni agreed that, although Drama was for entertainment, it was also to educate and to enlighten.

Keppy Ekpeyong Bassey – Nollywood notable, remarked that Nollywood was a reality nobody could ignore, but it had a duty not just to reflect reality but to transform it positively.

Summing up was tough, you reflected, as you took the microphone.

The NTA had to get real and accept it could not “control” Drama and the Industry it had spawned. More people were watching “private” Drama – films, television, Netflix, than were watching NTA Drama. People had a choice. It was the duty of government to facilitate and promote, rather than compete, disparage or stifle. The resources of NTA, which, afterall, belonged to everyone, should assist Nollywood to improve itself, and to grow and flourish.

Bimbo Oloyede – doyen of Newscasters, had led the team that put the celebration together. Her late husband, Tunde, was your friend, and had produced some of the television plays you wrote to earn pocket money in Medical School. He had also produced Village Headmaster for several years. Now she stepped forward to the microphone to give a vote of thanks.

Olugbile is a writer and psychiatrist. synthesiz@gmail.com

The stamina for success

A

young Jimmy Iovine was a ghetto kid from Brooklyn. To survive, he got a job as a studio cleaner and messenger.

During the cocaine sales epidemic of the 70s (similar to today’s “Yahoo Yahoo” epidemics amongst young adults in Nigeria), he instead, stayed at work with a meagre pay, cleaning basements of studios. Everyone loved his dedication and reliability. And because of that, the celebrities in the studio allowed him get closer. Right there he started learning about studio engineering. Like Wizkid was to OJB, he was what we call a studio rat. He was in the studio when most of The Beatles and John Lennon hits were being made. Today, he is the producer of the Academy Award movie 8miles

by Eminem; he is the chairman of Interscope records (his label created the likes of Lady Gaga, Tupac, Madonna, Kendrick Lamar and even Snoop Dogg). He is also the co-founder of the headphone company Beats by Dre. Their woofers and speakers now come in all Chrysler cars. He got $3.2 billion to share from Apple acquisition of beats by Dre alongside Dr Dre. This is article is about having stamina for success. It’s about grit and diligence.

In an era where parents do their kids assignments and let them copy it in their handwriting, where teachers help their students cheat to pass external exams, where most private schools don’t fail kids for bad performance anymore, we are steadily building a new generation with no stamina for success. Sacrifice, focus and grit are in steady decline. If there was a mathematical composition to personal success, I’d say that it is about ten percent luck, twenty percent skill, fifteen percent concentrated power of will, five percent pleasure, and a whooping fifty percent

pain. But we are steadily taking out that ability to manage pain.

It doesn’t matter how intelligent, fast and knowledgeable we are, if we don’t understand the value of pain and the grit to manage it, we go nowhere. Difficult roads lead to beautiful places. To be ready for success is to be ready for that lonely tough road.

It’s painful to see brilliant and nice people fail. I always wondered why. But numerous studies have found that people who are smart, talented, kind, curious, and come from stable, loving homes, generally don’t succeed if they don’t know how to work hard, remain committed to their goals, and persevere through struggles and failure. People just start and never finish. People just want to skip the process.

Sometimes the process and even failure is the only route to succeed. In life, making mistakes is better than faking perfection and grit (perseverance and passion for long-term desired goals).

People don’t just stay long enough with total focus on a desire. I am afraid there is really no lasting shortcut to this. To make any tangible progress or grand achievement, this thing must be conquered. The reason why most people fail is in their lack of grit. It is something most parents could have solved in their kids when they were younger. Research has proven that it’s a better indicator of future earnings and happiness than either IQ or talent.

In China, there’s a unique type of tree planted by the Chinese called the Chinese bamboo tree. Its story is a template of what persistence and perseverance really is. When planted, it doesn’t sprout out of the soil for almost six years.

It doesn’t show any sign of life nor growth but the Chinese guys would still go ahead and fer-

www.businessday.ng

tilize and water it daily for those six “horrible” years. Surprisingly, in the 7th year, the bamboo tree under just seven weeks sprouts and grows up to a height of 70 feet. So, the question always is, did the tree attain that great height in just seven weeks or was it in seven years? In reality, it happened in 7 years because if the Chinese had given up at any time within those six long years. The tree would have died beneath the soil.

This is how business works.

In the words of the management legend Peter Drucker “What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is what matters”. Will power and grit is such a neglected part of success. The same goes for going all out. I once read of how Hernando Cortez, a Spanish explorer of the 15th century who conquered Aztec, a part of today’s Mexico and other territories. He won so many wars on lonely lands surrounded with water by a tactics of always sinking all of his team’s ship in the middle of battles. This leaves them with no option than to fight with their last sweat, blood and tears, with no option but to win or die.

Working in an enterprise is much easier than starting one. I’ve always said that we have so many people searching and in need of a job because being an employee is such a safe thing to do. But in the world of business, it can be a scary world out there. To soar is to conquer that fear. Eagles take the biggest risks, days after birth; they throw their new off springs off a feared height with nothing but trial, confidence and hope that the new eagle will fly. Be brave.

Give wings to your dreams, and the powers that be will propel you through. Take risks, take on challenges, if you win, you’ll be happy; if you lose, you’ll be wise.

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

EIZU UWAOMA This brings home the question, how can we create a better culture for grit and stamina for success?

Firstly, find what you passionately love but confront the brutal fact, that there are things that must be done whether we are passionate about it or not. It’s called sacrifice.

Secondly, create a “do it yourself” lifestyle.

Also, ensure at any point in your growth process, you are working on something difficult.

More so, understand that practice begets skill. So, develop a growth mindset. Come to the disposition that hard work and even failing and trying again is a part of that process. Meanwhile, always remember that failure is not the end and finally always check up on your courage and strength of character.

I hope this helps. According to Julie Andrews, “perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th”. Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. Remember these; WANT is a word of RETREAT, DID – ACHIEVEMENT, CAN’T – DEFEAT, MIGHT – DOUBT, TRY – POSSIBILTY, OUGHT – DUTY, WILL –CONFIDENCE, CAN – POWER. Have a great stamina for success.

Uwaoma is a start-up, corporate restructuring and strategy consultant. contacteizu@gmail.com

@Businessdayng

12

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Editorial Publisher/CEO

Frank Aigbogun editor Patrick Atuanya DEPUTY EDITOR John Osadolor, Abuja NEWS EDITOR Chuks Oluigbo EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS Fabian Akagha EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, STRATEGY, INNOVATION & PARTNERSHIPS Oghenevwoke Ighure ADVERT MANAGER Ijeoma Ude FINANCE MANAGER Emeka Ifeanyi MANAGER, CONFERENCES & EVENTS Obiora Onyeaso BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER (South East, South South) Patrick Ijegbai COPY SALES MANAGER Florence Kadiri DIGITAL SALES MANAGER Linda Ochugbua GM, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (North)

Bashir Ibrahim Hassan

CSR example of indigenous oil and gas companies

T

he rise of indigenous oil and gas companies in the last decade has been a welcome development.

Over the period, many onshore assets which were hitherto in the hands of international oil companies (IOCs) were passed to indigenous companies.

Notwithstanding the challenges of the operating environment, many of the indigenous operators in partnership with the NNPC, have continued to deliver value to the Nigerian economy in terms of job creation, taxes and skills dissemination.

Several indigenous companies have been very successful at raising funds, acquiring technology, protecting the environment, gas utilization for power and entrenchment of federal government’s local content policy. This has led to a direct increase in local content participation in the sector. For example, the amount of fabrication being done locally has increased significantly and there are many more Nigerian subcontractors working on major projects, both for IOCs and

for indigenous operators.

However, beyond their core business, these indigenous companies have taken on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects in their host communities.

Over time, the companies have addressed community needs that cut across health care, education, infrastructure development among other areas. In many cases, extraordinary measures have been taken to graft in community interests into the operations of indigenous oil companies.

Accugas and its parent company, Seven Energy, for example, have adopted CSR initiatives beyond healthcare, education and infrastructure to include entrepreneurship and skills development.

Arguably the only indigenous company in the E&P sector dedicated solely to the domestic gas market, Accugas has invested over $600 million in gas development, processing and transportation infrastructure. The company has been providing gas to both Ibom Power and Calabar NIPP for the past five years, who together provide around 10 percent of the electricity consumed in the country. Together with its

parent company, Seven Energy, Accugas has invested close to $2 billion in the oil and gas sector, unprecedented for an indigenous company focused on the domestic gas market.

Seplat presents another sterling example. With such programmes as Eye-Can-See, the PEARLs quiz competition and Safe Motherhood. The indigenous major has brought communities closer and continues to deliver value. Since 2012, Seplat has invested in education in a bid to lift secondary schools in Edo and Delta states in a bid to help achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. As part of its quiz competition initiative it has delivered a language laboratory, three roofing projects, roofing for a block-ofclassrooms, interlocking stones for an entire school premises, designed to stave off erosion, five computer laboratories in different schools and four brand new school buses.

Lekoil, another example, is reputed to have signed a contract with its host and delivered significantly on CSR even before production began. Other indigenous companies that have demonstrat-

ed leadership in this area include First Exploration and Petroleum Development Company Limited and the Niger Delta Exploration and Production Plc. The result of these CSR interventions by indigenous oil and gas companies is that the acrimony which used to characterise oil companies and their hosts has reduced.

For companies, the key lesson is that when organisations factor in host communities into operations, the bottom lines are positively impacted. This model, that puts the people first, should be replicated across various sectors of the Nigerian economy.

This is even more relevant as the economic strains that communities face, post-recession, are still there. Many families can barely afford health care services or educate their children and will very much appreciate CSR interventions from time to time.

On the part of communities, it is only logical to reward responsible companies with peace and cooperation. And when there are the occasional disagreements, matters should be resolved without recourse to violence, intimidation and vandalism.

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

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Imo Itsueli Mohammed Hayatudeen Afolabi Oladele Vincent Maduka Opeyemi Agbaje Amina Oyagbola Bolanle Onagoruwa Fola Laoye Chuka Mordi Mezuo Nwuneli Charles Anudu Tunji Adegbesan Eyo Ekpo Wiebe Boer Paul Arinze Boye Olusanya Ayo Gbeleyi Haruna Jalo-Waziri Clement Isong

Enquiries NEWS ROOM 08169609331 08116759816 08033160837

} Lagos Abuja

ADVERTISING 01-2799110 08033225506 SUBSCRIPTIONS 01-2799101 07032496069 07054563299 DIGITAL SERVICES 08026011296 www.businessday.ng The Brook, 6 Point Road, GRA, Apapa, Lagos, Nigeria.

01-2799100 Legal Advisers The Law Union

OUR Core Values

Mission Statement To be a diversified provider of superior business, financial and management intelligence across platforms accessible to our customers anywhere in the world.

BusinessDay avidly thrives on the mainstay of our core values of being The Fourth Estate, Credible, Independent, Entrepreneurial and Purpose-Driven.

• The Fourth Estate: We take pride in being guarantors of liberal economic thought • Credible: We believe in the principle of being objective, fair and fact-based • Independent: Our quest for liberal economic thought means that we are independent of private and public interests.

• Entrepreneurial: We constantly search for new opportunities, maintaining the highest ethical standards in all we do • Purpose-Driven: We are committed to assembling a team of highly talented and motivated people that share our vision, while treating them with respect and fairness. www.businessday.ng

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

comment

13

comment is free

Send 800word comments to comment@businessday.ng

Wake up, let it be your morning again Tales from the main road

Eugenia Abu

I

w oke up to day w ith the thoughts of the people I have met along life’s journey who are broken and have told themselves they cannot rise again. People who life has dealt a difficult hand that they are certain that they will never be whole again.

Well, let me tell you something very special today. Wake up from that place that life handed you. It can be your morning again. You have to tell yourself hard as it may seem that the yeast that seems to be scarce in your life for the longest may have been added to make you rise again. And I can assure you, that yeast may not come from a hand you know, may not come from those you trust, may not come from your best friend and may not even come from your family and friends but from a stranger. That my friends, I assure you is the way of the spiritual. Especially if you are a good person and a repentant person.

Being good in itself is medicine and an investment for when you need yeast in your life. It may not look like it pays now but as I have always said, kindness, charity, empathy and

goodness are all bankable currencies.

The second thing to help you wake up from that place you are getting used to staying is to tell yourself continuously that it will be better. Positive thinking flips the coin of difficulty.

Self-doubt digs you deeper. The third mantra for planning to quit the darkness and embrace the light is to tell yourself that you are not alone.

Tell yourself that there are those in their numbers that are worse than you. Take a look outside, see the person who life has piled an enormous weight, count the huge boulders weighing you down, two? Well look around you even among your friends and see some who have four times your weight and guess what they still seem to be graceful and less irritating. And they with eight stones over their head may get out of the rot faster than you. Ask for grace from the Almighty so you can walk straight in spite of those boulders.

As I often do on this column, let me share a little tale about being under and thinking that the sunrays may never filter in again. It has happened to the best of us when you did not go out to offend anyone and everyone seems to be against you.

More often than not, if you have been blessed with efficiency and gifted with some measure of knowledge, even without showing off, just in the course of doing your job to the best of your ability, a few feathers will be ruffled. If you seem to be doing better than some of your so-called friends, envy will set in. You will be shocked that you may even have spousal envy or be unable to please your spouse no matter how hard you try. These are some of the trials and tribulations.

I am in the middle of writing my memoirs on my 35 years of service as a broadcaster and subsequently a top-level media administrator at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).

I am also putting finishing touches to my latest book, “So you want to be an Mc, tales and tips from a veteran Event Compere” available in 2020 but for pre-order by December this year.

I look back at my life and I am quite surprised at the many times the Lord has lifted me above danger and past my traducers. And so, to the story.

As E xecutive Director, Programmes at NTA for three years, I learnt more profoundly, things I had always known that human nature is inherently wicked. I dealt with some of the most bizarre incidences, lies, barefaced fact twisting, back hand behaviour, the height of betrayal and most of it were coming from people I knew. Sometimes I needed to interrogate the state of my mind. Before then I had encountered a boss, who was keen on decapitating me. Eventually, I retired at the height of my profession as an Executive Director.

I was on my way to do the things I enjoyed and was now answerable to myself. Leaving a toxic environment always re-awakens you. So, I took myself to Mauritius on a working visit.

While there, I received a text from one of my trusted aides while I was in service. She with whom i would share my challenges, ask her why human beings were inherently wicked, eat with her although by ranking she was about four positions below me.

She would tell me the plots and twists and plans of my naysayers and I will share with her what I was hearing. I am a bad eater, so I always need to

‘

Being good in itself is medicine and an investment for when you need yeast in your life. It may not look like it pays now but as I have always said, kindness, charity, empathy and goodness are all bankable currencies

concentrate fully to eat. No one was allowed in my office when I was eating because that was the end of the food and perhaps eating for the day, but she was allowed to break the protocol.

So, in Mauritius on a holiday, I received a text from one of my trusted aides who was still in service. It was 4 am Nigerian time which meant she could not sleep. The message was unflappable asking that i should forgive her, she did not mean to offend me etcetera. All along, my confidant was in bed with the enemy. It was an interesting development., this person could have killed me. The message could have depressed me for a long time. I was hurt of course but I chose to move on. Her conscience was clearly about to kill her. So, she was in my space on behalf of others. But you know how God says vengeance is mine, I moved on and simply cut her out of my life. Part of regaining that morning glory is to cut toxic people out of your life.

Find positive people and hang with them. Okay, so your spouse betrayed you, it’s not the end of your life, find something that makes you happy. Learn something new, don’t go into depression because of others.

Find something that makes your heart sing and do it Look at the glass as half full and not half empty. Remember, drugs are not an option.

Yes, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Pull up your will power. It does not matter where you are. It can be your morning again. Arise!

Abu is a broadcaster, writer, trainer, brand and multimedia strategy expert and media consultant. abu_eugenia@yahoo.com

How the excuse driven culture hinders organisations’ growth

T

he reality in life and in business is that we will always have reasons to give excuses at one time or the other. Interestingly, some of the excuses we give in life when we fail to attain or achieve some goals may appear to be what I call “good reasons”.

So, as a result of this “good reasons” mindset, many people will be tempted to justify their actions especially when failure has occurred.

But the truth is whether we have “good reasons” or “bad reasons”, when failure has occurred, it has indeed occurred and no amount of excuse or justification will turn things around. And this brings me to the thrust of my message – no one will excuse his or her way to success. This means, no organisation can be successful by having barrage of excuses. Trying to excuse one’s way to success will be akin to one deliberately stopping his wristwatch or time piece and expecting to have accuracy of time, or worst still believing that other people’s time piece would stop all because he chose to stop his.

Interestingly, when we are not doing what we ought to be doing for ourselves or for our businesses, others are doing them – same applies to your organisation. It is surprising to know that many people in organisations today have not realised that life does not reward intentions without actions. More often than not, our natural proclivity is to give ourselves permission to say what we want to do or intend to do but fail short of carrying them out. Some individuals and employees in organisations who procrastinate and at the same time give excuses for poor performance are being unfair

to themselves and their organisations. This is because they are short changing the growth of their organisations to their own peril and at the same short changing their potentials.

Most people are caught in the web of excuses majorly because they have not been measuring themselves based on results. They have not been measuring their input based on the result the organisation is getting. As a matter of fact, some do not even care to know what is going on in their organisations as long as they are being paid as at when due. We should begin to measure our successes or failures based on the results we generate either for ourselves or for our organisations. Measuring success or failure as a function of results basically means that we are taking a tough, end point approach to self-evaluation. Funnily enough that is how the world has been measuring us. No one or an organisation can set its own rules or laws; the world, the customers and even the shareholders have set the rules. And importantly, they have the ability even without our permission to enforce them on us.

If we are to start measuring our lives based on results that will make us to stop giving or taking excuses from other people. The truth is that anyone when given an opportunity can come up with one excuse or the other for poor performance. I have been a proponent of running one’s organisations as if it is one’s business.

This is because having ownership thinking helps us to do more and equally go the extra mile for our organisations. So, you can see that most excuses we give some times are based on the www.businessday.ng

fact that the organisation does not belong to us – and we don’t have a stake, but we seriously do – everyone in the organisation does. Usually, I believe that everyone that earns a salary in an organisation deserves to show ownership mentality and should strive for the organisation’s sustainability Again, giving excuses do not only affect our organisations but also ourselves in that it makes us losers. Because losers do not normally take actions when they should, and remember when you are not taking actions, others are taking. It is also the same thing as saying when we do not treat our customers’ right, our competitors are ready and eager to put smiles on their faces – and ultimately grab them from us.

Finally, to improve on our performances, everyone in your organisation would as a matter of concern and responsibility to your dear organisation forego giving excuses and start taking well defined actions. We should remember the time-honoured formula: Be, Do & Have. Meaning BE committed, DO what it takes, and you will HAVE what you want.

Instead of making excuses, we should resolve within ourselves to take the first step, make the effort and be persistent in the pursuit of your goals. When we make excuses and are losing, it is a pointer that another organisation is winning and ultimately it means that winning still takes place. The winning might as well happen to us, but it’s not going to happen by accident, it will never happen when we give excuses no matter how glamorous those excuses are, winning will only happen because

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

Uju Onwuzulike we made it happen. It will happen because you know what you want and move towards it in a strategic, consistent, meaningful, purposeful manner. Take action, and insist on results and avoid excuses. You and your organisation will be better for it.

Remember that everyone has one excuse or the other to give, but until we rise above our excuses and take responsibility and ownership of the outcome, our organisation might end up operating below average – while those that have risen above the excuses of others will operate above average.

Finally, remember that excuses abound for all the players, but it is only those that have ownership mentality of the business that can see to it that the organisation thrives regardless of any circumstance.

Let this ownership mentality be a key driving force for everyone in your organisation.

Feel free to share your views or perspectives.

The trusted advisor.

Onwuzulike is Nigeria’s leading authority on Systems Thinking and Strategic Management.

He can be reached on 09091142093 or uju.onwuzulike@ mclgroup.net.

@Businessdayng

14

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

MONEYINSIGHT

‘GoMoney gives users control of their money without unfair charges’

Adetomiwa Isiaka, communication manager of GoMoney in this interview with BusinessDay’s Frank Eleanya, speaks on the bank’s latest digital banking platform

W

hat is the GoMoney app about?

GoMoney is a mobile financial service designed to help users spend better, understand their spending habits and form a better relationship with their money. With it, users can send and receive money as well as pay bills, schedule, split, request payments and track expenses.

Why was the app created?

GoMoney was built to provide customers with enhanced and improved banking experience.

We aim to make adequate, reliable banking services accessible to all. By doing this, we are set to simplify payment processes, reduce the costs of transactions, and bring a community-based approach to banking.

What unique problem is the app solving?

We’re building an inclusive product that provides users with the features of a bank account without the hassle and disappoint-

from scratch, based on modern technology stacks. What this means is that users get realtime alerts and robust spending reports that provide users with readable bank statements and aid a better relationship with users’ money.

ment of failed transactions, unfair charges or needless paperwork.

We are giving users full control of their money, (within regulatory guidelines) and allowing users to send and receive payments from anyone - regardless of where they bank. As an individual or as a group, GoMoney enables users to schedule payments, share costs and, even better, spend together.

Does this mean there are no transaction charges on GoMoney?

There are no charges for transactions within the GoMoney ecosystem. However, transactions with other wallets and banks come at a cost of N7.5 for each transaction. This is an infrastructural cost that includes the NIP service charge and the

applicable VAT. How do you think GoMoney is changing financial transactions as we know it?

We are creating a platform that significantly improves and deepens our customers’ understanding of their spending habits. We have done this by building a secure and reliable core system

How do you access the app?

You can currently access GoMoney through Playstore but the app will be available on USSD and AppStore soon. Also, as a large number of Nigerians do not possess KYC documents and in the bid to foster a truly inclusive financial service, GoMoney does not require you to present KYC documents when registering your initial account.

You only need details like your name, phone number and email address. GoMoney accounts can also be funded with any registered Nigerian bank account.

Wherecanpeoplefindtheapp?

We currently have a waitlist for people who would like to download the app. They can access that at http://gomoney.global

French Week 2019 offers networking opportunities for France, Nigerian businesses ISAAC ANYAOGU

T

he Franco-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) is holding its annual French Week Celebration from November 22 to 29 in Lagos, an epic celebration that will bring together business figures from France and Nigeria in an atmosphere of networking and business exchanges, the organisers say.

French Week which has been organised for the past 30 years has become a veritable platform to promote bi-lateral business relationship between Nigeria and France.

“France-Nigerian relations have improved over the years,” says Laurence Monmayrant, French Consul General to Nigeria in an address at a press conference in Lagos.

Monmayrant said that France is an important trade partner for Africa and is the second-largest exporter to the continent so the goal is to enhance partnerships between French and African businesses in order to create new forms of cooperation.

“We expect that 2019 would account for more investments as French companies continue to show interest in the Nigerian economy,” Monmayrant, the first female French Consul General said.

Nigeria is France’s biggest trade partner within the Sub-

L-R Jean Guyonnet-Duperat, regional director Propaco, Jan Gwenole, economic counsellor, French embassy, Eric Jeanneau, the chairman of FNCCI, Laurence Monmayrant, French Consul General to Nigeria, Moses Umoru, director general of FNCCI, at the press conference announcing the French Week in Lagos on November 13.

Saharan African region with over 4 billion euros in trade in 2018, from about 3.6 billion euros in 2017. Nigeria is also the 9th largest trade partner of France in the world ahead of countries like Canada and Singapore.

“The goal of the French Week is to sustain this partnership and even create an opportunity for Nigerian firms to also increase trade with France,” says Moses Umoru, director general of FNCCI. Access to capital, identified as a key constraint to the growth of local business, limits Nigeria’s ability to achieve balance of trade with its partners, the organisers say the French are www.businessday.ng

seeking to achieve real bilateral trade relations hence they are access to financing.

Jean Guyonnet-Duperat, regional director Propaco, said that institutions like ADB and Propaco have made available funds to support both government agencies and businesses in Nigeria. So far different governments in Nigeria have benefited from loan facility of up to 2 billion euros. “ P re s i d e n t Ma c ro n a n nounced a 2.5billion euros fund to support small businesses around the world and it is also open to Nigerian businesses,” said Guyonnet-Duperat.

Guyonnet-Duperat said that

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

in the past, credit lines were opened with financial institutions allowing equity participation in Nigerian businesses but now, they were ready to deal directly with small businesses.

Jan Gwenole, economic counsellor, French embassy said there are about 130 French companies in Nigeria and they are present across different sectors including oil and gas, agribusiness, technology, food and beverages and transport sectors.

“Nigeria is now the second biggest investment destination for French companies after Morocco,” Gwenole said and accounts for over 9.4billion euros worth of investments in 2018. @Businessdayng

On his part, Eric Jeanneau, the chairman of FNCCI said that the chamber is ranked one for the most vibrant and dynamic bi-lateral business ecosystem in Nigeria.

“As a formidable ecosystem, we are always in the fore-front in advocacy and continue to create a dynamic platform for business exchanges between French and Nigerian companies. This year we have successfully hosted 5 business breakfast sessions that focused on key areas like healthcare, digital innovation and the economy.

“As part of our activities this year, we led a team of 10 Nigerian companies to France to prospect in the agribusiness sector, we also partnered with business France to recruit Nigerian companies for the just concluded ambition Africa b2b event in Paris and we work closely with the Nigerian embassy in France,” said Jeanneau.

According to Umoru, this year’s event will see new features apart from the regular New wine ceremony, sporting activities and even a women in business forum has been included to make the event deliver greater value and strengthen bilateral relations.

Dignitaries expected include the Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s vice president as well the Lagos state governor and heads of Nigerian and French businesses.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

COMPANIES & MARKETS

15

COMPANY NEWS ANALYSIS INSIGHT

Lafarge set to regain its mojo after disposing of South African operations …third-quarter profit jumps to N4.73bn OLUFIKAYO OWOEYE

A

fter the sale of its troublesome South Africa operations, Lafarge South Africa Holding Limited (LSAH) to LafargeHolcim Group for the sum of $316.2 million, figures from its thirdquarter result for the period ended 30th September shows that the cement maker may be on the path to deliver stronger value for investors and shareholders.

The group revenue which comprises Nigeria and LSAH was lower by 25.1percent to N53.91bn in Q3. This result accounts for July-September financial performance for Nigeria and July for LSAH operations.

Within the period, Nigeria revenue dropped 7.25percent to N45.17bn in the third quarter on the back of lower cement volumes and price competition.

Interestingly, despite this decline operating profit increased to N7.45bn with Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and

Amortization (EBITDA) growth of 73.9percent to N14.93bn supported by the sale of LSAH and reduction in cost base.

Lafarge declared a net profit of N4.73bn as compared to a

loss of N6.47bn recorded in Q3 2018. Net finance cost dropped 70.6percent year-on-year and 33.4 percent quarter-on-quarter to N3.18bn due to the repayment of $293mn parent company loan.

The company had bought Lafarge South Africa Holdings to expand but the post-acquisition period in South Africa didn’t go as planned as the country’s cement sector became less un-

friendly as the country slided into recession, increased in competitons, importation of cement in South Africa and increase in the price of cement price peaked.

Nigerian cement volumes dropped 5percent year-on-year and 23.1percent quarter-onquarter to 1.03mt in third quarter due to torrential rainfall and strong sales promotion by Dangote Cement.

Analysts at Chapel Hill Denham, expects stronger volumes to support revenue growth for its Nigeria operations “Lafarge’s ready to mix business presents another avenue for growth as private infrastructure spend recovers,” The cement maker concluded a merger with Lafarge Ready Mix Limited in August 2019.

In 2016, Lafarge S.A. France and Holcim Limited, Switzerland two large global players merged to form LafargeHolcim Group based in Zurich, Switzerland. Lafarge Africa is now a subsidiary company of Lafarge Holcim.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

PalmPay raises $40m from TECNO Mobile to deepen financial inclusion across Africa …launches MMO in Nigeria OLUFIKAYO OWOEYE

A

frican payments startup PalmPay has announced a $40m USD seed round as the company launches financial services in Nigeria.

The round was led by leading mobile phone brand TECNO Mobile. NetEase, one of the largest internet technology companies in China and Mediatek, a leading semiconductor company, also participated in the round.

The company will use the capital to grow its digital financial services businesses in Nigeria, Ghana and to support upcoming launches in several other African countries.

PalmPay offers consumers a range of digital services via its mobile application, including P2P transfers, airtime and bill payment. Billing itself as “the payment app that rewards you”, its USP of offering cashback and discounts to its users has caught on in the price-sensitive Nigerian and Ghanaian markets.

In Nigeria, PalmPay is offering 10% cashback on airtime purchases and bank transfer rates of N10 with free deposits and withdrawals to its mobile wallet. Over a million transactions have been made on the platform within its first two

months of pilot operations and the company is now eyeing rapid expansion.

PalmPay also announced a strategic partnership with major mobile phone brands TECNO, Infinix, and Itel, which will see the payments app exclusively pre-installed on at least 20 million phones in 2020. The mobile app is also available for download on the Google Play Store and iOS App Store.

In a market where only 40% of adults have access to a formal

financial account, PalmPay plans to provide for both banked and unbanked consumers to help it achieve nationwide reach. To do this, the company has obtained an Approval-in-Principle to operate as a Mobile Money Organisation (MMO) from the Central Bank of Nigeria. This allows it to build an agent network to facilitate inperson cash in and cash out to its mobile wallet.

First in line to be converted to PalmPay agents are the thousands of retail stores that are part of the TECNO distribution network, and the company is in the process of on

L-R Dami Owolabi, Senior Marketing Manager of PalmPay; Adebiyi Niyi, Director of Corporate Communications, VISA; Sofia Zab, Global Head of Commercial and Marketing and Chidi Okonkwo, GM TECNO Nigeria during the PalmPay Press conference held in Lagos.

boarding independent agents too.

PalmPay’s stated aim of including the unbanked in its payment platform comes at a time when the Nigerian government is promoting several policies and initiatives aimed at furthering financial inclusion.

The Central Bank of Nigeria plans to ensure that 80 percent of Nigerian adults are included in the financial net by 2020. It launched the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) in January 2012 to help achieve the set target.

However, recent data by EFInA put Nigeria’s financial inclusion rate at 63.2 percent, meaning that as much as 36.8 percent of adults still lack access to financial services.

This year, the current CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele also re-affirmed the nation’s cashless policy. The policy intends to encourage electronic payments, with the objectives of developing the payments system, as part of the key requirements for achieving the Payments National Vision; whilst reducing the risk and costs associated with high usage of cash.

PalmPay also aims to onboard the over 100,000 merchants that are part of the Visa network in Nigeria.

Earlier this year, PalmPay and Visa announced a strategic partnership to deepen financial inclusion in key African markets through joint ini-

tiatives including technical integrations, virtual cards, and merchant payment solutions.

This ecosystem approach is key to PalmPay’s strategy as the company aims towards becoming Africa’s largest financial services platform. “Our goal is to provide the best choice and value to consumers in the market, and to achieve this PalmPay should be a one-stop financial hub,” says Greg Reeve, PalmPay Global CEO. “We want to focus on providing the most reliable payments infrastructure and widest reach and we are happy to partner with other players in the market who would like to benefit from this to jointly offer the best value to our user base.” Such partnerships are already in the works in the areas of e-commerce, lending, and communications, notes Reeve.

For TECNO, the investment in PalmPay seemed like a natural next step as it seeks to develop its mobile ecosystem. “Tecno has helped expand access to smartphones among the Nigerian population.

We are now looking to leverage this infrastructure to further improve people’s lives,” said Stephen Ha, General Manager of TECNO Mobile. “We see a huge growth opportunity in mobile payments and financial services on the continent and are looking forward to working together with the PalmPay team to help shape the future of payments in Africa.”

