BusinessDay 22 Nov 2019

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news you can trust I **FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2019 I vol. 19, no 441

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American International School sale shows investment opportunities in education STEPHEN ONYEKWELU

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he acquisition of the Lekki-Lagos campus of American International School, designed to provide quality education for Ameri-

can and non-American expatriates in Nigeria, shows the hidden investment opportunities in the education sector.

The school was bought by an ex-Nigerian banker and entrepre-

DEALS

neur through his foundation for an undisclosed sum, sources familiar with the matter told BusinessDay. The new owner will add the school

to his other school with operations in the eastern part of Nigeria.

This move means James Hope College, already popular in the Agbor area of Delta State, is going to get its first foothold in the

L-R: Idris Garba Jahun, speaker Jigawa State House of Assembly; Yakubu Garba, representing Nasarawa State Governor; Yakubu Gowon, former head of state; Kalechi Igwe, deputy governor, Ebonyi State; Bisi Fayemi, wife of Ekiti State governor; Haruna Manu, deputy governor, Taraba State, and Uche Uwaleke, commissioner for finance, Imo State, representing the governor, at the BusinessDay States Competitiveness and Good Governance Awards 2019 in Abuja.

south-west geopolitical zone of Nigeria renowned for academic excellence.

Established six years ago, James Hope College (JHC), which offers a combination of British and Nigerian curricula, has strived to sustain outstanding performance among its students through hard and smart work, helping to build

Continues on page 43

Inside No naira devaluation until reserves fall to $30bn - Emefiele P. 42 CEO Lazarus Angbazo quits General P. 42 Electric Download e-copy of Women’s Hub from www.businessday.ng

Kidnappings along highways threaten holiday cheer See story on P.42

as FG remains helpless price of air tickets for Dec. up 100%

sponsored by

Pic by Tunde Adeniyi.

Continues on page 38

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Police declares state of emergency on traffic in Lagos JOSHUA BASSEY

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mid increasing difficulty driving around Lagos, Hakeem Odumosu, the Lagos State commissioner of Police (CP), has declared a state of emergency on traffic management and control in the state.

Odumosu has also ordered the immediate deployment of additional 1000 police personnel to mount various points on major roads across the state towards ensuring better flow of vehicular traffic in Nigeria’s commercial city.

Presently, traffic situation in Lagos is such that journeys of 30 to 50 minutes now take between four and five hours, leaving motorists and commuters stuck on the road. The situation is being worsened by construction work, potholes, poor traffic management, bad driving and the inability of concerned authorities to effectively enforce traffic laws, leading to motorcycles, tricycles and cars driving in chaotic manner and against traffic flow in some cases.

Odumosu, who recently resumed duty, summoned an emergency meeting at

the police headquarters, GRA, Ikeja, involving senior officers to review the current traffic situation in the state.

In at t e n d a n c e at t h e meeting where critical decisions were taken were deputy commissioners of police, area commanders, area operations officers, state traffic officer, divisional traffic officers and the chairman Lagos State taskforce on environmental and special offences, among others.

The meeting reviewed the time for duty report for traffic officers to take care of the peak hours.

Accordingly, traffic duties officers will run shifts between 10am and 10pm while the second shift will be 10pm to 10am, providing 24hours coverage. They will all operate in their usual reflective jackets.

The measure will help in ensuring free flow of traffic and will also curb the menace of traffic robbery.

The CP called on Lagosians to accord police personnel on traffic duties m a x i m u m c o o p e ra t i o n , stressing that it was imperative for all road users to obey the traffic laws of the state.

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Compliance Institute inducts 276 new Seplat lifts more communities in Edo, Delta through Safe Motherhood Initiative members December 7 personal and child hygiene, OLUWASEGUN OLAKOYENIKAN

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ompliance Institute, Nigeria (CIN), a body of professional set up to encourage, promote and revive the consciousness for compliance within and outside Nigeria’s financial industry, has concluded plans to induct 276 fresh members at its third induction ceremony.

The ceremony, which is scheduled to hold on Saturday, December 7, 2019, in Lagos, will expand its membership base to over 1,600 and have in attendance student members who have successfully completed the professional examinations and certifications of the Institute in 2019, as well as corporate titans from different sectors.

Also, prizes will be awarded to deserving top performers in the examinations.

“A total of 276 members who have successfully qualified for the award of the Institute’s compliance professional qualifications in examinations conducted in 2019,” Pattison Boleigha, president/chairman of CIN Board, said Wednesday at a press conference marking the beginning of activities lined up for the ceremony in Lagos.

A breakdown of the in-

ductees reveals that the Institute will officially award certificates to 262 members, who took and passed the Designate, Compliance Professional (DCP) examinations.

It will also be awarding Associate, Compliance Institute, Nigeria (ACIN) certifications to six individuals with the requisite qualifications and experience who applied and got exemptions as compliance practitioners.

In addition to this, Honorary Fellowships of the Compliance Institute, Nigeria (FCIN) certifications will also be awarded to eight new fellows.

The induction is coming after CIN became a member of the International Federation of Compliance Association (IFCA), a move that would further enhance the value of its certification and its recognition in all countries that is a member of the IFCA, according to the Institute.

“We congratulate the inductees for their gallant efforts in taking and passing the Institute’s examinations,” Boleigha said. “We are hopeful that these new select crop of professionals will help reshape the corporate compliance culture in Nigeria, Africa and indeed the world.”

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DIPO OLADEHINDE

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s part of its Corporate Social Re s p o n s i b i l i t y (CSR), Seplat Petroleum Development Company plc, operator of the NPDC/SEPLAT Joint Venture, has held its annual Safe Motherhood Initiative medical outreach.

Now in its seventh year, the Safe Motherhood Initiative outreach, which was held at Sapele, Delta State, the operational base of Seplat’s Western Assets, is put together annually to address the needs of pregnant women in host communities.

The programme directly closes the need for quality maternal and child health care. (According to the World Health Organisation (2010), the infant mortality rate in Nigeria is 71.20 deaths per 1000 live births and a woman’s chance of dying from pregnancy and childbirth is 1 in 3.

The initiative serves as an opportunity to equip expectant mothers with safe pregnancy and child care tips in order to address the issue of child and maternal mortality. At Safe Motherhood outreaches, mothers and pregnant women are educated on proper nutrition,

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child spacing among other important tips to guide them through the critical period of pregnancy.

Apart from providing life saving tips and training, essential drugs and insecticide treated mosquito nets and maternity bags are handed to all expectant mothers.

Speaking at the event, Emmanuel Otokhine, base manager, Western Assets, SEPLAT, who represented Austin Avuru, the company’s CEO, and Chioma Nwachuku, the general manager, external affairs and communications, stated that the initiative formed part of Seplat’s agenda to positively impact the lives of the people of its operational areas across the country. “ The programme has been impactful in the reduction of maternal and child mortality in our communities through the upgrade and renovation of a 30 bed female and paediatric ward at the Central Hospital in Sapele, the provision of safe delivery kits, insecticide treated nets and distribution of supplements and vitamins. The Safe Motherhood programme helps Nigeria meet up with SDG 3 which promotes good health and well-being,” he said.

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Saudi Aramco’s IPO, others likely to trigger extension of oil output cuts STEPHEN ONYEKWELU, with agency report

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il cartel OPEC and its allies are desperate to ensure both the oil market and price are stable with the possibility of extending oil output cuts when they meet early next month.

Russia is supporting Saudi Arabia’s drive for stable oil prices to sustain Saudi Aramco’s listing process. Saudi Aramco is a national oil company and has been acclaimed as the world’s most profitable company.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets on December 5 at its headquarters in Vienna. This

will be followed by talks with a group of other oil-producing countries led by Russia, also known as the OPEC+. The current oil supply cuts run through to March 2020.

On December 5, Saudi Arabia plans to announce the final pricing of the initial public offering of Aramco in what it hopes will be the world’s largest Initial Personal Organisation. The oil price at the time is likely to be an important factor to Aramco’s listing, expected around mid-December.

“So far, we have two main scenarios: either meet in December and extend the current cuts

until June or defer the decision until early next year, meet before March to see how the market looks and extend the cuts until the middle of the year,” said an OPEC source.

“It is more likely that we will extend the agreement in December to send a positive message to the market. The Saudis don’t want oil prices to fall; they want to put a floor under the prices because of the (Aramco) IPO.” OPEC sources said market conditions in the first quarter of 2020 remain unclear amid concerns of a slowdown in oil demand and weak output compliance by some producers such as Iraq and Nigeria, which is

complicating the outlook.

An OPEC delegate said: “My feeling is that (an extension) to end-June to avoid meeting again early March, with the possibility of calling for an (earlier) meeting, should market conditions require it … is the likely scenario as of today.”

The two sources said formally announcing deeper cuts looked unlikely for now although a message about better compliance with existing cuts could be sent to the market.

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s de facto leader, wants to focus first on boosting adherence to the group’s production-reduction pact before committing to any

more cuts, they said.

“The Saudis want to see how the rest of those who are not complying (with the cuts) do first. There are no numbers being circulated so far for deeper cuts or changing output quotas,” said the first OPEC source.

Amrita Sen, co-founder of Energy Aspects think-tank, which closely watches OPEC and Saudi oil policies said a mere extension

by OPEC+ of the existing output cuts until June might not be enough to support oil prices.

“The market expects a further cut and an extension until the end of 2020. In any other scenario, the market will sell,” she said.

Russian President Vladimir

IPPIS: An act of violence against university system - ASUU REMI FEYISIPO, Ibadan

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cademic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has described government pronouncement to enrol university workers in the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS) as an act of violence against the university system.

Reacting to the latest directive by the Federal Government that herofficialswillmovetocampuses to begin enrolment of university workers on the IPPIS, the union said, “It is worrisome for a governmentunderdemocraticdispensation to resort to force rather than dialogue.”

ASUU, while reacting through its University of Ibadan chairman, Deji Omole, described the alleged disobedience of the Muhammadu Buhari administration to laws of the land as the greatest corruption.

ASUU stated that the Union cannot be harassed by those who have penchant for breaking the law.

According to Omole, breaking existing laws with impunity is the greatest corruption. Omole, a professor, stated that it was worrisome that a government under democracy was afraid of negotiation and dialogue but preferred the use of force.

The ASUU boss maintained thattheUnionwoulduseavailable democratic means to prevent the violation and desecration of the NigerianUniversitysystem,which the children of the president and top government officials do not find worthy to attend.

“If not, why is the government afraid of negotiations? We are not perturbed by the directive. A government claiming to be fighting corruption should not break the law.

“The University Autonomy Act is very clear on university administrators. There is no greater corruption than those breaking the law of the land. Breaking of existing laws with impunity is the greatest corruption anywhere in the world. we refused to be harassed or intimidated. We are not strangers in this country. We are veritable stakeholders.

“We cannot be harassed. We have told them what to do. Let the government come back to negotiation’s table and let’s discuss the grey areas. Forceful enlistment will not solve the problem. We are not disturbed but we are worried, government is getting dictatorial. A supposedly democratic government is getting dictatorial,” Omole said.

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Putin set the tone for the December meeting last week, calling Saudi Arabia’s position ahead of the talks “tough”.

Moscow argues that it will find it hard to cut oil production voluntarily during the cold winter months, especially in western Siberia, where Russia produces two-thirds of its oil and where most of its well rigs are located.

Freezing temperatures make it difficult for Russia to shut in and restart wells in winter months.

“There is no doubt that Russia won’t let the Saudis down in case of a price collapse given the upcoming IPO,” said one source familiar with Russian thinking.

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MTN celebrates Indian community in Nigeria … sponsors 2019 Diwali Festival in Lagos

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s part of its commitment to foster communal spirit among Nigerians as well as celebrate the unique diversity among its customers, MTN Nigeria supported the just concluded Diwali Festival of Lights, which took place at Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos.

Diwali, which means an array of lights, is the most important festival celebrated in India and symbolises the victory of good over evil. During the annual celebration, friends and families gather to share love, food and happiness with others. For many Indians and non-Indians alike who attended the event, it was an amazing experience.

The festival kicked off with an exhibition of various Indian cuisines as well as other Indian products. The event also had in attendance over 4000 Indians and lovers of Indian culture, whose excitement lit up

the venue. The crescendo was when popular Indian music trio, Shankaar Ehsaan Loy took to the stage, performing some of their hit Bollywood soundtracks. This heightened the much expected excitement from guests.

Speaking on MTN’s sponsorship of the festival, Mazen Mroue, chief operating officer, MTN Nigeria, said, “We are building a legacy of changing lives by creating an environment that will foster financial technology and promote digital inclusiveness.

This is in line with our ‘We are Good Together’ initiative which goes beyond the business and pursues a deeper connection, integration, and co-operation with our customers in Nigeria, irrespective of cultural differences.”

Sharing his excitement at the event, he said, “It is very important for people to feel at home wherever they go, Diwali festival is about spreading the message of love, peace, happiness and friendship. We are good together, everywhere you go.”

2019 Megacity fair to create market hub for start-ups SEGUN ADAMS

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rganisers of the Megacity fair 2019 have reiterated its desire to create an enabling business environment for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups in Lagos.

Accordingly, the fair is aimed at creating a market hub for small businesses to thrive as well as help boost the bottom-line (profits) portfolio through sales at the fair.

The trade fair, which is starting today at the Festival Mall Arena/ Car park, Festac Town, aims to bringstart-upsandSMEscloserto a ready-made market that the fair environment provides, based on the facilities available atthe venue.

Therefore, vendors at the fair will benefit from the market traffic of other established businesses like Shoprite and Golden Tulip hotels.

Ifeoma Nora Emenani, the event coordinator, says the fair aims to create a market hub to enable SMEs thrive, adding that Megacity fair is about bringing the market to the buyers, saying it is her desire to see visitors and

participants leave the ambience of the fair full of fun and Joy-filled, saying lots are to be won during the period.

“The trade fair brings together Corporate Organizations, Brands, Government functionaries, captain of Industries, Entrepreneurs, NGOs, Celebrities, Diplomat and MediaExecutiveunderacolourful ambience for an irresistible day of discounted sales, music, comedy, presentations, wine and dine with soulful music”.

She opines that the local trade fair is expected to bring visitors including local and international buyers together and assured that vendors are willing to their goods at a discounted rate.

“In addition to this unfettered access to end buyers, vendors will have the opportunity to meet with key industry players. “It’s an opportunity to network, mingle, get new ideas, and open new opportunities. The fair is open to business vendors in fashion, household, books, kiddies, and cosmetics and Hair,” she states.

Russia commits to OPEC’s oil market balance SEYI JaOHN SALAU resident Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said Russia and OPEC have ‘a common goal’ of keeping the oil market balanced and predictable, and Moscow will continue cooperation under the global supply curbs deal.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets on December 5 in Vienna, followed by talks with a group of other exporters, including Russia, known as OPEC+.

“Our (common with OPEC) goal is for the market to be balanced, acceptable for producers and consumers and the most important – and I want to underline this – predictable,” Putin told a forum on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman said on Wednesday that the kingdom’s oil policy aims to promote stability in global oil markets, and serves consumers and producers alike.

It plans to announce pricing for an initial public offering of its crown asset, Saudi Aramco, also on December 5.

In October, Russia cut its oil output to 11.23 million barrels per day (bpd) from 11.25 million bpd in September but it was still higher than a 11.17-million bpd to11.18 million bpd cap set for Moscow under the existing global deal.

Putin told the forum that Russia’s oil production was

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growing slightly in spite of the supply curbs deal but Moscow was not aiming to be the world’s No. 1 crude producer. Currently, the US is the world’s top oil producer.

“Russia has a serious impact on the global energy market but the most impact we achieve (is) when working along with other key producers,” he said.

“There was a moment not that long ago when Russia was the world’s top oil producer – this is not our goal.”

Russia plans to produce between 556 million and 560 million tonnes of oil this year (11.17mbpd to11.25mbpd), Energy Minister Alexander Novak said separately on Wednesday, depending on the volume of gas condensate produced during cold months. Russia will aim to stick to its commitments under the deal in November, Novak said.

Russia includes gas condensate – a side product also known as ‘light oil’ produced when companies extract natural gas – into its overall oil production statistics, which some other oil-producing countries do not do. As Russia is gradually increasing liquefied natural gas production (LNG), the share of gas condensate it is producing is also growing.

Gas condensate now accounts for around six per cent of Russian oil production. Novak said that in winter, Russia

FG urged to leverage technology to enhance economic growth SEYI JOHN SALAU

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he Federal Government has been urged to leverage technology to enhance growth of the economy.

Uche Val Obi, managing partner, Alliance Law Firm, gave the urge in Lagos at a press briefing to announce the upcoming event that would bring together key stakeholders from across the world to brainstorm on ‘Leveraging Technology to Develop and Rebrand Nigeria.’

The Alliance Law Firm lecture is an annual event that brings together key stakeholders from across the world to discuss critical and topical themes central to the socioeconomic development and industrial growth of Nigeria.

It is part of the firm’s corporate social responsibility programmes aimed at giving back to society.

This year’s theme is considered topical considering the disruptive and pivotal place of technology in Nigeria’s quest for economic advancement, nation building and positive image profiling.

“We have gone to great lengths to assemble a stellar faculty and top executive audience in order to do justice to the theme,” Obi said.

The firm will also use the occasion to unveil its Doing Business In Nigeria Guide manual which has been de-

scribed as the most friendly handbook for start-ups, foreign and established businesses wishing to operate seamlessly in Nigeria. In doing this, the Firm leveraged its advisory experiences and role as notable contributor to the IMF/World Bank Doing Business publications.

The keynote lecture will be delivered by Leo Stan Ekeh, founder/chairman of Zinox Technologies Limited and Konga.com. The event is being chaired by Ernest Ndukwe, chairman of MTN Nigeria plc.

The panel of discussants includes: Patrick Akinwutan, MD/CEO of Ecobank; Chantelle Abdul, GMD Mojec International Holdings; Andrew Nevin, the chief economist and Partner Deal Advisory at PWC; Segun Aina, President Fintech NGR; Linda Ikeji, a leading Blogger in Africa; and Umar B. Bindir, the former director-general and CEO, National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP).

The maiden edition held in 2018, which discussed the emerging trends in corporate governance, featured Dotun Suleiman, chairman of FRCN, as key speaker, and was chaired by Pat Utomi, supported by an eminent panel of experts drawn from multiple sectors of the economy and regulatory institutions to enrich deliberations.

Lagos inaugurates state Resilience Steering Committee SEGUN ADAMS

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agos State inaugurated the Lagos State Resilience Steering Committee on Friday, November 15, 2019, in a bid to further build the resilience of the state to the physical, social and economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st Century.

This was in furtherance to its commitment to the 100 Resilient Cities programme of the Rockefeller Foundation. The committee is expected to act as a high level multidisciplinary strategic body providing critical resources and expertise to the Lagos State Resilience Office (LASRO) through the development and implementation of the Lagos Resilience Strategy. The committee is also expected to periodically report the progress of the State regarding resilience issues to the governor.

Adebayo Sodade, special adviser to the governor on Budget, said the inauguration of the com-

mitteespokevolumesofthereadiness of the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to bequeath a legacy of goodgovernancetoresidentsof the state and also guarantee their wellbeing.

Chairman, Lagos State House Committee on Budget, Gbolahan Yishawu, urged the committee to address identified resilience issues in line best practices and without bias.

The members of the Lagos State Resilience Steering Committee include the Permanent Secretaries of the Ministries of Economic Planning and Budget, Justice, Education, Transportation,PhysicalPlanningandUrban Development, Information and Strategy, The Environment and Water Resources, Energy and Mineral Resources, Works, Waterfront Infrastructure Development, Health, Local Government and Community Affairs; the Vice Chancellors of the Lagos State University and the University of Lagos. www.businessday.ng

L-R: Binos Yaroe, deputy chairman, Senate committee on capital market; Catherine Echeozo, 2nd vice president, Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE); Dapo Adekoje, president, Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers (CIS); Babangida Ibrahim, chairman, House committee on capital market; Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, former director-general, NSE, and Francis Alaneme, director, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, at the 23rd annual conference of Pic by Olawale Amoo CIS in Lagos, yesterday.

Software engineers, others gather at Terragon to explore Angular JS web framework Daniel Obi

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s part of ongoing commitment to building the technology ecosystem and ensuring it competes favourably with developed countries, Terragon, Africa’s fastest growing enterprise marketing technology company, recently brought together young technology experts to train them on Google’s Angular framework.

Riding on the theme: “Angular’s Mindset,” Terragon along Egghead.io and myCloudSeries took partici-

pants through cutting edge applications in code writing, building scalable web applications, building secure applications, using forms right and user experience in cloud deployment.

At the event, tech leaders such as senior software engineer at Terragon, Kelechi Oti, head, Digital Banking at TeamApt, Simpa Saiki, head, Infrastructure and Security at SeamFix, and Google developer expert in Angular and founder of Haibrid, Sani Yusuf, all took time to train the young Angular developer community.

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According to Oti, Angular Nigeria Community is the Nigeria community representing the Angular developers nationwide. Angular is a framework built by Google to aid frontend development, therefore “we are here to talk about Angular and not just angular alone but everything that concerns the web,” she said.

Though the Meetup has lasted for over three years in Nigeria, the senior software engineer at Terragon revealed that the community had continued to grow from @Businessdayng

inception, giving birth to some of the world renowned tech experts from Nigeria.

“We are growing and growing stronger every year.

Today, we are gathering to learn how to build scalable web application, how to add security to web application and how to properly deploy Apps with user experience in mind,” adding that “Sani Yusuf who is the Google developer expert and also the founder of Haibrid is also speaking, Saiki of TeamApt, Ewere Diagboya is also here to talk about UX,” Oti said.

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What is hate-speech?

THE NEW WEALTH OF NATIONS

Obadiah Mailafia

W

e live in strange times.

Blatant travesties are being repackaged as wisdom and virtue while right is being made an object of derision and scorn.

The new hate-speech law being proposed by the APC-dominated National Assembly is an obnoxious piece of legislation. It proposes to slam the death penalty by hanging for hate-speech especially through the social media.

To all intents and purposes, they are elevating that crime to the same level as murder and high treason.

I humbly submit that this bill is not only evil; it is unconscionable and reprehensible in the extreme. And it is patently unjust in every material particular. I predict that it will fail for the same reason that St. Augustine of Hippo Regis declared long ago – that an unjust law is no law.

The real target is not hate-speech but those who stand morally opposed to some of the excesses of this rapacious Leviathan. Some of these people have secretly been funding and protecting Boko Haram. It has been alleged that former insurgents are being allowed to worm their way into the ranks of our armed forces. They have also bought Keke NAPEPs for thousands of former insurgents that are becoming such a nuisance on Abuja roads. Most do not speak with Nigerian accents. They go about with daggers and sharp-pointed knives. They have hearts of stone.

Our latter-day converts against hate-speech have never acknowledged the murderous atrocities of foreign militia herdsmen that they have deliberately sponsored and imported for the purpose of boosting their electoral for-

tunes while permanently altering the ethnic geomorphology of our country.

These militias have killed and raped and maimed indiscriminately. They have destroyed thousands of villages in Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Zamfara, Birnin Gwari, Enugu, Benue, Edo, Imo, Ebonyi and Ondo. They have taken over and dispossessed autochthones of their ancestral homelands. None of the foreign killer herdsmen have been arrested, let alone tried or convicted.

Most of the time our government turns a blind eye, pretending not to see, while the foreign Janjaweeds prowl our ancient savannah homelands; killing children, raping women and committing a blitzkrieg of rapine and violent destruction. In today’s Nigeria, foreign bandits can move into your village and kill your parents and rape your sisters and absolutely nothing will ever happen to them. And they say we mustn’t complain. If you do, they label you a hater of Northerners and Muslims. It is the most pernicious and most wicked form of moral blackmail. They are fighting an undeclared war against our people and we are never supposed to complain whatsoever. We are, rather, expected to accept our fate and die!

I realise, sadly, that Nigerians have lost their moral conscience entirely. In our age of Salafi fascism, thousands of innocents, unarmed, defenceless peasants can be slaughtered and no one will care a hoot. The Western powers tacitly approve of it, because it not only reduces the black population; it prepares the ground for the disintegration of Nigeria, which is a prime strategic objective of theirs. The International Criminal Court (ICC), which should have been at the forefront of investigating these crimes, have been beating their way into the gilded pavilions of Aso Villa.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what they are looking for. It is what I call the mystery of iniquity in our age.

One theory that is making the rounds these days is that the North have finally resigned to the fact that our country may eventually break-up.

As a precautionary move, they are importing Janjaweeds from Sudan, Niger, Chad, Mali and elsewhere to infiltrate the Middle Belt and the South; a high-

stakes politico-military game of chess.

When the South begins to react, they would then offer to “withdraw” to the Middle Belt. We are thus mere pawns in their game. It is an irony that those who treat the Middle Belt peoples with such hate and contumely are the same people who are insisting on the discredited fiction of “One North” – an idea that died long ago.

The UN has been at the fore-front of the campaign to legislate new hatespeech laws across the world. But we must be very careful here. It is not everything that the UN comes up with that we must swallow hook, line and sinker. The extant laws in operation in our country are, in my view, sufficient to deal with the matter. The Electoral Act forbids engaging in political campaigns on the basis of ethnic or religious sentiments. Sections 95 and 102 of the Act specifically outlaws use of abusive slogans that injure tribal or religious feelings and prescribes a fine of N1 million for such offences. We also have extant libel laws that apply when anyone writes or says anything that is injurious to the person and reputation of a fellow citizen. The Nigerian Human Rights Commission equally denounces hate-speech during political rallies.

Hate-speech laws do not exist in many countries. They do not exist in the United States or in Japan. They tend to exist in countries where virulent political rhetoric has resulted in mass murders in the recent past, such as Rwanda and Kenya. In Europe hate-speech legislation is related to anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial, which remains a crime in countries such as Germany, France and Britain.

We cannot deny that there have been instances of hate-speech in our country. During the 2015 elections former Katsina State Governor Ibrahim Shema allegedly asked supporters to attack opponents and to kill them like in the same manner in which cockroaches are quashed. Not to be outdone, Patience Jonathan was allegedly quoted as saying: “Our people no dey born shildren wey dem no dey fit count. Our men no dey born shildren throway for street. We no dey like the people for that side”. There are a lot of clerics in the

‘ Most of the time our government turns a blind eye, pretending not to see, while the foreign Janjaweeds prowl our ancient savannah homelands; killing children, raping women and committing a blitzkrieg of rapine and violent destruction

North who openly refer to other people as “shegu arna” (pagan bastards). I have heard that kind of hate-speech right from my childhood to my mature age.

The issue is not whether hatespeech exists in Nigeria or not; the issue is whether we need new legislation against it. I am of the opinion that what is needed is tougher prosecution based on existing legal-constitutional provisions. We must go back to the imperatives of nation building The real intent of the new legislation is to muzzle the media while undermining civil liberties. The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has been at it for years. Newspaper editors and TV/radio broadcast stations live in fear of that dreaded phone call from NBC Director—General. He was a friend I admired as a humane socialist and public intellectual. Never say you know anyone until you have seen the way they handle power. Our Roman proconsuls aim to reinforce the culture of silence while creating an atmosphere legitimising impunity. You can beat a child, but you cannot stop the child from crying.

A former chieftain of the APC in Niger State, Jonathan Vatsa, laments that the bill is as unpopular and draconian as Decree No. 4 of 1984 that was imposed by the Buhari/Idiagbon military dictatorship. He was quoted as saying: “We brought hate-speech to Nigerian politics and I am one of them. As Publicity Secretary of the APC, I know how we used hate-speech to mobilise Nigerians against the then ruling party.

And it paid off”.

Those who ride the tiger’s back are destined to end up inside its stomach.

Hate-speech is not our problem today.

Rather, it is hunger, joblessness, destitution, impunity and exclusion. Those who are obsessed with hate-speech are ironically the real purveyors of hate.

They are in fact our biggest problem.

They will be judged harshly at the bar of history.

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)

Hiring for success

W

e are slowly coming to the end of not just this year, but also next year and that will close the curtain on this decade. However, we could actually look at it as being the beginning of an era. The beginning of newer wittier inventions, of so much innovation, of so many new heights.

Whichever way you choose to look at it the old is coming to an end and the new is about to begin.

Where do you choose to position yourself?

This week we will be talking about the sort of person you should be looking to hire and why.

I did an article not too long ago about the Box and Cedar person and I talked about profiling the people you want to hire.

I think every employer should take responsibility for whoever they hire. There is a human resource department that facilitates and advices recruitment. Ultimately however, the boss, who should have a strong vision, should be tough enough to make the tough decisions generally which includes the hire of the right person. This is an aside, if you have a high turnover of staff, invariably poor leadership is to blame. I am not taking the overall boss as the only leadership here.

The boss is whoever is in charge of that unit and if turnover is of management staff then it may be the overall boss who is a problem.

The boss must therefore also be able to accept criticism when and if necessary, it comes with the territory. A critical success factor is hiring a great

team and giving them credit for good work done.

Without mincing words, a great team is everything and the boss and indeed the company is nothing without a great team. We know a great team has to be built but a great building starts with good quality material even before assembling starts.

Bosses should surround themselves with people who they can trust, with opinions and minds that they respect. The bosses who surround themselves with “yes men” who always agree, never a differing opinion are only asking for a staid repetitive life completely devoid of any creativity and excitement. In a world that is so fast paced, with disruptions happening at lightning speed this is organisational or departmental suicide.

I once read a book called “Who is holding your ladder” where the author, Sam Chand, likened your recruitment to your hiring the person who is holding your ladder as you climb up a steep ladder to a very high point. Many things may happen. If you wobble and the ladder is not firmly held up you will fall and break your neck.

If you wobble and there needs to be a quick response if the person is slow and not empowered it will definitely end up in calamity. If you hire someone who is not focused on their duties, they done even notice the ladder is wobbling.

If the person has a bad attitude, they will be too self-absorbed to help you when necessary. The list is endless. Needless to say, your stay up on

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the ladder of success and the height to which you climb is up to who is holding your ladder.

Clearly you don’t want to employ someone who is slow and sluggish and possibly lazy. This is not to say these two traits are interchangeable.

Your hires should be able to do the things in a much better way than you can or putting it bluntly should be smarter than you. The boss should assemble a team that will stay and grow together so that they are almost like a synchronised swim team each doing their own bit but also flexible and concerned enough to ensure that their own bit fits in effortlessly with the whole, making a complete picture.

When you hire and nurture a great team then you the boss is able to be more strategic and not be a micro manager fighting in the trenches as well as trying to strategize in the war command room.

Each person will be in charge of their own turf. It is always good to have a diverse group as this creates a wealth of opinions, background and solutions. I am sorry I am not writing point by point but read the whole article and you will get the full picture.

The criteria should involve self-starters in strategic positions. This clearly means not every position is strategic. Please don’t go and put a self-starter in every position. Some positions just need someone whose strength is taking orders to the letter and don’t necessarily need to be first out of the blocks. These people in strategic positions should be of the elk that can be ambassadors for

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Olamide Balogun your business and have the ability to make good decisions quickly. They must also be discrete, loyal and positive.

Integrity and being a straight talker who is full of passion for both what they do and the organisation or should I say the world they are being hired for. Be sure the new hire will not be looking at your organisation as a stepping stone to where they really want to be. Sometimes if you know they only want to use the organisation a s a stepping stone, it may be okay as long as you are confident that in their time with you, they will give their best.

You are investing so much in your employees and don’t want to hire a fly by night.

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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Ekwegh is a private legal practitioner with over 15 years

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Chronicling a bitter-sweet age, a review of Sunmi Smart Cole’s latest book – ‘SUNMI’S LENS’ HumanAngle

Femi olugbile

S

unmi Smart-Cole is probably the most sought-after “Society Photographer” in Nigeria. Prominent among his clientele are the wellheeled, who want him to capture weddings, anniversaries and other events for their own delectation. But Sunmi is more than just a “Society Photographer”. He is an Artist, using photography as his medium. He is a writer, who speaks with pictures. He has been a whole lot of other things besides – barber, musician, newspaper editor. And a footloose aesthete whose passion has driven him round the world, soaking in enough experience to populate several lifetimes.

Spending an hour in casual conversation with Sunmi in his digs at Yaba, where the walls are covered with black and white photographs of people, places and landmark events from all over the world, you get to hear the most surprising facts, dropped in a deadpan manner.

Recently, a client took his wife to Bermuda to celebrate her birthday.

They had a choice of photographers, but the celebrant insisted on Sunmi.

It was an inconvenient time, because Sunmi had some urgent personal mat-

ter to settle in London. Eventually they agreed he would fly out early, spend a couple of days in London to sort out his matter, and meet up with his “employers” in exotic Bermuda. All, of course, on their money. Delighted, they agreed. Needless to say, the assignment went off like a song.

Sunmi’s book is a heavy coffeetable tome, titled “Sunmi’s Lens – Medium Between Man and Nature”.

It is beautifully bound in white. On the cover is a little white bird, cast in a miasma of darkness relieved by a distant glean of light in the sky. It could be the first suggestion of dawn or the last vestiges of a waning day.

For attractiveness alone, the book would look good in the anteroom of a business executive, a doctor’s consulting room, or in the well-appointed sitting room of a pushful wannabe on Banana Island.

There are no page-numbers, giving the impression of one flowing story from the first picture to the last.

Every picture indeed is a story on its own – a moment in time and space, somewhere on the planet earth, when something struck the imagination of Sunmi or caught his eye, and he reached for his camera and made permanent what he saw in his mind’s eye. A sunset. A sunrise. A bird poised to take wing. Beautiful Bimbo – the camera-shy, enigmatic icon of Leatherworld lolling in a hammock. Lanre Ogunlesi and his wife (Sofisticat’, Adam and Eve) beaming in a moment of expansive mirth. A young girl sitting by a basket of fruits she has to sell up before sunset, while she’s thinking in her head “I’d rather be in school”.

In that one pose, Sunmi captures the pathos of a country with thirteen mil-

lion children out of school.

There are other images. The pure joy of Emeka Anyaoku – a man not given to emotion, rushing forward with outstretched arms to embrace Olusegun Obasanjo one week after his release from prison and certain death. The unscripted drama of a man helping an old lady across the rickety plank bridging over a roadside gutter. Mandela – sipping from a glass of water in Addis Ababa one month after leaving Robben Island. The caption – “I’ll Drink to Africa.”

If Sunmi’s book tells a story, it is about the reach and variety of his creative talent, and his ability to turn the mundane into the spectacular. Every one of the black and white images tells of life, of nature, of a moment in time riding on the crest of power – Ibrahim Babangida being welcomed home by Hassan Usman Katsina in 1991, looking for all the world like an Emperor whose sun was set to shine forever, or a dejected labourer sitting road-side in the nadir of despair. Every picture jumps up from the page and speaks to the reader in a way that is apt to be personal. Billowing dark clouds reminiscent of Hiroshima (Down with Nuclear Weapons).

An oil rig with, nearby, dark fumes of gas being flared (Air Pollution in the Niger Delta). The highlife maestro Zeal Onyia, his cheeks distended with compressed air as he blows his trumpet. The white-washed vicarage of St Thomas’ Anglican Church, Badagry – the first storey building in Nigeria. A rock outcropping in the middle of the sea in Hawaii, resembling an elephant in repose. A rickety boat packed with young men and women, sailing in turbulent waters in the creeks, with a

‘

If Sunmi’s book tells a story, it is about the reach and variety of his creative talent, and his ability to turn the mundane into the spectacular

high wave threatening to engulf them (Stormy Times in the Niger Delta).

Sunmi is 78 years old. He is still hitting the road, perpetually inquisitive, perpetually insinuating himself into the hidden corridors where History is being made. He is, he tells you, working on his autobiography. In this one, he will use words, along with pictures, he says.

Sunmi has ‘been there and done that’. He knew and interacted with almost everyone who has been anyone in the power circles of Nigeria, from Independence to the Fourth Republic. Some of the stories he tells are hair-raising.

He has a penchant for asking odd questions, out of the blue, like a schoolteacher who is sure his student will not get the answer right. ‘Do you know who really killed Dele Giwa?’ Or, at another time, ‘Do you know what happened when Obasanjo visited Clinton just before his inauguration and the Secret Service came up to his hotel-suite to inform him that a notorious Nigerian doctor wanted to see him?’

“Don’t worry” he pats your arm, almost patronisingly. “You’ll read all the details in my autobiography - soon.”

From the foreword written by Wole Soyinka to the very end, the reader is bound to feel he has journeyed through an aesthetic and emotional tour de force, going through Sunmi’s book.

“SUNMI’s LENS” is published by SSC Publications Limited. It is available at QUINTESSENCE, Parkview Estate.

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

Life 101: An important Class on Greatness

H

ere’s a true story of a poor Scottish farmer that once lived by the name of Flemings. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog.

He dropped his tools and ran to the bog. There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself.

Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Fleming had saved. I want to repay you, said the nobleman, you saved my son’s life.

No, I can’t accept payment for what I did the Scottish farmer replied waving off the offer.

At that moment, the farmer’s own son came to the door of the family hovel. Is that your son? the nobleman asked. Yes, the farmer replied proudly. I’ll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his father, he’ll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of. And that he did.

Fleming’s son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Years afterward, the same nobleman’s son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia. What saved his life this time?

Penicillin. The name of the nobleman is Lord Randolph Churchill and his son’s name is what the world knows as Sir Winston Churchill- Arguably UK’s greatest prime minister till date.

