MONDAY 12TH APRIL 2021

Banks’ Impairment Charges Soar by 113% to N228bn W’Bank insists on subsidies’ removal, unified exchange rate Goddy Egene in Lagos and Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja In an apparent move to reduce the negative impact of COVID-19 on their risks assets, nine banks have significantly

increased their impairment charges to N288.182 billion in 2020. The provisioning showed a jump of 113 per cent compared with N135 billion recorded in 2019.

An impairment charge

usually reflects a fall in value or worse-than-expected performance of the asset.

While banks increased their lending partly due to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s policy on loan-to-

deposit ratio (LDR), which is put at 65 per cent, the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted economic activities, is expected to affect most risk assets.

THISDAY checks showed

that the nine banks that increased their impairment charges are: Access Bank Plc; Ecobank Transnational Incorporated Plc; FCMB Group Plc; Fidelity Bank Plc; Guaranty Trust Bank Plc;

Sterling Bank Plc; Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc; United Bank for Africa Plc and Zenith Bank Plc. Besides, the World Bank has sustained pressure on the Continued on page 11

Agbakoba Urges Govs to Comply with Judgment on Judicial Autonomy... Page 10 Monday 12 April, 2021 Vol 26. No 9500. Price: N250

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South-east Govs Establish Ebube Agu, Regional Security Outfit, to Rout Criminals Ask security agencies to submit requirements to fight crime Restate ban on open grazing Amby Uneze in Owerri South-east governors yesterday rolled out a raft of policy decisions, including the establishment of a regional security outfit, ‘Ebube Agu,’ to combat the security challenges facing the zone.

The outfit, with headquarters at Enugu, will complement the efforts of federal security agencies in tackling the security challenges in the region.

The governors, in a communiqué issued in Owerri at the end of a meeting

asked the heads of security agencies in the zone to draw up a comprehensive list of their logistics and material needs that will enhance their efficiency in combating the security challenges in the zone, so that the governors could provide them.

The meeting was the first gathering of the governors since last week’s attacks by gunmen who invaded the headquarters of the state police command, torching about 100 Continued on page 11

COVID-19 Vaccination Low Turnout Hits FCT, Taraba, Abia, Seven Others

First phase ends April 16 nationwide

Our Correspondents As the target date given by the federal government for states to end the first phase of COVID-19 vaccination approaches, the turnout for the exercise in many states has remained low, THISDAY’s investigation has revealed.

THISDAY gathered that the states are expected to end the administration of the first dose of the vaccine on April 16 so that those who received the first jab will begin to receive the second dose of the vaccine thereafter.

Continued on page 11

ROYAL VISIT...

Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III (left), and former Governor of Ogun State, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, during the visit of the monarch to the former governor in Abeokuta…yesterday

743 Delegates Decide South-west PDP Zonal Leaders Today...Page 8

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Group News Editor Ejiofor Alike Email Ejiofor.Alike@thisdaylive.com, 08066066268

SIXTY HEARTY CHEERS… L-R: Wife of Edo State governor, Mrs. Betsy Obaseki; wife of Oniru of Iru Land, Mrs. Mariama Abisogun; Oniru of Iru Land, Oba Omogbolahan-Lawal Abisogun; Senior Pastor, Trinity House, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo; and former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, at the thanksgiving service to mark the 60th birthday of Ighodalo in Lagos…yesterday sunday adigun

743 Delegates Decide South-west PDP Zonal Leaders Today Chuks Okocha in Abuja A total of 743 delegates approved by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will today in Osogbo elect the party’s South-west zonal leaders.

The NWC has also released the list of members of the Election Committee and the Election Appeal Committee.

According to a statement containing the delegate list signed by the National Organising Secretary of the party, Col Austin Akobundu

(rtd), Oyo State has a total of 171 delegates, while Ogun State has 114; Osun State, 130; Ekiti State, 115; and Lagos State, 101.

Akobundu named the Benue State governor, Dr. Samuel Ortom, as chairman of the election committee, while Senator Sandy Onoh, Ogun Otemabore and Ireruoke Edward will serve as members.

Senator Samuel Anyanwu will serve as secretary.

The party also appointed an election appeal committee headed by Chief Okey Ezenwa who will serve as chairman,

Tinubu’s Supporters Counter Kperogi on former Gov’s Health Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja The Tinubu Support Group(TSG) at the weekend, faulted and countered statements made by a newspaper columnist, Prof.

Farooq Kperogi, casting aspersions on the state of health of the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola Tinubu.