16

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

COMPANIES&MARKETS

Business Event

COMPANY RELEASE

HealthPlus Pharmacy emerges winner of PSN presidential award KEMI AJUMOBI

H

ealthPlus has emerged as the winner of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) Presidential Award for practicing pharmacy in the most ethical manner, the first pharmacy in the industry to win this prestigious award. The event took place at the 92nd Annual National Conference of the PSN, at Crocodile City, Kaduna on the 8th of November 2019.

The award was presented by PSN President, Sam I. Ohuabunwa. While presenting the award, the president commended HealthPlus Pharmacy for constantly raising the bar in pharmacy in Nigeria. He went on to state that the award is in line with PSN’s objective of maintaining a high standard of professional ethics and discipline in Nigeria. PSN remains the pivot organisation responsible for the value added services that pharmacists and pharmacy bring to healthcare and national development.

According to Foluke Akinniranye, Chief Retail Operations Officer, HealthPlus Lim-

L-R: Pharm. Foluke Akinniranye, Chief Retail Operations Officer, HealthPlus Limited; Pharm. Sam I. Ohuabunwa, President PSN; Pharm. Toyin Arifayan, Head, School of Pharmacy, HealthPlus Limited; Pharm. Valentine Ezeanochikwa, Pharmacy Manager, HealthPlus Limited receiving (PSN) presidential award for practicing pharmacy in the most ethical manner at the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) 92nd Annual National Conference, Crocodile city, Kaduna, Kaduna State

ited; The Board and Management of HealthPlus Limited are delighted to receive the first ever PSN Presidential Award for practicing pharmacy in the most ethical manner.

The award reflects our sustained commitment to our shared values and also serves as further motivation for us as we continue to go above and beyond in providing Nigerians with safe, quality and convenient access to medicines and related health products, Akinniranye said.

Akinniranye thanked the PSN President, Pharm. (Mazi)

Sam I. Ohuabunwa and the leadership of PSN for acknowledging HealthPlus’ efforts and contributions to healthcare in Nigeria.

“We also appreciate all members of staff for their dedication, professionalism and commitment to the mission and vision of HealthPlus Limited,” the Chief Retail Operations Officer said.

HealthPlus is Nigeria’s first integrative pharmacy and fastest growing pharmacy in West Africa with a mission to help people achieve optimum health and vitality.

L-R :Danmanplus Otti, research chief, Realms Healthcare Services Limited; Chisom Ibe, business consultant/wealth educator; Babatope Ogunniyi of department of economics, University of Lagos; Segun Adeleye, CEO, Worldstage Limited ; Dolapo Agbede, CEO, Willway Paradigm Services Limited, and Kayode Adegoke, Lagos regional coordinator, National Identity Management Commission, at the Worldstage Economic Summit with the theme, getting Nigeria ready for challenges of the fourth industrial revolution in Lagos.

Pic by Pius Okeosisi

L-R: Baker Magunda, MD/CEO, Guinness Nigeria; Jacquelyne Yawa, head agric business, Guinness Nigeria; Oscar Onyema, CEO, Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), and Rotimi Odusola, legal director/ company secretary, Guinness Nigeria, at the visit of the NSE leadership to Guinness Nigeria Headquarters, yesterday

MANUFACTURING

Local outlet of century-old manufacturer goes bullish on economy with $35mn Lagos facility SEGUN ADAMS

C

ummins West Africa Ltd. (CWAL), the local subsidiary of Cummins Inc., a Fortune 200 company listed on the New York Stock Exchange has launched its $35mn facility in Lagos, positioning for opportunities in Africa’s biggest market, the company said Tuesday.

Cummins which is the largest independent diesel engine manufacturer in the world said the move sends a strong signal that Nigeria is critical to its regional operations.

“Nigeria offers rich human capital, natural resources, and relative political stability, which are key indicators that companies evaluate to make investment decisions,” said Ade Obatoyinbo, CWAL Managing Director.

The facility, located in Ikeja, is a modern redevelopment consolidating three Cummins business units to improve operational efficiency.

Cummins is also investing millions of dollars in Nigeria to tap into the enormous opportunity to drive growth and help provide

critical power infrastructure in the economy, said Gino Bureta, Vice President, Power Systems, Cummins Inc. Nigeria’s economy has grown less than two percent annually since its exited a 2016 and needs private capital to support growth. The government recently said it has secured N205 billion worth of private investment this year to fix bad roads.

Meanwhile, the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu at the commission of Cummins’ new facility said that his administration will continue to provide a conducive environment for businesses to thrive in the state.

The Governor, who was represented by his Special Adviser on Industry, Commerce and Cooperatives, Ajayi Oladele, said that the state will continue to improve the road infrastructure, ensure the security of lives and property to continue to attract foreign direct investment to Lagos State.

Cummins’ design of its new office is based on its Smart Office concept which improves collaboration across teams, provides flexible spaces that meet the diverse needs of the workforce

and promotes diversity and inclusion.

Apart from incorporating world-class Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) standards, it is also fitted with amenities for persons with disabilities.

In addition, the 25,300 m2 brownfield development consists of several building clusters including a threefloor administrative building, training centre, which also houses the staff canteen, clinic, nursing mothers’ room, and meditation room; warehouse comprising a separate Genset and parts storage areas, as well as parts-sales offices to serve walk-in customers, climatecontrolled workshop with a mezzanine office floor for technical staff.

The workshop is fitted with a dynamometer for testing loose rebuilt or repaired engines, amongst other modern equipment.

Since entering the Nigerian market in the late 2000s, Cummins has played a significant role in powering Nigeria’s development and industrialisation through its power generator business and engines that power many households and businesses.

www.businessday.ng

L-R: Marilyn Maduka, People director, International Breweries Plc, (IB Plc); MD, IB Plc, Annabelle Degroot, Yemi Osinbajo, vice president, Federal Republic of Nigeria, and Michael Daramola, director, legal and corporate affairs, IB Plc, at a courtesy visit to intimate the Vice President on the progress of International Breweries’ Kickstart Entrepreneurial initiative, in Abuja.

L-R: Reeta Roy, president, MasterCard Foundation; Ndidi Nwuneli, founder, LEAP Africa; Udeme Ufot, board chair, LEAP Africa; Femi Taiwo, executive director, LEAP Africa; Nadu Denloye, board member, LEAP Africa, and Folu Ayeni, former VP, Tantalizers Limited, at the groundbreaking ceremony of LEAP Africa’s Institute in Lekki Lagos.

Pic by Olawale Amoo

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

17

AGRIBUSINESSINSIGHT Market Insights

Analysis

Commentaries

Experts/Industry Views

Commodities watch

Policy Reviews

Send in Commentaries to caleb.ojewale@businessdayonline.com

With certification, smallholders will get a seat in the global palm oil market Smallholders account for up to 70 percent palm oil produced in Nigeria, like many other places in Africa. However, with developed economies increasingly expressing preference for products from certified sources, there is a need for small producers to step up, just as the big players are doing. ELIKPLIM DZIWORNU AGBITOR, technical manager - Africa, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), in a Skype interview with CALEB OJEWALE from his Accra base, discussed the benefits of being certified, and a free path to certification being offered for smallholders in the palm oil value chain. Excerpts:

W

hat is RSPO all about?

Roundtable o n Su st a i n able Palm Oil (RSPO) is a not-for-profit membership-based organization. It is made up of members with various stakes within the palm oil supply chain and it started in 2004 when there was a realization that in Southeast Asia, particularly, Malaysia and Indonesia, the palm oil production was associated with a number of issues, mostly environmental and social issues.

What RSPO does is to set the standards for sustainable palm oil production globally. When we talk of sustainability, it is three key pillars: one is the environmental sustainability, ensuring that palm oil is produced in a way that is not damaging to the environment as much as possible.

The second pillar is the social pillar, that palm oil is produced in a way that is socially equitable and local communities benefit from the palm oil production.

The third is the economic pillar that focuses on ensuring that those operating in the sector operate their businesses in a way that is economically viable, that they have a medium to longterm business plan and that they clearly articulate how they are going to sustain the business.

Also, that they are not engaged in bribery, corruption and being transparent as much as possible.

Benefits of being a member The first is market access; certification according to RSPO standards gives access to markets that organizations would otherwise not have access to. Up until this point, a number of the European buyers still purchased some uncertified palm oil probably because there isn’t enough production to meet the demand but most of them have made commitments to say that by 2020 they would buy only hundred percent certified palm oil. This means, very soon, if you are not certified and Europe is one of your markets, you might not be able to sell.

The second one is more of attracting Investments. For instance, a lot of investment financing institutions like the International Finance Corporation (IFC) would require a palm oil grower seeking credit facility to conduct some due diligence assessments. IFC has their standard for due diligence, which is an environmental and social due

break down, we have 70 members in 15 countries.

Is Nigeria among these countries?

Yes. Nigeria is among them.

diligence standard. In addition to that, they require such a credit seeker to have a baseline assessment against the RSPO standard.

IFC is just one an example, there are others such as the African Agricultural Development Company (AGDEVCO).

There is also the Netherlands Development Finance Company, called FMO. A lot of the financial institutions are happy to say; if an organization is an RSPO member then it means they’ve met at least the minimum best practice requirements. It is helping to reduce the amount of due diligence that the investors may have to do.

The third is about corporate image because a lot of these companies in the sector are operating across different continents and do not want to be seen as doing the right thing in America, for instance, and doing the wrong thing in Africa. Therefore, for corporate image purposes, a lot of them become members and it helps with their own internal checks and balances.

Is RSPO the only certification body or are there others?

RSPO is not a certification body; rather, we set the standard. There is also ISPO, which is Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil, exclusive to Indonesia, and MSPO, Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil, exclusive to Malaysia. RSPO is at the moment the only global standard for sustainable palm oil production.

There are independent certification bodies who are the auditors. They are not aligned to RSPO, they are independent, and they are accredited indewww.businessday.ng

pendently by an accreditation institution. Therefore, to be certified, an organization would have to bring the certification body or these auditors to come to their operations and they will audit those operations against

‘

Our fear is that the way things are going, in a few years time, companies who even buy from smallholders may not want to buy from them anymore because the smallholders are not certified

the RSPO standard. If from their audit, it is clear that you have met the standards, you get certified.

If you do not meet the standards, you do not get certified.

Presently, how many member countries do you have in Africa?

In Africa, we have grower members in 11 countries. But together, the growers and the supply chain, we have 15 countries. To

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

Are there certified growers or supply chain players in Nigeria?

In September, Siat Nigeria Limited in Rivers state became the first grower to be certified. There are also two Palm Oil Supply Chain Certificate holders in Nigeria, both of which were also secured this year. These are; Certain bvba, getting certification for its Nigerian operating unit as Perfetti Van Melle Nigeria Limited in Agbara Industrial Estate, Ogun state, and Beiersdorf AG in July, with a certified Nigerian operating unit named Beiersdorf Nivea consumer products Nigeria Limited in Ilupeju, Lagos.

One thing I have noticed from everything you have mentioned so far, the memberships and the certifications seem to apply more to the big multinationals. Is there any rule or provision for smallholder Farmers or producers in RSPO? In Africa, smallholders account for about 70 percent of the palm oil output. The vision of RSPO is to transform markets so that sustainable palm oil becomes the norm. Therefore, we cannot be concentrating on the ‘big guys’, who are just about 30 percent, and ignoring the smallholders who are at least 70 percent.

We have a standard that is specifically tailored for certifying smallholders. Before now, the smallholder just mirrored what was applicable to the big growers, which was very similar. Moreover, we know that the dynamics are very different, so we wouldn’t expect smallholders to get certified to the same standards as the big holders.

Currently, we have developed specific standards for certifying independent smallholders. This does not certify smallholders as individuals; it certifies them as a group.

In addition, smallholders may not have the financial wherewithal to get certified because the certification could be quite expensive and also, they may not have the technical know-how to be able to implement the standards. Therefore, RSPO decided to have a support mechanism tailored for small holders. We came up with the RSPO Smallholder Support Fund (RSSF). We have @Businessdayng

been using this fund to support smallholder groups to become certified. Otherwise, our fear is that the way things are going, in a few years time, companies who even buy from smallholders may not want to buy from them anymore because the smallholders are not certified. Then, we do not want smallholders excluded from the supply chain because for them, it is a matter of livelihood and so we cannot afford to have that.

We have been using the RSPO support fund to enable smallholders to get certified. At the moment, we’ve had five supported projects in Africa, one of which is in Nigeria, in Cross River State.

What is limiting more players in Nigeria’s palm oil value chain from getting certified?

Okomu, for instance, their membership was approved just in April this year, so they are new members. Because they are new members, they are now putting their house in order to get certified. For Wilmar, most of their plantations are quite young, and so again, they are also pretty new. The ones that have been in the system longer are SNL and Presco.

SNL is already certified. For Presco, they had a certification audit already, just awaiting the final decision.

However, I would not restrict low level of certification only to Nigeria. I think it is a general issue in Africa as to why there are very few certified growers. I think at the moment, the demand for certified sustainable palm oil in Africa is quite low. Yet, to get certified, you would incur a number of costs. If the demand is not too high, yet having to incur quite some costs, this could be a reason why the pickup in the region is quite slow.

A lot of these companies are selling locally, only few export.

Even those who export in Africa, they export to other African countries. They are not exporting it outside of Africa. So if the demand is generally low, then the incentive to get certified is not too high. It could also be some bottlenecks during the process of getting assessments done.

For instance, in Nigeria, for the environmental impact assessment, you are required to do it in the rainy season and in the dry season. What it means is that it will take you one whole year to complete just the environmental impact assessments.

18

Friday 15 November 2019

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

BUSINESS DAY

INTERVIEW

19

INTERVIEW

Globus will target path where big banks fail to tread - CEO Globus Bank is fresh off securing a regional banking license from the Central Bank of Nigeria. The Bank will be looking to leverage on a gaping loan deficit in the country, according to CEO, ELIAS IGBINAKENZUA, who sat down for an interview with Business Day’s senior analysts LOLADE AKINMURELE and BALA AUGIE.

C

bank?

Globus bank was incorporated early this year and we got our banking license in the middle of the year.

As of the end of September, we were ready for operations but we took time to ensure we had dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s before opening our doors to the public officially on the 6th of November.

Before the official launch we were already doing skeletal operations and effecting payments across the industry; our door has been opened and within we already have over 200 accounts.

As a bank we have our internal target I would rather not divulge but we understand we are a new bank and one of the first in fourth generation banking and we are going to use technology to drive transactional volume immensely.

We are going to allow people from all walks of life have access to banking.

So we will be aggressive towards our account acquisition which we have seen grow rapidly. We also have plans to cover the nook and crannies of Nigeria in a short while. In the next 24 months we should have over 24 branches and in less than five years to cover the entire country. Account acquisition and growth will be rapid.

We are excited about everything. I have been asked several times why I am venturing into banking at this time.

We have an industry that is over-concentrated, we have about five banks holding on to over 60 percent of customer deposits and we have those banks already sliding into complacency because they have everything and are unbothered.

There is also what I call customer experience deficiency and if you recall CBN has made it clear we are under-banked with over 40 percent of bankable Nigerians having no bank accounts, so there is a lot of room to grow in banking.

Like I said, the big banks are already comfortable and have no need to go further into the trenches; they are making hundreds of billion without having to take much risk why do more? So we saw the need for hungry institutions to come up and make banking more available and affordable.

We have over 180 million people in Nigeria, and more than half of them are young, so there is a lot banking can do, and we are coming to bridge that experience gap.

areas?

Banking is not charity, it is a business and has to make profit. However, there must be corresponding value for such profit and a sense of responsibility on the part of the banks.

There must be margin when you are lending. Today you find people in need of funds going to money sharks to borrow at 5 percent flat rate of interest monthly. There is clearly a market and it is profitable that is why you have people able to lend at that rate.

As a bank you have access to public money. A bank is a public trust that must www.businessday.ng

ensure depositors’’ funds loaned is paid back, so safety is the issue. Once banks can provide necessary infrastructure to ensure safety, they can lend and make money.

Even going down the market is more risky which is why the big banks do not go down there but a more hungry bank can go and put the risk architecture, make money from it and ensure people’s financial needs are met.

Nigerians are not as bad as people portray.

Nigerians are known to respect contract and repay loans.

It is for a bank like ours to design a risk management criteria that defines who qualifies for credit.

Banks have the customers’ history of borrowing loans. Today we have the Credit Bureaus, they can tell this history over the years. Three are functional as of today.

It is not the number but the coverage. Let us appreciate where we are coming from; years ago we did not have any bird’s eye view of the credit history of Nigerians and so people could default in Bank A and still approach Bank B for a loan, but that is no longer possible today.

This is what avails abroad and that is why if you have a fund line abroad you hurry to pay so you avoid entering bad books.

We have seen people borrow from money sharks and pay back. Look at the Federal government’s Trader Moni scheme, people are paying back to access more credit. So we should separate the Nigerians doing well from the defaulters.

I have not done the study to give an accurate figure but from the little we have seen, the young and openly mobile people that need funding in this country will not be less than 20 million people as a conservative estimate.

Such funds are needed because many people working cannot even pay their rent. For instance, if I know you are employed and stay in Ajah where you have to pay N2 million, why can’t I avail you that support knowing well that your employer is aware of such loan and would ensure repayment?

Today they have no help and some are living where they have to leave home as early as 3am to get to work in search of cheaper accommodation.

That is not okay, we aspire to be a catalyst to grow the system and let people express themselves and increase productivity of our economy. So we think there is a lot banks can do. We believe that we would invest in technology and have the right people that would be risk aware and put in the necessary architecture to ensure loans are good.

We have a service mantra “to be quick, to be safe, and to be convenient”. So whether we are lending to the rich or the poor we ensure that all times all we do speaks to that mantra.

people who buy bills know that if the CBN says local companies and individual investors cannot buy, the market would not be as liquid as it used to be.

However that is arguable depending on how participants enter the market and why; if you are just speculative in your investment approach you might have issues and it would force you to enter and stay longer-not going in today and come out with so much money tomorrow.

Another fear is that CBN is pushing banks to lend to the real sector and that may result in more bad loans. You can argue in favour of that, but for me what CBN is asking from us is more rigour in lending process; take time to know who meets your rack and reach out more.

There are many people who qualify for this loan but like I said the banks have not done so much for them. Instead we have used one set of credit seekers to describe everyone as not credit worthy. So I think if we reach out there, we would see credit worthy people who need these loans.

The CBN is also trying to help the process by ensuring more transparency. So you will find that if one has bad loans anywhere, then such person is not allowed to take new loans.

Today you would see that the CBN is actually connected live to all banks and can see their lending activities as they occur.

-

-

-

There is an obvious deficit in infrastructure; power, road, water and so on. Over the years our leaders have paid lip service to it and that is partly why we do not have the required growth in the SME sector. SMEs shouldn’t have to worry about providing their own energy needs, security, and how to transport his or her goods to the market. These challenges jack up the cost of business in Nigeria.

Often, entrepreneurs start a business and for reasons beyond their control, it folds up so that is an issue.

However banks like ours have a different approach to use the resources we have optimally and today we are one of the few banks with branches utilizing green energy, which means we would not be spending so much money on diesel, fuel and generators.

In our environment I want to challenge the entrepreneurs and SME owners to be more creative in finding cost efficient ways of running their businesses. What is important is the will power to succeed.

I believe that the government can do a lot and also believe the present government is making efforts.

The recently announced new economic advisory council chaired by Doyin Salami is a step in the right direction, and they know what to do although the only concern is if they would be listened to and the reporting structure which means the council does not directly report to President Buhari.

I think we have hope as a people and I know our infrastructure challenges will be corrected in time- but it would not happen overnight.

Let me start by saying the issue with CBN regulation is that a lot is being misunderstood by the public. CBN said OMO bills should be limited to banks and foreign investors.

OMO bills are meant to be a CBN monetary management tool and is not meant to be an investment option for the public. The debt office had offered T-bills and you have some level of undersubcription that is taken back, and CBN is using that now to manage liquidty in the banking system. It was never meant to be something you and I are meant to invest in.

The CBN has been trying over time to push the interest rate of borrowing for the real sector down, now CBN is worried that the real sector players may get these fund at cheaper rate and return to invest them in T-bills leaving their core business which would improve the economy.

The CBN is simply telling real sector to focus on the business of production and not arbitrage because the returns on T-bills are more attractive than ROI in real sector.

This is a laudable step towards correcting arbitrage. However, the way it is managed is important because today you will find out there is virtually no activity in the T-bill market and I am sure that even now FMDQ has held a meeting to assess why everyone is pulling back. The market does not have enough information to understand what the CBN is trying to achieve and I think there is need for more education.

I think the fear is it would create illiquidity. The

www.businessday.ng https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Yes, you are aware that the CBN is giving signals that capital needs to grow in the industry. We are mindful of that.

Our capital raise was actually among very few friends of like minds, including Austin Okere, the founder of Computer Warehouse

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

Group and Isioma Ezeachi, owner of indigenous engineering firm, Sermatech.

As of today, all our owners are local but in the future we have plans to do a lot more. Actually as we speak, we already have enough to play as a national bank and we are looking at N50bn in the next 12 to 18 months.

But right now the minimum capital for a

@Businessdayng

Continues on page 22

20

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

INTERVIEW Globus will target path... benefit us all.

Continued from page 21

The border closure has not only restricted imports but also exports.

Some Nigerian firms would loss market share as a result of this move.

What are your thoughts on this?

The border closure for me was unfortunate and not what I would really subscribe to.

The government should live up to its own billing by ensuring that our trade laws work and ensure we do not give incentives to people to use our borders wrongly.

For instance we subsidize fuel and our next door neighbours do not but fuel can be taken from here to that place. Instead of closing borders government should have had the courage to remove the subsidy.

I was reading a paper yesterday that said Benin republic is the second largest importer of rice despite its population of around five million which shows they are pumping the rice into Nigeria, which is losing duty and so on.

It is how we have presented ourselves that these countries have taken advantage of, so government has to be firm and do what needs to be done.

We have signed AfCFTA and we should be seen to live by that charter but we have to put in place the right policies.

The border closure is a vote of no confidence on customs.

national bank is N25bn, we have raised that and are looking at the next level.

Do you have a national banking license or a regional license?

What we obtained is regional but since we have the necessary capital, we believe the CBN would not take much time to approve that.

We have a very clear focus; in five years we should be a player to reckon with in the industry, covering the entire country adequately and ranking among the industry’s top banks.

What from your previous roles as Executive Director at Zenith and Access Bank are you bringing with you to push Globus to the next level?

I was in Zenith Bank for 20 years, eight out of which I was ED and I had already covered all the key areas of banking as at the time I was leaving to head corporate and investment banking at Access bank.

Thereafter I thought it was time to go for my own license since all I know is banking. My previous experience has prepared me greatly, and was helpful during the capital raise.

I think the goodwill from my previous banking experience is also an advantage as people who know me and the others at Globus are very confident that we can do whatever we set out to.

I thank Jim Ovia for the privilege to have served him for 20 years and also Herbert Wigwe and Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede. I learnt a lot from those two institutions and they operate differently so bringing experience from both banks would be of immense benefit to Globus bank.

Do you get the feeling that some of those big banks are already seeing you as coming after their lunch?

I get the feeling but I think it should not be.

The big banks are already big and we are just starting, so they should be not be seeing Globus as a threat.

The big banks should be encouraging us to learn from them instead.

Also, I would ask them to start thinking differently. At Globus Bank we have a war response “it is time to lead the change”, We believe someone has to lead the change and it does not matter who- whether big or smallsomeone has to.

We just think that Nigerians deserve a better banking experience.

Is Globus going to focus solely on the unbanked?

No, for us it would cut across the board. We will do things to bring in the unbanked into financial inclusion and we will also do things to motivate those already in the banking system to come to Globus.

We would use omni-channel and better banking experience to attract those already in the formal banking net. A unique opportunity for our customers would be to use their phone number as account number.

Is Globus Bank going to lean more towards retail banking than corporate banking?

I always say I do not want to concentrate so much on one segment. If you know my history, I am a corporate person. I have being in corporate banking for years so that terrain is my forte.

The commercial banking space is another area of interest but retail is where we would

go digital from day one and ensure that form wherever our customers are, they can access our services.

We will also have a virtual account that would attract zero charge as long as the customer does not go to the banking premises.

I have ideas we cannot dwell so much on for now but as we roll them out you will find out.

For us, we would be mindful of foreign exposure because we are a local bank. We would not lend to any loan seeker in foreign currency if such party is earning in naira.

That way when 2016 repeats itself a bank is not overly exposed.

Banking risks exist in much form and one must understand how these risks affect each segment of the market.

The CBN wants banks to lend at single digit rate, would this be possible for Globus?

First of all you have to look at the risk-free return. Our risk-free rate is about 13 percent and is the benchmark rate.

Added to the risk free rate is the risk premium and market determines what that is.

If we find that we are getting deposits at 10 percent then we can lend at a lower rate than we currently are.

But we cannot give what we don’t have.

A bank is a financial intermediary and cannot give what they do not have. The market determines the interplay.

What is your outlook for foreign exchange in the short term?

For a while now we have had a stable exchange rate, I must commend the CBN. After 2016 the apex bank got exchange rate management right as rate has been quite stable since the I&E window and a few other initiatives that have narrowed that gap between FX windows.

The oil price is looking good and we do not expect price to fall below $60 in the near future and as a result we expect the exchange rate to be stable.

Also, with the CBN policy of minimizing overdependence on imports, the demand for FX for import will be moderated and keep FX stable.

In the wake of a drop in oil price in 2016, mid-tier lenders suffered an increase in bad loans. What buffers does Globus have in place against such events?

We are in a risk-based environment. The 4G is purely risked based in banking and what is important is a bank’s capital adequacy ratio (CAR). We are starting with over 30 percent CAR whereas regulatory requirement is about 15 percent.

Even as we grow we plan to maintain that buffer level so come what may, we would weather the storm.

Importantly, we would not be reckless in lending. In 2016 banks flocked into the oil and gas space because oil price seemed to be good and the banks were even lending in dollars to local names. When oil price came down, exchange rate went up and that loan went bad, some of which were never recovered. www.businessday.ng

Do you subscribe to the philosophy of managing FX demand?

Very well, the FX restriction on 43 items is a very commendable move by the CBN because we are importing anything that can be imported and killing our local industries.

Since the ban, people have become more focused; today you hear about indigenous rice brands and people are going into the real sector which is adding to our GDP and productivity.

If we keep importing, it would be a loss of foreign exchange to us.

Do not forget again that the bulk of our FX today is going into oil and gas import, and Aliko Dangote is about to change that which is encouraging. That the government supported him to do what he is doing means the government has Nigerians at heart. If by next year we stop importing oil it would

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

Where do you see the banking industry in the next five years?

The game that will drive the next five years will depend on if the banks are efficient, customer-focused and offer the convenience customers need.

Banking is going to move from the conventional structure and would be able to get to three customer nay where anytime through his or her preferred means.

Only banks that take this into focus, plan along that and execute will in five years rule the industry.

What is your staff strength like at Globus?

Today we have over 60 people who have resumed at Globus and we are hiring for branches now. Each branch requires a minimum of 20 people and we have about four branches coming up before December, hopefully, which would be a total of 80 staff strength for the branches.

We have a plan to roll out at least 20 more branches next year and the numbers would grow.

Here at the head office we have all the staff we need, except one or two which would be resuming shortly.

The branches we would commission very soon we already have staff for those branches. If you were president for three months, what would you do to get the economy back on track?

First of all I would take away all forms of subsidies, then I would look at our educational system and create a new framework for our children because what rules the world is knowledge.

I would also be concerned about institutions because today our institutions are not respected because power is either usurped or misused. So I would focus on governance and creating a reliable structure.

I would also cut waste in governance because today we spend too much on governance.

There are many more things to do so those are just starters.

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Hotels A review of The Wheatbaker at 8

Top BusinessDay Partner Hotels Four Points by Sheraton Hotel (Oniru Chiefatancy Estate,Lekki) Tel: +234 1 448 9444

Stories by OBINNA EMELIKE

W

hen The Wheatbaker opened its doors to the discerning public in the last quarter of 2011, it promised to offer luxurious boutique experience amid world-class facilities. Going by the poor maintenance culture in the country then, some hospitality industry observers thought the hotel would go the way of others when wear and tear set in.

Almost a decade down the line, the Ikoyi-based boutique hotel is waxing stronger on its offerings, especially personalised services, facility maintenance and innovations.

Since then the hotels has made each year’s anniversary unique. When it turned 5 years in October 2016, it kicked off the celebration with the opening of ‘Freedom’, an art exhibition by Gbenga Off, a leading Nigerian contemporary artist.

Few weeks ago, the hotel also rolled out drums to celebrate its 8th anniversary.

This time, it decided to carry along the guests and other stakeholders to join in the celebration of the journey together since 2011 when they first had a taste of its offerings.

As well, the recognition of the guests was due to the fact that there would not have been a celebration without the guests whose patronage has sustained the hotel in

Transcorp Hilton Abuja 1 Aguiyi Ironsi Street Maitama, Abuja Tel: +234-708-060-3000

The Wheatbaker #4 Onitolo(Lawrence Road), Ikoyi, Lagos.

Tel: 01 277 3560

spite of the challenges in doing business in Nigeria since opening.

The 2019 celebration had many exciting activities, especially the grand event tagged ‘The 8th Anniversary Cocktail’, where the guests relaxed in the most convivial atmosphere, had the best of food and drinks and also networked.

According to the hotel management, the cocktail was aimed at appreciating the guests and stakeholders for the sustained patronage in the very competitive Lagos hotel market. As well, the hotel management used the 8th anniversary cocktail platform to kick off the next chapter of its wonderful adventure together with the guests.

The cocktail was not all about talks; amid the food

and drinks, Femi Leye thrilled the guests with celebrity performance.

Excited at the guests turnout at the evening, Simon Grindrod, general manager, The Wheatbaker Hotel, noted that the need to continually satisfy the guests has made the hotel to be innovative and to stay afloat for the eight years in business.

He assured on the committed to sustain and improve on the feats, offering memorable and value for money experiences, and latching on innovations to refresh its offerings and create varieties for the guests.

For, Adeniyi Ladipo, the sales and marketing director of the hotel, The Wheatbaker prides itself in great customer experience, which it has proficiently sold to customers since 2011.

The Wheatbaker is a full service luxury boutique hotel with 65 rooms, two restaurants, a boutique spa and gym and with sought after banqueting services by Nigeria’s fortune five hundred companies. The Wheatbaker also has a unique commitment to the arts, presenting specially curated exhibitions every quarter. The hotel has its own art collection which boasts some of the best Nigerian contemporary art.

Since opening its doors in 2011, the Wheatbaker has quickly become one of the preferred hotels in Nigeria, winning yearly awards by industry leaders.

It was voted Nigeria’s Leading Boutique Hotel by Travel Awards Africa & Indian Ocean in 2018, amid other awards.

Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham Abuja 1 Uke St, Garki, Abuja.

Tel: +234 9 4603900, +234 805 7522500

Lagos Continental Hotel Plot 52, Kofo Abayomi St, Lagos Tel: 01 236 6666

Radisson Blu Hotel Ikeja #38/40 Isaac John St, Ikeja GRA100271, Ikeja Tel: +234-908-780 5555

206 Exclusive Hotel Plot 206 Oladipo Diya Road Opposite Olympia Estate

By Games Village Second Gate Durumi2 Abuja

The Executive at Maslow

O

nce again, the year is coming to an end and a whole lot of destinations are pushing mouth-watering offers to woo would-be holiday makers. Well, if you consider South Africa as your choice destination this holiday, it behooves to peep into The Maslow, the premium business hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg’s financial district.

Beyond having an ethos that focuses on the needs of the business traveler, The Maslow offers superbly appointed facilities at the fingertips of the guests, which are crafted to ensure balance between work and recreation.