Today’s article is not technical; it’s the simple things that lead to greatness and success. Permit

me to call it the 101’s of life. I will state them as small nuggets of wisdom that create catalysts in our lives.

First of all, irrespective of our skills and network, what is more desirable by the universe and all the principles to succeed is on those that proactively go the extra mile. While on that mile, it’s on having a kind and open-minded disposition. It’s being open to everything and attached to nothing, that we find better things.

It’s on losing ourselves in the service of others, that we gain more. It’s on ensuring you empty your pocket in your brain and your time on the path to a better tomorrow that we find that yellow brick road.

Learn to make sacrifices. Remember to love more without losing your assertiveness. While at it, shield yourself with a clean heart. Keep a big picture of where you want to be, a picture that shows a place much farther from where you are yet closer to your heart. And please, start the journey to that future through your actions today because tomorrow is just a now away.

Be the best, live your life with excellence.

But at times when you fall short, be quick to get up. Don’t take your social status or even its failures too seriously; so, it’s okay to laugh at yourself first, it dilutes the effect when others do. No one in history has ever choked to death from swallowing his/ her pride. Be a stand up, even if you need to fight. But don’t consciously leave people wounded for too long.

When you’re wrong, say you’re sorry, be sincere about it and then move on. Move forward, no regrets, not backward to the pain. Don’t wallow in guilt. Don’t apologise too much. Always remember that the bad thing about good times is that it’s really never that good and the good thing about bad time is that it’s never really that bad.

Keep a mentality that things are never really

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as they seem. To expect a favourable yes, don’t walk around looking like a “no”. You can’t always keep that pity face because this universe is designed to attack the wounded. Life is too short to dwell in errors; so, don’t get to the end of your life to realise that you haven’t lived.

Every day I see a lot of people who walk around looking defeated, due to backlog of unfavourable events. It’s called learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a disease. It is a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, guilt or fear arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure on something. It is a potent weapon to hinder moving on to greater things. But the reality should be to realise that strength can emerge from your weakness.

In the words of the NBA legend Michael Jordan, he said “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games.

26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

So many people are time travelling while forgetting now. NOW IS A GIFT, that’s why it’s called PRESENT. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worries; TOO MUCH FUTURE, and not enough PRESENCE often cause all forms of fear.

TOO MUCH PAST, AND NOT ENOUGH PRESENCE often causes guilt, regret, depression, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness in the present.

Help people with no expectations for a return, although some way it will. Learn to communicate, especially at times when expected outcomes seems difficult. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Socialise; leave every place and anybody feeling better than before you met them.

Have a positive disposition, give compliments and accept criticisms. In a world of negative

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EIZU UWAOMA vibes, you still can live without enemies; simply by not acknowledging their existence.

Find your purpose, we all exist for a reason so finds out yours.

At every point in your life, have a groundbreaking project you are working on. Be futuristic for its only he that sees the future that can seize the future. Every day we see people and brands fail for the lack of this. Take for example, 15 years ago (back when phone screens were grey scale, ringtones were beep, batteries lasted over a week, and I rocked a Nokia 3310).

Back then Nokia’s market capitalisation (value) was somewhere around a staggering $245 billion. About 3 years later, Blackberry came through to hit an all-time high of $144.5 billion. Today Nokia is worth barely 14.7 billion and Blackberry 4.7 billion with both kicked out of the top 500s. Brands rise and fall for their lack of vision, and futurism.

We all make errors at times. An error does not become a mistake till you avoid correcting it. Empires, people and brands fall and rise.

Listen. Don’t be caught sleeping. Welcome to life, where tables turn. When you’re on top, the aerial view is the “wrongest” view to the world.

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

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Editorial Publisher/CEO

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

Bashir Ibrahim Hassan

Nigeria dabbling into dictatorship

T

o toy with the idea of dictatorship, which from all indications Nigeria under President Buhari is doing, is anachronistic in these modern times.

Nigeria, Africa’s self-styled largest economy and the continent’s big brother, is giving a bad example.

Increasingly, democracy in the country is being stifled, its tenets and traditions are being trampled upon in a manner reminiscent of the dark days of military rule; a period best forgotten. For instance, the proposed social media bill is a blatant attack on free speech.

The legislature is working to close down the space for discourse with a bill that offers death, fines of N10 million or imprisonment for up to 10 years for expression of opinions on social media.

In addition, though the presidency denies it, is the obnoxious Hate Speech Bill in the Senate which recommends, among other punishments,

death by hanging for anybody who runs afoul of the law.

The bill, if it is passed, will forbid communication that is hateful, threatening, or abusive, and targets a person on account of disability, ethnic or national origin, nationality, race, religion, sexual orientation, or skin colour.

The executive is not immune from this dictatorial trait. In the past five years we have seen executive arrogance and impunity coupled with judicial rascality.

We see a gradual return to military era when Buhari-led military government announced that it would “tamper with” the press and followed it up with the enactment of the draconian Decree 4 which made even the publication of the truth a punishable offence. Under this cover, many journalists were jailed. Civil society organizations and professional groups were abolished so that the government could exercise absolute power.

Governors of Cross River, Kaduna and Abia states took the law into their hands and, in collaboration with the po-

lice, imprisoned journalists who criticise them without the courtesy of a trial. Freedom of expression or the right to a fair trial are luxuries these days.

When Buhari emerged as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015, his supporters and apologists insisted that he was a born-again democrat. But in several ways, he is confirming the adage that the leopard does not change its spots overnight.

The federal government under Buhari has refused to release Ibrahim El Zakzakky, leader of the banned Islamic Movement of Nigeria, and Omoyele Sowore, a human rights activist and prodemocracy campaigner who is being held by the government for alleged treason. Though the courts have, at various times, ordered the release of both men it holds them on flimsy excuses which we consider strange in a democratic setting where rule of law is paramount.

Such disregard for court orders does not build trust. It undermines the role of institutions

in a democracy.

The charade that happened in both Bayelsa and Kogi states in the name of governorship elections are further testaments and manifestations of tendencies towards dictatorship by the federal government.

The way the country is drifting toward dictatorship is alarming. The executive, legislature and judiciary are necessary for democracy to thrive. Those who occupy these offices today must always bear in mind that they risk undoing the good gained since 1999. Their every action and utterance against the rule of law can be used in turn against them when they no longer occupy the office.

We are in sync with President Harry Truman of the United States who was quoted as saying, “once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of the opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens.”

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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On the heels of Mombasa Tales from the main road

Eugenia Abu

I

had met Mombasa before I actually met her. Through her many beaches and touristic attractions, Mombasa had beckoned many years ago, but my travels around the world never brought me here. But as a world traveller, something happened and this time Mombasa personally called my name.

As a judge of an International Afrocentric media award, I was asked to be part of the grand finale taking place in Mombasa. I have done Kenya many times but mostly Nairobi and Nyeri where I had Muthokoi, traditional beans and corn meal imbued with all the nice spices and flavours made famous in Nigeria by Ebiras of Kogi State and the Yorubas in Ondo state, but made more famous by my mum,

the eternal Mrs Josephine Amodu.

Proud daughter of the Ebira race.

Many years of Kenya, first as a tourist visiting my late friend the cerebral Ruguru Githaiga, Kenya’s first female Actuary and the highly creative Eda Mutua, my classmate at City University London, now an academic in an American university.

I have done Kenya, eaten Nyamachoma, (Swahili for roast meat) and regaled Kenyans with my smattering of Swahili much to their delight. I did Kenya once annually for three years where I taught Public communications at the university of Nairobi as a guest of CARTA, a Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa. But this trip to Mombasa was my first, and truly Mombasa called my name.

Abari- ako, I ask in my unflappable Swahili sounding so like the native speakers. A warm handshake of Zurii sana. Fine thank you. Smiles, warmth, community and Jambo.

I feel immediately at home. With one dinner and one breakfast in Addis Ababa, I had flown 2 and a half hours away from a different culture within 24 hours and re-immersed myself in the Kenyan traditions of hospitality and tourism with which I am now familiar. Something akin

to Ethiopia whose economy is tied to the largest and best ran airline on the continent.

Mombassa, tourism, beach city, tourism, value chain. In all of this I put a magnifying glass to Nigeria. I am searching. Mombasa has been good to me. Arriving two days ahead of schedule so I can see the city, I have sat at breakfast among exotic fish, orange, yellow, zebralike stripes swimming under my breakfast table. I have eaten ughali at dinner table while revelling in vegetables, fruit and seafood. But I must confess Nigerian pineapples and mangoes are still the best.

I return to my ughali and vegetable to pish you to next week, sukumaweeki which as roommates to my Kenyan and Tanzanian friends in London in the early nineties, before I got my own flat still brings back fond memories. I taught them to make egusi and they showed me how to make sukumaweeki and chapati by chapati record holding broadcaster and friend, Tanzanian, Valerie Msoka who went on to shine at BBC London Swahili service for many years.

But it’s the Indian ocean that has capped my two days in Mombasa for now. Going for an early evening walk by the beach sand in your

‘

I return to my ughali and vegetable to pish you to next week, sukumaweeki which as roommates to my Kenyan and Tanzanian friends in London in the early nineties, before I got my own flat still brings back fond memories

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

Fighting corruption alone cannot guarantee economic development

I

n 2011, someone broke into my sister’s office at the university where she teaches in Nigeria. Fortunately, the person was caught, arrested and charged to court.

On getting to court, the guys who handled my sister’s case informed her that they won’t be able to process the paper work unless she pays a bribe. Initially, she thought it was a joke, but later, she realised that they were serious and she became furious.

Think about it, she was the victim, and those who should help her were demanding a bribe.

That, is one of the many ways’ corruption impacts millions of people in Nigeria. Growing up in Nigeria, corruption permeates virtually every element of the society. Reports of politicians embezzling millions of dollars were common, police officers stealing money or extorting money from hardworking citizens were also common practice. I thought development will remain a farce if corruption persist however, my research on innovation and prosperity has shown that corruption is actually not the problem hindering our development. Conventional thinking on corruption and its relationship to development is not only wrong but it is holding many poor countries backwards.

The thinking goes like this, in a poor and corrupt society, creating and fostering good laws is a way to reduce corruption. This will make ways for development and innovation to flourish. This explains why many governments and development organisations invest billions of dollars annually on institutional reforms and anti-corruption programmes. However, these programmes fail to reduce corruption because we have the equation backwards.

Societies don’t develop because they reduced corruption rather, they are able to reduce corruption because they have developed. Societies develop through investment in innovation. Earlier, I thought this was impossible, why should any person with right minds invest in a society with poor business environment, it is and where politicians are corrupt and consumers are poor.

But the more I learnt about the relationship

between innovation and corruption, the more I started to see things differently. This is how this played out in Sub-Saharan Africa as the region developed its telecommunication industry. In the late 1990s, less than 5% of Sub-Saharan Africans had phones. In Nigeria, for example, the country had over 110 million people but fewer than 500 thousand phones in the entire nation.

This fuelled wide spread corruption in the entire industry as public officials who worked for state government owned phone companies demanded bribes from people who wanted phones. However, phones were only available to those who were wealthy and could afford the bribe.

An entrepreneur, Mo Ibrahim decided to set up a telecommunication company, when he told his colleagues about the idea, they laughed at him, but Mo Ibrahim was undeterred. In 1998, he set up Celtel, the company provided affordable mobile phones and cell services to millions of Africans in some of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the region, such as Congo, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Uganda.

In our research, we call what Mo Ibrahim did, a market creating innovation which transformed complicated and expensive products into simple and affordable products, easily accessible to people in the society. phones were expensive before Celtel made them much more affordable, some of his colleagues saw that it was possible to create a successful mobile phone company flooded the market with investments worth billions of dollars which led to significant growth in the industry.

Today virtually every African country has a vibrant mobile telecommunication industry.

The thriving sector now supports almost1 billion phone connections and has created over 4 million jobs while generating billions of dollars in taxes yearly. These are taxes that government can re-invest into the economy to build various institutions.

Now, because most people don’t need to bribe public officials to get a phone, corruption, within the industry has reduced. If Mo Ibrahim had waited for corruption to be fixed in Africa www.businessday.ng

before he invested, he will be waiting till today.

Most people who engage in corruption know they shouldn’t. The public officials demanding bribes from people before they give phones and the people who were paying the bribes knew they were breaking the law, but they did it anyway. The question is why, the answer is scarcity.

Whenever people benefit from accessing anything that is scarce, corruption becomes attractive. In poor countries, we complain a lot about corrupt politicians who have embezzled state funds but, in these countries, economic opportunities are scarce, so corruption becomes an attractive way to gain wealth.

We also complain about civil servants like police officers who extort money from hardworking citizens but most civil servants are grossly underpaid and living desperate lives.

For them, extortion is a good way to survive.

This phenomenon also plays itself out in wealthy countries as well, when rich parents bribe university officials so their children can gain admission into lead colleges, the circumstance is different but the principle is the same.

Admission into lead colleges scarce, so bribery becomes attractive.

I am not saying there shouldn’t be scarcity in a society rather I am explaining the relationship between corruption and scarcity. In most poor countries, basic things like food, education, healthcare, economic opportunity, jobs, etc are scarce. This creates the perfect breeding ground for corruption to thrive.

Investing in businesses that make things affordable and accessible to people attacks the scarcity and creates the revenues for government to re-invest in their economies. When this happens in a country-wide level, it can revolutionise nations. For example, in the 1950s, South Korea was a corrupt and desperately poor country ruled by an authoritarian government which also engaged in bribery and embezzlement.

Like some other economies, South Korea was trapped in poverty and they referred to it as an economic basket case. looking at South Korea, its institutions and the leaders in 1980s,

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toes, warm water gushing towards you. The sky is the bluest blue and bumping into strangers, couples young and old all smiling back at you is what everyone needs. And with a seaside massage today and my stress kneaded out of me by an excellent therapist while I hear the lap of the ocean and the chirping of birds mixed with the aroma of the aromatherapy oil totally sent me to never-never land. There is now a spring in my step, a permanent smile on my lips and I forgive easily and warm up readily.

As I prepare for the business that brought me here, I am making a quick dash to museums and parks and all the lovely sights of Mombasa. Really Mombasa called my name and I am the better for it.

Everyone needs to save to get away even for two days ahead of that conference. Give yourself a break, feed the giraffe, smile at a lazy lion from a safari car, eat by the sea. You have only one life. Gift yourself a metime. I am living it up in Mombasa.

Work returns tomorrow but I am a sharper, more refreshed me. Mombasa… asante sana. Many thanks.

EFOSA OJOMO the country was at par with some of the poorest African countries at the time. However, companies like Samsung, Kia, and Hyundai invested in innovations that made things much more affordable for so many people. South Korea ultimately became prosperous. As the country became prosperous, it was able to transition from an authoritarian government to a democratic government and has been able to reinvest in building its institutions which has paid off tremendously.

For instance, in 2018, South Korea’s President was sentenced to 25 years in prison on corruption related charges, this could not have happened decades ago when the country was poor and ruled by an authoritarian government.

As we look at most prosperous countries today, we realised that they were able to reduce corruption as they became prosperous, not before.

Where does all this leave us? It may sound like I am saying we should just ignore corruption however what I am suggesting is that corruption, especially for most people in poor countries is a work around. Investing in innovations that make products affordable for many people, not only to attack the scarcity, but to create a sustainable source of revenue for government to reinvest into the economies to strengthen the institutions.

This is the critical missing piece in the economic development puzzle that will ultimately help us reduce corruption.

I lost hope in Nigeria when I was 16. In some ways, the country has actually gone worse. In addition to wide spread poverty and endemic corruption, Nigeria now actually deals with terrorist organisations, like Boko Haram. However, I am more hopeful of Nigeria today than I ever been before. When I see organisations investing in innovations that are creating jobs for people and making things affordable, I am optimistic about the future. I hope you will be too.

Ojomo spoke in New York recently

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

MoneyInsight

Ariston Thermos moves to secure market share in Nigeria with customers reward FRANK ELEANYA

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s part of efforts to deepen its presence and market share, Italian-based Ariston Thermos has rewarded its customers in Nigeria with gift items worth millions of naira.

Nigeria’s high, hot and dry weather has become a magnet for thermal comfort manufacturers. Growing demand for the technologies over the years has seen investments pour into the market with manufacturers such as Ariston vying for market share. Ariston says it has the edge giving that it is primarily focused on a cleaner and energyefficient technologies.

Ariston popular products include water heaters, solar systems, cylinders, and heat pumps. Solomon Vincent Umoh, marketing manager for Central Africa, said the company has been in Nigeria for a long time and grown a mutually profitable relationship with trade partners.

He described the three-monthlong promotion as a program set up to give back to “our”

L-R Solomon Umoh, marketing Manager Ariston Central Africa, Francesco Romoli SCM & Logistics Director for Africa, Giampaolo Provvedi the Senior Director for Africa, Ifeoma Okeke a Key distributor, A representative of one of the Winners in the promotion, Maken Nobis, Gaurav Bisaria, Director for Central Africa, Oludare Shoji SCM & Logistics manager for central Africa, Okechukwu Okereke Sales Manager central Africa and Dike Okoro, Sales Manager, Nigeria

customers.

“Ariston has been supporting my business since I joined them,” said Ifeoma one of the distributors of Ariston water heaters. “This promotion is a great way to reward customers and encourage them to keep doing business with us. I believe

this initiative also keeps Ariston ahead of the game in the Nigerian market.”

In one of the reward events held at the popular Coker market, Orile arguably the largest plumbing materials market in Nigeria, visibly excited retailers, distributors, and other custom-

ers expressed their satisfaction with the Ariston brand. The event was graced by senior executives from the Italian Head Office, the Senior Director for Africa Giampaolo Provvedi; Logistics Director for the region Francesco Romoli and Gaurav Bisaria, the Director for Central Africa.

Nigeria’s capital market set to reward Considering a credit card? Think about this outstanding companies at PEARL Awards I STEPHEN ONYEKWELU

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he 24th edition of PEARL Awards, a yearly Nigerian Capital Market event where companies that are recognised for outstanding performance is set to hold on November 24, at the Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos with the theme: ‘Celebrating Sustainable Leadership and Resilience.’

According to the organisers, the Awards night is a national corporate flagship event where quoted companies and key stakeholders in the capital and financial markets of the Nigerian economy are rewarded for their outstanding contributions to economic development.

The PEARL Awards, instituted in 1995 is endorsed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nigeria’s apex Capital Market regulatory authority.

Tayo Orekoya, the president of PEARL Awards Nigeria, remarked that this year’s Awards event promises to be novel yet glamorous. “The event is being remodelled from an operational stand point to be more appealing and engaging on a night of excellence and glamour.”Some confirmed attendees include Olufemi Lijadu,

chairman, Board of Securities & Exchange Commission; Mary Uduk, Ag. Director-General, Securities & Exchange Commission; Bashorun J.K. Randle, past president, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria; Kayode Falowo, president, Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce, among a host of other captains of commerce and industry.

Awards to be presented for deserving companies fall within the class of Sectoral Leadership, Market Excellence, Special Recognition, Special Honorary and then the Overall Highest Award (The PEARL). In all these categories mentioned, three nominees have been shortlisted and publicly announced on 22nd October 2019, with the winners to be announced at the event.

The PEARL Awards remains the only event in sub-Saharan Africa that identifies and rewards quoted companies based on empirical data. Which is predominately based on data sourced from audited financial reports companies, utilising credible parameters and tools of data evaluation that meet international standards. www.businessday.ng

t was a particularly stressful month financially for Musa and Ebele who have been married for three years, recently moved to Aguda, Surelere, 30 and 27 years old respectively. They had their first baby barely a month after moving into their new apartment, where they paid N450, 000 for a year. Musa works for a commercial bank as a customer relationship officer and Ebele works for a manufacturing company as an operations officer.

Their family budget was strained because they spent over N500, 000 refitting and furnishing the new apartment, then a new baby came along. They were cash trapped and had no egg nests to fall back on. It was during this month that Ebele got a call from her account’s officer pitching the benefits of credit cards.

Ebele was not sure she needed one but with the backdrop of their current budget deficits and the need to take care of the newly born she was really enticed and sought advice to help her make an informed decision.

“With a credit card, you are never cash trapped. You get 50 percent of your monthly salary loaded into it and you never have to borrow from anyone. You simply spend and pay later. The interest rate is only 2.5 percent” a bank worker explained to a customer.

According to people familiar

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with the matter, a credit card is one of the most misunderstood and divisive products among all the financial tools available. Most Nigerians are not knowledgeable regarding the workings of a credit card. In more advanced economies you are sure to find people who pay all their expenses using credit cards as well as others who swear the products are the embodiment of pure evil. Opinions among financial experts and thought leaders are just as mixed.

A credit card is nothing but a tool. Whether its effects are helpful or harmful depends on the skills and knowledge of the user, a person with the power to choose how to use the tool. Here is everything you need to know in order to make the most out of this particular financial tool, taking advantage of its benefits without falling into any traps. Here are some of the common traps for dealing with credit card rewards. These insights were influenced by a Forbes article.

Credit cards are not for everyone. Like tools, in the wrong hands, they can be dangerous. If you have personality traits like a tendency to lack self-control, if you are in the process of repairing your finances, or if you are not ready for personal responsibility, avoid credit cards until you are mentally and emotionally prepared.

What is a credit card?

Physically, a modern credit card @Businessdayng

The 1.57 billion group Euro employs 7000 people worldwide and manufactures over 7 million products per year, and over 36million components. With 26 state-of-the-art production units in 15 countries, Ariston Thermo Group has a global presence in 150 countries with Ariston as its flagship brand.

Over 6 million households choose us every year and more than 250 million people experience the comfort of Ariston Thermo products.

The company has invested over 79 million Euros across 23 research and development centers in 15 countries. The company has significant presence in Europe and Asia, with production sites in Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Tunisia, U.S.A, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

There is now a major thrust on Renewable energy, through solar water heaters and systems.

By 2020, the group aims to have 80 percent of its business coming from high efficiency and renewable solutions.

is a rectangular piece of plastic, graphite, or a metallic alloy, that identifies a financial account. All contain a magnetic strip on the back, and some contain a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip. An account number and the owner’s name or business name may be imprinted on the front.

Behind the scenes, the credit card represents a type of financial account. By using credit cards, customers can offer a bank’s money instead of their own to pay for a product or service today, and over time, they repay the bank. For the benefit of using someone else’s money, customers will often need to pay interest, as expected with other types of loans. This is where problems can arise. Using other people’s money is often preferable than using your own because it lets you keep your own money available for other purposes, but if you buy something with someone else’s money while not being able to repay that type of loan, the results can destroy your own financial future.

Credit cards are like Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) for money. Digital video recorders allow users to “time-shift.” Television channels, at least for now, have regular schedules during which they air programs, but if you’re not free at 8:00 PM to watch The Big Bang Theory, your DVR allows you to watch the program from the beginning at your convenience.

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Market Insights

AgriBusinessInsight Analysis

Commentaries

Experts/Industry Views

Commodities watch

Policy Reviews

Send in Commentaries to caleb.ojewale@businessdayonline.com

Alleged ‘racketeering’ puts local rice beyond reach of average Nigerians Stories by CALEB OJEWALE Twiiter: @calebtinolu

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igerians are paying more for local rice, not necessarily, because it is scarce as some would like to suggest, and even though cost of production remains high, current prices especially in places like Lagos, are not exactly market reflective.

Agribusiness Insight exclusively gathered that during a meeting called by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), rice millers in the country reached an understanding with the apex bank to sell a 50kg bag of rice at the rate N14,000 to their distributors. This was the CBN’s way of ensuring prices did not become excessively inflated on the back of the border closure.

According to a credible source, the CBN is also currently monitoring rice distribution across the country, having requested to be furnished with a list of rice distributors and suppliers in every geopolitical zone where each rice miller supplies.

However, since the closure of Nigeria’s borders to all goods, rice topping the list, the widely consumed staple has retailed for as high as N25,000 per bag, an N11,000 mark-up from the price it should come from the milling companies. Somewhere between the rice mills and the consumers, a 78 percent increase in price occurs.

“We have done some analysis and came to the conclusion that local rice should not be selling be-

yond N16,000 or N17,00 per 50kg bag, but it is currently selling over N20,000,” said Emmanuel Ijewere, vice president, Nigeria Agribusiness Group in a phone interview.

This, he attributes to “some greedy people who have put nothing in but want a lot in return”.

While this has translated to consumers paying more for rice, the farmers are also not necessarily recording higher prices for their paddy, commensurate with the increase in price for the milled product.

“Some individuals sit, bribe somebody and buy a quantity of rice, jerk up the price because there is a perceived shortage,” said Ijewere.

This view is however not peculiar to him alone. A major rice distributor whose corporate and individual identity is withheld

to avoid retribution, identified a group of four people from Lagos (names of which were also provided), who go to different rice mills, placing orders of about N100 million and tell them, “once you finish supplying me this 100 million, tell me, I will give you another one”.

When other dealers now go to those companies, they are directed to meet any of those people. They in turn sell at not less than N18,000 per bag to the other dealers and distributors who ordinarily should have purchased directly from the mills. However, with N18,000 now the price many purchase from this group of persons, it then becomes inevitable that when every dealer adds their own margin, depending on where they are in the supply chain, pushed prices to as high as N24,000 a month ago. At present, a BusinessDay report stated it has

come down to about N19,500 on the average.

“The same companies we used to patronise and buy directly, for instance Labana in Kebbi state, will say they already have some people they want to supply, so don’t pay,” said the unnamed source.

With Labana mills specifically mentioned, Agribusiness Insight reached out to Abdullahi Zuru, the company’s general manager, to clarify the allegation that his company has been favouring what appears to be becoming a cabal of rice distributors.

In his response, Zuru explained that before the border closure, many rice dealers in the South West preferred to deal in Imported (or smuggled) rice, with more patronage for local rice coming from the South East.

According to him, rice millers like his company were invariably more familiar with a certain group of distributors, mostly from the South East, and have only continued to deal more with those they are familiar with following the border closure.

While there appears to be an impasse in determining whether there is collusion between millers and a group of people cashing in on the luxury good rice is fast becoming, the unnamed rice distributor hinted that this practise has encouraged some distributors with no other option, to patronise local farmers and millers. Even though it is ‘stony rice’ since they cannot get from the big milling companies, they purchase and start trying to sieve the stones as

much as possible until it is a bit clean.

Some of these rice distributors, to avoid getting pushed out of the market completely, now use bags belonging to big brands, which the source said is “for them to be able to make more money,” a practise he did not personally identify with.

“The millers are our problem because their profit margin is too high,” claimed Siddik Abdullahi, chairman, Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN), Kwara state chapter in an interview last year. According to him, “in 2016 a 70-75kg bag of paddy rice was sold at about N12,000 but the price has fallen and now sells for N7,500. Yet the price of local rice has not come down. Our millers are the problem,” said Abdullahi, frustrated that farmers were not getting higher prices for their paddy rice, which becomes the milled rice Nigerians consume.

BusinessDay recently reported the average cost for a bag of paddy is now N8,500, whereas the cost of milled rice has increased by a higher percentage.

“NABG is concerned, consumers are suffering, and farmers are not getting commensurate value,” said Ijewere, who disclosed NABG will be writing all integrated milling companies in the country for a meeting to address the artificial scarcities being caused from some quarters.

Importantly, however, while local production has ramped up significantly in recent years, there is no data to establish how sufficient Nigeria has become in rice production.

Olam’s out-grower program rewards successful farmers, sets standard for increased local sourcing

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ocal farmers are often unable to scale up their production, with many struggling with poverty due to a combination of factors including low productivity, poor market access, and lack of training in Good Agricultural Practices (GAP).

They also often struggle with inadequate or no mechanization, poor storage, high postharvest losses, inadequate input supplies and access to finance, and fixing all of these as seen through some out grower models, often shows remarkable difference.

Addressing these challenges, the United Nation and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in partnership with the Federal Government and Olam Nigeria Limited developed the Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP) for rice in 2015. Under the pro-

gramme, rural farmers formed cooperatives and were supplied inputs, granted access to financing, storage and logistics for transporting their produce to the buying centres, trained in Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and guaranteed buyback of their produce.

Last week, the company celebrated some of the farmers on the programme, recognising their efforts and commitment in supplying paddy rice, which the company in turn mills.

Outstanding farmers were presented with certificates and cash prizes, for their hard work in the previous season.

One of the recipients was Martha Zemehe, a law graduate of Kogi State University and a former bank staff, who emerged the best female supplier of paddy rice. “When you’re producing, you are anxious on who will buy your www.businessday.ng

product,” said Zemehe, but with the VCDP, “the buyer is already there”.

Reggie George, vice president, Olam Out-grower Program explained that the biggest advantage of the program is its decentralized location model where the company has “taken the market access very close to the farmers’ villages.”

He explained the company under the programme, decentralized locations for of all inputs, procurement of paddy or any other commodities very close to the farm gate, removing the burden of finding markets from the farmers’ concerns. By doing this, he said farmers’ productivity has more than doubled, and annual income of the farmers has equally doubled since the program started.

Olam’s farm coordinators at remote villages covering a

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cluster of cooperatives manage the decentralized procurement model. These Farm Coordinators (Agricultural Science Graduates) who are 30 in all, open Bank accounts for each farmer, facilitate storage and logistics access, deliver inputs and the GAP training module developed by GIZ to Farmer Cooperatives. They also help to avoid the diversion of the produce as well as prevent middlemen who usually exploit the farmers on weights and prices.

According to Olam, the operations of the VCDP has seen rice productivity increase to 3.68MT/Ha as against the baseline of 2MT in 2015. Income generation and net profitability per hectare have also increased to US $1,115/Ha and US $673/ Ha respectively to rural farmers.

In 2018, it generated 47,418MT of quality rice paddy for Olam’s Rice Mill. @Businessdayng

The VCDP, which started in 2015 with 475 farmers, is currently working with 22,734 farmers and looking to scale up to 35,000 farmers in the year 2020. In 2015, the program registered 106 female farmers, this number has increased to 5,336 in 2019. The number of participating Farmer Cooperatives has also increased to 1,164 from 30 in 2015.

Aondongu Saaku, chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Benue state chapter, noted it is important to “aggregate more farmers and introduce them to the program”, in order to be trained on the best agricultural practices to run sustainable farm operations.

With this training and inputs provided to them, farmers will be able to increase their production, earning more income, and supplying more raw materials to companies like Olam.

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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cityfile Another internet fraudster bags 8 months in Ibadan REMI FEYISIPO, Ibadan

T Staff and volunteers of The Special Foundation with the vice principal (special duties), Lagos City Senior College, during the just-concluded Career Day.

IPMAN impounds adulterated products in A/Ibom ANIEFIOK UDONQUAK, Uyo

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he Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), in Akwa Ibom State has impounded alleged adulterated products and handed them over to the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).

The items include 25 jerry cans of adulterated diesel, 32 improvised plastic container bags, buckets and other accessories used in carrying out the illicit trade.

Handing over the seized products to Iniobong Ekong, area com-

mandant of the NSCDC, Oron zone, Sunday Ekwi, head of operations, petroleum products crime of IPMAN, said the products were concealed in plastic bags and kept at a l o c at i o n i n A f a ha Ube, off Atiku Abubakar Av e n u e , U y o t o a v o i d detection by security personnel.

He said in an attempt to call the police for reenforcement, the hoodlums escaped in a Toyota Camry car. According to him, petroleum products smugglers have devised new methods of carr ying out their nefarious activities, by concealing drums of adulterated products in improvised

plastic bags, so as to beat security agents.

Ekwi said IPMAN has berthed in Akwa Ibom to collaborate with NSCDC towards eradicating all forms of petroleum products crimes and ensure that adulteration of products is reduced in the state.

“We are determined to assist law enforcement agencies in the state to f i g h t p e t ro l e u m p ro d ucts crimes because; it is an act of sabotage against the Federal Government and an injury to our economy”.

He further stated that adulteration and smuggling of petroleum products was a common

c r i m e a ro u n d t h e r i verine areas of the state, because of the terrain, promising that IPMAN team would soon embark on awareness campaigns in riverine communities on the dangers of adulterated products.

The zonal head of NSCDC in Oron, Iniobong Ekong while receiving the items, commended IPMAN monitoring team for assisting the agency in the fight against petroleum products crimes in the state.

S h e u r g e d t h e I PMAN monitor ing team to liaise with the NSCDC and other security agencies in the fight against crimes in the state.

he Ibadan zonal office of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has secured the conviction of one Adedapo John Adeagbo before Justice Patricia Ajoku of the Federal High Court, sitting in Ibadan.

Adeagbo, who bagged eight months imprisonment, had earlier been a r ra i g n e d o n a f o u rcount charge of obtaining money under false pretences.

He later approached the commission for a plea and sentence barga i n w h i c h i n f o r m e d his re-arraignment on Wednesday on a onecount amended charge bordering on fraudulent impersonation.

The charge is contrary to section 22 (2) and punishable under section 22 (4) (b) (i) of the Cyber Crimes (Prohibition, Prevention Etc) Act, 2015.

He pleaded guilty to the lone-count charge when read to him.

Prosecuting counsel, Chidi Okoli, thereafter, prayed the court to convict the defendant accordingly.

C o nv i c t i ng t h e a ccused of the offence, the presiding judge equally issued an order compelling him to restitute to his victim the sum of $450 through the commission.

He is also to forfeit to the Federal Government of Nigeria his iphone6 mobile phone being the instrument used in committing the crime.

NGO to build life-afterstroke centre in Aba GODFREY OFURUM, Aba

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ealth Development Initiative (HDI), an Aba based non-governmental organisation (NGO), has announced plans to set up a “Life-after -stroke Centre” in Aba, to increase awareness on stroke, strengthen services for stroke prevention, control, and ensure that survivors are up again after a stroke.

Nancy Onwueyi, coordinator, Health Development Initiative, disclosed this to Cityfile in Aba, during a 3-day stroke awareness campaign, organised by her NGO to mark this year’s world stroke day.

She advised Nigerians to eat healthy, check their blood pressure and sugar level, avoid stress and exercise regularly for at-least 30 minutes, daily, to avoid stroke.

Health Development Initiative, kicked- off her maiden world stroke campaign event on Thursday, October 24, 2019 at Abayi Boys Secondary School, Aba with a “Walk and Run”, against stroke, in which they educated the public on world stroke day, basic facts on stroke, stroke prevention awareness, stroke risk factor assessment, lecture on prevention and management of stroke, lifestyle goal and self-management advice.

Accidents: FRSC wants J/Berger to open Kaduna-Zaria expressway

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he Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Kaduna sector command has appealed to Julius Berger to open both lanes of Kaduna-Zaria expressway to avert traffic build up ahead of December festive season.

The sector commander, Hafiz Mohammed, made the appeal at the official flag-off of the 2019 Ember Months campaign to caution road users against reckless driving in Kaduna.

Mohammed explained that the road, which is undergoing reconstruction, has more than 12 kilometre

diversions from four lanes to two lanes, causing serious traffic build-up, especially during festive season.

He pointed out that the volume of traffic along the expressway was expected to significantly increase by the second week of December.

According to him, there will be continuous traffic gridlock if the diverted sections of the expressway are not open up to free flow of traffic.

He commended the Kaduna State government for supporting the command in managing traffic bottlenecks along the expressway since the commencement www.businessday.ng

of the road reconstruction in June 2018.

On the ember months’ campaign, Mohammed said that the command, in partnership with Kaduna State government would carry out massive awareness campaign to curb avoidable accidents on major highways.

He explained that the campaign became necessary in view of the increase in vehicular and human movements during Christmas and New Year celebration and other social events.

He also said it was a period for post-harvest activities involving movement of agricultural produce from

the farms to houses, warehouses, markets and industries.

“This increase of traffic density brings about crashes that usually results to deaths, injuries and loss of properties. “The ember months’ campaign is, therefore, designed to enlighten the general motoring public to drive patiently as they share roads with other road users. “We want our road users to know that road safety is the state of mind and road accidents are the absence of mind.”

“Motorists need to be reminded that they need to stay alert to stay alive.”

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“We will be going to motor parks, places of worship, social gatherings to enlighten the people against over speeding, overloading, tyre violations, light sign, use of phone while driving and other route violations,” he said.

Also speaking, Aliyu Tanimu, state chairman, National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), noted the urgent need to address the prevailing road traffic crashes along Abuja – Kaduna -Zaria expressway.

Tanimu acknowledged that the huge volume of traffic during festive season calls for serious caution to @Businessdayng

prevent avoidable death, adding that the union would support all measures taken

by FRSC. Balaraba Inuwa, the commissioner, ministry for public works and infrastructure, attributed road accidents to reckless driving and commended FRSC for the laudable efforts to stem the tide through public sensitisation. She said that the current administration of the state has placed safety of lives and property of citizens at the front burner of interventions through the state’s road safety advisory committee.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

COMPANIES & MARKETS

19

Company news analysis insight

MARKETS

C&I Leasing assures on returns for shareholders as N3.2bn rights issue program gets approval OLUFIKAYO OWOEYE

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ollowing regulatory approval for its N3.2bn rights issue program, the management of C&I Leasing plc is set to deliver more value to its existing shareholders, according to the management.

The rights issue of 539 million ordinary shares of 50k each on the basis of

four new Ordinary Shares for every three shares currently held by existing shareholders.

A rights issue is an invitation to existing shareholders to purchase additional new shares in the company. In a rights offering, each shareholder receives the right to purchase a pro-rata allocation of additional shares at a specific price and within a specific period (usually

16 to 30 days). However, shareholders are not obligated to exercise this right.

