BusinessDay 18 Oct 2019

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news you can trust I * * FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER 2019 I vol. 19, no 416

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Fight corruption, serve citizens with country’s money, IMF tells Nigeria ...says economic recovery too slow to reduce vulnerabilities, poverty HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE, in Washington Dc

L-R: Hadiza Bala-Usman, MD, Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA); Simbi Kesiye Wabote, executive secretary, Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), and Folasade Yemi-Esan, head of Civil Service of the Federation, at a one-day workshop for Women in Oil & Gas Industry organised by the NCDMB in Lagos.

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he International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday told the Nigerian government to fight corruption and serve the citizens with the country’s money.

Kristalina Georgieva, IMF managing director, said the

CBN refunds N200bn to penalised banks on improved LDR OLUWASEGUN OLAKOYENIKAN & SEGUN ADAMS

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he Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN ) has refunded part of the funds it debited a dozen lenders that missed its September deadline of a minimum lending threshold, after a majority of the affected banks

improved their loan-to-deposit ratio (LDR) positions.

The apex bank returned about N200 billion to banks whose proportion of total loans to deposits

MARKETS increased between September 26 and 30, a reliable source told

BusinessDay. The amount represents 40 percent of almost half a trillion naira of the banks’ customer deposits restricted by CBN on September 26.

Lenders were also asked to submit their net treasury bills (T-Bills) purchase in the last three-four months as the regulator intensified watch on banks’ participation

in the money market which competes for funds that can support the real economy, sources say.

The CBN had in July asked banks to lend a minimum of 60 percent of their customer deposits in its bid to boost lending to the real sector of the Nigerian

Continues on page 34

Fund has been consistent to talk about three issues that need to be tackled in Nigeria, which include fiscal capacity, diversification of the economy, and fighting corruption.

Addressing journalists at the ongoing IMF/World Bank annual

Continues on page 34

Apapa gridlock returns as manual call-up system collapses P. 2 54 days after closure, Buhari approves N10bn request for Enugu airport repair P. 2

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news Beyond budget, here’s what Nigeria can do to grow its economy for payment of salaries and overheads, N296 billion for igeria is laying too sinking fund to retire maturmuch emphasis ing bonds issued to local on its budget, ig- contractors, and N2.45 trillion noring the needed was set aside to service debt.

To finance the proposed actions on key components of the economy necessary expenditure of N10.33 trilto achieve faster economic lion, the government hopes growth and improve the lives ANALYSIS of millions of its citizens living to generate N8.155 trillion as in poverty.

In traditional econom- revenue from oil, non-oil and ics, gross domestic product, other sources.

Taking it back to our equaotherwise known as monetary value of all economic tion earlier, Nigeria’s nominal activities, is a function of gov- gross domestic product in ernment expenditure, private 2018 stood at N129.11 trillion. investment and household At N10.33 trillion expenditure, Nigeria’s budget as a percentconsumption.

Mathematically, the age of the GDP is 8 percent equation is represented as while about 92 percent is Y=G+I+C, where Y= output, from a combination of private G represents government investments and household expenditure (budget), I rep- consumption.

What this implies is that resents private investments, and C represents consump- Nigeria’s budget is too small tion by households. What to cause any needed impact the equation implies is that on growth. What is needed to the three components on drive its growth is an enabling the right-hand side of the environment to attract private equation are all prerequisite investments which will, in turn, to lifting the gross domestic boost household consumption.

“In terms of spending to growth of any economy.

Last week, the Federal stimulate growth, Nigeria has Government presented to the not started scratching the National Assembly a N10.33 surface due to its lean budget,” trillion budget which has said Philip Anegbe, head of attracted debates from all research at Cardinal Stone, a research and investment firm fronts.

The proposed budget set based in Lagos. aside N2.14 trillion for capital •Continues online at expenditure, N4.88 trillion www.businessday.ng

MICHAEL ANI

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L-R: Okezie Ikpeazu, governor of Abia State; Emeka Ihedioha, governor of Imo State; Seriake Dickson, governor of Bayelsa State; Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers State; President Muhammadu Buhari; Ifeanyi Okowa, governor of Delta State; Philip Shuaibu, deputy governor of Edo State, and Moses Ekpo, deputy governor of Akwa-Ibom State, at a meeting of the president with governors of nine States comprising the Niger Delta Development Commission Board at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, yesterday. NAN

Apapa gridlock returns as manual call-up system collapses …Presidential task team alleges sabotage by unauthorised security personnel, others CHUKA UROKO, JOSHUA BASSEY & AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE

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radually but steadily, gridlock is returning to Apapa roads and bridges with trucks and their drivers defying the Presidential Task Team and, like before, taking permanent residency on the bridges.

The return of the gridlock has been blamed on a number of factors, including unauthorised ‘assistance’ of security agencies who ‘pass’ trucks illegally, and the collapse of the call-up system that had successfully regulated the movement of trucks into Apapa and largely kept them off the roads.

This, unfortunately, is coming at a time when motorists, residents and business owners in the port city are thanking God for the

activities of the task team which had, to a reasonable extent, been able to hold the trucks at their loading bays, leading to the return of sanity in Apapa.

Some members of the task team who spoke to BusinessDay on phone said the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has failed to manage the call-up system well.

They said further that the ports authority seemed to be working at cross purposes with the task team to maintain sanity in Apapa.

“NPA seems to be sabotaging our efforts. They have failed to manage well the call-up system. Not long ago, they locked up the Lilypond Container Terminal which has helped to keep the trucks off the roads,” said a member of the task team who craved anonymity.

“This is why many of the trucks have returned to the

roads and bridges which we have been fighting against in the last six months or so.

We are taking it easy with them but we expect them to see themselves as major stakeholders in Apapa cause,” the person said.

Another task team member said the port is not working now. He cited one of the major terminal operators, AP Moller, which has not been working in the past two days, leading to congestion at the ports.

He said that even when the task team had its meeting last Monday and invited NPA, nobody from the port authority showed up “and what that told us was that they were not worried by the gridlock that has returned to the roads”.

Truck unions shared the views of the task team members, saying that the resurgence of gridlock on Eko and Ijora-Apapa Bridges

was a direct consequence of failure of the NPA to effectively supervise operations within the Apapa port.

Tayo Aboyeji, Southwest zonal spokesperson of Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), told BusinessDay on phone that tanker drivers were not to blame in the fresh traffic build-up.

“We no long er have many tankers going to Apapa for petroleum products like before. This is because products are now being distributed by both the NNPC and private depots in places other than Apapa and Lagos,” Aboyeji said.

The resurgence of gridlock on Eko and Ijora-Apapa Bridges, he said, is a direct consequence of failure of the NPA to effectively su-

Continues on page 34

54 days after closure, Buhari approves N10bn request for Enugu airport repair IFEOMA OKEKE & TONY AILEMEN, Abuja

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ifty-four days after the closure of Akanu Ibiam International Airport in Enugu, President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday approved the release of N10 billion Special Intervention Fund for immediate repairs and upgrade of the airport.

Buhari said he “is aware of the central nature of the airport”, which was closed for repairs since August 24, to the socio-economic development of the South-East, as well as of the infrastructure deficits all over the country occasioned by lack of judicious use of available resources in the past, but declared that his administration was working on remedying this situation.

The approval came following a plea by leaders of South East region to President Buhari to declare a state of emergency and deploy contractors to the airport and interstate roads in the region.

The leaders, including serving and former governors, traditional as well as religious leaders, bemoaned the slow pace of work on the airport. They said contrary to earlier promise that the airport would be ready for use in November, indications are that it would not be ready.

They said the poor state of infrastructure in the region has worsened with the closure of the airport on August 24.

The approval is coming 54 days after the airport was closed, and several weeks after Hadi Sirika, minister of aviation, said his ministry had made a special grant request of N10 billion from President Buhari for the completion of reconstruction of the Enugu airport runway, citing structural damages at the airport that necessitated the reconstruction work.

Sirika had also said his ministry had negotiated with the contractor and made payment of the initial bill of quantities for the contract www.businessday.ng

sum and that the presidential grant was required to complete the repairs.

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) announced the closure of the airport runway for major repairs and works on the airfield from midnight on August 24, 2019.

In a statement signed by Henrietta Yakubu, its general manager, corporate communication, FAAN said the move was aimed at resolving the existing safety/security concerns to flight operations.

Prior to this approval by Buhari, there had been concerns as to why the Federal Government showed little seriousness with the repairs of Enugu airport, the sixth busiest airport in Nigeria after Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano and Owerri. In 2018, the Enugu airport processed an average of 273,000 local passengers and 41,000 international passengers, according to FAAN figures.

More than one month after

the airport was shut down, BusinessDay onsite visit to the airport showed that work was yet to commence.

Olumide Ohunayo, head research and corporate travel, Zenith Consult and Travel, had wondered why contractors were yet to report at the airport, which is critical as the only international airport in the South-East region of the country.

“As at the time they closed the airport, I expected all the necessary materials to be in place. What was the rush to close it when the contractor was not ready?” Ohunayo had queried.

Sirika had unofficially said the reopening of the airport would happen before Christmas. BusinessDay checks, however, show that the Enugu airport may not be ready for operations by December.

Experts in the sector share a similar view.

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•Continues online at www.businessday.ng

African countries look to MICE to increase tourist arrivals …Nigeria lags as South Africa, Rwanda, Morocco earn the most from meetings OBINNA EMELIKE

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n a strategic move to increase tourist arrivals and receipts, top African destinations are increasingly turning to the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Exhibitions (MICE) sector, a segment of the tourism industry valued at $23.4 billion in Africa and $621.4 billion globally in 2017.

The countries, which have invested heavily in convention centres and have also attracted international hotel brands to improve accommodation offerings, are further looking at tapping into the global MICE industry projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2025.

Though Africa accounts for a meagre 3 percent of the global MICE industry, countries such as South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Kenya and Rwanda are making the most earnings from the industry in Africa, which implies that the countries attract and host most international meetings on the continent.

According to the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) 2018 Country and City Rankings, South Africa led the

@Businessdayng

Africa region with 100 meetings in 2018, ranking 39th position globally. Morocco ranked 56th globally with 45 meetings, Egypt 68th with 31 meetings, Kenya and Rwanda ranked 68th and 70th with 31 and 26 meetings, respectively.

Nigeria, in spite of being acclaimed as the economic giant of Africa, attracted just 18 international events and meetings, ranking 75th and surpassing neighbouring Ghana with just 8 meetings.

Moreover, Cape Town in South Africa, Kigali in Rwanda and Cairo in Egypt are ranked as top cities in Africa that host most international meetings, according ICCA, while Lagos and Abuja were hardly mentioned due to less international meetings holding across the cities in a year.

According to the South African National Convention Bureau, South Africa hosts about one million delegates at business events every year, supporting over 250,000 jobs directly and indirectly in the sub-sector alone, which makes up just a quarter of the overall tourism pie in the country.

•Continues online at www.businessday.ng

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news

FG set to conclude Ogoni clean up by 2024 as concerns mount on crude theft Onyinye Nwachukwu

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igerian government projects to complete the long awaited Ogoni clean up by 2024, according to Musa Idris, director-general, National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), who also lamented that crude theft was gravely responsible for 70 percent of oil spillage and environmental decadence in the entire Niger Delta region.

Idris said 21 contractors were currently working to clean up Ogoniland and insisted that the exercise would be completed in 2024. 36 other contractors were currently undergoing procurement processes that would escalate the number of contractors working on the project by the end of 2019 to 57.

At a media interactive on activities of NOSDRA in Abuja, Idris added however that the set date was possible if everybody agreed that we would not pollute Ogoniland from today on.

“Given that the oil companies are able to make sure that their pipelines have high integrity, there will be no equipment failure and there will be no more oil pollution by the oil companies.

“Again, we must agree that there will be no more wanton vandalism of oil facilities by Nigerians. With these variables, we can say in five years, we would have been able to clean up Ogoniland,” he said.

According to Idris, it is not correct to say that the clean-up will last for 25 years. “Even if it is the entire state that was polluted, it will not take 25 years to clean up. It will take only five years through a sequence of planning to clean up all oil impacted sites in Ogoniland because they were segmented into less impacted, medium impacted and highly impacted,” he said.

He nonetheless explained

that it might take up to 25 years to bring the land to completely restore the oil impacted places, saying, “If a seedling of mango enters the ground today, by the time it gets to the point where it becomes matured and you can seat under it to rest and take fresh air, it will be going to between 20 and 25 years.

“That is total restoration.

Clean up wouldn’t take time because the technology is there, the manpower is there, and the resources are there,” he said.

He said the four Ogoni local governments were divided into less impacted, medium impacted and highly impacted portions, adding that some contractors had achieved between 25 and 30 percent completion even though the contracts were awarded early in 2019.

“Right now, the contractors are at different levels of work.

Some have achieved 25 to 30 percent and they were awarded just at the beginning of this year.”

He noted that the agency, which was established by Act 15 of 2006 to implement National Oil Spill Contingency Plans, had seen a restoration of thousands of polluted areas with several national and international oil companies operating in the country sanctioned for violating rules.

He said the attendant oil spillage mainly emanating from pipeline vandalism, crude theft, and illegal refining in Nigeria’s oil industry had come with advance consequences in terms of health, environmental pollution, huge amounts used to repair or replace vandalised oil facilities as well as billions of naira being used now to clean up the area.

“NOSDRA has found it worthwhile to expand the scope of efforts to wrestle down such criminal activities by articulating measures that go beyond law enforcement and security maintenance,” he said.

Nigeria’ll not pay $9.6bn P&ID fine - petroleum minister ... primary health gets only N 1.6bn in 2019 budget James Kwen, Abuja

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inister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, has insisted that the Federal Government will not pay the $9.6 billion judgment fine to Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID).

A British Court in a judgment had slammed the fine on the Federal government in favour of the Virgin Islands-registered company, few months ago.

Sylva, while defending the Petroleum Ministry 2020 budget before a joint-committee of the National Assembly on Petroleum Resources on Thursday, said the P&ID contract was fraudulent and Nigeria would not pay the fine.

He told the Joint Committee headed by Bassey Akpan (Akwa Ibom-PDP), that the ministry was determined to fix all the refineries in the country, before 2023.

He assured Nigerians that the Federal Government had no plan to remove fuel sub-

sidy, adding that the petroleum consumption rate being posted daily does not reflect the actual consumption of the country.

“This government is not about to remove subsidy because it is difficult, we believe as a government that our people are going through a lot issues.

We cannot as a responsible government heap another issue of petroleum price hike or removal of subsidy on Nigerians.

It is not on the cards at all, we are just looking at how we can manage it,” he said.

Speaking on the declaration of Anambra as an oil producing state by President Goodluck Jonathan, Sylva said there were a lot of things that were left undone that would had benefited the new status of the state.

He however said the ministry was in the process of amending the Deep Shore Act that would address such lacuna and missed opportunity, and disclosed that Bauchi State was on its way to becoming an oil producing state following recent discovery of oil in commercial quantity. www.businessday.ng

L-R: Gbolahan Lawal, commissioner for agriculture, Lagos State; Folasade Jaji, secretary to Lagos State, and Sam Ocheho, head, global markets, Stanbic IBTC Bank plc, at the Lagos Farm Fair to mark the 2019 World Food Day at Police College, Ikeja, Lagos.

Onitsha fire disaster: Traders count losses in millions of naira Emmanuel Ndukuba

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chanja Market traders in Onitsha, Anambra State, have recounted theirlossesintheinferno on Wednesday that destroyed their shops, goods and cash running into millions of naira as well as lives of some people.

It would be recalled that the accident occurred at Upper Iweka Expressway, Onitsha, when a tanker laden with petrol fell into a ditch and spilled its content.

A ball of fire resulted from this incident and quickly spread, which razed structures, including shops.

The market has been shut down for business by traders themselves to clear the debris.

Our correspondent who visited the market reports that traders affected by the inferno were seen clearing the derbies while the surging crowed who

thronged the market were seen along the streets of Iweka Road, Ziks Avenue and Ozomagala Street.

One of the affected traders, Godswell Anyanwu, former chief security officer of the market, told our reporter that he lost over N12 million worth of goods. Anyanwu, who deals on electronics, noted with regret that it was painful that no fire fighting vehicle was seen from 1O’clock in the afternoon when the incident happened till 9pm in the night.

He also said the state government had not provided fire fighting vehicles to markets in the commercial city and none was seen throughout the period the fire lasted.

According to Anyanwu, it was through the private water tanker drivers that helped to provide some assistance to reduced spread of the fire.

NUT seeks training of teachers to lift education standard JOSHUA BASSEY

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igeria Union of Teachers (NUT) has called on government at all levels to invest more in the educational system, especially in the training of teachers, as no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers.

The union made the call during the 2019 Teachers’ Day celebration at AnsarUd-Deen Comprehensive College, Ota, Ogun State.

The event, which was cosponsored by MTN Nigeria, Nestle Nigeria plc, Brown We m my a n d C h e m s t a r, featured lecture on “Young teachers and the future of the profession,” health talk, novelty match and cultural display.

Safar Asade, chairman of Ado-Odo/Ota branch of NUT, said at the event that education was the bedrock of any nation’s development, and teachers were central to

achieving goals set for national development.

“There is need for the governments at all level to invest in the training and retraining of teachers in line with the global trend so that they can continue to impart relevant, current and upto-date knowledge into the pupils.

“A situation where teachers don’t have adequate training and facilities to teach is spelling doom for the educational system. Teaching environment should be conducive for the teachers.”

Asade condemned sexual harassment in educational institutions and urged the government to ensure proper investigation and adequate sanctions for culprits of the heinous crime.

Ogun State chairman of NUT, Titilope Adebanjo, praised the Dapo Abiodunled administration for initiating a good working relationship with the union.

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Vincent Ugochukwu, another trader, said, “I have never seen a thing like that since I started business here in the market. We saw inside the water chanel this dirty black thing that looked like used motor oil which later we heard an explosion and fire spilled into my shop and burnt the goods and other things therein. ``I managed to escaped before this happened and this why I am alive today,’’ he said, and appealed to the state governor, Willie Obiano to come to their aid.

Ikechukwu Ekwegbalu, president general of the Anambra State Amalgamated Traders Association (ASMATA), described the incident as unfortunate.

He, however, said he did not order for the closure of the Ochanja Market, insisting that the market was not closed, but opened for business as usual.

The ASMATA boss, who

insisted that he must not be quoted out of context, said the state governor had earlier visited the market to sympathize with the traders and has also set up a panel of inquiry to ascertain the immediate and remote causes of the incident.

He said he was hopeful that the Governor would compensate the victim of the fire mishap.

He however condemned the attitude of some miscreants who throw stones and pebbles on government officials and agents during such incident in the commercial city pointing out that it is not the real traders but criminals among them.

Meanwhile, Governor Obiano, who visited scene of the fire, sympathised with victims.

He said, “I am saddened and very sorry for what happened.

Please be your brother’s keeper in this moment and time. Please remain law abiding.”

NAICOM challenges insurers to embrace technology for growth Modestus Anaesoronye

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nsurance regulator, the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), has challenged insurance companies in Nigeria to embrace technology for growth.

NAICOM says this has become necessary because it will not only enhance service delivery but will also help in the effort to deepen penetration, particularly in the retail space.

Sunday Thomas, acting commissioner for insurance, NAICOM, gave the advice at the 2019 Professional Insurance Forum taking place in Abeokuta with the theme “The Digital Era: Implications for Insurance Professionals.”

Thomas said in this 21st Century, for any business to succeed, automation of operations was the way forward, and called on CEOs of insurance companies to embrace technology in order to reap @Businessdayng

its benefits.

According to Thomas, in this 21st Century, digital technology has integrated the world and its systems into “one global village” where all transactions are now on our finger tips. Bigger than the phases of the advancement are the implications that are already affecting us positively or negatively, depending on our perspective, he said.

“Insurance business must understand that digitalisation has now taken precedence in people’s day to day affairs and the consequence could be massive if we fail to fix any gap that this can create in our service delivery. We must effectively integrate into the robust financial circle for insurance to take its rightful place in the economy.

“We must invest in technology in order to meet up with current phase of advancement and take our products to the comfort of consumers,” he said

Friday 18 October 2019

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news Nigeria loses N18bn on skewed PPP, says Immigration CG Solomon Ayado, Abuja

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omptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Mohammed Babandede, has disclosed that the country has lost N18 billion due to skewed agreement on the Public Private Partnership (PPP) with private companies.

Babandede, who revealed this while interacting with the Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Interior, Thursday, said the PPP agreement was signed on behalf of the service by the Ministry of Interior.

The CG stated that NIS had made concerted effort to jettison the agreement but, according to him, the beneficiary companies have employed legal means to frustrate it.

His words: “The sharing formula in the agreement between

NIS and the private companies was skewed in favour of the companies, which to us, is economically injurious to the nation.

“Expectedly, Immigration as a body has vehemently protested against the whole arrangement but the fact that the agreement was signed on our behalf by the Interior Ministry, the private companies have continued to have upper hand,” he said .

Although he refused to name the companies involved and details of the contractual agreements, but further informed that President Muhammadu Buhari had already handed over the matter to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate.

Giving information on budget performance of NIS, Babandede said the agency

received only N3.4 billion out of the N13.175 capital votes appropriated for it in 2018 budget, adding that nothing was released from N8.214 billion appropriated for capital projects in 2019.

He further said the agency had planned to clamp down on irregular migrants in the country, saying, “President Muhammadu Buhari has given them six months grace of Amnesty, which started from 18th of July this year and ends on 19th of January 2020.

“During this period, biometric data of concerned migrants are to be taken and documented. Information to that effect has been sent out to all the affected migrants that whoever refuses to comply, will from January 20, 2020, be on the radar of Immigration operatives for arrest and deportation,” he explained.

Sanwo-Olu appoints new CEOs for LAMATA, Lotteries Board JOSHUA BASSEY

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overnor Babajide SanwoOlu of Lagos State has appointed Abimbola Akinajo as the new managing director of Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA).

Akinajo is succeeding Abiodun Dabiri, who was appointed by AkinwunmiAmbode,immediate past governor of the state.

Sanwo-Olu has similarly appointed Bashir Abiola-Are as the new general manager/CEO of the Lagos State Lotteries Board (LSLB).

Akinajo by the appointment has become the first female and third managing director of the 16-year-old transport planning, implementing, regulating and franchising agency.

She is a chartered civil engineer with over 30 years postqualification experience, the last 25 of which has been in the design and delivery of major transport infrastructure projects. Akinajo

earned a B.Sc. in civil engineering from the University of Lagos.

Until her appointment, Akinajo was the managing director of Nexant Consulting Limited, a multi-disciplinary construction management, engineering consulting firm.

Bashir Abiola-Are, the new CEO of the Lotteries Board, is skilled in conceptualising and implementing transformative business solutions including Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Project Management, Strategy Planning, E-Commerce, Systems Integration, and International Trade.

A private and public sector executive with over 26 years of proventechnical,entrepreneurial andmanagerialexpertise,AbiolaAre served as sole administrator for Lagos Island East (LCDA) between June 2016 and August 2017 and participated in strategic collaborations with members of the Lagos State Executive Council, Community Development

Associations (CDA), and Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Growth and Employment in States (GEMS3), a United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) funded project designed to boost employment opportunities and promote the Ease-ofDoing Business in local and state governments.

As an entrepreneur, he operated MoneyMart in Maryland, USA, between 1994-1996, serving the unbanked and under-banked clientele with licenses from Maryland State Lottery Commission and Control Agency, Western UnionandGlobalExpressMoney Order Companies as a payment processor, lottery and global remittance agent.

He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Information Technology from University of Maryland University College and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the Salem University in West Virginia, USA.

man of First Bank of Nigeria and founder/CEO of The Chair Centre Group, and Joe Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group - during a televised finale event called ‘Africa’s Business Heroes.’

The Jack Ma Foundation will host a full-day Africa Netpreneur Summit, an invitationonly conference where African and global entrepreneurs, investors, educators, and leaders will convene to discuss how best to enable entrepreneurship and the digital economy across the continent. Guest speakers at the conference will include Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary General and co-chair of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens. The conference will be followed by ‘Africa’s Business Heroes’ event in the evening.

“We launched the Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative to identify top entrepreneurs from across the continent, not only to reward

them but to inspire a whole new generation of potential game changers for Africa. I have been inspired by the entrepreneurs I met in Africa, many of whom are dealing with the same challenges we faced when we started Alibaba years ago. I truly believe the potential of Africa’s business heroes is limitless,” said Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group and the Jack Ma Foundation.

The diverse group of 10 finalists represent a range of industries and experiences. They include four entrepreneurs with remarkable business ideas; four of them from Nigeria, two from Egypt, two from Rwanda, one from Liberia and one from Cote D’Ivoire.

Nigerian owned Thrive Agric, co-founded by Ayodeji Arikawe is an agricultural technology enabled company that works with smallholder farmers to enable them with greater access to finance, as well as improve their income and harvest distribution.

Nigerians make four out of 10 finalists in Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson

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our of Nigeria’s brightest digital entrepreneurs have made it to the top 10 list of finalists shortlisted from nearly 10,000 applicants from 50 African countries for the Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative (ANPI).

The competition created to identify and spotlight African entrepreneur heroes and their stories to inspire the continent and beyond will have the finalists pitch during the grand finale event taking place in Accra, Ghana, on November 16, 2019 for a chance to win a share of $1 million grant prize money.

After months of judging and deliberation, the finalists were shortlisted and will now go on to pitch their business directly to four finale judges - Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group and the Jack Ma Foundation; Strive Masiyiwa, founder and executive chairman of Econet Group; Ibukun Awosika, chair-

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news

Hope rises for informal sector as FG to initiate cooperative housing scheme HARRISON EDE‎H, Abuja

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here is rising hope for the informal sector, as the Federal Government plans to initiate a National Cooperative Housing Scheme as a provision to bring the informal sector into the nation’s housing programme, Babatunde Fashola, minister of works and housing, says in Abuja.

Fashola, who spoke at the unveiling of Karmod Nigeria Limited’s Pre-Fabricated Assembly and Installation Building facility in Abuja, said the objective was to use cooperatives as a driving force in the country’s housing programme, adding that their success in markets, in transportation and agriculture, among other areas of the economy, would be an incentive to achieve success in the sector.

The minister, in a statement on Thursday, said the government would also leverage on the successes and numerical strength of the cooperatives manifested in the many unions and associations they have in every state of the country. He said they would be mobilised under the aegis of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria to obtain loans to develop their own houses according to their tastes and preferences.

Cooperatives, which would be eligible to participate in the scheme, the minister said, would be those “who are properly registered, who have their trustees and leaderships to act for them, who have their own lands and who convey an approval of the type of house they want so that they won’t be stranded.

“We will tell them to get a

planned approval for land in whichever state so that it won’t become a slum. We will work with that state’s government to ensure that access roads are built; we will give them development loans to give Real Estate developers so that you build for yourself and contribute the counterpart fund to finish. In this way we will achieve the scheme.”

The Next Level Agenda of the present administration encompasses policies and programmes that are people-oriented and are meant to consolidate and sustain the achievements made in the last four years in all sectors of the economy, he said, adding that policies like the Eligible Customer and the Off-Grid initiative have enabled private businesses to source their own power either directly from generation companies or independent of the national grid as done by Messrs Karmod Nigeria Limited.

“If you follow the trajectory of government plans, Housing and Consumer Credit, this is one of the major objectives of this government in its Next Level Agenda; Agro development, food production, processing, manufacturing and transport infrastructure – Roads, Rail, Airports and Seaports, Education and Healthcare.

These are the major focal areas of this government,” he said.

He commended the chairman of the company, Hakeem Shagaya, for investing in housing, saying in so far as it sought to boost housing development in the country, the investment “sits appropriately within the focal area of the government which is Housing and Consumer Credit.

YMCA president underscores need for breakfast fellowship

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resident of The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Ibadan, Oyo State, Professor (Brother) David Olugbade Fakaye, has underscored the need for Breakfast Fellowship, being one of the four core values that YMCA as a humanitarian body (founded on 6th June 1844 – about 176 years ago) always tries to incorporate into all its programmes, special events and activities.

The special events include – teaching respect, responsibility, honesty, and caring, and also putting Christian principles into practice by developing a healthy body, mind and sprit.

Fakaye, who stated this at the weekend on the occasion of breakfast fellowship held at YMCA centre, Ibadan, with the theme: “YMCA: service to humanity, the authority of Jesus Christ” noted that going by the happenings in the social, economic, political and religious space of Nigeria, we need constant touch with the words of God, also, we need to seek spiritual intervention in our father law.

The guest speaker, Revd.

Dr. Edward Kehinde Alabi, minister in charge Molete Baptist Church, Challenge, Idi-Odo, Ibadan, further underscored benefits of service

to humanity and ministering to the needy, which include.

People will thank God for your life, –Your good works can speak for you. – God also will meet your own need. – God’s kingdom will be populated by your actions. – You will be able to do more for God. “You will not lose your reward. – When you call for help, God will send help for you also. – You will share in God’s kingdom,” he said.

Edward Alabi regretted that our generation speaks much of loving Jesus, but acts so little in expressing the love of God, to the needy.

The cleric added that God expects us to care for the needy, as he bring them along our ways, as, we are positioned for a purpose, also, this is a wake-up call for the church and the need for Christians to be sensitive to the needs of others around us.

The YMCA Ibadan acting secretary, Niyi Fagbemi and Tokunbo Ogungbemi, chairman, programme committee both commended those in attendance and the indefatigable spirit of the Board of management for bringing Breakfast Fellowship back on track after the break of six years. www.businessday.ng

L-R: Innocent Okwuosa, council member, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN); Nnamdi Okwuadigbo, ICAN president; Ndidi Nnooli, group chief sustainability and governance, Dangote Industries Limited, and Ismaila Zakari, ICAN past president, at the Inauguration of Nigerian Integrated Reporting Committee in Abuja.

Tony Ailemen, Abuja

W

orried by the persistent criticisms of the operations of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered a forensic audit of the operations of the organisation from 2001 to 2019.

The President gave the order after a closed-door meeting with governors of the states that make up the Commission, led by Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State on Thursday in Abuja.

What is presently on ground in the South-South region does not justify the huge resources that have been made available to the organisation, President Buhari said.

“I try to follow the Act setting up these institutions, especially the NDDC. With the amount of money that the Federal Government has religiously allocated to the NDDC, we will like to see the results on the ground; those that are responsible for that have to explain certain issues.

NDDC crises: Buhari orders probe of NDDC operations ... says cannot justify investment “The projects said to have been done must be verifiable.

You just cannot say you spent so much billions and when the place is visited, one cannot see the structures that have been done. The consultants must also prove that they are competent, “the president said.

He admitted that developing the Niger Delta area required enormous resources compared with other parts of the country with firmer lands. Apart from the 13% derivation funds paid to oil producing states, Federal Government also allocate resources through budgetary provisions to the NDDC, as part of its intervention efforts.

“I am acutely aware, with my experience, that projects in your area are very expensive; that is why if any job is given, we must

Female bankers to hold 2019 corporate forum/annual dinner

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he 2019 Association of Professional Women Bankers (APWB) corporate dinner is scheduled for October 25, 2019, at Eko Hotel & Suites in Lagos, with intention to launch a new mentoring programme.

The APWB is the female wing of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), a platform for the professional and social interactions for female bankers.

The event will present an opportunity for thought leaders to share deep insights on the theme ‘Security and the Development threat.’

Paul Adams - Africa advisor to Risk Management and Business Intelligence Group, S-RM Limited, and formerly a director at Kroll Consulting and a journalist writing for the Financial Times of London and the Reuters News Agency, will deliver the keynote address.

Speaking about the event, the APWB chairman, Tinuke LeyeIsola, emphasised the commit-

ment of the Association towards the promotion of professionalism among women in the banking sector, saying, “The APWB annual corporate dinner is the association’s flagship event. It aims to encourage social interaction among professionals and various industries experts. This year’s theme has been carefully selected to look into the impact of security on the country’s socio-economic development.”

She further emphasised that the President of the CIBN will be the chairman of the occasion while Ronke Sokefun, chairman of Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, is the guest of honour.

The APWB was set up to foster and promote professionalism among female bankers, and empower members with the right resources to succeed in a banking industry in the 21st Century.

The Association empowers and positions women bankers for opportunities, while living the culture of integrity, transparency and accountability, which are part of her core values.

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make sure that the company is competent and has the capacity to do it well with experienced consultants,” the president said.

The President however said he would wait for the report of the audit before deciding on the next line of action regarding the organisation.