The four-star hotel offers 281 rooms ranging from 239 luxury rooms, six family apartments, four junior suites, 14 luxury suites, and five executive suites.

However, while the barrage of room categories offers

21

guests competitive options, a visit to the hotel is not complete without a stay at the Executive Suites, which comes with separate bedroom that sleeps two people in a king size bed, a living room and seven accessible rooms.

Epitomising luxury and exclusivity, the Executive Suites embody the glamour and excitement of Africa’s richest square mile. While in any of the five suites, it is commonplace for guests to seek sanctuary in the spacious comfort of their own lounges, or entertain in their

www.businessday.ng

private dining rooms. With a fully fitted kitchenette, these Sandton Executive Suites are also perfect for private meetings with clients and colleagues; this is most probably, the reason an average business traveler will choose The Maslow’s Executive Suites.

Besides providing the perfect base from which to explore Johannesburg’s attractions, the suites, which are designed to meet all the business travel needs of the guests, also enable guests to optimize their stay as the perfect place to unwind after a long day of

meetings, conferences and corporate events in South Africa’s business capital. While in the suites, it is tradition to wind down a long day with a luxurious Molten Brown bubble bath, and start your morning with an invigorating rain shower.

With its 96 sqm / 1 033 sq ft, king-size bed, a bathroom with separate bath/shower and a guest bathroom, the suites are big enough for any kind of fun a guest wants.

The guests can get busy on the room desk, replenish in the personal dining area, sip wine in the separate lounge area or do some special cooking in kitchenette with oven, dishwasher and refrigerator.

Well, it is time to visit and experience the comfort of the Executive Suites. Of course, Sun International, the South African manager of The Maslow, is promising to create great memories for you while on a visit.

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

Novotel Port Harcourt Address: 3 Stadium Road Rumuomasi, Port Harcourt Rivers State, Tel: 0809 713 5734

Radisson Lagos Ikeja #42-44 Isaac John Street, GRA Ikeja, Lagos

Southern Sun IkoyI Hotel Address: 47 Alfred Rewane Road, Ikoyi, Lagos Tel: +234 1 280 5200 / +234 1 280 0630 Email: ssikoyi.reservations@ tsogosun.com

Radisson Blu Anchorage Hotel 1A,Ozumba Mbadiwe,Victoria Island.

@Businessdayng

22

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

FINTECH News

Products Review

In association with

Technology Review

Personality Review

Company Review

Queues keep growing in bank halls despite huge digital investments FRANK ELEANYA

A

s the silver mantrap door opens into the main bank hall, the length of the queue on the teller section is the first to hit this reporter. It is so long, the security officer has to curve the queue twice.

The faces the people on the line make give away their frustration of having their time prolonged unnecessarily for just the misfortune of working into a bank hall. The three teller staff don’t look happy either, having to deal with so many disgruntled customers can take a toll even on the bestintentioned worker.

At the customer service center, the staff there equally looks like she would use a break. This particular bank branch located at Liverpool, Apapa, has always had just one staff at the customer service center. It is probably a costsaving measure that has often fallen short in quality service delivery.

In front of the staff are more than 10 customers waiting to bark a request at her. To make matters worse, she is having trouble with the printer beside her desktop computer - an old model HP desktop. She calls a colleague to help check the troublesome printer while the woman sitting in front of her fidgets on her seat barely holding back an outburst for being kept waiting.

Finally, the worn-out bank staff looks up at the woman opposite her; “How may I help you,” she said in a voice heavy with unpaid sleeplessness.

The experience happens in nearly all the banks across Lagos. At another bank branch, this reporter has visited a couple of times, also located within Apapa, the queue could grow so long that the staircase area would be swarmed by human bodies.

Once in a while, a senior bank official would come and usher a group of customers to a tiny room where their slips are quickly collected and are asked to go with a promise of a swift turnaround. Most of the customers say they usually get delays instead.

Banks are not new to technology but the advent of fintech and the promise of disruption pushed them into a frenzy to innovate immediately.

As the threat of fintech started manifesting in the form of startups securing millions of dollars from foreign investors, banks moved quickly to secure their positions with

www.businessday.ng

huge investments going into upgrading and acquiring new digital technology tools like cloud, artificial intelligence, and software.

The audited reports of 10 Nigerian banks showed that as of December 2018, they cumulatively invested N120 billion building and upgrading their software. This represents a 55 percent increase from 2016 when the banks collectively reported N77.35 billion investment in software technology.

It is not just Nigeria alone, data from Accenture show that globally banks have invested $1 trillion in technology over the past four years to get their business out of the corner and into the digital sphere.

The difference for Nigeria is banks have been very aggressive to innovate mostly to keep their customers and attract new ones. Most of the efforts have been towards staying ahead of new competition and secure shareholders’ funds.

Very few have seen innovation primarily as a way to enhance the customers’ experience.

For Nigeria, the past four years have been the most intense as banks built digital experience centers manned mostly by ATMs, mobile applications that promised to do everything customers could want to do in the physical branches, created chatbots with cool names, WhatsApp banking and deployed thousands of Point of Sales (PoS) terminals.

Although the investment in technology is partly aimed at getting more customers to adopt digital banking thereby reduce the overhead cost banks bear, many customers still prefer going into the branches. For customers living in regions where connectivity is still a problem, the best option they have is the physical branches.

Deloitte’s most recent global digital banking consumer

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

survey found that in most countries, a majority of people prefer opening major accounts (mortgages, wealth management) or applying for new financial products in a branch, rather than online.

But while more investment is being channeled towards improving technological capabilities, little seems to be happening inside the old branches. In many of them it is still the old model of banking that prevails; Customers go through security, enter the bank hall, pick up a slip for withdrawal or deposit, fill the blank spaces, join a queue, delayed for different reasons, finally get the “Next” call and attended to, then exit the bank.

Despite millions of dollars spent on software, internet service is still very poor in nearly all bank branches. Bank officials still struggle with old equipment, when they can’t help it inform customers that

@Businessdayng

“the system is down.”

In some bank branches in remote areas, customers are subjected to sweaty conditions because the air conditioners (AC) are either faulty or nonexistent.

“The bank branch (name withheld) at Ibrahim Taiwo Road Ilorin (Kwara State) that one no AC, only one deadlooking standing fan with some old men and women; the queue is so long with some very slow set of tellers,” said Salawu Damilola, a bank customer.

Banks have to know there is more to providing optimal customer service than a mobile application, chatbot, and a website. Thus, the physical bank branch is still an asset to any bank and therefore deserves an equal significant upgrade in technology.

According to a McKinsey study, customers’ satisfaction with the in-branch experience has the greatest impact on their overall satisfaction with their banks. According to the authors of the McKinsey study, people commonly go to their bank’s branch mostly for problem resolution and account opening which is often complex, urgent, and require a more human touch.

Customers want to get in, get what they need and move on with their days.

“It doesn’t matter if wait times in one branch are not noticeably different from any other branch at any other bank, customers who perceive their time is being wasted will develop a negative impression of their bank,” said experts at JRNI, a firm that builds queuing applications for financial services.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

23

entertainment

A night of stars, studs at Living In Bondage: Breaking Free premiere

Okpaleke for the vision. You sure took it there.”

Also, Kunle Afolayan joined in commending Ramsey Nouah for a world class directorial debut.

“I would hate to compete with Living In Bondage in 2019. This is all-round creative genius”, he said.

Uche Jumbo, Chioma Akpotah, Niyi Akinmolayan, Funlola Aofiyebi and other Nollywood greats added glowing tributes to a movie widely adjudged as possibly Nollywood’s greatest ever.

The movie is created by Play Network Africa in conjunction with Native Filmworks and coproduced by Steve Gukas, Dotun Olakurin and Charles Okpaleke.

However, it is a directorial debut of Ramsey Nouah.

It is of note that in the 25 years since Living In Bondage heralded the local film industry, Nollywood has gone on to birth an industry of world-class indigenous film actors, world acclaimed movie directors, producers, cameramen, editors, as well

as, photographers, soundtrack artistes, special effects experts, movie financiers and diverse other talents. Today, Nollywood has created a crop of top talent many of whom have gone on to international acclaim including Genevieve Nnaji, Stephanie Linus, among others.

Sp eaking on the movie, Charles Okpaleke, the executive producer, explained that “Living In Bondage is the single most compelling; most consequential movie franchise in the history of the Nigerian film industry. It is the movie which in 1992 birthed the Nigerian movie industry that is today universally known as Nollywood; an industry that is now the world’s second largest, most prolific film industry.”

In same vein, Steve Gukas, the movie producer, noted that Living in Bondage spurned an industry that today entertains hundreds of millions in far flung locations across the world. “Nollywood is celebrated in Brazil, The Netherlands, South Africa,

and everywhere. It is an industry that has brought joy and employment to millions of Nigerians here at home and in the diaspora.

There is no more compelling story than the story of Living in Bondage: Breaking Free”, Gukas said.

Excited at his directorial debut, Ramsey Tokunbo Nouah, said, “I could not have asked for a bigger platform on which to make my directorial debut. From the power of this story, the intensity of the script, the cache of the cast and the quality of my technical support, there is no story as fascinating as Living In Bondage: Breaking Free. It is truly the movie maker’s dream project – and I should know working on both sides of the camera. I cannot wait to pack cinema seats with this truly movie magical work.”

Living in Bondage: Breaking Free is the story of Nnamdi, Andy Okeke’s mysterious son, and his vaunting quest for the big life, one that he would do whatever it took to realize. Nnamdi’s untamed quest for the quick buck, fast car, easy living, inevitably took him on a perilous journey that is better told by the cast of stellar performers, classic and current, including Kenneth Okonkwo, Kanayo O. Kanayo, Enyinna Nwigwe, Nancy Isime, and Munachi Abii.

Written by Nicole Asinugo and C.J. Obasi, Living in Bondage: Breaking Free has an original score produced by Larry Gaaga, which features top Afrobeat artistes.

The movie filming started in June 2018, with locations in Lagos, Owerri, Durban, South Africa, and beyond.

Living in Bondage: Breaking Free was released nationwide on November 8, 2019.

of the CBS AMC Networks EMEA portfolio of channels. We’re also delighted to expand our kids offering with Da Vinci just ahead of the holiday season.”

CuriosityStream is the awardwinning, global media company that delivers the world of factual entertainment in one mind-expanding place. Launched by John Hendricks, the visionary founder of Discovery Channel, CuriosityStream lets viewers explore their passions and discover new ones, or just indulge their inner geek with thousands of films and series covering space, art, volcanoes, history, travel, cars, architecture, dinosaurs and so much more. MultiChoice is debuting CuriosityStream in subSaharan Africa, bringing the chan-

nel’s library of landmark originals and exclusives directly to DStv viewers who are looking for the kind of engaging factual shows and original and exclusive films and series not available anywhere else, as well as shows from some of the best filmmakers around the world including Deep Time History, the History of Food, Age of Big Cats and Breakthrough and more.

“CuriosityStream is thrilled to premiere on DStv, collaborating with MultiChoice as our inaugural bundled distribution partner in Africa,” said Clint Stinchcomb, President and CEO of CuriosityStream. “MultiChoice is a global leader in finding innovative ways to deliver programming to its viewers whenever and wherever

they want it. Those viewers are hungry for high-quality, engaging and entertaining factual shows and CuriosityStream is proud to offer our channel to that important media market.”

Curiosity is innate to all humankind. We all want to know ‘why?’ CuriosityStream will become DStv customers’ definitive source for shows covering the full breadth and depth of the factual genre – from history and nature to science and technology to society and lifestyle. Launching on DStv channel 185, CuriosityStream is the culmination of Hendricks’ four-decade quest to create the definitive experience for satisfying curiosity and supercharging the imagination.

OBINNA EMELIKE

I

f you were at Filmhouse Cinema Lekki in Lagos for the premiere of Living In Bondage: Breaking Free, you will appreciate the great cast, and sheer creativity employed by the director in telling the epic story. The movie is the sequel to Living In Bondage; Nollywood’s first and most iconic blockbuster movie released in 1992.

There was a huge turnout of Nollywood stars, Afro-beat heavyweights and business moguls at the event, but the intrigue was their attempts at interpreting the theme of the premiere, ‘Demons In Diamonds’, which witnessed a show of blings, sequins and diamonds at Filmhouse Lekki.

Olu Okeowoin, a billionaire, almost stole the show with a seeming open act of the premiere when he stepped out on the red carpet in classic black and shimmery white and gold. It was all glamour, which continued with the enthralling movie later.

The guests were truly excited,

Some of the cast members at the premiere

describing the premiere as an experience not just a movie outing. Describing the experience, Obi Asika, special guest at the premiere, said: “Living In Bondage: Breaking Free is pure and unadulterated class. From the magnificent guests, to the jaw dropping red carpet, I consider it as Nollywood’s best ever. Thank you, Play Networks, for a movie of sheer creative, and Charles

A scene from the movie

MultiChoice unveils new channels

M

ultiChoice Group has announced the launch of three new channels – CuriosityStream, CBS Justice and Da Vinci.

CuriosityStream and CBS Justice will air for the first time in Africa on DStv channels 185 and 170 respectively, to ensure fans of Factual Entertainment and True Crime stories enjoy their favourite programming on familiar channel destinations, while kids education channel Da Vinci offers informative and fun learning from today on the Family package on DStv channel 318.

The news follows the recent announcement that the company has reached an agreement with A+E to extend the carriage contract for History and Lifetime which con-

tinue to air on DStv alongside the new channels.

In October, the company hinted at plans to launch channels aimed at delivering new titles and genres that viewers will enjoy, including among others blue chip documentaries, history and entertaining factual shows.

“We are thrilled to finally announce the launch of these channels that will expand the line-up of new programming for our DStv customers to enjoy,” says John Ugbe, CEO, MultiChoice Nigeria.

“CuriosityStream will give our viewers informative entertainment that the family can enjoy together and it is with great pride that we are able to launch CBS Justice, a new true crime channel which is part www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

24

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

entertainment

A business edge with Instagram

Business etiquette

Janet Adetu

W

e have been hit by a social media bomb, just as one is getting used to the workings of one platform a new one is launched. It was a long while all about Facebook and Twitter, today new media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and many more are the favoured.

During a brief survey I recently conducted, I discovered that many of the participants preferred to use Instagram regularly. When I asked informative, engaging and helped advance their businesses.

The good thing about Instagram is that just as it is a social means of communicating, lots of companies have seen the opportunity to use these mass of people to their business offerings so of course have latched onto Instagram to promote both their products and services.

Every relevant business today has some means of connection to social media, many of which have already signed up to having an Instagram page. However, like many of us it takes a short while to adjust to the new wave of communication, and now suddenly use it to build your business. Others during the survey felt a little overwhelmed by the whole social media saga, simply saying they had no time at all to engage and get hooked on to their technical devices all day long.

Essentiallysocial media can be very time consuming, at times distractive withoutdiscipline and can lure you off track onto other unnecessary sites. However either way there is certainly an edge in business when you use Instagram.

Instagram is very pictorial so catches the eye quickly, it is not bombarded with too much information to bore the reader. The short videosare a plus they capture your attention and leave you with wanting to see more.

All these features and more if used appropriately will give your business the added edge it deserves.

It will create awareness, build your business reputation and help you become a breast of what is the latest now. Trust me I am stilltrying to get the nitty gritty of using instagram so everyday is a learning curve, be open to new knowledge and use as best you can where required to your advantage.

Instagram savvy Be in the know I am quick to say that I am still learning when it comes to social media, be ready and keen on knowing what Instagram is all about. The added knowledge is ome step further to your business advancement. Do not just go on Instagram for the sake of ot it, or just like everyone says because it is the new craze, and you do not want the world to leave you behind. Know the purpose for which you intend using the platform. Check out how others are using it to give you some perspective as to whether it is relevant to your business or not. I suggest you get a little tutorial from someone who can put uou through the basics. Not

everyone has the patience to read the instructions or guidelines as well has give any meaning to what they have just read. Be in the know before you venture on to Instagram.

Picture perfect Instagram is everything about pictures and words alike but fewer words is the recommendation.

No doubt the pictures should be relevant to your business, remember the quality of the pictures too.

Use a standard format of pictures.

Blurry pictures can tarnish your imageas well as be a distraction to your page.The posts you send out should be attractive and leading to pertinent aspects of a business. A Chef may not release his recipes, however by posting delicious looking gourmet dishes in Instagram, he will be enticing Instagram users to find him and book for his services.

The expectation is that people will like what they see and indicate this by pressing the like button by this you may capture how many have engaged on your page. Do not be discouraged if you do not get likes to start with, begin to establish and build connection with your audience.

‘

Do not be discouraged if you do not get likes to start with, begin to establish and build connection with your audience

Instagram is also about building on your followership. You will need to direct other users to follow your page, at times create competition where the terms require page following and liking. In the same light it is expected that you also follow other instagram pages and be seen to be active too. As you also follow and like other people’s pages you will get return responses and build up organically.

Hashtag it Hashtags are new but have great purpose. The essence is so that many can see your post beyond just that day. The hashtag relates to any information that speaks to tht particular topic, event or business. The hashtag collates relevant information for many to see and relate to. In choosing a hashtag or two try not let it be too abstract. It should speak to what you are promoting with maximum relevance. Try not bombard your post with too many hashtags not to be too distractive.

Get an expert Finally as a business owner you cannot claim you know it all. At times time is not on your side especially when it involves constant engagement and staying current. The services of a young technical guru or a social media organization may just do the trick, at least you are comfortable enough to pass onto a member of your staff.

Always ask first who is social media savvy from within, you may just have the person in house already.

Goodluck!Janet.adetu@gmail.com

Humour, flavour In identifying the kind of post you should release everything does not need to be too serious, meaning you will need to spice it up a bit to be able to engage the new millennial. Add flavor to your post with a little humour, either in the chosen pictures, jokes,quizzes, quotes and lots of colour.

Janet.adetu@gmail,com quetteconsortium.com @janetadetu

Follow and be followed

janet.adetu@jsketi-

Happy Reading!

When Sola Shobowale, Okey Bakassi, Chigul, others lit up Mouka’s ‘Green Gala Night’

T

he ‘firmament’ at the Green Gala Night set by Mouka, the nation’s leading mattress and other bedding products manufacturer, to round off its 60th anniversary last weekend in Lagos was brightened with command appearance of leading Nollywood stars and On Air Personalities.

Leading the pack was Sola Sobowale, a Nigerian film actress, screenwriter, director and producer.

Sobowale, two weeks ago, received the prestigious recognition in theAfrica Movie Academy Award for best actress in leading role as ‘Alhaja Eniola Salami’ in Kemi Adetiba’s blockbuster, ‘King of Boys’.

Other celebrities in attendance include Adebayo Davies, an actor (Baba Landlord in Flat mates),

Chioma Omeruah (Chigul), an actress and comedian, Lotachukwu Ugwu, an actress (popularly known as Kiki in the TV series Jenifa’s Diary), Arese Ugwu, author and social media financial expert (popularly known as Smart money Arese), Sisi YemmieBlogger, Vlogger and all -round creativeto complete the galaxy of stars at the night.

The night was anchored

by Okechukwu Anthony O nye gbule, p opularly known as Okey Bakassi, a Nigerian stand-up comedian and actor.

Sobowale, while responding to journalists’ questions, described quality sleep as a necessaryingredient toa healthy and productive life of a busy professional like her, while thumbing up for the Mouka brand.

In his welcome remarks, www.businessday.ng

Okey Bakassi

Mr. Raymond Murphy, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the

company explained that the last 60 years has been a long and successful jour-

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

ney for Mouka, adding that the company has built an enduring brand in the last six decades.

“This is a big milestone for us. At 60, we are the market share leader in the foam and beddings sector” he said, while praising the stakeholders and shareholders of the company for giving quality and wholesome support to the company over the years.

He maintained that the last 60 years have been eventful for the company in terms of job creation, value creation for shareholders and business partners and high level of governance compliance.

“Our mantra within the company is good to great.

Good for us is never good enough. We continue to strive for greatness.” Murphy told journalists at the venue. @Businessdayng

Others highlights of the night included the cutting of the anniversary cake and the winning of exciting prizes by guests who marveled at the exhilarating ambience and the touch of class that surrounded the celebration.

The foundation for Mouka was laid 60 years ago in the historic city of Kano when the scion of the Faiz Moukarim family started the Moukarim Metalwood factory to manufacture furniture and iron beds.

Since then, Mouka has gone into manufacturing of foam and spring mattresses, as well as other bedding products at its three production facilities across Nigeria.

The company has also developed an extensive distribution network with more than 1,000 branded sales outlets nationwide.

Friday 15 November 2019

Harvard Business Review

BUSINESS DAY

25

MANAGEMENTDIGEST

Cracking the code of sustained collaboration FRANCESCA GINO

L

eaders tend to think about collaboration too narrowly, as a value to cultivate but not a skill to teach.

What’s needed is a psychological approach. When I analyzed sustained collaborations, I found that they were marked by common mental attitudes: widespread respect for colleagues’ contributions, openness to experimenting with others’ ideas and sensitivity to how one’s actions may affect colleagues’ work and the mission’s outcome. The task for leaders is to challenge the tendency we all have to fixate on ourselves instead of what we can learn from others.

Some organizations have cracked this code. In studying them I’ve identified six training techniques that enable leaders and employees to work well together, learn from one another and overcome the psychological barriers that get in the way of doing both.

1. TEACH PEOPLE TO LISTEN, NOT TALK My research suggests that all too often when others are talking, we’re getting ready to speak instead of listening.

We fail to listen because we’re anxious about our own performance, convinced that our ideas are better than others’, or both. As a result we get into conflicts that could be avoided, miss opportunities to advance the conversation, alienate the people who haven’t been heard and diminish our teams’ effectiveness.

When we really listen, on the other hand, our egos and our selfinvolvement subside, giving everybody the space to understand the situation and to focus on the mission. Listening can be improved by these practices: — ASK EXPANSIVE QUESTIONS: This is one of the behaviors encouraged at the animation studio Pixar. People stepping into managerial roles are required to take, among other courses, a 90-minute lunchtime class on the art of listening.

In the class, participants discuss the qualities of great listeners they’ve known (such as generosity in acknowledging the points of others) and practice “active listening.” That means suppressing the urge to interrupt or dominate a conversation, make it about yourself or solve your conversation partners’ problems, and instead concentrating on the implications of their words.

— FOCUS ON THE LISTENER, NOT ON YOURSELF: In another exercise, two coaches act out conversations to illustrate the difference between active listening and not really listening. One coach might say: “I’ve been so sick, and our calendar is so full, and I have this trip planned to see my family.

There’s so much to do and I just don’t know how I’m going to pull it all off.” In the not-listening interaction, the other coach responds,

“At least you get to go to Europe.”

In the active-listening version, she says, “That sounds really stressful — like you’ll feel guilty for leaving work and guilty if you don’t visit your family.”

— ENGAGE IN “SELFCHECKS”: The American roofing-systems unit of Webasto, a global automotive equipment manufacturer, has developed a good approach to raising employees’ awareness: its Listen Like a Leader course, which features various self-check exercises.

Several times throughout the course participants engage in self-checks, in which they critique their own tendencies. People work in small groups and take turns sharing stories about times they’ve failed to listen to others and then reflect on common trends in all the stories.

— BECOME COMFORTABLE WITH SILENCE: This doesn’t mean just not speaking; it means communicating attentiveness and respect while you’re silent.

2. TRAIN PEOPLE TO PRACTICE EMPATHY In successful collaborations, each person assumes that everyone else involved, regardless of background or title, is smart, caring and fully invested. That mindset makes participants want to understand why others have differing views, which allows them to have constructive conversations.

A couple of approaches can help here.

— EXPAND OTHERS’ THINKING: At Pixar an exercise called “leading from the inside out” has participants present a relevant challenge to their collaborators on a project. Then their teammates ask questions but are instructed not to use them as a means of touting their own ideas. Instead, they’re supposed to help the presenter think through the problem differently, without offering judg-

ment about the presenter’s perceptions or approach or those of other questioners. If a presenter describes the challenge of getting a team member to speak up more often in brainstorming meetings, for instance, the questioners could ask, “How has his behavior changed?”

— LOOK FOR THE UNSPOKEN: An advertising and publicity firm I studied uses a similar approach but also trains participants to pay attention to what people are not saying. If a member of the creative team presents an idea for how to shape an ad campaign to the client’s needs, for instance, the colleagues listening are tasked with trying to understand his or her state of mind.

While listening and empathizing allow others more space in a collaboration, you also need the courage to have tough conversations and offer your views frankly.

The next three techniques focus on getting people there.

3. MAKE PEOPLE MORE COMFORTABLE WITH FEEDBACK Good collaboration involves giving and receiving feedback well. The following methods can help.

— DISCUSS FEEDBACK AVERSION OPENLY: One of Pixar’s classes trains new managers to provide feedback more often and effectively and also to get better at absorbing it. Coaches first explain that aversion to feedback is common. The ensuing open discussion of reservations and challenges around feedback helps participants feel less alone.

— MAKE FEEDBACK ABOUT OTHERS’ BEHAVIOR DIRECT, SPECIFIC AND APPLICABLE: At Pixar, employees are asked to follow three rules for feedback: Be straightforward in both how you address a person and what you say about him or her; identify the particular behavior that worked (or didn’t); and describe the impact of

the behavior on you and others.

— GIVE FEEDBACK ON FEEDBACK: In this exercise a volunteer reads a piece of feedback that he or she has drafted to the group. The other participants are then asked to identify ways to improve it. If the volunteer says, “You keep missing deadlines,” for instance, the colleagues might suggest more specificity — perhaps “You missed three deadlines in the past month.”

— ADD A “PLUS” TO OTHERS’ IDEAS: Whenever a Pixar employee comments on a colleague’s idea or work during a brainstorming session, he or she must offer a “plus” — a suggestion for an improvement that doesn’t include judgment or harsh language.

— PROVIDE LIVE COACHING: Pixar coaches attend brainstorming meetings to reinforce good approaches and point out lapses. If a comment or a question doesn’t show “collaborative spirit,” the coach will ask that it be rephrased.

4. TEACH PEOPLE TO LEAD AND FOLLOW I’ve learned that effective collaborators are adept at both leading and following, moving smoothly between the two as appropriate. That is, they’re good at “flexing.”

Because flexing requires ceding control to others, many of us find it difficult. A few simple exercises can make people more likely to flex: — INCREASE SELF-AWARENESS: In some of my classes, I ask students to rate themselves relative to their classmates in three areas: their ability to make good decisions, their ability to get along well with others and their honesty.

Then I ask them to compute their average across the three. Most people’s average is higher than 50%, which demonstrates to the students how self-perceptions are often inflated.

— LEARN TO DELEGATE: In a

training session to help new Pixar managers delegate, participants discuss why it’s so difficult to pass the torch to others and the main reasons we tend to micromanage: It’s hard to let go of control, and we feel responsible for the outcome. So we favor getting the job done — fast — over the reasons for delegating (allowing others to feel engaged and to grow, and allowing ourselves to be more productive in the long run).

5. SPEAK WITH CLARITY AND AVOID ABSTRACTIONS In any collaboration there are times for open discussion of ideas and times when someone, regardless of whether he or she is a leader, needs to cut through the confusion and clearly articulate the path forward.

6. TRAIN PEOPLE TO HAVE WIN-WIN INTERACTIONS Many organizations I’ve studied teach leaders and employees to find win-win solutions through exercises in which each participant has information that others lack and all are asked to try to reach the best deal possible for everyone. Afterward, the instructors suggest techniques that could have helped the parties discover one another’s interests better and produce more-successful deals.

With a win-win mindset, collaborators are able to find opportunities in differences.

Francesca Gino is a behavioral scientist and the Tandon family professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. She is the author of the books “Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life” and “Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan.”

26

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

HEALTH BUSINESS&LIFE Here’s what Nigeria needs to do to address doctors migration ANTHONIA OBOKOH

N

igeria has a long history of doctors’ migration that may delay the country’s effort at achieving health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This has been largely due to Africa most populous nation’s inability to organise and fund its health system in order to enable access to better healthcare, reduce brain drain and expand the Universal Health Coverage for Nigerians Evidence-based reports show that Nigerian doctors migrate to the United Kingdom, America, Dubai South Africa, Saudi Arabia to render services that could have enhanced the healthcare system and the healthcare workforce.

Stakeholders are of the opinion that the current situation suggests that long-term solutions to shortages can only be found in addressing the problem from eliminating shortages through substantial investments in the sector, training and retaining Nigerian health workers in Diaspora, and not through policies that do not work

towards solving this underlying problem, such as the ones that restrict migration.

“It would be great to fix the healthcare in Nigeria first make it attractive to reduce brain drain and doctor/nurses emigration to the US and Europe. These countries also have huge shortages of workers. At this time, we need a campaign to bring back our Nigerian diaspora doctors to Nigeria,” said Runcie Chidebe, executive director, Project PINK BLUE, Commonwealth Scholar, Transforming and Leading in Health Care, Birmingham City University.

Chidebe said that currently, Nigeria’s healthcare is not in the hands of Nigeria nor Nigerians; it is in the hands of donors. Importing workers can never be sustainable if you do not have a sustainable healthcare system.

The shortage of health workers afflicts many states in the country, even though findings by the Nigerian Polling organisation (NOIPolls) has shown that Nigeria needs 303, 000 doctors to meet the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) standard of doctor to patient ratio.

As of 2017, the country had 72,000 doctors registered with

the medical and dental council of Nigerian, out of the 72,000, only about 35,000 are in Nigeria. This implies that this puts at risk rural patients who suffer because of an urban to rural doctor density ratio and Nigeria’s poor doctorpopulation the ratio of 1:6000 as compared with the World Health Organisation standards of 1:1000.

However, this directly impacts the access and service delivery to citizens and by extension Nigeria’s economic growth and also halting the country’s ability to meet its health goals which is dependent largely on the knowledge, skills, motivation and deployment of the health workforce responsible for organising and delivering health services.

“Medical schools are confronted with a lot of challenges, mostly due to inadequate funding, whereas even the little which is available is not properly spent,” explained Francis Faduyile, president, Nigerian Medical Association, in an interview.

Faduyile also confirmed that when many of the specialists conclude their training, it is easier for them to sit for one or two foreign qualifying exams, and then leave the country for foreign destinations

where he says “they do very well”.

Whereas, the same people, if they stayed back in Nigeria, could “roam the streets for up to five years looking for internship placement, if they chose to stay in the country.”

“These are challenges faced in terms of capacity to produce the right quality of medical personnel,” Faduyile said.

Similarly, analysts say a good economic condition will make most professionals return or stay back in the country.

X-raying the health workforce imbalance across the four tiers - imbalances in occupation/speciality, geographical representation, institutions and services and demographics-BusinessDay can say that as the impact of these different types of imbalances on the health system varies, the need to monitor and assess each of these dimensions of workforce distribution in the country is exigent given the correlation between the size of the workforce and its the implication for health-care coverage across the country.

Another important indicator is the number of graduates each year in the health professions per 100 000 population – by level and field

of education. Data check to obtain the number of health professionals from the Nigerian University Commission was unsuccessful.

The number and type of newly trained health workers are relevant given the need to increase production among all cadres, including the need for more workers in rural and underserved areas.

Strengthening the performance of health systems depends on more than just increasing the numbers of health workers; actions for assessing and strengthening their recruitment, distribution, retention, and productivity are also important.

These actions may include: adopting new approaches to preservice and in-service training; strengthening workforce management; establishing or improving incentives for addressing distribution and retention challenges; or task-shifting (delegating tasks, where appropriate, to less specialised health workers).

Such strategic plans would normally include targets for monitoring health workforce metrics in both the short and the long-term and adaptation to any major health sector reforms (for example, decentralisation).