Speaking at a conference call monitored by BusinessDay, Andrew Otike-Odibi, the managing director/CEO of the leasing company said the decision to embark on a rights issue was reached in order to reward existing shareholders who have been with the leasing

L-R: Femi Jaiyeola, chairman, finance committee, Compliance Institute, Nigeria (CIN); Pattison Boleigha, president/chairman of council, and Yemisi Olukoya, chairman, membership committee, at the press conference to announce the 2019 CIN induction in Lagos.

Pic by Olawale Amoo

OIL

Saudi’s Aramco shuns developed markets set to meet local investors OLUFIKAYO OWOEYE

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head of its planned IPO, oil-giant, Aramco is set to meet investors in Dubai as it seeks to raise $25.6bn in the world’s biggest listing.

The world’s most profitable company had earlier this week cancelled road shows in New York and London after it decided not to directly sell shares to investors in developed markets and go with a largely domestic-focused offering instead.

Aramco earlier in the

week set an indicative price for the deal, valuing the company at up to $1.7 trillion, which is below the $2 trillion sought by Saudi’s crown prince but putting it in the running to become the world’s biggest IPO. According to its IPO prospectus, for the six months ended 30 June 2019, Aramco generated SAR 196.7 billion ($52.5 billion) in net cash provided by operating activities and SAR 142.4 billion ($38.0 billion) of Free Cash Flow, while for the year ended

31 December 2018G, the company generated SAR 453.7 billion ($121.0 billion) in net cash provided by operating activities and SAR 321.9 billion ($85.8 billion) of Free Cash Flow.

The 658-page document also highlighted some of the risks that may affect its operations, this include oil price fluctuations and Geo-political tension within Middle East, North African region (MENA), also the risk of global warming and climate change.

company over the years “We felt we should give shareholders to cash-in on the current low share price and increase their stake in the business before we go out for a public offer in the nearest future.

According to OtikeOdibi, proceeds from the rights issue would be used to refinance part of its debt and business expansion, through the purchase of new vessels.

“We have invested heavily in the marine business and we hope to continue considering the opportunity available in that industry,” Between 2013 and 2018, C & I Leasing’s total assets base saw an

increase from N19.11 billion to N52.61 billion at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.5percent, on the back of an increase in operating lease assets from N22.52 billion in 2016 to N30.69 billion in 2018.

The rise in total assets was followed by an increase in shareholders’ funds from N8.09 bn in 2016 to N11.83bn in 2018 buoyed by 424.91percent r is e in retained earnings recorded between 2016 and 2018.

Over the same period, Profit after tax grew by 30.29percent and this was majorly driven by income from joint venture

and a 1473percent jump in interest income.

The company’s net income margin Between 2019 and 2023 is projected to grow from 5.9percent to 13.9percent, driven by increased revenue and declining finance costs.

The company’s return on average asset and average equity is also expected to grow from 4.2percent and 14.5percent to 13.0percent and 26.8percent respectively.

C & I Leasing Plc was incorporated in 1990 as a limited liability Company and duly licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria to offer operating and finance leases and other ancillary services.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

COMPANIES&MARKETS

Business Event

RISK MANAGEMENT

Experts advocate improved occupational safety measures in companies Gbemi Faminu

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afety experts have urged stakeholders in workplaces to pay adequate attention to occupational safety in order to boost productivity in the organization and ensure that employee safety is considered paramount regardless of position or qualification.

Eric Gislason, Executive Director, National Association of Safety Professionals (NASP), USA said “you have to show value that the safety of your employees is of utmost importance not only for ethical reasons but for your return on investments.” “ You do better as a company when you keep your employees safe, there is proven documentation that shows that a safe workplace will give better productivity, better employee, increased morale, better quality and that is what we need to implement worldwide” Gislason said.

Speaking on safety in Nigerian workplaces, Gislason who was the facilitator at the training said while Nigerian workplaces have quite an impressive level of occupational safety methods, however, more can be done

to become more advanced in workplace safety especially in policy reformation adding that safety reforms are not just a Nigerian problem but it is also prevalent in the United States.

Speaking to journalist during a 5-day safety training program organized by Swiss Register limited in partnership with National Association of Safety Professionals (NASP), USA, Kwode Festus, CEO of Swiss Register limited said “We have an objective to ensure that every Nigerian understands his right in terms of safety in the workplace what we are looking at is occupational health and safety which is very important, the country does not have the necessary regulations to support safety in the workplace” Proffering solutions on improving occupational safety, he advised that there is a need to establish a national framework and regulatory policy for workplaces which should be strictly adhered to.

“We need to have a peer review with other countries on safety and also attend conferences because without the knowledge, we cannot do anything”

Speaking on the training, Kwode having been certified by the NASP abroad said he decided to replicate the knowledge and certificate locally for other professionals and companies to benefit from in partnership with the international organization. He said presently Swiss Registers is the only West African partner of the NASP. He said besides becoming a certified safety manager, the participants after the training can also facilitate training for other people at a lower cost which he said presently cost $2900.

Kwode said the aim is to incorporate the training into academic institutions and reduce the fee to a more affordable amount for individuals. This he said can be achieved by working with necessary regulatory bodies and organizations speaking on the training, he said the training is not just for factory workers but also for those in corporate environments adding that the training which is a total of 5 days, have 20 participants from various companies and industries working with 32 modules after which they will be examined before receiving the certificate

L-R: Ashwine Dhanuka, chief operating officer, Eat’N’Go Limited, Otto Orondaam, founder Slum2School Africa, and Patrick McMichael, CEO, Eat’N’Go, at the Eat’N’Go 50million Naira commitment press briefing which in Lagos.

ACCOUNTING

UNIPROS launches software to boost ease of doing businesses …Unveils legendary actor, Bob Manuel Udokwu as ambassador for Africa Iniobong Iwok

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US based IT Firm; UNIPROS Solutions has launched software targeted at easing the bottlenecks associated with running small and medium scale businesses in Nigeria towards enhancing accountability, promoting transparency and efficiency.

In a statement made available to Journalists, over the weekend by the Company’s Representative in Nigeria, Prospect Mlemchukwu, noted that the software, UNIPROS SOLUTIONS, would tremendously help Entrepreneurs including Multinationals, Banks, Supermarkets, Hospitals, Schools, Service Centers and other top brands on record keeping, inventory taking, accounting and auditing with ease.

“With UNIPROS, your business is safe, before the start of business for the day, the

software takes record, and after the close of business, the software takes record, thus as an employer, you can measure efficiency and productivity of your employees from your system or tab anywhere you are.

“Also, if you run a supermarket, you can record all your supplies through UNIPROS; so by the time half of the products are sold out, you then use the software to calculate the number of products sold and multiply by the amount it goes for. Any minus from expected profit means your employees have questions to answer.

“All you need to do is to take inventory at the moment of supply and go on your way. It is a tech that cannot be altered.

Banks are now installing it for their tellers who handle cash deposit and withdrawals because it can easily trace shortages and overages.

“If you own a school, you can use it to measure the ef-

ficiency of your teachers and students. If you own a clinic, the patients and your staff can be measured through it, it is that useful,” he said.

On the affordability of the software, the company assured that the software was affordable as the package varies, and easy to apply, stressing that the software was very easy to use and had proven a success story in other parts of the world.

In another development, the company has unveiled Nollywood star, Bob Manuel Udokwu as its Ambassador for Africa.

The Nigerian representative of the Brand, Prospect Mlemchukwu who spoke on the choice of the legendary actor as the face of the brand in Africa, said that just like Udokwu who had been in the industry for over two decades with unfading relevance, UNIPROS is aimed at helping businesses succeed with ensured longevity.

L-R: Wasiu Adumadeyin, president, National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS); Adeola Ademuwa Ifeoluwa, winner, 2019 MTN Lagos State Private Schools Spelling Bee; Omotayo George, senior manager, youth segment, MTN Nigeria, and Ajoke Gbeleyi, director, private education and special programmes, Lagos Ministry of Education, at the award presentation of the MTN sponsored Lagos State Private Schools Spelling Bee competition 2019 in Lagos

L-R: Mathew Sanger, global development manager, Southampton Academy Football Club; Oluyomi Oluwasanmi, director, school sports directorate, Lagos State Sports Commissions; Anthony Ashiwe, project coordinator, Saints Lagos Football Academy, and Tosin Osunkoya, director, Goal Center, at a press conference on the introduction of Saint Lagos Football Academy in Lagos

COMPANY RELEASE

Verve International partners TVIO on online reward platform

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erve International -a leading payments technology and Interswitch’s card business in Africa- has signed a collaborative agreement with TVIO Solutions - a strategic marketing and sales promotion agency, which developed and manages Jollofrewards.com Jollofrewards.com is an online rewards platform that enables organizations to reward loyalty, acquire and retain customers. It has been creatively crafted to reward the insured based on the premium paid. The platform provides various travel, leisure and lifestyle incentives that includes free flights, free spa

treatment, free hotel stay, free cinema tickets, free Airtime, free fuel vouchers amongst others.

Verve international noted that the rewards initiative was in line with their organizational objective of rewarding Verve card holders.

Through this partnership, Verve card holders will be entitled to free travel leisure and lifestyle incentives when they use their Verve card to buy or renew their insurance policies through partnering brokers. Speaking at the MOU signing event in Lagos, the CEO of Verve International Mike Ogbalu III commended the team at TVIO for such ingenuity. In his response, the CEO of TVIO

Group, Dominic Essien said that they were excited about the opportunity to partner with a successful indigenous card scheme like Verve.

Another partnering brokerage firm Messer. J. Akin George & Co. Ltd who was represented by their Chief Operating Officer, Ayodeji Johnson considered the initiative a welcome one to deepen market penetration in the insurance industry. He considered the 1.9m insurance policies in circulation out of 190m population in Nigeria as too low. “Initiatives such as this will definitely cause a push in insurance sales and deepen penetration”.

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L-R: Paul Inyang, tutor, Little Saints Montessori School; Toyin Popoola-Dania, category development/ activation manager, PZ Wilmar Limited; Aigboke Darlington, head Boy, Little Saints Montessori School, and Kayode Comfort, elementary supervisor, Little Saints Montessori School, during the Mamador Breakfast school activation at Little Saints Montessori School, Ilupeju, Lagos, recently.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

FINTECH News

Products Review

21

In association with

Technology Review

Personality Review

Company Review

With OPay, PalmPay’s deep pockets, Nigeria’s payment space is game for Chinese takeover ...would protection save local startups from the onslaught? ...Consumers are the biggest winners FRANK ELEANYA

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ne way to remember 2019 is as the year when Chinese investors pulled the stops to hand over Nigeria’s payment and tech space to their homegrown startups.

It is a development that has experts worried and asking whether the local startups would need a policy to protect them from the deep pocket Chinese firms grown in Africa.

First, OPay secured another record $120 million in Series B from Chinese investors including Meituan-Dianping, Source Code Capital, IDG Capital, Sequoia China and GSR Ventures who funded the company’s $50 million raise in July. The July funding was the highest seed round raised by a fintech company operating in Nigeria.

OPay’s total investment now stands at $200 million (data from Crunchbase) barely one year since kicking off operations in Nigeria. It only needed less than 6 months to raise $170 million.

Second, PalmPay, another Chinese company owned by Transsion the parent of mobile phone brands Techno, Infinix and iTel, raised $40 to build a super app housing different digital services such as logistics, ridehailing and payments.

Apart from Transsion, other investors who participated in the seed round include NetEase investments, a Chinese Inter-

net technology company and Mediatek, a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company.

Third, Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group was in Nigeria on a visit to the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. After the visit, his African NetPreneur Foundation was handing out a $250,000 grant to LifeBank as the winner of its maiden edition of the award.

The Africa Netprenuer Prize Venture was founded by Jack Ma. 10 entrepreneurs across Africa were competing for an opportunity to win prize monies totaling USD 1 million.

“The prize is an entry strategy for the ecommerce company Alibaba founded by Jack Ma and its payment platform AliPay which is already in Nigeria and has a physical office,” said a source knowl-

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edgeable about the matter.

“Recently, they poached an executive of one of the local payment companies in Nigeria, Korapay.”

Jack Ma is a long admirer of African entrepreneurs, however, experts say he is looking to leverage Africa’s largely untapped ecommerce space to displace Amazon dominance in the global market.

Hence, an announcement by Alibaba is expected very soon.

But when Alibaba decides to make its intentions known, it would likely have competitions from Transsion which already has the advantage of being the leader of Africa’s mobile phone market.

Today the company that revolutionised the dual-SIM in Africa is a clear leader of the phone market on the con-

tinent controlling 37.4 percent as of the second quarter of 2019 according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

Transsion’s company data showed that it sold 124 million phones globally in 2018 alone.

Experts also say it is a signal that the Nigerian fintech market is up for grabs and Chinese companies backed by big funding are strategically positioning themselves to lead.

“The decade of application utility is around the corner in Africa. The Chinese are not buying local startups - they prefer to start from scratch.

What does that tell me? Simply, the market is still at infancy; no one has it yet,” said Ndubuisi Ekekwe, chairman of Fasmicro and a technology expert.

The increased Chinese

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attention may not be unconnected to significant milestones startups in the segment has made since the turn of the century.

A report by the World Economic Foundation (WEF) notes that given China’s position as a leading and rapidly accelerating technological superpower in the world, it is not surprising that they see technology as the industry for the next stage of Sino-Africa collaboration.

However, there are fears that the Chinese interest poses an existential threat to local startups who have no access to big funding. Hence, some tech professionals say maybe a protection policy could go a long way to ensure local startups are not pushed out by the big money Chinese firms.

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But there may be a way for local startups to survive.

“To compete, Nigerian Fintechs will have to offer a different value proposition entirely, capture a different market and spread from there or probably work together and create other markets, seeing that they all are in loans, agents, payments,” said Abel Achi, a software designer.

While local fintech firms have a serious battle ahead, Some experts see the competition benefitting the consumers. Aside from OPay and PalmPay, JumiaPay, Visa and other foreign payment platforms are beginning to expand their visibility in the Nigerian market. Visa was behind the $200 million stake in pre-IPO Nigerian payment companies, Interswitch.

“Lots of Chinese microcredit coming to the Nigerian market; combined with CBN policies, you should see loan interest rates come down in the next few years,” Mark Essien, founder of Hotelsng said in a tweet.

Following its funding, OPay released an OCar flier indicating that it is starting an Uber-like ridehailing unit.

From the flier, the first rides will cost only N200. The service is already available in Lagos, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Benin, Kaduna, Abeokuta, and Ibadan. OPay’s micro lending platform, OKash is also reported to have provided approximately 5 million loans valued at $250 million in Kenya, India and Nigeria.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

23

FEATURE

A fistful of poisoned gold Despite two lethal outbreaks of lead poisoning in northern Nigeria, thousands of people still eke a living digging the underbelly of the earth for gold. They have formed mining clusters which have morphed into lucrative small businesses. ISAAC ANYAOGU visited Shikira, in Niger State, getting over the outbreak of lead poisoning four years ago and found that only better regulation will ensure safer mining and deliver greater value.

H

assan Hussein remembered it like yesterday, toddlers with rheum running down their noses, eyes rolling backwards, lips arched sideways, drooling, and the tears of inconsolable mothers as their children lurched in pain.

“We thought it was witchcraft,” 46-year old, Hussein, said. “I prayed that it should take me and spare my child…,” he whimpered, fighting to claw back the tears that gradually seep down his eyes.

He watched his one-year old son convulse to death on a dry Harmattan night in 2015. The daughter was spared but with stunted growth and eyes that focus off-kilter, she was scarred for life. It was like a plaque; it visited almost every home, and left in its wake, an orgy of tears. Four years later, the wounds still fester, the pain yet to thaw.

“They told us, it was the lead from the gold we mined,” Hussein said, pointing to the abandoned office of the Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) who provided the information. They had since packed their gear and left town after completing their mission.

Only weeks after burying his child, Hussein returned to the pits.

“I have been doing this all my life.

This is all I know.”

On a good month, Hussein who is part of a mining cluster earns over N65,000 ($211). Over a dozen miners form a cluster, sometimes they are up to twenty and earnings vary between N50,000 ($162) and N70,000 ($228). Despite the risks, it is still the most lucrative gig in

town, affording them sustenance and paying school fees.

In March 2010, MSF responded to reports of children dying mysteriously in communities across Zamfara state, northern Nigeria.

About 400 children had died, and thousands were diagnosed with high levels of lead in their blood.

It was the worst recorded lead poisoning outbreak in history but it was not going to be the last.

For years, many communities in northern Nigeria have been digging the earth and extracting large chunks of rocks which they grind to separate gold fragments found inside them.

But this crude method of mining gold releases high levels of lead and silica dust in the air. This lead particles settle on the soil, on their clothes, in their homes and even in their food. The men came home with their work clothes and their wives use the same kitchen utensils to prepare cornflour to separate sand from gold fragments.

So, five years after the lead poisoning outbreak in Zamfara state was contained, another one occurred in Niger state, following the same pattern, says Benjamin Janero, coordinator, MSF in the state. More than 300 people were affected and 28 children died.

For two years beginning in 2016, MSF worked to contain the threat.

It carried out soil remediation, provided healthcare and counselling and promoted safer mining practices through information and tools to reduce exposure to lead and silica dust.

Medical experts say silica dust causes silicosis, lung cancer and is

a significant risk factor for tuberculosis (TB). Lead causes severe neurological deficits and death among children in these communities, but even at low exposure levels is responsible for 674,000 deaths each year primarily due to cardiovascular disease.

Lead particles are mostly airborne, so MSF taught the miners to replace dry operations with wet methods. Miners were taught to implement simple safe measures including washing, showering, setting up separate eating areas and changing out of work clothing before going home at the end of the day.

“Our pilot project demonstrated that low-cost dust control measures were effective at reducing average airborne lead exposures by 95 percent,” said Perry Gottesfeld, executive director of Occupational Knowledge International (OK International) whose organization partnered with Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in this effort.

The primary objective was to reduce lead exposure among artisanal small-scale miners and minimize take home exposures. “We worked cooperatively with miners to provide them with the information and tools to reduce their exposures to lead and silica dust. Together we showed that these efforts minimised contamination and helped save lives.” Gottesfeld said.

In addition to significant reductions in airborne lead, a study found that these control measures reduced the smaller respirable silica dust by 80 percent.

A visit to the community shortly

Hassan with little Aisha

after the team from MSF left along with officials of the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development and another journalist, showed that the threat of death is not enough deterrent for the business of artisanal mining in a community where opportunities are too few and far between.

The five-hour road trip to Shikira community in Rafi Local Government Area of Niger State from Minna, felt like a journey to the end of the world. Three hours into the journey, I understood why only a pickup truck was advised for the trip. What passes as road on the way to Shikira is a terrain of scraggy patchwork of uneven land.

We crossed seven streams and our vehicle got stuck in one. The local people came together and pulled it out of quick sand.

In Shikira, only a handful of houses are made with cement, many of the houses have rusty roofing sheets sitting on clay walls - just how squalor would live, if it owned a town.

At the makeshift operations centre of MSF, we could see the intensity of their work and the vacuum they have left. Safer mining messages translated in Hausa, complete with pictures filled the walls.

The clinic that could barely hold

all those requiring care three years ago, was now empty and left in the care of a Bashir, a 28-year-old, who had more enthusiasm than medical skill. He is yet to complete a diploma course in biochemistry.

Inside the clinic set up to treat patients affected b lead pensioning I feared the lessons from the previous lead poisoning outbreak may soon be lost on the community. We saw local women carrying cooking utensils and pots, spoons and buckets used in their homes to the mining sites.

Officials from the Ministry of Mines and Steel who accompanied us on the visit were horrified. “These are the same buckets, with which they will later get their drinking water!”

But at the ministry head quarters in Abuja the picture is totally different. We were assured that the lessons learnt from safer mining experience will continue long after the departure of MSF. Yet, MSF had not got on their planes when some of the villagers had returned to their old ways.

Ojeka Patrick, department head for small-scale mining at the Ministry of Mines and Steel said, “The plan now is for us to formalize the sector and make the practices safer. This includes a digital cadastre, because about one million people are directly involved in micro-mining, another

two million indirectly.”

Though this plan has been in the works for years, it does not look like it

could happen soon. Ministry officials say they get so little in the form of allocation that they can only manage periodic monitoring activities.

After it became obvious how difficult it would be to formalise the miners, the government introduced a form of certification which artisanal miners are required to obtain after forming clusters and with this certificate they can earn better revenue from selling the gold they had mined through official channels.

However, the ministry cannot even fuel its vehicles to visit these remote locations where artisanal mining is done. So, applicants end up paying for these ‘monitoring’ trips and predictably they get certified while they continued with unsafe practices.

While there is a boom in artisanal mining, the same cannot be said of formal mining. The ministry, last year, revoked the licenses of 155 holders mainly because they did not put them to use.

Lucrative enterprise According to the non-profit Publish What you Pay Nigeria, the exploration of minerals in Nigeria by the artisanal method has occurred for over 2400 years from mining basic clays to base metals and gold. There are thousands of artisanal mining sites in Nigeria

Some local people still violate rules that will ensure safer mining.

Niger State. www.businessday.ng

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and government officials say over one million people are directly involved and another one million engaged indirectly.

It is often difficult to get accurate data around the sector because, “the sales channel is largely unofficial and embedded with smuggling and distribution cartels leading to loss of revenue from taxes, loss of revenue from royalties, exposure of miners to uncontrolled risks, uncontrolled and non-systematic evacuation, resulting in environmental degradation, erosion and excessive pollution, amongst other negative effects,” the group said in a newsletter.

While an ounce of gold sells above $1475, artisanal miners are paid less than a third of what an ounce of gold is sold in the international market.

But it is a back-breaking task.

Artisanal miners dig pits removing the top soil. The stones are collected and packed in a sack (100kg) to the crushing machine. Each sack is crushed and grinded smooth by the smoother machine for a fee of about N5,000 ($16).

The smoothed powder is taken to the river where it is crudely filtered or some collect water in a big container using a wooden pallet on which is a rug carpet that retains the gold. This is called washing, both males and females engage in it. Mercury is then applied to coagulate the gold together and finally; it is cleaned up and ready for sale. However, the bulk of the money from this operation goes to middlemen. Kabir Mohammed Kankara national president of the Miners Association of Nigeria, said a lack of functioning buying centres means that artisanal miners do not get the full value of their toil. Negotiations are conducted informally and many are shortchanged.

“The biggest challenge for artisanal miners is lack of capital to scale their production” says Kankara. Though the government has provided a fund, operators say the conditions are too stringent.

Unlike the oil sector where obtaining a licence is enough collateral to obtain loans, financial institutions do not accept the same security from miners.

Last year, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), an anti-corruption body seized about N1.12 billion ($3.6 million) worth of gold about to be smuggled abroad through the

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Inside the clinic set up to treat patients affected by lead pensioning

Safer Mining information center

Abuja airport to Dubai, United Arab Emirates uncovering a syndicate of smugglers including foreigners.

Kayode Fayemi, former minister of Mines and Steel Development, lamented that in 2017 Nigeria lost about $9 billion in two years due to illegal mining.

The sector contributed N3.5billion ($11.6 million) to national revenue according to the minister.

An analysis of Nigeria’s mining sector shows that its contribution to the GDP in 2015 stood at 0.33 percent down from 4.5 percent in the 1970s. Nigeria’s oil boom led to a neglect of other viable sectors including mining.

Deeper reforms The Nigerian government seems more willing to reform the sector. It has registered 1,346 Artisanal Mining cooperatives to prepare them to access smallscale mining licences. Each of the 1,346 mining cooperatives comprise over 10 members; with additional 20 mine workers for each cooperative.

According to Olamilekan Adegbite, Nigeria’s minister of Mines and Steel Development, the Federal Government has identified 1,759 mining sites across the country. He said the government @Businessdayng

is seeking formalise the sector so it can deliver greater value to the country.

Some miners across Nigeria have begun to scale up their operations and transformed to smallscale mining firms operating with valid mineral titles. The ministry has issued registration certificates to 252 mineral buying centre operators to help artisanal miners access formal markets. This is expected to double what they currently earn.

The government has partnered with the Bank of Industry to create the Nigerian Artisanal and SmallScale Mining Financing Support Fund, where artisanal miners can access N10million credit facility with concessionary five percent interest rate and N5billion fund for bigger operators.

It is automating licenses and permits and issuing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) certificates to mining companies. It has also created a regulatory compliance handbook and operational guidelines and seek to outlaw child labour in mining operations.

Much of these reforms are yet to be firmly established in Shikira, but these are the kinds of actions that will prevent another lead poisoning outbreak in Nigeria.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

25

Conversations with Ade Adefeko

Akinwumi Adesina: High 5s Against All Odds

F

rom a relatively obscure background, Dr Akinwumi Adesina is now a global citizen of repute against all odds. Aside enjoying some ecumenical grace, that’s what happens when preparation intersects opportunities.

Dr Adesina, current President of Africa’s leading financial institution, African Development Bank (AfDB), had previously posted a sterling performance as Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development from 2011 to 2015 during the presidency of Dr Goodluck Jonathan.

By the way, it needs be stated from the outset that the intervention here is not to review ‘Against All Odds,’ the latest biographical work on Dr Adesina, written by the inimitable Dr Leon Hesser, the same writer who authored the biography of Adesina’s mentor and fatherfigure, Dr Norman Borlaug, the man who founded the World Food Prize in 1986, a prize which Adesina himself won in 2017.

Well, for all lovers of arresting prose, here is a clue to wet your reading appetite: it is a 221-page book divided into three parts; Part One- Change Agent (contains four chapters), Part 2- Transforming Nigeria’s Agriculture Sector(contains seven chapters) and Part 3- Leveraging the Success in Nigeria across Africa: the Feed Africa Strategy(it contains four chapters). And that is where it ends!

The crux of this conversation however is to intimate the readers with the five priority areas encapsulated by Dr Adesina as the President of AfDB to banish hunger in Africa, eliminate extreme poverty and help drive continental inclusive growth and organic development through African Agricultural Transformation enabled by technology and other allied ingredients such as access to credit facilities, improved seedlings, investment in soft and hard infrastructures, among other factors.

These new development priorities known as the ‘High 5s’ under the innovative and inventive leadership of Adesina as AfDB President are meant to stimulate Africa’s economic transformation. These High 5s form a blueprint for the implementation of the Bank’s Ten-Year Strategy- 2013 to 2022 which are: Light Up and Power Africa; Feed Africa; Integrate Africa; Industrialize Africa and improve the quality of life for the people of Africa.

A bit of digression here. Dr Adesina was elected 8th President of AfDB on May 28, 2015 by the Bank’s Board of Governors making him the first Nigerian to head the organization. He resumed office in September, 2015. Needless to rehash it here again that his stellar performance as Nigeria’s Agric Minister between 2011 and 2015 during the presidency

Akinwumi Adesina

of Dr Goodluck Jonathan was arguably one of the unique selling points that recommended him for being elected as the Bank’s President aside having worked in about 15 African countries and abroad prior to his election as a development economist and agricultural development expert for twenty five years. Meanwhile, Adesina was recommended for the ministerial position courtesy of the intervention of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his friend, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, former CBN Governor, now Emir of Kano amongst many other notable Nigerians.

Again, Adesina’s nomination for the position of President of the AfDB got the nod of the man who defeated Jonathan, Adesina’s boss, in the 2015 presidential election. Muhammadu Buhari, in spite of the bitter and acrimonious politics that exists between the APC and the PDP, did not hesitate a second to recommend Adesina for the exalted position. Just like he left his footprints in the sands of time as Nigeria’s Agriculture Minister, especially with his Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA), Adesina, a fantastic public speaker, is committed to ending hunger in Africa through his Feed Africa Strategy which is the epicenter of www.businessday.ng

his engagements as AfDB President, among other things.

The Feed Africa Strategy, one of the High 5s, is built around African Agricultural Transformation (AAT) which is modeled after Adesina’s Agriculture Transformation Agenda

‘

As per lighting Africa, from 2015 to 2018, the AfDB President said the bank had helped connect about 16million people to electricity; in agriculture, he said 70m farmers had been linked to better technology; in transport, which is a way of integrating Africa as well as laying the foundation for the industrialization of the continent

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(ATA) when he held sway as Nigeria’s Agric Minister. The activities of the strategy focus on four ambitious targets namely: contribute to the end of extreme poverty - up to 130m people will be lifted out of poverty, representing 25% of the 550m that are projected to be living below the poverty line by 2025; eliminate hunger and nutrition - eradicate the undernourishment that 240m Africans currently experience by 2025; Africa should be a net exporter of agricultural commodities by 2025, representing the substitution of US$110billion worth of imports.

This shift will involve achieving selfsufficiency in key staples so that Africa can feed itself and move to the top of export-orientated global value chains where it has comparative advantage and double its share of market value for select processed commodities by 2025.

As his own personal contribution to the Feed Africa Strategy and ending global hunger, Adesina founded the World Hunger Fighters Foundation (WHFF) with the sole aim of raising another generation of young food and agribusiness entrepreneurs to help end global hunger and promote agriculture as a business that unleashes wealth for poor farmers. To kick start the @Businessdayng

Foundation, he committed the cash reward of $250,000 he got from winning the 2017 World Food Prize.

A by-product of the WHFF is the Borlaug-Adesina Fellowship which is meant to inspire young Africans to build and advance their ideas in food science and agribusiness. In July 2019, the Foundation received over One Thousand Three Hundred (1,300) applications from young enthusiasts across 39 countries in Africa, representing all 5 regions of the continent. After a rigorous evaluation process, 10 exceptional individuals emerged.

Against all odds, according to Adesina, the other components of the High 5s are also working. For example, as per lighting Africa, from 2015 to 2018, the AfDB President said the bank had helped connect about 16million people to electricity; in agriculture, he said 70m farmers had been linked to better technology; in transport, which is a way of integrating Africa as well as laying the foundation for the industrialization of the continent, the bank has invested in airports, seaports and roads which invariably has led to significant improvement in the mobility of goods and services and provided better transportation for about 55m people. All the other components put together, other things being equal, if they are working optimally, there is definitely going to be improvement in the quality of life for the African people.

And that’s the ultimate desire of Dr Adesina who conquered the pangs of personal poverty by dint of hard work and personal sacrifices and now wants to banish poverty on the continent and the world at large.

Like Dr Hesser concluded in Against All Odds that Dr Adesina’s amazing story continues, the story of the High 5s is still evolving as well and we hope the launch of his second term bid will help him achieve his goal of inclusive prosperity for farmers and overall food security for Africa.

Adefeko, is Vice President Corporate and Government Relations, Olam International and a former Director Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Multi-choice Nigeria.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Ofe akwu (banga soup), a delicacy from south eastern Nigeria

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elcome to another edition of Culinary Delights.

I am excited to announce BusinessDay’s collaboration with Maggi. We have decided to collaborate with Maggi to expand this column from restaurant reviews to also bring you the most delicious easy-to-make recipes out of the diverse regions of Nigeria. Maggi is that resourceful ally that allows you to cook and enjoy the fresh food you love and believe in daily. Get ready to immerse yourself into the diversity of Nigerian cuisine and recipes, sprinkled with a little spice, culture, and everything nice.

We have an array of surprises, giveaways and much more in store for readers of Culinary Delights. Make sure to pick up a copy of BusinessDay every Friday to read the column or visit our website for the recipes and learn about Nigeria’s rich culinary history.

Our guest chef this week is Zoey Umeokeke also known as Chef Zoey Blaq. She is originally from Anambra State but grew up in Warri. She loves cooking and the science behind it. To her, every dish she makes is art – a combination of visual appeal and complimenting taste. The motivation behind what she does is passion.

She is very passionate about her work and the details that go into preparing each dish intricately.

As a chef she believes that what makes her stand out is the love of her profession which is evident with each bite.

Ofe akwu is a palm nut stew that is native to the south eastern (Igbo tribe) and Niger Delta areas of Nigeria.. It’s common to see Ofe

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

Akwu served as a sauce for boiled rice or yam, but you can also enjoy it with boiled plantain and a lot more. It is known as Nigerian Banga soup in the Niger Delta and commonly eaten with various fufu recipes: starch, pounded yam, semolina, garri, and cassava fufu. In the South-Eastern parts of Nigeria, banga soup is referred to as Ofe Akwu; Ofe means soup/ stew and akwu means palm fruit.

Here is a quick and easy recipe courtesy of Chef Zoey.

OFE AKWU (BANGA STEW) INGREDIENTS One “paint” measure palm fruits aka Banga One medium dried fish Half a cup of ground dried cray-

fish 2kg assorted beef One cup of blended pepper (yellow/red) Two cups of shredded scent leaves Maggi Naija Pot seasoning cubes 1 large onion Salt to taste Preparation 1. Wash and boil palm nut/Banga till it becomes soft 2. Clean and cook assorted beef with Maggi Naija Pot seasoning, salt and half the onions (cook till stock dries up) 3. Pound the palm nut in a mortar 4. Extract oil from the ground palm nut with hot water 5. Pour extracted palm nut oil into a pot and boil until it thickens

(this can take up 40-50 minutes) 6. Add cooked assorted beef 7. Add blended crayfish, dry fish and pepper 8. Taste for seasoning and add more if required 9. Add sliced onions & scent leaf 10. Serve with boiled white rice

Please try this recipe at home and let us know how it turns out. We want to see your pictures and videos and we want to see how you make this delicious meal from scratch.

Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @bdculinarydelights and @maggi_nigeria and use the hashtags #magginigeria #myculinaryrecipe to show us your dish and stand a chance to win some special prizes.

To make recommendations or for collaborations please send an email to lehle.balde@businessday.ng

Guest

Chef Zoey Umeokeke Instagram @chefzoeyblaq

@maggi_nigeria

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Culinary Delights

RSVP Lagos, the perfect Friday night dinner

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SVP Lagos is a modern upscale restaurant and bar serving new American cuisine since 2014.

From its industrial luxury design elements to its hidden bar and lounge behind the restaurant, R.S.V.P. is inspired by the prohibition era restaurants and bars in Manhattan NYC. The freshly made food, excellent bar program and exceptional service, along with carefully curated music and world-class design are elements that make RSVP stand out in the Lagos culinary scene.

Located on 9 Eletu Ogabi St, Victoria Island, RSVP is a restaurant that takes me down memory lane. It was the first restaurant that I visited when I first moved to Lagos. Comparing the first time I went there to the present day, gives me an appreciation for the two and a half years I have spent in the wonderful city Lagos. RSVP has become a staple in the Lagos culinary scene and it’s definitely one of the top 6 restaurants in my opinion.

On this occasion, I went with my friend Vivian Ojo who I went to high school with in Swaziland. We both have found ourselves in Lagos and it’s been great to have a familiar face around town.

It was a Friday night and we wanted to have some delicious food with god vibes and RSVP on a Friday is definitely a fun place to go. The food is to die for, each meal I have ever had at RSVP has been absolutely delicious, fresh and out of the box.

This evening I decided to go with the duck rolls, and honey glazed chicken wings. The chicken wings were delicious. I asked for sour cream to go with it and the chef came out to ask for clarification and provided me the perfect sour dip to go with the honey glazed chicken wings. The duck rolls were equally as delicious.

I’m always careful about not eating exotic meat but I think duck is acceptable right? I absolutely recommend this as a starter because it is super filling and different from the average starter. For my main meal, l I had the roasted salmon fillet. Both meals were scrumptious, well pre-

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

their food and having a good time.

They also have a great drinks menu that includes cocktails, mocktails, and wine options.

RSVP is also known for its poolside bar which is a great and fun Friday nightspot. I would recommend you go around 10 or 11 if you are only interested in the poolside experience.

That being said I would recommend that if you don’t enjoy standing all night you should book a table in advance as it fills up quite quickly and gets packed. The service indoors is slightly better than the outside pool but that is to be expected I guess.

RSVP is definitely a vibe and I recommend this place for people that enjoy fine dining, a good time and a fun yet sophisticated ambiance.

Rating 5

pared, well-plated and the food came out in a timely manner.

One thing I love about RSVP the restaurant is that the service is stellar. Each and every member of staff understands the value of hospitality and good service and I feel it every

time I go. The welcome is always warm and the staff is very attentive to detail and knowledgeable on the menu options. The owner and chef are also very on hand and can often be seen talking to customers and ensuring that all customers are enjoying

Duck rolls

- N4500

Chicken wings

- N4500

Roasted Salmon Fillet - N12500 Creme brulet

- N3800

Total for 1

- N25 300

Contact: 0906 000 8436 info@kohinoorhospitalities.com

To make recommendations or for collaborations please send an email to lehle.balde@businessday.ng www.businessday.ng

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Health Business&Life Sanwo-Olu commissions health facility, Fertility experts brainstorms to confront issues of infertility in Nigeria seeks strategy to reduce maternal mortality ANTHONIA OBOKOH ANTHONIA OBOKOH

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n a n at t e m p t t o f i g ht against stigmatisation, change mindset, the influence of national policies on fertility and building fertility care capacity in Nigeria, Fertility specialtists and stakeholders have called for the need to create awareness and educate the general public about In vitro fertilisation (IVF) and fertility treatments.

These experts spoke recently during a public enlightening programme organised by the Association for Fertility and Reproductive Health (AFRH) inaugural fertility the forum themed ‘Fertility Treatment – Facts not Fiction’.

The forum was a corporate social responsibility of AFRH to give opportunity for couples with fertility challenges to speak up on the difficulty with accessing IVF treatment and getting the best treatment.