Governor Dickson had earlier expressed the disappointment of other governors with the operations of the NDDC, which they said was characterised by poor choice of projects, shoddy handling, uncompleted jobs and lack of the required support for the efforts of the states and local government administration in the region covered by the organisation.

He, therefore, called for the repositioning of the NDDC in order to achieve the objectives

for which it was set up.

The governor of Bayelsa had while briefing State House correspondents after the meeting, expressed concerns over the crises in the NDDC, adding that “the President will find solutions to the issues soon.

“We have expressed our concerns about development in the oil producing region and most of the issues we raised are well known to Mr. President and we know they are on top of it. We only hope that the issues will be addressed soon.”

BusinessDay gathers however that some of the states were also not happy over appointments into the board of the NDDC, sparking off protests, a development that might affect operations in oil-producing communities.

Joy Inc. launches network against depression, unveils short film on mental health

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n commemoration of World Mental Health Day, Joy, Inc., a human flourishing company, has launched Mad Against Depression and Anxiety (MADA), a network of professionals and influentialpersonalitiescombining their resources and experiences to fight depression.

The exclusive event, which held at the Genesis Deluxe Cinema, Victoria Island, Lagos, on October 11, 2019, was organised in partnership with Y!TV and The Make It Happen Productions.

The gathering also saw the screeningofKemi‘Lala’Akindoju’s short film, ‘FINE,’ created to address the challenge of depression and anxiety. The film, which was co-written by Odenike Odeleye, tells the story of a young successful woman who seems to have her life under control but battling with mental health challenges.

The event featured a panel discussion anchored by media personality,LamideAkintobi,with Odenike Odeleye, Gbemi Ogunrinde and Kemi ‘Lala’ Akindoju sharing ideas, experiences, and practical solutions on addressing mental health in Nigeria. @Businessdayng

Speaking during the panel session,‘Lala‘Akindojusaid:“Producing the movie was an opportunity for me to raise awareness about depression, anxiety, and suicide across Africa. It is really important to know that the role we play in eachother’slivescanhelpimprove physical and mental health.”

Gbemi Ogunrinde, a psychotherapist, and member of the CentralWorkingCommitteeofJoy, Inc.,emphasisedtheimportanceof mental rest and practical ways to ensure well balanced mental state.

“Taking care of our mental health is just like taking care our physical health, everybody has it and we need to take care of it.

Having a balanced mental is an extremely important issue when considering overall health and wellbeing. We have some practical steps one can take to improve and maintain your mental being including making time for yourself, building positive relationships, and getting active. With the MADA network, we want to help people get support in safe facilities across Africa while we continue to raise significant awareness,” Ogunrinde said.

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Leadership and moral conscience THE NEW WEALTH OF NATIONS

OBADIAH MAILAFIA

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he art of leadership is difficult enough in normal times.

In an age of upheavals, the complexities are infinitely more daunting. Political leadership is the one vocation to which many are called but few are chosen.

Today, sadly, the world is truly bereft of great leaders.

You wouldn’t, for example, call Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister a great leader. Anybody who deceives the Queen and decides to lock up Parliament for weeks ought to be tried for high treason. Nor would we dare to tag Donald Trump with the undeserved appellation of a statesman. Some psychologists believe that his entire cognitive corpus – by way of concepts, lexicon, and cosmology – does not transcend that of a high school teenager. I wouldn’t pass the torch to the young Emmanuel Macron who fancies himself the god Jupiter who dishes out ex-cathedra pronouncements to the uncomprehending hoi-polloi.

And there are still few madmen around: North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un is a good example. Robert Mugabe, as you all know, has gone where his types normally end up. I am not exactly sure where to place Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a de facto ruler.

In the West, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany fulfils some of my basic requirements of a visionary leader. She has served Germany well. In Africa, I would defer to Paul Kagame of Rwanda – warts and all. Recent Nobel laureate Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia has deservedly

earned rock-star status within and outside his country. He is a breath of fresh air in Ethiopia where the people have been strangers to freedom for more than a century. President John Joseph Magufuli of Tanzania is also making the right waves.

By real leaders, I mean those servants of the people who have the courage of their convictions – who make things happen and who transform our world – transformational rainmakers who can move societies from a low level to a higher one.

One of the principal qualities that set apart great leaders from the common run is conscience and moral conviction. By moral conscience, we are referring to the still small voice which tugs tremulously on our hearts; urging us on when we are on the right and warning us when we are on the wrong. Every human being is born with a moral conscience.

Conscience lies at the foundation of the moral law. And it is largely from the moral law that natural justice and equity arise as precepts of jurisprudence.

Conscience tells us that we must do unto others as we would wish them to do unto us. It also tells us that it is wrong to bear false witness against another or to take what is not ours or to take another’s life or property. Conscience dictates that we treat others with fairness and justice. It also tells us that all life is sacred.

It all goes back to Socrates, the Greek philosopher and ancient gadfly of Athens. He claimed to have been guided all his life by a voice. When he was doing the right thing, the voice always expressed approval. But whenever he was derailing, the voice would always give a reprimand or warning.

The inner voice compelled him never to accept the dominant idols and prejudices of the age but to always question them. It soon got him into trouble with the ruling establishment. He was eventually tried on false charges of treason.

He was forced to drink hemlock to his death. Socrates was one of the most remarkable human beings who faced the prospect of his death bravely and

without bitterness. He recognised the awful fact that some lives would have to be sacrificed in the defence of truth, virtue, and justice.

His last words, as recounted by his student Plato are extraordinarily haunting: “Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death...

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to live. Which is better? God only knows.”

Martin Luther King Jr famously observed that a man has not begun to truly live until he has a cause for which he will willingly give his life. That is the foundation of conviction leadership.

Mere politicians are two a penny these days. It is almost considered to be a mark of political sophistication for a public servant to be shorn of politics and convictions.

Three thinkers are guilty of this current state of affairs. The first is Niccolo Machiavelli. The Florentine political thinker famously proclaimed that “the end justifies the means” and that it is better to be feared than to be loved. The most dangerous type of leader is those who read The Prince out of context.

Machiavelli was writing at a time when Renaissance Italy was made up of warring city-states.

What he wrote was a treatise on how the statesman might secure the existence of a free republic in an age of internecine strife. It is therefore not surprising that those who read him out of context are likely to behave like beasts.

The second culprit is the 17thcentury English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’s famous work, Leviathan, was written during the years of the brutal bloody English civil war. His pessimistic temper was shaped by those violent experiences.

The Leviathan emerged as a thought experiment of how a sovereign must govern under what he terms “the state of nature.” In that primordial condition in which life is “solitary, nasty, brutish and short”, the sovereign must rule with an iron hand. Moral considerations are to be suspended when what is impera-

‘

What will ultimately save our country is conviction politics. We may never all agree on values… we must be prepared to subject all our principles to the rigorous marketplace of ideas – to reason, debate and dialectical logic

tive is the protection of human beings from devouring one another like beasts.

The third is Robert Greene, the author of “The 48 Laws of Power”. An aspiring politician once gave me a tour guide of his library at his palatial home. The only book on the sprawling oak table was Greene’s book. He looked at me knowingly. Deep in my heart, I concluded that this man has become a lost soul. I believe that 70 percent of our politicians have read “The 48 Laws of Power”. The irony is that when all of you have read the same book and are trying to play the games recommended by the book on each other, it all becomes a fools’ market. You know that I know that we are all playing the games of power.

In the end, it all leads to nowhere but a common dungeon of moral nihilism.

What will ultimately save our country is conviction politics. We may never all agree on values. This is why Winston Churchill described democracy as the worst system of government – except for the others. And because this is so, we must be prepared to subject all our principles to the rigorous marketplace of ideas – to reason, debate and dialectical logic.

The godfathers and moneybags that control our political and party systems abhor such things. They prefer pliable operators in dark, smoke-filled chambers. Most of our politicians think strictly in terms of religion, ethnicity, tribe, and region. Rare are statesmen and women who believe in Nigeria, her common good and her manifest destiny within the temple of humanity.

I daresay that our country will never live up to its promise of greatness and will never transcend its mediocrity unless we hand over the torch to a new generation who possess the courage of their convictions – who are guided by conscience and the ideals of enlightenment and civilisation.

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)

Onboarding (1)

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know many people like today’s paper because it is Friday and everybody likes Fridays except of course if your deadline is Saturday and you are one of those who “love to work under pressure”.

What this means is that you are just doing the work that should have been done two weeks ago. I wish you all the best and I know you will still do this the next time you have a deadline. Except of course, if you partner with someone who plans and sticks to the plan. The chances are that because of that deadline, you will not get to read this article till next week. Wishing you all the best whichever way.

Today, we are going to be talking about onboarding. It is the action or process of integrating a new employee into an organisation or familiarising a new customer or client with one’s products or services. In this case, we are talking about staff, not customers. Onboarding enables new hires to quickly and easily become proficient in their roles by learning the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviour needed to function in their new place of work. Very many organisations ignore, onboarding completely or they limit it to filling out some forms and watching some videos that

were recorded too many years before and are no longer relevant.

This is a problem because onboarding is an extension of the candidate’s experience and when executed effectively leads to sustained engagement and faster time to proficiency. Few companies that do this, end it after the first week. This timing is not enough to get the new employees up to speed on all that will help them.

Many companies now believe that “reboarding” an internal hire is just as important as onboarding an external hire, but very few effectively reboard employees after they take on a new role. Usually, in the few onboarding organisations, it is the HR department that designs and implements the onboarding programs. This should not be the case and HR is increasingly seeking input from business units and senior leaders for more effectiveness.

Onboarding needs to be added to the overall budget for each year. Once there is a manpower plan, it should be easy to know how many onboarding sessions there will be in a year. Except of course if an employee leaves unexpectedly. This should also be planned for.

When your organisation invests in on-

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boarding, you will: emphasise people and performance over paperwork; create partnerships among HR, the manager, and the employee; see onboarding as a continuous process and be in a position to measure outcomes; produce onboarded staff that are twice as likely to reduce new hire time to proficiency.

Onboarding has a few emphases that should be included to get the best results.

Processes and paperwork; although it should not be the main focus, new hire paperwork does have a part in any onboarding program. Orienting an employee to organisational rules, regulations, and resources reduce time to proficiency in the role.

Performance and training; during the onboarding process and throughout an employee’s tenure, managers need to set performance expectations and provide feedback to them. Developmental coaching paired with training for skill gaps enables a new hire to become proficient much more quickly in his or her role.

People and culture; a company orientation and meetings with the new team and senior leaders are the most effective people and culture onboarding practice. It

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OLAMIDE BALOGUN is however, recommended that a combination of all the above-mentioned practices is necessary for successful onboarding.

Onboarding should extend to external hires as well as internal hires, a process that could be termed “re-boarding”. Moving to a new team or business unit within an organisation can be unfamiliar as joining a company from the outside. This lets you know that this orientation or re-orientation is not only about telling the new hires the history of the organisation even though it is a major part of it.

Note: The rest of this article continues in the online edition of Business Day @https:// businessday.ng Balogun is the founder of Box & Cedar Ltd a boutique Recruitment and HR Consulting firm Www.boxandcedar.com

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Dateline Lagos – 6th March 1884 – The reopening of Ejinrin market

“B

’oko kan o r’Ejinrin. Egbegberun re a lo” – Yoruba adage meaning “Ignore the boat-man who refuses you passage to Ejinrin. There are sure to be a thousand others going that way…”

Murray Rumsey, deputy to the Governor, brought out his pocketwatch from his fob as the steamer Gertrude settled beside the jetty at Ejinrin.

It was exactly nine o’clock.

He smiled grimly as he settled into a comfortable seat on the deck. The market town lay to the left and the right as far as the eye could see.

His detachment of Constabulary was deployed astern. He had ordered everybody to keep a low profile.

He was not going to step on the ground in Ejinrin, of course. He would remain in British waters.

Before the abolition, this place had been a major hub of international trade in slaves and commodities.

Slaves from the hinterland were brought here, to be conveyed to Lagos, where they were put on the big ships bound for foreign parts. Local produce was also purchased for shipment to Europe. When the human trade overseas was eventually ended, a vigorous trade in commodities ensued,

between the Jebu on one hand and Lagos and the rest of the world on the other. The market, rather than shrink, expanded. Big warehouses were constructed by business concerns to house the produce they bought from Jebu traders, awaiting export.

All of this, sadly, had gone into abeyance for a while now, since the market was closed on the orders of the Awujale, the King and de jure overlord of the Jebu.

Lately, the power game had taken a dramatic turn. The Jebu king fell out of favour with his people. He was exiled to Epe. The chiefs of the Jebu, now the de facto authority, decided to reopen trade at Ejinrin market, their gateway to the outside world.

Officially, Her Majesty’s representatives in the colony of Lagos would never take sides in a local power struggle, which was what this was.

Rather, the situation called for “active neutrality”.

If the Jebu people and their de facto leadership decided to resume trade with the Lagos people, and they were ready to take responsibility for the consequences, what was the business of Her Majesty’s government interfering?

There was a stir at the quayside as a boat came alongside the Gertrude.

Onboard were a group of eminentlooking people from Lagos. They were intent on coming aboard the steamer.

The officer in charge of the Constabulary moved to intercept them.

“Let them” he instructed, waving the man aside.

He recognised some of the men.

There was Eletu Jebu, a white cap chief. There was Soenu. There was Kasumu who had been one of the

messengers of the former King Docemo. There was one of the leaders of the traders.

They had come to welcome him to Ejinrin, they said.

He had seats arranged for them in a semi-circle, facing him on the gently undulating deck.

They informed him that several canoes filled with traders from Lagos had already arrived. The people of Ejinrin had received them enthusiastically. They had also met emissaries from Oru and Ode who assured them that Jebu traders were on their way to the market in their canoes.

Rumsey cleared his throat. He appreciated their enthusiasm, he said carefully, but Ejinrin was a Jebu market, and the Lagos people could not unilaterally declare it open. Only when Jebu traders arrived ready to trade could the market be said to be open.

They appreciated his caution, and shortly they departed.

He felt almost dizzy at the sheer intensity of contradictory emotions attending the simple act of reopening a local market for trade. True, Ejinrin was not just any market. It was a crucial gateway. It would reopen access to Ibadan and places beyond for British interests. The Lagos traders, always with an eye out for profit, had pressured the Governor to have the market reopened. The Jebu monarch was adamantly opposed. To compound it all, the Jebu Chiefs, led by the Balogun, were fully in support of reopening. They condemned their exiled monarch for being excessively bellicose and hostile to strangers.

Out of the little bag he carried, Rumsey brought out the handwritten letters that had been written to the

‘

They informed him that several canoes filled with traders from Lagos had already arrived.

The people of Ejinrin had received them enthusiastically.

They had also met emissaries from Oru and Ode who assured them that Jebu traders were on their way to the market in their canoes

Lieutenant Governor and glanced through them once again, smiling wryly. One was from the Awujale.

Another was from the Balogun and the Osugbo of Jebu.

“Epe, 29th February 1884” - began the monarch’s letter. “…when I ordered the Ejinrin market to be closed…I have not yet repealed it…I have been naughtily treated by the people of Oru and Ode… surely there are no two kings in any of the European countries…I hereby… protest against the opening of Ejinrin market…”

The letter seethed with anger.

On the other hand, the letter from his estranged Chiefs was unequivocal.

“Ikorodu February 16, 1884” • the letter began.

“We the undersigned are deputations from Ono Fowokan the Balogun to Your Excellency…are prepared to go …in trade with them, this being the principal work of their townsmen…”

The letter concluded with the marks of chiefs Ifetuga, Otenaki, Okunlaja and Odusayo.

Shortly after 3pm, the Lagos men came back to the steamer, accompanied by a powerful delegation from the Balogun of Jebu. The boats of the Jebu were close by. Very soon, they would arrive. The market would truly be in full flow, at last. They brought him some goats as gifts. He ordered them taken below deck.

He appealed to the Jebu dignitaries to ensure that they maintained law and order in their market.

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

Business and stakeholder engagement should be fun

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n Jamaica, at one of their beaches, they give one fresh wrap of marijuana in exchange for a full bucket of trash. And that’s how they keep a clean beach. Some people are known to feel guilty for spending so much of their own hard-earned money on luxury. To ease that, at Tom’s Shoes in America, they give a new pair of shoes to a child in need somewhere in Africa for every pair you purchase.

At Domino’s Pizza, they put a timer next to you name and the attendant that takes your order. As you place your order, then insert your name and the timeframe they’ve promised you on the screen for all to see. The reason for this is that you get fresh, hot pizza delivered to you within that timeframe or it’s delivered for free.

The words “work” and “fun” shouldn’t be antithetical. Business dynamics is changing; driving effectiveness and getting things done shouldn’t be too much work. And work shouldn’t be where people go to, but be what they love to do. This is easier said than done but it should interest us to know that it can be achieved.

In business, the main stakeholders include employees to investors and customers too. You can achieve an exciting brand, from creating a set of processes that drives brand promises and brand attitudes to stimulate a culture that drives the employees’ love to work, investors’ love to invest and the customers’ love to buy. This means making work more interesting and engaging for all stakeholders. This can be the ultimate differential in a saturated and uninspiring work-life dynamic.

Business success shouldn’t be seen as a destination but a journey. And because it is,

achieving your goals and enjoying your life while on that journey should be a priority.

Carry more people along too. To do this, moving clients to community members of your business and from it creating a fun mastermind group you can share lessons of failures and celebration from wins is key.

At Hexavia we call ours the inner circle, it’s an arm of our Hexavian Business Club. You should create yours for your business too.

If you have a mastermind group, they can become your accountability partner. You can make it part of your weekly check-in to meet up, have some fun while you list your wins.

To go fast is to go alone, but to go far, you go together. These days, clients don’t want to be transactional but relational. Find their common grounds with you and engage via it. Take for example, I like to be myself with my clients and I think we have more fun and get more done because of it. We give loyalty cards to clients that are willing to buy more and engage us more through feedback and referrals.

It’s okay to not love some things, outsource it. Take for example, if you hate social media, technology or accounting? Outsource it. The whole point of your business is to do mostly of what you enjoy. This should be the same for your team too. If you can’t outsource something (yet), can you find a way to make it more fun?

If you happen to be the leader of your firm or team, never give them the impression that all that matters is work, show them how their happiness and development is perhaps more important. Back that up by ensuring that you develop your people. In the words of Harvey S. Firestone, founder of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, “the growth and devel-

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opment of people is the highest calling of leadership.”

As a country gets tougher, the people get smarter. In line with Potters 5 Forces, Hertzberg and Maslow’s theories, as well as the balanced scorecards, taught in MBA, all stakeholders clamour for more over time.

Most of those needs are mostly more psychological than functional. Also, due to inflation, the cost of work and even products and sales become more expensive over time.

As customers pay more, expect that your employer or customers will begin to demand justification for what they normally pay since they have fewer funds and more options from other people, expect that competition will be fierce. Differentiation is key. Brand, deep/ spiritual and mental engagement are also key (talking “with” and not talking “to” your market/source).

I have come to summarise key concepts for stakeholder engagements in creating a set of interesting touchpoints and brand promises. What’s your brand promise to your client and staff to have them deliver an intended result?

For example, at my firm, Hexavia, we are a management consulting and corporate training firm. However, we are known for evening cocktails with an extremely cerebral set of attendees. We are known to party by the ocean shores with business executives in which we service their firms, we are known for networking events for our clients. In other words, when you pay for a class or consulting, as to add on we offer hangouts and a community for you to independently grow with other clients. At this point, let me introduce you to a framework for this. It’s called the Kano Model.

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The Kano model is not just a sophisticated graph sheet that defines the different levels of customer expectations. It’s a framework to advise you on how to go above them. Industries have a threshold of averages in expectation. Most people compete around those margins of average. Go above the average.

Don’t just deliver on what you have ordinarily promised by what your product does and is expected. That’s what average firms do; go across the borders of the expected.

The Kano Model is a theory for product development and customer satisfaction. It talks about satisfying customer’s needs, but clearly states that not all customer needs are equal. Because of that, it tries to categories and prioritise customer needs and breaks them into 3 touch points. From MVP to onedimensional quality to attractive quality that is delightful and unexpected. This is where greater firms play.

Note: The rest of this article continues in the online edition of Business Day @https:// businessday.ng

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

@Businessdayng

12

Friday 18 October 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

The rise in the price of rice

T

he unintended consequence of the anti-smuggling war in Nigeria is an increase in the prices of food; rice in particular. The idea was to wage war against “economic saboteurs”, enemies obstructing Nigeria from attaining food security.

Closing our borders with Benin Republic, Niger Republic and Chad was expected to boost local production capacity and manage scarce dollars.

Contrabands like rice, frozen chicken and turkey imported from across the borders of neighbouring countries account for a little over three quarters of the $4.2 billion in informal imports.

In October, the month the World Food Day is marked around the world, a 5kg bag of rice has more than doubled to 14,000 (in July it cost

6,500 naira). Rice, one of the most popular staple foods in Nigeria, is increasingly out of reach for many. Millions of Nigerians are at risk of a food crisis. A large part of the little people earn, if they do at all, is spent on food, especially rice.

At this rate, a bleak Christmas without the much beloved jollof rice is inevitable.

The central bank may argue this rise in the price of rice will attract more investments in rice farms and mills. Such investments take time. What’s more the scale required to meet Nigeria’s demand for rice is so immense. Farming in Nigeria depends on rain, mostly subsistence and not industrialised.

To catch up Nigeria needs to produce rice faster than the rate at which the general prices are rising. Food makes up half of the consumer price index which is used to track inflation. For the first time in four months, the price of food

increased. Inflation in September rose to 11.24 percent from 11.02 in August, reversing the gains the CBN has made to lower it.

At the heart of the matter is the way the central bank has decided to manage foreign exchange. It prefers capital controls rather than devaluation or floating the naira.

Limiting who gets foreign exchange and for what usually works when it is complemented with other fiscal policies and an open mind to economic realities. Income from oil, the major source of revenue for government and foreign exchange for the economy, is declining. Gone are the days when OPEC could determine the price of a barrel of oil; it now needs the cooperation of Russia to keep the price from falling below $60.

Taxes, as well as the capacity and responsibility that comes with collecting it at home and at our borders, have been ne-

glected since Nigeria discovered oil 63 years ago. In other words, the government can’t at the stroke of a pen waive or increase taxes to stimulate investments in the production of local rice or discourage consumption of imported rice.

Consequently, the central bank is saddled with a mixed bag of responsibilities. Other than monetary policy it has attempted pseudo-fiscal policies through issuing circulars and has expanded its development finance mandate in order to make up for the inability of the federal government to stimulate the economy.

This way of managing the economy is an old script from a movie made in 1984 when the government closed borders as devaluation of the naira and expansion of money supply pushed inflation to 41.2 percent. Nigeria has been down this road before and those with a sense of history know where it ends: a recession.

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

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Friday 18 October 2019

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COMMENT

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Ten reasons I still live in Nigeria TALES FROM THE MAIN ROAD

EUGENIA ABU

I

am pretty much amazed by those who are obsessed with leaving Nigeria. Thing is, I am not one of those and I do not begrudge those who want to leave or send their kids away in the name of education. I have heard it said that it is either I am too poor or I am used to hard life but y’ all know it’s a matter of choice, right? Right! So, let’s begin to state the many reasons I would rather stay and build where I can.

1) I miss the Nigerian ambience. Broken as some parts of us are, I like the fact that our sense of humour is incredibly rich. Can’t trade it for any dry western humour.

2) I like the fact that any issue in my children’s school or at my workspace is not based on race. We are all the same colour. You know right? The other

discriminatory demons, we will continue to fight.

3) I love Suya, Amala, Gbegiri and Masa. Maybe available abroad, but not quite the same.

4) I love our markets. The long-time no sees of friends you have not seen in a while that you run into. The fact that our traders’ shop from all over the world, the fruits, the vegetables, live chicken that’s tasty and cat fish straight from the water and just look at the tomatoes.

5) I love the fact that my friends’ homes are a whistle stop from me and my family is just around the corner even if it’s two hours by road. And that I am permanently invited to eat. Out there they tell you they were not expecting you and everyone has become cold and distant.

6) I worry that my kids may decide to divorce me or become strangers and turn up their

‘

I like dodo. The one that’s firm and big and Edo compliant.

Luscious. I love kunun aya, milky and delicious. I love kunun Shikafa and moi with nine lives

noses on your home while thinking you are local and old fashion.

7) The weather. End of story.

You know that winter it’s not my thing. Shikena.

8) I like dodo. The one that’s firm and big and Edo compliant.

Luscious. I love kunun aya, milky and delicious. I love kunun Shikafa and moi moi with nine lives.

9) I love Nigerian weddings.

The colours, the food, the camaraderie.

10) The landscape, the culture, the people and yesterday I saw a rainbow.

In spite of all the noise and all the warts. I just love Nigeria and these are some of the ways.

E go better.

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

The organisation that can withstand the turbulent times

I

mmediately after writing one of my insights in September 2013 titled: “How big or small your organisation is don’t matter”, and based on the feedback I got, something became more evident to me. Many assumed big organisations most times think that they have an “air of invincibility” over the perceived small organisations. Surprisingly, now, with the global events and disruptions that are going on, it is quite obvious that regardless of any organisation’s financial or structural size, no organisation in or outside Nigeria can boast of “having arrived” or has an air of invincibility over others.

An obvious truth is that it will be more challenging for organisations to increase revenues and maintain adequate profitability. But then again, regardless of what happens to all the organisations, the level of shock will not be the same for all of them – this is not a function of size as to say, our organisation is better cushioned because our size is big. In a major discussion I had with a bank CEO some time ago, I pointed out to him that any bank or organisation that is not well managed can go under with what portends in Nigeria today. This again is not a function of how big or small any organisation has been.

With the current spate of uncertainties and economic toughness, it is not advisable to say that your organisation can not or will never go under because of the sterling results you have to achieve in the past or

the quality of the executives therein.

The truth is that the survival of any organisation is not only in the hands of the executives but in the hands of everyone on the payroll. This means that everyone has a role to play.

One of the ways your organisation can be strengthened to withstand these tough times is to get your people, to move away from focusing on what is “outside their control” to start focusing on what is “within their control”. The big temptation or probably the reason why some organisations will post better results more than others stems from the fact that some are busy fighting or chasing policies, regulations, economic hardships and political uncertainties that they don’t have an iota of control over, while those winning are building their foundations on things that are within their control. This doesn’t mean to say that organisations shouldn’t scan the future environment, they must have to in order to prepare for the future and the changing world.

Recently, during a strategic thinking retreat for a key player in the construction company, we had an exercise that showcased why some companies will thrive in difficult times while others won’t. I call it the “Inside Tools and the Outside Tools” (which I developed a few years back).

The Inside Tools represent those tools that are in your hand (in your organisation) that you can work with and that you have control over, while the Outside Tools represent the tools that www.businessday.ng

are pretty much difficult to control – those that are out of your control.

The shocking news is that in difficult times, more organisations spend more time talking about the outside tools (and how they are not achieving results as a result of lack of it), and having less time making use of their inside tools. Things that are not within your organisation’s control abound (the list can be endless), and working day and night trying to change them may only bring ruin and fatigue to your organisation.

Now, the way your organisation will not only withstand these turbulent times but also thrive will be to focus on the things within your control – things that can be institutionalised. Your organisation has 100 percent control to make teamwork a driving factor in your organisation especially in times we are in, and the same level of control to make customer service a veritable tool that can generate continuous business for your organisation.

Every employee can be a customer service advocate, every employee has total control to cross sell the organisation’s product, your organisation has absolute control to diversify your assets away from risks prone portfolios, same level of control it has over cost containment across board etc.

From the above, one can see that there are so many things that your organisation can do within your control to stay afloat in these turbulent times. Remember, when people and

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UJU ONWUZULIKE

organisations have choices and options, they always choose the best as opposed to doing the best. Now, the reality is that no organisations can boast of having the luxury of having external options available to them in building their organisation – as they do before, the ball is now in your court to always do the best regardless of any circumstances.

Whether in good or bad times, some organisations will still make every effort to do well, let your organisation be among them.

I look forward to receiving your comments 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 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

MONEYINSIGHT

UBA leverages marketing communication to raise N150 billion deposits FRANK ELEANYA

W

ith income levels at a low and food inflation biting away at Nigerians’ meagre resources, savings becomes the last thing on the mind of the average bank customer.

Total bank deposits has struggled to hit its 2014 levels when it reached $104 billion.

Although the numbers have risen from 2017 after it dropped to $81 billion in 2016, it is still bogged down by economic headwinds and anti-consumer policies Worried by the declining savings habit, United Bank for Africa (UBA) in 2018 moved beyond hiring human marketers to do street to street and simply incentivised its customers to save. That decision led to the birth of the Wise Savers Promo, UBA’s marketing communication strategy for one year.

The Wise Savers campaign essentially requires customers to save at least N30,000 in N10,000 batches for a minimum of three months in order to qualify for the quarterly draw. Every quarter 20 winners are

selected through a computer-based raffle draw. Each of the 20 winners are rewarded with N1.5 million.

Over the course of one year, 2 million customers jostled for who will save the most. 80 millionaires were made within the period representing N120 million. In return,

Credit worthy Nigerian immigrants to have access to credit facilities in USA STEPHEN ONYEKWELU

B

efore now, Nigerians relocating to the United States of America had no financial credit records that the financial institutions in the world’s biggest economy could rely on for their creditworthiness in deciding if credit facilities should be extended to them.

Nigerians who approached financial institutions in the USA for credit facilities would have to show their financial integrity through a third party, mainly US citizens who would stand in as guarantors.

The same challenge was also the case with entrepreneurs, especially the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) wanting to access credit facilities from Nigerian banks. Banks have difficulties in trusting the credibility of their potential borrowers.

But with the advent of technology in the financial space, and leveraging on it, it is now possible to determine at first hand the credibility of anyone wishing to access credit facilities without going through the hurdles of providing surety and collateral.

The main technology used in this space is the Credit Score technology, which, upon key in the necessary information, grades the individual on a scale which determines how trustworthy or otherwise the potential borrower is.

Players in the micro-financial industry such as Branch, Carbon (Paylater), and Kwickcash, have been using the technology to access the creditworthiness of a customer before determining the fate of such client, and have cumulatively paid out millions of naira in loan.

Marrying such technology with the use of Bank Verification Number (BVN), commercial banks have equally joined in the adventure.

Wema Bank, Sterling Bank, and Access Bank, among others, could easily give loans without necessarily providing collateral, initially associat-

ed with such transaction. Some banks even give loans by merely dialling Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code, using your known transaction alert telephone number.

In extending such benefits to Nigerians relocating to the USA, CRC Credit Bureau has partnered Nova Credit, a US-based credit score firm.

This partnership will allow trustworthy Nigerians relocating to the US to use their international credit history to have access to credit opportunities, the opportunity that was previously unavailable to Nigerians.

The new service, known as Nova Connect, accesses individual Nigerian data from CRC Credit Bureau in Nigeria and translates such credit history data into the U.S. equivalent credit score in a format familiar to American underwriters.

Nova Connect merges and translates the two systems into what is understandable to American financial institutions, who use it to evaluate applications for credit products.

With this new opportunity, immigrants from Nigeria do not have to start from scratch and can start to benefit immediately from the credit history they built in their home country when they immigrate.

By using their international credit history to get a credit card or other products when they arrive, Nigerians can begin to build a U.S. Credit score.

This opportunity does not benefit thosewithapoorcredithistoryinNigeria.

CRC Credit Bureau provides a nationwide repository on credit profiles of corporate entities as well as consumers, thus improving the ability of credit providers and borrowers to make informed lending and borrowing decisions.

The bureau’s database covers the credit industry which includes commercial banks, non-bank institutions, retailers, utility service providers and fintech.

Visit https://www.crccreditbureau.com/ for more information. www.businessday.ng

UBA generated N150 billion in customer deposits plus about one million new customers that joined the bank. Given the time frame, it was an unprecedented milestone for the bank.

“More than that we got the patronage of our loyal customers

and we are happy that the savings culture is growing in the country,” Anant Rao, UBA’s Group Head, Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) and Telemarketing said. “It is very important that everybody should understand the importance of savings and then save for a rainy day

and you can also get some returns from that.”

The impact in terms of the customers is that it gave them the ability to develop the habit of saving on a regular basis, so that they can meet their financial goals and eat whenever they want to.

‘Strict compliance with standards will address financial crimes in Nigeria’ FRANK ELEANYA

I

n view of the growing rate of financial crimes in Africa and around the world, experts who spoke at the general meeting of the Association of Chief Compliance Officers of Banks in Nigeria (ACCOBIN), said the only way out is for organisations to upgrade their level of compliance to meet international standards.