Stanbic IBTC provides support for limbless children ANTHONIA OBOKOH

S

tanbic IBTC holdings plc, a member of Standard Bank Group, has continued its quest to provide succour for children living without limbs through its Together4ALimb initiative. The scheme, now in its fifth year, is the company’s flagship CSI initiative, through which it provides prosthetic limbs to children from underserved communities suffering from limb loss.

On Saturday, November 8, Stanbic IBTC organized the fifth Annual Together4ALimbWalk to draw attention to the plight and challenges faced by children living without limbs. The staff of the organisation were joined by members of their family and other well-wishers.

“At Stanbic IBTC, we focus on three areas to help our communities. We focus on health, education and economic empowerment.

Together4ALimbis one of the most important projects which we organize annually,” said Yinka Sanni, chief executive, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC while flagging off the 2019 edition.

Sanni, identified the Together4ALimb initiative as a key event organized by the company.

This year, the organisation raised the number of beneficiaries to 10, the highest since the inception of the programme five years ago. The recipients of this year’s prosthetic limbs are five-yearold ZainabQudus (Oyo State), six-year-old IyanuoluwaAdekoya (Ogun State) as well as the trio of Aisha Abdulrahman (Kaduna State), Fatima Bishir (Katsina State) and Naomi Ezeamaiwe (Delta State) who are all 10 years

L-R: Adeyemi Omobowale, Chief Executive Officer, Reddington Hospital Group; Ruth Adekoya, mother of the beneficiary; Iyanuoluwa Adekoya, Together4ALimb 2019 beneficiary and Yinka Sanni, Chief Executive, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC; during the presentation of EduTrust funds to beneficiaries at the 2019 edition of the Together4alimb Walk, organized by Stanbic IBTC Holdings, on Saturday, November 9. old. Others are UmaimaKabiru and ShamsiyyaAdamu who are both 11 years from Kano State. AbdulfataiAbdulazeez (Kwara State), SalamatuHusseini (Bauchi State) and HalimatuSadiya Musa(Borno State) are all 13 years who also got prosthetic limbs under the Together4ALimb initiative.

Each beneficiary was also awarded an Educational Trust worth N1.5 million to enable them further their education with ease.

Demola Sogunle, chief executive, Stanbic IBTC Bank PLC said the number of beneficiaries was increased this year in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Stanbic IBTC. He said: “In the past, we had fitted 20 beneficiaries with prosthetic limbs. Since we are celebrating our 30th anniversary www.businessday.ng

this year, we felt that this number should align with the number of beneficiaries. In 2019, we wanted to be sure that we end up with 30 beneficiaries and we have been able to achieve that.”

In his remarks, the special guest, Adeyemi Omobowale, chief executive Officer of Reddington Hospital Group, said that the loss of a limb produces a permanent disability that impacts a person’s self-image, care, and mobility which ultimately affects their quality of life. He, however, commended theTogether4ALimb initiative which he said would give the beneficiaries hope which they can leverage to achieve their Godgiven potentials.

He said: “As we all know, the goal of rehabilitation is to help the individual return to the highest level of function and independence while improving their

physical, emotional and social wellbeing. I, therefore, commend the StanbicIBTC team for this initiative to promote the rehabilitation of those who have lost their limbs, by providing them with one of the most effective methods which is the prosthetics; which brings them much closer to living a normal life.

To date, the Together4ALimb the scheme has provided prosthetics for 30 beneficiaries. All recipients under the scheme will have their prosthetic limbs replaced annually until they are 18.

Amongst the success stories of the scheme is Happiness Matthew who has successfully written her Senior Secondary Certificate Examination Polytechnic Jamb examination. She is awaiting admission into Nasarawa State Polytechnic to study Mass Communication.

NGO harps on right use of long-lasting insecticide nets to prevent malaria attack ANIEFIOK UDONQUAK, Uyo

B

reakthrough Action (BA), a NonGovernmental Organisation involved in Social Behaviour Change campaign has harped on the need for the correct use of Long Lasting Insecticide Nets (LLIN) to prevent malaria attack in Akwa Ibom State.

The NGO which is active in 11 states of the federation and is supported by the United States Agency for International Agency (USAID) expressed dismay over the wrong use of the nets saying it could hamper health investment in malaria prevention from development partners In an interview, Bassey Nsa, coordinator of the programme in Akwa Ibom State explained that its

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

activities are carried out through community health dialogue meetings and house to house visits adding that Social Behaviour Change (SBC) strategy has led to increased awareness on the danger of malaria in the state.

The state government in conjunction with development partners earlier this year distributed over 3 million long lasting nets but it have been observed that some of the nets are wrong used as in seen many houses where they are used to adorn farmlands.

Nsa said that adopting positive preventive the strategy of sleeping inside the net, going to health facilities for test and treatment were the sure way to guard against malaria attack in @Businessdayng

which he said children under five and pregnant women are more vulnerable.

“We need to change our behaviour towards malaria prevention and treatment, we need to protect ourselves against mosquito bites, sleeping inside mosquito nets is cheap and easy, we should not divert the nets to unwanted to use,’’ he said.

Nsa who also said that the NGO conducts advocacy programme on family planning services said malaria test kits are provided free by the United States Government commended the various communities in Akwa Ibom state for their support and thanked the state government as well for supporting all the implementing partners involved in the campaign against malaria and other health issues in the state.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

27

HEALTH BUSINESS&LIFE Ogun assembly pledges support to enhance sound family planning delivery, others RAZAQ AYINLA, Ogun

T

he Ogun State House of Assembly Committee on Health has assured to put in place better policy environment for family planning/childbirth spacing service delivery and adolescent reproductive healthcare to further reduce maternal mortality and morbidity deaths as well as child marriage, unwanted pregnancy, abortion and other young persons molestation in society.

Adegoke Adeyanju, chairman of the committee stated this while playing host to a Non- governmental advocacy working group, Family Health Initiative Ogun (FAHIO), at the Assembly’s complex, Oke-

Mosan, Abeokuta.

Adeyanju said family healthcare remains a core aspect that needed to be strengthened for the general wellbeing of the society, noting that the Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative of Governor Dapo Abiodun-led the administration is an allencompassing avenue to facilitate the required framework for the provision of effective family planning services and adolescent reproductive healthcare programmes.

He pointed out that the Committee would linked up with relevant government agencies to know the situations surrounding its budgeting, fund release, service delivery, availability of commodities

and consumables in order to enhance the service delivery. ‘’This aspect of healthcare is germane due to the fact that the wellbeing of mothers, children, and adolescents have multiple effects on the family and the society at large. The administration of Prince Dapo Abiodun has taken healthcare serious which made him declare state of emergency in the sector. I want to assure this group that your concern for improvement in the provision of family planning/ childbirth spacing services and adolescent reproductive health will be looked into’’, Adeyanju said.

In their separate contributions, other members of the Committee, Atinuke Bello, Latifat Ajayi and Wahab Ha-

runa, unanimously affirmed that any method of contraception is necessary for women of childbearing age to adopt for them to be physically and mentally fit in order to cope with home affairs, adding that the Committee would intensify efforts to co-opt other Honourable members in the House to promote family planning and adolescent reproductive health progammme in their respective constituencies.

Earlier in her presentation, Oluwakemi Balogun chairperson of FAHIO, said the group believed in advocacy to strengthen the health system of Ogun state for the sustenance of its landmark indices records, adding that provision

Tildacare to support 2000 less privilege with food items, medical care this yuletide season MICHAEL ANI

T

ildacare Foundation, a not for profit nongovernmental organisation will be supporting less privileged children as well as disabled persons, with food items and medical care this yuletide season.

That’s part of its vision to reach out to the well over 1.7 million people living below the poverty line in Nigeria’s biggest commercial city, Lagos.

The event which will be the fourth in a row will see the philanthropic organisation cater for the need of over 2000 underprivileged children that lacks access to good food, shelter and other basic needs of life.

“The motivation for this stemmed from seeing the rate

of poverty in Lagos and the number of people leaving in adverse poverty,” said Olu-Ajayi Razak, executive director/cofounder, Tildacare foundation.

They didn’t choose that life for themselves, rather some were born into it hence, the need to join forces in giving these classes of people a facelift”.

Since 2015 when the initiative was birthed, the foundation has consistently catered for the underprivileged children in Lagos every yuletide with members of the foundation pulling personal resources to organize charity events aimed at creating a wonderful Christmas experience for underprivileged children.

By employing its personal resources the foundation successfully fed 200, 400 and 1000

kids during its 2015, 2017 and 2018 outreach respectively. This year, it aims to double the number from its 2018 achievements by seeking partnership from both individuals and organisations who wished to support the course with as low as N1000.

“In this edition, we are targeting to put smiles on the faces of over 2,000 underprivileged children in Lagos, this includes providing them with food, clothing, back to school materials for children and primary healthcare,” Razak said.

According to Razak, the foundation hopes to evolve beyond just giving food items to the underprivileged kids to empowering them with training and skill acquisition programs so they could also make something of themselves. “We

believe feeding them alone on an annual basis can only make them feel loved and happy but there is the need to further empower them as this would make them less dependent on others for survival,” he said.

With 90percent of the world’s poor coming from the African by 2030 according to the World Bank, Razak noted that the foundation hopes to expand to other parts of the country as well as the continent.

“Our experience thus far has revealed that the foundation still has a long way to go because for every individual reached, there are over 50 individuals still in need hence, we intend to extend our reach to unprivileged kids in other states in Nigeria and hopefully other countries in the world”.

What you need to know as travelers on cruise ships and cruises Executive Travel Health

Dr Ade Alakija Q-life Family Clinic

D

uring the last decade, the cruise industry has been the tourism subsector with the highest growth rate. Despite the Titanic, Zebrugge and Estonia disasters, the travelers on high standard luxury liners are usually quite safe.

Current data shows cruise travel is steadily on the rise with a projected 27.2 million passengers expected to set sail in 2018. In 2017, an estimated 25.8 million passengers cruised compared to a confirmed 24.7 million passengers in 2016, an increase of 20.5 percent over five years from 2011-2016.

Cruises are increasingly

HBL TEAM

popular allowing for adventure along with good accommodation, food, security and many other facilities. The types of cruises include Family, Adventure, River, Transatlantic and World cruises. The average age of a passenger is gradually declining, now 45-50 years of age, however cruises of longer duration attract older travelers who are more likely to have chronic health conditions such as heart and lung disease.

The share magnitude of cruise ships and the number of passengers can approach the size of a small town with all its attendant health problems.

They may range from as little as 5 people cruises on a small sailing boat were medical facilities will be zero to large ‘city’ ships where a doctor and other key medical staff are available but medical services are still limited and, in some cases, Blood transfusion, Surgery. Medical evacuation will be needed and is dependent upon the ship’s position at sea, the sailing itinerary and the next port of call.

Cruises despite their safety are still associated with myriads of problems. The most commonly reported onboard health problems are respira-

tory tract infections, injuries, motion sickness, and gastrointestinal illness.

The schedule of events and activities on board, and excursions in port can be tiring and arduous and travelers are advised to be as fit as possible.

Most cruise ships do not have assigned space for a dental office and very few have resident dentists. Ships movements are inherently unstable due to sea swells and currents.

Accidents are common due to falls on deck and staircases (wet surfaces). People tend to drink alcohol excessively and are more prone to accidents both on deck and in the pool.

The elderly with poor balance are at higher risk of injury from falls especially in rough weather, due to their slower reaction time and reduced agility. Passengers tend to put on weight because of the easily available and abundant excellent food.

That is why you should prepare yourself properly for such trips by consulting your travel health consultant or family physician before the trip by the following steps: Ensure you have adequate supplies of your medication before you board the ship.

Appropriate travel insurance which should cover repatriation and also carry along a summary of your condition and a copy of your prescription with a letter from your practitioner attesting to your need for the medicines.

In hot and tropical regions especially, try to avoid sunburn and UV Light reflection from water as well as from the direct sun this being more likely at sea.

Extremes of heat and cold (including cooling effects of sea breeze) depending on itineraries can occur. Suitable clothing is advised.

Try to drink a lot of nonalcoholic fluids to prevent dehydration and because some cruise ships are not suitable for frail, elderly or handicapped travelers, try to ascertain the suitability of the ship before you book your trip. Make sure special facilities are available onboard for your condition.

Meanwhile, overindulgence in alcohol, food, and lack of exercise can worsen heart conditions and also overexposure to the sun can increase the possibility of stroke.

To be continued next week

ANTHONIA OBOKOH / Reporters. Email: obokoh.anthonia@businessdayonline.com

of adequate consumables to public health, facilities would allow for free access of family planning services and afford the State to meet up the projected 52 percent Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) by the year 2020.

Also, Olajide Odugbemi, secretary of the group, stated that the contributions of the lawmakers to the development of the health sector in their various constituencies would help in the revitalisation of primary healthcare for the grassroots to enjoy adequate services.

He added that investment in family planning and reproductive health is one of the realistic funding decision any state or country could make to save healthcare costs on

maternal and newborn.

Representative of the youths in the group, Dupe Kuku appealed to the lawmakers on the need to address issues inhibiting the access of adolescents in the State to reproductive health services through the sponsoring of intergenerational forum in their represented areas, saying that the development would create a platform for adolescent, parents, opinion leaders and other relevant stakeholders to discuss issues that would increase adolescent knowledge on how best to handle their reproductive health against child marriage, unwanted pregnancy, rape, contracting HIV and STI infections among others.

Prime Atlantic trains Oshodi youths on cardiopulmonary resuscitation DIPO OLADEHINDE

N

igeria based Oil servicing firm Prime Atlantic, a subsidiary of Prime Atlantic Limited has organized a capacity building training for youths in Oshodi local government in basic First Aid and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR).

CPR is a life-saving technique that is useful in many emergencies including a heart attack or near drowning during which someone’s breathing or the heart has stopped.

While many countries of the world have incorporated the teaching of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) into their school’s curricula, there has been little or no effort made towards this in Nigeria, which is why Falck Prime Atlantic is trying to fill the knowledge gap by offering professional training services.

Falck Prime Atlantic said it was evident that most Nigerians lacked the necessary skills required to respond to medical emergencies, adding that it had resulted in many preventable deaths.

Micheal Adebayo, a public school teacher at Oshodi local government said the program is a good idea which has inform people about basic things to do when saving a life because some people might have basic knowledge of First Aid or CPR however it might not be of international standard.

“It’s an advantage for us because it will allow residents of Oshodi to understand the importance of First Aid and CPR,” Adebayo said.

One of the beneficiary of the training, Oluwaranti Olagujoye, a resident of Oshodi local government said the training was very educative and informative which will go a long way in reducing the number of death across the communities.

“The training was more practical than theoretical

which makes it more understandable for people like us,” Olagujoye said.

Another beneficiary, Davidson Jegede who is also a resident of Oshodi Local government said the program was important and useful most especially when saving people who are involved in accidents or when trying to revive unconscious person.

“We learn a lot and if they can be taking it other local government areas, it will be fantastic,” Jegede said at the event.

Community leaders in Oshodi local government thanked Prime Atlantic for taking the initiative to come inside the community and train residents about the various challenges and process needed in applying First Aid and CPR. The Marketing and Communications Manager at Falck Prime Atlantic, Aderonke Adebanjo said the company had set out to change the narrative, adding that many Nigerians would be equipped with life-saving skills to save lives at any time.

She said the company would train individuals from different walks of life, including market traders, commercial drivers, students, celebrities, youth corps members, and government officials for free.

“This will ensure that across the city of Lagos, a variety of individuals are able to potentially save lives when faced with medical emergencies,” Adebanjo added. “This is training that is very expensive and cost a lot of money to do. This year we have a target of training 400 Nigerians which we might exceed before the end of the year.”

Recall early this month, Falck Prime Atlantic organized a capacity building training for staffs of Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) in basic First Aid and CPR while Bus drivers and conductors were also not left out in the training.

I David Ogar, Graphics

28

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

FEATURE

IMFC To Entrench Macroprudential Policies, Tackle Financial Vulnerabilities HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE

T

he resolve to employ all appropriate policy tools, individually and collectively, to mitigate risks, enhance resilience, and shore up growth had yet again found the pride of place at the Fortieth (40th) Meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) chaired by Mr. Lesetja Kganyago, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank.

The meeting, which was one of the many meetings at the just concluded World Bank/ IMF 20199 Annual Meetings held in Washington DC, the IMFC decided that available fiscal space should be used to support demand as needed.

And where consolidation is needed to ensure debt sustainability, the fiscal policy should be carefully-calibrated, growthfriendly, and safeguard social objectives. In line with central banks’ mandates, the Committee agreed that monetary policy should ensure that inflation remains on track toward, or stabilises around targets, and that inflation expectations remain anchored. Apart from stressing that Central Banks’ decisions need to remain well-communicated and data-dependent, it also decided it will continue to monitor and, as necessary, tackle financial vulnerabilities and risks to financial stability, including macroprudential policies.

After extending sympathies to the people and government of The Bahamas for the loss of human lives and the devastating impact of the recent natural disaster, the Committee, of which Zainab S. Ahmed, the Honourable Minister of Finance, Budget And national Planning is a member, reviewed global outlook and policy priorities, saying that the global economy is projected to grow by about 3% this year, but the pace has continued to weaken since April. “Growth is projected to pick up next year, but the outlook is highly uncertain and subject to elevated downside risks. These include trade tensions, policy

L-R: Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, minister of state for education; Godwin Obaseki, Edo State governor, and Sonny Echono, permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, during the World Teachers’ Day celebration, where Obaseki was honoured as the 2019 NUT Best Performing Governor, in Abuja.

uncertainty, and geopolitical risks, against a backdrop of limited policy space, high and rising debt levels, and heightened financial vulnerabilities. Other longstanding challenges also persist.”

According to IMFC, strong fundamentals, sound policies, and a resilient international monetary system are essential to the stability of exchange rates, contributing to strong and sustainable growth and investment. Flexible exchange rates, where feasible, can serve as a shock absorber; in that excessive volatility or disorderly movements in exchange rates can have adverse implications for economic and financial stability. The Committee decided to refrain from competitive devaluations and not target exchange rates for competitive purposes.

The IMFC is looking to advance structural reforms to lift growth, employment, and productivity; enhance resilience and promote inclusion. It reaffirms its commitment to strong governance, by tackling corruption. www.businessday.ng

“We will advance policies that foster innovation and more competitive and flexible markets, and strive to address challenges from demographic shifts. We will provide opportunities for all people to contribute to economic activity and share its benefits, and effectively assist those bearing the cost of ongoing transitions. We will enhance our efforts to reduce policy uncertainty and strengthen international frameworks and cooperation,” it resolved.

The Committee noted that free, fair, and mutually beneficial goods and services trade and investment are key engines for growth and job creation. And that strong international trading system, with well-enforced rules addressing current and future challenges, would support global growth. To this end, it recognised the need to resolve trade tensions and support the necessary reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to improve its functioning.

The IMFC decided to cooperate in order to reduce

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

excessive global imbalances through macroeconomic and structural policies that support sustainable global growth, and stressed the importance of timely, full, and consistent implementation and finalisation of the financial sector reform agenda as soon as possible, and the ongoing evaluation of the effects of these reforms. It was also the resolve to address fragmentation through continued regulatory and supervisory cooperation, adapt financial regulation to structural changes and the evolving global financial landscape, and close data gaps.

The Committee is working toward a modern and globally fair international tax system, particularly taxation related to digitalisation, and will address harmful tax competition, artificial profit shifting, and other tax challenges. It is in its decision to continue to address correspondent banking relationship withdrawal and its adverse consequences, having decided to also continue to tackle sources and channels of money laun@Businessdayng

dering and terrorism financing, proliferation financing, and other illicit finance.

“We will continue to work together to enhance debt transparency and sustainable financing practices by both debtors and creditors, public and private; and strengthen creditor coordination in debt restructuring situations, drawing on existing fora.”

The whole understanding is important because sustained joint action is essential to address the challenges that transcend borders, with focus on supporting efforts toward achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We will continue to support domestic and multilateral efforts to address, build resilience to, and deal with the macroeconomic consequences of pandemics, cyber risks, climate change and natural disasters, energy scarcity, conflicts, migration, and refugee and other humanitarian crises. It is to continue to collaborate to leverage financial technology while addressing related challenges.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

29

LEADINGWOMAN

How WIMBIZ helped women strategize to build successful careers …new executives sworn in at 2019 conference KEMI AJUMOBI

W

omen in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) is a nonprofit organisation that has, over the last 18 years, implemented programs that inspire, empower and advocate for greater representation of women in leadership positions in the public and private sector.

WIMBIZ has a contributory associate pool of over 768 accomplished women in management, business and public service and over 9,500 women in its database. WIMBIZ collaborates with credible domestic and international global organizations to deliver programs, which have influenced over 107,465 women since inception. Their vision at WIMBIZ is to be the catalyst that elevates the status and influence of women and their contribution to nation building.

Their mission is to inspire and empower women to attain leadership positions in business, management and public service. They are advocates for gender parity and increasing the representation of women in leadership positions in business, management, and public service. The Women on Boards and CEO/Policy Makers Interactive Series programs are strong tools towards the achievement of same.

They recently concluded their 2 day annual conference themed “Shaping the Future: Strategizing to Win” and it provided an opportunity for frank discussion, deliberation and debate on the future for women in their various sectors, and how they build and sustain a successful career.

In her welcome address to delegates, Chairperson (former), Executive Council, WIMBIZ, Olubunmi Aboderin-Talabi explained that the rationale behind the theme for this year’s conference is to point to the inherent ability that is latent within each person to make something of their future. “We all have the capacity to be proactive in shaping the outcome of our lives” she added.

The event was chaired by former Chief Judge, Federal High Court of Nigeria, Hon. Justice Rose Ukeje, OFR. The Keynote on Day 1 was delivered by Erelu Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, First Lady, Ekiti State and Day 2 keynote address was delivered by

IFEYINWA IGHODALO Chairman, Board of Trustees WIMBIZ, CEO, DO.II Designs

Fred Swaniker, Founder and CEO, Africa Leadership University.

A highlight of the event was the 2019 Female Achievers’ Award recognising trail blazing women in the civil service who have contributed to the growth and sustainability of the public sector. The recipients this year were Engr. Ebele Okeke, OON, CFR, Chairman/CEO Chantaly Engineering Services and Amal Inyingiala Pepple, CFR, Board Member, SunTrust Bank Nigeria Ltd. The winners of the WIMBIZ Impact Investment Competition, sponsored by ACT Foundation, were also announced at the conference. The 2019 Impact Investment Grant recipients were: Augustina Emele, CEO Chais Initiative; Adeike Ogunsade, CEO Crowncare Couture; and Peggy Ovat, CEO Peggies Kitchen.

Also at the closing ceremony of the conference, outgoing Chairman of the WIMBIZ Board of Trustees, Funmi Roberts handed over the baton of leadership, after her three year tenure, to Ifeyinwa Ighodalo, Founder/CEO, DO.II Designs Limited. Olubunmi AboderinTalabi handed over the baton of leadership of the WIMBIZ Executive Council as Chairperson after her two year tenure to Ngover IhyembeNwankwo, Head Coverage, Rand Merchant Bank, Nigeria. www.businessday.ng

NGOVER IHYEMBE-NWANKWO Chairperson, Executive Council, WIMBIZ, Head Coverage, Rand Merchant Bank Nigeria

IFEYINWA IGHODALO holds B.Sc. in Accountancy from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, but upon realizing her passion for interiors, in 1987, she established Design Options Ltd., a prestigious interior decorating and furniture manufacturing outfit. Since inception, Design Options has grown to become and is now widely recognized as one of the country’s very best in its area of expertise, in recognition of which it was honoured with the 2004 St. Moritz Style Award for Interior Design. She is a volunteer mentor for the mentorship programme of Fate Foundation. She is married to Asue Ighodalo and they are blessed with a beautiful daughter.

NGOVER IHYEMBENWANKWO is a Corporate and Institutional Banking Executive with 17+ years’ experience in Financial Services across a wide range of functions including, Corporate Relationship Management, Sales, Credit, Transaction Banking, Remedial Account Management and Risk.

She is currently Head Coverage at Rand Merchant Bank Nigeria.

Prior to this role, Ngover was an Executive Principal with Standard Chartered Nigeria responsible for anchoring the bank’s International Corporates Portfolio. She was also

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

previously responsible for structuring and implementing working capital and securities services solutions for Corporate Finance & Capital Markets clients across the Standard Chartered Bank’s Africa footprint. She also managed the Multinationals Portfolio under the Global Corporates Team and before that was Country Head of Transaction Banking.

Ngover holds a Master’s degree in International Management from the University of Exeter and a Bachelor’s Degree in Combined Social Sciences (Politics, Philosophy & Economics) from the University of Durham both in the United Kingdom. She is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Credit Administration.

Ngover is passionate about supporting women to achieve their full potential and sits on the WIMBIZ (Women in Management, Business & Public Service) Executive Council. She has also contributed to the Nigeria Banker’s Committee Sub-Committee on Women Empowerment. She enjoys providing finance and accounting coaching/ training through volunteering.

Her hobbies include reading, mentoring, travelling & culinary arts. She is happily married to a wonderfully supportive husband and they are blessed with 2 lovely daughters.

@Businessdayng

30

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

CULINARY DELIGHTS Noir Lagos unveils an innovative new menu

N

oir Lagos is a restaurant that I thoroughly enjoy going to. It’s a European restaurant with a good portion of its menu dedicated to modern French cuisines located on 4a Akin Olugbade street in Victoria Island. My first article covering Noir described it as the Quintessential French restaurant in Lagos and I am excited to let you all know that they recently intro-

Lehle (@lehlelalumiere) works at BusinessDay in Strategy Innovation and Partnerships, she is also a financial inclusion advocate and radio anchor. Originally from Senegal Lehle has a passion for culinary experiences and enjoys discovering new restaurants in Lagos. Follow @ bdculinarydelights on Instagram

GUEST duced a new menu curated by the new in house Chef Malan. For most restaurants, a new menu creates an opportunity for higher pricing but in Noir’s case, the menu pricing has stayed the same for customers who are comfortable with a fine-dining budget of N15k - N25k for a 3-course meal. This time around I had dinner with Tosin Oyewole founder of Enjoy.ng and Sonia Irabor Editor of Genevieve Magazine and Ebosie Okoronkwo We were all too excited to try out the new menu.

Here is what Tosin had to say: “Our evening dining experience started off with the Coconut Crispy Frog Legs and Creole Sour Cream - an adventurous start. It tasted like good crispy chicken which could use a bit more seasoning, maybe that’s the Nigerian in us speaking. Another memorable starter was the Foie Gras with the Orange Preserve and Herb Pita. Even though Foie Gras is a controversial dish in some countries, we loved the buttery smooth Duck Liver and the sweetness that orange preserve adds to the dish.

Noir is popularly known for steaks

cooked on hot stone “Black Rock”, however, we chose the Charcoal Flamed Grilled option for the main course. 500Gr T-Bone steak was cooked to perfection - juicy mediumrare, like the French, will say À Point.

Another star main was the Roasted Mint Crusted Lamb Chops with Sweet Potato Mash and Beetroot Red Wine Jus was the prettiest dish of the night. For dessert, the berry cheesecake was creamy comforting goodness that ended our adventure for the night. Overall, Noir gives you a good bang for your buck, quality dining experience - courteous staff, good ambiance, and tasty modern French dishes.”

I love Noir as a restaurant and I am impressed at the level and dedication to staying innovative. All businesses need to innovate and restaurants are no exception. For restaurants, while I find it is important to stay authentic

to the cuisine that customers are used to however I think it’s a good strategy to switch up the menu a little bit. I tasted the fried frog legs and while they tasted okay, I think I would have preferred a non-fried option with a lemon garlic side sauce instead.

I wasn’t feeling overly adventurous that day, so I decided to stick to a traditional T bone steak and frites which is french for fries and I had my steak had well done. the steak at noir is always delicious. I use to like my steak medium-well but these days I find myself ordering only well-done steak. Finally, for dessert, I had the berry cheesecake and it is safe to say it was the cherry on top of the rather delicious meal. In addition to the main restaurant, Noir also has a VIP Lounge, a Café, and an outdoor terrace. they also have a wine cellar for those interested, filled with a vast collection of international fine wines.

TOSIN OYEWOLE

RATING 4.5

Total:

- N 15 000- N 25 000 per person for a 3-course meal CONTACT: 0906 000 8436 info@kohinoorhospitalities.com

To make recommendations or for collaborations please send an email to lehle.balde@businessday.ng www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

FT

BUSINESS DAY

31

FINANCIAL TIMES

World Business Newspaper EDWARD LUCE

T

here is no theoretical limit to the number of fallback positions available in a retreat. In the real world, Republican defenders of Donald Trump are vacating their defence lines at a remarkable clip.

During the first day of public impeachment hearings on Wednesday, Mark Meadows, one of Mr Trump’s most loyal congressional allies, said: “Everyone has their own impression of what truth is.” When conservatives embrace relativism, facts have clearly lost their use.

The speed with which Mr Trump’s defenders have retreated is worth underlining. When we learnt of the Ukrainegate whistleblower in September, the initial line was that Mr Trump had done nothing improper. Then the White House released the edited transcript of Mr Trump’s call with Volodymyr Zelensky. The text clearly showed Mr Trump had indeed pushed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

The next line of defence was that Mr Trump had not offered a “quid pro quo”. This fallback was promptly blown up by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, who confirmed that the release of US military aid had in fact been contingent on Ukraine opening an investigation into the Bidens. A few hours later, a flustered Mr Mulvaney insisted that what he had been recorded on camera as having said was not in fact what he

Republicans keep changing their tune on impeachment Trump’s defenders resort to relativism in attempt to distort Ukraine inquiry

Republicans have tried sticking various strands of spaghetti to the wall in defence of President Trump, who rarely bothers with any of these defences © Getty

had said.

The third fallback position was that Mr Trump was only doing what any president does: all US aid has strings attached. This was in response to the parade of closed-door testimonies from US public officials that confirmed that Mr Trump was trying to extort electoral help from

Publishers warn that move could further entrench search group’s dominance

Blackstone, Tiger Global, Lightspeed and Founders Fund all raising huge funds for late-stage companies

I

nvestors are planning to pour billions more dollars into later stage tech start-ups, even as Japan’s SoftBank reels from a succession of faltering bets.

Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone plans to raise between $3bn and $4bn for its first growth equity fund led by former General Atlantic executive Jon Korngold, people familiar with the discussions said.

Tiger Global Management, the New York-based group managing close to $11bn in hedge funds, last week revealed it would try to raise $3.75bn for its next private investment fund in January, according to a document seen by the Financial Times.

The venture capital firms Lightspeed Venture Partners, an early investor in Snap, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund are also seeking to raise funds for backing private companies that are nearing initial public offerings or takeovers, people familiar with their plans said.

The pace of fundraising will test the demand of large investors, such as pensions and sovereign wealth funds, that have looked to capitalise on a rising tide of private start-up valuations. Each of the groups declined to comment on fundraising.

Michael Larsen, managing director at the investment firm Cambridge Associates, said venture capitalists, hedge funds and other

groups have caused a “massive convergence” in the market for late-stage private companies, with more groups than ever prepared to write large cheques.

“More of the prime growth happens in the private years,” Mr Larsen said. “Companies are also taking a longer path and achieving more scale.”

This year US investors are on track to raise a record amount of capital for growth equity funds, which had gathered $23.9bn by November 11 according to Pitchbook data.

For some, the rush to back start-ups has sparked fears private markets may help hide losses for longer and diminish the pull of public markets.

The property company WeWork was forced to shelve its IPO in September and accept a rescue package from its largest investor SoftBank, which valued the company at less than one-fifth its previous mark. Shares in Uber, another SoftBank investment, have fallen 40 per cent from their May IPO price.

SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son recently said the company’s second, $108bn Vision Fund was on schedule despite questions surrounding the participation of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth funds. Together, the two investors contributed 60 per cent of the first Vision Fund’s capital. www.businessday.ng

the impeachment inquiry, was conducting the process from a secret vault in the deep state. Specifically, he was holding the hearings in a secure room in the basement of Capitol Hill. A group of Republicans even staged a televised invasion of the hearing room to make their point.

That argument fell apart when the

Google to limit advertiser access to user data over privacy concerns

Investors race to tech start-ups despite SoftBank stumbles MILES KRUPPA

Mr Zelensky. On top of this, Mr Trump was only trying to tackle general corruption in Ukraine, they said. This, too, was detonated by testimony that Mr Trump had only one particular corruption investigation in mind.

The fourth was that Adam Schiff, the Democrat who is spearheading

process was moved to the public hearing phase on Wednesday.

The same witnesses who spoke in private are now doing so in front of the cameras.

Next, Republicans argued that Mr Trump could not be impeached since he had failed to pull off what he was accused of doing. The fact that he attempted a quid pro quo is irrelevant, they said. The $391m in US aid was released to Ukraine, which did not open an investigation into the Bidens. By the same logic, of course, Richard Nixon should have been exonerated since he, too, was caught in the act and thus failed.

Moreover, the Ukraine aid was only released after the House was notified of the whistleblower complaint.

Republicans have tried sticking various other strands of spaghetti to the wall. One of them is that the whistleblower’s identity remains unknown, which implies that he is a nefarious deep state operative. This is because whistleblowers, unlike leakers, are protected by law. Moreover, the accuracy of the complaint should be at issue rather than the identity of the complainer. But that complaint persists. Mr Trump reiterated it on Wednesday.

MADHUMITA MURGIA AND ALEX BARKER

G

oogle has announced a major change to its online advertising business that it said would enhance user privacy but which advertisers warned would give the search giant even more power.

From next February, Google will no longer allow advertisers to see key information known as “contextual content” about web pages when they bid for display adverts.

Currently Google allows advertisers to see the categories of web pages or apps, ranging from subjects such as music and audio, or autos and vehicles, to more sensitive topics such as substance abuse or kosher foods.

Chetna Bindra, from Google’s user trust and privacy team, said Google had decided to remove the information after discussions with data protection regulators. She said the change would stop advertisers from tying sensitive categories such as health, religion, politics and sexual orientation to any individual user.

The move will “help avoid the risk that any participant in our auctions is able to associate individual ad identifiers with Google’s contextual content cat-

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

egories”, she said.

The decision came shortly after a Financial Times investigation which found that some of the UK’s most popular health websites share sensitive health data, including medical symptoms and diagnoses, with companies including Google.

The search company’s advertising arm, DoubleClick, was a destination for data from 78 per cent of the top 100 health websites.

There is also an ongoing investigation by the Irish data protection authority into Google’s online advertising exchange, known as Authorized Buyers, which sits at the centre of the bidding process for online ads.

Following complaints from the browser company Brave, the European regulator is looking into whether Google’s online advertising exchange illegally taps into sensitive personal information about internet users.

The investigation will look at how data are being processed, the level of transparency involved and whether Google is doing enough to minimise the amount of information it uses.

Johnny Ryan, chief policy officer at Brave, said Google’s change was not sufficient to protect the privacy of users. “It appears Google will still broadcast bid requests that contain things like URL, approximate location and @Businessdayng

data to link these over time, to countless companies, billions of times a day. These data contain personal and special category data so this appears to be a cosmetic change,” he said.

Meanwhile, advertisers and publishers said the move could increase Google’s control over user data and further entrench its dominance in online advertising.

“No company tracks the public across the web and our digital lives more than Google. Although certain contextual categories can be sensitive, a blanket decision like this impacting the entire media ecosystem illustrates the global antitrust concerns in Google’s dominance over the ad stack,” said Jason Kint, chief executive officer of Digital Content Next, a US trade association for online publishers.

He added that without thirdparty data about users, the value of “first party” data, which are directly entered by users into websites, will rise to advertisers.

“This decision will at least enhance value of first-party data and Google Search is the most dominant place for first party data, so it will hurt everyone except Google,” he said.

Big brands and ad agencies have long been alarmed over the control Google and other big tech groups hold over customer data and the power this gives them as a channel for advertising.

32

BUSINESS DAY

FT

Friday 15 November 2019

NATIONAL NEWS

Germany narrowly avoids recession as growth ticks up Expansion of 0.1% in third quarter eases pressure on Angela Merkel’s government MARTIN ARNOLD

T

he German economy has defied expectations of a recession by growing 0.1 per cent in the third quarter as higher spending by households and the government offset a downturn in its exportfocused manufacturing sector.

Germany’s federal statistics office announced the figures on Thursday. It also revised down Germany’s second-quarter economic performance from minus 0.1 to minus 0.2 per cent, while revising up first-quarter growth figures from 0.4 to 0.5 per cent.

The mildly positive growth in the third quarter means the German economy has avoided a technical recession.

The German slowdown is having a knock-on effect across Central and eastern Europe; while growth in the region remains healthy, third-quarter figures published on Thursday came in below expectations for Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.

“The relevant economic indicators are not yet indicative of a fundamental change in the economic situation, but there are first slight glimmers of hope,” the German economy ministry said in a statement. “The slowdown in employment activity since February continued in September.”

The slight expansion could ease the pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to ditch its commitment to budget surpluses and to use more fiscal stimulus.

“After 10 years of almost unstoppable economic growth, a shorter period of stagnation is not necessarily a big crisis,” said Carsten Brzeski, economist for Germany at ING. “This also explains the resistance or at least hesitation of the German government to engage in significant short-term fiscal stimulus.”

However Andrew Kenningham at Capital Economics said some recent business surveys indicated there was still a risk of another downturn.

“With policymakers unlikely to loosen fiscal policy significantly, we think a mild recession is more likely than not in the coming year,” he said.

German industrial production has been in decline for a year and a half. But the domestic economy is in rude health, with employment at a record high and ultra-low interest rates prompting consumers to

spend more and pushing up property prices.

“The quarter-on-quarter comparison . . . shows that positive contributions in the third quarter of 2019 mainly came from consumption, according to provisional calculations,” Germany’s federal statistics office said.

It said exports rose while imports were flat between the second and third quarters. Investments increased in construction but declined in machinery and equipment production in the three months to September.

“Businesses probably ran down their inventories again, which shaved off a little from growth in GDP,” said Florian Hense, economist at Berenberg.

Year on year, the German economy grew by 0.5 per cent from the third quarter of last year, after adjusting for prices and calendar differences. Its labour market remained solid with a record 45.4m people in work, an increase of 0.8 per cent from a year earlier.

Column chart of Real GDP, quarter-on-quarter change (%) showing German growth returned to positive territory in the third quarter Germany’s third-quarter performance was below the 0.2 per cent growth across the eurozone in the same period, when Spain grew by 0.4 per cent, France 0.3 per cent, and Italy managed 0.1 per cent growth.

The latest quarterly growth figures contrast with the 2 per cent annual growth Germany has enjoyed on average over the past five years and underlines how the powerhouse of the eurozone economy has stalled.

German industry has been hit by the US-China trade war, uncertainty over Brexit and disruption in the car industry caused by new emissions rules and the shift to electric vehicles.

Car production was down 9 per cent in the first 10 months of the year.

Economists worry that the downturn in manufacturing could spill over into domestic-focused services and start to weaken the labour market, which has recently showed signs of cooling.

“A weakening of the German labour market will start to weigh on the mood of the consumer, who is the main pillar of the German economy right now, and we believe that next year this pillar will increasingly start to shake,” said Katharina Utermöhl, senior economist at Allianz.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is keen to find common ground with Donald Trump again © Reuters

Soaring Indian onion prices raise risk of political fallout Bad weather has hit production of a key vegetable in the country BENJAMIN PARKIN AND EMIKO TERAZONO

O

nion prices in India have soared to eyewatering heights, leading to worries about food inflation and consumer unrest as climate change hits production of one of the country’s most important vegetables.

Extreme heat earlier this year followed by excess rainfall from the annual monsoon has led to a drastic fall in production in India’s key growing areas. The monsoon is critical for the country’s agriculture, but the weather event has become increasingly erratic due in part to the changing climate, with warming oceans leading to extreme rainfall.

Wholesale onion prices at Azadpur, a leading hub for onion traders near New Delhi, have jumped by almost 500 per cent from the start of the year to Rs1,908 per 40kg after soaring to a six-year high of Rs2,400 in April.

“Prices are rising and rising,” said Sachin Gangawani, a vegetable vendor in a Mumbai market.

“Our profits have reduced drastically. People instead of buying a kilo, they’re buying a quarter kilo,”

he added.

India has two annual onion harvests. The first of this year was devastated by a severe drought, with production down 50 per cent from 2018, according to Rutika Ghodekar, analyst at commodities data firm Mintec. “Onion prices in India have spiked on the back of significant losses of the crop,” she added.

The second crop, currently being harvested, had been damaged by heavy rains during the monsoon, leading to lower planting and production as well as quality, said Ms Ghodekar. With rains still continuing, there were now worries about next year’s harvest as the seedlings available were of poor quality while volumes had also fallen, she said.

Line chart of Rupee per 40kg showing Indian onion prices hit eye-watering levels The sharp rise in onion prices is an unwelcome development for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, coming at a time when his government is struggling to address a steep economic downturn. The economy’s growth rate has fallen to a six-year low, cutting into the income of rural farmers and urban consumers alike.

The price of onions, an impor-

tant crop and a core ingredient in most dishes across the country’s rich regional cuisines, is a particularly sensitive subject.

Millions in India still spend more than 50 per cent of their household income on food, and onion-related strife has been linked to the downfall of more than one government since 1980.

It is also blamed for the defeat of Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party in a local election in 1998.

Faced with rising prices, the government has been releasing its national buffer stocks of 50,000 tonnes into the market. In late September, to quell rising prices it placed a limit on stocks held by traders to prevent hoarding and banned onion exports. Earlier this month, it pledged to import 100,000 tonnes of the vegetable.

India’s export ban has had a knock-on impact for importers of its onions such as Bangladesh, which suddenly found its own supplies constrained.

Dhaka has been calling for the ban to be lifted, and in a recent visit to New Delhi, Sheikh Hasina, Bangladeshi Prime Minister, joked that “it has become difficult for us to get onions”, adding “I’ve told my cook to make food without onions.”

Two Namibian ministers resign in Icelandic fishing scandal Iceland’s biggest fishing group accused of paying bribes to trawl African country’s waters JOSEPH COTTERILL

T

wo ministers in Namibia have resigned and the chief executive of an Icelandic fishing group has temporarily stepped down over allegations the company paid bribes to trawl the southern African nation’s maritime waters.

The corruption scandal was exposed this week in a leak of thousands of corporate documents that investigative reporters said showed Iceland’s biggest fish company, Samherji, had paid at least $10m in kickbacks over

several years in order to secure Namibian fishing quotas.

During a programme broadcast in Iceland, a former company employee turned whistleblower, Johannes Stefansson, outlined allegations of a complex international bribery scheme involving the transfer of funds through different offshore jurisdictions.

Mr Stefansson said he had approved the payment bribes on behalf of Samherji, each time with a “green light” from the company.

“Samherji does whatever it takes to get its hands on the natural resources of other nations,” he told www.businessday.ng

Icelandic media.

Africa’s fishing waters have become highly coveted as global fish stocks have declined and Namibia is one of the continent’s most important producers by the value of catch.

Following the broadcast, Samherji said on Thursday that chief executive Thorsteinn Mar Baldvinsson had stepped down pending an internal company probe into its Namibian activities.

“We take this serious step to ensure and demonstrate the complete integrity of the ongoing investigation,” said Eirikur Jo-

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

hannsson, chairman of Samherji’s board.

Samherji declined to comment on the specific allegations in the scandal. Mr Stefansson could not immediately be reached for further comment.

Namibia’s president Hage Geingob said he had accepted the resignations of Bernhard Esau, the fisheries minister, and Sacky Shanghala, the justice minister “due to the severity of the allegations in the press”.

Mr Geingob’s ruling Swapo is battling to renew its 29-year postindependence grip on power in @Businessdayng

polls at the end of this month. The former ministers deny wrongdoing and Mr Esau has said that the allegations are part of a plot to unseat Swapo in the elections.

Namibia, a former German colony that was ruled by South Africa’s apartheid regime until 1990, has a sparse population and a sleepy reputation. Its bestknown exports are uranium and diamonds but its fish stocks are particularly prized due to the resource-rich Benguela current that skirts Namibia’s Atlantic coast. In Namibia, Samherji was mainly fishing horse mackerel.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

33

34

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news Pension Bill compels PFAs to open offices ...

Continued from page 1

erational office in at least one state in each of the six geo-political zones of the federation is currently being debated on the floor of the National Assembly.

The Bill, sponsored by Aishatu Jibril Dukku from Nafada Federal Constituency in Gombe State, has passed first reading, according to information available to BusinessDay. According to a document accessed by BusinessDay, the Bill seeks to amend the provisions of Section 50(1) of the Pension Reform Act, 2004 to, as a matter of priority to employees or beneficiaries of the retirement savings accounts, compel each and every licensed Pension Fund Administrator to have an operational office in at least one state in each of the six geo-political zones of the federation for easy access and effective service delivery.

The promoters say the Bill, which may be cited as the Pension Reform Act (Amendment) Bill, 2019, has become necessary as most PFAs are headquartered in Lagos and usually don’t have offices outside Abuja and maybe Port Harcourt.

However, the National Pension Commission (PenCom), the regulatory body for the pension industry, confirmed to BusinessDay that it is unaware of the amendment Bill which has scaled first reading.

Dapo Akisanya, managing director/CEO, AXA Mansard Pensions, responding to BusinessDay telephone enquiry, said he was not aware of any Bill seeking to amend the Pension Reform Act on branch opening.

He, however, said there was an existing regulation with regard to branching, which the National Pension Commission (PenCom) oversees.

Wale Odutola, managing director, ARM Pensions, who also responded via telephone, also said he was unaware of the Bill, but added that there is an existing regulation.

Meanwhile, PenCom in a circular issued on July 7, 2009 signed by M.Y. Datti, head, Surveillance Department, titled ‘Minimum Requirements for Opening of Branches by Pension Fund Administrators’,

had directed PFAs as licensing requirement to have branches in certain locations in Nigeria.

“In order to ensure that all RSA holders have access to the services offered by Licensed Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs), the Commission has made the opening of two (2) branches in cities other than Abuja, Lagos, and PortHarcourt a requirement before any PFA is granted licence,” the circular read.

This is in addition to having two service centres in states where they have up to 2,000 Funded Retirement Savings Account (RSA) holders.

PenCom also went further to explain what makes a service centre and a branch.

“Service centre is a sales office whose main purpose is marketing the PFA and receiving customer complaints. A service centre, therefore, could be a table in a banking hall or an employer’s premises,” it said.

A branch, on the other hand, is a fully equipped office dedicated to providing a wide variety of services that are available at the head office, it explained.

Again, in another circular issued on April 10, 2012 by PenCom to all PFAS, titled ‘Addendum to Circular on Requirements for PFAs with Funds Under Management of N100 billion & Above and New Requirements for Appointments to Board and Top Management Positions of All PFAs’, the Commission also specified branch requirement for the operators.

“That where a PFA has 10,000 funded RSAs or more, the PFA should open a branch in that State so as to meet the requirements specified in the Commission’s Circular on Branch Opening,” PenCom said.

It added that for 50,000 RSAs, the PFAs are to have branch and extra service centres.

The objective of the Pension Reform Act when it was passed in 2004 was to ensure that every person who worked in either the Public Service of the Federation, Federal Capital Territory, States and Local government or the Private Sector receives his retirement benefits as and when due and to assist improvident individuals by ensuring that they save in order to cater for their livelihood during old age.

Nigeria to earn $7.05bn revenue in 5 years...

Continued from page 2

tives required for growth and sustainable indigenous shipping in Nigeria to include zero import duty on vessels, application of tonnage tax, abolishment of temporary importation permit or imposed stringent measure, shipping sector support fund, change of Nigerian crude oil trade policy,

among other incentives.

“Owning of ships is a vital qualification for a country to be called maritime nation.

The employment potential of the maritime industry is better imagined. It will impact on training and certification of cadets especially with the existence of ship building and repair yards, insurance and banking industries as well,” Bello said. www.businessday.ng

L-R: David Ifezulike, chairman, Nestle Nigeria plc; Clare Omatseye, managing director, JNC International Limited; Ndidi Nwueli, founder, LEAP Africa; Reeta Roy, president/CEO, MasterCard Foundation/keynote speaker, and Udeme Ufot, chairman, board of directors, LEAP Africa, at the LEAP Africa social innovators programme and award 2019, with the theme “People Profit Planet: The Tripartite Win” in Lagos. Pic by Olawale Amoo

Stocks jump most in 6 months as investors swoop...

Continued from page 1

9.55 and 9.64 percent, respectively.

“The banking stocks are the most attractive right now because they are very liquid, fundamentally sound and many are grossly underpriced,” said Aderonke Akinsola, banking analyst at Lagosbased ChapelHill Denham.

A k i n s o l a n o t e d t hat banks amid the weak macro environment are relatively positioned to withstand headwinds, and the minimum-loan directive which discouraged banks piling into high-yield government securities has caused them to innovatively create quality lending opportunities.

The market-frenzy follows a move by the CBN to limit participation in high-yielding OMO market which sent real returns on T-bills below zero, forcing big domestic investors back to equities.

The move to restrict the OMO market to banks and foreign investors have left big domestic investors, mostly pension funds

and insurance companies, with idle funds and caused heavy demand at a primary market NTBills auction on Wednesday.

The OMO bills accounted for N13trn of total liquidity in the money market, while treasury bills accounted for N2trn.

Consequently, the interest rates on Nigerian Treasury bills collapsed to within single digits for the first time since 2016, fuelling a hunt for lucrative opportunities outside the fixed income space.

“In terms of sustainability, you can’t say this is fundamentally driven because the economy is yet to improve,” said Wale Okunrinboye, head of research at Lagos-based Sigma Pensions Ltd. The OMO market is expected to witness six more maturities amounting to N3.32 trillion before the year runs out, according to ChapelHill Denham.

This implies that the holdings of domestic corporates and individuals in the market estimated at about

25 percent of outstanding OMO bills equal to about N829.25 billion would have to seek for investment opportunities in bonds, treasury bills and equities in the next six weeks.

The Debt Management Office (DMO) will auction two more FGN Bonds before the end of the year, according to the FGN bonds issuance calendar for the fourth quarter of 2019.

The Federal Government plans to raise N300 billion from the bonds, indicating foreign portfolio investors and banks which account for a larger share of the market would leave less than N150 billion for the local non-banks and individuals.

Consequently, it is estimated that N680 billion worth of liquidity would be left for investment placement in either treasury bills, equities or other assets.

However, the CBN indicated that it would still conduct an NTBills auction this month to roll over about N150.6 billion worth of maturing papers on No-

SAA: We have nothing to hide, says oms...

Continued from page 1

in its maritime security engagement.

In a statement yesterday in Abuja, Okunbo said several sponsored publications in the media were targeted at tarnishing his image and that of OMS. “The publications were intended to malign, demean and impugn my hard earned reputation as well as that of OMS. “For the purpose of setting the records straight, we have never been fraudulent in our operations since we entered into contractual engagement with

the Nigerian Navy. The socalled ‘N263b’ payments exist only in the warped imagination of those that cooked up the figures.”

On the controversial Secure Anchorage Area dispute with the Nigeria Ports Authority, the OMS boss said contrary to the erroneous impressions created, “we have actually saved our country money that would have been lost to vandals and bandits by bearing risks on behalf of anchoring ships transiting or making port calls to Lagos. In the past six years of the SAA operation, a 100 percent success rate has

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

been attained as there has not been any successful pirate attack on any vessel utilising our services at SAA.” Okunbo said with all its patriotic contributions to the maritime industry, OMS deserved “commendation, not condemnation. Profit has never been our motivator. We believe in our country, so we serve with our heart and might.”

He urged the NPA to retrace its steps in the SAA notice it issued to maritime stakeholders, “in the interest of our country.”

In recent times, OMS had been embroiled in dis@Businessdayng

vember 28.

While demand for the issuance may become weak given the lower rate environment on TBills with negative real interest rates, BusinessDay estimates that if local non-banks and individuals account for half of the successful bids at the auction, at least N605 billion will be hunting for investable instruments aside OMO, NTBills and Bonds.

This creates an opportunity for equities to remain bullish in the short term.

T h e r a l l y , h o w e v e r, would depend on how long CBN maintains this policy and how long it takes for valuation to correct, said Okunrinboye.

“End of Q1, most companies would start paying dividend and investors may move on to other asset classes,” he said.

On Thursday, the banking sector significantly outperformed all sectors, closing 7.4 percent higher as all the five sectorial indices – consumer goods, industrial goods, oil & gas, banking and insurance – tracked by BusinessDay closed in the green.

agreement with the Nigeria Ports Authority over the Secure Anchorage Area (SAA) with NPA issuing Marine notice discontinuing the arrangement with OMS. There have also been unsubstantiated reports of bogus payments to the company, which has prompted a senate committee invitation to the company.

The OMS chairman says t h e c o mp a ny ha s nothing to worry over or fear in any inquiry of its operations.

“We are transparent i n ou r o p e rat i o n s. We are patriotic. We love our country. We have nothing, absolutely nothing to hide,” he said.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

35

Sports

2021 AFCON: Super Eagles begin race with 2-1 win over Benin Republic Anthony Nlebem

N

igeria picked all three p o i nt s i n a hard fought 2-1 win over Benin Republic as the group phase of the qualifying campaign for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) began on Wednesday.

The Benin shocked the modest crowd at the Godswill Akpabio Stadium, Uyo as Stephane Sessegnon swept home after only two minutes, following Jodel Dossou’s brilliant run from the flank that left Jamilu Collins in no man’s land.

Two minutes later, Benin Republic came knocking again and would have made it two from a corner kick if not for some spirited defending as goalkeeper Daniel Akpeyi was again exposed.

From then, it was Nigeria all the way, with goalkeeper

Fabon Famolle having to stretch full length to parry Ola Aina’s low drive in the 13th minute, and then saving from Victor Osimhen four minutes later.

Samuel Kalu’s 22 –yard

free kick was way above the bar on the half hour, and four minutes from recess, Samuel Chukwueze saw his smart shot from a brilliant team move clip the crossbar with Famolle rooted

to one spot. A minute later, Kalu could not get to the ball to connect Osimhen’s pull-out, but in the 45th minute, roving Ola Aina was upended in the visitors’ box in another raid by Nige-

ria and Senegalese referee Issa Sy had no choice than to give a penalty, which Osimhen tucked away for the equalizer.

In the second half, Eagles were even more businesslike, as Alex Iwobi, Joseph Ayodele-Aribo and Wilfred Ndidi tightened the midfield and gave good support for Chukwueze and Kalu to bear down on the opposition from the wings.

In the 47th minute, a snap shot by Iwobi sailed narrowly over the bar ; Famolle had to parry fierce shots from Aribo and Osimhen and; in the 62nd minute, Samuel Kalu danced his way past a sea of legs and drove the ball low and fast beyond the groping hands of Famolle for Nigeria’s second goal.

Fou r m i nu t e s l at e r, Famolle had to be alert to tip over the bar another stinging shot from Kalu and then saved from the same player in the 71st minute as Nigeria launched onslaught

after onslaught.

However, the Squirrels could have been level in the 73rd minute but Dossou rocked the crossbar from a fast break. Two minutes later, Semi Ajayi came close as he connected a free kick

by Kalu.

Substitute Moses Simon nearly made it three with a fierce shot in the 80th minute that Famolle was lucky to parry away, but the Squirrels also had a chance to equalize, only for William Ekong to intervene decisively just as the trigger was about to be pulled in added time.

Victory took Nigeria top of their qualifying group, with Sierra Leone and Lesotho ending their encounter in Freetown 1-1 to share the spoils.

Next up for the Super Eagles is a clash with Likuena (Crocodiles) of Lesotho in Day 2 of the qualifying campaign, at the MaseruSetsoto Stadium on Sunday, 17thNovember.

How STANBIC IBTC’s *909# Lit up 2019 HiFL finals in Lagos

O

n Saturday, October 26th, football fever, the likes that have not been seen, since the jaunts of the Eagles at the last AFCON, gripped the residents of the Agege Township stadium and it’s environ. It was not another national league game. No, it was the final of the biggest collegiate sports league in the land, the Higher Institutions Football League, now in its second year.

Although, a reenactment of the 2018 finals between rivals UAM Tillers and UNICAL Malabites, the 2019 finals had a distinctly different flavour of its own brimming in vengeance and a quest to prove that previous glory wasn’t a fluke. The atmosphere was nothing short of amazing, even though no local team made it into the finals. It was an evening filled with plenty of action, some twists and turns, great crowd, awesome branding and intense action, anyone driving down the stadium axis, that evening, would have noticed an endless collection of parked cars crammed up along the outside streets.

Local residents of Agege, had a special reason to throng the stadium, their very own firstborn and music star, Small

Doctor, led the performance for the opening ceremony and thrilled fans to some of his biggest hits. But that was not the only spectacle of the evening, the UNICAL Malabites had brought with them, an enviable supporters club, reminiscent of the colourful Calabar Carnival, beautifully adorned dancers, who swayed symmetrically to the rhythms from drums and other musical instruments, cheering the team, while filling the stadium with positive enthusiasm, color and glamour.

Before long the games kicked off, it was a pure footballing affair. Both sides ignited their rivalry at the blast www.businessday.ng

of the whistle and immediately went at each other without inhibition, watching from the regular stands, where I sat, the game would pass as one of the most exciting encounters of the season. the referee and other match officials did their best to ensure the game flowed seamlessly. In the end, it was sweet revenge for UNICAL Malabites as they came from behind to beat defending champions UAM Tillers 5:4 on penalties in the most exciting encounter of the 2019 Higher Institutions Football League Season.

Apart from the historic win for UNICAL Malabites, the large turnout of fans and

football lovers to the stadium, the admirable spectacle of the UNICAL Malabites’ fans that aptly reflected the cultural heritage of the African people alongside the calmness and serenity that ran through the entire game time, one of the most remarkable sights and connection point at the finals was the STANBIC IBTC *909# banner, which welcomed everyone into the stadium.

Many of the fans who watched the super 4 finals in Lagos got instant passes, after opening a Stanbic IBTC wallet with *909#. It was interesting to see the brand make true its promise, even as fans got awesome opportunities to win

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

prizes through a raffle draw.

Before the HiFL 2019 Finals in Lagos, Stanbic IBTC, had launched the *909# platform as a product offering. providing a unique range of services to the informally served, the underbanked and the unbanked on various structured platforms with the last 10 digits of a phone number. During the match, fans experienced a hands on assessment of how the platform works especially as it concerns access to banking services such as interbank transfers, debit card issuance and card less withdrawals from Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) or the Agent Network, amongst others.

While the Stanbic IBTC @ ease wallet, platform comes through as a veritable financial freedom vehicle for all Nigerians to access seamless financial services. The initiative all the more reinforces Stanbic IBTC Bank’s drive to support the federal government to deepen financial inclusion and drive economic growth.

As cheerleaders of the bank took the center stage during the half time, to light up the atmosphere, with promising brand messaging, fans around the stadium @Businessdayng

could experience that the event was much more than just football. In the end it is an occasion to celebrate the power football has in bringing everybody together.

Back in Calabar, elated with the performance of the UNICAL Malabites, there was celebration and funfair on the occasion of the team’s return. the management of the University of Calabar, further awarded the entire students that made up the team, full academic scholarships, alongside free accommodation for emerging league champions.

UNICAL Malabites, may have been crowned champions of the 2019 higher institutions football league, but the joy of victory was a shared one, 21 weeks of exciting football action, the memorable experiences that fans took home, at the end of every match day, the success stories of emerging stars at the end of the league season, alongside the massive opportunities available to brands. Of a truth, everyone wins with HiFL. Olufemi Olatunji Olufemi Olatunji is the media officer of the Higher Institutions Football League, He writes from Lagos.

36

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news

FirstBank partners CFA Society Nigeria to host 2019 Ethics Challenge competition

I

L-R: Lars Johannisson, country manager, Tek Experts Nigeria; Nkemdilim Begho, CEO, Future Software Resources/ guest speaker; Aruosa Osemwengie, senior manager, people and organisation, PwC; Tosin Faniro-Dada, head of start-ups, Lagos State Employment Trust Fund, and Ashim Egunjobi, head of business development for Africa, Tek Experts, at the inaugural edition of the Tek Experts Open Day Forum, in Lagos.

Those in office do not get there by votes, says ex-President Jonathan IGNATIUS CHUKWU, Port Harcourt

F

ormer President Goodluck Jonathan threw what looks like a bombshell in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, on Thursday when he said that those claiming to win elections were not actually voted in by the people but use different methods to get into office.

Jonathan it was who conceded victory to President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and for the first congratulated the winner of a presidential election as an incumbent.

Speaking at the presentation of a book, In the Cause of Service, the memoir of Gabriel Tamuno George Toby (GTB Toby), the former president

…calls for immediate introduction of e-voting said the notion that good men get into office and change was not true, saying Nigerians do not actually know very well those that get into office.

He also dazed the Atlantic Hall of the Hotel Presidential that was filled to the brim with top leaders in the oil region when he said good men do not have any chance of getting into positions because votes do not matter in the face of guns and manipulations.

Offering a way out, Jonathan called for urgent introduction of electronic voting (e-voting) to allow people vote in men and women of their choice and reduce the use of thugs and guns.

Group kicks against Akpabio’s NNDC interim board Iniobong Iwok

A

group, the All Progressive Cultural Club (APCC), has kicked against the Interim Management Committee (IMC) board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) appointed by the minister for Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio.

The group described the composition of the board as illegal and disheartening, while expressing surprise that the minister hurriedly acted against the directives of President Muhammadu Buhari, who had earlier send the names of the chairman and directors of the NDDC to the Senate for confirmation.

In a statement to journalists in Lagos, Thursday, signed by the group’s national president, Benjamin Isokariari, they noted that President Buhari and Senate president, Ahmed Lawan, which nominated and screen the nominees acted in accordance with the law.

“It is disheartening to think that an IMC inaugurated in the middle of the night that took over from another IMC with questionable records, will ask a properly constituted board by President that was cleared in broad daylight

by the Senate to stand down indefinitely and not resume work.

“How can the President set up a board and send the names of the Chairman and Directors of an Agency, that is as sensitive as the NDDC to the Senate to be Confirmed within one week and someone quickly inaugurates an IMC board on the same day or same night.”

The group further expressed shock by the actions of Godswill Akpabio, which according to them was against his progressive ideas and laudable achievement as a former governor of Akwa Ibom State, which had endeared him to Nigerians.

“The body language of the Niger Delta minister, Godswill Akpabio, makes it obvious that he is throwing his weight behind the IMC, which is actually very surprising to many of us in the Niger Delta, especially with his landmark performance as Governor of Akwa Ibom State.”

“However, it might interest you to note that if there’s a breakdown of law and order in the Niger-Delta especially as it concerns the NDDC and other oil-related issues today, the government will not have leaders to negotiate peace with. www.businessday.ng

“The assumption is that every politician is useless.

Perhaps, political scientists should interrogate this concept. The question should be: do good men change when they get into office? No, I don’t think so. We vote in people we do not know. But we don’t really vote people in, they use different methods to get in,” Jonathan said.

“The solution is for us to go e-voting. If people can move billions of naira by e-transfers, then voting can safely and conveniently be done by evoting. For now, we use dogs as thugs while we send our own children abroad,” he said.