“The major problem that infertile couples have is lack of access to proper treatment and lack of access to knowledge about their condition,” said Faye Iketubosin, a consultant Obstetrician/ gynaecologist and fertility specialist with George’s memorial medical centre in Lagos.

Iketubosin said the association was concerned about the plethora of cases where infertile

couples fall victim of quackery.

“In this country, we have had an explosion of fertility practitioners, orthodox and unorthodox, recognized and unrecognized, and there are a lot of myths that go with infertility.

Meanwhile according to the World health organisation (WHO) men infertility contributes to more than half of all cases of global childlessness, infertility remains a woman’s social burden.

“The most difficult part of managing IVF is failure, nobody will categorically tell you that its 100 percent,” said Preye Fiebai, Vice president of AFRH while responding to concerns raised by a woman who complained that she had carried out IVF treatment three times in different facilities without success.

Fiebai explained that in the progress of treatment, the first is to detect the issues causing infertility noting that once the cause is identified, and then the patient can start by attempting treatment.

However to influence of national policies on fertility and building fertility care capacity, Lagos State Government has restated its commitment to ensuring that practitioners of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) in the State adhere strictly to standards to allow patients have access to quality services

in reproductive health. “the State Government partnered AFRH to ensure adequate supervision of all facilities providing fertility services across the State adding that the State would put in extra efforts to remove the myths surrounding infertility and reproduction through the effective campaign, education, and sensitization,” said Akin Abayomi, Commissioner for Health, represented by Abiola Idowu, executive secretary, Health Facility Monitoring and Accreditation Agency (HEFAMAA).

Abayomi noted that the state government earlier in the year inaugurated a seven-man committee to monitor, regulate and enforce quality compliance in Assisted Reproductive Technology practice in the state.

“In collaboration with the committee, HEFAMAA would ensure the best practices in assisted reproductive and fertility practice,” he said.

HEFAMAA is known for its tough stance against quackery and unprofessional practices, and in line with our mandates, sanity must return to ART practice.

“I urge all practitioners and health facilities involved in ART practice to register and ensure proper accreditation with HEFAMAA because it will not be business as usual,” said Abayomi.

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bijoke Sanwo-Olu Wife of the Governor of Lagos State has said that conscious efforts must be made to considerably reduce child death and the death of pregnant women.

She made the call last Saturday at the commissioning of the Maternal & Child Centre (MCC), in Omole, Ikeja, stating that was the whole essence of the idea of Mother & Child Hospital.

Sanwo-Olu said the unveiling of this edifice will no doubt go a long way to favorably improve the health indices in the State, especially as it concerns maternal and childcare, and further, help to achieve universal and comprehensive healthcare coverage in the State.

“With a population of over 22 million residents and the influx of people into Lagos on a daily basis, public infrastructure including healthcare facilities in the State and the medical personnel are already over-stretched.

“As we know, the government cannot do it alone, and it is for this reason that I commend the management of Mother and Child Hospitals.

“I am pleased to be part of this significant milestone marking the official inauguration of the Mother & Child Hospital, Omole Centre,

by Mother & Child Hospitals,” said Sanwo –Olu. Also speaking at the commis-

sioning, Ralph Olarewaju, medical director of Mother and Child Hospital, said that the vision of the facility was to cater for the family, knowing that Nigeria’s healthcare system, particularly on the mother and child, are not fantastic.

“We must also change the reality now that many of our women are dying in childbirth and many of the children do not live up to 5 years. That is why we have opened this facility,” he said.

Olarewaju said that billions of naira are spent aboard for medical treatment. “We want to change that scenario in this country; that is why we built this ultramodern facility.

“We want to give compassionate, quality and quantitative healthcare to Nigerians,” he said.

Johnson Adewunmi , chairman of Mother and Child Hospital Ltd, also said that Mother& Child Limited had delivered consistently on providing the best hospital care package for the entire family as well as prudent management of cash.

In 2017, a Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey across the whole of Nigeria indicated that for every 100,000 pregnant women, 576 of them die at childbirth while that for Lagos is currently estimated at 555.

It was also estimated that for every 1,000 live births in Nigeria, 77 don’t live to make it to their first birthday while for Lagos, the figure is 45.

Mamador: Imperatives of a healthy breakfast lifestyle among Nigerian children Kelechi Ewuzie

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n Nigeria, a considerable percentage of children find it difficult to cope in class owing to failure to eat a healthy breakfast research has shown. This hiccup may impact attention and emotional deficiencies of these children if not tackled. Nelly Agbogu, writes on the strides of private sector initiative to address this.

Breakfast as its often said is the most important meal of the day.

But, trying to convince your sleepy, grumpy kids who insist “I’m not hungry” to take breakfast most times is a tall order.

Again in the mad dash of school day morning’s making sure everyone is awake, dressed and on the school bus or in the car on time, can be really challenging, especially when you want to provide a balanced breakfast in such situations.

We all know that school day morning’s are a race against the clock to get out the door and to school on time, and all too often, kids skip breakfast in the rush.

However, research suggests that this habit can lead to a number of negative impacts on the child. But while this wisdom is seemingly timeless, passed down from one generation to the next, does it actually have some truth to it?

There has been a lot of research and studies as to the number of reasons why kids shouldn’t skip

breakfast and most of these studies have concluded that children who do not eat breakfast are less able to learn. Hunger can lead to lower math scores, attention problems, behaviour and emotional deficiencies, low test scores, and less concentration.

The reason for this is that our brain requires food for fuel, just as our muscles do. While our muscles can use stored energy from the food we ate yesterday, our brain prefers energy from food we have eaten recently. It is these issues that have led many schools to participate in school breakfast programmes.

Beyond academics, children who eat breakfast show decreased anxiety, depression, and hyperactivity.

Breakfast can improve a child’s overall nutrition by providing her/him with necessary vitamins and minerals, and can actually reduce the risk of obesity! www.businessday.ng

Each day our body requires a broad range of essential nutrients, needed for growth, brain development, immunity and overall good health. Children who eat regular meals, including breakfast are more likely to meet these daily nutritional requirements.

Blood sugar balancing is another very important part of eating breakfast. The imbalance of these blood sugar levels are what contribute to brain fog, irritability, and fatigue.

When the glucose level in your body is not adequate enough for the brain to use as fuel, we do not concentrate as well or feel as alert as we would like. Eating breakfast ensures that blood sugar levels return to normal after a long time without eating while you were asleep. Keeping blood sugars balanced not only helps with sustained energy and focus, but also

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helps with healthy weight control and prevention of disease states such as diabetes.

The bottom line is that breakfast breaks the fast, waking up our bodies and brains to let them know it’s time to get going. Even though mornings can be rushed, set your child up for success by making sure they start the day with a healthy, balanced breakfast.

That said, your healthy breakfast routine cannot be complete without the ‘Mamador Light Fat spread - a Cholesterol and Trans-Fat Free spread, best spread over bread, waffles, pancakes or crackers, and a great option for breakfast meals.

The ‘Mamador Light Fat Spread’ contains Triple Benefits which include its Ease of spread i.e. it glides easily, due to its smooth creamy texture; its great buttery taste; and health benefits as it is cholesterol and trans-fat free, with a 30 percent daily allowance of required vitamins needed to grow and keep you active.

Suffice to say that the nutritional value of the Mamador Light Fat Spread aid a child’s development because it contains the following: Vitamin A: This is a fat-soluble vitamin that is good for healthy vision, skin, bones and other tissues in the body. They’re essential for many processes in your body, including ensuring the normal the function of the immune system and organs, and aiding the proper growth and development of babies in the womb.

Vitamin D: having enough vitamin @Businessdayng

D is important for a number of reasons, including maintaining healthy bones and teeth.

Vitamin E: This has antioxidant effects. Vitamin E plays an important role in the production of hormone-like substances called prostaglandins, which areresponsibleforregulatingavarietyof body processes, such as blood pressure and muscle contraction. Vitamin E also aids in muscle repair.

B vitamins: Are an important class of vitamins that help support the red blood cells and the nervous system. It als0 reduces the risks of birth defects.

Vitamin B6 & B12: vitamin B6 helps keeps blood sugar within a normal range, while vitamin B12 protects against anemia.

Folic acid: Helps the body produce and maintain new cells, and also helps prevent changes to DNA that may lead to cancer. Folic acid is used to treat certain types of anemia (lack of red blood cells) caused by folic acid deficiency.

Niacin: Also known as vitamin B3, is an important nutrient. In fact, every part of your body needs it to function properly. Niacin helps to boost brain function, among other benefits.

It is without a doubt, that the Mamador Light Fat Spread ticks all the boxes of a spread that contributes to a healthy breakfast. From its creamy texture to its yummy taste, to its composition of all the essential vitamins your kids need and should, therefore, be any child’s preferred breakfast option.

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Health Business&Life KWSG set to implement optimal nutrition status for children, women 2019 World Toilet Day: Africare intensifies mentation of food and nutrition pro- of women and children in the State.

SIKIRAT SHEHU, Ilorin “Kwara will only have a prosperous campaign on toilet hygiene in schools grammes in Kwara State. he Kwara State Govern “The state Food and Nutrition and secure society when children de-

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ment says it is set to finalise the policy document and multi-sectoral plan of action on Food and Nutrition for the domestication of the National Policy on Food and Nutrition and the validation of the state Food and Nutrition policy.

Marion Adekeye, chairperson of the State Committee for the Domestication of Food and Nutrition Policy, said that this at the end of 5-days workshop organised for the domestication of the policy at G-pinnacle Hotel, Pipeline road, Ilorin.

She notes that the committee has completed the assignment of coming up with the State policy document to ensure seamless and smooth imple-

Policy will ensure optimal nutritional status of residents in Kwara, most importantly, women, children, adolescent and elderly people,” said Adekeye.

The chairperson further explained that the policy and the multi-sectoral work plan are scheduled for validation by the commissioners/permanent Secretaries of the relevant Ministries, Departments, and Agencies by December this year and subsequently signed by the State Governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to make it operational in Kwara State. “|when the document is signed; it will enable the State to address the menace of chronic malnutrition and other nutritional issues that have hampered the physical and mental growth

velop physically and mentally to pursue their objectives in life with sound health and vigor that will make them responsible members in our society in future” said Adekeye.

Earlier, Jayne Arinnze-Egemonye, monitoring and evaluation Specialist of CS-SUNN, assured that CS-SUNN will continue to work assiduously to ensure that the State Policy on Food and Nutrition become operational in order to eradicate nutritional challenges facing the State.

Arinnze-Egemonye, appreciated the State Government’s strong political will and commitment to ensure that Kwara has a policy document for the implementation of food and nutrition in Kwara State.

UCH requires N100bn to function optimally- CMD ....sets up foundation to raise funds REMI FEYISIPO, Ibadan.

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o function at an optimum level and experience a complete turnaround, the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, requires about N100 billion says Abiodun Otegbayo, chief medical director (CMD) Otegbayo said the amount the hospital requires is humongous because of the facilities at the teaching hospital had decayed and needed massive resuscitation.

Addressing newsmen to commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the hospital, the new CMD said “to turn UCH around, we won’t need less than N100 billion, the hospital is overstretched and overwhelmed.

“We need the secondary tier of the hospital to be up and doing and it is in the purview of the state governments. Until the state governments wake up to their responsibilities and resuscitate the primary and secondary health care, our facilities and personnel will continue to be overstretched and overwhelmed,” said Otegbayo.

According to Otegbayo, people naturally will go to a place where they will get the best care; our clinics

are congested and there is no way UCH can accommodate all but we will continue to do our best.

He said that within the short period of assumption of office, all undue bureaucracies that inhibit effective running of the system and kill initiatives have been removed.

“Operations are now seamless from the management to the departments and staff members.

“Unlike in the past, services are greatly improving at the hospital, the clinics and other treatment centers in the hospital are now being made comfortable for patients and visitors alike”, the CMD stated.

Saying funding has been a major challenge, he listed equipments, water, power supply, workers training and infrastructure as the top facilities the hospital is currently in dire need of.

“It has been intriguing how we get money to run the hospital. We pay huge sums of money for the supply of electricity, buying diesel, do our generators and yet we must meet the yearnings of our teeming patients,” Otegbayo said.

The CMD, however, said his administration have been able to raise a team of influential Nigerians to be on the Board of Trustees of a foundation

named Oritamefa Health Foundation.

“The foundation will be run by an independent body and it will be charged with the responsibility of raising funds for the provision of vital equipment needed to improve services and facilities in the hospital.

While however calling on wealthy Nigerians, corporate organisations and non-governmental organisations to consider UCH as a point where their generosity can be extended to stated that “it is not possible for the government to provide all the needed funds and infrastructure to adequately address the needs of the hospital.”

Otegbayo therefore disclosed that the hospital will be giving awards to some individuals and corporate organisations in recognition of the contributions they have made to UCH. He mentioned some of the achievements of his administration since assumption of office to include: renovation of Otunba Tunwase Children Emergency Ward; donation of dialysis machine by Pastor Enoch Adeboye; construction and equipping Cash & Carry Pharmacy and commissioning of the UCH-RAD-AID Pictorial Archiving Communication System (PACS) reporting room for the training of Radiologists in West Africa amongst others.

Godsgift Onyedinefu, Abuja

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n commemoration of the World Toilet Day (WTD), Africare Nigeria, through its power forward project has taken campaigns to encourage healthy toilet management to schools in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Africare in a statement by Terfa Akpoyibo, project manager, Power Forward said at least 900 direct washed toilets in their various schools and conduct public awareness campaigns in 30 secondary schools in Abuja.

The project manager said Power Foward is also encouraging Government Schools benefitting from the project to renovate toilets that are available to students thereby improving toilet hygiene.

Akpoyibo noted that the theme of the 2019 WTD is “Leaving No One Behind” which emphasizes the importance providing toilets for every person in every community in efforts to reduce open defecation, provide access to clean water, availability of public toilets and proper disposal of fecal waste.

He added that the Power Foward project has also erected 14 hand wash stations in 14 schools to increase hand wash and toilet hygiene among students.

“These campaigns are expected to encourage healthy toilet management among in-school-youth, and enlighten them on the need for cleaner and better sanitation options.

“The youths are also expected to take this message to their various homes and communities at large, in order not to “leave anyone behind”, he stated.

Akpoyibo explained that Power Forward is a youth life skills and public health development project

that uses basketball as a convening platform to train students on life skills such as effective communication, conflict resolution, embracing diversity, and gender equality.

According to him, the project which is in partnership between three organizations ExxonMobil, the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Africare has reached over 70,000 senior secondary students in 30 secondary schools Abuja with public health messages.

He said the project also seeks to increase knowledge of public health

issues such as malaria and its prevention, water sanitation, personal hygiene and develop leadership in beneficiaries of the project.

“In the last six years of implementation, Power Forward has conducted more than 400 student led social behaviour change community initiatives to impact relevant information on topics such as Toilet Management, Hand Wash, Sanitation, Environmental Protection, and Personal Hygiene”, he added.

The World Toilet Day (WTD) is a World Health Organization Public Health recognized Day celebrated annually on November 19 to raise awareness of the role that that toilets play in reducing diseases and creating healthier communities.

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

Dr Ade Alakija Q-life Family Clinic

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Continued from last week heck your vaccination status with your travel consultant depending on the regions you are visiting.

In cruises outside Europe and North America, Hepatitis A vaccination is usually necessary for the non-immune because hepatitis A is so easily spread(most Nigerians will not need this).

HBL Team

Food on cruise ships is usually safe because great care is taken to prevent outbreak of food poising, but rarely contaminated food may be taken on board during stopovers. If you eat when you go onshore at a stopover, take care to avoid risky foodstuff and contaminated water. Remember that stopovers may have more risk than being on board and insect bites with the accompanying diseases (like malaria) and infections can be picked up. Because a large number of people are together in close proximity, influenza outbreaks can occur.

The elderly and those with medical conditions that can be made worst with an influenza infection should be vaccinated. They should also receive pneumococcal vaccines if not previously given. A very popular outbreak of disease amongst passengers is the ‘epidemic vomiting disease’ often due to the Norovirus. It is spread via the respiratory route and through fomites and is very difficult to control.

Large number of passengers may be infected but the illness is usually mild

and self-limiting. Practise good personal hygiene to reduce the spread of the virus and other faeco-oral diseases.

More than 100 disease outbreaks have been identified in the past 30 years.

This is probably an understatement because many outbreaks are not reported or detected. Outbreaks of measles, rubella, varicella, meningococcal meningitis, hepatitis A, legionellosis and other respiratory and gastrointestinal illness amongst ship passengers have been reported. A valid yellow fever certificate of vaccination may be needed for cruises to the Caribbean, South and Central America and sub-Saharan Africa or you might not be allowed into the ship if you do not have one.

Consult your doctor on possible malaria risk and take necessary precautions if the need arises. It is not necessary for most cruises. Sexually transmitted diseases from casual sexual relationships among passengers and among passengers and crew are reportedly quite common. It is better to abstain, and if you must have sex,

practice safe sex to prevent HIV infection, Hepatitis B, Herpes.

Have a fun Cruise. Don’t forget your fully charged roaming mobile phone.

Whatever you do, don’t fall overboard into the ocean (Laugh). The next topic will be the traveller with Asthma.

Visit reference sites below. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2018/conveyance-transportation-issues/cruise-ship-travelwww. istm.org.

Carry prescription medications in their original containers, with a copy of the prescription and accompanying physician’s letter.

Bring insect repellent and sunscreen and consider treating clothes and gear with permethrin and Defer travel while acutely ill.

Consult wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/ notices for travel health notices and Check www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/surv/ gilist.htm for gastrointestinal outbreaks.

CDCs - Precautions for cruise ship travellers

During Travel Wash hands frequently with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based sanitizer that contains ≥60% alcohol.

Follow safe food and water precautions when eating off the ship at ports of call.

Use measures to prevent insect bites during port visits, especially in malaria- or dengue-endemic areas or areas where outbreaks of vectorborne diseases, such as chikungunya and Zika, are occurring.

Pretravel Evaluate the type and length of the planned cruise in the context of personal health requirements, Consult medical and dental providers before cruise travel.

Notify cruise line of special needs (such as wheelchair access, dialysis, oxygen tank), Consider additional insurance for overseas health care and medical evacuation.

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

I David Ogar, Graphics

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

LEADINGWOMAN

IBUKUN AWOSIKA, the astute trailblazer, shining the light of excellence …celebrating 30 years of The Chair Centre Kemi Ajumobi

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ords cannot completely express how I felt interviewing this amazon who has never ceased to be a blessing to millions of people around the world. The first female to be the chairman of First Bank Of Nigeria Limited, in the history of the bank’s existence.

The Chair Centre, her organisation, which she birthed 30 years ago, has grown into an outstanding enterprise, surrounded by willing staff who together, like Aaron and Hur in the Bible have ‘held her hands up’ in support through the years.

Every time I am opportuned to listen to her speak from her wealth of knowledge and unmatched wisdom, something in me leaps, I am encouraged to aspire and do the seemingly impossible because for her, there are no limits. Yes she can? So can I. It has been 30 years of hard work, commitment and relentlessness to her business as CEO of The Chair Centre Group. BusinessDay is indeed grateful she took out time out of her busy schedule, to share her journey with us. Her intriguing story we have divided into two parts. The first part is out today in our Women’s Hub Magazine (download online at http://www. businessday.ng ) and the second part will be out next week on our CEO interview pages. Look out for it. Trust me, you are in for a treat.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome into the world of Ibukun Awosika.

Ibukun Awosika is the Chairman, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, Nigeria’s premier and most valuable banking brand. She is also the founder and CEO of The Chair Centre Group. The companies in the group include: The Chair Centre Limited, Sokoa Chair Centre Limited, Furniture Manufacturers Mart, TCC Security Systems and Cubes and Boxes Limited. These companies are involved in manufacturing, retail and bank-way security systems services.

Ibukun chairs a number of cor-

porate and not-for-profit boards amongst which are: D.light Design Inc., Convention on Business Integrity (CBI), Digital Jewel Limited, House of Tara International and Afterschool Graduate Development Centre (AGDC), a facility which she promoted to help address youth employability and enterprise issues in Nigeria. She sits on the boards of Cadbury Nigeria Plc., Imperial Gate School and Peniel Apartments Limited. She was Chairman, GEMS Africa Limited, FBN Life Assurance Limited, FBN Capital Limited and Kakawa Discount House Limited. She also served on the board of Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).

Ibukun is a graduate of Chemistry from University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), www.businessday.ng

Nigeria; an alumna of the Chief Executive Programme of Lagos Business School; the Global Executive MBA of IESE Business School, Barcelona-Spain; and Global CEO Programme of Wharton, IESE and China European International Business School (CEIBS).

With high interest in social issues, including women, Ibukun is a co-founder and past chairperson of Women in Business, Management and Public Service (WIMBIZ). In November 2019, she was appointed as the President of International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC). An ordained Pastor and founder of the Christian Missionary Fund, Ibukun, through this faith-based organization, works with hundreds of missionaries spread across Nigeria to change lives with the

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provision of medical, educational, and other supplies.

As a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative, Aspen Global Leadership Network, Institute of Directors and Society for Corporate Governance Nigeria, Ibukun, through her projects, aspires to use her opportunities in life to further the greatness of her dear country by raising entrepreneurs to create jobs for the large unemployed youthful population.

She is a member of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), served on National Job Creation Committee (NJCC), and sits on the International Advisory Board of IESE Business School, BarcelonaSpain and the Governing Council of Pan-Atlantic University.

Ibukun is a multiple awardwinning entrepreneur and the first Nigerian recipient of the prestigious International Women Entrepreneurial Challenge (IWEC)Award as a nominee of the US Department of State in 2008. She loves to watch investigative and legal series in her leisure time. She is happily married to Abiodun Awosika and they are blessed with three wonderful sons.

The Chair Centre Group is a Nigerian indigenous Group of Company established by Ibukun Awosika. It specializes in the design, manufacture, installation and maintenance of office furniture & bank-way security doors with resounding experience since 1989 and still counting. The Group comprises of The Chair Centre Limited (TCCL), Sokoa Chair Centre Limited (SCCL), TCC L Laminate Factory and the TCC Systems & Services Limited.

“From the perspective of the Chair Centre, clocking 30 this year for us is a landmark. Sometimes, I sit back and ask myself, ‘how did we survive for this long?’ But then, when I think about how over the years, several people have joined hands with me to build the company, many people who have sacrificed their time, skills and knowledge to add value, I can’t but thank God. I am a firm believer in empowering people because it has never been about me” Ibukun said.

@Businessdayng

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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entertainment

The deaf also catwalks OBINNA EMELIKE

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t was a moment of uncommon glitz at Standard Bearers School, Lekki Lagos, recently when 14 young deaf girls took to the runway to show strength and creativity in spite of their disability.

The 14 contested in the first Most Beautiful Deaf Girl in Nigeria (MBDGN) pageant.

The pageant offered the audience great excitement amid creative display of skills by the ‘supergirls’, goof music and dance performances.

Although all the contestants were incredibly active and dexterous in their various talent exhibitions, only one was chosen.

Maria Okese, 21 years old Miss Rivers State, stole the hearts of the judges with her soothing objectives for the deaf to clinch the first Most Beautiful Deaf Girl in Nigeria (MBDGN) 2019.

With her victory, Okese will represent Nigeria at the 2020 Miss Deaf World in Prague, Czech Republic.

She emerged winner among 14 contestants across 13 states

including: Lagos, Enugu, Kaduna, Ebonyi, Ogun, Anambra, Edo, Benue, Rivers, Ogun, Kwara and Abuja.

While Okese was top among the five finalists, Odedina Rebecca of Lagos and Anambra’s Columba Chinazo emerged first and second runner ups, respectively.

Okese, a professional photographer and art enthusiast, said she would create awareness on the issues of raising the standard of education for deaf children, motivate especially the deaf in Rivers State to contribute to the society despite their disabilities.

For her and the other girls, it was thanks to Tolu Oke-Igaire, Nigeria’s foremost clinical relationship and marriage counsellor and CEO, MBDGN. Although impaired, she expressed herself in tears, laughter, and gesticulations. It was vividly written all over her.

Although deaf, they gave the most beautiful, transparent and innocent expressions smothered with spotless smiles. Their only disabilities are speech and hearing impediments.

According to the organisers, the MBDGN pageant is beyond show of beauty and brain. It is a platform canvassing inclusion for the deaf in the in the society; classroom, playground, work and social places.

Despite their speech impairments, Uri Ngozichukwuka, CEO, Empathy Driven Women International Initiative (EDWIN), gave them a voice to be heard always.

“When it comes to the issue of disability inclusion, the Nigerian entertainment industry still lags among the rest of the world,” she said.

She decried that the notion of disability inclusion is novel in Nigeria and many parts of Africa.

“The entertainment industry is supposed to be the vanguard to set the pace when it comes to boosting access to the production and consumption of creative content by People with Disabilities (PWDs)”, she expressed.

To further drive home her point, she listed creating awareness, advocacy, spatial justice and affirmative action as balm for the entertainment and beauty industries to correct the anomaly.

hinged on his penchant for story telling, entertaining the audience and a dream come true for him.

Mirian Dera, also one of the 5 Tops said, film gives her the platform to link to events around her, because through it she discovers things that she had no knowledge.

“Film has always been a mean for me to connect with what happens around me because it tends to mirrow life itself. Through films I find out about things I never knew and and learn more.” She explained.

In deed, the Top 5 Films dem-

onstrated the creative ingenuity of the filmmakers. The audience also applauded the rich content of the films, a boost to Accelerate Television vision of raising young generation of filmmakers with international standards.

Addressing the audience, Otusheso said a lot of young people lack the platform to showcase their talents in filmmaking and the need to fill the gap is the the reason behind the filmmaker project to raise a generation of film stars.

“When I started working in the Nigerian media industry, I felt there were a lot of young people that wanted to do great things, but did not have the opportunity to do so, hence the Accelerate Filmmaker Project was created to train, empower and give opportunities to the young demographic’’, she said.

Otusheso noted that Access Bank’s many initiatives to stimulate and support the development of young talents in the country, gave her the motivation to create the filmmaker project to enable young realize their natural potentials.

The short films from the 2019 Accelerate Filmmaker Project will be available to the public on the Accelerate TV YouTube channel from December 1, 2019 to January 2020.

Accelerate premieres Mindset Series at AFRIFF

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ccelerate premieres ‘The Mindset Series’; the top 5 short films from its 2019 Accelerate Filmmaker Project, at the Accelerate Day of the African International Film Festival (AFRIFF) held at Film House Cinemas, Landmark Retail Village, Lagos.

After a full week of intense trainings in the art of filmmaking by some of Nollywood’s finest; If Only, Blast, Black Monday, Last and Scar were selected as the winning films of the Accelerate Filmmaker project.

Touching on the power that the mind yields and how a people’s mindset can affect their lives, the stories interpret the theme through different styles, and the five winners; Tosin Ibitoye, Olabisi Akinbinu, Miriam Dera, Alfa Farouk and Adetola Films, had their short films produced by Accelerate and Access Bank Plc. Also, they got an opportunity to be mentored by veterans in the Nigerian film industry such as Kemi Adetiba, Kunle Afolayan, Niyi Akinmolayan, Victor Aghaowa and Seyi Babatope.

At the premiere of the series, Colette Otusheso, head, Accelerate Television, said, “Each of the top 5 winners put in their best for these films, from working on set with the crew through to post production. It

was great to see them work together, even with the filmmakers that did not get a chance to be in the top 5. We are indeed proud of the hard work of these young filmmakers and are even more proud to showcase another set of our Accelerate Filmmaker Project short films at the prestigious African International Film Festival for the third year in a row.”

Commenting on his film on stage, Alfa Umar Farouk, told the audience that filmmaking is designed to make positive impact on the society.

“Every creativity and talent

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is a gift meant for mankind for a larger or small world. Filmmaking is one the most powerful tools to make positive difference.”

He said.

For Tosin Ibitoye, premiering his film entitled: “Blast” on cinema is unprecedented experience in the make- believe business.

“This is a very special moment for me. It is my first experience in filmmaking. I conceived the film story when when I was in a bathroom and I enjoy how it would be like when put on screen.”

He said, his venturing for the Accelerate Filmmaker project is

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

entertainment

Mentoring with purpose

Business etiquette

Janet Adetu

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Can you take up the challenge? ver the years while pursuing my career, I developed goals, ideas and aspirations of where I wanted to be.

Looking from a distance there were people I met that inspired me based on their achievements, the impact they had on me and the value they added to many others. It has always been a natural desire for me to add value to other people both knowingly and unknowingly. Little did I know that I was mentoring people and inspiring them from a great distance. It becomes overwhelming yet self- fulfilling when you hear what impact you have had on another person just by simply being you.

Today mentoring is a great asset to those who seek advice and guidance from a seasoned person of value to them. It is also a great asset to those who have what it takes to share with others their experiences in life and use it to make the lives of others much better. Of course it takes maturity, discipline, understanding, tenacity and traits of super leadership potential to carry this out successfully.

I am happy to say that I am a Cherie Blair Foundation International Mentor. Interestingly it is not given on a platter of Gold it requires taking an exam and passing to tell you that not everyone is cut out to Mentor.

For the last three years I have been mentoring on an international scale.

One of my mentees from Vietnam is always happy and excited at having our sessions because she has expressed how she is able to improve her English language, express herself and speak much more which is rare for her on a daily basis. I am also pleased to be a Wimbiz Mentor, I am excited to see where my mentees are today reaching greater heights. As a lifestyle Connoisseur, Transformation and Performance Coach as well as a Philanthropist I also have a host of mentees across the globe.

Sharing minds, ideas, advice and experiences has helped me to help them develop their businesses, increase confidence, steer their course and build on their personal development. The impact to date has been very rewarding for me the Mentor as well as my host of Mentees.

As a mentor what is your goal or objective?

How can you impact others?

How do you know when you are mentoring with a purpose?

To measure ones impact or success with mentoring is to measure where you were as a mentor at the start of the mentoring period to where you are at the end. Your mentoring time can be time bound or ongoing but it must yield results.

Frequently asked questions about mentoring: What does it take to mentor?

I agree it can take a bit of your time if you are committed and dedicate to adding value. However it does not necessarily involve physical visits it is entirely upto you and your availabil-

ity. With new technology using audio and face calling like skype works just as well and is equally effective.

What does it take to mentor?

Does age matter in choosing a mentor?

As a professional you will be surprised who may ask you to mentor them. It is not necessarily age or gender specific. It is no doubt easier and possibly the common norm to mentor someone slightly younger than you but the idea is for you to share your wealth of experience, your challenges, mistakes, and successes all together. It is not out of place to find yourself mentoring someone who falls within your age bracket or older. If your life inspires others, leverage on that and create impact.

What if you are not in that line of business can you still mentor a prospective candidate?

If the mentee is seeking assistance for business purposes then being in that the line of business is n added plus. All businesses have some structured common goals, from being a start- up, to business growth and business success.

Should a mentor give direction on what to do?

Mentors should seek to know more about the mentee by asking questions on where the journey is now and where the mentee is hoping to go from there on. Care must be taken in giving direction or advice that may not be solicited. Offer general guidelines, suggest solutions, share information that is relevant to the mentee and walk the journey with them. Constant questioning is key to progress from the start, this way when action points are determined they will be accountable to the mentor in

MultiChoice Nigeria introduces new DStv, GOtv packages

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ultiChoice has unveiled five new packages for its DStv and GOtv platforms to deliver more quality content at great value for customers during the upcoming festive season and beyond.

From December 1, 2019 DStv customers will have more entertainment options to choose from with the introduction of three new DStv packages: DStv Confam, DStv Yanga and DStv Padi. GOtv subscribers will also get two new GOtv packages: GOtv Jolli and GOtv Jinja.

The new packages are exclusively and speciallycurated for the Nigerian market and come upgraded with new channels, fresh content and Naija-centric names that contribute to enhanced viewing experience. In addition, the GOtv Max package will be revamped to include more channels, and offering more value at an affordable price.

Speaking on the milestone, John Ugbe, CEO, MultiChoice Nigeria, said the introduction of the new packages customized for Nigerians will unlock a new

John Ugbe, CEO, MultiChoice Nigeria

level of entertainment and value for customers, giving them improved choices and a brand new DStv and GOtv experience.

“We are constantly driven to ensure that customers are satisfied with the overall quality of our services. The new packages are exclusively curated from Naija and for Nigerians, driven by great programing and affordable prices,” said Ugbe. “With improved package options available to our valued customers, they can choose a subscription plan that best fits their needs and budget. We remain committed to give millions of television viewers in Nigeria the opportunity to enjoy world class entertainment.” www.businessday.ng

The new packages come loaded with the recentlylaunched channels; Da Vinci, TNT Africa and Real Time, as well as, other top local, sports, movies and general entertainment channels.

For the new DStv packages, DStv Confam is a brandnew package designed for the whole family with over 120 channels. It is the home for BET, Da Vinci Learning, TNT Africa and more, and the subscription price is N4,500 monthly. DStv Yanga has over 94 channels. For N2,500 monthly, subscribers will get to enjoy all things Nollywood on amazing channels such as Africa Magic Epic, ROK 2 and Ebony Life. Also on the package are lifestyle shows on

Real Time and great local and international music on MTV Base. DStv Padi provides quality entertainment at anytime with over 51 exciting channels for N1,800 monthly.

The brand new GOtv JOLLI offers 68+ world class channels for family entertainment from top Naija and international channels.

Subscribers will get to enjoy exciting Naija drama, reality shows, news, kid’s shows on brand new channels such as ROK2, CBS Reality, FOX, TNT Africa*, and Davinci Learning for N2,400 monthly.

GOtv Jinja provides 47+ exciting local and international channels, with entertaining channels such as with FOX Life and Real Time; educative kid’s channels like PBS Kids, local drama on Africa Magic Epic and lots more for N1,600 monthly.

MultiChoice will give customers with active subscriptions on DStv Access, DStv Family, GOtv Plus and GOtv Value a glimpse of the exiting entertainment lined up on these exciting new packages with a two-week preview from December 1-15 , 2019 at no extra cost.

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‘ It is also a

great asset to those who have what it takes to share with others their experiences in life and use it to make the lives of others much better

following through.

As a mentor you are simply the accountability partner that helps a mentee reach their goals.

Is coaching different from mentoring?

Yes it is! You can be both a coach and a mentor to different people provided you are aware of the goal and the objective of each relationship. A coach is someone who offers services for a fee, while a mentor does not take financial rewards. A coach is not sharing experiences but helping you reach your goals through a structured process. A coach is also an accountability partner but with intention and deeper purpose. A coach helps you reach your goals faster than if you were to go alone by helping you beat the act of procrastination. Coaches have vast knowledge and experience in certain fields,as today their services are used for a multitude of purposes.

As a transformation and performance coach my goal is to help you see how you can do things better that will help you improve your outlook, your career goals, your personal development so that you can leverage opportunities for success and a more fulfilled purpose driven life.

What should you expect as a mentee from a mentor?

As a mentee determine what you want from the mentor, spell it out from the beginning with goals. As a mentor discuss skills needed, keep building the relationship. Stay in touch even after the period of mentoring is over, Be intentional about mentoring with a purpose.

Share your experience with me, follow me on social media @Janet Adetu Janet.adetu@jsketiquetteconsortium.com

The Ghost and The House of Truth wins three awards At AFRIFF

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he African Film Festival (AFRIFF) ended on a glorious note; closing with the spectacular new film The Ghost and The House of Truth by Akin Omotoso and Ego Boyo, the executive producer.

The film premiered to an outstanding number of film lovers, enthusiasts, students and supporters of the art. The newly opened Filmhouse Cinemas at Landmark was filled to capacity for the much anticipated premiere. In attendance was Inijoke Sanwo Olu, First Lady of Lagos State, representatives of the Police, judiciary, child protection units Lagos State, media and dignitaries from the American, British and German Consulates.

The premiere had several Nollywood practitioners led by Ego Boyo, Kate Henshaw, Lala Akindoju, Rita Dominc, Joke Silva, Mildred Okwo, Kunle Afolayan, Hilda Dokubo, Tope Tedela, Uzor Osimkpa, Toyin Osinaike, Seun Ajayi, and Dolapo Oni. The Ghost and House of Truth received a lot of great reviews from the panel of judges and audience at the premiere.

It is no surprise that the movie received three AFRIFF Globe awards. The Ghost and The House of truth won; “Best Ac@Businessdayng

tress” (Kate Henshaw) “Best Director” (Akin Omotoso) “Best Nigerian Film” (The Ghost and The House of Truth).

The Ghost and The House of Truth has a line-up of actors such as critically acclaimed BAFTA breakthrough Brit ; Susan Wokoma, multiple awardwinning actress Kate Henshaw, Fabian Oloyede, Kemi ‘Lala’ Akindoju with a supporting cast that includes, Uzo Ozimkpa, Toyin Oshinaike, Seun Ajayi, Tope Tedela, Chioma ‘Chigurl’ Omeruah, Keira Heywatch, Oludara Egerton - Shyngle and an outstanding cast of Child actors and an international crew.

“The Ghost and the House of Truth” is the sixth film from the stables of the Temple Productions and the second collaborative work with Akin Omotoso, the director and Ego Boyo, the producer.

Their focus is to make films that provoke enquiry into topical social issues that affect and shape the experience of the average person in our society thereby providing an avenue for reflection, dialogue and solutions that meet the needs of our time.

The film opens at the box office across Nigeria on November 22, 2019 at the nearest cinema near you.