A Thomas Reuters survey conducted in 2018 showed that Africa has some of the highest rates of financial crime and a higher percentage of companies affected by fraud, theft, money laundering or other financial crimes than the global average. The survey found that as much as 53 percent of the companies

that responded to the survey have been victims of financial crimes, compared to the global average of 47 percent.

René Lamberts, Executive Channel Manager MEA at Accuity, during the ACCOBIN meeting, said that international standard-setters are critical for promoting a level-playing field in financial crime compliance.

Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Wolfsberg and the Basel Committee are prominent organizations promoting best compliance practices, raising awareness on Anti-money laundering risks and putting pressure on the implementation of efficient AML framework (Mutual Evaluations).

“The financial services industry

in Nigeria needs to collaborate to win this war against financial crime.

These criminals are inventive in finding new ways to exploit regulatory loopholes. We therefore have to keep on innovating through technology and regulatory compliance to secure loose ends.” Lamberts said The general meeting brought together compliance professionals and representatives from regulatory and law enforcement agencies like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), etc. provides a platform for topical discussions geared towards the improvement of financial compliance standards in the country.

Outperform Business Conference set to inspire entrepreneurs in Nigeria …Shobanjo, Agboade, Tara Fela-Durotoye featuring as teachers

T

he Outperform Business Conference scheduled to take place at Landmark Event Centre; Oniru, Victoria Island on Thursday, October 31, 2019, has assembled a crop of seasoned, serial, Nigerian entrepreneurs as teachers of its master-classes.

Biodun Shobanjo, chairman of Troyka Group, Degun Agboade, national president of the Nigerian Association of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (NASME), Deji Agboade, founder of the Growth Lab Africa, and Tara Fela-Durotoye, the chief executive officer of House of Tara International are among the speakers set to teach and inspire entrepreneurs.

Organised by Growth Lab Africa the conference is targeted at entrepreneurs, business decision-

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makers and investors and will highlight appropriate strategies to help them outcompete, thrive and scale.

According to the organisers, attendees will participate in two out of four specific master-classes on the four (4) key pillars of business which are strategy and marketing, systems and structures, finance and people. They will also connect with potential investors; get free business advice and more.

Agboade, founder of Growth Lab Africa while speaking about the conference, said “on our continent and especially in our country today, the failure rate of businesses gives cause for concern. The situation is more worrying when you realize that the failure of a business is very often a sentence to a suboptimal life for an entire family as @Businessdayng

well as a group of friends who also rely on that business to succeed for their daily survival. It is to this end that the Growth Lab Africa is putting together this one-of-a-kind business conference specifically targeted at helping, businesses grow and scale.”

Other speakers at the conference include Anderson UvieEmegbo, senior faculty at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Yemi Faseun, head human resources and interim chief operating officer of FBN Quest Merchant Bank, Fernando Madeira, the chief financial officer of ENYO Retail and Supply, Adenike Adeyemi, executive director of FATE Foundation and George Ogbonnaya, group head Corporate Banking of FCMB Plc.

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

COMPANIES & MARKETS

15

COMPANY NEWS ANALYSIS INSIGHT

Insurance

AIICO Insurance increases authorized share capital to N18bn MODESTUS ANAESORONYE

I

n line with the preparations to meet the new minimum capital requirement for the insurance industry, AIICO Insurance Plc has received shareholders’ approval to increase its authorized share capital from N10 billion to N18 billion.

At the Extra-Ordinary General Meeting (“EGM”) in Lagos, the shareholders demonstrated their support by voting in favour of the recapitalisation. This is coming at a time public quoted insurance companies are struggling to convince their minority shareholders to align with their recapitalisation plans.

A few meetings of the insurance companies with their shareholders have seen board chairmen and directors sweating hard to convince the minority shareholders to approve their different capital raising proposals. “ T h e s e a re e x c i t i n g times for us as a busin e ss,” sa i d Bab atu n d e Fajemirokun, managing director. “We are confident that the recapitalization exercise will see the company emerge stronger, more resilient, with adequate capacity and competencies to continue to provide risk protection and value adding services to all our customers and

stakeholders.”

Kundan Sainani, chairman of the Board, at the EGM stated that AIICO has received NAICOM’s ‘No Objection’ to its recapitalization plan. The company’s recapitalization plan includes a combination of private placement, rights issue and bonus issue.

Ac c o rd i n g t o Fa jemirokun, the private placement is at an ad-

vanced stage with a number of investors. Therefore, the shareholders also approved amendments to the Memorandum of Association to reflect the addition of new investors.

The Nigerian insurance industry is estimated to see some N200 billion after the ongoing recapitalisation by underwriters, making for a stronger sector that can offer good returns to

investors and contribute reasonably to the economy.

Industry experts believe that the sector post consolidation will have enough resources to attract quality manpower, acquire necessary skills to underwrite big ticket risks, increase retention in the local market, and be able to take advantage of untapped potentials to create shareholder value.

The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) had in a circular issued on Monday May 20, 2019 announced increase in the paid-up share capital of life companies from N2 billion to N8 billion; General Business from N3 billion to N10 billion; Composite Business from N5 billion to N18 billion; and Reinsurance companies from N10 billion to N20 billion, with

30th June 2020 as deadline.

AIICO Insurance Plc., a leading composite insurer in Nigeria, commenced operations in 1963. AIICO provides life insurance, health insurance, general insurance, wealth management and pension management services as a means to create and protect wealth for individuals, families and corporate customers.

L-R: Ayotunde Funsho, associate director, management consulting, KPMG; Goodluck Obi, partner/head, consumer and industrial markets; Mohammed Adama, partner/sector lead, Agribusiness, and Ijeoma Emezie-Ezigbo, partner, deal advisory, at the launch KPMG Nigeria›s Rice Industry report, in Lagos. Pic by Pius Okeosisi

TECHNOLOGY

Paxful says Bitcoin not anonymous, safe asset for investors DAVID IBEMERE

P

axful, a leading peer to peer bitcoin marketplace says contrary to theories about Bitcion a digital currency, it is a safe investment that is traceable, trackable, and less anonymous than cash.

In a statement made available to BusinessDay, Paxful decried the level of wrong assumptions on the digital currency, the company however admitted

that the reputation “may need some repairing, due to links to illegal activities, the currency remains one for the future to change the way people manage their finances.”

“Some people seem to say they know who the creator(s) of Bitcoin is/are due to conspiracy theories. In Japanese, ‘Satoshi’ translates to ‘clear thinking,’ ‘quick-witted,’ ‘wise.’ ‘Naka’ can mean ‘inside’ or ‘relationship,’ while ‘moto’ is defined as ‘origin,’ ‘the cause,’

or ‘the foundation or basis.’

Because of these translations, there are people that believe Bitcoin was created by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). There are even conspiracy theorists that believe four companies were behind the creation of Bitcoin—Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi, and Motorola— whose names, when put together, make up “Satoshi Nakamoto.”

“The truth remains that Bitcoin can be used to purchase anything in the world

as long as it is accepted by the seller, it is a currency used by millions of people everywhere—thus making entry to the global economy more accessible.”

“Another argument according to (what) most people say, Bitcoin is a ‘decentralized’ currency while many others argue otherwise. This is because four mining entities control more than 50 percent of the hash rate. Regardless of whether or not you believe Bitcoin to be a decentralized

currency, it has unquestionably been built on a distributed system.”

Paxful listed other falsehood on Bitcoin to include, ‘Bitcoin itself has no value, the United States does not support Bitcoin, Bitcoin is just an idea, Bitcoin is a scam or Bitcoin and MMM (Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox) are the same and Bitcoin is used for illicit activities.’

The company further noted that Bitcoin is open, decentralized, and border-

less; it is unfair and illogical to blame Bitcoin for the existence of pyramid schemes.

“If you understand the technology behind it and how it works, you will know that Bitcoin has no pyramid structure.”

On Bitcion being used by criminal Paxful stated that while Bitcoin was enthusiastically taken up by criminals to conduct a range of illegal activities, “today less than 1 percent of Bitcoin transactions are related to ‘illegal’ activities.”

Editor: LOLADE AKINMURELE (lolade.akinmurele@businessdayonline.com) Graphics: Samuel Iduh

16

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

COMPANIES&MARKETS

Business Event

SERVICES

Regus dynamic network of workspaces enhance productivity for entrepreneurs KELECHI EWUZIE

D

etermined to enhance the productivity levels of entrepreneurs and connect 2.5 million like-minded professionals, leading global workspace provider Regus has unveiled its newest network of workspaces center at the Victoria Island Waterfront.

Regus is a multinational corporation that provides serviced offices for clients.

The Victoria Island center is the second centre launch in the last four months by Regus which is the flagship brand of International Workplace Group Plc, as part of its wider strategy to bring the workplace closer to Nigerians.

Lucy Ajala, team lead community manager Nigeria, International workplace group (IWG) says the center is designed to enhance productivity and connect like-minded professionals, Speaking at the unveiling

of the new center located at Landmark Towers, VI Lagos, Ajala said the Regus VI Waterfront is an instant global community and a place to belong, adding that its network of workspaces enables businesses to operate anywhere, without the need for set-up costs or capital investment.

According to Ajala, “The Victoria Island Waterfront Centre is set within the landmark ecosystem where clients have exclusive discounts and priority access to a range of facilities that include gym, hotel, leisure beach, retail shops, cinema, restaurants (including the famous Hard Rock Cafe), spa, medical centre, and sporting facilities.

A survey by International workplace group (IWG) shows that today’s dynamic and diverse workforce is in clear demand for flexible working on a yearly basis; workers demand is up to 75 per cent from 70 percent in 2018. More organisations are allowing staff to work where they want, in remote locations as well as in

co-working spaces.

Ayo Akinmade, vice president Regus says the brand remains the leading global workspace provider. “We have built an unparalleled network of offices, co-working and meeting spaces for companies to use in every city in the world.

Akinmade observes that Regus is a global infrastructure built for businesses to support every opportunity. “Our network of workspaces enables businesses to operate anywhere, without the need for set-up costs or capital investment. It provides our customers with immediate cost benefits and the opportunity to fully outsource their office portfolio”, he said.

Akinmade further said that the workspace is designed to enhance productivity and connect 2.5 million like-minded professionals adding that it’s an instant global community and a place to belong.

Chike Onyejekwe (r), presents the key of a brand new tricycle, to one Okey Eneh (l), one of the winners of the Globacom Ofala 2019 raffle draw, at the Onitsha Ime Obi, during the Azu Ofala festival, sponsored by Globacom.

Continues online @www. businessday.ng

COMPANY RELEASE

Opportunity for Nigerian art as Access Bank, NB launch talent hunt ENDURANCE OKAFOR

A

ccess Bank, Nigerian tier-one lender and the country’s biggest bank by asset and customer base has teamed up with Nigerian Breweries, pioneer and largest brewing company in the country to launch ‘Access The Stars’.

According to both companies, the exercise is geared towards discovering musical talents in Nigeria, a country whose young population is half of the entire 200 million inhabitants.

“Access The Stars is a platform that will take the talents of Nigeria and groom them, and showcase them, not just in Nigeria alone but through the platform, the young talents in the country will become known everywhere in the world,” Jordi Borrut Bel, MD of Nigerian

Breweries said at the launch of the initiative in Lagos.

With the highest population in Africa, its greatest asset has come with its big challenge. Nigeria’s unemployment rate rose to a record high of 23.1 percent of the workforce in the third quarter of 2018, up from 18.1percent a year earlier.

“The most important resources of Nigeria are her youths,” Bill Gates, co-founder Bill, and Melinda Foundation said during a visit to Nigeria.

In his remarks, Herbert Wigwe, MD/CEO of Access Bank said: “We are celebrating a very uniquepartnershipbetweentwo great institutions, determined, and focused to ensure that we support the youth, the national development and make social impacts and all the things necessary for our economy.”

According to the Access

Bank and Nigerian Breweries, the talent hunt initiative is scheduled to commence before the year-end will kick off in cities in South-Western region of the country: Ekiti, Abeokuta, etc.

The ticket to the audition of the Access The Stars includes the purchase of three cane of the Star product and an account holder of the Access Bank’s DiamondXtra account.

On the reason why a bank and brewer teamed up to form such a platform, NB CEO said “if you look at NB, we have a big history of growing young talents-NB has been promoting talents as well as music so as Access Bank. The bank has been doing a lot with their festivals, they are not just promoting music but also Nigerian and African designs.”

Continues online @www. businessday.ng

L-R: Tony Okpanachi, MD/CEO Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN); Ijeoma D. Ozulumba, CFO, DBN, and Joseph Nnanna, deputy governor, CBN, at the 2019 annual meeting of the World Bank Group in Washington DC, USA.

L-R: Naomi Smith, co- founder/commercial director, Gemona West Interior; Wassim Bashasha, business development, ProBlind Nigeria, and Deise Smith, co-founder/creative director, Gemona West Interior, at the MADE

by Design Exhibition In Lagos, in Lagos

MTN Nigeria earns platinum status in ‘Investors in People’

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TN Nigeria Communications Plc, recently announced that following an in-depth assessment of the organisation, it has achieved the Investors in People (IIP) platinum accreditation. IIP enable organisations to benchmark against the best in the business on an international scale, as one of the best places to work.

Investors in People is the international standard for people management, defining what it takes to lead, support

and manage people effectively to achieve sustainable results. Underpinning the standard is the Investors in People framework, reflecting the latest workplace trends, essential skills and effective structures required to outperform in any industry.

“This IIP certification is recognition of our people management practices over the years. It speaks to our credentials as an employer of choice and a great place for anyone to work and grow their career. For our people, we will continue to

build upon this success,” said Esther Akinnukawe, the chief human resources officer of MTN Nigeria, while commenting on the recent certification.

MTN Nigeria is the first Nigerian company to have attained IIP Platinum, the highest accolade available.

This is held by only 2% of current IIP accredited organisations companies globally. It is noteworthy that MTN had previously received the IIP Standard certification in 2013 and the IIP Gold Certification in 2015.

www.businessday.ng

L-R: Amolegbe Olatunde, 1st vice president, CIS; Olayinka Odutola, director-general/CEO, AERMP; Adedapo Adekoje, president/chairman, CIS; Taiwo Ige, president/chairman, AERMP; Adedeji Ajadi, registrar/CEO, CIS, and Segun Osisanya, at the Signing of MoU between Association of Enterprise Risk Management Professionals AERMP and Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers CIS to establish capacity building programmes and to offer joint certification on Enterprise Risk Management & Compliance.

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@Businessdayng

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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cityfile Cybercrime: MAPOLY student jailed REMI FEYISIPO, Ibadan

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21-year-old student of Mashood Abiola Polytechn i c ( M A P O LY ) , Ogun State, Olalekan Oladapo Ogunremi has been sentenced to six months in prison for criminal impersonation.

Olalekan was sentenced on Wednesday by Justice Patricia Ajoku of the Federal High Court, sitting in Ibadan, following the criminal charge filed against the convict by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Ogunremi had pleaded guilty to the one-count amended charge preferred against him consequent upon a plea bargain arrangement between him

and the EFCC. His offence contravenes section 22(2)(b) of the Cybercrime (Prohibition, Prevention etc) Act, 2015, and punishable under section 22 (2)(iv) of the same Act. Following his plea of guilty, the prosecution counsel, Babatunde Sonoiki had prayed the court to sentence him in accordance with the terms of the plea bargain entered, wh ich wa s a ls o by th e convict’s defence lawyer, Tunde Lawal.

Though the judge reduced the jail term from one year to six months, she upheld other punitive measures contained in the plea bargain, including forfeiture of items recovered from the convict and refund of foreign currencies to his victims

NGO empowers teenage girls INIOBONG IWOK

A one man protest at Oshodi Market in Lagos. Pic by David Apara

Invasion: Taraba community petitions NHRC NATHANIEL GBAORON, Jalingo

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he Mbayongo c o m mu n i t y i n Taraba and Benue has petitioned the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) over the alleged wanton killings and destruction of property worth millions of naira by the Nigeria Army and Air Force. The community alleged that the destruction was carried out by the military on the claim of searching for a wanted criminal, one Terwase Akwaza popularly known as ‘Ghana.’

The community is also

…demands N3b from military demanding N3 billion as compensation for the lives and property destroyed.

This was contained in the petition signed by the secretary of the community MacDonald Usaa and acknowledged by the NHRC which was made available to CityFile in Jalingo.

The community wondered why the Nigeria Army and Air Force who should be protecting the fundamental human rights of the people as guaranteed by the constitution of Nigeria would engage in wanton killings and destruction

of property belonging to a defenceless community.

“In the wake of the sustained attacks by the armed forces on our communities, we and the vast majority of villages where these attacks have been concentrated were completely overwhelmed. We are now desolate and devastated as we have suffered destruction of property and lives.

“The massive burning down and general destruction of houses and homes, sundry household items, farms, crops, economic trees, vehicles, machin-

eries, foodstuffs, schools among others as the armed forces do not exercise any care during the these attacks.

“The community is demanding monetary compensation of N3 billion only to the families of those killed in the raids to enable them take care of the relations of victims.”

They also urged the commission to investigate the killings as well as direct the Federal Government to rehabilitate the people and reconstruct their homes and farms destroyed.

Police reunite missing child with family in A’Ibom ANIEFIOK UDONQUAK, Uyo

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he police in Akwa Ibom State have reunited a missing four-year boy with his family.

Victor Asuquo got missing on Sunday, October 13 after attending a church service at the Deeper Life Bible Church, IBB Way, Uyo, with his cousin, one

Michael Godswill.

It was gathered that a f t e r t h e s e r v i c e, t h e whereabouts of Victor could not be ascertained.

One Ekemini Stanley was said to have, however, found the missing Victor around his neighbourhood and took him to ‘C’ Division Police Station, Aka/Etinan, Uyo. Spokesperson of the police in Akwa Ibom, www.businessday.ng

Odiko Macdon, who confirmed the incident, said the police upon receiving the boy, made frantic effort to locate his parents.

“It is heartwarming to state that the police located the mother of the missing but found child, one Comfort Elijah of Nung Ette, Ibesikpo Asutan local government area,’’ he said Macdon also confirmed that the Com-

missioner of Police (CP) in the state, Ahmed Zaki while handing the child over to the mother, advised parents to see the security of their children as a priority.

T h e C P, i m p re s s e d by the brilliance of the ch i l d w h o, a c c o rd i ng to his mother, has been enrolled in school due to lack of money, awarded scholarship to see him through pr imar y school.

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non-governmental organisation, Youth Empowerment Foundation (YEF) has launched a programme to assist young people attain success in career and business.

The programme- Future Makers, is targeted at empowering teenage girls who benefit from the foundation’s GOAL mentoring and empowerment programme secure the right tool to becoming successful in business and career.

At a recent quiz competition organised for benefiting secondary school students of the GOAL programme in Lagos, head of corporate affairs and branding, Standard Chartered Bank, sponsors of the programme, Joke Adun, said it was part of the GOAL’s project aimed at inculcating in teenage girls life skills, such as financial literacy, sex

education, and sports.

Adun added that the GOAL programme had recorded a significant success since its inception in 2010, stressing that thousands of girls had benefited in several areas.

“One of the reasons we continue to do this is because we believe the future of Nigeria is the children. We have been doing this since 2010. We are committed to this programme,” she said.

Executive secretary of the foundation, Iwalola Jimoh Akinjimoh, said the impressive performance of the students of the participating school proved that the students have embraced the values of the GOAL programme. “ The programme is opportunity to bring the schools together. For us it is more important because the more young people are able to learn from each other; through this they are able to reinforce positive values in their behaviour.”

Edo to acquire APCs for security operations

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do State governor, Godwin Obaseki, has said that the government would be acquiring two additional Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) to strengthen the operations of security agencies in the state.

Obaseki stated this when he played host to executives of Edo State chapter of Police Community Relations Committee (PCRC) at the Government House on Wednesday.

According to the governor, his administration @Businessdayng

is focused on reducing incidence of violent crimes, a d d i n g . T h i s, h e s a i d , informed the decision to invest in infrastructure development, basic and education technical and youth empowerment programmes to create jobs and better the lives of our people.

“Our first major assignment was to reduce drastically the activities of miscreants and hoodlums. This move has encouraged a lot of investments, which have led to the growth of the state’s economy.”

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BUSINESS DAY

Friday 18 October 2019

Friday 18 October 2019

PHOTOSPLASH

BUSINESS DAY

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PHOTOSPLASH

BusinessDay Inspiring Woman Series 9. Theme: ‘She sees no boundaries’ in Lagos

Kemi Ajumobi, editor, Women’s hub, BusinessDay giving her welcome speech

Chioma Akpotha, actress/brand ambassador during her presentation

Owen Omogiafo, MD/CEO, Transcorp Hotels plc during her presentation

Osayi Alile, CEO, Aspire Coronation Trust Foundation (ACT) during her presentation

Tara Fela-Durotoye, founder/CEO, House of Tara International during her presentation

L-R: Funmi Adekele, marketing; Bunmi Adetiloye, marketing executive; Vivian Chukwuedo, marketing/ sales, all of Zenith Insurance

L-R: Darling Tunde-Olofin, designer, Darlene; Iyabo Sonuga of Xandrina Dressmakers; Oluwaseye Olaitan, creative director, Hollersy Foods, and Regina Chris-Ogbodo, CEO, Reggypanache Consult

L-R: Princeba Bolou, creative director, Art and Flavours Limited; Oluwakemi Ajumobi, lead reactor, Despaz Reahors Limited, and Yvonne Nzette, head chef, Yvonne’s Delife Food365

L-R: Tara Fela-Durotoye, founder/CEO, House of Tara International; Adeola Ogunmola Sowemimo, aircraft pilot, Qatar Airways/speaker; Kemi Ajumobi, editor, Women’s hub, BusinessDay; Osayi Alile, CEO, Aspire Coronation Trust Foundation (ACT)/speaker; Owen Omogiafo, MD/CEO, Transcorp Hotels plc/speaker, and Chioma Akpotha, actress/brand ambassador/speaker, at the Inspiring Woman series 9, themed: ‘She Sees no Boundaries’ in Lagos.

L-R: Nike Iwuayoku, MD, First Choice S.A Limited; Vinod Kaukiy; Josephine Nkem, and Chinelo Madueke, head, innovation hub, The Hatch

L-R: Ibironke Rotimi-Olajide, senior first officer, Airpeace Airline, and Maria Adophy, marketing manager, Binatone

L-R: Omoni Oboli, actress; Osayi Alile CEO, Aspire Coronation Trust ACT Foundation, and Juliet Aigbogun, wife of the publisher, BusinessDay Media

L-R: Ini Abimbola, CEO, Thistlepraxis Consulting, and Imomoemi Ibisiki, company secretary/legal adviser, Heritage Bank Plc

L-R: Yvonne Popoola, MD/CEO, Adom Limited, and Adeyanju Olomola, lead coach/CEO, Source Coaching Limited.

Pictures by David Apara

Adeola Ogunmola Sowemimo, aircraft pilot, Qatar Airways during her presentation

L-R: Vanessa Burgal, faculty of marketing, Lagos Business School (LBS); Visliki Samparu; Sidikat Taiwo, and Adeyrmi Bankole

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Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

HEALTH BUSINESS&LIFE Investments, entrepreneurship culture will boost Nigeria’s healthcare – Brown ANTHONIA OBOKOH

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uge investment in the healthcare sector will improve the economy and help the government in ease of doing business and also in delivering quality health service to Nigerians, Ola Brown, founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria have said.

According to the CEO, professionals in various disciplines especially in the health care industry should imbibe entrepreneurship skills as it is the only way to achieving success in their businesses.

Brown, the manager of the influential healthcare- Air ambulances recently gave the advise during her presentation at the Lit subnational Tour organised by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council and the Lagos State Government.

She noted that it was one thing to be professionally sound, “but a different ball game to run the business aspects of various disciplines successfully.”

Apart from ending poverty, having quality education, one of the most pressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) needs in Nigeria is ensuring healthy lives and the promotion of well-being for all at all ages.

In Nigeria, access to good health care is a luxury many cannot afford. No wonder the country’s average life expectancy rate is one of the lowest in the world at 52.2 years.

“Nigeria’s federal budget for

Brown

healthcare is $1billion and the population is almost 200 million.

We need to donate more money and until we get a large investment in the healthcare with where every single person in every single place begins to feel it,”Brown said.

She recommended that Nigeria needs to look at the duties on medical equipment and see how it can bring which ever taxes or duties down to zero, asserting that it would make people to be able to bring more medical equipment into the country.

Over the past 3 years, Nigeria has implemented more than 140 reforms, increased its Distanceto-Frontier (DTF) score by over 11 basis points, and moved up 24 places in the World Bank Doing Business Index (DBI) rankings.

“For me visa on arrival has

changed the way my business runs forever. Flying Doctors like every air ambulance service in the world is focused on moving patients from an area where there is an overwhelmed level of care to a more suitable level of care,” Brown said while commenting on Ease of doing business.

According to her, every year, there is an event that involves people climbing the mountain in Chad to look at some historic structures and there usually accident in the process.

“So can you imagine, trying to move an American or a European into a Nigerian hospital, you have to move them to the center of Chad first and wait two days for a visa there while the patient is critical before you can get them into Nigeria.”

According to Brown, “now we can fly directly to the accident scene and bring them straight into Lagos, they get their visa on arrival when they get here and we can take them to the hospital. I will tell you what that does, each of these patients are intensive care patients, they spend around $50,000 each.”

She said one can imagine if 1,000 to 5,000 of those patients were brought in to Lagos annually.

“The business services are making money because now they are making money from their charges when they issue visa.The hospitals are making money; the doctors can be paid better salaries. Even sometimes the relatives have to fly in to stay in hotels in Lagos. So it is a really huge boost to the economy,” Brown said.

Nigeria, others to access HIV self-testing kits on CIFF’s $25m investment ANTHONIA OBOKOH

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nowing one’s HIV status in Nigeria and other sub-Saharan African countries will soon become a thing of ease thanks to the $25 million invested in Global Fund by the Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF).

CIFF recently announced the investment aimed at fighting AIDS, and dedicated to scaling HIV selftesting in the African region.

The impact of self-testing may be greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the largest number of people living with HIV who do not know their status.

“CIFF is championing HIV selftesting and other methods to promote self-care as one of the most powerful ways for youth, women, and men to take control of their sexual & reproductive health,” said Miles Kemplay, Executive Director for Adolescence at CIFF. “People deserve the choice to test when they want, where they want and how they want.”

Paulyne Chemeli, a Nairobi pharmacist stated that distributing self-test kits is improving the uptake of HIV testing among individuals who require confidentiality or who do not trust healthcare workers.

“Thanks to HIV self-testing, we

now have more male clients and we encourage them to take at least two self-testing kits, including one for their partner,”Chemeli said.

1.9 million people were estimated in 2018 to be living with HIV in Nigeria. The most populous nation in Africa was also estimated to have recorded 130 000 new HIV infection and 53 000 AIDS-related deaths in the same year.

According to health experts, Nigeria is one of the countries in Africa with the largest HIV epidemic with one of the highest rates of new infection in the region.

The CIFF-Global Fund partnership is designed to increase funding for country programs that have ambitious HIV self-testing goals as well as put supportive policies in place for people to easily access self-tests.

“We applaud CIFF’s investment as there is an urgent need to engage people who would not normally test in traditional settings.

Self-testing is innovative and seeks to break the cycle of HIV transmission, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa,” Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund said.

In his remarks, he explained that“By accelerating access to HIV self-testing, we can get closer to controlling HIV as a public health threat.”

This is because more people www.businessday.ng

will know their status so that those with the syndrome can commence treatment while those who are negative can access prevention services.

“We want to raise awareness of the investment and encourage Sub-Sahara governments to apply,” Miles Kemplay, executive director for Adolescence at CIFF said.

Kemplay said that CIFF is championing HIV self-testing and other methods to promote selfcare as one of the most powerful ways for youth, women, and men to take control of their sexual and reproductive health.

According to the Fund, the first step to access the fund will be to engage policymakers and implementers in countries likely to be eligible to motivate them to apply in due course. Once the selection process is completed, the governments of the selected countries will need to develop robust strategies and operational plans to be able to access financing.

“Improving the uptake of HIV testing among individuals who require confidentiality or who do not trust healthcare workers.

Thanks to HIV self-testing, we now have more male clients and we encourage them to take at least two self-testing kits, including one for their partner,” Kemplay said.

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Expert advocates collaboration, strategic measures to curb suicide in Nigeria SIKIRAT SHEHU, Ilorin

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motesho Olumuyiwa, a medical practitioner with the University of Ilorin Clinic has advocated for strategic and collective measures to address the rising cases of suicide in Nigeria.

Olumuyiwa, who spoke to BusinessDay in Ilorin on how to identify and assist those with the tendency of committing suicide; recommended that, once a person is suspected of contemplating suicide, professional help should be rendered.

“Person should not be left all alone, family, friends and colleagues should intervene to provide company and possibly,” he advise.

According to Olumuyiwa,, the act of voluntarily taking one’s life is repulsive, disturbing and scary saying that suicide is frowned against by major world religions and culture.

He says: “Suicide is an extreme reaction to problem(s) which had lingered without solution; most people that commit suicide give one hint or the other but people around them could have failed to discern the potential risk of suicide or failed to make appropriate response to prevent it from happening.

“A person complaining that he or she is fed up and tired of life could be contemplating suicide, risky behavior such as reckless driving and sexual indiscretion could be due to the fact that an individual no longer values his/her life and could take it at any time.

“Feelings such as; hopelessness, feelings of guilt, loss of interest, insomnia, and low self-esteem, have been identified as having high tendency towards suicide.”

Speaking further, he says despite the fact that major world religions frown on suicide; there have been incidences of mass suicide amongst adherent of certain movement when their leaders twisted conventional scripture to suit their wild belief.

“Suicide prevention requires strategies that encompass work at the

individual, systems and community level. Individual needs encouragement and support of family, close friends and the community. If an individual contemplating suicide is holding a dangerous weapons (gun, explosives and sharp objects), there is need for extreme caution when trying to discourage such an individual.

“Therefore, it is better to invite professionals in the field (Police and other security agencies) to prevent a bloodbath, because such an individual could have homicidal tendency,” said Olumuyiwa Individuals on treatment for Psychiatric disorders he says they need support of family, friends, colleagues and the community at large.

As follow up care with the specialist is crucial to their health, default in clinic appointment could be the genesis of more trouble ahead, including possible suicide.

He equally asserted that bereaved individuals need empathy and support of those around them so that they could gradually overcome the psychological and emotional trauma, noting that, when this is lacking, a tilt to nervous breakdown/depression could increase the chances of suicide.

Olumuyiwa, however, identified unemployment as a major problem in Nigeria, as he stressed the need for government to create jobs for the teaming youths in the country.

He explains that a person could get depressed out of frustration of unemployment and get tilted towards committing suicide.

The medical practitioner says: “Economic hardship is not funny; not being sure of where the next meal is coming from could make a physical energetic person buckle and fall into depression.

“Empowerment of financiallychallenged individuals through soft loans, grants, gifts and provision of welfare stipends goes a long way in helping to meet their daily needs, especially feeding.

Continue online @www.businessday.ng

Oyo partners NGOs on eye surgery, treatment …as 8,000 benefits from medical outreach REMI FEYISIPO , Ibadan

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ight thousand patients in Oyo state benefited from a medical outreach to mark 2019 World Sight Day, which took place at the State Hospital, Ring road, Ibadan and at the State Hospital in Oyo town.

At the Free Eye Outreach and Cataract Surgery, jointly organised

by Oyo State Ministry of Health, Ophthamological Society of Nigeria, Oyo State branch, Organization of Tadhomum Muslimim, Nigeria, a Saudi Based Humanitarian Organization known as Al Basar International Foundation, and other non-governmental organizations two hundred glasses were given to those in need at no cost while Seven Hundred cataract surgeries were done successfully Speaking at the event, Seyi Makinde, Oyo State Governor advocated medical checkup as preventive measure to reduce incidence of Secondary Health Care in the society especially as human sight was concerned.

Makinde stated this in his address delivered to the mark 2019 World Sight Day, The Governor who was represented in Ibadan and Oyo cen@Businessdayng

ters by Muftau Ayoola, permanent secretary, Ministry of Health, a medical doctor and his counterpart at the Hospital Management Board, Bola Oloko respectively said the present administration was not focusing only on provision of curative services but to improve awareness on preventive steps for people of the state to be sound and healthy.