Jonathan said e-voting

would bring out at least 25 percent of good leaders, men of integrity and discipline, into office and the likes of Gabriel Toby would be in position of leadership. He said not all politicians are bad.

“When we begin to use e-voting, and when our votes begin to count, thuggery will end and use of guns will end.

Those who get in with thugs only think of buying more piles of guns, but when good men come in, guns will reduce and governance will come.

The likes of Toby will then have a chance,” he said.

“I enjoyed the panel discussion by young people and what they said about politicians. It shows that people now know what is right. What-

Agriculture, solid minerals panacea to reducing over-dependence on oil - Senate Solomon Ayado, Abuja

T

he Senate on Thursday said agriculture and solid minerals sectors were major areas the Federal Government could improve to reduce overdependence on oil and diversify the nation’s economy.

According the Senate, agriculture remains the highest employer of labour and key contributor to wealth creation, and if government efforts are concentrated, it will not just reduce poverty through abundant food but raise revenue generation.

Also, it said agriculture and solid minerals sector hold the secret to improve on the nation’s economy and lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next 10 years.

The position of the Senate was sequel to a motion by Ibikunle Amosun (Ogun Central) and 59 other senators.

Tagged ‘the need for continuous implementation of policy reforms for the diversification of Nigeria’s economy through agriculture and minerals,’ the motion seeks to put in place viable policies that revitalise agriculture and improve revenue generation.

According to Amosun, “The contribution of crude petroleum and natural gas to the nations GDP declined from 14.95 percent in 2011 to 9.61 percent in 2015, while agricultural sector contributed 23.35 and 23.11 percent to the GDP within the period.”

In his contribution, Danjuma Goje advised the Federal Government to formalise illegal mines and to engage the local miners to boost revenue.

Also, Ike Ekweremadu pointed out that policy inconsistency was major hindrance to development of agriculture, and insisted that the government become serious to turn farm produce to finished products to increase revenue generation.

Consequently, the Senate mandated its committees on agriculture and solid mineral development to organise a round-table conference by December this year, where relevant stakeholders would exchange ideas on how to improve the sectors.

The Senate urged the Federal Government to formalise mining of illegal miners so that government could start to generate revenue from collection of taxes and royalties.

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

n furtherance of the bank’s commitment to promote business ethics, professional excellence and education, reflected in the its endowment programme – the Samuel Asabia, chair for Business Ethics at the University of Lagos – First Bank of Nigeria Limited for three consecutive years, is partnering CFA Society Nigeria to host its annual flagship event, the Ethics Challenge, scheduled for November 15 – 16, 2019, in Abuja and Lagos for the regional and national levels, respectively.

The Ethics Challenge is designed to increase students’ awareness of the ethical dilemmas and issues they may face when they enter the investment management industry. At the Ethics Challenge, students are given an ethics case study to analyse, evaluate, recommend and present to a panel of judges.

To determine the winning team, the judges provide feedback based on the identification and understanding of the ethical issues in the case, the recommendations provided with the depth of the analysis, quality of the presentation, and responses to the judges’ questions.

The 2018 winner, Obafemi Awolowo University, would compete with 15 other higher institutions in the country to defend its trophy.

Babcock University, Bowen University, Covenant University, Federal University of Technology Akure, Mountain Top University, University of Calabar, University of Ibadan

and University of Lagos are the schools competing in the Lagos preliminary round.

Other schools are University of Abuja, University of Maiduguri, Bayero University, University of Ilorin, University of Nigeria and Madonna University in the Abuja based preliminary round.

The competition will be judged by Adeola Asabia, member, Board of Trustees, Business Ethics Chair, University of Lagos; Musa Bagudu, CFA, head, External Funds Management Office, Central Bank of Nigeria; Kunle Anida, CFA, director, Deals Advisory, PWC Nigeria among others.

According to CFA Society Nigeria president, Banji Fehintola, “The annual Ethics Challenge embodies CFA Society Nigeria’s mission to promote the highest standards of ethics in our investment and financial services industry. It touches on many of CFA Institute’s Future of Finance six areas of focus which include: Transparency and Fairness, Regulation and Enforcement, and Safeguarding the System.

“It also promotes ethical awareness and fosters a healthy investment industry that works for the ultimate benefit of society. Through our collaboration with First Bank of Nigeria Limited to run this competition annually, we will continue to invest in our university students and we hope to build the commitment of our future professionals to operate according to sound ethical principles.”

National livestock transformation to boost economic growth - FG Nathaniel Gbaoron, Jalingo

S

enior special assistant to the President on Agriculture, Andrew Kwasari, says the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) was to create millions of jobs and engender economic growth in Nigeria.

Kwasari made this known on Thursday at the flag-off training on the implementation of the pilots under the NLTP held in Jalingo, Taraba State.

Kwasari, who is also the national coordinator of the NLTP, said the implementation of the plan would create avenues for goods and services, providing opportunity for job creations of unimaginable proportion.

He also said the policy was a deliberate shift from the traditional method of livestock production to a modern one, adding that the plan had provided the platform where state would implement it in line with their peculiarities.

He stressed that the policy, which selected seven states as pilots, was a brain-child of the Federal Government to be driven by the National Economic Council (NEC) aimed at addressing the herders/farmers conflicts, which had destroyed the hitherto mutual coexistence between both communities. @Businessdayng

The national coordinator urged the Taraba steering committee to accommodate all stakeholders in the implementation, which would be acceptable by all.

In his address, Governor Darius Ishaku of Taraba State identified the traditional movement of animals from one place to another as a major cause of clashes between animal and crop farmers.

Ishaku, who was represented

by Haruna Manu, deputy governor of the state, said the NLTP would end the clashes, saying the adoption of the plan would improve livestock productivity by making it more profitable, decent and eradicate conflict between livestock farmers and crop farmers.

The governor eulogied the Federal Government for the initiative, saying the state stood the chance of benefiting more from the programme, as Taraba had over 5 million heads of cattle, 2.9 million sheep and 3.5 million goats.

He said the favourable climatic condition in the state and the vast grazing land had attracted livestock from different parts of the world to the state, and therefore assured the Federal Government that the state would do its best to ensure that all aspects in the policy were implemented as designed.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

37

38

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

39

40

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news N66.3bn Paris Club refund: Kastina denies entering agreement with financial consulting firm Felix Omohomhion, Abuja

A

defence witness, Yahaya Nasiru, told a Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday that Kastina State government did not enter into consulting agreement with the Mauritz Walton over the Paris Club Refund.

Maurice Walton Consulting Firm sued the Kastina State government, accusing the state of failure to pay it 20 percent of the $217.3 million (N66.3bn) consultant fee due to it from the Paris Club refund by the Federal Government.

But the Kastina State governmentrefusedtopayontheground that the contract with the firm was terminated half way for failure to abide with terms of contract.

Nasiru, an accountant, who works in debt management department of the state ministry of finance, said there was no contractual agreement over recovery of the over deduction.

Under cross examination from counsel to the plaintiff, Chijioke Okoli, Nasiru said the state did not have any issue with the Federal Government to have engaged Mauritz Walton over the deduction by the Federal Ministry of Finance. “There was

no letter that we complained of over deduction to the firm,” he said.

When he was made to read a letter, dated August 24, 2014, which engaged the firm to reconcile the debt profile of the state toward arriving at the over deduction, Nasiru said another letter was written to cancel the contract because the firm did not fulfil some conditions in the agreement.

Ask to produce any letter where it was stated that the firm did not fulfil some conditions, Nasiru said he had no letter to that effect, but only the disengagement letter.

The trial judge, Justice Inyang Ekwo, thereafter fixed January 22, 2021, for adoption of addresses from all the parties.

The financial consulting firm took Kastina State to court claiming N13,253,774,451.60 being 20 percent of the total N66.3 billion refund due to Katsina, being fees for its consultancy services to the state.

In the suit, the firm claimed that it was appointed by Katsina State, via a letter dated August 18, 2014, with reference No: MOF/STAFF/409/1/31 to ascertain and recover the excess deductions by the Federal Government from its account

to service its external debt between July 1995 and March 2002.

In its statement of claim, the firm said the Katsina State government agreed to pay it 20 percent of what was due to the state from the excess deduction, commonly referred to as the Paris Club Refund.

Mauritz Waltson stated, in a witness statement that, through the firm’s efforts, it was ascertained that Katsina State was entitled to $217,274,991.01 (estimated at N66,268,872,258.00 calculated at an exchange rate of $1 to N305) as Paris Club Refund.

The statement added that his firm’s efforts yielded further results when President Muhammadu Buhari, in 2016 directed the payment of the first tranche of the Paris Club refund to states, including Katsina.

It further stated that despite the pendency of the suit and existing interim orders by the court, restraining further payment to Katsina, the 2nd defendant (Central Bank of Nigeria), on the instruction of the 1st defendant (Finance Minister) recently paid N35,364,610,435 to the 4th defendant (Katsina State), through the 5th defendant United Bank for Africa (UBA).

building a compelling brand story around its core values, vision and mission.

In addition to a refreshed logo, the Nestoil brand has adopted a refocused pay-off line – ‘delivering exceptional value’. The tag line embodies the value proposition, vision, mission and corporate ethos of the oil and gas giant.

Speaking at the event, Ernest Azudialu-Obiejesi, group managing director of Nestoil Group, states that the company’s new identity is informed by its quest to continue to play in the highly competitive O&G industry as a leader. He said the group would become increasingly more strategic in capacity building, technical knowledge acquisition and contribution to the growth of the sector.

According to AzudialuObiejesi, Nestoil is more poised and equipped to face

the challenge of increasing Nigerian’s contributions to the growth of the sector. “The journey of Nestoil started 28 years ago, long before the Nigerian Oil and Gas Content Development Act (NOGICD) was passed.

What was unique about our identity when we started was a corporate culture that supported and enhanced innovation,” he says.

The company, which sits atop the Nestoil Towers in the heart of Lagos, is known to be the first player in West Africa to attain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, signifying its excellence in construction and energy conservation space. Its member companies are pacesetters in quality and innovation across dredging, fabrication, maintenance, marine and construction.

Nestoil Group unveils new corporate identity HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE

T

o consolidate its fort as “The face of Local Content in the Oil and Gas Industry” the Nestoil Group has unveiled a new corporate identity.

Nestoil, Nigeria’s largest indigenous engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPCC) oilservicing company, revealed its refreshed identity to industry players, captains of industry, media icons, regulators and other stakeholders at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, Thursday.

The corporate identity refresh represents the agenda of Nestoil for growth, market penetration, social investment and economic growth support.

It is a result of the company’s efforts to re-engineer its entire brand strategy, positioning and

Mitsubishi Motors partners The Future Awards Africa, hosts 2019 nominees SEGUN ADAMS

M

assilia Motors, the sole distributor of Mitsubishi Motors in Nigeria, has teamed up with The Future Awards Africa to host its nominees to a reception in its Victoria Island, Lagos showroom.

The partnership builds on Mitsubishi Motors ‘Drive Your Ambition’ tagline and the brand’s efforts to inspire young Nigerians.

Thomas Pelletier, managing director, CFAO Nigeria plc, gave the opening speech, while the chairman, CFAO Nigeria, Gbenga Oyebode, presented the certificates to the new nominees.

The awards event is scheduled to hold November 24, 2019 at the Balmoral Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Speaking at the event, Funmi Abiola, head of marketing, Massilia Motors, said, “Nigerian youths have consistently proven themselves to be enterprising, innovative, creative and resilient, and they truly deserve to be celebrated through a sustainable and important platform like The Future Awards Africa. Our continent is at a critical point, and our work in supporting them will determine how excellent Africa will perform independently in the global market.”

Massilia Motors, which is a joint venture of CFAO and Chanrai Group, is focused on delivering a range of exquisite cars to the Nigerian market including ASX, Eclipse Cross, Outlander, Pajero, Pajero Sport, and the L200 pick-up.

“Mitsubishi Motors has con-

sistently been recognized as one of the world’s renowned, forward-looking automobile brands, and we are so excited about this partnership. It is a perfect mix because we understand the brand’s effort to inspire the Nigerian youth and boost creativity and enterprise, which also aligns with our vision,” said Bukonla Adebakin, chief operating officer of The Future Project.

The Future Awards Africa celebrates young enterprising Africans who have done exceptional work in their respective fields throughout the year. The reception is a pre-event of the award show where nominees are presented with certificates of nomination, and an opportunity to network with their peers across several industries.

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

41

42

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news

House member says N1.3trn CBN 2020 budget outrageous James Kwen, Abuja

... begs Buhari to re-open borders

member of House of Representatives, Gudaji Kazure (APC, Jigawa) on Thursday raised alarm over the N1.3 trillion budget of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for the 2020 fiscal year, saying it was outrageous.

Kazure also slammed the apex bank for disregarding a resolution of the House over implementation of the money deposit and withdrawal charges by banks, after the House advised the policy be suspended.

Briefing journalists in Abuja, the Jigawa lawmaker vowed to personally sponsor a motion on the floor of the House next week to canvass for a drastic trim down of the budget.

“In 2019, budget of the CBN was N420 billion, but the same CBN brought a budget of N1.3 trillion for 2020. What are they producing? Which revenue are they generating?” he queried.

He said he would persuade the House to ask his colleagues in the Appropriation Committee to bring down the budget of the CBN to N300 million, while the balance of N1 trillion be distributed to health, education and the Federal Government’s N-Power social intervention programme.

“I am pleading with Mr President (Muhammadu Buhari) to ensure that resources are put into places where they will benefit our people,” he said, adding the bank charges were

A

discouraging local people from lodging money even at their risk losing same to robbery.

He also appealed to President Muhammed Buhari to consider re-opening land borders with neighbouring countries, even if temporarily.

The lawmaker said the appeal became necessary in view of the challenges being faced by business men who were caught unaware with the sudden closure, while their goods were already on the way.

“Some of the consignments I have seen deal with time, because they are perishable and the goods I saw are not contrabands. Some of the business men collect loans from bank,” he said.

Monument Distillers appoints Godwin Oche as CEO ISAAC ANYAOGU

M

onument Distillers Nigeria Limited (MDN) launched in Nigeria in March 2019 with the acquisition of the 1960 Rootz Bitters brand and the state-of-the-art manufacturing plant has appointed Godwin Oche as chief executive officer (CEO).

Oche joins from AB Inbev where, in January 2016 as a result of the integration of SABMiller and AB InBev, Oche was made the regional director/general manager of AB Inbev’s brewery in Onitsha. In 2017, he was later appointed national sales director of AB Inbev’s Nigerian business, and is credited with championing the business’s growth agenda to delivering significant volume and market share growth, ultimately contributing to growing the company from fourth- to second-largest beer company in Nigeria.

Commenting on this, Michael Ajukwu, board member, MDN, said: “We are thrilled that someone of Oche’s calibre and experience is joining our Monument Distillers Nigeria

Oche team. We are looking forward to Oche making a big impact on our business and accelerating the growth of our brands – which he understands well given he worked on them when at AB InBev. We believe Oche will enjoy the challenges of moving from a beer business to a spirits business and that he is the right person to drive our vision of building MDN into a market-leading spirits company in Nigeria.”

In addition to owning its own brands, MDN has the distribution rights in Nigeria to a range of global brands from

leading US spirits company, Sazerac, including Southern Comfort, Popov Vodka, Myers Rum, Paddy’s Irish Whisky, Firewater, and Buffalo Trace Bourbon. Furthermore, MDN will soon be launching international brands, Jose Cuervo Tequila and Bushmills Whiskey to add to their growing portfolio which already includes Four Cousins Wine, and international brands Bannerman’s Finest Scotch Whisky, and Grace du Roi Fine Wine, owned by MDN’s parent company Kensington Distillers and Vintners.

Oche is a chemical engineer by training, and his qualifications include a PGD in Business Administration and an MBA in Marketing from Enugu State University of Science and Technology Business School. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultant (FIMC), a member of the Nigeria Institute of Marketing (MNIM), a member of the Nigeria Institute of Personnel management (MIPM) and is also a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) by the International Council of Management Consulting Institute (ICMCI).

Opportunities exist for African entrepreneurs looking to export to Canada HARRISON EDEH, Abuja

D

irector of Africa Canada Trade Investment Venture, Kenneth Oguzie, says there are numerous opportunities existing for African entrepreneurs looking to export goods and services to Canada.

Oguzie made this statement during his visit as a guest speaker to The Next Titan reality TV show house to encourage the contestants and speak about foreign trade and export.

Oguzie in the statement challenged entrepreneurs to take advantage of some of the opportunities available to them to promote and ultimately sell their products to Canadian consumers, which could be finished or semifinished goods.

He remarked that extensive market research to understand the needs of the market segment, which the

contestants plan to target and develop products and services that suit their taste and preference.

He dwelt on the importance of standardisation of packaging and product quality

www.businessday.ng

to ensure the products met the quality standards set by the Nigerian export promotion agencies as well as the Canada Border service Agency and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

43

news

Azura invests in 115mw Senegalese power plant Isaac Anyaogu

A

zura Power, a developer, financier, acquirer and operator of Independent Power Plants and who built Nigeria’s privatelyowned plant, is investing in the 115mw Tobene Power Plant in Senegal.

The investment is part of the Melec Power Gen portfolio, now forms part of Azura Power’s pan-African power generation platform. The new investment in Tobene also brings together Actis, an investor in growth markets in Africa and Azura Power’s majority shareholder, with Africa50.

Africa50 is an infrastructure investment platform that contributes to Africa’s growth by developing and investing in bankable projects, catalysing public sector capital, and mobilising private sector funding, with differentiated financial returns and impact.

According to a release from the company, Actis and Africa50 are committed to work with stakeholders to complete the conversion of the plant, to be fuelled by gas.

Azura Power, together with

Africa50, will also invest in the remaining assets in the MPG portfolio over time, and Africa50 is also expected to invest in future projects undertaken by Azura Power.

Azura Power’s CEO, Alan Muir, commented, “We are delighted to be making this investment in the Tobene Power Plant to help drive our growth in thermal power plants in Africa. A key part of the investment strategy for Azura is to convert the Tobene plant from HFO to gas, as part of Senegal’s Emerging Senegal Plan (PSE), in order to drive down the cost of power as well as improve the environmental impact of the plant.”

Adrian Mucalov, partner at Actis, said, “We have invested over US$1billion across Africa in the electricity sector and we are deeply committed to the continent.

We take our responsibility to the countries, cities and communities in which we operate extremely seriously and we are excited to be investing in a business that will directly contribute to the economic growth of Senegal.”

Raza Hasnani, head of infrastructure investments at

www.businessday.ng

Inadequacies in Public Procurement Act responsible for low level of budget implementation - Senate Solomon Ayado, Abuja Africa50, noted, “We are very excited to make this investment in Senegal’s power sector. It underlines our strong commitment to Senegal’s progress, and we believe that our platform is well-positioned to drive the conversion of the plant to gas.”

This new investment is part of Azura’s ambition to build the continent’s leading power generation platform.

Azura has a strong presence in West Africa where it is the founder and majority owner of Nigeria’s first privately project financed IPP, a 461mw IPP that is now operating near Benin City in Edo State.

Actis has a broad portfolio of investments across Asia, Africa and Latin America and has raised over $15 billion since inception from leading global asset managers including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and development finance institutions.

Actis’s energy business has committed $5 billion to 34 energy investments in over 20 countries; this translates to more than 25GW of generating power which have provided access to over 100 million people across the firm’s markets.

T

he Senate on Thursday said the non-amendment of the Public Procurement Act with its attending inadequacies was responsible for low implementation of annual budgets in the country.

This was revealed in two bills, tagged “an Act to amend the National Council on Public Procurement and Bureau of Public Procurement Act No. 14 of 2007,” which scaled second reading in Senate.

The bills were sponsored

by Shuaibu Isa (PDP, Taraba North) and Uche Ekwunife (PDP, Anambra Central), respectively, as senators took turns to debate the bills.

The Senate has discovered that the Public Procurement Act, 2007, which was signed into law on June 4, 2007, is currently the root cause of most of the corruption in public procurement in Nigeria.

The proposed bill seeks to remedy the anomalies by amending 57 sub-sections and introducing 88 new subsections to the existing Act. A proposed additional amendment of Section 1 of the Act is being introduced to prescribe those eligible to be appointed by the President into the position of the chairman of

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

the National Council of Public Procurement.

The bill proposes “A former President or Retired Chief Justice of the Federation” as an appointee eligible for consideration as chairman of the National Council of Public Procurement.

Also, the bill proposed that membership of the committee must include the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, the AttorneyGeneral of the Federation and Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

Among other things, the bill seeks to provide term of office and removal from office for members of the Council which are not provided for in the existing Act. In his contribution, George Thompson Sekibo (PDP, Rivers East), said the Public Procurement Bill should be amended to make it compulsory for the Federal Government not to award contracts where funding is not readily available.

The Deputy Whip, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi (APC, Niger North) called on the upper chamber to accommodate the interest of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the procurement processes.

According to Abdullahi, amendment to the Procurement bill should include provi-

@Businessdayng

sions to make it mandatory for the patronage of locally produced goods and services.

The lawmaker, who described the consideration of the bill as “timely”, called on the Senate “to fast-track it, so that the 2020 Appropriations bill when passed by the National Assembly, will be complimented by a brand new amended Procurement Act.” Emmanuel Bwacha, the deputy minority leader, while lending his voice to the debate on the bill, said the purpose behind the introduction of the Act in 2007 was primarily to address the issues associated with corruption in procurement processes.

The lawmaker, however, stressed that the objectives behind the bill had overtime been defeated because of the workings of government bureaucracies that encourages continuous sabotage.

Bwacha, therefore, called for the inclusion of clauses in the Public Procurement Act under amendment to ensure that bureaucrats are prevented from sabotaging the fight against corruption.

“There are things done deliberately by bureaucrats to steal public funds; often times, they have justifiable reasons to give to allow them divert public funds”, he said.

44

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Bayelsa/Kogi guber watch

Bayelsa APC questions court judgments Samuel Ese, Bayelsa

T

he Bayelsa State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has reacted to recent court judgments that first disqualified its governorship running mate, Degi Eremienyo and later nullified the governorship primary election conducted on September 4 this year.

Addressing a press conference at the Bayelsa State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) on Thursday, Seiyefa Brisibe, alternate director-general of the campaign, sued the people for peace, saying it has appealed the judgments while filing for stay of execution of the judgments.

Brisibe stated that the governorship candidate, “Chief David Lyon and his

David Lyon

running mate, Bishop Degi Eremienyo are fully on the

ballot for the election. Don’t listen to rumours, come out

I am smelling victory great Nigerian youths - Yahaya Bello VICTORIA NNAKAIKE, Lokoja

A

s All Progressive Congress Party (APC) rounds off its campaign for the 2019 gubernatorial election slated for November 16, Governor Yahaya Bello has said he was already getting the aroma of victory.

Addressing APC faithful at the Confluence Stadium, Lokoja, Bello, who spoke with excitement and happiness, said on November 17, President Mohammadu Buhari will come and welcome his son that has been re-elected for a second tenure.

The incumbent governor also pointed out that ethnicity is what has drawn Nigeria backward, saying, “But I want to assure you that thugs will run out from Kogi very soon. We

will show them that we have come. Come out en masse and vote. Make sure that nobody intimidates you and if they try it catch them with your hands.

Great Nigerian youths am smelling Victory”.

Nasir El-Rufai, chairman, campaign Kogi State gubernatorial election, said victory is APC’s on Saturday, adding that they have come not only to reelect Bello but to bury People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

PDP has ruled this state for a long time and has done nothing for this state, stressing that many people said that Bello is young, but “I am on my knees on his behalf; am kneeling down to beg all of you. Many people are saying he is young and he has made mistakes. He did everything to bring progress to this state.

We must work for progress.

We must hate ethnicity”.

El-Rufai also pleaded with the people of Kogi to vote for Smart Adeyemi in the forthcoming rerun senatorial election between him and Dino Melaye, adding that Kogi people must not repeat the previous mistakes.

On Ajaokuta Steel, he said that it was because of it that Buhari travelled to Russia; with their support after 50 years Ajaokuta Steel Company will bounce back to life after 50 years.

“So vote for Yahaya Bello and Smart Adeyemi if you do not want Kogi to die. Apart from the governorship election; there is a re-run election in Kogi West; you must all come out and vote for Smart Adeyemi. You must not repeat the previous mistake,” he said.

Atiku rallies support for PDP in Bayelsa, Kogi ...demands free, fair polls

A

tiku Abubakar, a former vice president, has urged the people of Bayelsa and Kogi States to take serious interest in the choices they make on Saturday as they cast their votes in the governorship elections in both states.

In a statement signed by his media office, Abubakar enjoins the electorate to make their choices wisely by electing capable hands to steer the affairs of those two states.

He par ticularly urges members of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to use the power of their over-

whelming strength in those two states in ensuring that its flag remains standing in the Bayelsa State Government House and that the good people of Kogi State can begin to have a feel of better life under a PDP administration. Also, he reminds voters that the senatorial election in Kogi West is equally crucial and that they need to turn out in their numbers to defend the seat.

According to him, the leadership of the PDP has abiding confidence in the voters in that senatorial election that the choices before them are between a continuation of quality www.businessday.ng

representation at the Senate and a promise of meaningless change.

Beyond partisan concerns, he counsels that it is pertinent on all political actors to exhibit necessary decorum and sportsmanship.

“Election is about the people and not a war against the people,” he said.

The former Vice President urges all security agencies on election duty to do their jobs with utmost professionalism.

He asks all parties in the election to bear in mind that democracy can flourish only when everyone plays according to its rules.

en masse and vote for the APC and David Lyon.

“That is the assurance we are giving to Bayelsans.

Come and vote,” he said, while likening what the party is experiencing to the travails of the children of Israel when leaving Egypt for Canaan.

Brisibe insinuated that the Thursday judgment looked like a procured judgment while questioning the relationship between the judge and Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in the state.

He stated that prior to the judgment, the APC governorship candidate, David Lyon had been endorsed by groups and individuals including ordinary men, women and youth across the state owing to his selfless services to the people.

The party chairman said there is a better Bayelsa ahead for the people and that “the needful has been

done. Come out en masse and vote. We must take this state to a platform of sustainable development.”

According to him, the party campaigns had shown the love that the people have for Lyon, explaining that they were enthused by how the party flag bearer helped their children out of drug addiction, criminality and other vices.

He, therefore, enjoined the media to help inform the state and people that APC is ready for the governorship election as the processes at the various courts are ongoing, expressing hope that the judgments would be vacated at higher courts.

He said there was no doubt that the judgments came to weaken the resolve of the people to change the narrative in the state to ensure that development took centre stage across the state.

You can’t take governor’s seat through back door, Oyo group fires back at Adelabu, APC REMI FEYISIPO, Ibadan

O

yo Kajola Group (OKG), an O yo State-based sociopolitical group, on Thursday, chided the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the March 9 election, Adebayo Adelabu and his party for seeking to snatch the governorship seat through the backdoor.

The group, in a statement by its Media Coordinator, Adebayo Ayandele, said that the statements credited to the APC and its candidate were targeted at provoking the good people of Oyo State.

“We cannot understand what Adelabu meant when he said he had a date with history in a statement he made after the ruling of the Court of Appeal on his election petition.

We can also not understand the enthusiasm of the APC on the same matter.

“Rather than creating false hopes and hiding under the banners of lies and confusion to deceive their followers, we wish to urge the APC to face the reality of it all and accept that the 2019 governorship election in Oyo State has been won by Engineer Oluseyi Makinde.

“Let us warn very clearly that the election of the Governor of Oyo State was done within the purview of the law and not extra-legal factors.

“We, therefore, reject in its entirety, any form of ambivalence or ambiguity written into the judgement of the Court of Appeal on the Oyo State election matter and stick

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

to the truth of it all: that Seyi Makinde remains the man voted for by the people of Oyo state and that his mandate will be in force till May 28, 2023.”

The group described the statement credited to Adelabu that some agents of darkness perfected the plan to steal his mandate,” which led to his “recourse to the judiciary to proof (sic) their wrongdoing,” as hogwash, and an insult to the good people of Oyo State who massively rejected him on March 9, 2019.

The statement also warned the APC not to keep the hopes of manipulative tendencies too high as according to it, no one can supplant Makinde through the back door.

The group urged Makinde to continue the good works he has started in Oyo State, which it said have made him a cynosure of all eyes and a worthy example for other governors.

It noted that “the APC’s plot to take a mandate given to Governor Makinde by Oyo State people through evil machinations will not succeed.”

The statement read: “We read with amusement a statement credited to Adelabu that the pronouncement of the Election Appeal Tribunal has rekindled his and his party’s hope in their march to keep a date with history. They, indeed, will have their date with history at the Supreme Court and it will end in disappointment and shame, as we are sure that the court, as the last bastion of hope for the common man, will not allow itself to be used for the APC’s evil intention. @Businessdayng

“In the said statement, like a similar one released by the APC a day after the judgment, Adelabu had robed himself in borrowed gowns, stating how some imaginary people knew he was the best candidate among the lots that sought the mandate of Oyo State people.

He had equally prided his campaign as most organized and issue-driven.

“We in the Oyo Kajola Group would not have bothered with whatever borrowed gowns Adelabu chose to robe himself in, of course, no one can stop a butterfly determined to pride itself as a bird.

“Indeed, we would have considered his statement and that of his party as a bit of blarney, an amusing nonsense that should be laughed at and ignored but knowing the evil machinations of the APC and its tendencies to pervert the cause of justice and snatch popular mandates through the judiciary, we will like to place it on record that the APC did not and could not have won the 2019 governorship election in the state. The result of the election in which Makinde won in 28 out of 33 local governments, polling 515,621 votes to defeat the Adelabu, who polled 357,982 votes.

“The people of Oyo State reacted rightly by voting against the APC, a party that nearly ruined Oyo State in eight years; turned nearly every institution and processes upside down and tore into the core of the state’s nobility and prestige as a pace-setter state. The people voted against a reign of terror synonymous with the APC campaigns.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

45

Bayelsa/Kogi guber watch Kogi: Police review level of preparedness …Assure voters of safety VICTORIA NNAKAIKE, Lokoja

A

matter of hours to the Kogi State gubernatorial election, the Police have reiterated its resolve to do everything within their powers to make the exercise hitch-free.

Addressing journalists on Kogi and Bayelsa states election, at the police headquarters in Lokoja, Abdulmajid Ali, deputy Inspector-General of Police, Department of Operation, stated that the conference was a veritable opportunity to feel the pulse of the people, addressing their concerns and drawing on the media inputs in the attainment of the command’s election security mandate.

“The gubernatorial elections in the two states, as you are aware, have been scheduled by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for Saturday, 16th November, 2019. The re-run of the elections for Kogi West Senatorial District

will also hold on the same date. By virtue of the provisions of the Constitution and the Electoral Act, the Nigeria Police is the lead agency in the electioneering process.

This mandate is, however, being exercised in close conjunction with INEC leadership and other sister security agencies under the auspices of the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES),” he said.

“Towards this end, we have undertaken a security threat assessment in both Kogi and Bayelsa States and have identified possible risks, geolocated trouble spots, and classified individuals and groups that could constitute security challenges to the process. The outcome of this intelligence-driven initiative guided our election deployment plans and informed our post-election security projections.

“Let me emphasise that our strategic plans are guided by our invaluable experiences in previous engagements and are designed to achieve four

Federal High Court annuls Bayelsa APC guber primary Samuel Ese, Bayelsa

A

Federal High Court sitting in Yenagoa yesterday nullified the September 4 governorship primary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) that produced David Lyon as the governorship candidate for the November 16 election in Bayelsa State.

Jane Inyang, the presiding judge, in a judgment on the suit filed by one of the aspirants, Heineken Lokpobiri challenging the outcome of governorship primary, ruled that the primary was conducted without due regard to the rules of the party.