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Advertise Here We are inviting the world’s greatest catastrophe if the African youth is not politically and productively engaged – Ugochukwu 34

GEW Walk kicks off 35

The police and ease of doing business 36

Rising zeal for entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship is not foreign to Nigeria. Informed global business space stake-holders often comment Nigerians are highly enterprising people. This is unquestionably true going by empirical evidence. SIAKA MOMOH brings you the story of the rising zeal for entrepreneurship in Nigeria and the rest of Africa. It is a must read.

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aja’s trading policies alarmed other British firms trading in the Niger Delta with the exception of Alexander Miller Brother and Company, which prospered and had stations throughout Southern Nigeria partly because it co-operated with Jaja.

It is however instructive to note that the other eight firms that were virulently opposed to his policies ‘ganged’ up to form the African Association which was incorporated in 1889. Hence, it was this African Association and a few other firms that eventually formed the United African Company (UAC) in 1929.

Thus, the history of the origins of the UAC would not be complete without adequate reference to the intense commercial rivalries between Jaja and the firm of Alexander Miller who were contemptuously referred to as the agents of Jaja by the other firms, on the one hand, and the other eight British firms in opposition to Jaja, on the other.

Talking about UAC, Siaka Momoh has clear memory of AT&P (African Timber & Plywood Company Limited) in Sapele which, as well as the thriving export business in ‘Safa’ ( Safa stands for Sapele just like ‘Wafi’ and ‘Lasport’ stood for Warri and Lagos.

These were popular slangs that the present Delta State Boma Boys, the equivalent of these days ‘Area Boys’ of Lagos, sing song). Gone are the days when Sapele and Warri were all bubbles.

It was this same UAC, that a few Nigerian entrepreneurs had to contend with in pre and post independence periods. The likes of Timothy Adeola Odutola and Hamzat Beyioku Adebowale were good examples. Adeola Odutola, who, according to the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, is the foremost Nigerian and perhaps, African industrialist in history,

had businesses that were household names in the country. His fleet of companies include: Odutola Nigerian Industries Limited - manufacturers of bicycle tyres and tubes in Ijebu-Ode, Odutola Tyresoles Company Limited with factories in Ibadan, Kano and Onitsha - re-threading automotive tyres, Odutola Tyre & Rubber Company Limited with factories in Ibadan for rubber compounding, Adeola Farms known for growing of rubber and oil palm, Odutola Food Industries Limited known for manufacturing assorted biscuits, and Odutola Stores Limited - department Stores.

There was also Adeola Odutola College, Ijebu Ode, where Siaka was to do his HSC (Higher School Certificate) but couldn’t because his father, Omooba Ilori Momoh asked him to take up a job for two years. And he had to wait for six

years to continue his education.

Most of these six years was spent by him managing small and Medium businesses.

This business guru held substantial investments in breweries and pharmaceutical sub-sectors and served as chairman in many other companies including Kabelmetal Nigeria Limited, Bayer Pharmaceuticals Nigeria Limited, and Unichem Nigeria Limited in which he had substantial share holdings.

Adebowale, on his part, started his career with SCOA Group in 1959 as a marketing manager.

By 1961, he founded Adebowale Stores as a retail outlet in Lagos.

Taking advantage of the Federal Government’s favourable industrial policies later on, Adebowale incorporated Adebowale Electrical Industries Limited as a manufacturing concern. The

move marked a turning point in his career from a businessman to a manufacturer, especially in 1975, when the young company rolled out its first set of locally manufactured electrical/electronics products, opening branches in Ibadan, Kano and Lagos.

There was a list of other indigenous entrepreneurs that the sixties and 70s and thereafter witnessed.

This list included: Aminu Dantata, Odimegwu Ojukwu, Augustine Ilodibe of Ekene Dili Chukwu fame, David Dafinone, James Edewor – the Oloku of Eku, Wahab Folawiyo, Chris Ogunbanjo, Rasaq Akanni Okoya of Eleganza Group of Companies, and Adeyemi Lawson.

Only recently, Aliko Dangote, President Dangote Group, currently the richest man in Africa, and Femi Otedola, made the Forbes list of world billions. Dangote is the founder of the Dangote

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Group, which has operations in Nigeria and over a dozen African countries. Dangote began his career as trader at 21 with a loan from his uncle. He went on to build his Dangote Group into a conglomerate with interests in sugar, flour milling, salt processing, cement manufacturing, textiles, real estate, haulage and oil and gas.

Femi Otedola is the Nigerian president chief executive officer of Zenon Petroleum and Gas limited. In 2009, he joined Aliko Dangote on World’s Richest List (Forbes magazine) with an estimated worth of 1.2 billion Dollars.

In 2010, due to the recession, his fortune was reduced by half and he no longer figured in the Forbes list. Femi Otedola is the dominant force in diesel business among

Continues on page 24

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

BusinessChief

We are inviting the world’s greatest catastrophe if the and productively engaged – Ugochukwu Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, lawyer, business coach, and CEO, Tony Elumelu Foundation makes the list of hundreds of stakeholders in entrepreneurship, in and outside Nigeria, that yours sincerely has spoken to. If you are looking for one person who has a deep knowledge of the African entrepreneurship turf, you will find one in Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu.

You wouldn’t find this a surprise when you get to know her pedigree which you will do shortly. She had a one-on-one conversation with SIAKA MOMOH recently, in her car, which took off from her Heirs Holdings Ikoyi office, where she just had a meeting, en route Tafawa Balewa Square, for another engagement.

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feyinwa has been so many things that have to do with entrepreneurship. She was an external consultant in the Enterprise Development Centre, Pan-Atlantic University, facilitating training sessions for management staff as well as business service providers and other related services.

Ifeyinwa founded and grew Sleek Nigeria, a medium scale business from a completely unknown brand to one of the top cosmetics companies in Nigeria. With an annual turnover of N400 million within the first three years of operation, it soon became a household name, well known among its target audience. She also conceived, initiated and developed the ‘Africa Women Economic Empowerment Initiative’ which started as a nationwide project developed on the principle that the economic empowerment of women in Africa is pivotal to economic growth and sustainable development across the African continent one community at a time.

And many more. No wonder she was considered for the big CEO, Tony Elumelu Foundation job that is currently the toast of the African continent.

Why the choice of entrepreneurship?

Being an entrepreneur, I always say that the only better thing to do, as an entrepreneur, is to help others to make a success of their businesses.

So, having spent time not just in Nigeria but in Cape Town, South Africa, I knew that the only way that Africa can find its way out of poverty is to go the entrepreneurship route.

And so having successfully run a business in Nigeria, I understood the trials of running a business in Africa and my time in Cape Town now led me into development where I started the Women Economic Empowerment Development Initiative, working with governments across Africa. So it just became clearer with each passing day, that entrepreneurship was the way to go. Concerning impact, no one in Africa has had much impact as the Tony Elumelu Foundation. That’s why, when I was approached by the Foundation to join the team, to catalyze the growth of the Foundation across Africa, it was a no brainer for me.

Partnerships It has been great. When I came in, the partnership department at TEF was quite new. I came in as Director of Partnerships, this was in 2017.

Since then we have been able to generate almost $20 million, to sponsor additional entrepreneurs into the TEF programme. Each of these entrepreneurs, after training and mentorship, receives the $5000 seed capital. The Foundation selects 1000 every year that get the $5000. The Foundation, from its own pocket, pays out $5million out annually. But with 216,000 applications this year that 1000 is barely scratching the surface, which is why we opened up the programme to partners.

In 2018, we had 240 additional entrepreneurs, 200 from GIZ, and 40 from UNDP. Making it 1240 that were trained in 2018.In 2019, we had 3531 entrepreneurs: 1000 from the Foundation and 2500+ from partners, so this year alone, we will pay out over $15 million to entrepreneurs across 54 African countries.

Number of partners to date At the moment, we are working with several partners. We have UNDP, not only have they sponsored 754 entrepreneurs on the programme this year, but they also launched a separate programme, a 10-year programme in partnership with TEF, to empower 100,000 entrepreneurs. So that is a huge partnership we have with UNDP where we had to have an off-cycle programme, running alongside the flagship programme.

We also have ICRC that has been our partners for the last two years.

We have the African Development Bank (AfDB) which sponsored a thousand entrepreneurs. And it is also interesting that we have Anambra State sponsoring additional entrepreneurs from their State same as the Republics of Botswana and Benin. They also sponsored additional entrepreneurs from their own countries.

Open to all TEF is open to all. There are no age limits; no academic qualification and all entrepreneurs are welcome.

Flipside of beneficiaries In Africa, they always say that most businesses that start don’t survive the first two years. But I think that we have proven that theory wrong because, with support, training and mentorship, I believe that entrepreneurs, who have good intentions, have a better rate of success. We see an estimated 65-70 percent success rate. And success here means that two years after you have received your seed capital, you are still in

business, creating jobs and generating revenue.

Of course, some do not do what they are supposed to do with the seed capital. We have known entrepreneurs who collect the seed capital and travel abroad or entrepreneurs who, in all fairness, their businesses fail so they give up and go back into paid employment.

One thing entrepreneurs need to understand is that resilience is the most important characteristic of an entrepreneur and you must never give up.

There is no successful business leader today who has not had failure as part of his or her history.

But the difference between the successful entrepreneur and the failed entrepreneur is that the successful one never gave up. Show me your failure and I will show you a successful entrepreneur. So you must always know that if it doesn’t work here, change your tactics and never give up. That is the message we give to our entrepreneurs and many of them know that as long as you stick with it and you are resilient, you will have success.

Why TEF? What is in TEF for

Tony?

The only thing he expects from it, the only thing we as a foundation expect is that we want you to make a success of your business, go and create jobs for Africa and generate revenue for the continent so that we can raise Africa out of poverty.

So Mr. Elumelu believes in democratizing opportunity because he is a classic example that with hard work and determination, you can make it. Someone gave him an opportunity when he started in banking. And it was because of that opportunity he was given that he is what he is today. He applied for a job that required 2:1, but he had a 2:2. He went ahead and applied and wrote a letter telling them ‘you will not regret it if you give me this job. I know I do not have a 2:1, but I can do this job if you give me the opportunity.’ And he was given the opportunity. He is a product of that opportunity. That is why he has decided in turn, to give thousands, if not millions of Africans, the opportunity to make a success of their business. That is why at the Foundation, we believe strongly in democratizing opportunity and institutionalizing luck.

Africa, poverty and disease Everywhere that African entrepreneurship is on the agenda, the Tony Elumelu Foundation is the first partner or participant that the European partners think of because no one in the continent is doing it as we are doing it. The event in Brussels was put together by the Finish presidency and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was a panel which had Graça Machel, Bill Gates, and several EU and Finish government policymakers. We came together on the panel to discuss the role of Public/ Private Partnerships in developing Africa especially in the area of human capital development.

And my contribution was around the fact that poverty is the root cause of many of the illnesses you see across Africa. Everything we see from extremism to illegal migration, infant mortality and disease is a symptom of this root called poverty. If we can solve the problem of poverty, we would have solved 95 percent of Africa’s problems. That is why entrepreneurship is the only way to solve the problem of poverty. Once you empower entrepreneurs, give them what they need, they will relate well with their community, with their families, and then they will solve all their problems.

They would no longer need to travel and risk their lives on the Mediterranean Sea

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

African youth is not politically to go to places they think there are opportunities. They will go for opportunities right here in Africa.

TEF beneficiaries and AFCTA Well the African Continental Free Trade Agreement signed by the African government, is really the beginning of African transformation. But signing it is the easy part, implementing it is the hard part.

And I call on our African governments to engage the private sector in putting together the implementation plan around the AFCTA because without proper infrastructure, without ensuring that African fragmented market is dealt with, the AFCTA agreement will not materialize.

For instance, if our entrepreneurs all over Africa want to trade with themselves, somebody in Ghana cannot transfer Naira to somebody in Nigeria without first of all changing his Ghanaian Cedi to Dollars before changing it to Naira. Why? Why can’t we have a direct currency exchange system by which we can have a direct exchange between African countries?

Then let us not just talk about going from Nigeria to Gambia. A flight, if it is direct, should not take more than two and a half hours. With the system we have now, it will take you nine hours to get to Gambia! You will get to New York or London faster than to Gambia! Why don’t we have enough connectivity - air routes connecting Africa? Why don’t we have railways? Why don’t we have good road networks? How do we expect the goods that we have opened up the border to move from the places where they are produced to the places where they are needed? So, a good transportation system is critical for the AFCTA to work. We need to also ensure that there can be a free flow of capital between the countries without foreign exchange barriers. These are a few of the things that can be done to ensure that the agreement succeeds.

A common trend among African entrepreneurs The common trend among African entrepreneurs is the fact that they are probably one of the most positive and committed entrepreneurs that you can find on the globe. I always say to them that if you can succeed as an entrepreneur in Africa, you can succeed anywhere because African economic terrain is not easy. In Nigeria for instance, you have to provide your own light, your own electricity, your own security, sometimes you have to provide your own road, provide your own water. By the time you spend your time and resources doing all these, your counterparts in other parts of the world have already gone far. So, what I want to tell African entrepreneurs is that ‘This is your time; there is no better time to be an African entrepreneur than now. When you succeed in Africa, it is rest assured that you will succeed anywhere’.

There is no better time to move because the world has moved on. Africa has a very huge youth population, over 200 million. By the year 2040, the African youth population will make up 25 percent of the world population. `If we do not ensure that African youth is not only politically engaged but productive, it would be the world’s greatest catastrophe. That is why governments in Africa and out of Africa are waking up to see that issues of youth’s entrepreneurship must be prioritized. We must train them and

empower them so that they can be contributors to the world economy.

TEF in 10 years TEF in the next 10 years will have the largest network of African entrepreneurs on the globe. With TEFConnect, which is our digital platform, we are creating a combination of the “Facebook” and “Alibaba” of entrepreneurship. It is a one-stop-shop for all things African entrepreneurship. It is the gateway to the African entrepreneur eco-system, for the world and African entrepreneurs who want to open up the market beyond Africa.

It is going to be the largest marketplace. It is going to have tools to help entrepreneurs anywhere they are in Africa to succeed. From business marketing tools to social media marketing tools, everything you need to succeed.

Most importantly, our training and mentoring programmes sit on that platform now, and we are currently undergoing a digital transformation system that will ensure that leveraging at the official level and intelligence and machine learning, we can scale what we do, so that we can train millions of entrepreneurs simultaneously as well as ensuring that they have access to the much-needed funding.

So I believe that we have started a movement at TEF: a movement that will catalyze into a global economic group and ensure that Africa stands shoulder to shoulder as equal partners with the developed countries across the world.

Challenges Our current challenges are the fact that as we scale our system, meaning that we can train millions, we have always said that training and funding are two sides of the same coin. We want to train you and give you your money in your hand and empower you to start your business.

And so the challenge we have is that as we are scaling our pro-

gramme; we need to ensure that we work with enough partners who would fund the entrepreneurs that are taking our training programmes.

So if let us say next year, we are training 100,000, governments, development finance institutions should come together to fund these entrepreneurs because they are the future of Africa. And if we do not take care of them now, Africa will burn.

Beautiful bride Well, I don’t know about it being the beautiful bride because we need to see much more FDI than we are seeing now. To answer your question, Africa today is not taking advantage of the fact that Africa has the most investment opportunities and the highest potential for growth – the most virgin territory, something that you cannot find anywhere else. The opportunity is limitless. We need to create an enabling environment in Africa. So I call on our government and policymakers in Africa to create an enabling environment, not just for the MSMEs who we are empowering to be African leading entrepreneurs, but also for global companies who want to come and do business in Africa. They need to see a friendly economic environment. They need to see peace and security and a place that investment is safeguarded. Therefore, I think there is a lot that we can do to promote foreign direct investment.

There is a lot that we can do that ensure that entrepreneurs have an enabling environment. As I said, the work has started. The governments have their minds in the right place.

They are all committed. When we had our forum this year in July – TEF Entrepreneurship Forum, we had five presidents from African countries that interacted face-to-face with entrepreneurs. This tells us that African governments understand right now that creating an enabling environment for promoting entrepreneurship is the key to enabling development.

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Editor’s Note

I

t is generally acclaimed by informed business persons on our shores and outside our shores that Nigerians are enterprising people. And this is true going by what we see on our streets, be it in the rural areas or metropolis. Our cover this month, by Siaka MOMOH, brings you the story of enterprising Nigeria. Only in ‘NonOil Digest’. Check it out.

One person who has a deep knowledge of the African entrepreneurship turf is Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, CEO Tony Elumelu Foundation.

She would tell you ‘There is no successful business leader today who has not had failure as part of his or her history. But the difference between the successful entrepreneur and the failed entrepreneur is that the successful one never gave up.

Urbane and articulate Ifeyinwa had a one-on-one conversation with Siaka Momoh recently. It was a stout engagement you will find a must read.

Enterprise Strokes tells you we need to close the gaps that may make us lose the recent gains we made in respect of ease of doing business citing the case of black legs in our police institution who are clogs in the wheel of progress.

The Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) for this

Siaka Momoh year in Nigeria, kicked off last Saturday in Lagos with a 9-kilometre Global entrepreneurship Walk organised by the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) of the Lagos Business School. The walk undertaken by the alumni of the EDC kicked off from No 2 Ahmed Onibudo Street through Ajose Adeogun, Ahmadu Bello Road, Adeola Odeku, and Akin Adesola and back to Ahmed Onibudo.

Get the details in our package for the eleventh month of 2019. You are welcome on board.

For advert placements, call Siaka: 08061396410 or email siakamomoh@yahoo.com.

Entrepreneurship

GEW Walk kicks off

T

he Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) for this year in Nigeria, kicked off last Saturday in Lagos with a 9-kilometre Global entrepreneurship Walk organised by the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) of the Lagos Business School. The walk undertaken by alumni of the EDC kicked off from No 2 Ahmed Onibudo Street through Ajose Adeogun, Ahmadu Bello Road, Adeola Odeku, and Akin Adesola and back to Ahmed Onibudo.

The walk which was spiced with raining commercial music of the day as done to create awareness for the week which spans November 18 – 24, 2019. Two other events , Youth Entrepreneurship Dialogue and Women Enterprise Day are billed for Lagos Business School Tuesday, November 19th, and Wednesday, November 20th at Havilah Events, Oniru, Victoria Island, Lagos respectively.

The GEW Week involves 170+ countries, 10 million people, 35,000 events across the globe.

The Global Entrepreneurship Network operates a platform of projects and programs in 170 countries aimed at making it easier for anyone, anywhere to start and scale a business.

By fostering deeper cross border collaboration and initiatives between entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, policymakers and entrepreneurial support organizations, GEN works to fuel healthier start and scale ecosystems that create more jobs, educate individuals, accelerate innovation and strengthen economic growth.

GEN’s extensive footprint of national operations and global verticals in policy, research and programs ensures members have uncommon access to the most relevant knowledge, networks, communities and programs relative to size of economy, maturity of ecosystem, language, culture, geography and more.

GEN helps celebrate, understand, support and connect entrepreneurs and those who champion them.

36

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Rising zeal for entrepreneurship...

Continued from page 21 oil marketing concerns. Otedola started Zenon few years ago and within a short time seized control of the market. Today he has become the pacesetter in the downstream sector while expanding the frontiers of competition.

Also on the list of contemporary Nigerian entrepreneurs of note is Mike Adenuga Jnr., Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of Globacom. At age 26, Adenuga had already become a millionaire with connections in high places. With his unique flair for risks and sheer tenacity of purpose, in no time he started reaping profits in billions.

He owned defunct Equatorial Trust Bank, and Consolidated Oil which carries out crude oil drilling, refining and marketing. His first shot into the consciousness of Nigerians was when his company, Consolidated Oil became the first indigenous company to strike crude in December1991.

Craze for entrepreneurship Never in the history of Nigeria has the awareness about entrepreneurship be so popular like it has been in the last decade. The reason for this is not farfetched. Job losses came with plant shut downs and we churn out about two billion graduates from our tertiary institutions yearly when we create jobs in thousands.

Now, Nigerians generally think self-employment and not paid employment. In answer to this development, tertiary schools across the country have now introduced entrepreneurship programmes into their curriculum. Moreover, capacity building institutions such as Fate Foundation, Pan African University’s The Entrepreneur Development Services and a number of other private capacity building institutions are found across the country. When you add all these to small business development institutions that governments – federal and states - have created over the years, the robust focus on entrepreneurship by government becomes clearer. The Federal government had the National Directorate of employment (NDE), The Small and Medium Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), and the states have institutions for the development of small businesses.

Moreover, the CBN brought on board Microfinance Banks to replace moribund people’s banks.

Tony Elumelu Foundation Tony Elumelu has come to take the passion for entrepreneurship to new heights. He created the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) in 2010.

At a time when international governments and agencies are increasingly recognising that the route to Africa’s transformation is through African-led solutions and private sector growth, Tony Elumelu’s track record of business success—founding the United Bank for Africa, now one of Africa’s leading financial services groups, with presence in twenty African countries, New York, Paris and London and multi-sector proprietary investment holding company, Heirs Holdings, together employing of 30,000 Africans—typifies a new generation of African business dynamism.

The Foundation’s long-term

The police and ease of doing business

investment in empowering African entrepreneurs is emblematic of Tony Elumelu’s philosophy of Africapitalism, which positions Africa’s private sector, and most importantly entrepreneurs, as the catalyst for the social and economic development of the continent. The Foundation has currently assisted 7,531 entrepreneurs thus far through its flagship Programme—the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

This Programme is the $100million commitment by the Elumelu family to empower 10,000 African entrepreneurs across 54 African countries over a 10-year period.

The Programme is the only one of its kind and scale in Africa focused on the transformation of Africa through empowering African entrepreneurs and advocating for entrepreneurship for the sustainable development of the continent.

The goal of the Entrepreneurship Programme is to create at least 1million jobs and contribute over $10billion in revenue to the African economy.

According to the Foundation’s CEO, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, “This investment in young African entrepreneurs will not only create hope for a burgeoning youth demographic but will break the cycle of poverty on the continent and drastically reduce the economic underpinnings of Africa’s migration crisis.

• We actively convene global and African political leaders to ensure that entrepreneurship and the necessary enabling environment is prioritized. At our most recent Forum in Abuja, H.E. Paul Kagame, President, Republic of Rwanda; H.E. Macky Sall, President, Republic of Senegal; H.E. Félix Tshisekedi, President, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); H.E. (Prof.) Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), Vice President, Federal Republic of Nigeria; and Hon (Dr.) Ruhakana Rugunda, Prime Minister, Republic of Uganda, representing the President of Uganda, H.E. Yoweri Museveni were present, following the presence of H.E. Nana Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana, and H.E. Uhuru Kenyatta, President of Kenya in 2018. Earlier in June 2018, President Emmanuel Macron participated in a town hall engagement hosted by the Tony Elumelu Foundation, where he interacted directlywith 2,000 young African entrepreneurs.”

Entrepreneurship in Africa With approximately 60% of Africa’s population aged under 35years, entrepreneurship has become the most important intervention to sustainably lift the continent out of poverty. Some pertinent statistics relating to African entrepreneurship: • 80% of Africans view entrepreneurship as a good career

opportunity • 22% of Africa’s working age population are starting new businesses, the highest rate in the world • The median age of Africa’s entrepreneurs is 31, younger than in other developing regions.

• Firms with fewer than 20 employees and less than 5 years’ experience provide the most jobs in Africa’s formal sector.

• 44% of African entrepreneurs start business to exploit market opportunities while 33% do so because they cannot find jobs.

• African women are much more likely to start businesses than women elsewhere although they are 3% less likely to engage in early stage entrepreneurial activity like their male counterparts Source: African Development Bank TEF entrepreneurship forum Every year, the Tony Elumelu Foundation holds what has become the most influential entrepreneurship gathering on the continent - a convening of the African entrepreneurship ecosystem. This year, the TEF Forum hosted 5 African Heads of States, 60 speakers across 3 continents and an audience of over 5,000, out of which were thousands of African entrepreneurs across the continent. The principle themes of discussion were job creation for the young African entrepreneurs, women empowerment and promoting trade relationships across Africa.

TEFConnect TEFConnect is the largest digital platform connecting African entrepreneurs to the tools and the opportunities they need to succeed.

With over 800,000 registered users across the continent, the platform was launched in 2018 by the Tony Elumelu Foundation to provide opportunities for thousands of entrepreneurs to create their own luck and establish the trade relations they need to scale their business, despite geographical limitations. The platform provides support to the thousands of entrepreneurs who may not easily access the right business tools, funding and networks on their own.

TEFConnect hosts the 12-week intensive business training, likened to a mini-MBA programme, which was developed by the Tony Elumelu Foundation to equip entrepreneurs with knowledge for business. The platform connects entrepreneurs with mentors and likeminded entrepreneurs, as well as boasts a Marketplace for entrepreneurs to trade easily from wherever they are.

I

t is good news that Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, improved its ranking on the latest World Bank ease of doing business index. The country now ranks 131 on the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 index. It has moved up 15 places from its 2019 spot and has been tagged as one of the most improved economies in the world for running a business.

Nigeria made a 15-place rise on the World Bank’s 2020 Doing Business Index. It ranked 131st, from 146th last year; and up 39 places since 2016, when it established the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC).

Its goal is a Top 70 position by 2023, we are told. The index is a yearly ranking that assesses the business environment in 190 countries using various indicators including paying taxes, trading across borders, starting a business and protecting minority investors.

Good thinking; good hope.

But when you juxtapose this with certain happenings in the country’s business space, you will find out that some unprogressive elements in the business space are clogs in the wheel of progress.

Such elements are unworthy personnel of government institutions, the police as a case study here.

Well dressed for work on Monday October 28, 2019, I set out for a Paint Manufacturers Association Coating Show 2019 appointment in Ikeja. Like other commuters on wheels, heading for Ikeja, in pains with the traditional Lagos arduous traffic. Suddenly, along Charity/ Oshodi axis, about 10 am, a fellow in mufti, jumped into my lane, in front of three other vehicles that were ahead of me, used them to slow me down, passed them on and directed me to park along the corridor between the express way and the service lane. I parked wondering what was amiss. And within seconds, in a gangster manner, he jumped into the front seat beside me and asked for my vehicle particulars. With full confidence, I made for my papers, and as I was doing this, he opened the automatic door lock and let in his two uniformed colleagues.

Can you imagine this kind of intimidation, this kind of distraction, early in the morning when my brain was engaged in building up a robust engagement I was going to have with chieftains of the nation’s industry?

It turned that he was not interested in my papers. Said he: ‘They

are not interested in your papers.

They are contravening you for doo traffic offence’. ‘Which traffic offence? ‘I asked. He couldn’t offer an answer. I wondered why he was referring to his colleagues as ’they’.

Perhaps he was one of these touts police at check point hire to do dirty jobs for them, a crude decoy strategy. None of the two policemen was an Inspector of Police which I believe the law demands or a check point to be legal. I gave them a good fight. If they knew they were dealing with a student of communication and strategy, they would have deployed a better strategy. He made for my ignition key; I resisted and told him he had no grounds whosoever to so. How could I allow a stranger who threw at me trumped charges and one whose identity was questionable to take over my car, a duly registered car with up-to-date papers?

In fact, one of the two armed policemen in uniform asked him to allow me drive my car. He continued: ‘You are proving stubborn. I will tow this car to the station if you don’t cooperate.’ ‘You will do no such thing,’ I told him firmly and to let him know that I knew my rights as newspaper editor and pastor.

That did the magic. He abruptly told his colleagues “Let us let him go”. They let me go after succeeding in making me go late for my appointment. You have this type of scenarios across the country every day. They constitute obstacles to business operations. You will recall a number of commercial bus conductors and drivers have lost their lives for not parting with N20/N50 ‘regular due’ which the police use touts to collect. This is of public knowledge. Do we care?

It is of public knowledge that the security personnel detailed to help make truck drivers solve the traffic lock-jam in Lagos connive with truck driver to break the rules.

Truck driver spoken to confirm they pay them to break the rules.

Truck owners have special budgets for this. With this arrangement, the truck drivers smile home with more money as they have the discretion of disbursing such monies.

Tie this to congestion at the ports, demurrage, current border closure, dearth of raw materials at the factories, and inventories that cannot be moved to consumers in other West African countries and beyond, and see what it does to ease of doing business.

We must close the gaps raised here if we must not reverse our ease of doing business gains that we are currently celebrating.

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

37

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Pullman brings a piece of Zamzam to Nigeria OBINNA EMELIKE

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new and niche lodging experience now awaits Nigerian pilgrims to the holy cities of Makkah and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

The Pullman Hotels and Resorts, a member of the Accor Hotel Group, through Pullman Zamzam Hotel; a 5-star hotel with its sister hotels in the holy cities in Saudi Arabia, is reaching out to the Nigerian Muslim community, especially the intending pilgrims among them for value for money lodging experience across its properties in the two cities.

The Zamzam brand, which prides itself in the quality of its premium hospitality and service offerings through its warm Arabic welcome of pilgrims visiting the holy sites in Makkah and Medina, is looking forward to extending the warmth to the Nigerian guests as well.

The rationale for wooing Nigerian guests is obvious; Nigerians are regarded as high spenders and Saudi hotels and hospitality service providers have confirmed that over the years.

Bearing that in mind, Hamid Sidine, general manager, Zamzam Pullman, Makkah, led a team from the hotel group on aggressive hunt for customers

in Nigeria recently.

While in Nigeria, the team intensified its marketing drive to the Nigerian audience through showcasing its facilities and services, as well as, engaging key Hajj operators and other key stakeholders’ within the Nigerian Hajj community.

Starting from Abuja, the team hosted cocktail and a networking event, which offered an opportunity for the management executives of the Pullman Zamzam brand to meet with notable Nigerian dignitaries, Hajj operators and the media.

From the Abuja visit, which lasted for three days, the team berthed in Lagos for the second leg of the Nigerian marketing drive. Speaking at Radisson Blu Ikeja Hotel, venue of the engagement session with the stakeholders in Lagos, Hamid Sidine, g e n e ra l ma na g e r, Z a mzam Pullman, Makkah, presented world-class leisure facilities across the hotels, which he noted are top among reasons to lodge in the hotels.

He explained that the hotel group offers over 800 rooms at its Makkah facility and 500 at its Medina facility. Aside the quality of the facilities, he disclosed that the hotels are ideal and quite popular with the high end and ultra-high end Nigeria pilgrims desirous of a close proximity to the holy sites, luxurious amenities and top notch hospitality. www.businessday.ng

Speaking further on the facilities, he said the hotels are closer to the holy sites and offer large rooms.

“When people are coming for Umra and Hajj they need local food, proximity to Al-Haram, we have large rooms that can host two to six people and all the conveniences they want”.

However, he noted that the group was in Nigeria to seek its share of the market because they get few Nigerian guests when compared with other less populated African countries.

“For us the Nigerian market is important because in Africa we have more Senegalese, Ivorian, Moroccan, and Tunisian guests but few are Nigerians. So, we want to get our share from this niche market through our world class offerings and facilities”, he said.

Bearing in mind that Nigerians like their local food, Sidine explained that, “Nigerians love their local food. We do not have the menu, but we are ready to hire Nigerian chiefs, as you know in Makkah we have some local Nigerian community and there are chefs among them, so we will hire them to meet the expectations of our Nigerian pilgrims”.

On affordability of the hotels, he noted their hotels are five-star and may not be affordable by all, but that they give guests chance to visit and stay close to Al-Haram with good offers

during low seasons, as well as, great offers in some of their hotels in other parts of Mecca that are three-star like Novotel.

He advised that visit during off season such as after Ramadan comes with great and affordable offers.

Aside the holy sites, the general manager disclosed that guests have many attractions to see.

“We also have hotels in Jeddah. We run golden triangle of Mecca, Medina and Jeddah. We have museums, tours to holy sites, among other attractions.

Saudi Arabia offers visit visa and pilgrims can go beyond Mecca and Medina to further see the country”, he explained.

He described his experience for the first in Nigeria as wonderful.

“We spent three days in Abuja and three days in Lagos. In Abuja, we met executives of the National Mosque, other dignitaries, stakeholders and visited many places. The stakeholders in Abuja like our hotel because we have a special name Zamzam and niche offerings as well”, he said.

Concluding on the visit, Sidine said the marketing drive has just started as the first visit and stakeholders meeting gave them opportunity to listen and to understand what the Nigerian pilgrims want. “We will come back with our offers to meet their expectations”, he concluded.

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

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38

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

39

Business SOUTH-SOUTH

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF SOUTH-SOUTH / SOUTH-EAST

NPDC empowers host communities with multi-million-naira educational facilities IDRIS UMAR MOMOH, Benin-City

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s part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) to its host communities, the Niger ian Petroleum D e v e l o p m e nt C o m p a n y (NPDC) has donated some educational materials worth several millions of naira to over 10 public primary and secondary schools in Edo State.

The managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)’s subsidiary, Mansur Sambo said the benefitting schools are the company’s (OML 111) host communities in Benin-City.

Sambo represented by general manager, Community Relations and Security, Sylvester Atugbokoh commended the host communities for their continuous support and hitch free operations in the communities.

He noted that the initia-

tive has impacted positively on the host communities, and assured that the subsidiary will continuously sustain the initiative.

He listed the educational materials donated to the schools to include, e-Library tablets, Science textbooks,

notebooks, desks, chairs, among others.

He said the empowerment was the second presentation to schools in the host communities in the past two years since 2018, as part of its corporate social responsibility.

Ugwuanyi inaugurates projects in Enugu, promises peace in state REGIS ANUKWUOJI, Enugu

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overnor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State who was recently nominated as the Best Improved State in Security by the BusinessDay Media Limited in its 2019 State Competitiveness and Good Governance awards, has recently reassured the people of Enugu of his administration’s willingness to continue to promote peace in the state.

The governor, who made some remarkable achievements in peace making in the state by reconciling some age-long problems between communities in t h e st ate, w i t h p a r t i c u lar reference to Umuode and Oruku in Nkanu East, among others, said, his aim was to enhance good governance and rapid development in rural communities of the state.

He said that his administration will not take the existing peace in the state for granted; stressing that he would do whatever is necessary to sustain the existing peace throughout his tenure.

The governor stated this in Aninri Local Government Area of the state, after inaugurating some development projects executed by the council chairman, Ezekiel Chukwu, which included seven

classroom blocks at Community Pr imar y S chool, Amacharauka, Oduma, fully-equipped with learning materials, and a 2000-capacity event pavilion at the local government secretariat.

Governor Ugwuanyi commended the chairman and his team for the bold initiatives in constructing projects that he said, are people-oriented.

He also laid the foundation stone for construction of an ultra-modern civic hall at Ndeabor adjacent the council headquarters, in company of former deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who is the senator representing E n u g u We s t S e n a t o r i a l District, the member repr e s enting Aninri/Awgu/ Oji-River Federal Constituency, Toby Okechukwu, his counterpart for Udi/Ezeagu Federal Constituency, Dennis Amadi, state chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Augustine Nnamani, among others.

Ugwuanyi said, “we are one family and equal in the eyes of God. He urged the people of Aninri to continue to uphold the principles of his administration which are anchored on peace and good governance. He thanked God for the successful and peaceful conduct of the 2019 general elections in the state, as he prayed that the state continues to grow from

strength to strength.

Also speaking, Ekweremadu appreciated Governor Ugwuanyi for his support and kind disposition to the people of Aninri LGA; pointing out that the governor gave them two commissioners, in spite of the fact that their council was among the smallest local government areas in the state.

The former Deputy President of the Senate congratulated the commissioners, Mathias Ekweremadu (Transport) and Uchechukwu Ogbonna (Labour and Productivity) for their appointments.

He equally applauded the council chairman for the development projects, reassuring the governor of the commitment of the people of Aninri to sustain the existing peace in the area.

Earlier in his welcome address, the council chairman, Chukwu, expressed gratitude to the governor for his support and contributions to the development of the area. He stated that the achievements made by his administration in the areas of infrastructure development, workers’ welfare, healthcare delivery, s ecur ity, empow er ment programmes, collaboration with other development agencies, among others, were in keeping with the social contract we entered with our people who voted us to power.

Earlier, Dahiru Abubakar, manager, Community Relations Department (CRD) said the presentation was to improve the educational standards in all NPDC host communities. He said in 2018, schools from host communities in Edo, Delta, Imo

and Rivers states benefitted from the programme. He however, urged the schools managements to allow the students make judicious use of the facilities.

He assured the company’s commitment to do more in its host communities especially in youth and education empowerments in order to sustain the relative peace in the communities.

Abubakar noted that the programme was geared towards partnering with communities to ensure good working and harmonious relationships in all its areas of operations.

Responding on behalf of the benefitting schools, the Enogie of Ologbo, Owen Gason Akenzua, commended the company for the empowerment. The traditional ruler who was represented by Felix Edogiarie, assured the establishment of good working and peaceful environment.

‘We have capacity to produce 350 million syringes per year’ ANIEFIOK UDONQUAK, Uyo

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ubilee, a syringe manufacturing firm in Awa, Akwa Ibom State says it has the capacity to produce 350 million units of 2ml, 5ml and 10ml disposable syringes annually. The firm which was commissioned two years ago, currently produces one million units of disposable syringes per day, with the quality of its products said to be among the best in the world.

Akin Oyediran, the managing director of the firm, who stated this in an inter view w ith BusinessDay in his office, said if the power supply issue was resolved before the end of the year, the firm would be in a position to produce 350 million units of syringes per year.

Oyediran said the feedback the company has received from many West African countries about the company’s product was encouraging, such that it plans to increase the market reach, and to expand to other African countries by next year.