In a statement issued in Abuja, the Head of Media and Publicity of TSG, Mr. Oluwatosin Johnson, denied what he described as Kperogi's wild claims and urged him to uphold the ethics of journalism practice without being mischievous.

Oluwatosin condemned Kperogi's hypothetical submission, describing his narratives as fallacious and idiotic.

The group said it was shocked by Kperogi's “curious and spurious allegations” claims, declaring that Tinubu is medically sound and fit

to undertake any national assignments whatsoever.

"Kperogi appears to have his facts or information mixed up somewhere. He must be confusing someone else with Tinubu. The national leader has been enjoying and continues to enjoy sound health to the utter shame of his detractors," the group said.

While urging Nigerians to shun falsehood surrounding the state of Tinubu’s health, the group said Kperogi's mischief should be viewed from the prism of his planting of fake news about Tinubu's health in cyberspace for the very intent of later citing same as the source of this information to misinform Nigerians about the former governor’s health.

The group admonished those it accused of playing evil politics with human health to repent and turn a new leaf, adding that no human being has the key over any other's life or death except God.

Mr. Roland Najomoh, secretary, while Clement Okaredir will serve as a member.

Following the supremacy battle between Oyo State Governor, Mr. Seyi Makinde, and a former governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayo Fayose, the venue for the election was changed from Ibadan to Osogbo to ensure fairness and avoid giving any advantage to either of the two leaders of the party in the region.

Both have been at loggerheads over the leadership of the party in the Southwest, supporting opposing

candidates.

While Makinde is said to be sponsoring Mr. Taofeek Arapaja, a former deputy governor of Oyo State, Fayose is said to be backing Mr. Eddy Olafeso, a former governorship aspirant in Ondo State and the immediate past chairman of the party in the zone.

The feud between Makinde and Fayose was responsible for the delay in the conduct of the party’s congress in the South-west zone.

The NWC had intervened severally to ensure a consensus candidate for the chairmanship

position to no avail.

Meanwhile, Arapaja and Olafeso have been cleared to contest the party’s top post in the region. Also cleared are Mr. Rahman Olokaniron and Mr. Jenvo Bunni for the position of zonal secretary.

For the office of zonal treasurer, those cleared are Mr. Ogunje Samson and Mr. Ojo Michael, while the candidates for the zonal organising secretary are Mr. Amuwa Adegbenro and Mr. Faisu Adewele.

The candidates cleared for zonal publicity secretary are

Mr. Olusanya Adefarari and Mr. Fadaka Ayodele, while Mr. Adewoyin Babatunde and Mr. Philip Okubode were cleared to contest for the position of zonal financial secretary.

Mr. Babatunde Samuel and Mr. Muniru Kukouye were cleared to contest for the office of zonal legal adviser, while those cleared for the zonal auditor are Mr. Dominic Adegbola, Mr. Balogun Ayuba and Mr. Adeolu Adewunmi.

For the office of zonal woman leader, Ms. Modinat Adedibu and Ms. Abimbola Balogun were cleared.

Sultan Urges Nigerians to Embrace Inter-religious Harmony Tells Muslims to look out for crescent of Ramadan Ibrahim Oyewale in Lokoja The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammed Sa’ad Abubakar III, at the weekend charged Nigerians to embrace interreligious harmony to ensure peace in the country.

He has also directed Muslims to look out for the crescent (moon) of Ramadan from today.

Abubakar, at the inauguration of a 1,800-seat capacity Anyigba Central Mosque built by a former Governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, also prayed that the excellent relationship between Muslims and Christians in the state would continue to be strengthened to ensure peace not only in Kogi but the entire country.

He thanked the people of Kogi State for the interreligious harmony in the state and urged other Nigerians to emulate it.

The sultan, who is the

head of the Muslims in Nigeria, called on Muslims to see the building of mosques as a way of moulding spiritual characters of the upcoming generations.

He said: "I am very happy to see the mutual relationship between Muslims and Christians in Kogi State because for a leadership of Christians community to be in attendance when a mosque is being commissioned clearly shows the understanding, love and togetherness that has bound them in the state.

"This has shown what we should do as one community created by God Almighty and it is high time we learnt from the relationship that exists in Anyigba between the Christians and the Muslims faith.

"We prayed that this relationship will continue to strengthen so that we can have peace not only in Kogi

but the entire country at large."

The sultan commended Idris for building the mosque, saying that it attested to the fact that the edifice must have been conceived over time and not an idea that began now.

Earlier, Idris had said his charity and community development projects were part of his way of showing appreciation to God for His love and blessings.

He stated that his involvement was not because he had too much money but because “God has been good to me all through my life. I know I cannot pay Him for his superlative mercies to me”.