He said that concerted efforts would be made in ensuring that free health care system would be a permanent thing in the state. “I specially want to appreciate Al Basar International Foundation who has over the years supported the state in this laudable venture.

“Our goal is to really reform the health care system to be able to provide high quality health coverage in a cost effective way and in achieving this, government, individuals and various organizations have roles to play.

“With these inplace,i wanttoassure you that we would be securing an unrivaled legacy in the provision of quality health care service for all and sundry.”

Continue online @www.businessday.ng

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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HEALTH BUSINESS&LIFE

Sterling Bank: Bridging Nigeria’s healthcare financing gaps ANTHONIA OBOKOH

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bout 139 years after the nation’s first healthcare facility in Obosi opened its doors in 1880, primary and advanced healthcare delivery is beyond the reach of many citizens.

Healthcare development plans and reforms dating back to 1945 all sought to improve access to affordable and quality healthcare for all Nigerians.

Some of the recent reforms undertaken to reposition the health sector for efficient and effective services include the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), National Immunisation Coverage Scheme (NICS), Midwives Service Scheme (MSS) and Nigerian Pay for Performance (P4P) scheme, among others.

Highlighting the major challenges confronting the health sector, Clare Omatseye, president, Health Care Federation of Nigeria, placed inadequate funding and investment at the top of the list. She called for the establishment of a ‘catastrophe health fund’ to provide financing for medical equipment and infrastructure, among other nagging industry needs.

Curiously, foreign aid and philanthropic donations to the health sector are not in short supply. Yet our healthcare challenges remain daunting and is further aggravated by a rapidly increasing population.

The health sector is clearly in need of more sustainable sources of funding.

And the good news is that Sterling Bank is committed to bridging the sector’s financing gaps to help it save more lives.

Interestingly, Sterling Bank is the reputable go-to bank for financial solutions that help alleviate social and economic challenges in five crucial sectors of the economy. The sectors, known as the HEART of Sterling, are Health, Education, Agriculture, Renewable Energy, and Transport.

They are the bank’s focus sectors.

The bank’s health sector goals include improved primary and advanced healthcare delivery, infrastructure overhaul through equipment financing, adoption of technology and capacity building for medical practitioners. Others are research and development, data collection and adoption of innovative cost-effective business models.

Acknowledging the bank’s support and commitment to the health sector, Muhammadu Buhari, president of Nigeria commended Sterling

Tunde Adeola

Bank for supporting the federal government’s healthcare transformation initiative which will improve access to qualitative and affordable healthcare services for all Nigerians. He gave the commendation in Abuja during the inauguration of the Kuchigoro Model Primary Health Care Centre for Universal Coverage in Nigeria.

The President praised Sterling Bank for its foresight, innovation, and financing support to the project which is focused on vulnerable women, children and the elderly at little or no cost to beneficiaries.

Tunde Adeola, executive director, Commercial Banking, Sterling Bank, disclosed that only a reformed healthcare sector will check the country’s declining health and wellbeing profile.

“Our purpose as a bank is enriching lives which encompasses staying healthy and well, reducing health inequalities and protecting people from threats to their health and wellbeing. There are many worthy causes, but healthcare is a national priority that is too critical to be ignored.

“Only a reformed healthcare sector will check the country’s declining health and wellbeing profile. As such, we have set aside N10 billion to support operators in the healthcare industry,” Adeola said.

“Beyond financing, we are also involved in the areas of innovation, payment systems deployment as well as equipment finance on both demand and supply sides. Essentially, we are committed to the rapid development of the entire ecosystem in the health sector.”

Adeola further stated that the bank’s operations are based on three pillars – agility, digitization, and specialisation.

“We are agile and bringing the specialist skills to the healthcare sector using digital platforms.

Although thousands of people are making efforts to uplift healthcare delivery, such efforts are not enough to take the industry to the next level. Our approach is to use our influence and resources to bring all collaborators in the sector together to chart a new course through a sustainable collaboration that is digital based.”

He said that “We cannot use traditional methods to catch up.

Technology is the only way to leapfrog the sector. Also, the solutions to our healthcare challenges do not lie with just doctors, nurses, pharmacists, hospital administrators or even partners that are providing financial support.”

“It can only happen when these parties come together to thrash out the issues. We want to be known for bringing players in the health ecosystem together to find the solution.”

The bank executive director also emphasized the need for reliable data because it will make it easy to find solutions to healthcare-related problems. However, the current state of affairs in the sector is regrettable because anyone looking to get information about the sector will get contradictory data from different sources. He confirmed the bank’s readiness to work with digital partners to get reliable data that stakeholders in the sector can use in their work.

On his part, Adewale Adebowale, head -Health Sector Finance, Sterling Bank, said the bank’s intervention in the health sector became imperative due to the increasing demand for quality healthcare services and the inadequacy of government’s intervention in the sector whereas private sector participation is on the rise across the entire value chain. He said greater emphasis would be placed on the growing private healthcare market which makes it a focal point for prospective investors to examine.

Adewale said the bank’s goal is to improve healthcare delivery infrastructure in the country through equipment financing, improved access to medical technology that also improves health business by providing access and information to practitioners in the sector. “These will include technologies such as Hospital Management systems to improve data collection, analysis and decision making, and Inventory Management system to keep track of stock.”

He stated that the bank is working with partners that include PharmAccess, Medical Credit Fund (MCF) and Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) to deliver sustainable solutions at scale to the health sector. PharmAccess, for instance, has a digital agenda dedicated to connecting more Nigerians to better healthcare through public-private partnerships.

It is an international not-for-profit organisation that mobilises private and public resources for the benefit of healthcare providers and patients through a combination of loans to

healthcare providers, health insurance for patients, quality standards for hospitals, provider services, mobile health innovation, and impact research.

MCF, on its part, provides loans for small and medium scale hospitals to strengthen their business capacity.

This initiative entails preparing the hospitals for debt funding through trainings and business re-structuring. Notably, the bank has provided structured finance to two Oncology Centers in Lagos and Calabar to the tune of N7bn. The bank is the primary participating financial institution on Lagos State Access to Finance Scheme for Health in partnership with the World Bank/International Finance Corporation.

Sterling Bank also provides business advisory services to ACPN to improve quality control over drugs sold through a platform that allows them to buy directly from approved and credible drug wholesalers. Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria is a technical arm of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) committed to empowering every Community Pharmacist to embrace Best Pharmacy Practice and collaborate with all stakeholders in the health sector, to promote quality healthcare.

In addition to providing finance, the bank also supports and invests in healthcare advocacy programmes.

Two of its recent interventions are Diamonds in the Sky and Anave both feature-length films creating awareness and educating the masses against the scourge of cancer and malaria using the power of drama and celebrity artistes.

Production of Diamonds in the Sky was the outcome of Sterling Bank’s partnership with Leah Foundation, a not-for-profit and charitable health organisation delivering breast and cervical screening services to urban and rural communities in North Central Nigeria. The bank’s goal is to heighten breast and cervical cancer awareness through the educative movie to increase early diagnosis and screening rates which increases the chances for successful treatment.

Sterling Bank also partnered with Maternal Mortality Eradication (MACMME) Project to produce Anave, malaria, infant and maternal mortality advocacy movie. It highlights the plight of vulnerable children while also providing educating its audience that Africa’s most prevalent parasitic disease is preventable, treatable and curable.

LAPO spends N69.1m on cancer treatment in two years IDRIS UMAR MOMOH, Benin

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ift Above Poverty Organization (LAPO) says it spent the sum of N69, 175, 749, 21 million for cancer treatment between 2016 and 2018.

Sabina Idowu, executive director of the organisation said this at the LAPO-C4 phase two project management workshop organised for Community Based Organizations (CBOs) from Lagos, Edo, Imo, Rivers states and Abuja in Benin City.

HBL TEAM

Idowu said the money was spent on treatment, screening, diagnosis, awareness campaigns among other.

“The sum of N36, 604,767 million was spent in 2017 and N32, 570, 982, 21 million in 2018.”

She further said that in 2017, the sum of N20, 731,100 million was spent on CBOs’ grants for community intervention and N15, 873,667 million on monitoring, advocacy, media, printing and supply of screening materials.

She explained that the sum of N13, 887,100 million was in 2018

expended on CBOs’ grants for community intervention and N18, 683, 882, 21 million on monitoring, advocacy, media, printing and supply of screening materials.

While reviewing the performance of phase one of the project between November 2016 and October 2018, she said a total of 1,941,993 million persons made up of 654,488 males and 1,287,504 females were reached with cancer awareness campaign out of the 1,217,434 targeted persons.

In the period under review, she

said a total of 26,553 persons made up 3,126 males and 23,427 females out of the targeted 10,000 persons were screened for breast, cervical, prostate and childhood cancer.

The LAPO executive director further explained that 19,394 persons comprising 3,079 males and 16,315 females out of the projected 30,000 persons were referred for further diagnostic services.

“332 persons made up of 16 males and 316 females were referred for treatment services on prostrate, breast, cervical and childhood

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

cancer.”

Idowu explained that LAPO-C4 was initiated in 2016 to promote cancer prevention through massive enlighment outreaches among Nigerian communities where access to cancer diagnosis and treatment remain a challenge and confirmed terminal death sentence.

She said that LAPO is a leading non-governmental organization that is committed to the social, health and economic empowerment of the poor and the vulnerable across the country.

I Samuel Iduh, Graphics

22

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

LEADINGWOMAN Inspiring Women Series 9: Women empowered to break boundaries, become more

DESMOND OKON

A

deola Ogunmola Sowemimo, Aircraft pilot with Qatar Airways came from a place of obscurity, a slum in Kaduna State. People from this place struggle to be accepted by others. She aspired to be successful in a career woman hardly ever think of, but her environment did not support her dreams.

More so, she watched as her dreams slowly slipped away due to challenges that came partly from education, finance, and unemployment which lasted for two and a half years. However, when there seemed to be breakthrough, she got antagonized by a superior who threatened to do all the niceties to get her sacked on her first day at work.

Before Chioma Akpotha, one of Nollywood’s respected actress and producer, came to prominence in her career, she suffered serious setbacks. From her inability to get roles after several attempts at auditions, to feeling irrelevant in the industry, she almost gave up.

Although from different fields, what both women share in common are stories that show some of the challenges that women encounter. Experts in this area have argued that women face many challenges that tend to limit them.

Addressing this problem, Nigeria’s financial intelligence newspaper, BusinessDay Media, gathered women from various works of life at the ninth edition of its Inspiring Woman Series Conference to equip women with the right knowledge to enable them break free from all shades of limitations.

The theme “She Sees No Boundaries” was driven through stories like Ogunmola’s and Chioma’s as the women present were inspired to see beyond what may seem like boundaries, challenges or limitations.

The speakers, while addressing what constitutes boundaries and limitation, unanimously concluded that some challenges were beyond physical, and added mental and emotional challenges to the list.

One of the speakers, Osayi Alile, CEO, Aspire Coronation Trust (ACT) Foundation said the circumstances that a person is going through at any age could become a boundary. She said being too protective of oneself could lead to putting up boundaries and could be inimical to personal development.

“We think of boundaries as limits that we’ve put around ourselves. As women, there are so

L-R: Tara Fela-Durotoye, founder/CEO, House of Tara International; Adeola Ogunmola Sowemimo, aircraft pilot, Qatar Airways/speaker; Kemi Ajumobi, editor, Women’s hub, BusinessDay; Osayi Alile, CEO, Aspire Coronation Trust Foundation (ACT)/speaker; Owen Omogiafo, MD/CEO, Transcorp Hotels plc/speaker, and Chioma Akpotha, actress/brand ambassador/speaker, recently at the Inspiring Woman series 9, themed: ‘She Sees no Boundaries’ in Lagos.

many limitations we go through.

As we women, what creates the boundaries for us today is because we look at other people’s times or journey. You have to realize that sometimes, you put your own limitation just by looking at other people’s journey—everybody’s journey is different. Once you focus on your own self, you become better.” Osayi said, adding that “Focusing on people’s journeys will make you pursue what is not your own, and when you begin to pursue what is not your own, you limit yourself completely,” she said.

Explaining the theme, Alile said it did not mean that boundaries or challenges do not exist, rather, it talks about having a mind-set that they can be overcome.

“We know that boundaries exist,” she said. “But when we say ‘she sees no boundaries’, we’re talking about the heart, the mind, knowing that you will walk out of any barrier… and find a way around it. So, you must find other ways to deal with issues that you are dealing with.”

For women to break boundaries, they must know themselves, know who they are as a person, know what they want in life, and what purpose and journey they are meant to embark on, Alile said.

“When you talk about steps to take, make sure you have a great network around you, people that can help you overcome those challenges that you face, but you also need to begin to gather knowledge, knowledge is key, because www.businessday.ng

you only know if you have a limitation if you know what journey you’re on.

“So once you begin to gather knowledge, and then unlearn some things. A lot of these boundaries that we face are things that we have gathered from when we were younger. So sometimes, you need to unlearn those things and realise that it’s not about you, and don’t put it as a stamp over your life. Once you do that, it makes it easier,” she said.

Also speaking at the event, Owen Omogiafo, managing director/chief executive officer, Transcorp Hotels Plc, said limitations were part of life and the process of getting to achieve something.

She said it was critical to have an idea of your personal vision, where you are going to when dealing with boundaries, because “if you do not know where you are going to, you won’t even understand that there is a barrier on the way there.”

“And when you encounter the barrier, there is no need to throw your hands up and shout. Look at the barrier, rather, analyse the barrier, say ‘what am I going to do about this?’, ‘is it a barrier I’m going to ignore?’ or ‘is it a barrier I’m going to deal with?’ is it a barrier I’m going to push myself through?

“Is it a barrier that I have put in place myself? There are various things that you’d do, but very importantly, is have a vision, have measures to know what you are doing. You might move away for

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some time, but always know that you must come back to where you are going to. Nevertheless, you must have an idea of where you are going. And keep in mind, barriers are part of the growth process,” Omogiafo said.

While speaking, Tara Durotoye, CEO, House of Tara International said there is a nexus between service, women supporting women and breaking boundaries.

“When you think about boundaries, one of the things that you experience is that there is a need for people to be there to tell you what you are good at, reaffirm you, and that is where women supporting women becomes important.

“Sometimes, the boundaries we see, is our cheer team, our circle of influence who will voice out that these are boundaries that we can actually overcome. And so it becomes important that we have to surround ourselves with strong women, who believe in the power of supporting themselves, invest in nurturing those relationships by serving in those relationships and you can only reap what you sow,” Durotoye said.

Inspiring, encouraging women to be more using real stories has been a distinguishing feature BusinessDay’s Inspiring Women Series, and participants have had tremendous experiences for the ninth time since inception.

According Kemi Ajumobi, editor, Women’s Hub and coordinator, Inspiring Woman Series Confrence, BusinessDay Media, the Inspiring Women Series platform @Businessdayng

was born out of her desire to inspire women beyond the pages of the Newspaper.

“When I started working in BusinessDay a decade ago, I began featuring women with intriguing stories to inspire people. I later realised they had more to say that a page in the Newspaper wasn’t sufficient for so I birthed the idea to my boss and he okayed it. Let’s just say the rest is history,” Further speaking on how the platform has been sustained, Ajumobi, who doubled as the compere, attributed it to God. “He sustains and I retain all He inspires,” she said.

“Secondly, consistency. Planning such an event is tedious but when you think of the lives that will be impacted, strength springs up. As it is with most things in life, you must be consistent. It will eventually come through if you believe. Third thing is focus. I do not listen to nay sayers no matter who it is. When you have a dream, you nurture it, when you birth it you must guard it, in guarding it, you preserve it and from there you must choose to be unstoppable,” she explained.

The interactive sessions and engagement with participants was evidence that this year’s edition was mind blowing.

Asked whether the event was as successful as imagines, “yes,” Ajumobi said. “It did achieve its purpose and surpassed it. The seats were sold out. Inspiring Woman Series 10 is going to be mind blowing. Watch this space.”

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

23

AGRIBUSINESSINSIGHT Market Insights

Analysis

Commentaries

Experts/Industry Views

Commodities watch

Policy Reviews

Send in Commentaries to caleb.ojewale@businessdayonline.com

Mile 12 market plans tomato processing to curb multi-billion naira losses, improve hygiene Stories by CALEB OJEWALE Twiiter: @calebtinolu

M

ile 12 has been dubbed the largest market for food produce in West Africa, but this also means the market carries a substantial burden of post-harvest losses and the economic wastages that come with it.

Top on this list is the tomato crop which suffers a 40 percent loss, valued in previous BusinessDay report at N72 billion annually, between farm and market. Nigeria’s demand for fresh tomato according to the Agriculture Promotion Policy (2016 – 2020) is estimated at about 2.2 million metric tonnes per annum, while the country produces only about 1.5 MMT. Despite the supply gap, about 40 percent (equivalent to 700,000 MT) of fresh tomato is lost due to wastage.

Three months ago, the Mile 12 market got a new leadership, which now appears determined to redefine the way trading of agricultural goods is conducted. Under the leadership of Shehu Usman Jibril, chairman of the Mile 12 International Market Perishable Section, there are now plans to curb post harvest losses, and create a new stream of revenue from hitherto lost farm produce.

“It is a very bad experience and people lose a lot of money,” said Jibril on the impact of losses due to spoilage. According to him, if one is not knowledgeable in the business of food produce, and just entered it probably, after getting a loan from the bank or some other source of

Shehu Usman Jibril inspects crates of tomatoes at the Mile 12 market

funding to start business, “I am doubting if you will not end up being in the police station because of the experiences we have (with losses),” he said.

“Most of the people that bring goods to the Mile 12 market are farmers and I can tell you they lose a lot because this is the biggest market in West Africa where you have a lot of tomatoes and a lot of onions,” said Jibril.

As he explained, what is required in the market is how to process those tomatoes that are at the verge of spoiling. When farmers bring their

tomatoes and are expecting buyers and after some hours no one comes for it, the next thing should be taking it to a processing house.

Currently, such processing facility does not exist in the market, but Jibril told Agribusiness Insight in an exclusive interview that his adm inistration is working towards having it installed in a hygienic place inside the market. Invariably, when any farmer or trader sees that their tomato is going bad, they can quickly take it to the processing house.

Asked what form of processing is to be adopted, he explained three

methods are currently being considered. The first is to grind those tomatoes and put in a safe place where people can buy the ground one.

Secondly is drying the tomato.

When the fresh tomatoes are brought to prevent spoilage, these can get dried and kept for traders to later sell without much fear of spoilage.

This will require a large scale drying system that can handle the volume of tomatoes at the market.

“The market authority is willing to do that for our consumers at a rate that they will not get much loss and at a rate that we also will not lose,”

he said.

Lastly is the plan to process tomatoes into paste where it can easily be sold. All these options, and especially the third, are capital-intensive methods that require substantial funding. However, if successfully implemented, not only will these processing methods curb food wastage, but will also create a new value chain and revenue stream.

Jibril says the market is looking to partner with private companies on delivering processing units that can enable this value addition, reduce wastages, and generate more revenue for both farmers and traders.

Hygiene is often another topic of concern when the subject of Mile 12 is raised. The market leader however said there are plans to collaborate with the local government to put protective structures in place, that will provide roofing for all sections in the market that are very open.

“We are trying to cover them and make them hygienic so that it will be a better place,” he said.

According to him, however, “the most interesting part of it is that it has never happened in the history of the market for over forty years that somebody shopped in Mile 12 market and had issues of meningitis, cholera. It has always been safe. Yes, it may be dirty but what we sell is very hygienic.”

In terms of data, the market is currently unable to give accurate information on volume of transaction, either in terms of goods offloaded daily or even financial turnover.

However, Jibril expects this to change in the near future.

Climate-smart agriculture to determine Achieving food security in Africa with the Agrorite approach future of sustainable farming TOYOSI AYODELE

F

orest wildfires are not really known as a regular occurrence in Nigeria, but with climate change and the unpredictability that comes with it, lessons can be drawn from climatesmart agriculture and its usefulness in sustainable food production.

Not just wildfires, but also in view of a number of severe environmental events this year, which have included historic hurricanes, cyclones and monsoons, scientists, researchers and policymakers recently gathered in Bali to advance sustainable agriculture as a priority for the next decade.

“Recent events such as forest fires around the world have only raised awareness of the increasingly fragile state of our environment and climate,” said Bruce Campbell, program director for the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in a statement.

“We are on course for a three to four-degree warmer world. There are many opportunities for agriculture to mitigate its contribution to climate change as well as adapt to farming under new, extreme conditions.”

Among the “climate-smart” initiatives presented at the conference

were pioneering “Science Field Shops”, which have supported rice farmers in Indonesia to gather and then digitise their own historic weather data, allowing them to develop their own climate-smart references and resources.

Other research highlighted opportunities to reduce livestock emissions through optimising diets according to the specific needs of individual animals. A study of dairy cattle in Lembang, West-Java, found emission reductions of up to 15 per cent with tailored feed rations.

Elsewhere, researchers found that self-help groups and social media were particularly effective among female farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda for promoting knowledge around crop and seed diversity to improve resilience against extreme weather.

A flagship big-data platform that assessed the impact of 100 agricultural technologies across Africa was also due to be launched at the event. Evidence for Resilient Agriculture (ERA) contains more than 75,000 data points from around 1,400 studies covering indicators such as yield, soil carbon and resource use efficiency. www.businessday.ng

T

he International Food Policy Research Institute in 2002 described food security as a situation in which all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and foodpreferencesforanactivehealthylife.

Food security is the measure of the availability of food and the access to same by individuals. This means that on the one hand is the availability of sufficient food to cater to a teeming population and on the other hand is the capacity of the population to afford and access the available food. It therefore means a reduction in starvation and poverty will meet the objectives of food security.

The World Bank defines food security as a condition where everyone has access to sufficient food to live a healthy and productive life.

Food insecurity in Africa is generally caused by poverty. That is, the inability of people to access nutritious food in sufficient amounts due to lack of money or poverty.

This reality is more worrisome as a higher percentage of the population who cannot access sufficient food are rural dwellers who are generally smallholder farmers. The same small

https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng

Ayodele

holder farmers who are also key players in the scheme of agricultural things still constitute a large portion of the demography of persons affected by food insecurity in Africa.

Underdeveloped Agricultural sector practices which include; soil management practices, pre and postharvest losses, financial inclusion on the one hand, and access to market barrier on the other hand are all responsible for the lack of agricultural profitability of small holder farmers who are then victims of food insecurity.

The Agrorite Approach Agrorite is a premier digital agricultural platform working to tackle food insecurity by creating shared value for smallholder farmers and investors/businesses. The Agrorite platform creates social impact on @Businessdayng

these smallholder farmers who have been identified as constituting a major part of the overall number of farmers in agricultural production.

Agrorite promotes participation in agriculture by enabling sponsors to earn and learn through crowdfunding.

It is the vision of Agrorite to create a technologically driven impact for sustainable agriculture with a mission to inspire and nurture participation in agriculture by all.

To actualize the mission and vision statements, Agrorite has fully aligned itself with certain Sustainable Development Goals which include; SDG Goal 1: No Poverty.

The approach of Agrorite is to commercialize these small holder farmers to ensure agricultural profitability such that they grow above and beyond the subsistence farming of what they do and target expansion of production to cater to high scale demands and volumes of agricultural produce by off takers.

SDG Goal 2: Zero Hunger.

Through driving agricultural participation and prosperity by all and sundry, there will be a reduction in Hunger index and in the end; Agrorite hopes to record zero Hunger and work towards that.

Continues online @www.businessday.ng

24

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Hotels

‘We have brought into Ikeja, specifically Lagos Airport Top BusinessDay Partner Hotels area, an elevated level of hospitality’ It is obvious that the entry of Legend Hotel Lagos Airport Curio Collection by Hilton has changed the face of hospitality business in Ikeja and Lagos. In this interview, PETER IDOKO, general manager of the hotel, speaks to OBINNA EMELIKE on the elevated service offerings, growing patronage, sustained standards, among other feats the hotel achieved in its first year of operation.

No doubt, Legend Hotel Lagos Airport Curio Collection by Hilton has changed the hospitality landscape of Lagos since inception. How has it been since then? t has been an amazing journey from the day of the opening up till now. Legend Hotel Lagos Airport, Curio Collection by Hilton, is an oasis in the bustling city of Lagos. The hotel’s unrivalled location, which is a short drive, and indeed, within walking distance to the international airport terminal and only 5km from the domestic terminal, has been acclaimed perfect for corporate and leisure travelers alike. Being a Hilton brand and with the advantage of the awardwinning Hilton Honors program has helped in the acceptability and growth of our hotel. As envisaged, we have truly become the convenient hub for travelers in and through Lagos.

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

I

Are there specific achievements in your first year of operation?

It has been an upward trajectory. We have brought into Ikeja and specifically the Lagos Airport area an elevated level of hospitality.

Many people now know our hotel brand and location.

Our guest satisfaction ratings are quite high as can be seen on various review sites. On the human side of things, we have built a great team of hospitality professionals, many of whom have benefited from local

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

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

Tel: 01 277 3560

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 Peter Idoko

and international training and development.

curiosity as it relates to travel.

How are the Nigerian guests responding to the Curio brand and foreigners as well?

Curio – A Collection by Hilton is a global set of upscale and luxury hotels, each handpicked for its distinctive character. We have welcomed a wide range of guests and with every individual visit, the response has been that of utmost satisfaction and fulfilling experience. We have been able to provide that unique service that remains memorable to both Nigerian and foreign guests. We are able to tap into Curio Collection by Hilton’s “Curious Gene” a programme that explores

Are guests beginning to take advantage of the world-class facilities and service offerings, especially the hassle-free immigration facilities to boost seamless travel experience while in the hotel?

Yes indeed! Our Flight Support Lounge within the hotel has become the ideal waiting area for travelers, as well as, in-house guests. It is a space to wait for flights while being provided the comfort, convenience and experience of the Legend outlets of hotel and flight support.

Because of this, our unique “Day Use Plus Package”, is in great demand by travelers or people transiting who need a place to wait, relax and unwind.

At the inception, you had a target market, has it changed and is there a segment you will rather appeal to?

We haven’t changed our target market. We have only enlarged it. We have added a few meeting facilities, which means that we can welcome not just individual travelers but also meeting guests. We are happy to welcome all guests into our hotel.

www.businessday.ng

In line with your one year operation milestone, are there activities to celebrate it and is Hilton still celebrating its 100 years in operation?

Celebrating 100 years in business cannot be done in a short time because it is a huge accomplishment that we a grateful to be a part of.

With one successful year of operations under our belt, we are using this period to let the public know more about this oasis in Lagos and that we aim to be in the frontline of hospitality in Lagos.

So far, is Hilton Worldwide impressed with the Lagos Airport Curio Collection and are there other Curio Collections in the pipeline?

Our Vice President for Africa & Indian Ocean will be visiting us shortly. I will let him answer this then.

You have achieved despite challenges, what are these challenges and possible suggestions to tackle them?

We have had a fair share of the collective challenges that businesses in our location have, but we have been able to surmount them with the collective help of the ownership, leadership and team of Legend Hotel Lagos Airport, Curio Collection by Hilton.

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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

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

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

FINTECH News

Products Review

25

In association with

Technology Review

Personality Review

Company Review

Will under fire Facebook Libra find soft-landing in Africa?

FRANK ELEANYA

T

he survival of Libra, Facebook’s vision for a global currency, is hanging on very thin ice, hence may prompt the social media powerhouse to turn to African countries to stay alive.

W h e n a p p ro a c h e d , eventually, African regulators will need to decide whether to tow the hardline as their counterparts in the US or Europe or just embrace the company that has given millions of dollars in aides and technology to startups on the continent.

Repeated efforts by Facebook negotiators to convince regulators in the US and Europe that Libra’s is not on a mission to take over the world’s economic system is falling on deaf ears and forcing former allies to break ranks.

In less than two weeks, the Calibra Network has lost five of its most powerful members including Paypal which quit on 4 October, then Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe and Mercado Pago bailing on 11 October. Their exits mean that every major US payment processor has exited the association. PayU, the only processor remaining, is keeping its decision to either remain or exit close to its chest.

Facebook had on 18 June 2019 announced that it plans to launch a developmental global cryptocurrency which it called Libra in 2020. According to a White Paper, Libra is de-

signed as a form of digital money backed by a reserve of assets.

In the beginning, the company imagines Libra will be used mainly to transfer money between individuals in developing countries who lack access to traditional banks. Eventually, the goal is to create the first truly mainstream cryptocurrency: a decentralized global form of payment that is as stable as the dollar, can be used to buy almost anything, and can support an entire range of financial products — from banking to loans to credit.

Libra’s biggest problem is Facebook’s global reputation which has come under intense scrutiny in

www.businessday.ng

recent times on the back of widely reported cases of data abuses.

Facebook reputation is perhaps a problem the 27 members of the Calibra Network did not anticipate will drag for so long, hence the decision to leave Facebook as the face of the project. That decision has not paid off, if anything, some members are likely to suffer reputational losses in associating so closely with Facebook.

In explaining the reason for their exit, eBay and Stripe said they had received letters from US authorities threatening regulatory actions for simply associating with Facebook.

In a letter to G20 finance

ministers on Sunday, Randal Quarles, the head of the global Financial Stability Board, said that, with a “host of challenges” posed by global “stablecoins”, such as Libra, “possible regulatory gaps should be assessed and addressed as a matter of priority”.

Although Libra is projected as an ideal payment technology for emerging markets, Facebook will be hard put to turn to Asia where Chinese companies already dominate.

But it seems to have a warm relationship with African countries all thanks to its investment in startups in the tech ecosystem, including a $25 million funding of Andela, several startup

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meetups and bootcamps, free internet connection among others.

Africa has also responded in kind with 139 million users resident on the continent accounting for 69.84 percent of internet users on the continent.

“We see there is a demand from customers in countries in Africa to use mobile money services because they bring a lot of value to them in terms of the ability to not only send and receive money, but store money in a much more secure way than using cash,” Bertrand Perez, chief operating officer, Libra Association, told BusinessDay in London.

The company will be

@Businessdayng

counting on authorities’ relative ignorance to the nature of blockchain and other technology which is partly responsible for the low investment in digital infrastructure.

Importantly, across the continent, many regulators have adopted a “wait and see” approach, hence the blockchain market in Africa is largely allowed free rein while authorities claim to be “understudying” the market.

Elo Umeh, co-founder, and CEO of Tetragon Group says Libra’s headache may also come from Chinese companies in Africa.

“Chinese companies have emerged as commercially astute operators in Africa and have succeeded in overcoming the region’s connectivity difficulties to access hard-to-reach consumers,” Umeh said. “To ensure Libra’s long-term success in African markets, Facebook needs to watch out for Chinese companies - unencumbered by regulations - which are expanding aggressively across the continent.”

Notwithstanding, the global scrutiny Facebook is undergoing on behalf of Libra will certainly not go unnoticed by African central banks which have long harboured suspicions about digital assets. The majority of these Central Banks are conservative, it is expected that some level of scrutiny will be brought to bear on the company.

Thus, for Libra, the 2020 launch looks even further away.

26

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

ENTERTAINMENT

Farming: A tale of untold African story OBINNA EMELIKE

I

f you have read the history of Black American slavery, the civil rights, the African-American experience, among other ugly experiences of Black people across the world in generations past, you would get different perspectives that keep throwing up many unanswered questions.

Many filmmakers have attempted to answer the questions by revealing and drawing global attention to Africa’s ugly past in foreign lands with award-wining movies such as Kunta Kinte. Yet, there are many stories that need to be told.

Until recently, very little is known about the Black British Struggle, an ugly experience of Black people in the United Kingdom in the past. The struggle is one of the stories that need to be told and a filmmaker who experienced the wrath is now telling the tale to a generation that seems to be in a hurry to forget history.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, a British-Nigerian actor, is revealing the British struggle from his own perspective in the movie he entitled ‘Farming’. The title refers to a social practice in which Nigerian immigrants to Britain would temporarily give their children to white foster families, sending money for the child’s upkeep while they studied to make a better life for themselves.

The movie, which is his directional debut, is based on Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s unbelievable story as a troubled youth, and as a black member of a white skinhead gang in 1980s Essex.

It tells a story of a young Nigerian boy, ‘farmed out’ by his parents to a white British

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, playing the role of Lock Nah in The Mummy Returns

family in the hope of a better future. Instead, he becomes the feared leader of a white skinhead gang. The compelling film sees Akinnuoye-Agbaje turn his traumatic early life into a drama, yet telling the one of the many untold stories.

Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s parents were among a generation of Nigerians to come to Britain, the colonial “mother country” to get a university education, which they could take home and use to build democracy in their newly independent nation, then beset by civil war.

The filmmaker was among the many Nigerian children taken in by his foster parents and mostly raised by his new mother, Ingrid (played in the film with abrasive spirit by Kate Beckinsale) while her husband was away working as a lorry driver.

Explaining the rationale for making the movie, Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s said, “Here in Britain, we know a lot about the history of Black American slavery, civil rights, and the African American experience.

But very little is known about

A scene from Farming

the black British struggle. This is just one of our stories.”

As well, the filmmaker traced the origin of farming to an age-old habit in Africa, particularly Nigeria where parents usually send their children from the village to stay with an extended family member(s) in the townships for better opportunities, especially education and not necessarily for better upbringing.

But in the UK then and other foreign lands, the filmmaker noted that Africans like his parents saw farming as a status thing as “they wanted

us to get an education and learn to speak good English”.

However, the practice remained popular until in 2000 when the laws became strict following the abuse and murder of Victoria Climbié.

But while there were no official data on how many African children were farmed in the UK for several decades, Akinnuoye-Agbaje said that most Nigerian British children experienced at least a few years away from their birth families, while the white foster parents and homes then grew.

Probably due to the untold

story it revealed, the movie scooped the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) this year.

For the EIFF jury members, which included; Antonia Campbell-Hughes, David Hayman and Philip John, “The unanimous decision of the Michael Powell Jury goes to an important, powerful and disturbing film from Adewale A k i n nu oye -A gb aj e. Th i s story forces us to confront an unfamiliar, uncomfortable reality. Farming keeps you invested in its brutal world. Culturally adrenalising. Visceral. Inspirational.”

A sl o, t h e sa m e ju r y awarded the Best Performance in a British Feature Film accolade to Damson Idris for his role in Farming.

Speaking on the film and its feats so far, Moses Babatope, managing director, FilmOne, Lagos, Nigeria, said that the movie is an important one for the region. “We have so many stories that need to be told.

Many, like Farming, have relevance beyond Africa and affect the history and culture of other countries where there is a Nigerian diaspora. We want to ensure that audiences in West Africa get to watch movies that shift the conversation around our impact on the world.”

Meanwhile, with starry names like Genevieve Nnaji, Kate Beckinsale, Gugu Mbatha-Raw among others in its ensemble, Farming is a must-watch because of its chilling story about combative need to face down the past, before embracing a future of hope.

Farming will be released from October 25, 2019 in cinemas in Nigeria, Ghana and across West Africa.

Erica Nlewedim set to impact Nigerian film industry

E

rica Nlewedim, Nollywood actress, who has spent the last few months in Met Film School in London, is back to Nigeria and ready make a mark in the industry.

Erica, who came into the limelight after her participation in the Most Beautiful Girl In Nigeria (MBGN) pageant in 2014 where she won the Most Photogenic award, made the

transition from modelling to acting and has not looked back ever since.

Her acting career began in 2015 after she acted in a series Secrets and Scandals where she played a leading role. Since then, she has starred in a good number of television series and films, notable among them are Flatmates, Royal Castle, Being Farouk, Made in Heaven, and Hire A Woman. www.businessday.ng

Speaking on her experience at Met Film, Erica said:“The school is right in the Ealing Studios where parts of big movies like Doctor Strange, Two Faces of January, The Lady Killers, were shot; we got to experience firsthand how the big budget Hollywood and European movies are produced.

“I learned misner method of acting, improvisation, voice and accent training, mono-

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logues, casting and audition techniques, we were taught by the BAFTA (British Academy Of Film and Television Arts) award winning director, Jonas Grimes.

“And I ended my stay by producing my first short film “Mercy Mercy” directed by Emmanuel Donaldson.”

Erica is also an ambassador for some tops brands in Nigeria, modelling for brands like @Businessdayng

Nature’s Gentle Touch, Access Bank, Zaron Cosmetics, Jumia Online Shopping Mall, Stanbic IBTC Bank, and Travel Beta.

Riding on the back of a successful modeling career amid making steps to boost her continued success while making innovative inputs in the entertainment industry, Erica is definitely on her way to the top.

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

27

ENTERTAINMENT Are you maximizing your priorities and productivity?

BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

environment we live in you need to be constantly encouraged to relieve yourself of the impending stress you experience daily. Positive leaders bring positive attitude.

JANET ADETU

E

ight Keys to Maximizing Your Priorities & Productivity i. Identify Your Positive & Negative Qualities: Conduct an in-depth appraisal of yourself finding facts and not faults.

This will help you form a basis for improvements. Emphasize more on your positives and do not dwell on your inadequacies. Include in your list those things that matter most to you, make them your priority.

Identifying your positive traits will help you stay focused and assist in increasing your productivity both personally and professionally. ii. Be Goal-Oriented and Forward Thinking Working endlessly without a goal can be futile. To be productive you need direction that is time bound and achievable. When setting your goals you should visualize your success with a positive attitude. Your passion for your vision will drive your productivity up and set you on the right path. Along the way be open to possible changes, a few risks but always believe you can do it. iii. Associate with Positive People It goes without saying that when you surround yourself with negative people chances are they will put your ideas down or discourage your efforts. This in turn will demoralize you and sabotage your self-esteem. An optimistic boss will always encourage his / her subordinates. Surround yourself with people who you find encourage, inspire and motivate you.

This will boost your energy, spur you to increase your knowledge base and discipline you towards ensuring that you achieve that which you have set out to achieve. In such a competitive

iv. Polish yourself Image Your image is everything, the beginning of you creating a good or bad first impression. A successful person has a deep sense of self -worth and a good self –image. Having a good selfimage is the foundation from which you’re self – esteem, self – confidence and attitude arises from. When you polish your image you say a lot about yourself without saying a single word. When you feel good about yourself you are confident to excel in any project or mission. Dress the way you would like to be addressed.

Be sensitive and pay attention to detail when choosing what to wear daily. Dress appropriately recognizing the occasion, day of the week, time of day. Ensure your clothes fit properly, accentuate your body and feel comfortable. Try to colour coordinate your dress sense effectively, compliment your appearance with the correct accessories and spice your look with fabulous shoes. Your image is incomplete with me talking about the importance of grooming and hygiene. The easiest way to sabotage your image is to look unkept, give off an overwhelming odour and appear unapproachable.

Identify a smell you like and are comfortable with, take care of your hair, nails, face and feet regularly.

Your objective in being productive is for people to see you and trust you enough to want to do business with you. Creating, establishing and maintaining relationships is key to maximizing productivity. v. Be a Team Player ‘No man is an island’ - is a popular saying that could not be further from the truth.

Just like I explained about my colleague who was busy doing nothing, this is because he operated alone. He was never a team player so became

quite anti-social and inefficient. In being a team player you are able tap from a wider pool of knowledge. You therefore gain more and can direct your level of productivity positively.

A team player should equally share information, be open to opinions, constructive criticism, new ideas and advice. When you work in a team you work in common agreement towards a common goal. As a team your achievements are greater, provided you are able to get everybody to follow the vision, accomplish their individual and collective tasks and motivated to achieve. With all these in check as you increase your productivity you will automatically increase that of the team. vi. Be Social & Business Savvy Having ‘Savoir Faire’ meaning ‘know how’ is essential today to become a successful leader. Your poise, polish, positioning and presence is what will give you that Panache advantage. It is important that you acquaint yourself with the proper protocol and procedures for behaving and doing the right thing in every situation.

Whether you are in a social or business setting there are some behaviours expected of you that command respect, consideration and dignity.

When you conduct yourself in the appropriate manner you will appear trustworthy and approachable, people will like to associate with you and know you better. Etiquette and protocol affect your personal as well as your corporate image as courtesy is expensive but costs nothing. Proper etiquette should be exhibited in the workplace, board room, among colleagues, in a gathering, during casual and formal dining events, social scenarios and the like.

Knowledge is power, if you do not know these attributes feel free to seek new knowledge. Hire a personal coach to train and equip you, invest in yourself for improved productivity and the future.

‘

Being appreciative of your gradual achievements will push you in your pursuit of excellence

courageous, disciplined and confident. Your leadership style has a lot to do with your character, personality and life experiences which can be both positive and negative. To be productive you need to first believe in what you do thereby leading yourself to success. In having the spirit of a leader you want everything around you to be successful therefore you carry everyone along to follow your dream. In adopting a leadership mindset you will need to show professional presence, this you can do by acting like a mentor, showing respect, motivating others, managing stress, managing time, maintaining ethics and values, building effective teams and relationships. viii.

Have an Attitude of Gratitude Your productivity level is influenced by many factors whether it is to satisfy a need, avoid a loss or gain something you are driven by what motivates you.

Being appreciative of your gradual achievements will push you in your pursuit of excellence. Whether you work for yourself, a good or bad boss how you are motivated will also influence your priorities and productivity.

Your reasons may be psychological for comfort, egocentric for status, emotional for respect ,power for control, personal growth for satisfaction and confidence, or for the challenge to be competitive. Your attitude and demeanour should be one of gratitude, as this will keep you thinking positively. Pessimism will only draw you backwards and kill your vision.

In conclusion I say :

‘’Poor Productivity affects the quality of life Perceive Greatness, Seek Perfection, Achieve Success’’ --- Janet Adetu

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

vii. Adopt a Leadership Mindset To be a leader involves being bold,

janet.adetu@jsketi-

Happy Reading!

How DFA discovers, inspires fashion talents in Africa

R

ecently, some young fashion talents across the African continent engaged in healthy rivalry at Design Fashion Africa (DFA), a platform that aims to help them to reach their potential and harness opportunities to grow their business.

The DFA, a brainchild of Oracle Experience, a Lagos-based marketing agency, aims to help fashion talents to hone their creative ingenuity in tune with global best practice, as well as mentor existing and new talents on how to expand their business to global clientele.

At the grand finale fashion show, which held on October 5, 2019 in Lagos, the DFA platform hosted fashion experts and upcoming ones across Africa to a new level of creative exploration.

The 3-day event, which

calumniated in the fashion show, started with designers selling their submissions online, amid other activities such as a reality show, marketplace, a master-class and conferences that featured various panel sessions.

The marketplace brought 77 vendors who showcased their wares and provided network opportunities for designers to meet their clients and explore their areas of needs.

Prior to the final show, DFA featured a boot camp where various upcoming fashion designers submitted their creative sketches on instagram amid a live screening. The contest saw 10 successful designers who participated in the final fashion show where the final winner emerged.

The three-day event also featured DFA Academy amid master-classes where www.businessday.ng

participants were mentored on the etiquettes of fashion and photography. Mao Atafo, a fashion icon, Ogechukwu Agada, a modeling expert, House of Tara (makeup), as well as, Kelechi Amadi Obi for photography, were present.

It was a whole knowledge of experience for the contestants as they met with the experts.

There was also a conference that featured panel session attended by designers from many parts of Africa who shared their experiences with the upcoming designers.

One of the highlights of the event was the crowning of Abubakar Jubril as winner of the DFA 2019 Fashion Show, while the second and third positions were considered winners as well.

Speaking at the event, Abubakar Jubril, said the

DFA has given him the platform to launch his fashion business to the international stage.

“I am so happy to win the contest. DFA gave me the platform to excel. For my collections to be featured on the runway, where Mao Atafo was present, is something I never thought of even in decades to come”, he acknowledged.

At a media briefing held recently in Lagos, Felix King, managing director and CEO, Oracle Experience, explained what the DFA is doing differently from other fashion platforms adding that the objective is to capture young designers and bring them on the big stage.

King noted that DFA provides the hub for young designers to excel through trainings, interactions and networking with established designers, while uniting Africans through

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fashion.

“The DFA differs from other fashion platforms because it focuses on upcoming designers rather than the established ones. From the feedback we have gotten so far, designers should no longer have to wait because DFA is available for them to leverage and promote their business”, he said.

He said the platform discovers, empowers and inspires new fashion talents with whole lots of experiences hence equipping them with knowledge they would have taken a long time to acquire.

For him, the DFA idea is changing the dynamics in the fashion industry because a lot of people in the business are trying to expand their business to include trainings, engagements and empowerments.

The Oracle Experience boss gave insight on the @Businessdayng

limitations faced by upcoming designers in the fashion industry, saying many designers are constrained by inability to market their wares, as well as, increase their profit earnings. He stressed that achieving such feat needed the experience of experts in the industry like a Mao Atafo.

He also attributed lack of access to finances to fund fashion business as challenge for upcoming designers. But through the DFA such barriers, according to him, are broken because it provides links that solve the challenges.

The event was powered

by Oracle Experience in partnership with Jakaranda, Soundcity TV, OnTV, Spice TV and Urban Radio.

Sponsorship included the Ethiopian Airline, House of Tara, Heineken and Access Bank.

28

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Harvard Business Review

MANAGEMENTDIGEST

The CEO of Canada Goose on creating a homegrown luxury brand DANI REISS

I

clearly remember the day in 2001 when I decided that Canada Goose would commit to always making our signature parkas in Canada. I was sitting at my desk, reading that morning’s newspaper headlines, and I saw that two North American apparel companies were moving their manufacturing abroad. Their leaders gave two reasons: the high cost of domestic labor had been squeezing their margins and the belief that customers wouldn’t care about where products were made.

They’re wrong, I thought to myself. I’d learned from my early days at international trade shows that many customers in Europe and Asia do indeed care where goods are produced, especially high-value ones. I saw firsthand that people had a passion for high-quality, Canadianmade outerwear, and I suspected that over time, they would come to care about provenance even more deeply. Today, Canada Goose is one of the country’s best-known apparel brands, selling a range of high-quality outerwear around the world.

In 1957 my maternal grandfather, a Polish immigrant, started the company that would eventually become Canada Goose. His Metro Sportswear was a small industrial-apparel factory with a handful of employees. In the

1970s my dad got involved in the business. He invented a downfilling machine, which allowed us to be more efficient and expand our product line. He created the in-house brand, Snow Goose, which supplied coats to tactical units across the province of Ontario.

Most of our revenue at the time came from private-label commissions: making outerwear on which other companies put their names. Those relationships could be unpredictable. Orders weren’t always as large or as frequent as my parents would have liked, so they sometimes accepted less-profitable orders to keep the factory running.

I had no interest in the parka business or in having a job that people would think my mom and dad had given me. Instead, I got a degree in English literature and set out to be a shortstory writer. But first I wanted to do some traveling. That meant I needed to earn some money, so I asked if I could work in the factory for three months.

I had zero intention of staying, but I liked earning an income. I realized later that Snow Goose wasn’t just a “parka business” — we were making something real.

Our products had a meaning that resonated with customers.

While working at the company, I had some ideas about how the business could be improved.

I set up an email account for the

company and built its first website. My three-month stay turned into six months and then into a few years; it’s now been more than two decades since I started.

In 1998 I began attending trade shows around the world.

I discovered that in Japan and Europe, where we used the name Canada Goose (because Snow Goose was already trademarked), our little in-house label really meant something.

Consumers recognized that people who lived and worked in the coldest places in the world wore our coats.

In 2001 I told my parents I was ready to run the company if they were willing to let me. My dad let me take the reins and pursue my own vision for what Canada Goose could become. Slowly but steadily, I got out of our privatelabel deals and focused solely on the Canada Goose brand, eliminating the Snow Goose name.

Quality was key. People wanted a well-constructed, exceptionally warm coat made from the best materials. Our country of origin was also critical. To many people, owning a Canada Goose jacket is like owning a little piece of Canada, and for that they’re willing to pay a premium.

That’s another part of what persuaded me to commit to being a “Made in Canada” brand.

Although we couldn’t sustain the cost of domestic manufacturing in a world where people

bought one $299 coat and kept it for a decade, we could do so in a new environment where outerwear was treated as a luxury, coveted and collected, just like high-end watches or cars.

We couldn’t afford glossy ad campaigns, so we focused on a different kind of marketing: word-of-mouth and telling real stories. When an expedition team traveled to the North Pole and was featured in National Geographic, we made sure the team members were wearing our jackets. We also outfitted TV and film crews that were shooting in remote cold-weather locations where temperatures could fall well below freezing.

As awareness grew and sales began to spike, we had to increase production capacity. We moved to a much larger manufacturing facility in Toronto and later expanded into the eight factories. We also focused on building a bigger talent pool. In our training schools people learn to operate an industrial sewing machine, set a zipper and more.

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, we’ve partnered with local government and employment agencies that funnel students into our programs. Across the country we now employ more than 3,500.

For many years I dreamed of opening our own store, a place where we could showcase our heritage and immerse shoppers in the Canada Goose story. In

2016 that dream became a reality when we opened our first stores in Toronto and New York City. We had already launched e-commerce in North America by then, but our expansion into brick-and-mortar shops, at a time when so many other companies were closing them, caused us to shift our thinking about the business. Today we have Canada Goose stores in 12 cities around the world, and we run an international e-commerce business.

In 2017 we took the company public. Many people warned me that being publicly listed would change the company, putting pressure on us to do whatever it took to keep investors happy.

But that’s not a formula that works for Cananda Goose, and we made that very clear from day one. I continue to run this business with the same long-term vision I had back when I became CEO. I regularly hear stories from people who are only now discovering us about how much they love our products. Young, old, local, international, outdoor explorers or fashionistas, they all respond to our commitment to quality and authenticity. That’s how we remain relevant as we grow and build an enduring brand. Canada Goose will forever be a champion for “Made in Canada.” There is simply no better way for us to remain timeless.

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

29

POLITICS & POLICY Purchase of 820 buses: We never indicted Ambode, say former Commissioners INIOBONG IWOK

O

lusegun Banjo and Olawale O luw o, former commissioners of Economic Planning and Budget, Energy and Mineral Resources, respectively, in the administration of former governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode, have denied reports that they indicted Ambode before an ad-hoc committee of the State House of Assembly.

The Accountant-General of Lagos State, Shukrat Umar buttressed the claims of the former commissioners when she appeared before the ad-hoc committee on Wednesday, confirming that the State Executive Council (SEC) approved the budget for the purchase of the 820 vehicles.

The commissioners debunked the reports in separate statements Thursday, noting that the reports were a deliberate misrepresentation of what transpired at the proceedings of the investigative committee probing Ambode administration.

The Speaker of the Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa had constituted a nine-man ad-hoc committee under the chairmanship of Fatai Mojeed (Ibeju-Lekki I) to probe the procurement of 820 high occupancy vehicles, which the Ambode administration ordered for under its Bus Reform Initiative (BRI).

He had also claimed that the administration did not seek its approval for the procurement of the vehicles and directed the committee to Banjo and other top functionaries that were involved to state their roles in the

Olawale Oluwo,

purchase.

At the proceedings, reports had claimed that Banjo indicted the former governor and that Ambode side-lined his ministry in the controversial purchase of 820 mass transit buses and that the way the ministry was structured under Ambode did not allow him to function well.

However, in his statement, Banjo denied the reports, noting that he did not say anything before the committee to condemn or indict the Ambode administration under which he served as the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning between February 2018 and May 2019.

He explained that he appeared on October 15 before the committee based on a letter of invitation dated October 11, requesting him to answer some questions on the purchase of 820 buses as they relate to the function of the Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget headed by him during the last administration.

At the proceedings, Banjo said he told the committee

that he was appointed in February 2018 when the issue of bus purchase had already been on the ground, pointing out that the bus issues were not contained in the budget he managed, though could have been in earlier budgets.

According to him, “I am deeply saddened and disappointed by such sensationalism by hitherto section of the press and by its uninhibited and deplorable abdication of a basic tenet of professional journalismimpartial reportage.

“I wish to state that I am not in a position to know what exactly transpired on the issue of the buses as I was not in government when the issue was tabled and approved by the State Executive Council and neither was I drafted into the bus Steering committee on assumption of duty in February 2018.

“My response to questions asked by the committee under oath was intended to explain technical issues pertaining to the operations of the Ministry and explain the anomalies they noted

and seek explanations to, and nothing said by me there was intended to or said in any manner as to condemn or indict anyone,”.

However, Banjo claimed that he brought to the attention of the ad-hoc committee that the operating system of the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning should be reviewed; claiming that he mentioned other weaknesses of the ministry’s operating system in a professional manner.

In his own statement, Oluwo acknowledged that he attended the second session of the committee proceedings on October 15 alongside former Commissioner for Agriculture, Toyin Suara, noting that reports in some sections of the media were not true.

According to him, Suara and I were called into the conference room at the same time. The lawmakers asked both of us questions in the open. While Suara was asked questions about Lagos Rice Mill Project in Imota, I was asked questions about the LED-UK streetlights installation, a UK Exim Bank-funded project.

The former commissioner, expressed dismay over media reports that Suara and Oluwo said that many of the projects, including Oshodi Transport Interchange and others were never captured in the state budget.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I reiterate that I did not and could never have indicted former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. I am a committed democrat, a loyal team player and a strong believer in the principle of collective responsibility,” he said.

Kogi guber poll: Catholic bishops urge electorates to vote wisely

T

wenty-nine days to the Kogi State governorship election slated for November 16, Catholic Bishops have charged the electorate to vote wisely in order to usher in credible leaders with fear of God who will restore the needed good governance that has eluded the state.

According to a pastoral massage to the people of the state, signed by Bishops of Lokoja Diocese, Martins Olorunmolu and his Idah counterparts, Anthony Adaji made available to journalists in Lokoja, the clerics said: “We be-

lieve that God loves our dear Kogi State and wants all of us, the people of the state, to live in peace and harmony so as to attain social progress and development under God fearing, capable and honest leaders who will have our welfare at heart “It is unfortunate that the sufferings the people of the state have passed through as a result of bad governance, especially in recent times, the electorates ought to do the needful with the incoming opportunity of electing candidates of their choice come November 16.

“As Chief Shepherds, God has given us the responsibility to counsel you on any important social or spiritual matter that affects or will affect your lives significantly in various ways, going by the Scripture saying that the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.”

The Bishops also urged the electorate to be thoughtful, careful and prayerful in electing another set of leaders in Kogi to avert the hardships and painful experience of the

past bad leadership that had resulted in delay and irregular payment of workers’ salaries as well as lack of provision of basic infrastructure in the state.

However, the clerics noted that attempts are now being made to pay salaries even in small percentages but reminded the people of the damage that have been done before the recent improvement.

“We urged the people to see the forthcoming election as a golden opportunity to elect leaders that will make their welfare as priority number one,” they emphasised.

Obaseki warns Edo govt officials against responses to comments credited to Oshiomhole

T

he Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki has maintained his position that government officials in the state should not join issues with the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former governor of the state, Adams Oshiomhole, whose media aides are “spreading extremely hostile, malicious and incorrect statements in the media.”

In a statement jointly signed by the Commissioner for Communication and Orientation, Paul Ohonbamu and Special Adviser to the Governor on Media and Communication Strategy, Crusoe Osagie, the governor warned those intent on disrupting public peace that he is determined to maintain law and order and protect lives and property as the Chief Security Officer of the state.

“The Edo State Government has again taken notice of extremely hostile, malicious and incorrect statements attributed to the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, by his media aides in various newspapers and media outfits.

“This continuous spewing of invectives and purposely

distorted accounts is aimed at creating a sense of tension and crisis in and around the state and the country when none actually exists,” the release said.

According to the statement, “Governor Godwin Obaseki has therefore, restated that on no account should any government official in Edo State join issues on the continuous unwarranted vitriolic comments on the person of the governor and the government by Oshiomhole’s media aides purportedly acting at his behest.

“The position of government is to pursue the path of peace in dealing with ensuing issues for the good of all Edo people.

“As governor and leader, Governor Obaseki is in firm control of the APC in Edo State and there is no reason whatsoever to even moot the idea of leaving the party where he enjoys tremendous support and goodwill both at the state and the national levels.

“The governor, however, warned those intent on disrupting public peace that he is determined in his resolve to continuously carry out his primary responsibility of maintaining order and protecting lives and property as the Chief Security Officer of the state.”

PDP demands Buhari’s explanation on funding of First Lady’s office SOLOMON AYADO, Abuja

T

he People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to as a matter of urgency proffer explanations on funding of the office of the first lady.

The PDP said Buhari had initially promised not to run any office of First Lady and therefore, should clarify on source of Presidential support for the office, including the appointment of aides.

In a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, Thursday, the PDP described Buhari’s violation of such sensitive undertaking as irresponsible.

“The profligacy that permeates the Buhari Presidency had further manifested in the public fight between the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, and President Buhari’s nephews over issues of opulent accommodation in our presidential villa.

“The party further urges Nigerians to note that the Buhari Presidency has failed to make the details of its budget public, despite demands by our party and other well-meaning groups

in Nigeria,” it said.

However, PDP has said it is still monitoring the implementation of directive to government functionaries on cost cut and asked the President to fulfil his promise and reduce the Presidential fleet.

Also, it requested Buhari to cut his over-bloated entourages and curtail the opulent lifestyle in the Presidency, which “is daily flaunted before suffering and impoverished Nigerians.”

“The PDP invites Nigerians to note that the Buhari Presidency has proven to be extremely expensive and a major drain pipe for valuable resources, while millions of compatriots, who look up to government for solutions, wallow in hunger and acute poverty.

“The failure to make the details of the Presidency budget public places a huge burden on the Buhari Presidency, particularly in the face of allegations of budgetary corruption and financial sleazes.

“Unless the Presidency budget is made public for Nigerians to see, any directive on cost cut remains cosmetic,” it stated.

30

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Friday 18 October 2019

Business SOUTH-SOUTH

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF SOUTH-SOUTH / SOUTH-EAST

Lamentations greet BEDC’s unveiling of MAPs in Delta MERCY ENOCH, Asaba

T

he unveiling of the Delta State Meter Asset Provider (MAP) scheme by the Benin Electricity Distribution Company, (BEDC) has sparked off agitations among power consumers in the state, who expressed fear that they would be duped again by the company, after paying for the smart meters.

Abu Ejoor, executive director of BEDC, at a media launch of the MAPs in Asaba, announced that the company would be rolling out a total of 200,000 smart prepaid meters in the state in the next two years with a monthly cumulative average of 10,000 units.

He disclosed that the meter would be sold for N36,991 and N67,826 for a single phase and three-phases, respectively, while distribution would start from Asaba to other locations in the state.

Ejoor urged consumers who needed the product to pay and

...Okowa urges communities’ support

Okowa, Delta State Governor have the meters distributed to them, explaining that enumeration was a prerequisite for the provision.

The media men at the launch, who are equally residents and power consumers in the state, accused the company of not satisfying the yearnings of the people in terms of power supply.

Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce opens in Enugu …Gov Ugwuanyi to address session REGIS ANUKWUOJI, Enugu

T

he Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce (NACC) Enugu State chapter will be officially inaugurated in the state capital, Enugu on 17 October, said Ifeanyichukwu Ugochukwu, the chapter chairman.

Ugochukwu announced at a press conference in Enugu that the state governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi would deliver a keynote address at the event. He noted that every arrangement and logistics for a successful event have been properly taken care of.

Those expected at the inauguration/ induction of the chamber include the national president of NACC, some members of the national executive committee, and esteemed guests from the state government and other special guests.

The NACC chapter chairman called on the business community in the country, especially those that have business links with America to avail themselves the opportunity

and register with the chamber, in order to benefit fully from the various business openings in the chamber.

He said the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce was established in 1960 to foster relations between the United States of American and Nigeria; and that Enugu would be the ninth chapter of the chamber in Nigeria.

Ugochukwu informed that about 32 members had already registered with the Enugu NACC chapter; adding that the chapter had fulfilled all requirements for inauguration.

He listed objectives of the incoming chamber to include: fostering trade and commercial investments between members and the USA; liaising with the Nigerian government and its agencies throughout the country on trade and industry related matters; promote business, trade, commerce and industry between Nigerian business community and American businesses; promote opportunities for bilateral trade and investment in the zone (Enugu) and America.

They questioned the rationale behind the company reintroducing metering when it has failed to render adequate services to the consumers.

“I was duped two years ago after paying N70,000 for two meters at the cost of N35,000 each, said Felix Igbokoye; adding; We had registered and paid,

and till date, we are yet to get the meters. Now, we are told to register again.”

For Alphonsus Agbo, it was quite incomprehensible that Ekiti State, which is part BEDC’s supply territories, was enjoying 24 hours power supply, while Delta State that produces oil and gas, manages with just two to three hours electricity supply per day.

He said Nigerians should be told the truth, especially on the meters that were rolled out; adding that what the layman wants to see is electricity and nothing else.

Various complaints were railed at the company, but Ejoor the executive director promised that the current leadership of BEDC would rectify every anomaly and give meters to those who paid two years ago once they presented evidences of payment.

“Our major challenges remain transmission problems, which has severally hampered our ability to receive power for onward sales to our customers

across Delta North and Warri.

We recorded 126 outages in the state in September alone. The limitations of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and bottlenecks have been of a major worry especially in Asaba, Efurun, Afesere and Oghara,” he explained.

Meanwhile, the state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, at a quarterly media interaction held at Government House, Asaba on Tuesday, noted that the electricity challenge was a nationwide problem, and not peculiar with Delta State. He said the state was even having electricity supply more than some neighbouring states. vernor, while reacting to a question on why he had remained silent, instead of calling out BEDC on poor performance, said it was not about shouting. He advised Deltans to support BEDC and get their meters. He warned that any community that didn’t have meter would be cut off from the power supply.

Firm partners steel ministry over resource development ANIEFIOK UDONQUAK, Uyo

A

s part of its roadmap for the support, growth and development of the Nigerian mining industry, De Mbarukas Limited, an indigenous environmental consultancy firm, is to partner the Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development to deepen sustainable development opportunities in the country’s sea-shorelines.

Joseph Akpan, the managing director of De Mbarukas Limited said the firm was poised to bring its over 20 years of experience to bear in the mining industry, with the objective of ensuring that Nigeria harnesses the opportunities that abound in mineral resources in a sustainable and environmentally friendly ways.

He regretted that in recent times, the domestic mining industry was considered to be underdeveloped leading to Nigeria having to import minerals that she can produce locally, such as salt and iron ore.

Akpan said that since mining activities affect the environment, the soil friendly structure and the general makeup of the ecological system, the environmentally friendly technology and the utilization of flared gas and sunlight along the sea-shorelines of Nigeria would be economically sustainable.

Akpan spoke when he met the minister of Mines and Steel Development, and urged the ministry to take advantage of the over 30 km stretch sea-shoreline of the South-South, particularly Akwa Ibom State, to aid the production of common salt and other mineral resources.

“Apart from the sodium chloride, which is the table salt, there are other dissolved chemicals in the ocean water that could be harvested in commercial quantity,” he said; explaining that the cost of salt production could be cheaper as long the ministry would be ready and willing to put necessary infrastructure in place to enable local miners thrive in regions where energy through gas flaring

is abundant alongside the natural sunlight.

He also called on the ministry to grant permits to investors for the harvesting of solid minerals for the economic advantage of Nigeria.

The minister of Mines and Steel Development, Olamilekan Adegbite thanked De Mbarukas for proposing the good business idea of mining salt locally to boost the economy. He assured the firm (De Mbarukas) that the ministry will do its best to ensure the idea was developed into a bankable business model that will yield sustainable results.

Uchechukwu Ogah, the minister of state, Mines and Steel Development expressed the ministry’s delight that an indigenous firm had deemed it fit to venture into the sector with so much passion. He said the ministry will partner with De Mbarukas in the proposed areas to attract investment and investors to the sector; stressing that such will create employment and generate revenue for the entire nation.

400 indigent undergraduates benefit from BKF Education support programme in Abia UDOKA AGWU, Umuahia ot less than 400 indigent undergraduates from Bende Local Government of Abia State have benefitted from the Education Support Project of Benjamin Kalu Foundation (BKF). The beneficiaries are drawn from all the wards in the LGA. Each would be receiving undisclosed cash periodically to support his/her tuition fees and other school charges.

Benjamin Kalu, a mem-

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ber representing Bende Federal Constituency at the National Assembly, while disbursing cash to the beneficiaries in his country home, Bende, said that the project would last as long as he remains in the National Assembly.

He said the gesture was to assist government to bridge the gap in education.

According to him “empowerment comes only through education. The government is doing its best, but it is not enough. There are indigent

students everywhere, and they deserve assistance from kind-hearted individuals,” he added.

The federal legislator said that his NGO had been in existence since 2003; adding that he had been using the platform for various activities.

He said the BKF is involved in agriculture, education, health, poverty alleviation and environment, among other activities. “If you educate the people, the country will grow,” Kalu

noted.

He urged the beneficiaries not to allow their situation to weigh them down; adding that the Foundation had taken their data with a view to transferring money into their different bank accounts periodically.