Inyang said that since the process was conducted in violation of the party’s constitution and guidelines for the conduct of governorship primary, none of the aspirants should be fielded as the party’s candidate in this Saturday’s election.

She gave an order restraining the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) from fielding Lyon as the party’s candidate in the election, noting that by the guidelines for the conduct of the 2019 governorship primaries, the results were expected to be declared by the returning officer for the election, Mai Kala Buni, governor of Yobe State and not Emmanuel Ochega, secretary of the election committee.

According to the trial judge, the APC also violated

its own rules in the composition of the election panel, saying that the party constituted an 11-member election committee instead of seven.

“It has been established by judicial authorities and several judgments that political parties are bound by their own rules; the committee that conducted the primary threw caution to the winds and it is my ruling that the primaries stands nullified,” she said.

“The result announced by Senator Emmanuel Ochega is not valid as he is not the returning officer for the election, and I make an order restraining INEC from recognising any of the aspirants that participated in the said primaries,” she further said.

Lokpobiri had approached the court, challenging the emergence of Lyon as the APC governorship candidate in the state; listed as respondents in the case are the APC, Lyon and INEC. Lokpobiri had claimed that he won the governorship primary election conducted by the APC using the direct primary mode which was also contested by Aganaba Steven, Ebitimi Amgbare, Diseye Poweigha and Ongoebi Etebu.

Speaking to newsmen after the court judgment, counsel to Lokpobiri, Fitzgerald Olorogun said he expected the APC to appeal the judgment while describing the nullification of the primary election as strange since it was not one of their prayers. www.businessday.ng

Abdulmajid Ali

key objectives. First, is to create an environment that is secured and peaceful enough to give confidence to the political actors to undertake their campaigns and other political activities and for the

citizens to freely exercise their electoral franchise. Second, is to emplace adequate security for all INEC personnel, AdHoc staff i.e NYSC, agents, domestic and international observers during the entire

process. Third, is to emplace adequate security for both sensitive and non-sensitive election materials, both at the voting centres, while on transit and at the various collation points. Fourth, is to ensure adequate security for all INEC facilities in the two States.

The essence of all these, is to ensure that the elections are peaceful, secured and credible,” he further said.

“In furtherance to these, we shall be deploying a total of 66,241 personnel on the election security operations in both Kogi and Bayelsa States. The breakdown shows that a total of 35,200 personnel will be deployed to Kogi State while a total of 31,041 will be deployed to Bayelsa State. The police deployment shall involve the conventional police personnel who will be complemented by the special units including the Police Mobile Force, Special Protection Unit, Counterterrorism Unit, Special Forces, Intelligence Response Unit, Special tactical Squad, Mounted Troops and K9 Sec-

tion, Airwing and the Marine detachment. There shall also be massive logistics mobilisation to support the operations while complementary Forces shall be pooled from sister security agencies. It must be emphasised that the heavy deployment of all these security operatives is to make the elections a success in the two states, and not to intimidate the electorates and the general public,” Ali said.

“It is noteworthy to also state in order to ensure an effective command and control framework, the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Mohammed Adamu has ordered the posting of very senior police officers including Deputy Inspectors-General of Police (DIGs), AIGs, CPs, DCPs and ACPs to all senatorial districts and Local Government Areas within the two states to monitor security arrangements during the elections; and their telephone numbers have been made public to enable the citizens contact them if the needs arise.

Schools closed in Kogi till Tuesday as police take over state, residents make last minute purchases VICTORIA NNAKAIKE, Lokoja

B

arely for ty-eight hours to Kogi gubernatorial election, truck loads of policemen have continued to arrive in Lokoja, the state capital The policemen started arriving the state on Monday

afternoon and about 10 trucks were parked in front of the Kogi State command headquarters.

There were sporadic gunshots all night into the early hours of Tuesday in what observers believed was a show of force to send warning signals to troublemakers.

But looking at what hap-

pened at Idrinana Hotel on Tuesday, observers are asking, will police really protect the electorate on Saturday or would they keep quiet and watch things get wrong?

The Police Public Relations Officer, William Aya, said there was nothing to worry about as officers were on parade, awaiting the arrival

of the Inspector-General, Mohammed Adamu, who was expected to come and assess the level of preparedness.

Private schools have closed till Tuesday next week while indigenes and residents have besieged markets for last minute’s shopping in order to have reasonable stock at home.

Kogi: Women group tasks security agencies on Akpoti, others’ safety VICTORIA NNAKAIKE, Lokoja

T

he League of Women Voters of Nigeria has condemned outright the harassment and intimidation of Natasha Akpoti, Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate in the Kogi State Governorship Election.

In a press statement signed

by Esther Udehi, president of the group, she pointed out that Akpoti was harassed because she is a woman, adding that Nigerian women are now more concerned for her safety and security in the forthcoming election as she called on Federal Govern-

ment and all the security agencies to ensure her safety and security during and after the gubernatorial election.

“We believe that she is being harassed on the grounds of her gender and the fear that she may draw sympathy from female voters and change the equation of things in the state

if she is on the ballot,” the group stated.

“We are concerned for her safety and security in the elections and we call on the Federal Government and all the Security Agencies to ensure her safety and Security throughout the process,” it also said.

Diri insists APC will not be part of Saturday’s election Samuel Ese, Bayelsa

T

he governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Douye Diri has insisted that the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) would not contest Saturday’s poll against the PDP. Diri, who had a live media chat on Thursday at the Onopa Villa, Government House, Yenagoa, said that initially, 46 political parties were to contest the governorship election,

but now only 45 of them would contest the election.

Reacting to the mayhem at Ogbolomabiri in Nembe Local Government Area on Wednesday, he said the party was mourning the victims, confirming that six persons died as a result of the attack while unconfirmed reports had the number of dead as 12.

Diri expressed dismay at the alleged propaganda being spread by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva and urged the

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

security agencies that justice must be served on the perpetrators of the dastardly killings.

He stated that after the attack, members of the party were still being hunted at Ogbolomabiri and neighbouring Bassambiri with a view to killing them, while alleging that a town crier also announced that all PDP members should leave the town whether they are indigenes or not.

According to him, it would pave way for the APC to rig @Businessdayng

the election 100 percent and stated that the PDP campaign was hinged on God and that the outcome of the court judgments against the APC’s deputy governorship candidate, Degi Eremienyo was divine.

He also spoke on the Federal High Court judgment that annulled the APC governorship primary election, meaning that the party has no candidate for the governorship election two days later on Saturday.

46

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

FT

BUSINESS DAY

47

FINANCIAL TIMES

World Business Newspaper EDWARD LUCE

T

here is no theoretical limit to the number of fallback positions available in a retreat. In the real world, Republican defenders of Donald Trump are vacating their defence lines at a remarkable clip.

During the first day of public impeachment hearings on Wednesday, Mark Meadows, one of Mr Trump’s most loyal congressional allies, said: “Everyone has their own impression of what truth is.” When conservatives embrace relativism, facts have clearly lost their use.

The speed with which Mr Trump’s defenders have retreated is worth underlining. When we learnt of the Ukrainegate whistleblower in September, the initial line was that Mr Trump had done nothing improper. Then the White House released the edited transcript of Mr Trump’s call with Volodymyr Zelensky. The text clearly showed Mr Trump had indeed pushed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

The next line of defence was that Mr Trump had not offered a “quid pro quo”. This fallback was promptly blown up by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, who confirmed that the release of US military aid had in fact been contingent on Ukraine opening an investigation into the Bidens. A few hours later, a flustered Mr Mulvaney insisted that what he had been recorded on camera as having said was not in fact what he

Republicans keep changing their tune on impeachment Trump’s defenders resort to relativism in attempt to distort Ukraine inquiry

Republicans have tried sticking various strands of spaghetti to the wall in defence of President Trump, who rarely bothers with any of these defences © Getty

had said.

The third fallback position was that Mr Trump was only doing what any president does: all US aid has strings attached. This was in response to the parade of closed-door testimonies from US public officials that confirmed that Mr Trump was trying to extort electoral help from

Publishers warn that move could further entrench search group’s dominance

Blackstone, Tiger Global, Lightspeed and Founders Fund all raising huge funds for late-stage companies

I

nvestors are planning to pour billions more dollars into later stage tech start-ups, even as Japan’s SoftBank reels from a succession of faltering bets.

Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone plans to raise between $3bn and $4bn for its first growth equity fund led by former General Atlantic executive Jon Korngold, people familiar with the discussions said.

Tiger Global Management, the New York-based group managing close to $11bn in hedge funds, last week revealed it would try to raise $3.75bn for its next private investment fund in January, according to a document seen by the Financial Times.

The venture capital firms Lightspeed Venture Partners, an early investor in Snap, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund are also seeking to raise funds for backing private companies that are nearing initial public offerings or takeovers, people familiar with their plans said.

The pace of fundraising will test the demand of large investors, such as pensions and sovereign wealth funds, that have looked to capitalise on a rising tide of private start-up valuations. Each of the groups declined to comment on fundraising.

Michael Larsen, managing director at the investment firm Cambridge Associates, said venture capitalists, hedge funds and other

groups have caused a “massive convergence” in the market for late-stage private companies, with more groups than ever prepared to write large cheques.

“More of the prime growth happens in the private years,” Mr Larsen said. “Companies are also taking a longer path and achieving more scale.”

This year US investors are on track to raise a record amount of capital for growth equity funds, which had gathered $23.9bn by November 11 according to Pitchbook data.

For some, the rush to back start-ups has sparked fears private markets may help hide losses for longer and diminish the pull of public markets.

The property company WeWork was forced to shelve its IPO in September and accept a rescue package from its largest investor SoftBank, which valued the company at less than one-fifth its previous mark. Shares in Uber, another SoftBank investment, have fallen 40 per cent from their May IPO price.

SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son recently said the company’s second, $108bn Vision Fund was on schedule despite questions surrounding the participation of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth funds. Together, the two investors contributed 60 per cent of the first Vision Fund’s capital. www.businessday.ng

the impeachment inquiry, was conducting the process from a secret vault in the deep state. Specifically, he was holding the hearings in a secure room in the basement of Capitol Hill. A group of Republicans even staged a televised invasion of the hearing room to make their point.

That argument fell apart when the

Google to limit advertiser access to user data over privacy concerns

Investors race to tech start-ups despite SoftBank stumbles MILES KRUPPA

Mr Zelensky. On top of this, Mr Trump was only trying to tackle general corruption in Ukraine, they said. This, too, was detonated by testimony that Mr Trump had only one particular corruption investigation in mind.

The fourth was that Adam Schiff, the Democrat who is spearheading

process was moved to the public hearing phase on Wednesday.

The same witnesses who spoke in private are now doing so in front of the cameras.

Next, Republicans argued that Mr Trump could not be impeached since he had failed to pull off what he was accused of doing. The fact that he attempted a quid pro quo is irrelevant, they said. The $391m in US aid was released to Ukraine, which did not open an investigation into the Bidens. By the same logic, of course, Richard Nixon should have been exonerated since he, too, was caught in the act and thus failed.

Moreover, the Ukraine aid was only released after the House was notified of the whistleblower complaint.

Republicans have tried sticking various other strands of spaghetti to the wall. One of them is that the whistleblower’s identity remains unknown, which implies that he is a nefarious deep state operative. This is because whistleblowers, unlike leakers, are protected by law. Moreover, the accuracy of the complaint should be at issue rather than the identity of the complainer. But that complaint persists. Mr Trump reiterated it on Wednesday.

MADHUMITA MURGIA AND ALEX BARKER

G

oogle has announced a major change to its online advertising business that it said would enhance user privacy but which advertisers warned would give the search giant even more power.

From next February, Google will no longer allow advertisers to see key information known as “contextual content” about web pages when they bid for display adverts.

Currently Google allows advertisers to see the categories of web pages or apps, ranging from subjects such as music and audio, or autos and vehicles, to more sensitive topics such as substance abuse or kosher foods.

Chetna Bindra, from Google’s user trust and privacy team, said Google had decided to remove the information after discussions with data protection regulators. She said the change would stop advertisers from tying sensitive categories such as health, religion, politics and sexual orientation to any individual user.

The move will “help avoid the risk that any participant in our auctions is able to associate individual ad identifiers with Google’s contextual content cat-

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

egories”, she said.

The decision came shortly after a Financial Times investigation which found that some of the UK’s most popular health websites share sensitive health data, including medical symptoms and diagnoses, with companies including Google.

The search company’s advertising arm, DoubleClick, was a destination for data from 78 per cent of the top 100 health websites.

There is also an ongoing investigation by the Irish data protection authority into Google’s online advertising exchange, known as Authorized Buyers, which sits at the centre of the bidding process for online ads.

Following complaints from the browser company Brave, the European regulator is looking into whether Google’s online advertising exchange illegally taps into sensitive personal information about internet users.

The investigation will look at how data are being processed, the level of transparency involved and whether Google is doing enough to minimise the amount of information it uses.

Johnny Ryan, chief policy officer at Brave, said Google’s change was not sufficient to protect the privacy of users. “It appears Google will still broadcast bid requests that contain things like URL, approximate location and @Businessdayng

data to link these over time, to countless companies, billions of times a day. These data contain personal and special category data so this appears to be a cosmetic change,” he said.

Meanwhile, advertisers and publishers said the move could increase Google’s control over user data and further entrench its dominance in online advertising.

“No company tracks the public across the web and our digital lives more than Google. Although certain contextual categories can be sensitive, a blanket decision like this impacting the entire media ecosystem illustrates the global antitrust concerns in Google’s dominance over the ad stack,” said Jason Kint, chief executive officer of Digital Content Next, a US trade association for online publishers.

He added that without thirdparty data about users, the value of “first party” data, which are directly entered by users into websites, will rise to advertisers.

“This decision will at least enhance value of first-party data and Google Search is the most dominant place for first party data, so it will hurt everyone except Google,” he said.

Big brands and ad agencies have long been alarmed over the control Google and other big tech groups hold over customer data and the power this gives them as a channel for advertising.

48

BUSINESS DAY

FT

Friday 15 November 2019

NATIONAL NEWS

Germany narrowly avoids recession as growth ticks up Expansion of 0.1% in third quarter eases pressure on Angela Merkel’s government MARTIN ARNOLD

T

he German economy has defied expectations of a recession by growing 0.1 per cent in the third quarter as higher spending by households and the government offset a downturn in its exportfocused manufacturing sector.

Germany’s federal statistics office announced the figures on Thursday. It also revised down Germany’s second-quarter economic performance from minus 0.1 to minus 0.2 per cent, while revising up first-quarter growth figures from 0.4 to 0.5 per cent.

The mildly positive growth in the third quarter means the German economy has avoided a technical recession.

The German slowdown is having a knock-on effect across Central and eastern Europe; while growth in the region remains healthy, third-quarter figures published on Thursday came in below expectations for Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.

“The relevant economic indicators are not yet indicative of a fundamental change in the economic situation, but there are first slight glimmers of hope,” the German economy ministry said in a statement. “The slowdown in employment activity since February continued in September.”

The slight expansion could ease the pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to ditch its commitment to budget surpluses and to use more fiscal stimulus.

“After 10 years of almost unstoppable economic growth, a shorter period of stagnation is not necessarily a big crisis,” said Carsten Brzeski, economist for Germany at ING. “This also explains the resistance or at least hesitation of the German government to engage in significant short-term fiscal stimulus.”

However Andrew Kenningham at Capital Economics said some recent business surveys indicated there was still a risk of another downturn.

“With policymakers unlikely to loosen fiscal policy significantly, we think a mild recession is more likely than not in the coming year,” he said.

German industrial production has been in decline for a year and a half. But the domestic economy is in rude health, with employment at a record high and ultra-low interest rates prompting consumers to

spend more and pushing up property prices.

“The quarter-on-quarter comparison . . . shows that positive contributions in the third quarter of 2019 mainly came from consumption, according to provisional calculations,” Germany’s federal statistics office said.

It said exports rose while imports were flat between the second and third quarters. Investments increased in construction but declined in machinery and equipment production in the three months to September.

“Businesses probably ran down their inventories again, which shaved off a little from growth in GDP,” said Florian Hense, economist at Berenberg.

Year on year, the German economy grew by 0.5 per cent from the third quarter of last year, after adjusting for prices and calendar differences. Its labour market remained solid with a record 45.4m people in work, an increase of 0.8 per cent from a year earlier.

Column chart of Real GDP, quarter-on-quarter change (%) showing German growth returned to positive territory in the third quarter Germany’s third-quarter performance was below the 0.2 per cent growth across the eurozone in the same period, when Spain grew by 0.4 per cent, France 0.3 per cent, and Italy managed 0.1 per cent growth.

The latest quarterly growth figures contrast with the 2 per cent annual growth Germany has enjoyed on average over the past five years and underlines how the powerhouse of the eurozone economy has stalled.

German industry has been hit by the US-China trade war, uncertainty over Brexit and disruption in the car industry caused by new emissions rules and the shift to electric vehicles.

Car production was down 9 per cent in the first 10 months of the year.

Economists worry that the downturn in manufacturing could spill over into domestic-focused services and start to weaken the labour market, which has recently showed signs of cooling.

“A weakening of the German labour market will start to weigh on the mood of the consumer, who is the main pillar of the German economy right now, and we believe that next year this pillar will increasingly start to shake,” said Katharina Utermöhl, senior economist at Allianz.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is keen to find common ground with Donald Trump again © Reuters

Soaring Indian onion prices raise risk of political fallout Bad weather has hit production of a key vegetable in the country BENJAMIN PARKIN AND EMIKO TERAZONO

O

nion prices in India have soared to eyewatering heights, leading to worries about food inflation and consumer unrest as climate change hits production of one of the country’s most important vegetables.

Extreme heat earlier this year followed by excess rainfall from the annual monsoon has led to a drastic fall in production in India’s key growing areas. The monsoon is critical for the country’s agriculture, but the weather event has become increasingly erratic due in part to the changing climate, with warming oceans leading to extreme rainfall.

Wholesale onion prices at Azadpur, a leading hub for onion traders near New Delhi, have jumped by almost 500 per cent from the start of the year to Rs1,908 per 40kg after soaring to a six-year high of Rs2,400 in April.

“Prices are rising and rising,” said Sachin Gangawani, a vegetable vendor in a Mumbai market.

“Our profits have reduced drastically. People instead of buying a kilo, they’re buying a quarter kilo,”

he added.

India has two annual onion harvests. The first of this year was devastated by a severe drought, with production down 50 per cent from 2018, according to Rutika Ghodekar, analyst at commodities data firm Mintec. “Onion prices in India have spiked on the back of significant losses of the crop,” she added.

The second crop, currently being harvested, had been damaged by heavy rains during the monsoon, leading to lower planting and production as well as quality, said Ms Ghodekar. With rains still continuing, there were now worries about next year’s harvest as the seedlings available were of poor quality while volumes had also fallen, she said.

Line chart of Rupee per 40kg showing Indian onion prices hit eye-watering levels The sharp rise in onion prices is an unwelcome development for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, coming at a time when his government is struggling to address a steep economic downturn. The economy’s growth rate has fallen to a six-year low, cutting into the income of rural farmers and urban consumers alike.

The price of onions, an impor-

tant crop and a core ingredient in most dishes across the country’s rich regional cuisines, is a particularly sensitive subject.

Millions in India still spend more than 50 per cent of their household income on food, and onion-related strife has been linked to the downfall of more than one government since 1980.

It is also blamed for the defeat of Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party in a local election in 1998.

Faced with rising prices, the government has been releasing its national buffer stocks of 50,000 tonnes into the market. In late September, to quell rising prices it placed a limit on stocks held by traders to prevent hoarding and banned onion exports. Earlier this month, it pledged to import 100,000 tonnes of the vegetable.

India’s export ban has had a knock-on impact for importers of its onions such as Bangladesh, which suddenly found its own supplies constrained.

Dhaka has been calling for the ban to be lifted, and in a recent visit to New Delhi, Sheikh Hasina, Bangladeshi Prime Minister, joked that “it has become difficult for us to get onions”, adding “I’ve told my cook to make food without onions.”

Two Namibian ministers resign in Icelandic fishing scandal Iceland’s biggest fishing group accused of paying bribes to trawl African country’s waters JOSEPH COTTERILL

T

wo ministers in Namibia have resigned and the chief executive of an Icelandic fishing group has temporarily stepped down over allegations the company paid bribes to trawl the southern African nation’s maritime waters.

The corruption scandal was exposed this week in a leak of thousands of corporate documents that investigative reporters said showed Iceland’s biggest fish company, Samherji, had paid at least $10m in kickbacks over

several years in order to secure Namibian fishing quotas.

During a programme broadcast in Iceland, a former company employee turned whistleblower, Johannes Stefansson, outlined allegations of a complex international bribery scheme involving the transfer of funds through different offshore jurisdictions.

Mr Stefansson said he had approved the payment bribes on behalf of Samherji, each time with a “green light” from the company.

“Samherji does whatever it takes to get its hands on the natural resources of other nations,” he told www.businessday.ng

Icelandic media.

Africa’s fishing waters have become highly coveted as global fish stocks have declined and Namibia is one of the continent’s most important producers by the value of catch.

Following the broadcast, Samherji said on Thursday that chief executive Thorsteinn Mar Baldvinsson had stepped down pending an internal company probe into its Namibian activities.

“We take this serious step to ensure and demonstrate the complete integrity of the ongoing investigation,” said Eirikur Jo-

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

hannsson, chairman of Samherji’s board.

Samherji declined to comment on the specific allegations in the scandal. Mr Stefansson could not immediately be reached for further comment.

Namibia’s president Hage Geingob said he had accepted the resignations of Bernhard Esau, the fisheries minister, and Sacky Shanghala, the justice minister “due to the severity of the allegations in the press”.

Mr Geingob’s ruling Swapo is battling to renew its 29-year postindependence grip on power in @Businessdayng

polls at the end of this month. The former ministers deny wrongdoing and Mr Esau has said that the allegations are part of a plot to unseat Swapo in the elections.

Namibia, a former German colony that was ruled by South Africa’s apartheid regime until 1990, has a sparse population and a sleepy reputation. Its bestknown exports are uranium and diamonds but its fish stocks are particularly prized due to the resource-rich Benguela current that skirts Namibia’s Atlantic coast. In Namibia, Samherji was mainly fishing horse mackerel.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

49

FINANCIAL TIMES

COMPANIES & MARKETS

@ FINANCIAL TIMES LIMITED

The private education risk premium

Riksbank dumps Canadian and Australian debt in green push

THOMAS HALE

Swedish central bank to avoid regional bonds with ‘large climate footprint’ for reserves TOMMY STUBBINGTON

S

weden’s central bank has ditched bonds issued by Australian and Canadian regions on the grounds that their carbon emissions are too high, as part of its push to use monetary policy in the battle against climate change.

Sveriges Riksbank has sold debt from the Australian states of Queensland and Western Australia, and the Canadian province of Alberta from its portfolio of foreign exchange reserves, deputy governor Martin Floden said in a speech on Wednesday.

Speaking in the Swedish city of Orebro, Mr Floden said that under a new policy the central bank “will not invest in assets issued by issuers with a large climate footprint”.

“Australia and Canada are countries that are not known for good climate work,” he added, noting there was considerable variation in emissions between different states and provinces.

Greenhouse gas intensity in Alberta, which has a large shale oil and gas sector, is three times larger than in Ontario and Quebec, he said. The two Australian states have

been cut from its debt holdings for similar reasons.

The Riksbank holds about 8 per cent of its SKr500bn ($52bn) foreign currency reserves in Australian and Canadian central and regional government bonds, attracted by their relatively high yields, liquid markets and the diversification they offer from other assets.

The divestment comes at a time of scrutiny of the role of central banks in addressing climate risks.

The Bank of England and European Central Bank have both been criticised for buying bonds issued by polluting companies under their quantitative easing programmes — largely because issuers such as energy and utility companies are over-represented in bond indices.

BoE governor Mark Carney has repeatedly argued that central bankers should do more to tackle the impending “tragedy” of climate change, arguing that it poses existential risks to the financial system.

Protesters marked Christine Lagarde’s first day as ECB president earlier this month by marching on the central bank’s Frankfurt headquarters with a banner reading “if the Earth was a bank you’d have rescued it”.

Apple launches research app in bid to gather users’ health data Company hopes millions of users will opt in for array of medical studies PATRICK MCGEE AND HANNAH KUCHLER

A

pple is racing to collect healthcare data from its customers, launching a new research app that it claims will “advance science” by harvesting information from its massive base of iPhone users and Apple Watch wearers.

The world’s largest company by market value is hoping millions of users will opt in to its new “Research App” and participate in an array of medical studies that rely on its electrocardiogram sensor, decibel meter and menstrual cycle-tracking functions.

Those studies could, in turn, generate outcomes that Apple would then use to build new products.

The announcement comes as big tech companies, led by Apple, Google and Amazon, are pushing into healthcare in myriad ways, trying to use their massive computing power and expertise in data analytics and sensors to disrupt the industry, cut costs and make new discoveries.

But the companies are also coming under increasing scrutiny for their use of health information.

On Tuesday, the US government said that it was probing whether Google broke privacy laws on healthcare data in a cloud computing project with Ascension, the country’s second-largest healthcare system, after a report in the

Wall Street Journal. Google said it had complied with the regulations.

Apple has increasingly been looking at ways to encourage activity and monitor health, with chief executive Tim Cook saying that in the future it would become clear that the company’s “greatest contribution to mankind” will be in healthcare.

The company is hoping it can differentiate itself from rivals thanks to its nearly 1bn iPhone users — and a “privacy first” business model that is not reliant on advertising.

The new app declares that “privacy is a fundamental human right”. It allows users to control whether they participate, which studies they join, and stay informed about the results. The app says no data will be sold to third parties.

The push follows the 2014 launch of ResearchKit, an opensource platform that lets researchers recruit participants for a wide array of studies. The best known is Apple’s “heart study”, a Stanfordled research project that identified irregular heart rhythms using data from more than 400,000 users of the Apple Watch.

Three research projects launching on Thursday will study women’s health, heart and movement, and hearing. Apple’s partners in these projects are the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the World Health Organization and the University of Michigan. www.businessday.ng

A

t the start of the year, we had a look at the Alpha Plus Group, a lossmaking educational organisation with close ties to some of the biggest players in London property.

The company was bought from a private equity firm by clients of Delancy Real Estate Management in 2007. That firm is run by Jamie Ritblat, the son of Sir John Ritblat, former chief executive of British Land.

Alpha Plus controls 19 schools, colleges and nurseries, including the prestigious Wetherby School in West London, which counts Princes William and Harry among its alumni.

One of the clearest examples of for-profit education in the UK, Alpha has also borrowed nearly £130m in retail bonds -- an approach to financing that has also been used by other organisations with prestige attached to their names, such as by Wasps Rugby Club in 2015.

Having embarked on an ambitious expansion plan, including an attempt to crack the Manhattan market, Alpha Plus was still losing money when we last wrote about them - specifically, £4.2m in the six months to the end of February.

More recently, there have been some interesting developments in the prices of its bonds -- one of which matures next month.

The £80m bond that matures in 2024 is now trading at a yield of 6.7 per cent, compared to 5 per cent when it was issued in 2016. Its price has recently fallen to the low 90s.

The £48.5m bond maturing this year, meanwhile, dropped below par for the first time ever in September. While its price is currently 99.3p, it is technically trading at an annualised yield of 14 per cent, because the maturity date is so imminent.

Both of these issues are secured against prime London property, and are subject to various covenants around the value of that property.

Investors appear to be concerned over the prospect of a Corbyn victory in the election, given that Labour has signalled that it would try to integrate private schools into the public sector. That news emerged in September, the same month in which the prices moved.

A possible private education risk premium combines with the prospect of imminent redemption.

The company had £5m in cash, as of the end of February. In the past, the company has said that one option it has to redeem the bonds next month is to issue new bonds, From its filings earlier this year:

The Directors have various options regarding the £48.5m bond redemption in December 2019 including selling all or part of the £50m of March 2024 bonds which are held on the Company’s behalf by Deutsche Bank acting as Security Custodian or arranging alternative financing given the unsecured underlying assets held by the Group and available to provide security.

The price at which it would issue new bonds now looks to be quite a lot more expensive.

The company is ultimately owned by its parent, based in the British Virgin Islands, which has net assets of over £1bn. When we asked about the maturing 2019 bond earlier this year, a spokesperson said it had £42m “on deposit” with its parent company. That money comes from the second bond, which it issued in 2016, and of which it lent £46m to its parent.

The group’s annual results will be published on Companies House in the second week of December, just ahead of the bond’s maturity.

We expect further details then.

BHP’s new boss shows miners are turning to low-carbon leaders Mike Henry succeeds Andrew Mackenzie as the industry’s class of 2013 moves on

MATTHEW VINCENT

J

ust as commodity markets move in cycles so, too, do mining group chief executives — and their priorities.

BHP’s appointment of Mike Henry, to succeed Andrew Mackenzie in 2020, would appear to fit this pattern. BHP and its rivals, Rio Tinto and Anglo American, all appointed dealmaking bosses as the commodities supercycle ramped up in 2007. All three groups then turned to cost-cutting chiefs with the cycle past its peak in 2013. And now, as Mr Mackenzie becomes the second of that class of 2013 to step down, after Rio’s Sam Walsh, it seems as if the next transition is to decarbonising leaders.

Twelve years ago, with the fastrising resources prices appearing super-cyclical, there was little concern about anything going up in smoke — be it coal, iron ore or shareholders’ money. BHP appointed Marius Kloppers as chief in May 2007, who then tried and failed to buy Australia-based Rio and PotashCorp of Saskatchewan,

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

succeeded in paying $17bn for North American shale gas assets, and ended up landing investors with a $2.8bn impairment charge.

Rio made Tom Albanese its boss in 2007, and he immediately bought Canada’s Alcan at the top of the aluminium market, before overpaying for Mozambique-focused Riversdale Mining, leading to a $14bn writedown — one of the biggest in Australian corporate history. Anglo’s 2007 choice was Cynthia Carroll, who failed to stem cost overruns at a Brazilian iron ore project, and paid a heady $5.2bn for 40 per cent of De Beers as Anglo’s own share price tumbled.

Six years later, after equity investors had paid the price of these excesses, all three miners focused on the cost of extracting resources — but principally the financial one.

BHP promoted Mr Mackenzie in May 2013. He streamlined the business, spun off Australian mining unit South32 and cut spending.

That same year, Rio promoted Mr Walsh, who restored financial discipline, cut the dividend and, in his last 12 months as chief, @Businessdayng

reduced capital expenditure by a full $1bn, to $4bn. Anglo followed suit, bringing in Mark Cutifani who turned to new mining technologies to reduce costs.

In 2020, however, the priorities are already very different, as miners face the almost contradictory challenge of processing more resources to enable low-carbon energy production. BHP’s Mr Henry arguably has the hardest job, here. While Rio’s current boss Jean-Sébastien Jacques can point to exiting thermal coal as well as developing “carbon-free” metal projects, and Anglo’s Mr Cutifani can stay on to pursue low power and low water ore processes, BHP’s new boss still has high-carbon footprint oil and gas operations, coking coal mines and big iron ore operations to justify, offset or exit. His 30-year career in health, safety, environment and technology roles will help. So too will a $400m fund to reduce carbon emissions. But a shareholder base that recently rebelled against BHP’s support for fossil fuel lobbyists will hold his feet to the fire — and expect much more progress in the cycle from 2020 onwards.

50

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

ANALYSIS

FT

Why the US economy isn’t as competitive or free as you think Martin Wolf reviews ‘The Great Reversal’ by Thomas Philippon MARTIN WOLF

I

t began with a simple question: “Why on earth are US cell phone plans so expensive?” In pursuit of the answer, Thomas Philippon embarked on a detailed empirical analysis of how business actually operates in today’s America and finished up by overturning much of what almost everybody takes as read about the world’s biggest economy.