“The quality of our products meets any international syringe production.

We have to make sure we produce quality products,” he said.

He said, as a medical device manufacturing firm, they have the responsibility to be professional in all their processes; insist-

ing that they are capable of doubling their capacity without adding a new block of building, since according to him, the factory currently has four lines of production.

“Our plan is to increase our capacity when the power issue is addressed, we will be able to sustain our business with zero power challenge,” he said.

Oyediran said the company which is reputed to be the largest on the African continent explained that its goal is to grow manufacturing in the state and lauded the community for being business friendly and welcoming.

“We are happy to be here, the best kept secret is being business friendly, the environment is safe and the community is welcoming.

This is just the right place to be,” he said.

He expressed the hope that qualified indigenes of the state will show interest in joining the company as p o sit io n s to b e a leading manufacturing firm in the state; adding that it has mapped out a comprehensive corporat e s o c i a l re s p o n s i b i l ity (CSR) scheme for the community.

BusinessDay gathered that the ultimate goal of the company is not only to make Nigeria self-sufficient in syringe production, but also a net exporter of syringe and other medical devices to other countries.

PHED warns residents against trading, erection of structures under high tension wires EFEGADIRIM MADU, Port Harcourt

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he Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) has warned members of the public in its coverage areas, who were in the habit of trading under high tension lines in Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River and Rivers states, to desist from the act as they risked being electrocuted.

The warning according the manager, corporate communications PHED, John Onyi did not exclude those who are planning or have already erected structures under the power lines. Onyi, made known the company’s position on trading and erecting structures under high tension lines, said, it was part of the electricity distribution company’s public awareness campaign, tagged: “Why you should not trade under high tension lines.”

It was organized by the company in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital.

The PHED spokesman stated that many lives have been lost due to non-adherence to safety standards; adding that last month, a 14-year old boy lost his life when a line snapped on the Abuloma 11KVA feeder pole and rested on top of the building.

He said a safe distance on 11KVA feeder pole stands at 5.5 metres, while 33KVA pole is 12.5 metres. The safe distance for 132KVA line is 25 metres, while for a 415KVA power line, a safe distance should not be anything less than 1.5 kilometres. Onyi noted that some members of the public have habitually jettisoned the safety rules, hence the company was calling for concerted efforts in enforcing the safety standards, in order to save lives by the relevant authorities.

According to him, the door-to-door safety awareness campaign on the dangers inherent in trading or living under high tension power lines, especially those found to have contravened the safety standards, is PHED’s idea aimed at curbing cases of injury and deaths that result from line snapping.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Sports

FIFA Beach Soccer: Supersand Eagles set for Portugal test Anthony Nlebem

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wo –time African champions Nigeria will begin their campaign at this year’s FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup finals in Paraguay when they clash with world number two Portugal in Asuncion on Friday.

This year’s finals will hold at the ‘Los Pynandi’ World Cup Stadium – named after the Paraguayan national beach soccer team - and located at the headquarters of the Paraguayan Olympic Committee in Greater Asuncion.

Nigeria earned a ticket to feature at the 16 –team World Cup finals after finishing second at the CAF Beach Soccer Cup of Nations held in Egypt in December 2018. Champions Senegal is the other team flying Africa’s flag in Paraguay.

This year’s finals will kick off on Thursday and end on Sunday, 1st December.

Nigeria’s delegation of players and team officials flew

out of the country on Friday, 8th November, in order to participate in an eight-nation pre-competition tournament that took place in Asuncion, 12th – 16th November. The Supersand Eagles defeated the Tahiti national team 9-4 during the pre-tournament event, after losing 3-7 to host Paraguay.

On Monday this week, Coach Audu ‘Ejo’ Adamu and his wards moved into their

Dazzler Hotel World Cup accommodation in Asuncion, and have been training hard as they countenance an interesting encounter with the world number two team on Friday.

Nigeria, winners of the African title in 2007 and 2009, and quarter –finalists at the World Cup in 2007 and 2011, will campaign in a fierce Group D that also has world number one team, Brazil and Oman, ranked number 14 in the

City Sports Group signs partnership agreement with LaLiga club Real Betis Anthony Nlebem

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ity Sports Group and LaLiga club, Real Betis have agreed to a partnership deal to collaborate on areas such as brand exposure, talent development, exploring commercial opportunities and creating pathways for young Nigerian talents to visit Spain for further training and assessment. The collaboration was facilitated by the LaLiga office in Nigeria as part of its efforts to build bridges between the Nigerian football ecosystem and Spanish clubs.

Speaking on the partnership, Shola Opaleye, CEO of the City Sports Group said he is excited with the partnership because of the many areas of

collaboration and the opportunities it opens up for the City Sports Group, its development programs as well as exciting Nigerian talent. “We have been in talks with a few clubs but this is the perfect deal for us. I have been to Spain twice in the past few months with my team and I have to say we felt right at home in Betis and we are delighted we share the same views about what can be achieved with partnerships such as this. Their facilities are excellent and their coaching philosophy is outstanding.

We are excited to work with Betis and to open this opportunity for young Nigerian talents. We shall be holding periodic camps facilitated by their coaches, develop a training program and every year, we will send our teams for further

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training in Betis thereby exposing them to what life behind in the scenes at the top-level looks and feels like for a special one week, immersion program where they will see how football clubs and teams operate, prepare for games.”

Ramon Alarcon, Chief Business Officer of Real Betis also said that CSG are the right partners as they look to connect and engage more fans globally.

“My team has been working together with Shola and his team for the past few months and we are happy to finally reach an agreement with great potential for both parties and for Nigerian young talent. The objective of this partnership is for us to connect more with Nigerians and to share some of the knowledge we have through training camps and other programs. We are looking forward to a successful partnership and expanding our brand in Nigeria. This is just another step into our international growth and our first kind of a deal in Africa, where we think we have a lot of potential.”

City Sports Group is Nigeria’s leading sports brand.

A total sports company with one of its focus areas being the identification, engagement and nurturing of sports talents

world. Nigeria is ranked 21st in the world.

Host nation Paraguay will tackle Japan in the tournament opening game on Thursday.

After their first game against Portugal on Friday, the Supersand Eagles take to the beach against Oman on Sunday, 24th November and then against Brazil two days later.

Head Coach Adamu has listed veterans Abu Azeez and Victor Tale in his final squad of 12, with Emmanuel Ohwoferia, Emeka Ogbonna, Godspower Igudia, Dami Paul and Taiwo Adams also in.

Godwin Tale (Victor’s younger brother), Egan-Osi Ekujimi, Babatunde Badmus, Godwin Iorbee and Hameed Kareem are the other names on the list.

GROUPS Group A: Paraguay, Japan, Switzerland, USA Group B: Uruguay, Mexico, Italy, Tahiti Group C: Belarus, United Arab Emirates, Senegal, Russia Group D: Brazil, Oman, Portugal, Nigeria

Heavyweight bangers go to war again … Wilder defends WBC heavyweight belt against Ortiz Anthony Nlebem

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he most explosive puncher in boxing will be showcased this weekend when Deontay Wilder defends his WBC heavyweight championship against dangerous Luis Ortiz in Las Vegas in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Wilder, with an astonishing 40 knockouts in 41 wins, will face a man who almost beat him 18 months ago. In their first fight, Ortiz rocked Wilder in the seventh, but the champion roared back to force a stoppage in typically dramatic fashion.

In the interim, Wilder burnished his reputation with a war against Tyson Fury and a blowout of Dominic Brezeale.

Ortiz himself scored three solid wins, but more notable has been his trimming down and getting into the shape of his life for the rematch.

It’s a high-risk challenge for American Wilder, not least because his big-money rematch with Fury in February will likely implode in the event of him losing to Ortiz.

Even by heavyweight standards, Ortiz is a big man whose southpaw style and

heavy hands make him a difficult proposition for any of the elite heavyweights.

Said Wilder: “Luis Ortiz is a smart fighter, he moves strategically in the ring, he’s a great counter-puncher as well. I like his style as a Cuban. Nobody in the top 10 wanted to fight Ortiz and they still don’t ‘til this day. But I’m giving him the opportunity and we about to do it again.”

Ortiz believes he will be facing a better fighter than the one he fought last March.

“When you watch videos online from Wilder, there are definitely things he does better now. But he still doesn’t have the experience of taking that from training into the fight. He’s got to have a plan B and C. If he doesn’t, it will be a mistake. I have a plan for everything. This fight is personal because I want to erase the loss and that thorn in my side.”

Edo govt engages new coach for Bendel Insurance FC Idris Umar Momoh & Churchill Okoro, Benin

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do State Government has engaged the services of new technical director and a coach for the Bendel Insurance Football Club.

The state deputy governor, Philip Shaibu announced the new technical team for the club during the official unveiling of Edo Queens and Bendel Insurance Football club new logo and jersey in Benin City.

Shaibu also announced a donation of N5million to the supporters of Insurance FC. The new coach Bernard Ogbe, from Benue state while the technical director Alabi Aisien, from Edo state will oversee Edo Queens Football club.

Shaibu said the engagement of the new technical team was geared towards repositioning the club to return to the Nigerian Professional League after the season.

He also added that the state government has approved the increment of wages of Edo Queens Football Club (EQFC) to be at par with their counterparts worldwide.

He however, reiterated

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the state government commitment to rebrand sports facilities and sporting career for girls and women in the state.

The deputy governor noted that the Obaseki ledadministration has decided to use sports as a means of communication and also to curb insecurity and create employment for youths in Edo state.

“I wish to affirm that the state government continued support for growth of football and sports development in Nigeria will continue because we are returning Edo state to what it used to be during the era of Samuel Ogbemudia.

“We are building digital facilities that will enhance all @Businessdayng

sporting activities in the state.

“We are rebranding Edo Queens today for greater footballing and sporting career for our young girls and women to become role models to other young girls.

“I am proud to report that the salary package and allowances for coaching crew and players of both club is very competitive and rank among the best in Nigerian league.

“Bendel Insurance will also rank among the highest paid players in the Nigerian national League because the salary we have been paying Bendel Insurance is also the same salary that was approved by the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) for Nigerian Professional League,” he said.

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

41

news

P&ID scam: EFCC rearraigns Briton as it opposes statement of its witness Felix Omohomhion, Abuja

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conomic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Thursday re-arraigned James Nolan, a Briton, on 32-count charge.

The Briton is accused among others of tax evasion, money laundering involving the controversial $9.6 billion judgment against Nigeria.

Nolan, said to be a signatory to the account of the Process & Industrial Development (P&ID) Nigeria, was first arraigned on 15-count charge.

When the case resumed Thursday at a Federal High Court, Abuja, the EFCC kicked against the admission of the statement of its own witness.

The witness, Agunbiade Adeseye, a staff of Guarantee Trust Bank (GTBank), had made statement in which he chronicled how about eight accounts linked with the controversial oil and gas supply contract was opened in 2006 and operated till date before the sponsors of the company were arrested in connection with the failed oil and gas deal.

Adeseye, who was led in evidence by counsel to the EFCC, Iheanacho Ekele, had told the court how huge amount in dollars were transferred from P&ID accounts overseas into its subsidiaries’ accounts in Nigeria through GTBank.

The witness also told the court how huge sums running into millions of naira were also transferred from one of the subsidiaries to another, especially Goidel Resources Nigeria Limited and ICIL Nigeria Limited.

There was disagreement however during cross examination by counsel to the defendants, Paul Erokoro, when the witness admitted that there was nothing unusual in foreign companies transferring money to their subsidiaries in Nigeria legally.

The witness further told the court that GTBank would not have accepted the transfer of the foreign currency from outside the country if it were not for legitimate purposes.

Erokoro, who crossed examined the witness based on the witness statement to EFCC, applied to tender it as exhibits to assist the court in arriving at a just conclusion.

However, the request was vehemently opposed by EFCC’s counsel, who stated that the defence counsel did not lay foundation for admission of the statement.

Ekele insisted that the witness statement could only be tendered if it was for the purpose of discrediting the oral testimony of the witness.

But Erokoro expressed worry on why the EFCC objected to admission of its own statement,adding that the witness was accurate in the statement he made to the anti-graft agency.

NASS to amend ICRC Act to boost PPP contracts in Nigeria Cynthia Egboboh, Abuja

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he National Assembly has disclosed its plans to amend the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) Act to boost the effectiveness of Public Private Partnership contracts in Nigeria.

Adamu Alero, chairman, Senate Committee on works speaking at the 2019 joint Nigeria PPP network and PPP units consultative forum summit in Abuja, said that the National Assembly

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in its commitment to ensuring economic growth would amend the ICRC Act and develop laws that would attract both local and foreign private sectors investment into the country.

He said PPP remained the only way to fast track infrastructural development in Nigeria, adding that the government cannot meet the infrastructural need in the country as it still struggles with its revenue generation.

“The 2020 budget has over 500 road projects to a tune of about N4 trillion

to be funded by the federal government, of which the fund available is not more that N147 billion. Also, we have N50 billion housing deficit. In this situation we have no option other than the PPP arrangements,” he said.

“We at the Senate will come up with a robust legislature around the ICRC act to ensure it meets the requirement. The National Assembly will continue to partner with all agencies to ensure that PPP succeed in Nigeria,” he added.

Speaking further, the

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senator stressed that there was an urgent need to fix the infrastructural deficit across the country as Nigeria in the next 10-15 years would one of the countries with the highest population in the world.

“For us to curb the possible challenge that poor infrastructure may bring to us in future, we at the senate will work to come up with laws that will attract the private sectors investment, laws that will promote security across the country.

Unfortunately many policy makers still think that the

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government can and should fund all project, and this is unacceptable,” he said.

Chidi Izuwah, directorgeneral, ICRC, in his remark said with the regulator y guidance of the ICRC, the Federal Government had approved $8 billion to PPP projects between 2010 and 2018.

According to Izuwah, the conference seeks to identify as well as promote the development of bankable PPP projects in Nigeria with a view to accessing project funding from African Export Import Bank.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news No naira devaluation until reserves fall to $30bn - Emefiele LOLADE AKINMURELE

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L-R: Yinka Sanni, chief executive, Stanbic IBTC Holdings; Daniel Asapokhai, executive secretary/CEO, Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria; Olusegun Osunkeye, guest speaker; Pascal Dozie, president, Society for Corporate Governance Nigeria; Moyosore Onigbanjo, attorney general/commissioner for justice, Lagos State; Audrey Joe-Ezigbo, co-founder/CEO, Falcon Corporation; Frank Aigbogun, publisher/CEO, BusinessDay Media Limited, and Idrissa Diop, director, compliance, African ExportImport Bank, at the 2019 Society for Corporate Governance Nigeria annual corporate governance conference, with the theme “Purposeful Leadership and Governance as Prerequisites for National and Economic Development” in Lagos, yesterday.

Pic by Olawale Amoo

Kidnappings along highways threaten holiday cheer ISAAC ANYAOGU

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I

was driving from L ag o s t o D e l t a State. Just before Abudu, around 4pm, gunmen came out from the bush and began shooting at my car. I panicked, shifted gears to reverse but another group emerged from behind and started shooting,” recounted Emeka (not real name), who works in a media house in Lagos.

Amidst the hail of bullets, he swerved the car into the path of a truck that promptly teed his car into a ditch. A horde of gunmen speaking a variant of English Language sautéed in Fulfude descended on him, seized his phone and led him into a bush path.

“That was when it dawned on me that I have been kidnapped,” Emeka

said.

As t he yul et id e approaches, violent kidnappings are worsening across Nigeria as security operatives continue to dither.

Christmastide is a season Nigerians, especially those from the eastern parts, like to make a yearly trip to their villages, but some who spoke to BusinessDay say they are shelving the plans this year for fear of the kidnappings happening along the routes to their home states.

Kidnapping hotspots in the country include BeninAsaba road up to Auchi, Lokoja-Okene highway, Abuja-Kaduna highway, and Owo to Ifo. Kidnappers along these routes have reportedly built camps inside forests used as detention centres.

Air travel, which would have provided an alterna-

tive, is beyond the reach of many. Airfares have skyrocketed as many airlines are fully booked for the seasonal travel.

Checks by BusinessDay for flights around December 23, 24 and 25 to Asaba, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Calabar and Uyo show they are all largely fully booked. There are some business class tickets available, though, starting from N85,000 for a one-way ticket.

“If I can’t pay for a flight, my family and I will not bother travelling this year,” Nnamdi Obiora, who operates a car dealership, said.

Some kidnap victims who have spoken to BusinessDay accuse the Nigerian police of complicity.

Emeka said he was attacked barely 10 minutes after leaving a checkpoint, just after a policeman

demanded gratification which he was unwilling to give.

“So, what if you’re kidnapped now, won’t you pay them more than this N200 you want to give?” the police officer said, sighed and waved him away, Emeka recounted.

“I don’t believe in coincidence. It seemed strange I was attacked only minutes after being threatened.”

After descending the River Niger Bridge from Asaba and driving further into the southeastern parts of Nigeria, the nu m b e r o f p o l i c e a n d army checkpoints could leave the impression of a land under siege.

These checkpoints were ostensibly erected to check separatist agitation by the proscribed Indigenous

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Senate approves 7.5% VAT, passes finance bill Solomon Ayado, Abuja

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he Senate on Thursday okayed the Finance Bill 2019 and approved the 7.5 percent Value Added Tax (VAT) proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Buhari had proposed an increase of the Value Added Tax from 5 percent to 7.5 percent.

The VAT approval by the Senate followed adoption of the report on the Nigeria Finance Law and Tax Amendment Bill, 2019, otherwise known as Finance Bill.

But while the Senate approved the new VAT, some senators including Enyinnaya Abaribe, minority

leader, and Ifeanyi Ubah, Gabriel Suswan and Abba Moro, however, raised objections to the bill.

They argued that the increment in taxes would further compound the suffering and pain of Nigerians.

Meanwhile, chairman of the committee, Olamilekan Adeola, while presenting the report, said the Bill specifically seeks to amend Nigeria’s tax provisions and make them more responsive to the tax policies of the Federal Government, among other things.

He added that the amendment and passage of the Finance Bill would enhance the implementation and effectiveness of government’s tax policies. www.businessday.ng

According to Adeola, the initiative to reform the tax system and the proposed modifications to the fiscal rules around taxation are clearly aimed at creating an enabling business environment aimed at minimising the tax burden for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

The Acts amended in the Finance Bill are Companies Income Tax Act, Cap C21 2004 (as amended to date), Value Added Tax Act, Cap VI, LHN 2007 (as amended), and Customs and Excise Tariff (Consolidation) Act, Cap C49, 2004.

Others are Personal Income Tax Cap P8, LFN 2007 (as amended), Capital Gains Tax Act Cap C1, LFN

2007, Stamp Duties Act Cap S8, LFN 2004, and the Petroleum Profit Tax Act (PPTA) 2004.

Adeola further said the Finance Bill, as amended, would promote fiscal equity by mitigating instances of regressive taxation, as well as introduce tax incentives for investment in infrastructure and capital markets.

He said the bill seeks to amend the provision of the Companies Income Tax Act by curbing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) as proposed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and broaden

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t an investor meeting in L ondon, Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), told foreign investors that the apex bank would meet all foreign exchange demands so long as the nation’s external reserves are above $30 billion and the international prices of crude oil do not go below $45 per barrel.

Information that Emefiele was in London to woo selected foreign investors was revealed in a first-ofits-kind monthly update by the CBN publishe d Wednesday on its website.

Emefiele also assured that reserves are unlikely to dip below $30 billion “considering various policies of the Federal Government to diversify the economy”, the report read.

Oil prices would need to weaken some 40 percent to create the scenario where the CBN can no longer guarantee exchange rate stability, as Brent crude was priced at $63 per barrel as of November 21.

At the current level of

$39 billion, external reserves will have to fall 30 percent.

Emefiele’s meeting with investors came after signs of a growing backlog of foreign exchange demand.

The CBN saw less foreign exchange inflows than outflows in the third quarter of 2019, in what is only the third such occurrence since the fx crisis of 2016 and the first time this year.

Net fx outflow in the third quarter was $3.6 billion, being the difference between inflows of $11.7 billion against outflows of $15.3 billion.

The implication of net fx outflows is that it may invite pressure on the exchange rate which the CBN has protected at all costs for more than two years.

Lower dollar inflows reduce the CBN’s firepower in defending the naira against any depreciation as it eats away at the external reserves.

The CBN’s gross external reserves are already on the decline, after shrinking 12 percent from $45 billion at the start of the year.

Foreign investors have been particularly worried

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CEO Lazarus Angbazo quits General Electric DIPO OLADEHINDE

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azarus Angbazo has resigned his position as president and CEO of General Electric Nigeria, a position he has held since 2012, BusinessDay has learnt from an insider source.

The widely admired CEO’s decision to quit General Electric comes as a rude shock to many players in the power sector, especially given General Electric’s aggressive expansion into some major sectors of the economy under Angbazo’s leadership.

BusinessDay could not get an official comment from General Electric on the matter.

However, a staff of the company who simply identified himself as Lucky said he could neither deny nor affirm that Angbazo has resigned. He suggested that our correspondent call back tomorrow (today) or reach out to Angbazo’s personal assistant.

Angbazo joined General Electric in 2004 and held several leadership positions within the GE Capital business in the US. Under his leadership as president and CEO of GE’s business operations in Nigeria, Angbazo doubled General Electric’s revenues in Nigeria to exceed $1 billion annually, tripled employment to 600 employees with over 80 percent Nigerians, kicked off GE’s $1 billion direct invest@Businessdayng

ment in Nigeria anchored by a multi-modal manufacturing and service hub for Africa in Calabar, and also created a landmark Country-to-Company Development Partnership Agreement with Nigeria.

On the rail front, GE under the management of Lazarus Angbazo supplied the Nigeria Railway Corporation with 25 locomotives. The company continues to research other ways to support the Federal Government in its revitalisation of the rail industry.

In the aviation sector, General Electric is working with the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Aviation in the areas of private sector-led investments in aviation infrastructure development including airport upgrading and facilities development.

Angbazo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics (First Class), a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from the University of Iowa, and a PhD in Corporate Finance from New York University.

Between 1992 and 1997, he was assistant professor of Finance at Purdue University, and also served as research director at Fannie Mae in 1996.

From 1997 to 2004, he worked for JP Morgan Chase, New York, where he held senior positions in corporate mergers & acquisitions, strategic planning, and credit portfolio management.

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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news American International School sale shows...

Continued from page 1

enough momentum for continual growth over a short period of time.

The school is a Cambridge Associate School, a member of Council of British International Schools (COBIS) and Association of British Schools Overseas (AoBSO).

JHC is in partnership with Microsoft Imagine Academy and GL Education. It is accredited by Cambridge Assessment of International Education (CAIE), Pearson Edexcel Examinations, and British Schools Overseas (BSO).

With the acquisition of the American School’s property, James Hope College is coming to Lagos next September to offer the outstanding academic services it is known for in Agbor.

“We are interested in restoring the value of education. I will like to see the infrastructure that is much better, the teachers much better and teacher training blossoming,” Oyewusi Ibidapo-Obe, former vice-chancellor, University of Lagos, said at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in Lagos last month.

The latest acquisition is not an isolated case. There is renewed hope for education financing in Nigeria as private equity firms invest in both mid and high-end private secondary schools to drive expansion initiatives amid growing interest among parents to educate children in such schools.

Verod Capital Management, Nigeria-based private equity firm, in July 2017 acquired a stake in Greensprings School, one of Nigeria’s leading private secondary schools located in Anthony and Lekki, both in Lagos, bringing the number of its investment in private secondary schools to five. This was designed to enable Greensprings restructure its capital base and fund growth initiatives.

“Greensprings has a long track record of academic excellence and is led by an experienced CEO and management team,” said Eric Idiahi, partner at Verod, in a statement announcing

the deal. “We believe in the company’s growth potential and are thrilled about its expansion plans both in the traditional education space and in ancillary services – supplementary education and teacher training.”

The private equity firm said it expects that the segment will continue to grow owing to increasing affordability for the middle class and the Nigerian government’s increasing role as a steward and enabler rather than a provider of public education.

“As public-sector budgets get tighter, educational administrators are under more and more pressure to find new ways to do more with less and that opens the door to a wider field of publicprivate partnerships,” Gossy Ukanwoke, a higher education investor and founder at Nigeria-based Beni American University Research and Development, said in a phone interview.

This is not uniquely Nigerian. Across Africa, a new education funding model has emerged in Angola and Ghana, involving private equity firms. In Nigeria, this will help narrow down funding gap, improve accountability and increase transparency in resource allocation.

AfricInvest, a U$1 billion asset, mid-market private equity firm, backed International Community School, a private school in Ghana, in a preferential share deal in 2017. The investment is the sixth for AfricInvest’s third private equity fund, which was 50 percent deployed at the time. The capital will be used to upgrade the school’s facilities and help support its expansion plans within Ghana, as well as the broader West African region.

Similarly, ABO Capital, an Angolan investment firm, has acquired Complexo Escolar Privado Internacional in Luanda, Angola’s capital city, reinforcing the evolving trend. Terms of the deal for the 768-pupil facility remain undisclosed. Also known as the Turkish School, CEPI started life in 2007 and enrolment has expanded consistently.

L-R: Gbenga Shobo, deputy managing director, FirstBank; Uk Eke, group managing director, FBN Holdings plc; Ibukun Awosika, chairman, FirstBank; Mehta Kandarp, senior lecturer, IESE, Business School, and Adesola Adeduntan, chief executive officer, Pic by Pius Okeosisi FirstBank, at the FirstGem third anniversary conference in Lagos, yesterday.

Kidnappings along highways threaten...

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People of Biafra, but they have remained even after the agitation has been severely degraded. They now serve as extortion stops.

Drivers risk losing limbs if they were not quick enough with the N100 charge.

Data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), sourced from law enforcement agencies of member states, show that 277 kidnappings were reported in Nigeria in 2007; 309 in 2008; 703 in 2009; 738 in 2010; 600 in 2012; and 574 in 2013. No data were provided for 2011.

In 2015, the Nigeria Police Force reported 886 kidnappings. About 630 people were reportedly abducted between May 2016 and May

the triggers for domestic taxation of income earned by non-resident companies in Nigeria through dependent agents and via online market platforms.

He further said the bill would address the taxation of industries, such as insurance, start-ups and the capital markets, deemed by the Federal Government as critical to the growth and

the younger ones were often sent on errands to purchase noodles, which they were fed with, after their mothers and sisters prepared the meals.

“Kidnapping is now a normal thing in Aba,” one of the victims told BusinessDay. The severity of the violence employed during kidnaps portends an even greater danger. On October 22, kidnappers laid ambush to a vehicle conveying a judge along the LokojaOkene highway. When the vehicle approached, a band of kidnappers began shooting sporadically at every car within the scene.

Some Nigerians who have been victims of kidnapping (directly or indirectly through a close relation be-

NEC approves $250m investment into NSIA Tony Ailemen, Abuja

Senate approves 7.5% VAT, passes ...

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2017. Figures for this year could be higher with daily media reports of kidnappings for ransom.

“Kidnapping in Nigeria is a lucrative venture because Nigerians pay the ransom, and it persists because criminals get away with it,” said Tanwa Ashiru, founder, Bulwark Intelligence, a security analytics firm.

In June, BusinessDay reported findings from interviewing several kidnap victims which indicated that the kidnappers have a well-organised supply chain that ensures they get enough supplies.

In one instance, a kidnap victim recalled being kept in a building where relatives (mothers and siblings) of the abductors also lived. In fact,

development of the Nigerian economy.

After the clause-byclause consideration, Senate President Ahmad Lawan said the bill’s passage by the Senate was intended “to ensure that we (National Assembly) streamline the tax system in Nigeria and get revenue for government to provide services and infrastructure to the citizens of this country”. www.businessday.ng

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he National Economic Council (NEC) on Thursday approved additional investment of $250 million into the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).

Uche Orji, managing director, NSIA, disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents after a meeting of the NEC chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Orji also announced the setting up of a committee to work out modalities for collaboration between the NSIA and the National Pension Commission (PenCom) on how to channel pension funds for investment.

“Following the presentation, Council resolved to invest an additional $250m into the NSIA. The governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, should chair a committee of the National Economic

Council to consider how a portion of the pension fund can also be leveraged into investment in the NSIA with possible implementation with PenCom,” Orji said.

“The committee will include the finance minister, the central bank governor and the managing director of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority,” he said.

The NSIA had presented its 2018 annual report and 2019 finance update, where it announced that its group made a profit of N44.3bn in 2018 and that as at the first six months of 2019, it made a profit of N24 billion.

“This is achieved in the face of a volatile international market environment driven by the trade dispute between the United States and China as well as Brexit challenges,” Orji said.

NEC passed a vote of confidence on the NSIA whose activities are focused on infrastructure fund on agricul-

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ture, road, power, healthcare projects and industrialisation.

Orji stated that NSIA as the manager of the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) is focused on deploying capital to ensure the completion of the Second Niger Bridge, Abuja-Kano Highway and Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

“Other projects under the PIDF include the Mambila Hydro Power project and East-West Road,” he said.

The NSIA also announced its intention to deploy capital in expanding its health projects, following a successful implementation of its cancer treatment project with LUTH under Public-Private Partnership (PPP), a diagnostic and radiology centre in Aminu Kano Specialist Hospital to be commissioned next month, and the Federal Medical Centre in Umuahia which will be finished in the first quarter of 2020. @Businessdayng

ing affected), are dealing with the traumatising experience in their own way, mostly through silence. Victims who talked to BusinessDay were reluctant to talk about it for fear of repeated attacks, but mostly because they have lost faith in law enforcement getting them justice.

Yet, this culture of silence helps kidnapping to thrive.

Victims and their families’ fork over millions of naira delivered in cash (local or foreign currencies) before they regain freedom. People are unwilling to disclose how much was paid.

Bulwark Intelligence said kidnappers often include miscreant unemployed youths, professional crime syndicates, nomadic criminals/bandits, cult groups, and individuals “known” to victims, such as relatives or employees.

No naira devaluation until reserves fall...

Continued from page 42

by the trend which surely rekindles bitter memories from 2016 when the fx backlog swelled to as much as $7 billion as investors had their money trapped.

“Chances of the situation in 2016 repeating are quite subdued. Not only did oil prices crash to a record low, militant attacks caused a big disr uption in pro duction.

That proved too much to handle coupled with the massive exodus of foreign investors,” a money manager told BusinessDay. “A naira devaluation is not a near-term risk but the CBN must be prepared to pay a higher risk premium now that yields are falling below inflation,” the money manager who did not want to be named said.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news

C&I Leasing to expand business, improve working capital with N3.2bn Rights Issue Iheanyi Nwachukwu

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he N3.2 billion projected proceeds from C&I Leasing plc Rights Issue will be used to expand the company’s business and meet its working capital requirements.

The company is currently undergoing a Rights Issue of 539,003,333 ordinary shares of 50 kobo each at N6 per share following the approvals of both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

Andrew Otike-Odibi, managing director/CEO, C&I Leasing, said the capital raise will also position it to take advantage of opportunities for further business expansion.

Speaking during a conference call on Monday November 18 on the Rights Issue, Otike-Odibi noted that Nigerian leasing industry is vibrant and can thrive during periods of both economic boom and recession.

The Rights Issue to existing shareholders is on the basis of 4 new ordinary shares for every 3 ordinary shares held.

The qualification date for the Rights Issue was Wednesday, September 4, 2019.

The CEO believes that a Rights Issue does not have the limitations of other capital sources, “but would allow the Company’s shareholders to increase their equity holdings at a discount”. “This would help avoid the risk of dilution and

create an avenue for capital gains for shareholders,” he added.

“It is expected that appetite for the equities market will be renewed by both domestic and foreign players, following the just concluded election as market fundamentals remain supportive of growth,” OtikeOdibi said.

Between 2019 and 2023, C&I Leasing expects its total revenue to witness a steady increase from N33.67 billion to N66.34 billion at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.48 percent.

This growth will be supported by increased volumes - that is anticipated rise in gross earnings in the Company’s divisions in Nigeria, Ghana and United Arab Emirates.

“In line with the growth is total assets, we anticipate a simultaneous rise in shareholders’ funds from N13.68 billion in 2019 to N34.57 billion in 2023. The significant rise in shareholders’ funds will be substantiated by a 466percent growth in retained earnings.

“Over the same period, we expect net income to grow by 367percent, following significant increase in revenue of the business divisions and other operating income” he said.

The CEO said appetite for leasing continued to increase especially in the current economic situation which has made outright purchase in-

creasingly difficult and this demand was buoyed by multinationals and other large corporate for service oriented leases like fleet management.

Between 2013 and 2018, C&I Leasing’s total assets base saw an increase from N19.11 billion to N52.61 billion at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.5percent.

This can be attributed to the significant increase in operating lease assets from N22.52 billion in 2016 to N30.69 billion in 2018.

The rise in total assets was followed by an increase in shareholders’ funds from N8.09billion in 2016 to N11.83billion in 2018. The rise came on the back of 424.91percent rise in retained earnings recorded between 2016 and 2018.

O ve r t h e sa m e p e r i od, profit after tax grew by 30.29percent and this was majorly driven by income from joint venture and a 1473percent jump in interest income.

Notably, there were improvements across segments of the business.

Over the years, C&I Leasing has enjoyed consistent growth and has expanded its scope of business to cover major sectors of the Nigerian economy, providing specialised services, in Marine, Telecommunications, Oil and Gas, Equipment Rentals, Manpower Outsourcing and Transportation.

L-R: Adebayo Sodade, special adviser to the Governor on Economic Planning and Budget; Gbolahan Yishawu, chairman, Lagos State House Committee on Budget; Abiola Liadi, permanent secretary, Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, and Gbolahan Owodunni, chief resilience officer, Lagos State Resilience Office.

TEXA 2020 kicks off with thrilling official launch BUNMI BAILEY

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ctivities for the second edition of The Event Xperience Africa (TEXA) kicked off Monday with an official launch at Civic Centre, Lagos.

The event, set to hold in Lagos January 28-30, 2020, is designed to further improve networking opportunities for event professionals by connecting seasoned and new professionals across Africa.

Convened by Zapphaire Events, Funke Bucknor-Obruthe, the conference will engage participants on trade secrets, curated sessions, emerging innovations and trends in the industry.

Speaking at the launch, Bucknor-Obruthe said: “After reflecting on the success of the conference in 2019 with over 600 attendeesfromdifferentcountries inAfrica,wearedelightedtoreturn for the second edition.

“The event industry is an integral part of a growing economy andTEXAintendstobuildalegacy for millions of event entrepreneurs across the continent, empowering them, creating an enabling environmentandalsobuildinganecosystem for sustainable businesses.

“We are extremely grateful to all our partners and sponsors and all participants that have come from across Africa to be a part of

this great vision. Indeed, TEXA is not just about Nigeria but the whole of Africa.”

TEXA is targeted at event designers, concert and show producers, bakers/caterers, audio visual experts (lighting, cinematographers, photographers), entertainment specialists (musicians/bands, dancers), event planners, wardrobe and beauty experts, and all service providers in the industry.

It is also targeted at corporate event stakeholders such as brand and corporate communication activation managers and experiential marketing companies.

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Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

news

Experts at Oracle roundtable outline role of CEOs in digital transformation FRANK ELEANYA

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s digitalisation becomes the new normal for businesses, experts who spoke at an Oracle Nigeria digital roundtable in partnership with BusinessDay say a true transformation can only begin from the leadership.

The roundtable which was exclusively for organisations’ top management highlighted the role of management in driving digital transformation.

Prior to now, organisations have allowed digitalization to be led almost exclusively by the IT unit which created a challenge in transmitting digitalisation as a culture to the various structures of the organisation.

Adebayo Sanni, country managing director, Oracle Nigeria, during the panel session, acknowledged that digital transformation is about the mindset ; it is a cultural change. Agada Apochi, managing director of Unified Payments (UP) also described digital transforma-

tion as “a change leadership exercise.”

That change can only best be communicated by a digital CEO just the same way it is incumbent on him or her to drive the entire transformation of the company. In essence, a CEO cannot watch from the sidelines, nor can he or she micromanage all aspects of the transformation.

Sanni says there are three key areas to consider for digital transformation, including what areas of the business that requires the change.

For most organisations, one of such areas could be the experience of the customers.

Second, operation efficiency and third, the workforce.

“The digital transformation is here and we can paint the canvas in defining the future,” Olufemi Oyenuga, chief Customer Enterprise Architect, Oracle Africa.

Segun Ogunsanya, CEO of Airtel Nigeria pointed out that cybersecurity is one of the major challenges that CEOs face in exposing their organisations to digitalisation.

Globally, CEOs of big institutions particularly in the financial services sector consider cybersecurity as the biggest risk they face in digital transformation. Ogunsanya suggested that a cybersecurity framework that protects businesses from attacks may be ideal to put the mind of business leaders at rest.

“Cyber-security is very important to enjoy the good things about technology,” Ogunsanya said.

However, beyond security, digital transformation should focus on enhancing the customer experience said Onyinye IkennaEmeka, general manager, Enterprise Marketing, MTN Nigeria. Digital transformation shortens the distance and removes the barrier between the organisation and the customer, hence the emphasis on convenience for consumers.

“Digital transformation is about understanding where your customers want to be reached,” Ikenna-Emeka said.

Employers, employees must prepare for changing future of work to stay afloat, experts say MICHAEL ANI

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i t h t h e g ro w i n g use of technological innovation in disrupting the way work is being done, employers of labour as well as employees must keep pace with evolving trends if they want to stay afloat.