Chidi Osuagwu, one of the board members of BKF said the occasion was the foundation’s first outing; noting Kalu had been assisting so many people using the BKF. He assured that there is future for the

programme; and that what the initiator was doing cuts across political party lines.

He said the educational empowerment initiative runs from 100-400 level.

Victor Kelechukwu Onwuka, one of the beneficiaries and a 200-level Mass Communication student of Abia State University, Uturu, said he was happy for the gesture, praising the initiator. He said he got to know about the programme and its requirements through Facebook.

Obasanjo Foundation, Vicar Hope Foundation undertake 5OO free surgeries, others in Abia UDOKA AGWU, Umuahia

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team from the Olusegun Obasanjo Foundation (OOF) known as Living Life to Fullest has met with Vicar Hope Foundation a pet project of Nkechi Ikpeazu, wife of Abia State governor in Umuahia with a view to arriving at areas of collaboration between the two organizations.

The Living Life to the Fullest led by Olalekan James Makinde was received by Edith Nwosu, vice president and administrator of Vicar Hope, Kate Ndukauba, board of trustees (BOT) member and other board members and staff of the foundation.

Issues discussed by both parties centred on an upcoming “Sights and Sounds,” which would target visually and hearing-impaired persons in Abia State for one week.

According to Makinde, the programme was coined Sight and Sound by the founder and former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

It would feature free eye screening, free ear screening, free medicated glasses and electronic hearing aid and 500 free surgeries and other partnership programs.

The OOF team further explained that they had achieved some successes in other states, and said Abia was the state from the South East that was selected to benefit from the upcoming health intervention. They said they recorded success in 2017, when the OOF undertook an intervention for deaf people.

Makinde said owing to the progress that the Vicar Hope Foundation has made in the fight against sickle cell disease, the OOF extended an invitation to the former for the first African Congress on Sickle Cell Disease (ACSCD) organized by the Centre for Sickle Cell Disease, in association with the OOF in Nigeria.

The congress put together with support from a host of sickle cell organizations across Africa and the world would hold from October 31 to November 2 at the Landmark Center, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

FEATURE The intrigues and bickering that continue to plunge Nigeria into darkness AARON ARTIMAS

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t would appear that President Muhammadu Buhari had done a special favour to the duo of Engineer Sale Mamman and Mr Goddy Jeddy Agba, by appointing them as Senior Minister and Minister of State, respectively, to the Ministry of Power.

However, this could be right only to the extent that the Ministry is supposedly a multi-billion dollar enterprise. But the bigger truth is that Engineer Mamman and his colleague have been handed the most challenging task, or if you like, the most difficult job in Nigeria at the moment.

To be sure, the struggle to provide efficient and adequate power to Nigerians has been a long and painful journey -- since the days of NEPA and Power Holding Company of Nigeria: PHCN. Nigerians had complained, cried and even demonstrated at various times over the failure of the now unbundled state-run NEPA and PHCN, following their consistent failure to deliver on their mandate over the years. To stop this miserable race of failure, the government decided to carry out a major reformation of the power sector, as a result of which we now have six generating Companies, eleven distribution companies, one transmission company and the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading, PLC. While retaining the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, the government added the eleventh distribution company in November 2014.

Now, more than ten years after this wonderful initiative, the problem has remained obstinate and intractable or even worse. As things stand today, the story about the power sector, led by the Ministry of Power, has remained illusionary as the various agencies under the Ministry continue to squabble and point accusing fingers at each other on the problems besetting the sector; while the issue of inadequacy or absence of power continues to pose a hindrance to Nigeria’s quest to be among the twenty economies of the world by 2020.

The gaping question even among the sector’s players is: “How much power does Nigeria generate and how much of it, is distributed?”

According to reports recently quoted in an editorial in Leadership newspaper, the country has an installed generating capacity of 13427MW of electricity, but between this figure and the actual distribution, which fluctuates around just about 3000MW, is an unaccountable or unexplainable loss of nearly 7000MW. According to other reports, the current generating capacity is between 7000 and 8300MW, while the national grid is said to have the capacity to transmit 7000MW, an improvement from less than 5000MW transmission capacity inherited by Buhari administration in 2015. But despite this apparent improvement in generation and transmission of electricity, the distribution capacity has remained “Significantly Low” as

Engineer Sale Mamman, minister of power

recently stated by the Vice – President. In fact, during a recent courtesy visit on the speaker of the House of Representatives, the management of TCN admitted that the country’s transmission capacity has dropped to below 30% due to what they described as “inadequate integrity of the distribution network by the Discos.”

It is claimed that the Discos are unable to fully distribute the bulk of power wheeled to them due to a number of factors, including , Forex and macroeconomics realities, coupled with the fact that they have to pay for power that was not utilized.

However, the Discos are not keeping quiet -- they are also telling their story in a very desperate and combative tone as they prepare for the final review of their Performance Service Agreement (PSA) on December 31st this year. The Discos, through their Nigerian Association of Nigerian Electricity Distribution, took up a two full paged advertorial in one of the national dailies, in which they lambasted TCN for allegedly misrepresenting facts about the Nigerian Supply Industry (NESI). The Discos claim that there is a gross variation in the actual amount of energy delivered to the discos from the ones claimed to have been delivered to the Discos by TCN through the Multi – year Tariff Order (MYTO). The Association claims that the SIEMENS Electrification Roadmap for Nigeria report of 7th May 2019 says the electricity distribution capacity is twice (2X) that of transmission capacity. It simply means that the amount of energy received from the generating companies exceeds the actual energy transmitted and delivered to the Discos. The Discos claim that due to obsolete or outmoded communication systems of tracking energy flow, there have been multiple and frequent explosions, and burnings of sub-stations and transformers, resulting to partial or total system collapse, about 121 times, since privatization and Nine (9) times in 2019 alone.

Not only are the Discos craving www.businessday.ng

for retention, but they are also asking for N1.9 billion Dollars in recapitalization.

But, TCN remains adamant that the DisCos are the most inefficient in West Africa. During a recent power sector round table organized by MAINSTREAM ENERGY SOLUTIONS LIMITED, at Kainji in Niger State, the Discos took further bashing from other players in the energy value chain. Although the participants agreed that reversing the privatization of the Power sector or withdrawing the Discos was not in the best interest of the Country, they instead called for restructuring and recapitalization of the DisCos. This was in spite of the claims that the DisCos were unable to off-set their debts to the GenCos, unable to pay tax as well as maintaining operational loses of over N417 Billion.

Recently, TCN threatened to bar the Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KedCo) from electricity market because of its failure to raised its energy payment guarantee for 3 0days. While Kedco claimed it could not do so because it owed TCN N3.2 billion since 2015, TCN insist the Kano Distribution Company still owes N315.8 billion, representing only 50% of its invoice.

Still on these wild figures, the Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission claims that during the 1st quarter of 2019, the 11 Discos received N190.1 billion energy invoice from the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET), but they paid only N52.8 Billion, just about 28%.

One source places the indebtedness of DisCos to NBET at N270 billion. The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has just issued a notice of intention to cancel licenses to eight (8) DisCos pursuant to section Seventy-four (74) of the Electricity Power Sector Reform Act. The non-compliance bothers on low remittances and revenue under recovery. But these are not the only issues dogging the Nigerian Electricity Supply industry in the country. The

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generating companies, Gencos, are also up in arms with the NBET over the federal government intervention fund of N600 billion. They claim that NBET wants to deduct N2.7, billion representing 0.75 charge, on them.

Mainstream Energy Solution Limited Chairman Col. Sani Bello told the round table in Kainji that although the GenCos were doing extremely well, they were not receiving commensurate appreciation and support, explaining that in May – June 2019 Mainstream only received an invoice of 15%. This also affects other GenCos. The other intractable issue affecting the industry is the problem of metering. Records show that out of the estimated N8.8 million power consumers only about N3.793 million are metered, representing 43%, while over 5 million others are on estimated billing. There are allegations among industry players and Nigerians that the DisCos are not ready to meter consumers. But the Nigerian Electricity Management Services agency (NEMSA) has announced that the 11 DisCos would install six million meters between 2019 and 2022. Three testing stations were said to have been opened in Lagos, Kaduna for this purpose.

Despite this miserable report and confusing numbers, President Muhammadu Buhari remains resolute about providing stable and efficient power to Nigerians. The President has demonstrated this by the various intervention funds being sunk into the industry. The Federal Executive council has just approved $5.7 billion for the formal commencement of the Mambilla Hydro – Electricity Power Project, after it had wallowed for more than forty years on the drawing board. The Mambilla Power Project has potential to deliver over 3000MW of power to National grid.

In his 2019 Independence day broadcast, President Muhammadu Buhari devoted over nearly seven paragraphs to the issue of electricity and the government’s continuing efforts to revolutionize the power sector in the country. He announced that a Presidential power initiative has been launched to modernize the national grid in three phases, starting from 5GW to 7GW; then to 11GW by 2030; and finally to 25GW afterwards.

The program envisages localized development and assembly of smart meters as well as the operation and maintenance capabilities of transmission and distribution infrastructure.

This is coming as SIEMENS, A German Electricity Equipment manufacturing giant, in collaboration with the federal government, has produced an “Electricity roadmap for Nigeria” a bulky document that had x-rayed the power disposition in the country and proffered solutions or measures to tackle all the problems in the sector.

The document followed a meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in August last year, with the aim of resolving existing challenges and expanding the capacity of the power sector. The Presidency has just @Businessdayng

demonstrated this commitment by voting the second highest allocation of N127 billion in the 2020 Federal Government budget to the power sector.

With all the issues raised above, it is obviously clear that the failure of the power sector to meet the country’s expectations is not caused by the government’s lack of commitments but the insincerity of the players and our attitude as Nigerians.

Indeed, Nigerians should apportion blames appropriately and direct their anger and displeasure to unpatriotic and corrupt industry players rather than the government which has tried and continues explore all avenues of tackling the problem.

PriceWater-Cooper (PWC), a global corporate auditing and assurance company, has identified six key challenges in the power sector in Nigeria. They are: •inadequate gas supply; • operational inefficiencies; • non-cost reflective electricity tariff and liquidity constrains; • poor management at hydro plants; • limited transmission lines and inadequate; and obsolete distribution infrastructure.

These problems are not unsurmountable because not all of them have to do with government. In fact, PWC found out that Nigerians have not been good at paying bills. About #3.4 out of every #10 billed to customers was not paid to the DisCos and only four DisCos out of eleven surpassed the average collection rate of 60% for the first quarter of 2019. This has made it difficult for the DisCos to meet their obligations to the Bulk Electricity Trading, NBET. The Government under President Muhammadu Buhari has done everything possible including attracting the required foreign partnerships and support to move the sector forward but apparent lack of patriotism and corruption seems to drag the efforts backwards. The industry players seem to operate at variance to each other while some of the agencies have not subordinated their activities to the Ministry of Power.

Since assuming duties, the new Minister of Power Engineer Sale Mamman and his colleague, the Minister of state, Mr Goddy Jedy Agba, have been going round to physically assess the infrastructural development level in the power Ministry. So far, the exercise has revealed a mixture of fortunes. while there are cheering news for projects like the kashimbilla Hydro – electricity power project, there are a lot of issues on others, especially the Kaduna thermal power projects, which have so far gulped over 100 billion Naira.

Nigerians are clearly frustrated at the miserable state of affairs, but the government is clearly not relenting in finding solutions. The government is also pursuing options in the off-grid and small scale power projects to supplement or cover the gabs in the national grid.

Aaron Artimas is the special assistant to the Minister of Power on Media and Communication

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

CONVERSATIONS

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with ADE ADEFEKO

Ease of Doing Business: PEBEC striking the right chords

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efore 2015 Nigeria consistently ranked very poor in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business even though, the country was the biggest economy in Africa and we still retain the trophy of the biggest economy on the continent till date. Things like getting construction permits, filing tax returns, business registrations, judicial resolution of business disputes etc could pose very difficult challenges.

In 2016, the Federal Government established the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), to oversee Nigeria’s business climate reform agenda. Nigeria had for many years, struggled with the bottlenecks and bureaucratic constraints, making it difficult to start and grow businesses in the country. A few weeks ago, the World Bank Group announced Nigeria as one of the top-20 improvers on the Ease of Doing Business Score. This was based on the number of reforms planned and implemented by the country and the improvements in the ease of doing business score. Nigeria’s improvements have largely anchored on improvements in business registration process, land administration, access to electricity, commercial litigation and customs & port services.

According to the World Bank, “Nigeria made starting a business easier by operationalizing a new electronic platform that integrates the tax authority and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). The CAC also upgraded its name reservation platform and, in Kano, there is now an electronic platform for registering business premises online, eliminating the need to appear in person.” Company registration in Nigeria had traditionally been a problem, but in the last couple of years, the process has been digitized for more efficiency and transparency.

The World Bank also noted improvements in land administration in Lagos State, stating. “In Lagos, land administration was made more transparent following the digitization of cadastral plans in a geographic information system; digital copies of cadastral plans are now easily obtainable.” Lagos is Africa’s fifth largest economy, contributes about 30% to Nigeria’s GDP, 90% of the country’s trade flow, 65% of manufacturing activities and attracted 47.4% of capital imported to Nigeria in Q4 2017. With these credentials, it only makes senses that reforms in the state’s land administration will be catalytic for overall business environment

improvements.

On access to electricity, the World Bank notes, “Nigeria also made getting electricity easier by allowing certified engineers to conduct inspections for new connections.” This certainly is one area for improvement, not just in last mile distribution, but including generation and transmission. According to PwC, the metering gap is somewhere around 38.91million consumers, which by the way, is a potential market of N1.1 trillion.

Another area where Nigeria made improvements is in commercial litigation. “Initiatives also made commercial litigation of smaller cases more efficient. The Chief Judges in Lagos and Kano issued practice directions for small claims courts introducing pre-trial conferences and limit adjournments,” highlighted the World Bank. One of the foundations of a modern economy is a judicial system that is fair and efficient. The tendency is to sometimes emphasize the need for judicial systems to be fair.

However, the efficiency requirement of a modern judicial system must be front burner. Never ending case adjournments can have very material economic impact on investments.

Finally, the World Bank highlighted the improvements in the customs and port services, noting, “customs integrated more agencies into its electronic data interchange system, and port authorities launched an e-payment system, speeding up both exports and imports.” Many Nigerians must wonder why Nigeria is winning World Bank brownie points for port efficiency, given the chaotic traffic gridlock around Apapa, Nigeria’s most important seaport by hundreds of nautical miles. Well, technology again played an important role, as the efficiency and transparency of

the payments system increased the speed of import and export processing. Technology also played a significant role in improving the efficiency of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), which was able to integrate more agencies into its electronic data interchange system.

At this point, one must praise the efforts of the PEBEC. Over the last three years, it has increased its score by over 11 basis points and implemented over 140 reforms. In the same period, Nigeria moved up 24 places in the World Bank Doing Business rankings and 32 Nigerian states improved in their ease of doing business environment led by Kaduna, Enugu, Abia, Lagos and Anambra States. In doing these, the country has seen a 360% reduction in time for filing Corporate Income Taxes from 14 days to 72hrs (+14 places in 2019 DB rankings), 30% reduction in import documentation, and 26% reduction in cost of registering a business. These improvements have not immediately made it easy to do business in Nigeria. However, they show that improvements have been made in the last few years.

In ensuring these improvements continue, the PEBEC, as a matter of priority, must strengthen its relationship with and support for critical stakeholders like Ministries, Department & Agencies, National Assembly, Judiciary, sub-nationals and the organized private sector, to ensure the passion for these reforms are maintained and improved for even better performance in the future.

While Nigeria has consistently moved on the positive trajectory on the World Bank ease of doing business since 2016, the achievement is a fitting reward for the exemplary leadership of the President Buhari-led administration and the Vice President,

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who personally took charge as the tour de force of the efforts invested by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council to make the leading economy in Africa a destination of choice for doing business for foreign and local investors. Professor Osinbajo heads PEBEC as the interministerial committee comprising of private sector leaders charged with the responsibility of cleaning up the operating environment for businesses to thrive in Nigeria.

Dr Jumoke Oduwole, who was recently promoted as the Special Adviser to President Buhari on Ease of Doing Business got a deserving reward for the good job she did as the Secretary to PEBEC and former Senior Special Assistant on Trade and Investment.

While the economy is yet to fully rebound from the 2016 recession, the recent appointment of Presidential Economic Advisory Council with some of the best brains the country can parade in matters of business and economy will further inspire global confidence in the economy and accelerate government’s attention to some of the unfinished business of reforming our economy against many fiscal distortions that still constitute a burden on full recovery.

To continue on the current upward swing, the government must work harder within the next four years to see that there is significant improvement in power supply in the country. It is estimated that businesses and families in Nigeria spend about N3.5trillion annually to fuel generators. This is a major drag on the economy and a big hole in the purse of businesses and individuals.

The very high costs for running an economy that depends on generators – factories, offices, homes in a country of over 180 million people has impaired growth in gross domestic product that is already limping along at 1.92% at a time inflation is still above double digit.

Investments in infrastructure such as roads, rail and port services outside the Lagos ports should be ramped up while government should open up to attract more private capital to fund critical national infrastructure to stimulate economic growth. The cost of transporting goods in Nigeria is still high because of bad roads and poor rail services. The cost of logistics for businesses that distribute goods within Nigeria

can be reduced. While states like Lagos and Kano which were specifically mentioned in the 2020 Ease of Doing Business Index are reforming, other states must see the need to improve business environment. This is because the states as the sub-national entities are the real economic drivers.

Capital and or investments will only flow to a state that make doing business very easy to do.

Judicial reform is very fundamental to making Nigeria more attractive as a country to do business. The Chief Justices of Lagos and Kano according the 2020 report gave practice direction to their judges on quick dispensation of justice in disputes arising from small businesses. It is a fact that we need a comprehensive judicial reforms that allows for very quick resolution of commercial disputes within 12 months up to Supreme Court like we have in Election petitions matters.

It does not inspire confidence when investors think about our judicial processes and how long it can take to resolve disputes while making investment decisions. Investors whether local or foreign must have confidence in our judicial processes. Nigeria must work to remove the stigma of taking commercial disputes to London arbitration panels for resolution.

That Nigeria still has some gaps to fill in our quest to make our country a destination hub and one of choice for doing business is not in doubt. We must continue to put in the required hard work.

It is very gratifying that those in government too also appreciate the urgency to make things work better. While the battle has not been won fully, we can at least celebrate the positive strides made.

The aurora moment beckons.

Ade Adefeko, Vice President Corporate and Government Relations Olam InternationalNigeria is a member Technical steering Committee of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council.

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Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news Fight corruption, serve citizens with country’s...

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meetings in Washington, D.C., Georgieva expressed concern that Nigeria’s economic recovery remains too slow to reduce vulnerabilities and poverty in the country.

“Fight corruption and make sure that the richness of Nigeria serves Nigerians inside the country,” she said.

Georgieva said the tax collection levels in Nigeria leave quite a lot of room for improvement, and that without strengthening the fiscal position of the government, the expenditure side would suffer.

She said the IMF recommends that countries should aim for 15 percent of GDP in terms of collection to fund the responsibilities of the government, but this is quite far in Nigeria.

“If I am not wrong, we are still in the single-digit territory,” she said.

The IMF managing director noted that the Fund last year adopted a very clear, strong policy on anticorruption, and engaged with governments to build their capacity to ensure that they serve the citizens of the country with the money of the country.

IMF is forecasting slower global growth this year and next, 3 percent in 2019 and 3.4 percent in 2020.

Measured by GDP, nearly 90 percent of the world is experiencing slower growth.

This, she said, means the global economy is now in a synchronised slowdown.

“Fractures driven by trade, driven by uncertainty surrounding geopolitical tensions, and BREXIT, they are holding back growth, and they are causing hazards in this shared road we are travelling on,” she said.

Georgieva plans to focus on five priorities, one of which is to undo the harm on trade and find a lasting solution that will help build a stronger trading system.

Other priorities include to use monetary policy wisely and enable fiscal policy to play a more central role. Lagging productivity calls for measures to achieve stronger, more inclusive, and more resilient growth over the medium and long term and the final priority was to promote stronger international cooperation, and that extends well beyond trade.

Also, in response to a question on Nigeria’s pro-

posed loan for transmission and distribution, the World Bank said legacy debts from past projects were making it difficult to get transmission and distribution systems running in the power sector.

Speaking at the ongoing annual meetings in Washington, DC, David Malpass, World Bank group president, said many countries have already used up their fiscal and monetary-policy space, and that structural reforms are essential.

O ver $15 t r il l ion in bonds have zero or negative yields, which amounts to frozen capital, and debt has climbed to troubling levels, Malpass said.

“We need fresh thinking to reignite growth,” he said.

“As far as the specific projects, one thing I do want to mention, debt sustainability becomes very important as countries think about how the investments in electricity can be made.

If there is already a lot of debt, maybe it’s legacy debt that’s left over from past projects, it makes it difficult to have the new investment that’s needed in order to get transmission and distribution systems running.”

Without specific comment on Nigeria in the area of $3 billion loan, Malpass said, “We are involved in a lot of countries on trying to have improvements in the structure of their stateowned enterprises or of their electricity systems, so that they work. And particularly in West Africa, I think there can be a lot of progress made in terms of connecting more people and having more dependable power.”

Speaking at a panel session on decoding debt, getting transparency right, Zainab Ahmed, Nigeria’s finance minister, said, “Where we want to go next is to make sure we scan the environment and make sure we have a database of all the debts that government owes, whether it is the sovereign or the subnational, and also the debt of the state-owned enterprises and debts we owe to creditors.”

She said the government also wants to be able to show more clearly the debts that are related to specific projects and debts that it owes to countries like China for major projects.

“Right now, they are reported as public debt but there is no detailed breakdown to show that they are related as project borrowing,” she said. www.businessday.ng

L-R: Pascal Furth, regional economic counselor of French Embassy, Abuja; Gwenole JAN, economic counselor of French Embassy, Lagos; Laurence Montmeyrant, consul général of France, Lagos; Jerome Pasquier, ambassador of France to Nigeria; Brian Hammond, director, Impact Hub Lagos; Mangaux Abriev, SER, French Embassy, Lagos, and Orinayo Ayodele, community manager, Impact Hub Lagos, at the courtesy visit of the French ambassador to Impact Hub Lagos.

Pic by David Apara

CBN refunds N200bn to penalised banks...

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economy, failure of which would result in a levy of 50 percent additional Cash Reserve Requirement of the lending shortfall of the target LDR. The financial regulator had also assured a refund of the deduction whenever the lenders meet the set threshold.

The CBN further raised its minimum LDR this month to 65 percent for a December deadline and said it would review the benchmark every quarter. According to the bank, the policy is aimed at accelerating growth in Africa’s largest economy whose economy has expanded by less than 3 percent per annum (below population growth) since its emergence from a recession in the second quarter of 2017.

While Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) and First Bank of Nigeria were part of Nigeria’s biggest banks that failed to meet the 60 percent minimum LDR target, findings revealed that GTBank

may have benefitted from the refund having met the target to provide more credit.

In the third quarter 2019 period, the CBN debited GTBank the sum of N25.1 billion as excess funds on which it could not earn any interest but would still pay its customers interest for depositing the fund in its custody, according to notes from its financial statements for the period.

“From our calculations, GTBank’s LDR stood at 60.7 percent as at 30th September 2019,” analysts at Lagosbased InvestmentOne said in a note to clients on Thursday.

United Bank for Africa plc was also given back some of the N99.7 billion deducted as additional Cash Reserves Requirement after it increased lending, according to the bank’s chief financial officer, Ugochukwu Nwaghodoh.

Nigerian banks have been wary to lend to the real sector of the country’s economy after a slump in oil price in 2016 which made their loan book go bad, prompting the lenders to seek the safety of depositors’

fund in low-risk government securities such as bonds and T-Bills which offered attractive returns and helped profit.

But the policy which has now seen an expansion of banks’ loan books by 5.33 percent to N16.39 trillion as at September 26, 2019 casts a pall on their earning capabilities as they move the fund to the real economy where Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) need credit to expand.

Gross earnings of GTBank, Nigeria’s most capitalised lender, declined by 3.3 percent to N326 billion in the first nine months of 2019 following a 5.6 percent reduction in interest income to N224.2 billion, although its after-tax profit rose 3.4 percent to N146.99 billion.

“We think this was a decent performance by the bank, given the tough operating and regulatory environment so far this year,” analysts at InvestmentOne said.

“We do not have any target price for this stock, we proffer a Bloomberg consensus Target

Apapa gridlock returns as manual call-up system...

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pervise operations within the Apapa port.

“If you go to the Apapa port gate, you will see trailers queue up to enter the port.

The major problem there is that they don’t have easy access to the port. That is what is causing the traffic build-up stretching to Area B’ Police Command and the bridge,” said Aboyeji.

The union leader equally identified the ‘inefficiency’ associated with the operations of APM Terminal, a major operator at the Apapa port. According to him, this terminal operator does not allow container trucks full access to its facilities even after such trucks have been cleared to approach the port.

Aboyeji also said that the

efforts of the presidential task team, which in the last two to three months had worked to restore some level of sanity on the roads in Apapa, are now being sabotaged by “some security persons in military uniform who extort tankers, especially at night, to allow passage”.

Reacting to the issues raised, Adams Jatto, general manager, corporate and strategic communications of the NPA, said that the ports authority would not join issues with the presidential task team until it was confirmed that such statement was made by the task team, which was appointed by the Federal Government to work with the NPA in addressing the Apapa problem.

“If there are issues with traffic management in Apapa,

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we expect the task team to call the attention of the managing director of the NPA to those issues rather than pointing accusing fingers. We would not make comment on the allegations until NPA management hears officially from the task team,” he said.

Remi Ogungbemi, chairman of the Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), said in a telephone interview that the NPA recently introduced a new traffic management guideline to checkmate the movement of trucks coming into the Apapa port city.

According to him, the implementation of the new traffic management guideline was why port users are experiencing challenges in moving in and out of Apapa.

He said the guideline @Businessdayng

Price of N47.50, implying an upside potential of 75.9 percent, basedonitsclosingpriceofN27.0 yesterday,” the analysts said.

Already, there has been a decline in banking stocks, many of which are attractive at record-lows, but investors are worried about the ability of banks to generate quality returns, analysts say.

The banking sector index is down 19.2 percent yearto date underperforming the broad market by 3.4 percentage points.

A reduction of the daily refunded deposit by banks at the Standard Deposit Facility (SDF) which can attract interest makes it unattractive for banks to keep funds with the apex bank, and a failure to meet the new minimum loan threshold of 65 percent by December 31 would see erring banks debited.

Analysts have called for a tighter risk management framework to ensure non-performing loans remain subdued, and in spite of the expected impact on earnings in the immediate period, they are optimistic on the resilience of banks. stipulates that for a truck to go to the transit parks in Ijora or Tin-Can Second Gate, the truck owner must write to the port manager, who would minute to the traffic manager before such truck can gate out.

“This is just to ensure orderliness and more control because it was discovered that the task team were having more than the necessary number of trucks at any particular time. The guideline is new and that is why it is causing chaos,” he said.

Ogungbemi stated that no system was perfect at the start. He said further that truckers believed that the NPA management has started seeing the hiccups caused by the new guideline, and that they were working on addressing the challenges.

•Continues online at www.businessday.ng

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Sports Reds test title might at Old Trafford as Atletico Madrid host Valencia … A preview of Premier League, La Liga and Serie A matches Anthony Nlebem

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ootball fans will gear up for a thrilling week of football action after the international break, as Premier League, La Liga and Serie A matches resumes.

The pick of Premier League matches this weekend is definitely the meeting of Manchester United and Liverpool at Old Trafford on Sunday evening. The Red Devils went into the international break on the back of a dispiriting 1-0 loss away to Newcastle United – a new low for a club which has been on the decline for years.

By contrast, Liverpool beat Leicester City 2-1 at home in their last outing to make it eight wins from as many matches and open up an eight-point lead at the top of the log over champions Manchester City.

Jurgen Klopp’s team will also have the all-time Premier League record for consecutive wins in their sights: the Reds have racked up 17 straight victories from last season into this, and equalling Manchester City’s record of 18 at the home of their hated rivals the Red Devils will be the sweetest achievement for the Merseyside club.

Also, the pick of La Liga games for this round comes from Estadio

Wanda Metropolitano on Saturday afternoon, when Atletico Madrid host Valencia. The Rojiblancos have won just once in their last five league outings, playing out a goalless draw with Real Valladolid before the international break to sit in third place on the log, three points adrift of leaders Real Madrid.

Valencia, meanwhile, are unbeaten in their last four La Liga outings and claimed back-to-back wins over Athletic Bilbao and Deportivo Alaves before the international break, moving them up to eighth spot and within striking distance of the Champions League berths.

The headline match from Serie A this weekend is the opening clash between Lazio and Atalanta from Stadio Olimpico. Le Aquile

have struggled for consistency in the league thus far, with a 2-2 draw away to Bologna in which they twice had to come from behind to salvage a point summing up the difficulties of their campaign thus far. Lazio, nonetheless, have risen to sixth spot and are optimistic of further improvement.

Atalanta, meanwhile, have really hit their stride in Serie A. A 3-1 home win over Lecce extended their unbeaten run to five matches, a sequence of results in which they have claimed 13 points from a possible 15 to rise into third place behind the leading duo of Juventus and Internazionale. Le Dea will hope to continue their momentum with a win in Rome and lay down a marker as potential title hopefuls.

Georgian Cup: Emir of Katsina, Umar laud First Bank on centenary milestone Anthony Nlebem

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he huge involvement of Nigeria’s premier banking giants, First Bank Nigeria, in the development of the noble game in Nigeria and beyond, has received official commendation from the Traditional Council of Katsina State.

Chairman of Katsina State Traditional Council and Emir of Katsina, HRH Alhaji (Dr.) Abdulmumuni Kabir Usman who made the commendation, praised First Bank for partnering Kaduna Polo Club in the promotion of the noble game and for positively touching the lives of Nigerians in so many ways.

The Royal father who is also the Life Chairman of the Nigerian Polo made this declaration at the legendary Murtala Sqaure Polo Ground, venue of the ongoing Georgian Cup Centenary Polo Tournament in Kaduna, noted that the partnership with the noble game of polo has positively impacted the promotion of sports generally around the country.

He stated that the unequalled involvement of First Bank in the promotion of polo and sports spanning a century in Kaduna and other states of the country has helped in redirecting the energies of the youth and engaging them positively.

He expressed happiness at the

commitment of the banking giant to achieving this milestone of a century long sponsorship, and urged the foremost banking institution to do more, given the unifying and the diplomatic credentials of sports in Nigerian political history.

“We the entire Nigerian polo family are happy with First for engaging our youths positively in the area of polo and I would urge them not to

rest in this highly commendation partnership that turns our people away from negative tendencies,” the royal father stated.

Former military Governor of Kaduna State, Col. Dangiwa Umar (rtd,) who salute First Bank on the centenary milestone, expressed delight at the huge turnout for the prestigious festival confirmed that “First Bank has been at the forefront of sports development with several sponsorship initiatives spanning polo, golf, soccer, amongst others,”.

Umar, who is the Chairman Board of Trustees of Kaduna Polo Club, www.businessday.ng

pointed out that the landmark collaboration has already impacted positively in the development of polo and sports generally in the country.

We are tapping into the passion that people feel for the game to bring to the front burner, the need to develop our sporting sector, so that in our little way, we can contribute to making life better for Nigerians,” he added.

Expressing the Bank’s delight on the sponsorship, the Group Head, Marketing & Corporate Communications, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, Folake Ani-Mumuney said “2019 is indeed an eventful year for us and one of the many highpoints since we were founded 125 years ago.

Part of our excitement stems from the pride we feel at having supported the Georgian Cup Polo Tournament for 100 years consistently.

“We are indeed proud to achieve this feat as it reinforces our leadership role as an institution committed to the continued growth and development of sports and the economy at large.

The Georgian Cup Polo Tournament is one of the many heritage sporting sponsorships supported by First Bank over the years.”

The international polo fiesta is bracing for a glamorous climax this weekend with the finals of El-Amin Cup, Emir of Katsina Cup, Imani Cup and the Georgian Cup which has remained the biggest polo prize in Kaduna for a century now.

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Rohr says draw with Brazil will boost 2021 AFCON race Anthony Nlebem

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uper Eagles’ Technical Adviser, Gernot Rohr, has landed his playing body a huge pat on the back for a gutsy performance in Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Brazil in a friendly match in Singapore.