Also speaking during the occasion, the Bishop of Idah Catholic Diocese, Most Rev. Anthony Adaji, who led the clergymen drawn from all Christian denominations across Kogi East Senatorial District, commended the

former governor for his decision to advance the worship of God. He tasked Nigerians to always see themselves as brothers and sisters, saying part of the reasons, why crises and insecurity continued to linger in Nigeria, is the high level of indoctrination in places of worship.

The ultra-modern Anyigba Mosque in Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi has an auditorium, offices, as well as 30 male and 50 female toilets. It also has a school and was built on a 1.3-hectare of land.

Meanwhile, the sultan has directed Muslims to look out for the crescent (moon) to herald the commencement of Ramadan from today.

Abubakar, in a statement yesterday by the Chairman, Advisory Committee on Religious Affairs, Sultanate Continued on page 11

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SECURING THE SOUTH-EAST...

L-R: Governors Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu), Willie Obiano (Anambra), David Umahi (Ebonyi), Senator Hope Uzodimma (Imo), and Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia); President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Prof. George Obiozor; and Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Mr. J.O. Egbunike, after the South-east security summit in Owerri…yesterday

Agbakoba Urges Govs to Comply with Judgment on Judicial Autonomy Alex Enumah in Abuja A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), has urged governors to comply with the judgment of a Federal High Court that recognised the financial autonomy of the judiciary in order to save the country from imminent chaos.

Courts nationwide have been grounded since last Tuesday following an indefinite strike by the Judiciary Staff Union

of Nigeria (JUSUN) to protest the refusal of state governments to implement the financial autonomy policy for the judiciary.

Already, the federal government is implementing the policy while President Muhammadu Buhari had last year signed Executive Order 10 for the enforcement of financial autonomy in the states.

However, the states are yet to obey both the court order and the executive order leading to the indefinite strike embarked

on by the judiciary workers.

Reacting to the development, Agbakoba lamented that the strike could have been avoided if the state governments had complied with the court order.

In a letter to the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors' Forum (NGF) and Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Agbakoba, urged the governors to enforce the court's decision in the interest of justice and the country.

In the letter, dated April

11, Agbakoba expressed sadness by what he described as an avoidable strike, adding that the industrial action has brought a stress on the judiciary.

He said: "A simple way out is for state governors to observe the rule of law and obey judgments of the court. Sections 81 (3) and 121 (3) of the Constitution of Nigeria grant financial autonomy to the federal and the state’s judiciaries.

"This has been confirmed by courts in the following cases:

“1. Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria Vs National Judiciary Council and Governors of the 36 states in Suit No: FHC/ABJ/ CS/667/13 2. Olisa Agbakoba Vs FG, the NJC and National Assembly Suit No: FHC/ ABJ/CS/63/2013 and 3. Olisa Agbakoba Vs AG, Ekiti State and two Others in Suit No: NAD/56/2013.

"President Buhari has affirmed the decisions of the courts by issuing Executive Order 10 of 2020, in the exercise of his

powers under Section 5 of the Constitution to ensure execution and maintenance of the constitution which includes enforcement of decisions of the court.

"State governors should please enforce the decisions of the court and save the country this chaos.”

He said JUSUN is absolutely correct to pursue a policy of financial independence of the courts guaranteed by the constitution and affirmed by three decisions of superior courts of Nigeria.

Kano Killer-Drink Contains Terrorism Chemical, Says NAFDAC Culprits arrested Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja The National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has found out that the chemical added to the killer flavoured drink that led to the death of three persons in Kano State contained ‘Hyroxylamine,’ used for terrorism.

It said all the merchants of the deadly chemicals and additives had been apprehended while further investigation continued.

The Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, in a statement yesterday, signed by NAFDAC's Resident Media Consultant, Sayo Akintola, warned Nigerians against adding chemicals and additives to food and drinks to enhance the taste.

She stated that such practices could result in severe illness and even death.

On the recent Kano incident where three persons reportedly died as a result of their consumption of dangerous chemicals used as additives,

Adeyeye said a preliminary result of the agency’s investigation indicated that the additive chemical was hydroxylamine.

"Having tested the addictive chemical, it was discovered to be hydroxylamine. It’s poison.

“Sometimes it’s used for terrorism. This is very sad because it involved people dying," she said.

Adeyeye said the investigators found an additive that was kept in a transparent freezer bag.

She said that there was another unknown chemical that was sold as a food additive.