This is because the future of the workplace is tilting towards the direction of technological advancement and digitisation, said experts who spoke at a panel discussion at an event organised by Chief Executive Programme (CEP), 26 class of the Lagos Business School Alumni Association.

The experts, who brainstormed on the topic ‘Future of work,’ to commemorate the 2019 Alumni Day of the association, explained that five forces were shaping industrial revolution and the future of workplace across the globe.

These forces include: the rapid advancement in technology; Artificial Intelligence; big data and machine

learning; demographic change/shift; hyper globalisation; changes in societal preference, and lastly, drive for a low carbon economy.

According to the experts, the sooner employers of labour, employees and job seekers take cognizance of this growing tends, the better they would be prepared for the fourth industrial revelation.

A l o t o f t h i n g s h av e change and are changing with the way work is done, said Kayode Falowo, group managing director/CEO of Greenwich Trust Limited. “For the employees, it speaks on what their future would be like while for the employers, it speaks on how their businesses would be if they do not take the future of work and its implication as seriously as they should. It also has a larger implication on the economy,” he said According to Falowo, technological innovation is evolving new ways of doing things, making the division of labour shift more towards machines than man, and the

implications of this is that about 14-30 percent of jobs can be eliminated by machines, based on research done by the OECD. He admonished employers to see talents as being competitive, as the most brilliant people always want to do things differently.

Access to information as well as ability to compare note in the social media is changing the power structure of a company, he said.

Michael Liley, a human resources, talent management and organisational change with multi-year work experience in Germany, the UK and US, said employers and employees should stop thinking about the future as something that was going to happen in about 5-10 years’ time, but they should see it as something already happening in many places and would get to them soon.

He noted that automation was very real and was the future the world was referring to, as jobs were now being augmented by machines.

Wemy mulls new product offensive to increase diaper market share … rewards distributors, regional sales team MIKE OCHONMA

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emy Industries Limited, manufacturer of Dr Browns and Nightingale diaper products and other range o f s a n i t a r y p a d s i n Ni geria, says it is embarking on fresh moves to increase its share of the p e rs ona l hyg i e n e ra ng e of products in the local market.

Paul Odunaiya, managing dire ctor of Wemy Industries, made this declaration in Lagos at the c o m p a n y ’s n a t i o n w i d e marketing conference for its 55 distributors at the Lagos Travel Inn, Ikeja.

The managing director told BusinessDay exclus i v e l y t h a t t h e c o n f e rence, he described as a family re-union, was coming after almost five years when the last conference was channelled at its distributors nat i o n w i d e, s o a s t o g e a r them for the expansion in business volumes the would commence from January 2020.

According to Oduna i y a , We m y I n d u s t r i e s have put in strategies to ensure that Dr Browns and Nightingale and other products are always available throughout the year which is one of the comp a ny ’s maj o r i s s u e s f o r many years. ‘’We have also identified that we have to partner with all state government health institutions to drive the consumption of our locally made dispos-

able delivery mat product called “Nightingale”. The influx of imports is hurting our business,” he said.

He expressed optimism that the Diaper policy that should help fur ther industrialised the sector in Nigeria is expected to be in place before the close of the year.

He called on the ministry of industries, trade a n d i nv e s t m e nt s t o a c t swiftly in effecting that policy The Wemy Industries Limited boss disclosed that, the manufacturing of adult diaper in Nigeria will commence for the first time by D e cemb er 2019 which all the customers are anticipating from January 2020.

Highlights of the daylong conference were the presentation of Awards to the regional sales managers, adjudged to have performed very in the year.

These Bawa Al-yahaya who emerged as the overall winner, Adebola Adedire is the first runner-up while Banwo Olubunmi is the second runner up I n t h e d i s t r i b u t o r ’s category, winners are Olaniran & Sons Awardee from the North Central, R.I Lawal Investment from the North West, Jiddah Trading Enterpr is e North East, Sky Level Company from SouthSouth, Victor y Nigeria Limited from South West, Grand Magnet Integrated Concept South East and Orna Crowne from Lagos. www.businessday.ng

L-R: Dotun Olowoporoku, associate director, Novaster Ventures; Anthony Osae-Brown, bureau chief, Bloomberg; Adenike Adeyomi, executive director, Fate Foundation; Olaniyi Yusuf, managing partner, Verraki Partners; Toki Mabogunje, deputy president, LCCI, and Osaigboro Omorogbe, divitional head, SME banking, Fidelity Bank plc, at the 5th policy dialogue series on entrepreneurship themed, from StartUps to ScaleUps by Fate Foundation in Pic by Pius Okeosisi Lagos, yesterday.

CBN to release new guidelines on BVN, watch-listing soon … risk-based supervision framework for FinTechs, PSBs for release soon HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE

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he Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday signalled plans to release new guidelines on the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and watch-listing soon.

“A new BVN guideline should be coming out any moment from now. When the exposure draft is released, I will encourage you to make a suggestion regarding your area of concern,” Sam Okojere, director, payments system management department, CBN, told participants at Access Bank’s anti-fraud week in Lagos.

Represented by Ademola Adeleke, assistant director, payments system management, Okojere hinted of a stakeholders’ meeting coming soon where all the people in the eco-

system would come together to rub minds on how to improve the process.

Another thing in the offing of the CBN is the plan to come up with the risk-based supervision framework for Financial Technology Companies (FinTechs) and the Payment Service Banks (PSBs).

“The risk-based supervision framework that will actually take care of FinTechs and PSBs is in the offing, very soon there will be a very clear guideline on that,” Okojere said.

He noted the CBN had been embedding fraud risk-mitigating measures in its guidelines and periodic circulars to ensure that adequate measures are being implemented at all levels of digital product development and its operations.

In 2018, 38,000 fraud cases with over N9 billion attempted

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fraud value was recorded, while an estimated N2.0 billion was completely lost in the same year. This represents a 25.7 percent increase when compared to the N1.6 Billion lost in 2017.

While we are not happy with the increase in the value of lost fraud, there are indicators that our controls are working”.

This is demonstrated by the fact that the percentage of actual losses compared to attempts, has reduced from 40.46 percent in 2017 to 23 percent in 2018. More succinctly, in 2017 the industry lost 40 kobo for every N1 attempted, while in 2018 the losses abated to 23 kobo on every N1 attempted.

Welcoming the participants, Herbert Wigwe, group managing director/CEO, said the Workshop was the Bank’s avenue of reaching out to members of our community on @Businessdayng

issues around fraud risk and cybersecurity through close engagement and collaboration of various stakeholders in the industry.

The workshop is in line with the International Fraud Awareness Week which officially started on Sunday, November 17, 2019.

Quoting from a report by Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), he said in 2018, about 89 percent of all financial services fraud in Nigeria happened through Digital channels while only 11 percent were nonelectronic.

In Nigeria, he said, customers are culturally not attuned to security issues around digital transactions, noting that even well-educated people run the risk of falling victim to social engineering and identity theft traps.

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

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Live @ The Exchanges Market Statistics as at Thursday 21 November 2019

Top Gainers/Losers as at Thursday 21 November 2019 LOSERS

GAINERS Company

Opening

Closing

Change

FLOURMILL

N16.25

N17.85

1.6

STANBIC MTNN DANGCEM DANGSUGAR

N39

N40

1

N119.05

N120

0.95

N144

N144.9

0.9

N12.25

N13.1

0.85

Company

Opening

Closing

Change

N20

N18

-2

UNILEVER

N18.5

N17.45

-1.05

ZENITHBANK

N18.8

N18.6

-0.2

UBA

N7.75

N7.6

-0.15

N14.5

N14.4

-0.1

CCNN

WAPCO

ASI (Points) DEALS (Numbers) VOLUME (Numbers) VALUE (N billion) MARKET CAP (N Trn)

26,872.09 3,585.00 239,221,339.000 2.278

Stories by Iheanyi Nwachukwu

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L-R Olufemi Lijadu, chairman of tue Board Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, Mary Uduk, acting DG SEC, and Ike Chioke of Afrinvest West Africa Limited at the Breakfast meeting between the Board of the SEC and Capital Market stakeholders in Lagos.

adding N1 or 2.56percent.

MTNN also moved up from N119.05 to N120, adding 95kobo or 0.80percent.

Dangote Cement Plc gained 90kobo or 0.63percent, from N144 to N144.9.

On the decliners table, Cement Company of Northern Nigeria Plc occupied topmost position after its share price decreased from N20 to N18, losing N2 or 10percent. Unilever Nigeria Plc followed after decreas-

ing from day open level of N18.5 to N17.45, losing N1.05 or 5.68percent.

Zenith Bank Plc was also down, from N18.8 to N18.6, losing 20kobo or 1.06percent, while United Bank for Africa Plc decreased from N7.75 to N7.6 after losing 15kobo or 1.94percent.

The market’s monthto-date (MtD) increase by 1.95percent and week-to date (WtD) by 0.08percent helped moderate the nega-

tive return seen year-to-date (YtD) to -14.50percent.

In 3,585 deals on Thursday, equity dealers exchanged 239,221,339 units valued at N2.278billion.

FBN Holdings, Transcorp, Zenith Bank, GTBank and UBA were actively traded stocks on Thursday.

Investor confidence is seen improving as all major sub-sectors closed positive except the Industrial Goods sector.

Fund manager of ‘Value Fund’ proposes N353.06m distribution to unit holders …represents N11 per unit ...says N2.21bn distributed to unit holders since 2011

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nits holders of Va l u A l l i a n c e Value Fund will on December 23 receive a distribution of N11 per unit as proposed by the Fund Managers for the financial year ended June 30, 2019.

The Fund’s financial summary released at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) shows the proposed distribution totaling N353.065million in financial year 2019 is less than N13 per unit totaling N417.258million which the Fund Manager distributed to unit holders in the corresponding period of 2018. In 2015, 2016, and 2017 financial year, the Fund Manager distributed N320.968million

respectively to unit holders.

The Fund Manager will at the Annual General Meeting of the Fund scheduled on December 12 seek unit holders’ approval for the proposed N11 per unit distribution. The proposed distribution represents a yield of about 10.7percent relative to its closing price of N103.20 on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

The ValuAlliance Value Fund (Value Fund), formerly known as “SIM Capital Alliance Value Fund”, is a closed-end collective investment scheme, registered and regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), whose units are listed on the main board of the Nigerian Stock www.businessday.ng

Exchange.

For the 2020 financial year, the Fund Manager expects continued volatility brought about by the impact of themes such as trade tensions, geopolitical uncertainty, domestic and foreign monetary policy actions among others.

“These themes will likely have material implications for business confidence, expectations, activity ultimately the domestic capital markets”, the fund manager noted.

The Fund Manager expects attractive entry opportunities in both the listed and unlisted equity markets for long term value investors and will seek to take advantage of these by selectively

increasing the Value Fund’s equity exposure.

“Concurrently, the Fund Manager will continue to review the Value Fund’s existing holdings and will potentially trade out of equity positions that are determined to be trading close to intrinsic value or at a premium to intrinsic value.

“In the fixed income space, the Fund Manager will continue to seek and take advantage of attractive opportunities while working to maintain appropriate portfolio diversification”, according to the Fund Manager.

The Value Fund commenced operations on June 30, 2011 when it raised the sum of N3.2billion through an Initial Public Offer (IPO).

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FTSE 100 Index 7,235.61GBP -26.88-0.37%

Nikkei 225 23,038.58JPY -109.99-0.48%

S&P 500 Index 3,101.69USD -6.77-0.22%

Deutsche Boerse AG German Stock Index DAX 13,154.20EUR -3.94-0.03%

Generic 1st ‘DM’ Future 27,739.00USD -61.00-0.22%

Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index 2,903.64CNY -7.42-0.25%

12.969

Investors gain N45bn as stock market rises further by 0.36% he Nigerian stock market rose further by 0.36percent on Thursday November 21, which helped to sustain the previous day’s gains.

Investors gained N45billion as the value of listed stocks on the local Bourse increased from day open level of N12.924 trillion to N12.969trillion.

More stock buyers are expected to position in value and dividend paying counters in expectation of making more money. The market should record another day of gains in Friday’s session.

The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) All Share Index (ASI) moved from 26,776.15 points to 26,872.09 points at the sound of the trade closing gong.

Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc recorded the highest gain on the Bourse after its share price increased from N16.25 to N17.85, adding N1.6 or 9.85percent. Stanbic IBTC followed after its share price increased from N39 to N40,

Global market indicators

SEC says developing teachers’ guides on Capital Market Studies

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n line with its commitment to infuse Capital Market Studies (CMS) into the Curriculum of schools in Nigeria, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has commenced the development of teachers’ guides.

This was disclosed by Mary Uduk, acting Director General of the SEC in a welcome address at the third quarter (Q3) Capital Market Committee Meeting held in Lagos, Thursday.

The acting DG of SEC noted that this development is in line with the SEC investor education efforts.

“Having infused the capital market content into this curriculum, the next phase of our work is to develop Teachers’ Guides. We have equally constituted a steering committee for the Universities’ curriculum,” she added.

“Taking our investor enlightenment drive further, we hosted over 250 personnel of the military, para-military and security agencies in August. The programme was a first of its kind with the participants anxious for more exposure to the capital market. A similar engagement was held

in Lagos in October, with equal success recorded”, Uduk noted.

In his remarks, the Chairman of the SEC Board, Olufemi Lijadu noted that Capital Markets play critical roles in the development of any country, adding that it could be a medium to raise more funds to finance the nation’s development projects in a period of low oil price. “What we do here at this CMC meeting has far greater implications for the economy. We hope and trust that this will be the beginning of good partnership between the SEC Board and the market as we both have a common objective of developing a first class capital market”, Lijadu added.

He said, “We hope to build a capital market where there is transparency, fairness, liquidity, compliance among others. A lot of the knowledge and research capability you have as stakeholders will be of immense assistance to us as we pursue these laudable goals to make our market a world class capital market”.

NSE wins awards for promoting CSR reporting, delivering efficient in-house legal support

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he Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has received the “Best Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative (Promoting Sustainability & Reporting)” and the “Capital Market In-House Team of the Year” awards at 2019 Marketing World Awards and ESQ Nigerian Legal Awards respectively.

NSE emerged the winner of the “Best Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative award (Promoting Sustainability & Reporting)” at the 9th edition of the Marketing World Award held on Friday, November 8, 2019, in Ghana.

This award is in recognition of the remarkable initiatives implemented by NSE to advance sustainability reporting in Nigeria. During the event, NSE Head of Corporate Communications department, Olumide Orojimi was also named “Corporate Communications Professional of The Year”.

Similarly, the ESQ Nigerian Legal Awards, on Friday, @Businessdayng

November 1, 2019, named NSE Legal Services Department the “Capital Market In-House Team of the Year”, for driving several innovative ideas and playing major roles in key projects of The Exchange and the Nigerian capital market at large.

Commenting on the awards, Bola Adeeko, Head, Shared Services Division, NSE, stated that, “we are most honoured to receive both awards. This achievement is a testament to the efficiency of our service offering and commitment to excellence. It is also a testament of our commitment to creating a sustainable future through our Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility (CSR) activities.

These awards serve as recognition for the assiduous efforts of our employees to achieve our aspiration to provide investors and businesses with a reliable, efficient and adaptable exchange hub in Africa, to save and to access capital”.

48

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

Live @ The STOCK Exchanges Prices for Securities Traded as of Thursday 21 November 2019 Company

Market cap(nm)

Price (N)

Change

Trades

Volume

Company

Market cap(nm)

Price (N)

Change

Trades

Volume

PRICES FOR MAIN BOARD SECURITIES (Equities) BANKING ACCESS BANK PLC. 360,784.04 10.15 -0.49 185 7,849,362 UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA PLC 259,915.60 7.60 -1.94 231 14,157,539 ZENITH BANK PLC 583,974.78 18.60 -1.06 462 18,306,997 878 40,313,898 OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS FBN HOLDINGS PLC 269,214.70 7.50 2.74 450 74,027,644 450 74,027,644 1,328 114,341,542 TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES MTN NIGERIA COMMUNICATIONS PLC 2,442,541.57 120.00 0.80 43 845,602 43 845,602 43 845,602 BUILDING MATERIALS DANGOTE CEMENT PLC 2,469,169.52 144.90 0.63 63 870,128 LAFARGE AFRICA PLC. 231,952.26 14.40 -0.69 82 4,965,522 145 5,835,650 145 5,835,650 EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION SEPLAT PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PLC 323,467.98 549.70 - 11 7,616 11 7,616 11 7,616 1,527 121,030,410 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 - 0 0 UPDC REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST 11,873.80 4.45 - 2 7,000 2 7,000 2 7,000 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 2 7,000 CROP PRODUCTION FTN COCOA PROCESSORS PLC 440.00 0.20 - 0 0 OKOMU OIL PALM PLC. 47,695.50 50.00 - 2 5,603 PRESCO PLC 34,600.00 34.60 - 5 8,908 7 14,511 FISHING/HUNTING/TRAPPING ELLAH LAKES PLC. 8,520.00 4.26 - 0 0 0 0 LIVESTOCK/ANIMAL SPECIALTIES LIVESTOCK FEEDS PLC. 1,590.00 0.53 - 9 103,442 9 103,442 16 117,953 DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIES A.G. LEVENTIS NIGERIA PLC. 794.19 0.30 - 2 2,222 217.92 0.56 - 3 4,240 JOHN HOLT PLC. S C O A NIG. PLC. 1,903.99 2.93 - 0 0 TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION OF NIGERIA PLC 41,867.43 1.03 -0.96 68 19,187,675 U A C N PLC. 20,601.27 7.15 0.70 64 2,052,849 137 21,246,986 137 21,246,986 BUILDING CONSTRUCTION ARBICO PLC. 711.32 4.79 - 0 0 0 0 INFRASTRUCTURE/HEAVY CONSTRUCTION JULIUS BERGER NIG. PLC. 25,080.00 19.00 2.43 15 206,476 ROADS NIG PLC. 165.00 6.60 - 0 0 15 206,476 REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT UACN PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PLC 2,598.40 1.00 - 8 52,393 8 52,393 23 258,869 AUTOMOBILES/AUTO PARTS DN TYRE & RUBBER PLC 954.53 0.20 - 0 0 0 0 BEVERAGES--BREWERS/DISTILLERS CHAMPION BREW. PLC. 7,986.09 1.02 - 6 74,200 GOLDEN GUINEA BREW. PLC. 242.22 0.89 - 0 0 GUINNESS NIG PLC 67,901.87 31.00 - 57 178,757 INTERNATIONAL BREWERIES PLC. 80,801.10 9.40 - 12 71,116 NIGERIAN BREW. PLC. 415,838.91 52.00 - 53 432,473 128 756,546 FOOD PRODUCTS DANGOTE SUGAR REFINERY PLC 157,200.00 13.10 6.94 114 3,419,952 FLOUR MILLS NIG. PLC. 73,191.78 17.85 9.85 19 306,890 HONEYWELL FLOUR MILL PLC 8,088.80 1.02 1.96 20 800,578 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 37,092.14 14.00 - 13 43,348 UNION DICON SALT PLC. 3,321.07 12.15 - 0 0 166 4,570,768 FOOD PRODUCTS--DIVERSIFIED CADBURY NIGERIA PLC. 16,903.82 9.00 - 43 626,356 NESTLE NIGERIA PLC. 911,554.69 1,150.00 - 28 30,410 71 656,766 HOUSEHOLD DURABLES NIGERIAN ENAMELWARE PLC. 1,680.31 22.10 - 0 0 VITAFOAM NIG PLC. 4,803.24 3.84 3.50 31 770,374 31 770,374 PERSONAL/HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS P Z CUSSONS NIGERIA PLC. 20,845.00 5.25 0.95 28 499,896 UNILEVER NIGERIA PLC. 100,250.34 17.45 -5.68 48 900,138 76 1,400,034 472 8,154,488 BANKING ECOBANK TRANSNATIONAL INCORPORATED 128,446.86 7.00 1.45 71 3,367,507 FIDELITY BANK PLC 60,557.33 2.09 3.47 88 7,933,677 GUARANTY TRUST BANK PLC. 868,219.79 29.50 1.55 220 17,232,896 JAIZ BANK PLC 20,330.33 0.69 -8.00 32 1,396,627 STERLING BANK PLC. 59,884.07 2.08 -1.89 148 11,611,410 UNION BANK NIG.PLC. 206,757.34 7.10 - 20 525,008 UNITY BANK PLC 8,182.54 0.70 - 11 155,854 28,930.85 0.75 1.35 34 2,807,342 WEMA BANK PLC. 624 45,030,321 INSURANCE CARRIERS, BROKERS AND SERVICES AFRICAN ALLIANCE INSURANCE PLC 4,117.00 0.20 - 1 3,000 AIICO INSURANCE PLC. 4,920.45 0.71 2.82 16 1,748,332 17,325.00 1.65 - 1 2,000 AXAMANSARD INSURANCE PLC CONSOLIDATED HALLMARK INSURANCE PLC 3,008.10 0.37 - 1 2,739 CONTINENTAL REINSURANCE PLC 23,442.40 2.26 - 2 61,966 CORNERSTONE INSURANCE PLC 11,341.72 0.77 10.00 6 207,993 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. 1,830.86 0.25 -7.41 7 1,122,000 LAW UNION AND ROCK INS. PLC. 2,577.80 0.60 7.14 2 101,154 LINKAGE ASSURANCE PLC 4,080.00 0.51 - 1 8,125 MUTUAL BENEFITS ASSURANCE PLC. 2,234.55 0.20 - 3 355,000 NEM INSURANCE PLC 11,089.06 2.10 - 8 37,336 NIGER INSURANCE PLC 1,547.90 0.20 - 2 9,962 PRESTIGE ASSURANCE PLC 2,745.10 0.51 - 0 0 REGENCY ASSURANCE PLC 1,333.75 0.20 - 2 15,250 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 - 1 140 516.46 0.20 - 0 0 UNIC DIVERSIFIED HOLDINGS PLC. UNIVERSAL INSURANCE PLC 3,200.00 0.20 - 0 0 VERITAS KAPITAL ASSURANCE PLC 2,773.33 0.20 - 0 0 WAPIC INSURANCE PLC 4,550.13 0.34 - 8 65,782 61 3,740,779 MICRO-FINANCE BANKS NPF MICROFINANCE BANK PLC 2,743.97 1.20 - 2 350,000

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2 350,000 MORTGAGE CARRIERS, BROKERS AND SERVICES ABBEY MORTGAGE BANK PLC 4,200.00 1.00 - 1 400 ASO SAVINGS AND LOANS PLC 7,370.87 0.50 - 0 0 5,796.93 1.39 - 0 0 INFINITY TRUST MORTGAGE BANK PLC RESORT SAVINGS & LOANS PLC 2,265.95 0.20 - 0 0 2,949.22 3.02 - 0 0 UNION HOMES SAVINGS AND LOANS PLC. 1 400 OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AFRICA PRUDENTIAL PLC 8,520.00 4.26 - 24 134,200 CUSTODIAN INVESTMENT PLC 35,291.19 6.00 - 2 7,714 660.00 0.44 - 0 0 DEAP CAPITAL MANAGEMENT & TRUST PLC FCMB GROUP PLC. 43,169.91 2.18 7.39 155 10,483,598 ROYAL EXCHANGE PLC. 1,029.07 0.20 - 6 126,203 418,938.08 40.00 2.56 19 559,825 STANBIC IBTC HOLDINGS PLC UNITED CAPITAL PLC 13,500.00 2.25 2.27 64 4,242,269 270 15,553,809 958 64,675,309 HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS EKOCORP PLC. 2,029.31 4.07 - 0 0 UNION DIAGNOSTIC & CLINICAL SERVICES PLC 852.75 0.24 - 0 0 0 0 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 7,302.26 3.50 - 1 800 GLAXO SMITHKLINE CONSUMER NIG. PLC. 7,534.02 6.30 - 129 5,497,320 3,381.46 1.96 - 5 5,780 MAY & BAKER NIGERIA PLC. NEIMETH INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICALS PLC 968.57 0.51 6.25 11 834,804 556.71 3.62 - 0 0 NIGERIA-GERMAN CHEMICALS PLC. PHARMA-DEKO PLC. 325.23 1.50 - 0 0 146 6,338,704 146 6,338,704 COMPUTER BASED SYSTEMS COURTEVILLE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS PLC 888.00 0.25 -4.00 9 8,873,637 9 8,873,637 COMPUTERS AND PERIPHERALS OMATEK VENTURES PLC 1,470.89 0.50 - 0 0 0 0 IT SERVICES CWG PLC 6,413.06 2.54 - 0 0 NCR (NIGERIA) PLC. 486.00 4.50 - 0 0 316.77 0.64 - 0 0 TRIPPLE GEE AND COMPANY PLC. 0 0 PROCESSING SYSTEMS CHAMS PLC 1,549.70 0.33 - 13 321,458 E-TRANZACT INTERNATIONAL PLC 9,996.00 2.38 - 1 1,000 14 322,458 TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES AIRTEL AFRICA PLC 1,122,935.67 298.80 - 15 6,535 15 6,535 38 9,202,630 BUILDING MATERIALS BERGER PAINTS PLC 2,173.68 7.50 - 2 2,746 CAP PLC 17,010.00 24.30 - 2 51 CEMENT CO. OF NORTH.NIG. PLC 236,583.02 18.00 -10.00 22 522,535 MEYER PLC. 313.43 0.59 - 0 0 1,769.32 2.23 - 0 0 PORTLAND PAINTS & PRODUCTS NIGERIA PLC PREMIER PAINTS PLC. 1,156.20 9.40 - 0 0 26 525,332 ELECTRONIC AND ELECTRICAL PRODUCTS AUSTIN LAZ & COMPANY PLC 2,256.91 2.09 - 0 0 2,589.14 1.47 - 10 431,460 CUTIX PLC. 10 431,460 PACKAGING/CONTAINERS BETA GLASS PLC. 26,898.49 53.80 - 2 1,025 GREIF NIGERIA PLC 388.02 9.10 - 0 0 2 1,025 AGRO-ALLIED & CHEMICALS NOTORE CHEMICAL IND PLC 100,754.14 62.50 - 0 0 0 0 38 957,817 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 - 3 275,577 3 275,577 INTEGRATED OIL AND GAS SERVICES OANDO PLC 48,358.19 3.89 9.89 56 1,587,760 56 1,587,760 PETROLEUM AND PETROLEUM PRODUCTS DISTRIBUTORS 11 PLC 53,332.04 147.90 - 3 810 CONOIL PLC 12,838.11 18.50 - 39 162,950 ETERNA PLC. 3,651.61 2.80 - 9 128,212 FORTE OIL PLC. 21,621.19 16.60 - 29 206,319 MRS OIL NIGERIA PLC. 4,663.23 15.30 - 6 19,560 TOTAL NIGERIA PLC. 37,652.97 110.90 - 12 14,999 98 532,850 157 2,396,187 ADVERTISING AFROMEDIA PLC 1,642.45 0.37 - 0 0 0 0 AIRLINES MEDVIEW AIRLINE PLC 17,551.17 1.80 - 0 0 0 0 AUTOMOBILE/AUTO PART RETAILERS R T BRISCOE PLC. 270.56 0.23 - 7 108,239 7 108,239 COURIER/FREIGHT/DELIVERY RED STAR EXPRESS PLC 2,623.26 4.45 - 0 0 TRANS-NATIONWIDE EXPRESS PLC. 398.52 0.85 - 0 0 0 0 HOSPITALITY TANTALIZERS PLC 642.33 0.20 - 0 0 0 0 HOTELS/LODGING CAPITAL HOTEL PLC 4,259.15 2.75 - 0 0 2,369.83 1.14 9.62 4 115,000 IKEJA HOTEL PLC TOURIST COMPANY OF NIGERIA PLC. 7,862.53 3.50 - 0 0 TRANSCORP HOTELS PLC 41,042.18 5.40 - 0 0 4 115,000 MEDIA/ENTERTAINMENT DAAR COMMUNICATIONS PLC 4,800.00 0.40 - 0 0 0 0 PRINTING/PUBLISHING ACADEMY PRESS PLC. 223.78 0.37 - 0 0 LEARN AFRICA PLC 972.03 1.26 -0.79 7 264,194 STUDIO PRESS (NIG) PLC. 1,183.82 1.99 - 0 0 612.60 1.42 -0.70 7 251,863 UNIVERSITY PRESS PLC. 14 516,057 ROAD TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATED BUS COMPANY PLC 679.66 0.41 - 0 0 0 0 SPECIALTY INTERLINKED TECHNOLOGIES PLC 757.44 3.20 - 0 0

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@Businessdayng

Friday 22 November 2019

FT

BUSINESS DAY

49

FINANCIAL TIMES

World Business Newspaper Jim Pickard

L

abour leader Jeremy Corbyn unveiled the party’s most leftwing election manifesto in a generation on Thursday including a pledge to increase taxes by £82.9bn a year with the vast majority falling on big business and the wealthy.

The party’s manifesto, unveiled at an event in Birmingham, promises a host of radical policies if the party wins power in the UK’s general election on December 12.

It includes a wave of nationalisations, higher taxes on big business, huge borrowing for capital investment and extra money for the National Health Service, social care and schools.

But the tax increases — much larger than the £48.6bn of extra annual tax and spending in the party’s 2017 election manifesto — was one of the most eye-catching announcements made by Mr Corbyn on Thursday.

He described the policy proposals as “the most radical and ambitious plan to transform our country in decades”.

Paul Johnson, director for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a thinktank, told the BBC the manifesto will produce “just about the most punitive corporate tax regime in the world”.

The document sets out plans to raise £14bn a year from changes to capital gains tax so that gains are taxed at the same level as income tax. In addition to an increase in corporation tax from 19p to 26p, the manifesto includes a new way of taxing multinational corporations to raise £5.8bn a year. Under the approach, corporate groups under common ownership will be treated as “unitary enterprises” so that profits are declared where

Jeremy Corbyn launches Labour’s most leftwing manifesto in generation

Policies include £83bn increase in taxes and windfall levy on oil and gas groups

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with party members before the launch of the manifesto in Birmingham © Bloomberg

economic activity occurs and where value is created.

The financial transactions tax would be extended in order to raise £8.8bn a year, while another £5bn would be raised by reversing recent cuts to inheritance tax, imposing VAT on private school fees, scrapping the married person’s allowance and introducing a second homes tax.

Mr Corbyn said he accepted his new tax rises would be unpopular with the rich but insisted: “We will make those at the top pay their fair share of tax to help fund worldclass public services.”

Labour also announced a new windfall tax on oil and gas companies that could raise more than

Online brokerage industry forced to consolidate as a result of price war

Allegations against four-time prime minister cover bribery, fraud and breach of trust

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rime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been charged with corruption by Israeli prosecutors in a long-awaited decision that threatens to end the four-time premier’s political career.

A spokesman for attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit said Mr Netanyahu had been charged with one count of bribery, and three counts of fraud and breach of trust. The charges follow three long-running probes into his relationships with wealthy friends and regulatory favours he allegedly promised to media barons to secure favourable coverage for himself and his wife.

Mr Netanyahu has always denied the chargesand the prospect of his removal from power and possible jailing has energised his rightwing base, who have stood by him during three years of lurid revelations of expensive cigars, champagne and secretly taped negotiations.

Mr Netanyahu is expected to make a statement shortly, and has already asked supporters to gather near his residence in Jerusalem to protest against the indictment.

The decision pushes the country’s

year-long political paralysis into a full-blown crisis. On Thursday morning President Reuven Rivlin told parliament it had three weeks to choose a member to cobble together a governing majority of 61 seats or face a third election in 11 months.

Both Mr Netanyahu and his main challenger, ex-military chief Benny Gantz, have already tried and failed to form majorities after deadlocked elections in April and September.

Without a majority, Mr Netanyahu is currently serving as interim prime minister and has repeatedly vowed not to resign the premiership even if indicted. There is a legal precedent for a minister to resign if under indictment, but that has never been tested when it comes to the premiership.

“Everyone knows that if a minister is indicted he has to step down, because there was a clear case in the ‘90s . . . but we never had a precedent about a prime minister,” said Amir Fuchs, legal expert with the Israel Democracy Institute. “If the PM resigns, the whole government collapses, and you cannot reinstate him as a prime minister if he is acquitted.” The Supreme Court would probably have to weigh in, he added www.businessday.ng

tional £117bn in taxes,” a Labour official said.

Labour claims the tax should have no effect on prices for consumers at the pump because oil prices are determined by the global oil market. But trade unions have been fighting a rearguard action against the idea of the tax since it was discussed at Labour’s manifesto meeting last Saturday because they are concerned about its impact on the industry.

The announcement is part of Labour’s plan for a total overhaul of the UK economy to shift it towards a low-carbon future, with a new £250bn “green transformation fund” — all funded by borrowing — to pay for policies

Charles Schwab nears $25bn deal for rival TD Ameritrade

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu charged in corruption cases Mehul Srivastava and Ilan Ben Zion

£11bn.

The oil levy would be used to pay for what Labour described as a “just transition fund” providing an £11bn support package to help retrain 37,000 workers in the industry to “make the transition to a clean economy”.

The party wants to raid UKbased oil and gas companies that have extracted oil and gas from the North Sea because it believes the UK has collected less tax per barrel than other countries such as Norway and the Netherlands.

“Had the UK charged the same effective tax rate as the average rate charged by North Sea countries from 1992 to the present day, it would have collected an addi-

including millions of electric car loans and a fleet of new statecontrolled offshore wind farms.

The party will also commit to a radical plan for the UK to produce net zero carbon emissions by 2030 — 20 years earlier than the current government target — although the wording will allow some wriggle room on meeting the target.

The party is planning a series of nationalisations, £400bn of new borrowing and higher taxes on high earners and big business to fund better public services. The party would also introduce “inclusive ownership funds”, which would seize 10 per cent of the shares in every big company in the UK and hand them to workers over a decade.

Industries earmarked for nationalisation include water companies, the railways, Royal Mail, National Grid, private finance initiative schemes and the broadband arm of BT, Openreach.

Some shareholders are threatening legal action if — as expected — their stakes are to be nationalised at below market price.

Mr Corbyn is struggling to cut through in the election campaign, with his party languishing behind the Conservatives in most opinion polls.

Responding to the publication of Labour’s manifesto the Conservative MP and home office minister Brandon Lewis described it as a “reckless spending spree” and accused Mr Corbyn of not having a plan for Brexit.

James Fontanella-Khan, Eric Platt and Philip Stafford

C

harles Schwab is nearing an agreement to acquire US online brokerage TD Ameritrade for more than $25bn, according to people briefed on the matter, as a brutal price war forces the industry to consolidate.

The combination between Schwab and TD Ameritrade, which could be announced as early as Thursday, would be the most striking response so far to the forces disrupting the brokerage industry.

Walter Bettinger, chief executive of Schwab, is expected to run the combined company, one of the people added. TD Ameritrade’s chief executive Tim Hockey announced in the summer he would be stepping down in February 2020.

“This would create a Goliath in wealth management,” noted Mike Mayo, a Wells Fargo ana-

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lyst.

Online brokers, including Schwab and TD Ameritrade, have slashed trading fees to zero as they face insurgents such as stock-trading app Robinhood, which have chipped away at their dominance.

Charles Schwab, the founder and chairman of the eponymous group, told CNBC last month that consolidation in the brokering sector was a “logical conclusion” for an industry that had been struggling to compete against challengers.

Analysts have said in recent months that the shift towards zero trading commissions would ultimately force brokers to consolidate.

The latest round of cost-cutting over the past two months saw shares of online brokers, including TD Ameritrade, plunge.

The race to cut fees for trading shares comes just as the industry grapples with the pernicious effect of low interest rates, which cut the profits that brokers make from money sitting in customers’ @Businessdayng

accounts.

The business of US equity trading has also been upended by the growth of passive investing. Asset managers Fidelity and Vanguard have increased the number of exchange traded funds that investors can buy without paying a commission.

The battle for US retail investors has intensified as the record Wall Street bull market shows little sign of slowing. The S&P 500 has gained 24 per cent this year.

On Thursday, shares of Schwab climbed 11 per cent in pre-market trading to $49.69, while TD Ameritrade gained almost 25 per cent to $51.61 after CNBC first reported on the deal.

Schwab, which is already the biggest online brokerage with more than 10m active accounts, has pushed into asset management and doubled down on offering investment advice as fees from trading shares bleed away.

A combination of Schwab and TD Ameritrade would create a behemoth with $5tn in assets.

50

BUSINESS DAY

FT

Friday 22 November 2019

NATIONAL NEWS

Angola raises $3bn from yieldstarved bond investors IMF warns of ‘borrowing binge’ among already indebted economies Tommy Stubbington

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ngola has raised $3bn from its first bond sale since securing an IMF support package last year, in the latest demonstration that investors’ hunger for higher-yielding debt has spread into frontier markets.

The oil-rich African country, which has a debt pile that is close to 100 per cent of its GDP, attracted more than $8bn of orders for the 10- and 30-year debt. Buyers were drawn in by the chunky yields on offer — 8 per cent and 9.125 per cent respectively — and tentative signs that president João Lourenço’s economic turnround programme was bearing fruit.

Since taking over in 2017, Mr Lourenço has vowed to wean the country off its dependence on oil revenues while tackling the rampant corruption that set in under his predecessor José Eduardo dos Santos, who led Angola for 38 years.

“There has been a genuine change in Angola — a clear-out of the old guard and a more professional approach to running the public finances,” said Kieran Curtis, a fund manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments who bought bonds in the sale.