Five –time world champions Brazil to to dig deep into their arsenal before securing the equalizer as the Super Eagles had them on the back foot following Joseph AyodeleAribo’s 35th minute goal.

“This result is a good confidence booster for the team. We now have to prepare for the more competitive games next month.

“I am happy we stayed organized even when the Brazilians mounted a lot of pressure on us in the second half. The only negative thing is the injury to (Francis) Uzoho,” the Franco-German said minutes after the fina whistle at the Singapore National Stadium in Kallang.

Aribo’s goal, his second in as many matches in the colours of the Super Eagles, was an eye –catching finish as he received a pass from Moses Simon and then waltzed his way through a number of outstretched Brazilian legs to shoot past

Gernot Rohr

goalkeeper Ederson.

Brazil drew level three minutes after the restart but the three –time African champions held firm in the face of onslaught after onslaught, and could have won in the end had Thiago Silva not upended a marauding Aribo with the South Americans exposed.

Goalkeeper Francis Uzoho, who horribly twisted his leg as he went for the ball from a corner kick, will be out for a minimum of six months, according to team doctor Ibrahim Gyaran.

Nigeria host Benin Republic on 14th November in the opening day of the 2021 AFCON qualifying campaign, before flying to Lesotho for a Day Two match on 19th November

GOtv Boxing Night Mini excites boxers Anthony Nlebem

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he introduction of GOtv Boxing Night Mini, which debuts on 16 November at the Rowe Park Sports Complex, Lagos, has sparked excitement among boxers. The decision to introduce GOtv Boxing Night Mini was announced on Monday by the organisers, Flykite Productions.

According to the organisers, GOtv Boxing Night Mini, which will hold more frequently at various venues, will give boxers more opportunities to fight and build their fight profiles to increase their eligibility for international titles.

Speaking in separate interviews, boxers commended the sponsors for increasing the opportunities to fight, saying many talented ones seeking avenues will benefit from GOtv Boxing Night Mini.

Kamaru “Slow Poison” Aremu, a boxer yet to make his professional bow, said he believes that his chances of getting an opportunity to fight have been boosted with the introduction of GOtv Boxing Night Mini.

“I like GOtv Boxing Night and I have tried to be on the bill a few times, but I have not succeeded. With GOtv Boxing Night Mini, which will hold more regularly than the big ones, I

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believe that boxers in my shoes will have opportunities to fight and also feature at the main event,” he said.

A similar sentiment was expressed

by Sikiru “Omo Iya Eleja” Shogbesan, who has had one fight at GOtv Boxing Night, but is seeking more to boost his fight profile.

According to him, the competition for spots on the bill at the main event is stiff, making it tough to be selected.

“GOtv are about the only serious sponsors of boxing in Nigeria.

It means getting to fight at the main event is tough. But with the mini edition, boxers stand to have more opportunities, as GOtv Boxing Night Mini will hold more frequently,” he said excitedly.

Rilwan “Real One” Oladosu, West African Boxing Union (WABU) lightweight champion, who is billed to fight at the maiden edition, said the tournament will provide him an opportunity to keep in shape for the African Boxing Union lightweight title bout against incumbent champion, Oto “Joe Boy” Joseph, in December.

Both boxers were billed to clash for the title at GOtv Boxing Night 20. The bout had to be postponed, following a shoulder injury suffered by Joe Boy. Aside from Oladosu, boxers scheduled to fight at the maiden edition of GOtv Boxing Night Mini are Rilwan “Baby Face” Babatunde, West African Boxing Union (WABU) welterweight champion; Waheed “Skoro” Usman, former African Boxing Union (ABU) featherweight champion; Kabiru “KB Godson” Towolawi and Opeyemi “Sense” Adeyemi.

Babatunde, a graduate of GOtv Boxing NextGen Search, thanked the sponsors for the initiative, saying the tournament will help keep boxers in good shape.

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Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news

FAAC shares N693.528bn revenue to FG, states, LG for September

BAFI Awards 2019 holds tomorrow

… excess crude account now stands at $323.692m

ADEMOLA ASUNLOYE & AMAMCHUKWU OKAFOR

HARRISON EDEH, Abuja

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ederation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) chaired by the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, has shared a total of N693.529 billion to the three tiers of government for the month of September 2019.

The N693.529 billion comprised revenue from Value Added Tax (VAT), Exchange Gain and Gross Statutory Revenue. The Committee announced that as at October 17, 2019, the balance in the Excess Crude Account was $323.692 million.

A communiqué issued by the FAAC confirmed that from the total revenue of N693.529 billion, the Federal Government received N293.801 billion, the states received N186.816 billion, and the Local Government Council received N140.864 billion.

The Oil Producing States received N51.532 billion as 13% derivation revenue and the Revenue Generating Agencies received N20.517 billion as cost of revenue collection.

The gross statutory revenue for the month of September 2019 was N599.701 billion. It was less than the N631.796 billion received in the previous month by N32.095 billion. For the month of September, gross revenue

of N92.874 billion was available from the VAT as against N88.082 billion distributed in the preceding month, resulting in an increase of N4.792 billion. Exchange Gain yielded total revenue of N0.954 billion.

A break of the distribution showed that from the gross statutory revenue of N599.701 billion, the Federal Government received N279.985 billion, the States received N142.012 billion, the Local Government Councils received N109.485 billion, the Oil Producing States received N51.417 billion as 13% derivation revenue and the Revenue Collecting Agencies received N16.802 billion as cost of collection.

The N92.874 billion gotten from VAT revenue was shared accordingly in which the Federal Government received N13.374billion, the states received N44.580 billion, and Local Government Councils received N31.206 billion and the Revenue Generating Agencies received N3.715 billion.

The communiqué also stated that in September 2019, revenue from Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT) and Company Income Tax (CIT) decreased while Royalties, Import and Excise Duties and VAT increased considerably.

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he stage is set for this year’s Banking and Financial Institutions (BAFI) awards as the Award Committee has finalised plans to announce the winners for the different categories on Saturday in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.

The annual event, which usually brings together C-suite executives in the nation’s financial sector, is set to showcase the achievements of financial institutions in the last financial year.

Expected at the event are the CEOs of deposit money banks, merchant banks, mortgage banks, microfinance banks, investment houses as well as the presidents of professional asso-

ciations such as the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers(CIS), Chartered Institute of Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), among others.

The annual awards are part of BusinessDay’s leadership initiative and consistent commitment to promote financial services in Nigeria. The BAFI Awards have turned out to be industry benchmarks for the recognition of excellence in the Nigeria’s financial services industry.

The BAFI Awards seeks to identify and celebrate the financial institutions and their leadership that have excelled across a number of areas, including financial performance, shareholder value creation, brand value accretion, corpo-

rate governance, sustainability, employment of new technologies, compliance to standards, innovations, and contribution to the industry’s overall growth.

In this year’s edition, over 20 financial institutions were nominated for different award categories based on the different parameters adopted by the Award Committee in line with the global best practices.

The award categories include Deposit Money Bank of the Year, Mortgage Bank of the year, Merchant Bank of the year, Microfinance bank of the year, Insurance of the year, Registrars of the year, Trustees of the year and Bank CEO of the year, among others. Others include the Stockbroking Firm of the year, Deal of the

year, best mobile and internet banking apps as well as the best bank in retail banking services, commercial banking services, SME banking, corporate and investment banking services, just to mention a few.

The parameters considered include loans growth, PAT growth, deposits growth, capital adequacy ratio(CAR), nonperforming loan ratio (NLR), liquidity ratio (LR), return on average assets(ROAA), return on average equity(ROAE), Net Interest Margin (NIM), cost to income ratio (cir), share price growth (2018) as well as the percentage of women in workforce(management), among others. Red carpet opens by 6pm while attendance is strictly by invitation.

FG presents MDAs with IT service level agreement framework Stella Enenche, Abuja

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he Federal Government, Thursday, presented the framework for information technology service level agreement to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

Presenting the instrument at the public sector consumer protection forum in Abuja, Kashidu Abdullahi, director-general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), said the draft was developed because of the wide scale failure of IT projects executed within the MDAs. According to Abdullahi, the public sector consumer protection forum remained a platform “where public sector consumers and service providers share their challenges and recommend solu-

tions for information technology service delivery.”

He, therefore, tasked the stakeholders on the need to actively participate by way of sharing ideas, articulating challenges, with a view to finding solutions at the end of the day.

This was as he disclosed that, prior to 2016 the NITDA did not have a service legal agreement (SLA), which he said was a subsidiary legislation that stipulates clear processes for issuance of regulatory instruments.

“The aim of this forum is to present the Framework for Information Technology Service Level agreement for MDAs and a platform where public sector consumers and service providers share their challenges and recommend solutions for information technology service delivery.

L-R: Bisi Ijimakinwa, ICT teacher/Robotics instructor, Imperial Gate School; Sefunmi Fadahunsi, country programme manager, Oracle Academy Sub-Saharan Africa; Olusola Babs-Ajayi, ICT head, Atlantic Hall, and Dele Tejuoso, CEO, WIFI Combat, at a Bootcamp for ICT educators sponsored by Oracle in Lagos.

Pic by Pius Okeosisi “The SLA framework draft document before our esteemed stakeholders is for your contributions and to seek your support for joint and successful implementation.

Nigeria seeks $3bn facility from World Bank for power sector development ... says inflation rate not high at 11.2% HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE, in Washington DC

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ederal Government is seeking $3 billion facility from the World Bank for power sector development programme, a 20 percent increase from the earlier $2.5 billion proposed by the government.

Zainab Ahmed, finance minister, disclosed this in an interview with journalists on the side lines of the ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank annual meetings holding in Washington, D.C. The power sector development programme includes development of the transmission network, development of the distribution network as well as removing the challenges within the electricity sector.

“We are going to have full meeting to discuss the power sector recovery programme. Back home we have been working a great deal with the World Bank to design how this programme

will be implemented.

“So, we have an opportunity now to have a direct meeting with the leadership of the bank to tell them the plan that we have and how much we need. So the funding could be a much as $3 billion. We are pushing for it to be provided in phases, maybe phase one would be $1.5 billion and phase two will be another $1.5 billion,” she said.

The World Bank and Nigeria began talks for fresh $2.5 billon concessionary loan to fill revenue gap. In the past year, Nigeria received $2.4 billion from the World Bank.

Responding to questions on bother closure, she said, “We needed to close the border because we are not getting corporation with our neighbouring countries. We have over years committed to some alliances, bilateral agreements and our neighbours are not respecting those bilateral agreements.”

A cording to her, the timeline www.businessday.ng

would be when the neighbouring countries commit to complying with the commitments signed.

“We hope that at some point, there would be discussions at the level of presidents where we would extract strong commitments from our neighbours.”

On inflation rate, Ahmed said 11.2 percent is not a high inflation rate. “Remember that in January 2017 inflation was 18 per cent and whenever there is any shock within the economy like the border closure the market reacts so you have inflation but it will moderate and it will stabilise within a short period of time”.

The minister said the underperformance of revenue is causing significant strain on the government ability to service debt, and to service government day-to-day expenditure.

“That is why all the work we are doing in the ministry of finance and other economic ministry is to concentrate on driving the increase in revenue.”

Housing market upbeat in Benin City as Emotan Gardens offers affordable homes CHUKA UROKO

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or low and middle income home seekers in Benin City, the Edo State capital, time to own their homes has come as one of Nigeria’s leading developers, Mixta Africa, has entered the city’s housing market with well finished, quality and affordable homes.

The 59 units of affordable homes, which the company has off-loaded into the market, are part of the 1,800-unit Emotan Gardens that the company is developing on 70 hectares of land in Benin City.

House prices in the estate start from N5.7 million for a cluster of 2-bedrooms and increases to N7 million, N8 million and N9 million, according to the house-type, providing the much needed affordable homes.

The delivered 59 homes comprise 38 units of 2-bedroom bungalows and 21 units of 3-bedroom bungalows. The company expects additional 68 units to be delivered by the end of 2019, while the entire project is expected to be completed by 2021 Presently, the company is perfecting plans to award con-

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tracts for the construction of the first phase of infrastructure for the growing community including power, water and roads.

“We are delighted with the progress made on the Emotan Gardens development. In collaboration with Edo Development and Property Agenc y (EDPA), we are delivering, within our initial timeline, a range of high-quality affordable homes,” said Deji Alli, Mixta Africa’s CEO. “We are experiencing excellent levels of interest for the properties with over 76 units sold till date,” he said further.

An 1800-unit estate sitting on 70 hectares of land in Upper Sokponba axis of Benin City and providing a range of housing options to subscribers, Emotan Gardens is deemed a revolution in Edo State’s housing sector.

It is an affordable housing estate being developed by the state government through the Edo Development and Property Agency (EDPA) and Mixta Africa. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the estate development was signed between the state government and Mixta Africa in May 2018 @Businessdayng

and work kicked off in June last year.

Upon completion, the project will include a commercial area with opportunities for a shopping mall, schools and a hospital in addition to the residential component. The project also offers land sale to retail customers on plots of land measuring 450 square metres or 900 square metres.

The raw materials used in the construction and finishing of the buildings were sourced within the state to encourage local job creation. The materials, which include tiles, doors, glass, and other such materials, are sourced from companies operating in Utesi, an industrial cluster in the state.

Emotan Gardens is part of the many housing projects EDPA has set out to do in the state since it was revamped.

Since then, the state government has been on an aggressive drive for urban renewal with infrastructure projects ongoing across the state. These efforts are tapping into all sectors including infrastructural renewal, manufacturing, ICT development and educational reforms.

Friday 18 October 2019

FT

BUSINESS DAY

37

FINANCIAL TIMES

World Business Newspaper

DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO AND AIME WILLIAMS IN WASHINGTON, AND LAURA PITEL IN ANKARA

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ike Pence has arrived in Ankara on a high-stakes mission to persuade President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to halt Turkey’s military incursion into Syria and avoid becoming “the devil”, in the words of Donald Trump.

The US vice-president is leading a delegation that includes Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, and Robert O’Brien, US national security adviser. They are trying to repair the damage critics say the US president caused when he appeared to give a green light to Ankara by removing American troops from north-east Syria, where US-backed Kurdish forces had been fighting Isis jihadis.

Critics from across the political spectrum condemned the president’s actions, accusing Mr Trump of abandoning the Kurds, who have lost 11,000 lives battling the terror group.

The US withdrawal has created a vacuum that was immediately filled

by Moscow, with Russian troops recording videos from abandoned American bases.

John Allen, a retired US Marine general who heads the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, called it a “policy catastrophe”.

“Turkey’s invasion effectively undid in 96 hours what had been accomplished in four years. Everyone told Trump not to do this,” said Mr Allen. “The Pence mission is an attempt to put a battle dressing on a massive self-inflicted wound. Erdogan and Putin are calling the shots.”

Pence arrives in Turkey as Trump comes under pressure at home Vice-president heads mission to persuade Erdogan to halt Syria incursion

US vice-president Mike Pence, left, and secretary of state Mike Pompeo en route to the presidential palace in Ankara on Thursday © AP

Elizabeth Dent, an Isis and Syria expert at the Middle East Institute think-tank, said: “The optic is that we are being forced out of Syria by a Nato ally, Russia and the [Syrian] regime.”

Mr Trump on Wednesday denied giving the Turkish president approval for the incursion in an October 6

phone call, adding that he had created a “strategically brilliant” outcome.

He said Turkey and Syria could argue or “fight it out” but that the conflict had “nothing to do with us”.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator and an ally of the president, lambasted Mr Trump for com-

ments that “completely undercut” the ability of Mr Pence to negotiate a ceasefire.

Many experts doubted whether the vice-president’s delegation would secure a positive outcome in any case.

“I don’t think the US has a ne-

gotiating advantage at this point,” said Thad Troy, a former senior CIA officer with experience in Turkey and who is now at Crumpton Group, a business intelligence company. “Erdogan has pulled the carpet out from under the US. It’s a fait accompli.”

Mr Trump on Wednesday defended his actions by referencing a letter to Mr Erdogan, in which he said he would become “the devil” if he chose the wrong path. But the letter was dated October 9 — three days after their call and on the first day of the invasion.

US officials said Mr Erdogan would have invaded regardless.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to censure Mr Trump. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader who rarely chastises the president, said it was a “mistake”.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, said Mr Trump was having a “meltdown” following a tense White House meeting.

Mr Trump has also created a problem for Nato, putting members of the transatlantic alliance in the middle of a controversy that some say has increased the chances that Isis could re-emerge.

Why hedge fund managers are happy to let the machines take over

World Bank moves to halve ‘learning poverty’ and end illiteracy

Some claim computers are getting better at finding profitable patterns in market data

An estimated 265m children around the world are not studying in school

ROBIN WIGGLESWORTH

ANDREW JACK IN LONDON

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ore than half of tenyear olds in poorer countries and nearly 90 per cent of those in Sub-Saharan Africa lack basic reading skills, the World Bank said as it unveiled a new initiative to halve “learning poverty” over the coming decade.

In an effort to boost education spending and to increase its effectiveness, the agency released data showing wide divergence in the ability of children to read and understand a basic text.

An estimated 265m children around the world are not even studying in school, the analysis suggests, while a high proportion of those attending classes are failing to benefit because of poor quality teaching, absent or unsuitable materials or other impediments.

Jaime Saavedra, global education director at the World Bank, said: “This is a critical issue. All kids should be able to read. If not, their future is at risk. A lot of children are in school but are getting a low quality education.”

The initiative comes at a time when investing in “human capital” — or education and health — is seen as essential in boosting economic and social development and achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal targets for 2030.

The World Bank last year set up a “human capital index” to track progress and is helping co-ordinate a network of finance ministers alongside their counterparts in education and health to encourage countries to invest more of their own resources in social development.

Measures it says are required include meritocratic recruitment, improved teacher training coaching in schools, wider provision of textbooks, detailed lesson plans and improved systems for tracking students’ progress.

Julia Gillard, chair of the Global Partnership for Education which has raised $2.5bn over the past few months for education funding in lower income countries to support national plans, said: “We need an integrated approach. Data has to drive policy to assess improvements and we must focus on the most marginalised.” www.businessday.ng

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month ago many computer-driven investors watched astonished as markets were wracked by a financial tempest, with once-hot stocks tumbling and previously shunned sectors enjoying a revival.

But for Michael Kharitonov, the chief executive of San Franciscobased Voleon Group, the rapid rotation out of momentum stocks that wrongfooted many investors was “boring”.

The $6bn-in-assets hedge fund hardly noticed the brief but dramatic reversal. “We saw nothing,” he says, with a chuckle.

Voleon sees itself as at the vanguard of the next wave of quantitative investing, using machine learning to unearth patterns too faint for others to detect. Machine learning is a hot field of artificial intelligence, where algorithms work in a dynamic fashion, continuously adapting to new data.

The methods of the machines can be hard to explain, even for the fund managers presented with a raft of positions. Investors in those funds cannot go to their internal investment committees and talk about how the results were ob-

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tained. According to Mr Kharitonov, the majority of the patterns “have no simple economic rationale”.

Still, he predicts machine learning will be the next wave of innovation across the asset-management industry. “The tools are complex, but eventually others will have to move in this direction if they want to remain differentiated,” he said.

The Bank of England concurs. In a report on Wednesday on machine learning in UK financial services, it found that two-thirds of respondents already use it and that many expected to more than double the number of business areas in which they drew on it within the next three years.

Traditional trading algorithms are given a set of rules by human coders — for example, buy if a stock has climbed above its long-term moving average. But an algorithm derived from machine learning can extrapolate rules from the data itself. As a result, it learns as markets fluctuate.

This differs from mainstream quantitative investing, which primarily revolves around “factors”.

These range from established longterm trends such as the tendency for cheap or trendy stocks to do well, to niche bets, such as exploit@Businessdayng

ing the difference between the stock market’s actual volatility and the volatility implied by options prices.

These typically start as a hypothesis, which a quant then tests against the historical data. If it appears true they then start a new test on live data, and see if the factor, or signal, remains. Voleon, however, says it needs no economic theory to underpin its trades.

“Quants automate decisions that used to be made by humans. We automate the decisions that are made by quants,” Mr Kharitonov said.

This approach has advantages.

September’s dramatic reversal in fortunes for the big quant factors knocked many investors such as Transtrend of Rotterdam and Man Group’s AHL unit. But Voleon’s main fund gained 1.2 per cent over the month, taking its gains this year to 9.2 per cent, according to people familiar with the matter.

Voleon’s approach reflects the background of its senior management. Mr Kharitonov has a PhD in computer science from Stanford, and its chief investment officer Jon McAuliffe has a PhD in statistics from the University of California.

Both worked at DE Shaw, a pioneer of quantitative investing, before founding Voleon in 2007.

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Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

FT

NATIONAL NEWS

Boris Johnson battles to get new Brexit deal through parliament Pound slips after Northern Ireland’s DUP refuses to back new plan GEORGE PARKER, SAM FLEMING AND JIM BRUNSDEN IN BRUSSELS AND LAURA HUGHES IN LONDON

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oris Johnson faces an uphill struggle to pass what he called “a very good” Brexit deal in the House of Commons after it was denounced

by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party.

Mr Johnson is expected to win the backing of 27 other EU member states for the Brexit deal at a European Council meeting on Thursday evening, and claimed that Britain was on track to leave the bloc on October 31.

But the British prime minister only secured a deal in Brussels after agreeing to a new customs border inside the UK between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain, incurring the wrath of the DUP. Mr Johnson insisted on arrival in Brussels that it was a “reasonable and fair” outcome that would preserve peace in Northern Ireland.

The new EU withdrawal treaty means there will be no customs or regulatory land border on the island of Ireland.

The 10 MPs of the DUP could be crucial to determining whether Mr Johnson can pass a deal through the Commons at a special sitting on Saturday. Some Tory Eurosceptic MPs may refuse to back the deal unless the DUP can endorse it.

In a statement on Thursday, the DUP said: “These proposals are not, in our view, beneficial to the economic wellbeing of Northern Ireland and the integrity of the Union.” The party said it was “unable to support these proposals in

parliament”.

The DUP’s opposition throws up a big problem for Mr Johnson at Westminster but is also embarrassing for the prime minister in Brussels. He had promised EU leaders he was sure he could get a deal through parliament.

Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, said the deal agreed by negotiators in Brussels — which must be ratified by the EU27 leaders — “provides certainty where Brexit provides uncertainty”.

Mr Juncker said there would be no further extension to the Brexit process, helping Mr Johnson to maintain pressure on MPs to back a deal that could take Britain out of the EU on October 31.

A senior British official told the Financial Times: “The prime minister will tell EU leaders that it’s this deal or no deal — but no delays. He will not ask for an extension and will not accept one if offered.”

Standing alongside Mr Johnson, Mr Juncker said that talks on a future trade deal between the EU and UK would begin on November 1.

“I’m happy about the deal but sad about Brexit,” he said.

Sterling slipped 0.2 per cent to drop below $1.28 in early afternoon trading after the DUP said it would not support the new deal.

The pound had earlier jumped to $1.297, up more than 1 per cent, in reaction to initial news of the agreement.

Labour, the main opposition party in the UK, has also said it will vote against the deal. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader, said the new agreement was “even worse than Theresa May’s” in a reference to Mr Johnson’s predecessor.

Jobberman Launches ‘Best Match’ package

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obberman, a leading talent recruitment agency has introduced a new product called ‘Best Match’, which has been designed to make the process of sorting through applications and finding the best candidates more convenient for human resource professionals, business heads and entrepreneurs looking to hire quality talent.

Recruiting talent is an arduous and expensive task for employers as it involves a lot of administrative filtering, combined with the uncertainty around getting the wrong fit for the role. Many growing organizations struggle with identifying people who would take their business to the next level. Jobberman CEO Hilda Kragha noted that “With more job seekers coming into the market, the demand for jobs is higher than ever.

Therefore, employers receive hundreds of applications for a vacancy and have to sort through heaps of CVs and profiles to find candidates that best match what they require for the role.”

Kragha then explained “The Best Match product uses a mix of HR experts and our automated matching algorithm to sort and rank candidates that best match the criteria an employer is looking for in a role. The mix is extremely critical as it ensures

that science and experience are combined effectively to ensure that an employer gets the very best out of the candidates that have applied for the role.”

“Employers who use the Best Match product will get up to 10 best matches within the first 7 days of their job posting going live. This saves an employer so much time and for those that are not too tech-savvy, ensures that they can get access to the best matching candidates without too much effort. In addition to this, employers get access to over 1 million candidates in the Jobberman candidate database, 80% who are fully profiled and have undergone behavioural tests.” added Kragha.

The Future of Jobs 2018 Report courtesy of the World Economic Forum cited that many employers’ retraining and up-skilling efforts remained focused on a narrow set of current highly-skilled, highly-valued employees. However, in order to truly rise to the challenge of formulating a winning workforce strategy, businesses were challenged to recognize the human capital investment as an asset rather than a liability. This means hiring the best fit. Jobberman with this new value proposition is guaranteeing employers the Best Match, for their roles. www.businessday.ng

Elijah Cummings clashed frequently with Donald Trump © Getty

Democrat who chaired panel in impeachment inquiry dies

High-profile Trump critic and longtime congressman Elijah Cummings was 68 LAUREN FEDOR IN WASHINGTON AND BARNEY JOPSON IN LONDON

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lijah Cummings, a longser ving D emocratic congressman who was a central figure in efforts to impeach US President Donald Trump, has died at the age of 68.

Cummings, a popular and well-respected former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, passed away at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital “due to complications concerning longstanding health challenges”, his office said on Thursday. The congressman had been unwell in recent weeks and missed a series of votes on the House floor.

A member of Congress for more than two decades, Cummings was chairman of the House oversight committee, which is one of the panels overseeing the impeachment inquiry into Mr

Trump, at the time of his death.

This year, Mr Trump sued Cummings in an effort to conceal his business records.

Cummings and Mr Trump frequently clashed, and became locked in a war of words this summer as House Democrats stepped up their attacks on the president.

In response, Mr Trump lashed out at the lawmaker’s district, which includes much of the city of Baltimore.

Mr Trump called Cummings “a brutal bully” and his largely African-American district a “rat and rodent-infested mess”.

In response, the congressman said he was a strong advocate for the area he represented: “It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the executive branch.

But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.”

On Thursday, in a marked change of tone, Mr Trump praised Cummings, saying: “I got to see

first hand the strength, passion and wisdom of this highly respected political leader. His work and voice on so many fronts will be very hard, if not impossible, to replace!”

Cummings, the son of sharecroppers from South Carolina, was born and raised in Baltimore.

An attorney, he graduated from Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, and the University of Maryland School of Law. He was a member of the Maryland state legislature before being elected as a US congressman in 1996.

News of Cummings’ death prompted an outpouring of praise from Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, ordered all flags at the US Capitol be flown at half-staff in honour of Cummings, and said she was “personally devastated” by his passing.

Africa’s eurobonds are a blank cheque Failure to declare the use of proceeds is a threat to debt sustainability ANDREW ROCHE

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urobond financing is booming, even in the leastdeveloped emerging markets. African sovereigns issued $26bn on the market last year alone. You would be hard-pressed, however, to find out how the money was used.

In many eurobond prospectuses, you will find that the “Use of Proceeds” section consists of a mostly blank page containing one short message: “The Republic of . . . will use the net proceeds of the issue for general budgetary purposes.” That blank page is, essentially, a blank cheque.

Despite the risks associated with the potential misallocation of borrowed money and growing debt distress, the quality of public debt

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management in debtor countries is not reflected in traditional sovereign credit analysis.

In this context, environmental, social and governance (ESG) evaluations could be a game changer.

They could focus attention on often overlooked debt management and governance issues, factors that experience has shown to be material to sovereign risk. Scoring those factors would offer investors a more accurate risk profile of sovereign issuers.

As the World Bank and IMF hold their annual meetings in Washington this week, sovereign borrowing without conditionality is certain to be a hot topic. Debt campaigners are clamouring for discipline as the external debt of African countries reaches unsustainable levels. Organisations such as the IMF are being criticised for encouraging reck@Businessdayng

less borrowing. There are legitimate questions as to how countries can be facing debt distress, given that so many have recently benefited from debt bailouts.

Some of the answers can be found on the blank pages of the eurobond prospectuses.

It seems barely possible today that, despite great pressure for loan transparency from international institutions, G20 governments, rating agencies and official creditors, sovereigns are still able to borrow billions of dollars on the eurobond market with little or no accountability regarding the use of proceeds.

When a private company makes a pitch for new finance, a business and investment plan is essential, including clarity about how the borrowed funds will be invested in future earnings capacity.

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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FINANCIAL TIMES

COMPANIES & MARKETS

@ FINANCIAL TIMES LIMITED

Morgan Stanley notches strong quarter as bond trading surges Revenue from fixed income sales & trading offsets decline for wealth management LAURA NOONAN IN WASHINGTON

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organ Stanley capped off a mixed earnings season for Wall Street banks by reporting its strongest third quarter of the past decade, as a surge in bond trading revenue more than compensated for falling wealth management revenues*.

The smallest of Wall Street’s “Big Six” reported net income of $2.17bn, comfortably above the $1.8bn predicted by analysts and 3 per cent better than the third quarter of 2018.

Revenues grew 2 per cent year-on-year, to $10bn, beating median expectations for $9.6bn among analysts in a Refinitiv poll and marking the highest level in more than a decade. It also allowed Morgan Stanley to claim revenues above $10bn for the third quarter in a row.

“Our consistent performance shows the stability of our business model,” chairman and chief executive James Gorman said. “We remain committed to controlling our expenses and are well positioned to pursue our growth initiatives.”

Fixed income sales and trading was the powerhouse,

delivering an extra $251m of revenues in a quarter when equity sales and trading revenues were flat.

Morgan Stanley said clients demonstrated strong engagement “despite seasonality and volatile markets.”

Investment banking revenues grew 5 per cent yearon-year, fuelled by higher fees in advisory and debt capital markets.

Revenues in wealth management — Morgan Stanley’s second biggest division after its investment bank — fell 1 per cent to $4.36bn. The bank said its net interest income decreased 3 per cent year on year.

At its previous earnings call in July, analysts fretted over how that business would be affected by falling interest rates and an inverted yield curve.

The results capped off a mixed earnings season, where JPMorgan Chase shot the lights out with an 8 per cent rise in net income, while Citigroup and Bank of America posted more modest increases, and Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo both posted big falls.

Morgan Stanley shares were 4 per cent higher in premarket trade on Thursday morning.

German government slashes growth forecast Economy expected to expand by just 1 per cent next year as trade war bites GUY CHAZAN IN BERLIN

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he German government has revised down its forecast for economic growth next year from 1.5 per cent to 1 per cent, in a further sign of the slowdown that is clouding the prospects for the eurozone’s largest economy.

The economics ministry did not change its projection of 0.5 per cent growth in gross domestic product in 2019.

Germany’s economy has been roiled by global trade tensions, Brexit-related uncertainty and upheaval in the auto industry. It shrank by 0.1 per cent in the second quarter and is widely expected to suffer a further decline in the third, tipping it into recession.

But the overall picture is mixed, a point stressed by economics minister Peter Altmaier when he unveiled the revised forecasts on Thursday.

He said Germany’s industrial production and the export sector were suffering a marked downturn. But other parts of the economy, such as craft trades and the construction industry, were booming, thanks to strong domestic demand.

“They expect growth of 4 to 5 per cent this year, they’re desperately looking for qualified staff and their order books are more than full,” he said.

Mr Altmaier said that “even if the current prospects have

dimmed, there is no threat of an economic crisis”. Employment and incomes are rising and Germany will have 45.4m people in work by the end of 2020, he said, up from 44.8m in 2018.

The Brexit deal agreed between the UK and EU on Thursday would help to improve the mood among German executives, he added, saying it meant “the feared negative effects of Brexit will be limited and we will have additional impulses for the economy”.

That point was echoed by Clemens Fuest, head of the influential Ifo Institute in Munich.

“The current plan to avoid border controls in Northern Ireland and move towards a wide-ranging tariff-free free trade agreement would be a good prospect for all those involved,” he said.

The economics ministry said that although uncertainty over Brexit and international trade conflicts had clouded the picture for German exporters, the traderelated downturn would soon reach its “lowest point”. After that, foreign demand will pick up again and “Germany’s export economy will get back on its feet”, Mr Altmaier said.