"This chemical for 25 Kg bag was supposed to be sold for N30,000. One of the merchants got it for N3,000 and sold it to another merchant for N7,000. The merchant that got it for N7,000 thought it was Dantsami (Hausa name for “something sour”) that they normally use and tested to confirm that truly it was Dantsami. Dantsami is what is used in some parts of Northern Nigeria to make drinks sour.

"A twenty-five kilogrammes bag of the unknown chemical was also sent to the agency's laboratory in Kaduna for testing," she said.

According to her, shortly after the news about the Kano incident was received

by NAFDAC, six directorates of the agency launched a probe into the incident.

She added that internal checks revealed that only two of the five flavoured drinks identified in the incident were registered by NAFDAC while three were not on the agency’s database.

According to her, samples of the chemicals and additives that were added while preparing the flavoured drinks for consumption were collected and taken to NAFDAC's laboratory in Kaduna for testing.

She said further testing was conducted at the agency’s central laboratory in Lagos for confirmation. ‘’We have five flavoured drinks. Two were registered while three were not. Any food that is unregistered is

not guaranteed by NAFDAC. "It’s fake food. It was most likely smuggled into the country,” she said.

Adeyeye said the agency tested all the food samples, adding that there were E-Coli bacteria in some of the samples.

She expressed surprise that E-Coli bacteria could get into powder.

The D-G said the preliminary report of the agency had been submitted to the Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje.

She said that the Pharmacovigilance Directorate of the agency had sent an alert to all its 36 state offices of NAFDAC and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to mount surveillance on the unregistered products and mop up the killer chemical.

She added that the chemical did not pass through NAFDAC as there were no records at the Chemical Evaluation and Research Directorate to suggest that permission was given to anyone to import the chemical.

According to her, internal checks at the Ports Inspection

Directorate revealed that the chemical was not imported through the ports. ‘’Definitely, it was smuggled into the country,’’ she said, noting that before any chemical can be legally imported into Nigeria, full authorisation and permit must be obtained from NAFDAC to ensure that no dangerous chemicals are brought into the country and used to the detriment of the Nigerian people. ‘’For safety and security concerns, NAFDAC does end-to-end monitoring for all chemicals. We request distribution and utilisation patterns before we give importers permits to import chemicals. We must know who you have sold the chemicals to in your report. These are the things you must clarify to us before we give approval for a permit to clear chemical consignments,” she said.

Adeyeye regretted that three fatalities were recorded from the Kano incident with many people having their health compromised.

She said it was heart-

warming to note that all the merchants of the deadly chemicals and additives had been apprehended while further investigation continued. ‘’We are very particular about food additives, about the temperature at which food can be kept, or about the expiration date of food. If all of these are violated, then there could be foo She stated that adding chemicals and other substances either to enhance the food or change its form can be dangerous, especially when NAFDAC can’t verify the source and content of such additives.

Adeyeye said NAFDAC was working with the Kano State Government with a view to preventing the reoccurrence of March 11, 2021 incident.

She said NAFDAC would be working with the Kano State task force under the Federal Task Force on Counterfeit and Fake Drugs and Unwholesome Processed Foods, which is domiciled in NAFDAC, and Nigeria Consumers Protection Agency in Kano.

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PAGE ELEVEN COVID-19 VACCINATION LOW TURNOUT HITS FCT, TARABA, ABIA, SEVEN OTHERS Statistics obtained from the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) showed that some states such as Lagos, Ekiti, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Katsina, Yobe, Kwara, Niger, Adamawa, Gombe, Jigawa, and Kaduna have vaccinated between 60 per cent and 111 per cent of the

targeted population under the first phase.

The statistics, however, showed that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as well as states such as Abia, Anambra, Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi, Enugu, Rivers, Sokoto, Kogi and Taraba were still below 50 per cent of the target.

According to the figures, Abia has attained only 14.

9 per cent; Akwa Ibom, 28 per cent; Anambra, 22.8 per cent; Ebonyi, 31 per cent; Enugu, 30.1 per cent; Rivers, 30.6 per cent; Sokoto, 33 per cent; Taraba, 19.5 per cent, while the FCT has attained 33.3 per cent, However, the FCT

has disputed the figures, disclosing that the federal government’s assessment was based on the 228,400 doses given to it, which it claimed was in excess of the 120,000 doses it actually required.

Reacting to the vaccine hesitancy in the state, the Abia State government said it had not yet fixed a specific

date for the commencement of the public vaccination following the extension of vaccination to more categories of frontline workers.

However, the Anambra State government’s claim of having vaccinated a total of 22,861 persons also contradicted the federal government’s assessment,

which showed that the state vaccinated only 9,000 persons or 22.8 per cent of the target.