Over the past two decades, competition and competition policy have atrophied, with dire consequences, Philippon writes in this superbly argued and important book. America is no longer the home of the free-market economy, competition is not more fierce there than in Europe, its regulators are not more proactive and its new crop of superstar companies not radically different from their predecessors.

Philippon, a professor at New York University, is one of a list of brilliant economists of French origin now teaching in the US. Others include the recent Nobel-prize winner Esther Duflo, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the IMF, and Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, both now at Berkeley.

It is not obvious, however, that these people share all that much, apart from their national origin and an inclination not to take freemarket platitudes for granted. Sceptics of Philippon’s controversial thesis might assert that a French

economist must be ideologically opposed to American capitalism.

But Philippon insists that he believes passionately in the value of competition. Indeed, The Great Reversal contains a chapter arguing just that. Moreover, each step in his argument is based on meticulous analysis of the data.

He crisply summarises the results: “First, US markets have become less competitive: concentration is high in many industries, leaders are entrenched, and their profit rates are excessive. Second, this lack of competition has hurt US consumers and workers: it has led to higher prices, lower investment and lower productivity growth.

Third, and contrary to common wisdom, the main explanation is political, not technological: I have traced the decrease in competition to increasing barriers to entry and weak antitrust enforcement, sustained by heavy lobbying and campaign contributions.”

All this is backed up by persuasive evidence. Those prices of broadband access in the US are, for example, roughly double what they are in comparable countries. Profits per passenger for airlines are also far higher in the US than in the EU. The analysis demonstrates, more broadly, that “market shares have become more concentrated and more persistent, and profits have increased.” Moreover, across industries, more concentration leads to higher profits. Overall, the effect is large: the post-tax profit share in US gross domestic product has almost doubled since the 1990s.

Apple launches research app in bid to gather users’ health data Company hopes millions of users will opt in for array of medical studies PATRICK MCGEE AND HANNAH KUCHLER

A

pple is racing to collect healthcare data from its customers, launching a new research app that it claims will “advance science” by harvesting information from its massive base of iPhone users and Apple Watch wearers.

The world’s largest company by market value is hoping millions of users will opt in to its new “Research App” and participate in an array of medical studies that rely on its electrocardiogram sensor, decibel meter and menstrual cycletracking functions.

Those studies could, in turn, generate outcomes that Apple would then use to build new products.

The announcement comes as big tech companies, led by Apple, Google and Amazon, are pushing into healthcare in myriad ways, trying to use their massive computing power and expertise in data analytics and sensors to disrupt the industry, cut costs and make new discoveries.

But the companies are also coming under increasing scrutiny for their use of health information.

On Tuesday, the US government said that it was probing whether Google broke privacy laws on healthcare data in a cloud computing project with Ascension, the country’s second-largest healthcare system, after a report in the Wall Street Journal. Google said it had complied with the regulations.

Apple has increasingly been looking at ways to encourage ac-

tivity and monitor health, with chief executive Tim Cook saying that in the future it would become clear that the company’s “greatest contribution to mankind” will be in healthcare.

The company is hoping it can differentiate itself from rivals thanks to its nearly 1bn iPhone users — and a “privacy first” business model that is not reliant on advertising.

The new app declares that “privacy is a fundamental human right”. It allows users to control whether they participate, which studies they join, and stay informed about the results. The app says no data will be sold to third parties.

The push follows the 2014 launch of ResearchKit, an opensource platform that lets researchers recruit participants for a wide array of studies. The best known is Apple’s “heart study”, a Stanfordled research project that identified irregular heart rhythms using data from more than 400,000 users of the Apple Watch.

Three research projects launching on Thursday will study women’s health, heart and movement, and hearing. Apple’s partners in these projects are the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the World Health Organization and the University of Michigan.

Researchers involved in the women’s health project said the scale and breadth Apple could bring to the field was unprecedented. The iPhone maker is targeting 1m signups over 10 years. www.businessday.ng

Sri Lanka: how Easter attacks shaped presidential election A return to power for the Rajapaksa family could strengthen China’s sway over the strategic island AMY KAZMIN

O

n a vast tract of newly reclaimed land off Sri Lanka’s seafront capital, construction is under way on a huge Chinese-backed project designed to turn the small, tropical island nation into a south Asian Singapore: a hub of financial services, business and tourism.

To be built over the next 25 years — at an expected cost of $15bn, Colombo Port City will have 5.6m sq m of sea-facing office, residential and commercial space to woo investors fleeing messy, unplanned urbanisation elsewhere in south Asia. The biggest, most ambitious foreign direct investment in Sri Lanka’s history, the project is a vision of what the country could be.

Yet two luxury hotels overlooking the site — including the towering, two-year-old ShangriLa — reflect a more contemporary preoccupation: tight security with guards, metal detectors, cameras and airport-style baggage scanners carefully screening visitors and their belongings. Many Sri Lankans hoped they had left the threat of terrorism and heavy surveillance behind them in 2009 with the end of a decades-long, ethnic civil war that killed more than 100,000 people in combat, massacres and suicide bombings.

But Easter Sunday’s wave of Isis-inspired, suicide bomb attacks on three luxury hotels and three churches, carried out by a cell of self-radicalised Sri Lankan Muslims, renewed those concerns. Killing 277 people and injuring hundreds more, they were the first attacks to deliberately target foreigners in the island’s history.

As its economy reels from a sharp, post-attack drop in tourists, the country has seen an outpouring of hostility towards the small, prosperous and mostly peaceful Muslim minority. Hardline Sinhalese nationalists, backed by fiery Buddhist monks, called for boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses. Hundreds of homes and businesses owned by Muslims were destroyed in two days of mob violence in May. The fear stoked by the attacks is weighing on Saturday’s presidential election. And, say many political analysts, it may open the way for former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa — who as president crushed the Tamil insurgency in 2009 — to make a comeback by capitalising on widespread frustration with the

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

government, including its failure to act on intelligence that could have thwarted the bombers.

Mr Rajapaksa is barred from running for president himself, due to term limits imposed after his shock defeat in 2015. But he is backing his younger brother, Gotabaya, who, as defence secretary, played a critical role in eradicating the Tamil Tigers — a campaign stained by allegations of wartime atrocities.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s candidacy was announced just days after the Easter bombings. Supporters hope his image as a disciplinarian and promises to strengthen the intelligence services and combat religious extremism will propel him to power.

But he has vowed to install his elder brother Mahinda — who he calls Sri Lanka’s “spiritual leader” — as prime minister, should he win.

Though Sri Lanka has no professional opinion polls, many independent political observers believe the former defence chief has the edge in a tight contest, though his victory is not assured, given the island’s complex demography and electoral maths.

If the brothers do succeed, it would shake-up the strategically located but heavily indebted Indian Ocean island nation — the object of intense interest of both the US and China, as they vie for influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Line chart of Military expenditure, as a % of GDP showing Sri Lanka is spending less on defence despite security concerns “Gotabaya is presenting himself as a cross between [the late Singapore leader] Lee Kuan Yew and [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi, combining nationalism, toughness and efficiency,” says Alan Keenan, Sri Lanka project director at the International Crisis Group. “Mahinda is looming in the background as a guiding presence.”

For a decade from 2005, Mahinda Rajapaksa ruled Sri Lanka with an iron fist, defeating the Tamil Tiger separatists which had battled for independence for 26 years. But he had fraught relations with western countries, which were highly critical of his government’s human rights record — particularly after its uncompromising final offensive against the Tamil Tigers, during which the UN has estimated that as many as 40,000 civilians were killed.

Defying western demands for accountability for wartime and postwar abuses, Mr Rajapaksa turned to Beijing, which provided a gush of credit for postwar reconstruction and asked fewer awkward questions. @Businessdayng

His administration was also known for tough tactics against dissenters, including journalists, many of whom were attacked.

Since 2015, Sri Lanka has rebalanced its foreign relations, repairing ties with western states and neighbouring India, while cooling towards Beijing. It has taken tentative steps towards prosecuting some past abuses and embarked on an $1.5bn IMF reform programme.

But on the campaign trail, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has denounced the current incumbents for the treatment of soldiers and police officers jailed for rights abuses, vowing to free all “war heroes” a day after taking power. Such a reversal could strain the island’s ties with the west, giving Beijing far greater sway.

“It would be the worst possible outcome because we would fall back into the laps of the Chinese,” says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Colombo-based think-tank.

Basil Rajapaksa, who is running his brother Gotabaya’s campaign, insists the family has learnt from past mistakes and would strive to maintain better ties with both the west and India. “There are a lot of things we can learn from the Mahinda Rajapaksa era and some things we must do in a different way,” says Mr Rajapaksa.

“We have to handle international relationships much more carefully.

That is a priority.”

The campaign strategist adds that “the number one priority and number one condition will be security. If you don’t have security from extremists, or if terrorists come to a country, everything will go.”

After the civil war ended, many Sri Lankans grew disillusioned with the leader they had once lionised.

Amid the euphoric postwar economic boom, Mr Rajapaksa’s family was accused by rivals of skimming money from Chinese-funded infrastructure projects — many of them ill-conceived white elephants, though no one has been convicted of any wrongdoing.

Perceptions of corruption and authoritarianism led to Mr Rajapaksa’s 2015 defeat by Maithripala Sirisena, a politician who defected from the ruling party to lead a motley opposition alliance promising a new era of “good governance” and democratisation.

But Mr Sirisena’s government — plagued by bitter infighting between the president and his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, leader of the United National party, failed to live up to expectations and instead developed a reputation for indecisiveness.

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

51

52

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

www.businessday.ng

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Friday 15 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

53

Live @ The STOCK Exchanges Prices for Securities Traded as of Thursday 14 November 2019 Company

Market cap(nm)

Price (N)

Change

Trades

Volume

Company

Market cap(nm)

Price (N)

Change

Trades

Volume

PRICES FOR MAIN BOARD SECURITIES (Equities) BANKING ACCESS BANK PLC. 383,888.44 10.80 9.64 436 99,299,641 UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA PLC 253,075.72 7.40 8.82 400 67,779,279 ZENITH BANK PLC 601,242.86 19.15 7.58 1,252 167,922,889 2,088 335,001,809 OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS FBN HOLDINGS PLC 224,345.58 6.25 9.65 209 15,873,431 209 15,873,431 2,297 350,875,240 TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES MTN NIGERIA COMMUNICATIONS PLC 2,481,215.14 121.90 -0.12 129 12,964,752 129 12,964,752 129 12,964,752 BUILDING MATERIALS DANGOTE CEMENT PLC 2,470,873.57 145.00 -0.07 100 2,307,667 LAFARGE AFRICA PLC. 238,395.37 14.80 5.71 84 1,913,224 184 4,220,891 184 4,220,891 EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION SEPLAT PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PLC 323,467.98 549.70 - 13 14,441 13 14,441 13 14,441 2,623 368,075,324 REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUSTS (REITS) SKYE SHELTER FUND PLC 1,710.00 85.50 - 0 0 UNION HOMES REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST (REIT) 10,175.81 40.70 - 2 10,010 UPDC REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST 11,873.80 4.45 - 1 25,000 3 35,010 3 35,010 OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS NIGERIA ENERYGY SECTOR FUND 411.91 552.20 - 0 0 VALUEALLIANCE VALUE FUND 3,312.39 103.20 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 35,010 CROP PRODUCTION FTN COCOA PROCESSORS PLC 440.00 0.20 - 0 0 OKOMU OIL PALM PLC. 50,509.53 52.95 - 20 99,604 PRESCO PLC 34,600.00 34.60 - 8 99,180 28 198,784 FISHING/HUNTING/TRAPPING ELLAH LAKES PLC. 8,520.00 4.26 - 0 0 0 0 LIVESTOCK/ANIMAL SPECIALTIES LIVESTOCK FEEDS PLC. 1,440.00 0.48 - 5 12,377 5 12,377 33 211,161 DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIES A.G. LEVENTIS NIGERIA PLC. 794.19 0.30 - 1 15,000 217.92 0.56 - 2 2,794 JOHN HOLT PLC. S C O A NIG. PLC. 1,903.99 2.93 - 2 2,195 TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION OF NIGERIA PLC 44,306.31 1.09 6.86 145 24,181,374 U A C N PLC. 19,016.56 6.60 1.54 109 5,002,145 259 29,203,508 259 29,203,508 BUILDING CONSTRUCTION ARBICO PLC. 711.32 4.79 - 0 0 0 0 INFRASTRUCTURE/HEAVY CONSTRUCTION JULIUS BERGER NIG. PLC. 24,486.00 18.55 - 10 60,468 ROADS NIG PLC. 165.00 6.60 - 0 0 10 60,468 REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT UACN PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PLC 2,520.44 0.97 - 4 38,913 4 38,913 14 99,381 AUTOMOBILES/AUTO PARTS DN TYRE & RUBBER PLC 954.53 0.20 - 0 0 0 0 BEVERAGES--BREWERS/DISTILLERS CHAMPION BREW. PLC. 7,046.55 0.90 -9.09 11 289,007 GOLDEN GUINEA BREW. PLC. 242.22 0.89 - 0 0 GUINNESS NIG PLC 56,949.95 26.00 9.70 54 650,572 INTERNATIONAL BREWERIES PLC. 80,801.10 9.40 - 10 12,429 NIGERIAN BREW. PLC. 379,852.85 47.50 0.53 53 36,290,730 128 37,242,738 FOOD PRODUCTS DANGOTE FLOUR MILLS PLC 111,250.00 22.25 - 0 0 DANGOTE SUGAR REFINERY PLC 130,800.00 10.90 9.55 87 10,329,027 FLOUR MILLS NIG. PLC. 62,325.77 15.20 - 44 397,342 HONEYWELL FLOUR MILL PLC 7,930.20 1.00 3.00 67 13,004,296 MULTI-TREX INTEGRATED FOODS PLC 1,340.10 0.36 - 0 0 N NIG. FLOUR MILLS PLC. 766.26 4.30 - 0 0 NASCON ALLIED INDUSTRIES PLC 39,344.16 14.85 - 9 85,494 UNION DICON SALT PLC. 3,321.07 12.15 - 0 0 207 23,816,159 FOOD PRODUCTS--DIVERSIFIED CADBURY NIGERIA PLC. 16,903.82 9.00 - 15 21,542 NESTLE NIGERIA PLC. 911,554.69 1,150.00 - 39 43,318 54 64,860 HOUSEHOLD DURABLES NIGERIAN ENAMELWARE PLC. 1,680.31 22.10 - 0 0 VITAFOAM NIG PLC. 4,653.14 3.72 1.92 18 264,513 18 264,513 PERSONAL/HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS P Z CUSSONS NIGERIA PLC. 19,852.39 5.00 - 32 225,955 UNILEVER NIGERIA PLC. 106,282.60 18.50 - 24 61,942 56 287,897 463 61,676,167 BANKING ECOBANK TRANSNATIONAL INCORPORATED 137,621.63 7.50 8.70 122 4,641,818 FIDELITY BANK PLC 59,688.08 2.06 8.42 173 27,989,673 GUARANTY TRUST BANK PLC. 879,992.26 29.90 6.79 285 29,618,698 JAIZ BANK PLC 19,151.76 0.65 8.33 56 4,766,883 STERLING BANK PLC. 64,202.63 2.23 1.36 1,346 31,426,210 UNION BANK NIG.PLC. 203,845.27 7.00 - 29 389,219 UNITY BANK PLC 7,130.50 0.61 8.93 26 1,216,129 WEMA BANK PLC. 27,002.13 0.70 9.38 31 5,541,882 2,068 105,590,512 INSURANCE CARRIERS, BROKERS AND SERVICES AFRICAN ALLIANCE INSURANCE PLC 4,117.00 0.20 - 0 0 AIICO INSURANCE PLC. 5,405.56 0.78 6.85 27 5,199,150 AXAMANSARD INSURANCE PLC 17,325.00 1.65 - 0 0 3,170.70 0.39 - 0 0 CONSOLIDATED HALLMARK INSURANCE PLC CONTINENTAL REINSURANCE PLC 24,894.59 2.40 4.35 13 863,000 CORNERSTONE INSURANCE PLC 8,543.11 0.58 9.43 14 1,069,110 909.99 0.20 - 0 0 GOLDLINK INSURANCE PLC GUINEA INSURANCE PLC. 1,228.00 0.20 - 1 29 487.95 0.38 - 0 0 INTERNATIONAL ENERGY INSURANCE PLC LASACO ASSURANCE PLC. 2,123.80 0.29 7.41 13 2,092,627 LAW UNION AND ROCK INS. PLC. 2,362.98 0.55 - 2 18,950 LINKAGE ASSURANCE PLC 4,080.00 0.51 - 0 0 MUTUAL BENEFITS ASSURANCE PLC. 2,234.55 0.20 - 8 3,015,595 NEM INSURANCE PLC 10,561.01 2.00 - 18 292,870 NIGER INSURANCE PLC 1,547.90 0.20 - 1 37,100 PRESTIGE ASSURANCE PLC 2,745.10 0.51 - 1 850 REGENCY ASSURANCE PLC 1,400.44 0.21 - 0 0 SOVEREIGN TRUST INSURANCE PLC 1,668.16 0.20 - 2 2,500 STACO INSURANCE PLC 4,483.72 0.48 - 0 0 STANDARD ALLIANCE INSURANCE PLC. 2,582.21 0.20 - 0 0 SUNU ASSURANCES NIGERIA PLC. 2,800.00 0.20 - 1 200,000 UNIC DIVERSIFIED HOLDINGS PLC. 516.46 0.20 - 0 0 UNIVERSAL INSURANCE PLC 3,200.00 0.20 - 0 0 VERITAS KAPITAL ASSURANCE PLC 2,773.33 0.20 - 0 0 WAPIC INSURANCE PLC 4,416.30 0.33 3.13 27 7,682,069 128 20,473,850

www.businessday.ng

MICRO-FINANCE BANKS NPF MICROFINANCE BANK PLC 2,515.30 1.10 - 3 79,099 3 79,099 MORTGAGE CARRIERS, BROKERS AND SERVICES ABBEY MORTGAGE BANK PLC 4,200.00 1.00 - 0 0 ASO SAVINGS AND LOANS PLC 7,370.87 0.50 - 0 0 5,796.93 1.39 - 0 0 INFINITY TRUST MORTGAGE BANK PLC RESORT SAVINGS & LOANS PLC 2,265.95 0.20 - 0 0 UNION HOMES SAVINGS AND LOANS PLC. 2,949.22 3.02 - 0 0 0 0 OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AFRICA PRUDENTIAL PLC 7,980.00 3.99 2.31 53 1,021,669 CUSTODIAN INVESTMENT PLC 32,350.25 5.50 - 7 16,265 DEAP CAPITAL MANAGEMENT & TRUST PLC 660.00 0.44 - 0 0 38,813.31 1.96 9.50 95 10,803,192 FCMB GROUP PLC. ROYAL EXCHANGE PLC. 1,029.07 0.20 - 0 0 397,991.17 38.00 2.43 46 2,447,855 STANBIC IBTC HOLDINGS PLC UNITED CAPITAL PLC 13,620.00 2.27 9.66 106 6,968,895 307 21,257,876 2,506 147,401,337 HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS EKOCORP PLC. 1,844.82 3.70 9.79 7 169,261 UNION DIAGNOSTIC & CLINICAL SERVICES PLC 852.75 0.24 - 0 0 7 169,261 MEDICAL SUPPLIES MORISON INDUSTRIES PLC. 494.58 0.50 - 0 0 0 0 PHARMACEUTICALS EVANS MEDICAL PLC. 366.17 0.50 - 0 0 7,302.26 3.50 - 5 51,100 FIDSON HEALTHCARE PLC GLAXO SMITHKLINE CONSUMER NIG. PLC. 7,534.02 6.30 - 12 52,000 3,381.46 1.96 - 4 11,500 MAY & BAKER NIGERIA PLC. 759.66 0.40 2.56 6 304,201 NEIMETH INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICALS PLC NIGERIA-GERMAN CHEMICALS PLC. 556.71 3.62 - 0 0 325.23 1.50 - 0 0 PHARMA-DEKO PLC. 27 418,801 34 588,062 COMPUTER BASED SYSTEMS COURTEVILLE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS PLC 816.96 0.23 9.52 7 2,757,156 7 2,757,156 COMPUTERS AND PERIPHERALS OMATEK VENTURES PLC 1,470.89 0.50 - 0 0 0 0 IT SERVICES CWG PLC 6,413.06 2.54 - 0 0 NCR (NIGERIA) PLC. 486.00 4.50 - 0 0 TRIPPLE GEE AND COMPANY PLC. 316.77 0.64 - 0 0 0 0 PROCESSING SYSTEMS CHAMS PLC 1,174.02 0.25 4.17 7 1,637,934 E-TRANZACT INTERNATIONAL PLC 9,996.00 2.38 - 1 200 8 1,638,134 TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES AIRTEL AFRICA PLC 1,157,510.66 308.00 - 8 1,083 8 1,083 23 4,396,373 BUILDING MATERIALS BERGER PAINTS PLC 2,173.68 7.50 - 2 3,931 CAP PLC 17,010.00 24.30 - 29 229,236 249,726.52 19.00 - 65 549,207 CEMENT CO. OF NORTH.NIG. PLC MEYER PLC. 313.43 0.59 - 0 0 PORTLAND PAINTS & PRODUCTS NIGERIA PLC 1,769.32 2.23 - 0 0 PREMIER PAINTS PLC. 1,156.20 9.40 - 0 0 96 782,374 ELECTRONIC AND ELECTRICAL PRODUCTS AUSTIN LAZ & COMPANY PLC 2,256.91 2.09 - 0 0 CUTIX PLC. 2,377.78 1.35 - 27 498,036 27 498,036 PACKAGING/CONTAINERS BETA GLASS PLC. 26,898.49 53.80 - 2 350 GREIF NIGERIA PLC 388.02 9.10 - 0 0 2 350 AGRO-ALLIED & CHEMICALS NOTORE CHEMICAL IND PLC 100,754.14 62.50 - 0 0 0 0 125 1,280,760 CHEMICALS B.O.C. GASES PLC. 2,547.42 6.12 - 0 0 0 0 METALS ALUMINIUM EXTRUSION IND. PLC. 1,781.64 8.10 - 0 0 0 0 MINING SERVICES MULTIVERSE MINING AND EXPLORATION PLC 852.39 0.20 - 0 0 0 0 PAPER/FOREST PRODUCTS THOMAS WYATT NIG. PLC. 83.60 0.38 - 1 303 1 303 1 303 ENERGY EQUIPMENT AND SERVICES JAPAUL OIL & MARITIME SERVICES PLC 1,252.54 0.20 - 1 1 1 1 INTEGRATED OIL AND GAS SERVICES OANDO PLC 43,385.63 3.49 9.06 69 2,899,009 69 2,899,009 PETROLEUM AND PETROLEUM PRODUCTS DISTRIBUTORS 11 PLC 53,332.04 147.90 - 21 19,578 CONOIL PLC 10,686.86 15.40 - 16 28,357 ETERNA PLC. 3,651.61 2.80 - 7 33,798 FORTE OIL PLC. 20,709.45 15.90 - 64 448,336 MRS OIL NIGERIA PLC. 4,663.23 15.30 - 4 1,084 TOTAL NIGERIA PLC. 37,652.97 110.90 - 39 25,742 151 556,895 221 3,455,905 ADVERTISING AFROMEDIA PLC 1,642.45 0.37 - 0 0 0 0 AIRLINES MEDVIEW AIRLINE PLC 17,551.17 1.80 - 0 0 0 0 AUTOMOBILE/AUTO PART RETAILERS R T BRISCOE PLC. 270.56 0.23 - 0 0 0 0 COURIER/FREIGHT/DELIVERY RED STAR EXPRESS PLC 2,623.26 4.45 - 15 61,400 TRANS-NATIONWIDE EXPRESS PLC. 398.52 0.85 - 0 0 15 61,400 HOSPITALITY TANTALIZERS PLC 642.33 0.20 - 0 0 0 0 HOTELS/LODGING CAPITAL HOTEL PLC 4,259.15 2.75 - 0 0 IKEJA HOTEL PLC 1,808.55 0.87 -9.37 18 1,301,500 TOURIST COMPANY OF NIGERIA PLC. 7,862.53 3.50 - 0 0 TRANSCORP HOTELS PLC 41,042.18 5.40 - 0 0 18 1,301,500 MEDIA/ENTERTAINMENT DAAR COMMUNICATIONS PLC 4,800.00 0.40 - 1 15,000 1 15,000 PRINTING/PUBLISHING ACADEMY PRESS PLC. 205.63 0.34 - 4 59,040 LEARN AFRICA PLC 902.60 1.17 - 0 0 STUDIO PRESS (NIG) PLC. 1,183.82 1.99 - 0 0 UNIVERSITY PRESS PLC. 616.92 1.43 - 5 30,100 9 89,140 ROAD TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATED BUS COMPANY PLC 745.97 0.45 - 5 46,350

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

@Businessdayng

Women in Business

BUSINESS DAY Friday 15 November 2019

By Kemi Ajumobi

www.businessday.ng

Godrey Ogbechie

Damilola Ogunbiyi

Group Executive Director, Rainoil Limited odrey is a 1988 graduate of Agri- player in the Nigerian industry, the company’s cultural Economics and Extension operations span across the downstream value from the University of Calabar. She chain i.e. Petroleum Product Storage, Haulage/ also holds a Masters Degree in Busi- Distribution and Retail Sales. Our primary products include Petrol (PMS), Diesel (AGO) ness Administration.

Godrey has extensive banking experience, and Kerosene (DPK).

Rainoil Limited was incorporated in Nospanning Operations, Customer Service / Relationship Management, Audit and Human vember 1994. Commencing business as a Resource Management. Cumulatively, she petroleum products marketing company in spent 19 years with Universal Trust Bank Lim- May 1997, the company’s assets base has grown ited and Fidelity Bank Plc, where she managed over the last 20 years.

Her organisation is committed to providing high profile projects both within and outside the country. As the Head – Human Resources energy products and services in an efficient of Fidelity Bank, she was a key member of the and sustainable manner while creating superiFidelity, FSB and Manny Bank Merger Team. or value for all stakeholders. In alignment with On how she developed interest in banking, their core values of Respect, Integrity, TeamGodrey always had it as a childhood dream. work, Excellence and Safety, they endeavour to She studied Agricultural Economics and they deliver products and services efficiently, build were told that one of the places they could work an enduring business, create an environment was an Agric bank. It was always her dream to that nurtures creativity and establish beneficial work at Nigeria Agricultural and Cooperative collaborations with stakeholders.

Rainoil is passionate about philanthropy.

Bank (NACB) but when she got to Kano for NYSC, the bank refused to take them because As a company, they are involved with a lot they had no space. They then got redeployed of CSR, and as individuals, Godrey and her to other banks that had space for youth corps husband have foundations through which they members. That was how she ended up at UTB reach out to people.

On discrimination against women in Nigewhere she did her youth service. After the youth service, they felt Godrey was hardworking ria, where she says a lot of things are defined enough and retained her. Godrey was in bank- from the male point of view, she believes it would be difficult to go through life without ing for 19 years.

Joining Rainoil Limited in 2009 as an Execu- experiencing it. Godrey will readily tell you she tive Director, Godrey has been instrumental in has been working for about 28 years and may growing the business to include an asset base not have had many of such instances.

Still on women empowerment, she says she comprising; over 70 service stations spread across the country, a 50 million litre capacity is aware that WIMBIZ (Women in Managemulti-product depot in Oghara, Delta State, a ment, Business and Public Service) sponsored 50 million litre capacity multi-product storage an advocacy on the issue of stopping sexual depot in the Free trade Zone, Calabar, a 50 harassment and creating awareness around it.

Lending from this move, Ogbechie says million litre capacity multi-product depot in Ijegun, Lagos State, a fleet of over 80 tank trucks the paramount thing for any establishment is for product distribution and 1 shipping ves- to have zero tolerance for sexual harassment. sel. She oversees Corporate Support Services In her words, “women should be able to have functions which include; Human Resources, the freedom to aspire to any position. Decisions Information Technology, Admin and Facilities around work engagement and appointment Management. As Group Executive Director, should not be viewed from the point of gender; she also deputises for GMD/ GCEO as often it should be viewed solely from the point of competency.” as required.

She has attended several courses in Nigeria, Rainoil Limited is an integrated downstream oil and gas company. A prominent UK, South Africa and Ghana.

Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All Co-Chair of United Nations-Energy, CEO, Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL)

G

D

amilola Ogunbiyi was recently made the Special Representative for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of United NationsEnergy. She is also the CEO of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL).

Ogunbiyi succeeds Rachel Kyte of the United Kingdom as Special Representative, Co-Chair of United Nations-Energy, and CEO of SEforALL. Ogunbiyi is a globally respected leader with a broad and diverse international network in the area of energy development, which includes key relationships with leading multilateral and bilateral partners and the private sector. She is also one of the Commissioners for the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty.

Ogunbiyi brings extensive leadership experience and a track record of supporting energy access in Sub-Saharan Africa to these roles. She was the first woman to be appointed as Managing Director of the Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency. She is also responsible for implementing the Nigerian Off Grid Electrification Programme and successfully negotiating the Nigerian Electrification Project, to rapidly construct solar mini-grids and deploy solar home systems across Nigeria.

Damilola developed the Energizing Economics Initiative and Energizing Education Programme, which provide sustainable and affordable off grid power solutions. Before joining the Federal Government of Nigeria, Ogunbiyi was the first woman to be appointed as the General Manager of the Lagos State Electricity Board, which is responsible for public lighting, independent power projects, and energy development serving millions of people across the State. Prior to this, she consulted for the United Kingdom Department for International Development on public-private partnerships.

Damilola is an infrastructure development expert with demonstrated experience in the public and private sector in various roles which include portfolio management, cost and risk management, public private partnership (PPP), energy sector advisory and strategic leadership with a particular focus on power sector infrastructure development.

As the first female Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), she

successfully negotiated within 18 months, the Nigerian Electrification Project, a $350m World Bank and $200m African Development Bank Facility for the development of solar mini grids and solar home systems in Nigeria which will impact 2.5 million Nigerians and 500,000 SMEs. As General Manager- Lagos State Electricity Board, she led the transformation of a moribund organisation to a world-class electricity board responsible for developing independent power plants, executing the public lighting master plan, creation of an energy training institution and energy development for Lagos State Government.

As the former Power Sector Recovery Programme (PSRP) Coordinator, her role included coordinating the activities of the PSRP, which is a series of policy actions, operational, governance and financial interventions to be implemented

by Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) over 5 years (2017-2021) to restore the financial viability of Nigeria’s power sector, improve transparency and service delivery, and RESET the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry for future growth.

She developed, managed and monitored independent power projects which were completed to deliver over 55 megawatts of power to Lagos State hospitals, schools, streetlights, and the Government secretariat.

In renewable energy, she completed 5MW decentralised solar project for 213 schools and clinics in Lagos State.

Damilola also led the transformation of a moribund organisation to a world-class electricity board responsible for developing Independent power plants, executing the public lighting master plan, creation of an energy training institution and energy development for Lagos State Government.

Damilola’s selection as CEO of SEforALL, which followed UN Secretary-General, António Guterres announcing her appointment as his Special Representative for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of UN-Energy, means in both capacities, Ogunbiyi will continue the close ties SEforALL has with the UN, helping to support even greater collaboration towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7): affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030.

Published by BusinessDAY Media Ltd., The Brook, 6 Point Road, GRA, Apapa, Lagos. Advert Hotline: 08033225506. Subscriptions 01-2950687, 07045792677. Newsroom: 08169609331 Editor: Patrick Atuanya. All correspondence to BusinessDAY Media Ltd., Box 1002, Festac Lagos. ISSN 1595 - 8590.