The ministry also forecast that Germany’s current account surplus, which reflects the balance of trade between exports and imports, will fall to 6.2 per cent of GDP in 2020, down from 7.25 per cent in 2018. It said that while imports will decline next year, they would not drop as fast as exports. www.businessday.ng

© Bloomberg

SEC opens debate on finding alternatives to IPOs US markets regulator hears arguments for enabling direct listings to raise capital MILES KRUPPA IN SAN FRANCISCO

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he US Securities and Exchange Commission has held exploratory discussions on alternatives to initial public offerings for companies that want to raise capital and list on the public markets.

Silicon Valley investors and advisers are pushing for more companies to follow Slack and Spotify’s lead and choose a direct listing, in which pre-existing shares are released to public investors without offering any new equity.

But some supporters of direct listings are lobbying the US markets regulator to allow companies to raise new capital when taking this route.

Representatives from Morgan Stanley, the Nasdaq stock exchange and the law firm Latham & Watkins met SEC officials in Washington earlier this month to discuss ways companies could sell primary shares in direct listings, people with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

William Hinman, director of the SEC’s division of corporation finance, was among the officials present at the meeting, one of the people said. They cautioned discussions are at an early stage, and any proposals to raise capital in direct listings could take months to finalise.

The SEC declined to comment on the meeting but said it has an “open door for issuers and their advisers if they have questions in general, and in particular about novel offerings or procedures”.

At the Washington meeting, SEC officials raised questions about proper investor disclosures in the new direct listing format, people with knowledge of the discussions said. IPO prospectuses, for instance, require companies to establish a price range for their share offerings, and it is unclear how that would be handled in the new procedure.

The topic also came up during a Goldman Sachs conference in Las Vegas this month. Greg Rodgers, a partner at Latham, said that there are still “hurdles” to raising capital in a direct listing, though regulators

are “very happy” with the precedent set by Slack and Spotify.

“The SEC’s mandate is to have as many public companies as possible.

And I think they do recognise that the inability to raise primary capital [in direct listings] is a limiter,” Mr Rodgers said, according to a transcript. “So I think in the long term, I like our chances here.”

The Washington meeting was partly organised and attended by Joseph Grundfest, a Stanford University law professor and former SEC commissioner, people with knowledge of the matter said. Mr Grundfest did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Discussions around direct listings have increased following a series of high-profile stock market flops. Shares in fitness equipment maker company Peloton and dentistry provider SmileDirectClub got off to a sluggish start when they made their debuts as public companies last month, while property group WeWork shelved its planned IPO entirely after facing questions about its business model and corporate governance.

Mario Draghi’s ECB opponents shift attention to Christine Lagarde Critics of his recent stimulus measures seek change of policy under incoming president MARTIN ARNOLD IN FRANKFURT

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he European Central Bank’s main opponents of Mario Draghi’s recent stimulus package have shifted their attention from criticising his renewed bond-buying programme to piling pressure on to his successor, Christine Lagarde.

The heads of the German, French, Dutch and Austrian central banks have all spoken out this week to call for a change of strategy when Ms Lagarde takes charge at the central bank next month. They hope she will move on from the ambitious monetary easing strategy Mr Draghi has pursued over the past eight years.

In a speech in New York on

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Wednesday Jens Weidmann, head of Germany’s Bundesbank, said that central banks should “stick to a narrow interpretation of their mandate” of maintaining price stability and keeping inflation in check, warning that interpreting this too broadly would imperil their independence.

The German central banker has long been the most vocal critic of Mr Draghi’s move to broaden the ECB’s remit by launching unconventional measures such as negative interest rates and huge bond purchases in response to the eurozone debt crisis.

Many economists question whether the ECB can go much further in this vein as it seeks to head off a fresh economic slowdown. As a result, some believe Ms Lagarde @Businessdayng

could seek a closer alignment of monetary and fiscal policy, such as buying governments’ bonds in return for investment in infrastructure or climate change mitigation.

Mr Weidmann warned against this. “It is true that, at the lower bound of interest rates, fiscal policy is in theory often considered a powerful instrument,” he said “However, the interests of monetary policy and fiscal policy will not overlap forever.”

He cited Bundesbank analysis that found every 1 per cent rise in wages will push up consumer prices by about 0.3 per cent, saying that once inflation began to rise, central banks would only be able to remove their monetary stimulus if they stayed independent.

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Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

FT

ANALYSIS

Chile president Sebastián Piñera: ‘We are ready to do everything to not fall into populism’ Billionaire leader preaches virtues of the market but reform agenda is bogged down MICHAEL STOTT AND BENEDICT MANDER IN SANTIAGO

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etermined to preserve his country’s reputation as a beacon of stability and sound economic management in a continent not famous for either, Chile’s billionaire president Sebastián Piñera defines himself as a committed crusader against populism. His fight is an increasingly solitary one.

Latin America’s two biggest economies, Brazil and Mexico, are governed by populists of the right and left respectively; neighbouring Argentina looks set to eject Mr Piñera’s close ally Mauricio Macri and return to Peronism in elections at the end of this month; and pro-reform presidents in Peru and Ecuador are fighting for their political lives.

But Mr Piñera is unbowed, invoking classical myth in his fight against the demagogues. “Ulysses tied himself to a ship’s mast and put pieces of wax in his ears to avoid falling for the . . . siren calls,” the silver-haired 69-year-old leader tells the Financial Times during a conversation at the presidential palace in Santiago. “We are ready to do everything to not fall into populism, into demagoguery.”

His vision for Chile is ambitious and wide-ranging: to boost growth after four lacklustre years under his socialist predecessor Michelle Bachelet by building the pillars of a knowledge economy. It means improving the quality of education, increasing investment in science and technology, raising the standard of institutions and modernising the state.

The wider goal is to achieve an objective that has eluded most of the world’s middle-income countries: becoming a developed nation, with gross domestic product per capita al-

most 50 per cent higher than Chile’s 2018 level of $25,200 on a purchasing power parity basis.

Seated in shirt sleeves at a circular table in his office, and waving printed sheets of economic data, Mr Piñera points out that growth rates under Ms Bachelet averaged just 1.7 per cent. “Today we are at 3.25, double, but we are still a long way off reaching the rate of 5 or 6 per cent,” he admits.

Now 18 months into his second (non-consecutive) term as president, one of Mr Piñera’s biggest obstacles is his lack of a congressional majority. The government’s tax, pension and labour reforms have been bogged down for months as hostile legislators try to amend them. The president’s tactics have been to negotiate and make concessions where needed. Some bankers and investors in Santiago feel he may have given too much ground.

Mr Piñera, who made his fortune introducing credit cards to Chile in the 1980s, waves away the concern, recalling words attributed to Winston Churchill that an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. “We in the government are very optimistic,” he adds with a smile.

The president also hopes to raise Chile’s traditionally low diplomatic profile: he will host the Apec summit of Asia-Pacific economic powers next month and wants to make the case for open markets and try to end the “absurd” trade war between the US and China.

Donald Trump, who skipped last year’s Apec summit in Papua New Guinea, has not yet confirmed his attendance in Chile but Mr Piñera is hopeful that the US president will turn up. “One thing is that he has not confirmed, another is that he has not come,” he explains.

US diplomat says Trump told him to work with Giuliani on Ukraine Gordon Sondland’s testimony illustrates centrality of president’s lawyer to impeachment inquiry DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO IN WASHINGTON

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ordon Sondland, US ambassador to the EU, said Donald Trump told him to co-ordinate Ukraine policy with Rudy Giuliani, further highlighting the central role the president’s personal lawyer has played in the Ukraine scandal.

Mr Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and Trump fundraiser, told Congress on Thursday that Mr Trump ordered him to liaise with Mr Giuliani in May when he urged the president to hold a telephone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian who had been elected as Ukraine’s president.

Mr Sondland said the US president gave the order after he and other officials working

on Ukraine — including thenspecial envoy Kurt Volker and Rick Perry, US energy secretary — tried to arrange both a telephone call with Mr Trump and an Oval Office meeting for Mr Zelensky “President Trump was sceptical that Ukraine was serious about reforms and anti-corruption, and he directed those of us present at the meeting to talk to Mr Giuliani, his personal attorney, about his concerns,” Mr Sondland said. “It was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the president’s mind on Ukraine was Mr Giuliani.”

Mr Sondland is one of several officials called to provide evidence to the Democraticcontrolled committees in the House of Representatives that are leading an impeachment inquiry into the president.

www.businessday.ng

The Vatican, a Chelsea property deal and Brexit Pope Francis has ordered an investigation into a London investment by the body managing charitable donations MILES JOHNSON IN ROME AND DONATO PAOLO MANCINI IN LONDON

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n 2012, private bankers at Credit Suisse arranged a meeting at their Canary Wharf offices in London that required even more discretion than usual.

There a representative of one of their most secretive clients sat down with a man claiming to be able to perform miracles with money.

The client, an ultra-high net worth European account, had been studying an investment into a risky oil project in Africa, and the stylish Italian financier was there to offer his expert advice.

After a year of deliberations the Italian had returned with his opinion. The oil investment would not be profitable, but instead he could put a new, far more lucrative opportunity on the table: selling the client a stake in his own luxury property development in one of London’s most exclusive neighbourhoods.

By 2014 a total of $200m had been wired from accounts at Credit Suisse and Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI), a Lugano-based private bank, to the Italian financier’s holding company in Luxembourg.

The ultra-high net worth client was none other than the Secretariat of State for the Vatican — custodian of hundreds of millions of charitable donations from the Catholic faithful around the world for the poor and needy.

As a result of the investment, the Secretariat was now the part owner of a scheme to build 49 luxury apartments in London’s Chelsea — a speculative development plan that was made even riskier after Britain’s vote to leave the EU in 2016 sent shivers through the capital’s prime real estate market.

This month cardinals were left stunned when the Vatican’s own police raided the offices of the Secretariat — the central bureaucracy of the Holy See — to seize financial documents and computers, while five members of staff were suspended.

That same week Pope Francis drafted in Giuseppe Pignatone, one

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of Italy’s most feared anti-mafia judges who helped bring down the capo of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Bernardo Provenzano, as head of the Vatican’s prosecution service.

The Vatican has declined to comment on why it staged the unprecedented raid on its own offices beyond a statement that it is probing suspicious financial transactions “carried out over time”.

The Financial Times has been able to establish through interviews and financial documents that the investigation is focused on how the Vatican Secretariat entered into a complex London real estate deal that was blown off-course by Brexit.

The deal, which saw the Secretariat buy a minority stake in 60 Sloane Avenue in Chelsea through an offshore structure of funds and companies, realised £138m in profit for Raffaele Mincione, the Italian former banker and family office manager who put the deal together and managed it on the Vatican Secretariat’s behalf.

Last year, with the UK luxury property market shaken by political uncertainty, the development was forced to refinance its debts with a London hedge fund. In November 2018 the Vatican Secretariat issued a demand to Mr Mincione to buy the Chelsea building outright — setting in motion the events that would lead to the police raids at the heart of the Holy See this month.

The Vatican raid, insiders say, is a rare public glimpse of a fierce battle inside the Holy See, with a faction of cardinals resisting attempts by Pope Francis to sort out and centralise its sprawling finances after decades of scandals and embarrassment for the Church.

The Secretariat’s bet on London real estate was made with funds held away from the Vatican bank, the Institute for Religious Works, which since 2013 has published an annual report of its €5.3bn of assets in an effort to show progress after past money laundering cases.

In a statement, Mr Mincione’s investment company WRM said the Vatican Secretariat had been advised in all of its dealings with the fund by Credit Suisse, and all its transactions @Businessdayng

with the Secretariat were transparent and audited.

“We have no inside knowledge of these investigations or the circumstances that led to them. We are secure and confident in the knowledge that no wrongdoing or improprieties were conducted by the WRM group or any of its companies,” it said.

Credit Suisse declined to comment.

Details of the London property deal raise questions over the actions of Giovanni Angelo Becciu, now a cardinal and at the time of the investment the substitute for general affairs of the Secretariat, its second highest ranking official and in effect chief of staff to the pope.

It was in this role, which made him one of the most powerful figures inside the Holy See reporting daily to Pope Benedict and later Pope Francis, that Cardinal Becciu signed off on the investment after meeting Mr Mincione at the Vatican. Cardinal Becciu, through his office, declined to comment.

Mr Mincione was not the typical company that a man of the Church such as Cardinal Becciu might be expected to keep. Born in Pomezia, 30km outside the centre of Rome in 1965, Mr Mincione moved to London in the 1980s, where he worked selling bonds and derivatives in various investment banks and developed a reputation among his colleagues as something of a playboy.

Having briefly attracted British press attention for dating the model Heather Mills in the early 1990s after meeting her in the London nightclub Stringfellows, ex-colleagues said Mr Mincione showed a penchant for taking large, risky bets. “He made a lot of money, and spent a lot of money,” says one.

During the Russian financial crisis of the late 1990s he used his bonus money to buy up Gazprom bonds at distressed prices, making several million pounds in profit when they were eventually paid out at full value.

He hit the British press again after buying a large period house in London’s Knightsbridge for what was reported as a knockdown price of £18m in 2009. He commented to a newspaper that “in a very uncertain time there is no bargain”.

Friday 18 October 2019

BUSINESS DAY

41

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Trades

Volume

PRICES FOR MAIN BOARD SECURITIES (Equities) BANKING ACCESS BANK PLC. 263,034.67 7.40 - 94 1,825,434 UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA PLC 198,356.64 5.80 -2.52 171 9,999,017 ZENITH BANK PLC 555,717.94 17.70 -0.84 271 11,945,430 536 23,769,881 OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS FBN HOLDINGS PLC 190,245.05 5.30 -0.94 144 24,338,944 144 24,338,944 680 48,108,825 TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES MTN NIGERIA COMMUNICATIONS PLC 2,625,732.18 129.00 0.39 41 250,730 41 250,730 41 250,730 BUILDING MATERIALS DANGOTE CEMENT PLC 2,470,873.57 145.00 - 34 104,830 LAFARGE AFRICA PLC. 246,449.27 15.30 -0.33 55 3,312,039 89 3,416,869 89 3,416,869 EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION SEPLAT PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PLC 304,225.84 517.00 - 33 15,408 33 15,408 33 15,408 843 51,791,832 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 - 3 19,888 UPDC REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST 13,074.52 4.90 - 1 10 4 19,898 4 19,898 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 4 19,898 CROP PRODUCTION FTN COCOA PROCESSORS PLC 440.00 0.20 - 0 0 OKOMU OIL PALM PLC. 52,417.35 54.95 - 18 41,144 PRESCO PLC 38,400.00 38.40 - 4 7,401 22 48,545 FISHING/HUNTING/TRAPPING ELLAH LAKES PLC. 8,520.00 4.26 - 0 0 0 0 LIVESTOCK/ANIMAL SPECIALTIES LIVESTOCK FEEDS PLC. 1,500.00 0.50 - 14 194,013 14 194,013 36 242,558 DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIES A.G. LEVENTIS NIGERIA PLC. 688.30 0.26 - 1 3,048 214.03 0.55 - 2 2,936 JOHN HOLT PLC. S C O A NIG. PLC. 1,903.99 2.93 - 0 0 TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION OF NIGERIA PLC 41,054.47 1.01 -0.98 43 4,222,369 U A C N PLC. 19,304.69 6.70 - 22 93,800 68 4,322,153 68 4,322,153 BUILDING CONSTRUCTION ARBICO PLC. 711.32 4.79 - 0 0 0 0 INFRASTRUCTURE/HEAVY CONSTRUCTION JULIUS BERGER NIG. PLC. 24,486.00 18.55 - 17 26,255 ROADS NIG PLC. 165.00 6.60 - 0 0 17 26,255 REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT UACN PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PLC 2,884.22 1.11 - 4 12,820 4 12,820 21 39,075 AUTOMOBILES/AUTO PARTS DN TYRE & RUBBER PLC 954.53 0.20 - 0 0 0 0 BEVERAGES--BREWERS/DISTILLERS CHAMPION BREW. PLC. 8,142.68 1.04 - 0 0 GOLDEN GUINEA BREW. PLC. 242.22 0.89 - 0 0 GUINNESS NIG PLC 64,287.74 29.35 - 61 101,402 INTERNATIONAL BREWERIES PLC. 108,307.86 12.60 - 13 322,147 NIGERIAN BREW. PLC. 368,257.34 46.05 - 50 253,259 124 676,808 FOOD PRODUCTS DANGOTE FLOUR MILLS PLC 115,000.00 23.00 -0.86 52 345,137 DANGOTE SUGAR REFINERY PLC 122,400.00 10.20 - 45 446,482 FLOUR MILLS NIG. PLC. 61,915.73 15.10 2.37 28 2,507,813 HONEYWELL FLOUR MILL PLC 7,850.90 0.99 - 14 110,195 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 - 11 18,267 UNION DICON SALT PLC. 3,321.07 12.15 - 2 12,500 152 3,440,394 FOOD PRODUCTS--DIVERSIFIED CADBURY NIGERIA PLC. 18,500.29 9.85 - 13 20,990 NESTLE NIGERIA PLC. 967,040.63 1,220.00 - 52 1,027,242 65 1,048,232 HOUSEHOLD DURABLES NIGERIAN ENAMELWARE PLC. 1,680.31 22.10 - 0 0 VITAFOAM NIG PLC. 4,878.29 3.90 - 20 369,368 20 369,368 PERSONAL/HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS P Z CUSSONS NIGERIA PLC. 24,418.43 6.15 - 17 102,463 UNILEVER NIGERIA PLC. 153,391.64 26.70 - 24 117,014 41 219,477 402 5,754,279 BANKING ECOBANK TRANSNATIONAL INCORPORATED 128,446.86 7.00 - 28 254,154 FIDELITY BANK PLC 49,257.15 1.70 1.19 62 13,960,674 GUARANTY TRUST BANK PLC. 784,340.93 26.65 -1.30 199 35,218,896 JAIZ BANK PLC 15,026.77 0.51 2.00 13 635,140 STERLING BANK PLC. 51,822.75 1.80 - 18 540,763 UNION BANK NIG.PLC. 203,845.27 7.00 - 18 234,803 UNITY BANK PLC 7,364.28 0.63 - 3 6,632 WEMA BANK PLC. 22,373.19 0.58 -1.69 23 1,347,089 364 52,198,151 INSURANCE CARRIERS, BROKERS AND SERVICES AFRICAN ALLIANCE INSURANCE PLC 4,117.00 0.20 - 0 0 AIICO INSURANCE PLC. 4,435.33 0.64 1.59 10 1,248,695 AXAMANSARD INSURANCE PLC 17,850.00 1.70 - 2 975,000 CONSOLIDATED HALLMARK INSURANCE PLC 2,439.00 0.30 - 1 20,000 CONTINENTAL REINSURANCE PLC 23,961.04 2.31 0.43 22 2,217,000 CORNERSTONE INSURANCE PLC 5,008.03 0.34 -8.11 2 145,000 GOLDLINK INSURANCE PLC 909.99 0.20 - 0 0 GUINEA INSURANCE PLC. 1,228.00 0.20 - 0 0 INTERNATIONAL ENERGY INSURANCE PLC 487.95 0.38 - 0 0 LASACO ASSURANCE PLC. 2,050.56 0.28 -3.57 10 1,073,294 LAW UNION AND ROCK INS. PLC. 2,105.20 0.49 2.08 9 9,147,578 LINKAGE ASSURANCE PLC 4,080.00 0.51 - 20 1,370,000 MUTUAL BENEFITS ASSURANCE PLC. 2,234.55 0.20 - 1 810 NEM INSURANCE PLC 12,145.16 2.30 - 48 1,645,730 NIGER INSURANCE PLC 1,547.90 0.20 - 5 705,900 PRESTIGE ASSURANCE PLC 2,691.28 0.50 - 0 0 REGENCY ASSURANCE PLC 1,333.75 0.20 - 0 0 SOVEREIGN TRUST INSURANCE PLC 1,668.16 0.20 - 0 0 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 - 1 500 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 4,683.96 0.35 9.38 30 3,030,272 161 21,579,779

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MICRO-FINANCE BANKS NPF MICROFINANCE BANK PLC 2,721.10 1.19 - 6 83,084 6 83,084 MORTGAGE CARRIERS, BROKERS AND SERVICES ABBEY MORTGAGE BANK PLC 4,158.00 0.99 - 0 0 ASO SAVINGS AND LOANS PLC 7,370.87 0.50 - 0 0 INFINITY TRUST MORTGAGE BANK PLC 5,796.93 1.39 - 0 0 RESORT SAVINGS & LOANS PLC 2,265.95 0.20 - 0 0 2,949.22 3.02 - 0 0 UNION HOMES SAVINGS AND LOANS PLC. 0 0 OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AFRICA PRUDENTIAL PLC 8,000.00 4.00 - 17 52,884 CUSTODIAN INVESTMENT PLC 33,232.53 5.65 - 14 199,972 660.00 0.44 - 0 0 DEAP CAPITAL MANAGEMENT & TRUST PLC FCMB GROUP PLC. 33,664.61 1.70 6.92 40 2,845,436 ROYAL EXCHANGE PLC. 1,029.07 0.20 - 1 1,255 STANBIC IBTC HOLDINGS PLC 379,662.63 36.25 - 22 557,460 UNITED CAPITAL PLC 12,600.00 2.10 0.48 50 1,171,982 144 4,828,989 675 78,690,003 HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS EKOCORP PLC. 1,680.29 3.37 - 0 0 UNION DIAGNOSTIC & CLINICAL SERVICES PLC 781.69 0.22 - 1 8,288 1 8,288 MEDICAL SUPPLIES MORISON INDUSTRIES PLC. 494.58 0.50 - 0 0 0 0 PHARMACEUTICALS EVANS MEDICAL PLC. 366.17 0.50 - 0 0 FIDSON HEALTHCARE PLC 8,345.44 4.00 - 4 11,762 GLAXO SMITHKLINE CONSUMER NIG. PLC. 7,653.61 6.40 - 12 344,468 MAY & BAKER NIGERIA PLC. 3,450.47 2.00 - 6 45,665 NEIMETH INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICALS PLC 759.66 0.40 - 7 52,580 556.71 3.62 - 0 0 NIGERIA-GERMAN CHEMICALS PLC. PHARMA-DEKO PLC. 325.23 1.50 - 0 0 29 454,475 30 462,763 COMPUTER BASED SYSTEMS COURTEVILLE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS PLC 745.92 0.21 - 0 0 0 0 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 - 1 1,196 TRIPPLE GEE AND COMPANY PLC. 292.02 0.59 - 2 3,705 3 4,901 PROCESSING SYSTEMS CHAMS PLC 1,127.05 0.24 9.09 6 758,059 E-TRANZACT INTERNATIONAL PLC 9,996.00 2.38 - 0 0 6 758,059 TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES AIRTEL AFRICA PLC 1,157,510.66 308.00 - 1 58 1 58 10 763,018 BUILDING MATERIALS BERGER PAINTS PLC 2,173.68 7.50 - 7 69,145 CAP PLC 17,885.00 25.55 - 16 72,117 CEMENT CO. OF NORTH.NIG. PLC 208,324.49 15.85 - 11 27,315 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 - 1 80 35 168,657 ELECTRONIC AND ELECTRICAL PRODUCTS AUSTIN LAZ & COMPANY PLC 2,256.91 2.09 - 0 0 CUTIX PLC. 2,465.85 1.40 - 19 98,710 19 98,710 PACKAGING/CONTAINERS BETA GLASS PLC. 26,898.49 53.80 - 1 16 GREIF NIGERIA PLC 388.02 9.10 - 0 0 1 16 AGRO-ALLIED & CHEMICALS NOTORE CHEMICAL IND PLC 100,754.14 62.50 - 0 0 0 0 55 267,383 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 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 ENERGY EQUIPMENT AND SERVICES JAPAUL OIL & MARITIME SERVICES PLC 1,252.54 0.20 - 1 1,000 1 1,000 INTEGRATED OIL AND GAS SERVICES OANDO PLC 42,391.12 3.41 - 50 358,405 50 358,405 PETROLEUM AND PETROLEUM PRODUCTS DISTRIBUTORS 11 PLC 53,332.04 147.90 - 19 5,681 CONOIL PLC 10,686.86 15.40 - 15 13,803 ETERNA PLC. 4,108.06 3.15 - 9 94,560 FORTE OIL PLC. 20,839.70 16.00 - 30 130,039 MRS OIL NIGERIA PLC. 5,166.13 16.95 - 5 51,325 TOTAL NIGERIA PLC. 41,829.09 123.20 - 23 17,802 101 313,210 152 672,615 ADVERTISING AFROMEDIA PLC 1,820.01 0.41 - 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. 294.09 0.25 - 0 0 0 0 COURIER/FREIGHT/DELIVERY RED STAR EXPRESS PLC 2,387.46 4.05 - 7 155,420 TRANS-NATIONWIDE EXPRESS PLC. 361.01 0.77 - 1 4,837 8 160,257 HOSPITALITY TANTALIZERS PLC 642.33 0.20 - 1 6,000 1 6,000 HOTELS/LODGING CAPITAL HOTEL PLC 4,723.78 3.05 - 0 0 IKEJA HOTEL PLC 2,452.98 1.18 - 1 201 TOURIST COMPANY OF NIGERIA PLC. 7,862.53 3.50 - 0 0 TRANSCORP HOTELS PLC 41,042.18 5.40 - 0 0 1 201 MEDIA/ENTERTAINMENT DAAR COMMUNICATIONS PLC 4,800.00 0.40 - 0 0 0 0 PRINTING/PUBLISHING ACADEMY PRESS PLC. 211.68 0.35 - 2 120 LEARN AFRICA PLC 948.88 1.23 - 8 51,107 STUDIO PRESS (NIG) PLC. 1,183.82 1.99 - 1 40 UNIVERSITY PRESS PLC. 496.12 1.15 - 3 88,702 14 139,969 ROAD TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATED BUS COMPANY PLC 729.39 0.44 - 3 19,800 3 19,800

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Women in Business

Saratu Grace Ghartey Chief Program Accountability Officer for NYC Department of Social Services (DSS)

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aratu Grace Ghartey is the Chief Program Accountability Officer for New York City’s Department of Social Services (DSS). DSS is the largest local social services agency in the country, employing over 17,000 people and serving approximately 3 million needy New Yorkers with an operating budget of $9.7 billion. DSS’s programs include Medicaid (public health insurance), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, f/k/a food stamps), Temporary Cash Assistance (a/k/a welfare), HIV/AIDS support services, child support enforcement, and homeless services.

As Chief Program Accountability Officer, Ms. Ghartey has agency-wide responsibility for program integrity, compliance, investigations, audit and quality assurance. Specifically, she oversees the Investigation, Revenue and Enforcement Administration (IREA), the Office of Audit Services and Quality Assurance, and the Office of Compliance and Contract Monitoring (approximately 1,300 staff).

She started off as Ratings Advisory Intern for Merrill Lynch International where she conducted quantitative and qualitative research and analysis for various European industries, performed financial benchmarking and assisted with presentations to Standard & Poors and other rating agencies.

Ghartey began her career at Dept of Social Services/HRA as the Assistant Deputy Commissioner over the Management Analysis, Policy and Data (MAPD) division, which conducts managerial and statistical analyses, documents and evaluates internal processes, and creates and maintains reporting data.

Under Ms. Ghartey, MAPD added a Data Analytics unit charged with developing new data mining capabilities. Specifically, the unit utilizes program and administrative data to develop and maintain predictive fraud algorithms and indicators in order to identify new investigative initiatives and establish meaningful case filters.

She was also formerly the Deputy Commissioner, Investigation, Revenue & Enforcement Administration (DSS/HRA) and after only one year at the agency, Ms. Ghartey was promoted to Deputy Commissioner for IREA Operations. She was given direct operational responsibility for two investigative areas within the Investigation, Revenue and Enforcement Administration (IREA) (the

Bureau of Fraud Investigations (BFI) and the Bureau of Eligibility Verification (BEV) (1100 investigators total), as well as the Office of Revenue, which is the collections arm of the agency. She also had oversight of the Management Analysis, Policy and Data division. In this role Ms. Ghartey managed the day-to-day operations, provided strategic planning and oversight, spearheaded cross-agency projects, managed staffing budgets, etc.

In the past, she was also the Assistant Medicaid Inspector General, NYS Office of Medicaid Inspector General, where she managed the Division of Medicaid Investigation’s downstate operations, which includes supervision of over 35 healthcare fraud investigators and administrative staff. She led the agencywide multi-disciplinary task force on home healthcare. As part of NYS Medicaid Redesign Team proposals, she designed and implemented State-wide education initiative that ultimately saved New York over $138 million.

Her previous position within the Agency was, Head of Bureau of Research and Evaluations, which is responsible for conducting a comprehensive set of in-depth evaluations of the New York State Medicaid program’s operations and processes in order to identify vulnerabilities, promote efficiency and effectiveness, and prevent and detect fraud, waste and abuse.

While at WILMER HALE, she was Senior Litigation Associate, and represented clients in a wide variety of complex litigation matters before the SEC, the DOJ, and in state and federal courts. These matters included business contract disputes, multi-litigation securities fraud, accounting fraud, trading violations, and white-collar crime. She conducted investigations, developed case theories and defense strategies. Saratu researched and drafted legal briefs, motions and memoranda.

She prepared experts and witnesses for trial and depositions and also conducted and coordinated discovery.

Ms. Ghartey came to DSS from the New York State Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG), where she was first the Assistant Medicaid Inspector General. Ghartey is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, and of Boston University, where she majored in Economics. Ms. Ghartey was raised in Jos, Nigeria and now lives in Brooklyn, New York City, with her husband and son.

BUSINESS DAY Friday 18 October 2019

By Kemi Ajumobi

www.businessday.ng

BIBI BAKARE YUSUF

Co-Founder, Cassava Republic

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ibi is co-founder and publishing director of one of Africa’s leading publishing houses, Cassava Republic Press and the co-founder of Tapestry Consulting, a boutique research and training company focused on gender, sexuality and transformational issues in Nigeria.

She has worked as a gender and research consultant in the public, private and development sectors for the BBC, UniFem, ActionAid, eShekels, Central Bank of Nigeria, the European Union and others. She has a Ph.D in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Warwick. She has published many academic papers and regularly presents papers at academic conferences. She sits on the editorial board of a number of influential journals and is the chair of board for The Initiative for Equal Rights, the largest organisation in West Africa devoted to LGBTQ issues. Bibi is also a Yale World Fellow, a Desmond Tutu Fellow and a Frankfurt Book Fair Fellow.

Bibi Bakare-Yusuf was born in 1970 in Lagos, Nigeria. At thirteen, she was sent to private school in England, and later studied communications and anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

She went on to do a masters and a PhD. in gender studies at the University of Warwick. Bakare-Yusuf ’s thesis explored cultural preservation and memory with an examination of embodiment and agency in the black diaspora. In addition to publishing in numerous trade journals, she is a regular presence at academic conferences, and sits on the editorial board of several influential journals. In 2003, she returned to Nigeria to take up a research fellowship at the Centre for Gender Studies of Obafemi Awolowo University.

Bakare-Yusuf says that writing has been a thread running through her entire life, from faithfully keeping a diary as a girl and young woman, to her participation in writing workshops in London. She cites as a significant source of inspiration the books of Bessie Head, considered Botswana’s most important writer.

According to internationales literaturfestival Berlin, Bakare-Yusuf read Head’s books in one go and has said in an interview that it was then she realized that it was possible to still the chaos in her thoughts by writing. She said that her interest in the relationship between culture and memory lends itself more to an academic than a literary style. She gave up writing poetry when she realized that there were other poets who could express what she wanted to say better than she ever could. “So, I stopped writing creatively, but intensified my reading of poetry and fiction” she said.

In 2006, she co-founded Cassava Republic Press, which has since become one of the leading African publishing houses. A committed feminist, the publisher sees her life’s work as helping to transform African societies with the production of alternative narratives. In keeping with that, Cassava publishes stories by and for Africans at affordable prices, with the goal of fostering African literature, as well as rebuilding a culture of reading and writing on the continent. Some of the books present a subtle challenge to the UN Millennium Development Goals with regard to sex roles, among other issues, and several of them have been incorporated into Nigeria’s school curriculum. Among the authors published by the house are literary heavyweights such as Helon Habila, who won the 2015 Windham Campbell Literary Prize for fiction.

Cassava Republic Press was founded with the aim of bringing high quality fiction and non-fiction for adults and children alike to a global audience. They have offices in Abuja and London.

Their mission is to change the way we all think about African writing. They believe that contemporary African prose should be rooted in African experience in all its diversity.

They also believe that time has come to build a new body of African writing that links writers and readers from Benin to Bahia. For them, it is the right time to ask challenging questions on African writing.

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.