“It’s not an uncontroversial story because the debt stock is so high, but the yield is very attractive,” added Mr Curtis.

Maryam Khosrowshahi, a senior debt banker at Deutsche Bank, one of the banks that arranged the sale, said: “Angola came to market at a good time, when benchmark yields are still so low.”

Rock-bottom interest rates in developed economies have made it relatively easy for so-called frontier markets such as Angola to raise cash, prompting the IMF to warn of a “borrowing binge”. Debt issuance by frontier economies — a grouping of lower-rated emerging nations that typically lure investors by paying higher yields — is on course to equal 2017’s record of $38bn.

“There can be too much of a good thing,” the IMF said earlier this week.

“Countries that don’t put the money to good use may have trouble servicing their loans and find themselves at risk of default.”

Angola’s bond sale, its first this year, comes amid pressure to open up its economy after signing a $3.7bn credit facility with the IMF in December, the biggest ever such arrangement made by an African country. The country’s currency, the kwanza, has plunged since it was allowed to float freely last month, and is down roughly a third against the dollar this year.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest economy is struggling with dwindling output from its oilfields, which account for roughly 95 per cent of foreign revenue.

Can João Lourenço cure Angola of its crony capitalism?

“Their focus has been to diversify, but this is still an oil economy,” said Ms Khosrowshahi. Substantial dollar-denominated oil income is a comfort to bond investors who worry less about a mismatch between the government’s revenues and liabilities, she added.

Louis Bacon to shut Moore Capital hedge funds Closure to external money after three decades follows run of poor returns Ortenca Aliaj, Miles Kruppa in San Francisco and Laurence Fletcher

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ouis Bacon, the veteran hedge fund manager, is closing his flagship hedge funds to external money and stepping back from day-to-day trading at his 30-year-old Moore Capital Management, according to a letter sent to investors on Thursday.

The decision, which would mark one of the industry’s most high-profile retreats to date, follows years of diminished performance and outflows at Moore’s global macro hedge funds, which trade stocks, bonds, currencies and other financial instruments.

“Intense competition for trading talent coupled with client pressure on fees has led to a challenging business model for multi manager funds such as ours,” Mr Bacon wrote in a letter to investors seen by the Financial Times.

“Our move to a proprietary funded asset base will allow us to be more opportunistic in acquiring investment talent and more competitive with those whom have a ‘pass through’ structure.”

The New York-based firm, which expects to return most of its outside capital in the first quarter of next year, will consolidate its three flagship funds into one proprietary fund to manage internal money. The letter cited “disappointing results of these funds of the last few years,” but said that “our long term track record is one we remain proud of.”

Mr Bacon also told investors that he is scaling back his involvement to

allow “more personal time for a large family, philanthropic pursuits and to continue to develop a number of sports oriented properties.”

Moore is “not morphing into a family office as some others have done of late”, the letter added, and it intends to launch individual funds managed by its best performing portfolio managers. “These individual manager offerings will remain inside of Moore,” it said.* Over the past decade Moore’s assets under management have declined to $8.9bn at the end of last year, according to regulatory filings.

Returning money to outside investors would see Mr Bacon, 63, joining other prominent hedge fund managers such as Leon Cooperman‘s Omega Advisors and Michael Platt’s BlueCrest who have called time on external money in recent years, amid an increasing regulatory burden, pressure on fees, and a prolonged period of low interest rates that has frustrated many macro managers.

Raised in North Carolina, Mr Bacon began his trading career at Commodities Corporation in the 1980s, where he cut his teeth alongside future hedge fund stars Bruce Kovner and Paul Tudor Jones.

Mr Bacon is viewed by peers as one of the most successful traders of his generation, known for his ability to shift between positions based on macroeconomic judgments. He won early acclaim for making gains of 86 per cent in 1990 after betting on the crash of Japanese markets, and returning 45 per cent in 1992 when the European Exchange Rate Mechanism collapsed. www.businessday.ng

The sector was pioneered in east Africa by Kenya’s Safaricom and its dominant M-Pesa service © Reuters

Investors pour almost $400m into African fintech in a week

Interswitch, OPay and PalmPay are expanding payments networks across the continent Neil Munshi

I

nvestors have poured almost $400m into payments companies based in Nigeria in the past week, in a sign of how seriously venture capital firms are taking the opportunity to build financial networks across the continent.

OPay, the Africa-focused, Chinese-backed payments company founded by Opera, on Monday announced it had raised $120m from a group of investors including Sequoia Capital China and SoftBank Ventures Asia, following a $50m fundraising in June.

The news came just days after Visa announced a $200m investment in Lagos-based Interswitch and another local fintech company, PalmPay, said it had raised $40m in a round led by China’s Transsion.

“The growth in the payments space is probably like no other on the continent at the moment,” said Segun Agbaje, chief executive of Guaranty Trust Bank, Nigeria’s largest lender by customer base and a pioneer in digital payments.

“There is so much untapped potential . . . this is a space where people are growing 20-30 per cent, month on month — that tells you why the money is pouring in.”

The tally announced by the three companies in the past week is a significant slice of the total $1.2bn in venture capital raised across all of Africa last year, according to data from Partech Ventures.

All three companies suggested they would use the infusion of cash to expand across sub-Saharan Africa, where only a third of adults have bank accounts.

Each is aiming to become the first pan-African payments company, a goal that has been hamstrung by complicated foreign exchange controls, inefficient cross-border trade and complicated, diffuse regulatory regimes.

All are using Nigeria — the biggest economy in Africa — as a launch pad for their expansion.

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Nigeria’s central bank recently opened the gates for mobile money — a sector pioneered in east Africa by Kenya’s Safaricom and its dominant M-Pesa service — and is pushing towards a more cashless society. Roughly 95 per cent of transactions in Nigeria are still done in cash, and about 60m adults do not have bank accounts, representing a tantalising opportunity.

“When it comes to payments, the Nigerian market is probably big enough [to sustain a business]”, said Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s former ICT minister and now a partner at TLcom’s Africa-focused venture fund. “And it’s much easier to start here and expand to other parts of the continent than the other way around.”

Lagos has become a centre for the continent’s fintech sector in the years since Interswitch was founded in 2002. Interswitch built most of the mobile applications for Nigerian banks, creating the system through which digital payments run more smoothly — and are much more widely accepted — than in many developed economies.

The company has since become the dominant infrastructure through which digital payments are made in Nigeria, and has issued 19m of its pan-African Verve debit cards. But founder Mitchell Elegbe said the company has a broader goal, even as his home market expands, with Nigeria’s population having grown from 160m when Interswitch was founded to 200m today.

“Despite the growth that we’ve done, it’s like we’re chasing an accelerating vehicle on foot, so the opportunity in Nigeria is huge and it still remains,” he said. “I believe the opportunities in other African countries are similar [and] the [Visa] partnership allows us to replicate the same thing in multiple markets at the same time.”

Interswitch reported $15m in profits after tax in 2016, $19.2m in 2017 and $23.3m in 2018.

The company said Visa’s $200m @Businessdayng

investment valued it at more than $1bn, making it Africa’s first true homegrown ‘unicorn’, ahead of a long-gestating initial public offering in London that is expected early next year.

In March, Mastercard invested $300m in rival, Dubai-based, Network International, the largest payments processor in the Middle East and Africa, ahead of its London IPO. Interswitch is at the vanguard of a payments scene that also includes Opera, the Chinesebacked, Nor way-based web browser that launched OPay in Nigeria last year.

Its green-helmeted ORide motorcycle drivers are ubiquitous on Lagos’s crowded streets, ferrying people and goods, and the company has also moved into food delivery with OFood, and marketing for small businesses with OLeads.

All are essentially vehicles for its payments business, which it plans to expand across Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya using the infusion of cash.

OPay has been able to attract major investment in part because of the exponential growth of Lagos-based companies such as Paystack and Flutterwave, which has its own partnership with Visa and another with Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba’s Alipay to offer digital payments between China and Africa.

Iyinoluwa “E” Aboyeji, Flutterwave co-founder and one of the leaders of the Lagos tech scene, said global players were teaming up with domestic companies because they needed local expertise to gain access to Nigeria’s fastgrowing young population.

“When you consider that half of the world’s working population is going to be in Africa over the next 35 years, then you start looking at the total market opportunity differently because ultimately all those people can hopefully get jobs and make money . . . and spend money,” he said. “You’ll be the ultimate conduit for that.”

BUSINESS DAY

Friday 22 November 2019

51

FINANCIAL TIMES

COMPANIES & MARKETS

@ FINANCIAL TIMES LIMITED

Ireland to review fund liquidity rules after Woodford crisis Dublin backs call from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to consider regulatory overhaul

Siobhan Riding

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reland, Europe’s second-largest asset management hub, has backed calls by the City of London watchdog to review investment fund rules in the wake of the Neil Woodford scandal.

The Central Bank of Ireland, which regulates the country’s €2.9tn fund industry, plans to assess whether regulations governing fund liquidity risk are fit for purpose or whether new rules are needed to protect investors and preserve financial stability.

Liquidity risk, where investment funds are not able to sell assets quickly enough to reimburse fleeing investors, was propelled into the spotlight this year by the shock suspension — and subsequent wind-up — of the Woodford Equity Income fund, which sparked fury among investors.

Gerry Cross, director of policy and risk at the Central Bank of Ireland, said that events such as the Woodford crisis had “raised questions as to whether existing rules in respect of liquidity risk are sufficient”.

“It is important there should not be a mismatch between investors’ expectations and what a fund is able to deliver in terms of daily redemptions, particularly in times of stress,” Mr Cross said.

Although he said Ireland’s review was at an early stage and may not result in it recommending changes, his comments add weight to calls by Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, for fund liquidity rules to be overhauled.

The two watchdogs do not have the power to make high-level changes to fund rules — this would have to be done by the EU institutions under rules known as Ucits.

However, the Central Bank of Ireland is an influential voice at the European Securities and Markets Authority, the EU-wide regulator, which can issue guidelines clarifying the rules.

Esma has rejected calls to take action in response to the Wood-

ford crisis. “We need to be careful about the suggestion that Ucits has to be changed,” Steven Maijoor, Esma chairman, told the Financial Times this year. “It is important to emphasise that Ucits already establishes the principle that funds must be able to comply, at any time, with the obligation to redeem investors upon request.”

The crisis at Mr Woodford’s investment business was sparked after the former star stockpicker was unable to meet a surge in withdrawal requests due to his high exposure to hard-to-sell assets. The fund is being wound up with an initial distribution planned for January.

A similar liquidity crunch forced several UK property funds to temporarily close in the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit vote. GAM, the Swiss asset manager, also halted suspensions in a SFr7.3bn ($7.3bn) absolute return bond strategy in 2018 after investors attempted to redeem more than 10 per cent of its assets.

These problems occurred despite regulatory changes introduced since the financial crisis to make the fund industry more resilient. The Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, a vast package of rules introduced in 2013 to regulate Europe’s alternative fund industry, toughened up liquidity stress testing and reporting requirements for funds.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions, the global umbrella body for securities regulators, has also established standards on liquidity risk management in response to concerns from the Financial Stability Board about potential systemic risks linked to funds.

However, liquidity risk management rules are far less stringent in Europe compared with the US. Under reforms passed in 2016, US funds must classify their portfolios into four categories according to how quickly the assets could be sold and report this information publicly.

The Labour party promised that nearly 90 per cent of electricity would be renewable or low carbon in 10 years’ time © Reuters

Labour proposes £11bn oil and gas tax to pay for new green deal Opposition party’s manifesto waters down 2030 net zero emissions target

Jim Pickard, Camilla Hodgson and Nathalie Thomas

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abour announced a new windfall tax on oil and gas companies which the UK’s opposition party says will raise more than £11bn as part of its commitment to shift the UK to a low-carbon economy within the next decade.

The oil levy would be used to pay for a “just transition fund” providing an £11bn support package to help retrain 37,000 workers in the industry to “make the transition to a clean economy”.

Environmental protection was one of the central themes of the Labour manifesto announced on Thursday, underlining the party membership’s growing concern over the climate emergency.

Speaking at the manifesto launch in Birmingham the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn promised a new £250bn “green transformation fund”, all funded by borrowing, to pay for policies including millions of electric car loans, a mass household insulation programme and a fleet of new state-controlled offshore wind farms.

But the party has watered down a commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030. Instead the party is pledging to remove a “substantial” proportion of emissions from the UK economy by

2030, stopping short of the target agreed by delegates at its annual conference in September.

At the same time the party promised that nearly 90 per cent, not all, of electricity would be renewable or low carbon in 10 years’ time and only pledged to deliver 50 per cent of home heating from renewable and low-carbon sources by 2030, reflecting the difficulty in replacing millions of household gas boilers.

The proposals were nevertheless well received by green groups.

Professor Charlotte Burns, from the research group Brexit & Environment, said the proposals were “ambitious”, while Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace UK, welcomed the green emphasis in the document although she said it did not go far enough to tackle emissions from aviation.

Labour has stuck to previous pledges that it would renationalise National Grid and the energy networks — the pipes and wires that transport electricity and gas to homes and businesses. It would also take back into public hands the supply arms of the “Big Six” energy companies, including British Gas. The prospect of a higher tax regime sparked concerns from the UK’s North Sea industry which warned that any increase in taxes would thwart investment needed to recover the remaining oil and

gas in the region.

In d u s t r y re p re s e nt at i ve s warned it would also leave Britain more heavily reliant on imports as oil and gas would still be needed as the country transitions to a greener economy.

“Any increase in tax rates will drive investors away and damage the long-term competitiveness of the UK’s offshore oil and gas industry, threatening jobs and future tax revenues and needlessly damaging the UK economy,” said Gareth Wynn, spokesman for OGUK, a trade body representing North Sea operators.

But Labour argues the UK should have reaped greater tax revenues from North Sea operators over recent decades.

“Had the UK charged the same effective tax rate as the average rate charged by North Sea countries from 1992 to the present day, it would have collected an additional £117bn in taxes,” a Labour official said.

The party has compared UK tax rates with those raised by other North Sea countries; companies that produce oil and gas in the UK North Sea currently face a combined tax rate of 40 per cent compared with 50 per cent in the Netherlands and 78 per cent in Norway.

But oil and gas tax specialists said such comparisons were not comparing “apples with apples”.

most heavily traded equity security on the planet, with more than $15bn changing hands every day, leaving aside the various derivatives linked to the fund.

Mr Ross is also on the board of the Investment Company Institute, a trade organisation for the US asset management industry, and chairman of its ETF committee.

“Without question, Jim has been one of the most influential figures in the investment management industry,” Ron O’Hanley, State Street chief executive, said in a statement. “His role in creating many of the world’s first ETFs ensures he will go down in history as an instrumental player in per-

haps the most important product innovation the industry has seen.”

However, ETFs have become increasingly controversial in recent years, with some analysts and investors arguing that they make markets less efficient and may even cause or exacerbate crashes.

Others say that the dominance of State Street, Vanguard and BlackRock — and the likelihood that this will become even more entrenched given the benefits that scale gives in ETFs — may even be anti-competitive. Some academics have argued that given their big stakes in many companies, some may feel less of an impetus to compete, a theory known as “common ownership”.

State Street’s ‘Spider’ man takes an early bow Jim Ross to leave exchange traded fund industry after almost three decades Robin Wigglesworth

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im Ross, one of the most prominent people in the $6tn exchange-traded fund industry, is taking early retirement from his job as chairman of State Street’s pioneering ETF business.

The ETF market has exploded in size and diversity over the past decade, seizing market share from traditional, active fund managers thanks to the funds’ low expenses.

These listed, benchmark-mimicking vehicles offer investors exposure to a wide range of securities, and have become a vital tool for money managers who use them as building blocks for trades.

Though the first ETF was

launched in Canada, State Street created the first US version, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, in 1993.

It was nicknamed “Spider” after its acronym, which stands for Standard & Poor’s Depositary Receipts.

Mr Ross, 54, was part of the original SPDR team, having joined the Boston-based group in 1992 after a stint as an accountant at Ernst & Young, and has led the business since 2005. In 2016 he became chairman of SPDR, State Street’s now-$714bn ETF business, and will retire at the end of March.

“I’m not sailing off into the sunset, but I’ve been running hard for 27 years, so it feels like the right time to step back,” Mr Ross told the Financial Times. “It’s been a great www.businessday.ng

run, but there will be times when I’ll miss it.”

The SPDR business will continue to be led by State Street Global Advisors executive vice-president Rory Tobin. After a break, Mr Ross plans to explore opportunities in private equity, venture capital or financial technology, but does not intend to take any senior full-time positions at any State Street rivals, he said.

At the time Spider was launched, it was considered primarily a tool for institutional investors, a tradable version of the index-tracking funds that were starting to proliferate at the time. But today it manages nearly $280bn and is comfortably the

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@Businessdayng

52

Friday 22 November 2019

BUSINESS DAY

FT

ANALYSIS

US jury payouts leave insurers ‘facing $200bn hole’ Industry worried as the size and frequency of court awards from US juries soar Oliver Ralph and Robert Armstrong

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he global insurance industry has a new enemy: US juries.

Executives are increasingly fearful at the threat posed by juries handing out ever more generous awards to plaintiffs, covering everything from opioid overdoses to tainted talc, with insurance companies left to pick up the bill.

“Social inflation”, as the trend of juries making bigger payouts is known, is a hot topic for an industry facing a squeeze in profits and the need to bolster the reserves companies hold to fund payouts.

Rob Francis, who runs healthcare underwriting at ProAssurance, a US property and casualty insurer, reels off a list of this year’s payouts, including $230m a Baltimore hospital was to ordered to pay in July in the largest US malpractice award to date.

pact on the industry’s profits with certainty is difficult, says Meyer Shields, insurance analyst at KBW. “Court cases are different from one another and the data are slow to come in,” he says. What is certain is that “it is a huge deal”.

Big awards have a trickle-down effect, putting upwards pressure on smaller settlements, underwriters say. “The demands of the plaintiffs’ lawyers go up because the defendant has to fear [large] verdicts . . . that makes its way into day-to-day claims,” and from there into insurers’ profit margins, said Mr Francis.

Robert Reville, chief executive of Praedicat, a risk modelling agency, says that the pain for insurers has been deepened because just a decade ago there was a consensus corporate America faced little threat from juries.

“Ten years ago, the corporate community had a sense they had won the tort reform battle,” said Mr

‘Social inflation’ is the hottest topic for an industry facing a squeeze in profits

Insurers have seen “a tripling of verdicts over $10m over the past three years” in professional liability cases, he says.

The mix of explanations for the trend is eclectic, including a souring in the national mood towards big corporations, the financial firepower provided by specialist litigation companies and a shift in the political disposition of judges.

“There is a growing social mood against big business,” says the chief underwriter of one global insurer. “Juries think they can hold big companies to account without consequence.”

What is not in dispute is that insurers are on the back foot.

At a conference organised by Insurance Insider this month, Stephen Catlin, an industry veteran, reckoned the trend could ultimately blow a $200bn hole in global reserves.

A graphic with no description Third-quarter results from insurers offered evidence of the damage. Travelers, the $34bn US insurer, warned of an “increasingly challenging tort environment” as its profits fell sharply.

Bermuda-based Hiscox said it, too, was taking an increasingly cautious approach to its US business.

Transport companies with US exposure are beginning to feel the fallout. FirstGroup, the UK owner of Greyhound buses, last week alarmed shareholders by revealing a £59m charge to cover the rising cost of motor insurance.

Estimating the ultimate im-

Reville. “Since then the price of insurance has declined dramatically.

So you have 10 years of declining prices and 10 years of reserves being released, and insurers being deemed profitable. But over that time they have accumulated exposure.”

Bodily injury claims are proving a particularly expensive area for insurers, as plaintiffs and their lawyers go after employers as well as transport companies. This year, for example, Greyhound was told by an appeal court that it had to pay some $30m to a person injured in a 2013 crash.

According to data from Swiss Re, the median cost of the top 50 bodily injury claims in the US rose from around $28m in 2014 to just over $54m last year.

“We’re seeing claims for opioids, talc, repetitive head injuries caused by sports and even for loud noises in occupational settings,” Mr Reville says. In a report called “Nine newly known unknowns,” his firm argued that “the next opioids” are antibiotics, diesel and sugar, each of which leading to liabilities in the tens or hundreds of billions.

Line chart of Median of top 50 single plaintiff bodily injury verdicts in the US ($m) showing Social inflation is leading to higher liability claims As those vying for the Democratic presidential nomination call for companies to broaden their purpose beyond profits, analysts say that the headache insurers face over payouts is in part a legacy of Barack Obama’s election. www.businessday.ng

Why US farmers are falling out of love with Donald Trump As impeachment gathers momentum, anger over ethanol policy threatens the president in the Corn Belt Gregory Meyer

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hree stickers decorate a fire door inside the Siouxland Energy Cooperative of north-west Iowa. One with a green heart declares “I Love Ethanol”.

Another shows a cartoon character urinating on the word Opec. A third says, “write your congressman”.

Siouxland is a biofuel refinery, taking corn by the truckload from some of the nation’s best land and brewing it into ethanol for car engines. Built with local farmers’ capital and political muscle, these plants have established a market for excess grain supplies over the past 15 years and helped cut US reliance on foreign oil.

But this autumn, the plant laid idle for six weeks, one of dozens to have slowed or halted their operations even as demand for transport fuel creeps higher.

Plant owners blame government waivers that allow smaller oil refineries to ignore quotas requiring biofuel use. The policy shift has capped demand growth and pressured prices for corn and soyabeans. The resulting pain for farmers is now creating a problem for Donald Trump.

“We pretty much supported President Trump in the last election,” says Kelly Nieuwenhuis, one of 391 local farmers with a stake in Siouxland. “I know the polls say he has still got a lot of strong [farmer] support, but I’ve heard a lot of people that won’t support him again because of biofuels.”

The anger highlights the Trump administration’s difficulty satisfying rival constituencies in the Corn Belt and oilfields. The number of “small refinery exemptions”, or SREs, has shot up since 2017 and shaved 7.4 per cent from the government biofuel target in the latest round, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The government says low-volume oil refineries are entitled to such waivers if they can prove hardship from biofuels quotas.

Marimekko chart showing the distribution of farm incomes from 2010 to 2019. More than third of farm income comes from the government in 2019 This obscure policy shift, conducted in the shadow of national news about impeachment, is now weakening Mr Trump’s standing

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in a core voting bloc ahead of the 2020 elections.

For many farmers, the waivers are the final straw after a year of suffering the costs of a trade war with China, an extremely wet planting season and tougher loan terms. Scrambling to address their complaints, the White House has instead only intensified the outrage.

There are big stakes at play.

Two in every five bushels of an estimated 347m tonne corn crop will be used to make ethanol this year, the Department of Agriculture estimates, so lower demand would be bearish for crop prices.

The biofuels industry is concentrated in several Midwestern states that backed Mr Trump in 2016, including Iowa, Indiana, Missouri and Nebraska.

Federal law enabled the industry’s growth. The 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard mandated the annual use of at least 15bn gallons of corn ethanol and billions of gallons more for biodiesel and other renewable fuels. A vocal coalition of biofuels and grain trade groups have, with mixed success, used lobbying, campaign contributions and the courts to defend the standard in the face of attacks from the oil industry.

Before the 2016 presidential election, Mr Trump backed the rules as a tool for US energy independence. “I am there with you 100 per cent,” he told a large crowd at the 2016 Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit. Earlier this year he abolished rules that had restricted ethanol blending with petrol — delighting the world’s largest biofuels industry.

But the relationship soured on August 9 when Mr Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency let 31 smaller oil refineries off the hook from their biofuels blending obligations, defying complaints about the 35 exempted in 2018 and 19 in 2017. In total the moves lowered the biofuels target by 4bn gallons, EPA data shows.

The blows fell hardest on one of the most Trump-friendly slices of America. Sioux County, home to Siouxland Energy, ranks among the nation’s top 10 counties for corn production. It also gave Mr Trump more than 80 per cent of its vote in 2016. Another ethanol plant 30 miles away remains closed after shutting down in July, a mound of yellow corn outside. @Businessdayng

Map and bar chart showing ‘small refinery exemptions’ policy hits US farm belt Farmers were already frustrated by the decline in soyabean, sorghum, ethanol and corn-based livestock feed exports as a result of the US trade war with China.

In north-west Iowa’s fourth congressional district, goods exports to China fell by $558m in 2018 because of higher tariffs, the most of any district in the country, according to the US-China Business Council.

The White House has compensated farmers for the cost of the trade war with an initial cash assistance programme worth $12bn last year and a further $16bn in a scheme due to end in January.

More than 1m farm operations have received bailouts. “Our great Farmers will recieve (sic) another major round of ‘cash’, compliments of China Tariffs, prior to Thanksgiving,” Mr Trump tweeted on Monday.

This year 30 per cent of farm income will come from government payments and insurance indemnities backed by Washington, the highest share in at least a decade, USDA economists forecast.

Yet Mr Nieuwenhuis, who farms 2,100 acres with his brothers, dismisses the government payments as a “spit in the bucket”.

“We [have] worked for years and years and years to build relationships and grow markets,” he says.

“And they can be destroyed with the stroke of a pen in the political realm.”

Mr Trump is trying to contain the blowback from the latest biofuel waivers. He convened cabinet officials and Midwestern politicians to work out a plan to satisfy farmers. On October 4 the EPA — the head of which reports directly to the president — announced a plan to maintain the small refinery waivers while also promising that more than 15bn gallons of ethanol would be blended in 2020 as mandated.

Biofuels groups had been briefed in advance: the Iowa Corn Growers Association jumped the gun with a laudatory press release 17 minutes before the EPA made its announcement. Yet when the fine print appeared days later, farmers’ excitement turned to fury. “No more Iowa nice. Now it’s Iowa pissed,” said Craig Floss, chief executive of the ICGA.

Friday 22 November 2019

Harvard Business Review

BUSINESS DAY

53

ManagementDigest

Breaking down the barriers to innovation Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Rahul Nair and Natalie Painchaud

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o catalyze innovation, companies invest billions in internal venture capital, incubators and accelerators. Yet, according to a McKinsey survey, 94% of executives are dissatisfied with their firms’ innovation performance. Why? We believe it’s because companies have failed to address a huge underlying obstacle: the routines and rituals that stifle innovation.

Fortunately, it’s possible to “hack” this problem. Drawing on the behavioral-change literature and on our experiences working with dozens of global companies, we’ve devised a practical way to break bad habits. Our approach involves setting up interventions we call BEANs, shorthand for behavior enablers, artifacts and nudges. Behavior enablers are tools or processes that make it easier for people to do something different. Artifacts — things you can see and touch — support the new behavior.

And nudges, a tactic drawn from behavioral science, promote change through indirect suggestion and reinforcement.

One of the biggest impediments standing in the way of innovation is organizational inertia. As an executive once said to us, businesses are “organized to deliver predictable, reliable results — and that’s exactly the problem.” A major paradox managers face is that the systems that enable success within today’s model reinforce behaviors that are inconsistent with discovering tomorrow’s model.

If you don’t address inertia, efforts to eliminate other blockers won’t work. Give people more time in an environment stifled by inertia, and they’ll simply have more time to do things the old way; give them new skills, and those will go to waste if they don’t fit with existing routines. Fortunately, you can combat both inertia and other blockers with BEANs. In our research we collected some 130 examples of interventions that promoted better innovation habits, which we found either at clients we were working with or by reading through case studies from the Innovation Leader information service and corporate cultural documents compiled by Tettra, a startup.

Then we and a team from Innosight, a management consulting firm, analyzed those interventions and tested them at a variety of organizations. We determined that successful BEANs typically are: — SIMPLE: Interventions that

are easy to adopt and remember gain traction much more quickly.

— FUN: When an activity is engaging and social, it’s intrinsically rewarding, which makes people more likely to do it.

— TRACKABLE: The ability to monitor performance and compare it against that of others is a powerful motivator.

— PRACTICAL: The best BEANs are smoothly integrated into existing meetings and processes and don’t require major changes or entirely new routines.

— REINFORCED: People often need physical and digital reminders to keep using the new habits.

— ORGANIZATIONALLY CONSISTENT: Effective BEANs don’t encourage people to do one thing if the company punishes them for that behavior or rewards them for something else.

A good example of a BEAN comes from the Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate.

Every year the company holds a celebration honoring innovation accomplishments across its sprawling collection of business units. One of the most coveted awards given at that gathering is called Dare to Try. As the name connotes, it goes to a team that failed but in an intelligent way.

Dare to Try is a substantial program, attracting hundreds of applications annually. Promotions for it help nudge innovative behaviors like embracing

risk and tolerating failure. The award itself — a trophy — and the high-visibility public summary of the event are artifacts that effectively reinforce Tata’s innovation culture.

While many BEANs have sprung up organically, we’ve created a three-step process companies can use to develop them. Ideally, you would appoint a group of change agents (we’ll call it a culture team) tasked with developing your BEAN. 1. SPECIFY THE DESIRED CHARACTERISTICS: The team should start by outlining what kind of organizational traits it wants to develop. For example, it might describe a culture that is agile, learning-oriented and experimental. It should then list behaviors under each of them.

For example, under “experimental” one could add aspirational statements such as “We rapidly test new ideas.”

2. IDENTIFY BLOCKERS: Next, the team should look for things that may get in the way of the innovative behaviors. To uncover these, members can sit in on staff meetings, conduct diagnostic surveys and interview employees one-on-one.

Another way to identify specific changes to implement is to gather groups of employees and ask them to complete two sentences: “Wouldn’t it be great if we … ” (which surfaces the behaviors) and “But we don’t because … ” (which helps pinpoint the blockers).

3. COME UP WITH INTERVENTIONS: Last, the culture team should design ways to eliminate the blockers. To get things going, it can facilitate workshops with senior leaders. After discussing the desired behaviors and their blockers with them, participants can break into small groups for structured brainstorming. Each group should be provided with examples of BEANs from other organizations for inspiration and tasked with devising new ones, specifying the behaviors sought, the habits blocking them, and the enablers and nudges that would help employees break through them. The participants can then reassemble to review the proposed BEANs and vote on what to implement.

A few words of caution: Companies seeking to spark innovation often copy artifacts they see in other innovative companies. Maybe they install a wellstocked cafeteria with bright colors or provide scooters. But quick-and-easy artifacts that are bolted on and don’t connect with day-to-day behaviors won’t work. Consider the case of a socially oriented venture in Cambodia that employs thousands of poor artisans. One silkworm farm connected to the venture had put out a bright-blue box and invited workers to leave in it feedback and ideas “for you, for your colleagues and for your well-being.” Sounds inspirational, right?

There was just one prob-

lem. The rusted lock on the box betrayed that it hadn’t been opened recently — or maybe ever. Such “innoganda” — innovation propaganda — just serves as a painful reminder of the things leadership is not doing.

Even the best BEAN can turn into innoganda without the right support. Once you have come up with your own, make sure to form a team tasked with encouraging cultural change and teaching employees how to innovate. Having executives experience the new mindset and behaviors through special initiatives (such as workshops on digital concepts) will also help make the programs practical, authentic and organizationally consistent.

By embracing BEANs, companies can finally see the gap close between leaders’ innovation goals and reality. When the people in your organization were children, they were brimming with curiosity and creativity.

Your job is to bring that youthful spirit back to life.

Scott D. Anthony is a senior partner of the growth strategy consulting firm Innosight and co-author of “Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future.” Paul Cobban is the chief data and transformation officer at DBS. Rahul Nair is a manager at Innosight. Natalie Painchaud is the director of learning at Innosight.

Women in Business

BUSINESS DAY Friday 22 November 2019

By Kemi Ajumobi

MARY AKPOBOME

Onyeche Tifase

Chief Operating Officer of HBCL ary Akpobome is the Chief Operating Officer of HBCL Investment Services Plc, a private Investments company.

Prior to her appointment to HBCL Investment Services Plc, Mary was the Executive Director, Business Banking overseeing all Corporate, Commercial, Special Projects, Intervention Schemes, Multilaterals, Agriculture and Export Businesses of Heritage Bank.

A Fellow of the Institute of Credit Administrators, Mary holds an MBA from the University of Lagos and a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre Arts from the University of Benin, Edo State, Nigeria. She is an Alumnus of Lagos Business School, London Business School and INSEAD (France); Mary has attended courses at Stanford Graduate School, Harvard Business School, Kellogg Executive Education and well as IMD (Switzerland).

In 2015, following the acquisition of Enterprise Bank Limited by Heritage Bank Plc, Mary was appointed the Acting Managing Director of Enterprise Bank Limited. Her solid experience in the management of people and resources was instrumental in stabilizing the operations of the bank, improving its service orientation and preparing it for a seamless integration with Heritage Bank Plc. A consummate Banker with over 30 years cognate experience and vast proficiency and skills in Credit Management, Commercial and Retail strategies, Mary began her banking career with Citizens International Bank serving in different departments before joining Platinum Bank Ltd in 2001 and rose to the position of Executive Director Designate in 2008 overseeing the Service Bank of Bank PHB. In 2009, Mary was part of the Executive Team of the core investor that acquired the former Societie Generale Bank. An astute manager of people and resources, Mary is a team leader with extensive experience in the private and public sectors.

Akpobome is also a member of the Institute of Directors, Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland and Nigeria.

For her, Banking is a knowledge based industry, and you can get customers literally

Managing Director/CEO, Siemens Nigeria

M

eating out of your palms if you understand their business. “They walk into your office because they want their problems solved, they want to grow their businesses.

When you understand their businesses, their sectors, then you understand how to add value to them which is where the knowledge comes in. Customer will stick to where they can get that extra commitment.

An excellent spirit in everything that you do is being able to see through situations.”

Mary said.

She has more to say about the banking industry. “Banking is a service industry. Survey has shown that among all the various ways customers use to decide who to bank with, the highest is service. So customers want the right service, at the right time. You make a promise of service to a customer; he also makes a promise of service to his customer.”

She revealed.

Mary is also the Founder, The Purple Girl Foundation. The Purple Girl Foundation is a private organisation solely set up to provide opportunities and support for enhancing the education of female children in Nigeria.

Its primary focus is giving young girls from underprivileged backgrounds, who struggle amid various disadvantages, a chance to improve their lot through educational support.

They work with indigent female children at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels because they believe that every girl deserves the chance to make a difference in their lives and by extension, the society.

“Poverty remains the most important factor for determining whether a girl can access education. The Purple Girl Foundation was borne out of a desire to provide opportunities for enhancing education for the girl-child amid these disadvantages. Akpobome stated adding that “our main emphasis is on providing educational support to female children from indigent families at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels.”

In Mary’s words, “Life has taught me to be real to myself, that I should be kind to people, that I should be there for people, because people have been there for me”.

O

nyeche Tifase is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Siemens Nigeria, a position she assumed in 2014.

She is the first Nigerian to hold that position. She is also a Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and the President of the Nigerian-German Chamber of Commerce.

Siemens is a global powerhouse focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the world’s largest producers of energy-efficient, resourcesaving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of systems for power generation and transmission as well as medical diagnosis. In infrastructure and industry solutions, the company plays a pioneering role.

Siemens has been active in Nigeria since the 1950s, and established its first Representative Office in the country in 1970.

Today, more than 140 employees operate from Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja as well as project sites around the country.

Onyeche Tifase graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Electronics Engineering from the University of Nottingham in 1999. In 2001, she completed her master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge Tifase started her career with Siemens in 2001 as an Electrical engineer in the Power Distribution Division of Siemens UK and thereafter moved to other roles in power transmission & distribution, sales and marketing divisions in Siemens Germany and Siemens USA. She came back to Nigeria in 2006 and worked with Accenture Nigeria in the area of management consulting up till 2009 before returning to Siemens as Deputy General Manager, Medium Voltage and Transformers for Siemens Ltd Nigeria.

She became the first Nigerian Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Siemens Nigeria effective November 1, 2014. In July 2018, she was appointed Vice-chairman alongside Niyi Yusuf at Nigerian Economic Summit Group. She was previously a Non-Executive Director of the company.

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Sharing on Siemens, she says “Siemens has a vast portfolio of products, systems, and services providing solutions all the way from gas to generation, transmission, distribution, smart grids, metering, and revenue collection, and we seek to use our best practices from around the world to resolve the challenges that investors face along the entire power sector value chain.”

She further adds saying “we have focused on turning our strategy into one where we are not just seen as an equipment provider but as a solution provider, partner, and advisor for investors in the power sector.”

On the role digitalisation plays in Nigeria, Onyeche says it plays a significant role and as such cannot be ignored. According to her, “Firstly, companies can leverage the internet on things to manage, operate and maintain their assets more efficiently. Secondly, entrepreneurs can increase their revenue and reduce cost with digital solutions and, in that way, expand and create jobs. Plus, Africans have the right mind-set for it. They are passionate about the latest technical innovations and embrace them as fast as possible, from mobile phones and all kinds of apps to digital solutions in manufacturing.”

While speaking at the recently concluded WIMBIZ annual conference themed Shaping The Future, Strategizing To Win, she was on the panel that discussed the topic: The Imposter Syndrome-Myth or Truth? And her story was truly inspiring.

She shared on being in a field not common to women and even at work; she was often the only woman in the room in executive meetings dominated by men.

What inspired me in her narrative was that, she never allowed being the only female deter her from achieving her goals and making positive impact when the need arose. Being efficient on duty earned her the topmost position in the organisation.

Work has to be done, she is capable and therefore the work gets done. It isn’t about gender but how efficient you are. What was truly riveting in all she said was that, she never allowed herself to be silenced.

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