The state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Vincent Okpala, told THISDAY at the weekend that a total of 22,861 persons had received the COVID-19 vaccine in the state.

Continued on page 51

SOUTH-EAST GOVS ESTABLISH EBUBE AGU, REGIONAL SECURITY OUTFIT, TO ROUT CRIMINALS vehicles and freeing some detainees.

The gunmen also attacked the Imo State Correctional Centre and released over 1,800 inmates.

In the communiqué read by the Chairman of the South-east Governors’ Forum and Governor of Ebonyi State, Mr. Dave Umahi, the governors aligned themselves with the efforts of the federal government to find the solution to the security challenges in the country.

They condemned what they called terrorism and banditry in any part of Nigeria, particularly in the South-east.

They condemned the recent burning of police

stations, violent attacks on custodial centres with the unlawful release of inmates, and the killing of security personnel, natives/farmers and herdsmen.

The governors said they were on the same page with the federal government on the need to tackle the security challenges in the country.

They committed themselves to joining the federal government to fight terrorists and bandits.

They also “resolved to bring together all the arsenals at their command, as one united zone, to fight and flush out criminals and terrorists from the zone.”

The communiqué noted that to achieve this, “there

is a need to galvanise all the relevant stakeholders in the South-east, the political class, the business community, the bureaucrats and the intelligentsia to provide all necessary support to security operatives in the five South-east states to ensure total success in the fight against criminality in the zone.”

According to the communiqué, “The heads of all the security agencies in the South-east have resolved to exchange intelligence in a seamless, effective new order that will help to checkmate crime in the zone.

“To fast-track crimebusting in the South-east, the heads of security agencies have been

mandated to draw up a comprehensive list of their logistics and material needs for sustainable success in the fight against criminality, for the immediate provision by the leadership of the South-east.”

The governors also resolved to set up a committee comprising security personnel, government officials and stakeholders, to coordinate and monitor the implementation of the South-east joint security platform.

The governors applauded the initiative of the Southeast security summit and to make it a statutory summit that would convene every quarter while its hosting

shall rotate among the five South-east states.

“The meeting resolved to maintain a joint security vigilante for the Southeast otherwise known as Ebube Agu. The meeting appreciated the formation of South-east joint security outfit code-named Ebube Agu, with headquarters in Enugu to coordinate our vigilante in the South-east,” the communiqué explained.

The governors also requested the Acting Inspector-General of Police (IG), Mr. Usman Baba, to stop the influx of IG monitoring units and allow police commissioners and state and zonal commands to handle their cases.

The governors also

requested Baba and other security chiefs to invite the leadership of Ohanaeze Ndigbo and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to find out the reason for increasing insecurity of the region.

They also agreed that military policing in the South-east should be adequately funded to become effective.

“Meeting agreed that open grazing has been banned and the security agency should implement the ban.

"The meeting encouraged a peaceful co-existence of farmers and herders to allow governors to succeed in the fight against criminality,” the communiqué added.

Assets Management Limited, Yadinma Onwu, attributed the higher impairment charge of banks to the lagged impact of the weaker economy and attendant impact on borrowers’ ability to meet obligations.

"I believe the market is already pricing this expectation in the valuation of banks’ stocks, as we look forward to a higher credit losses in 2021, a phenomenon that may aggravate the volatility risk of their treasury portfolios in the year, given the dynamics of the interest rate environment over the cycle. Nonetheless, we are not at a systemic risk situation and I believe the rise in NPL ratio and impairment charge should be moderate, even so, it may constrain the return on equity and dividend growth prospect of banks," he said.

Onwu explained that with the conservative dividend payout ratios of Nigerian banks, which hovers between 30 per cent and 50 per cent, the impact of the higher cost of risk on dividend should be muted, even so, it may undercut profit growth.

"To this end, we still see value in the leading Nigerian banks and selective midsized players, albeit timing, is important, and this is why we at Funds Matrix & Asset Management continue to provide relevant advisory services to our clients in addition to our commitment to best execution," he said.

need to remove all forms of subsidy on petrol and electricity supply as well as to harmonise forex rate.

The bank, in a statement at the weekend, unifying the exchange rate would reduce inflation and attract the much-needed foreign investments the country badly needed.

The statement, which revealed snippets of the discussion the World Bank officials had with the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Mrs..

Zainab Ahmed, and the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, said Nigeria must be resolute in its drive to end subsidies.

However, the World Bank President, David Malpass, told both top government functionaries during the meeting that buffers or compensation should be provided for the poor and vulnerable to ameliorate the impact on the removal of government subsidies.

“The World Bank Group's David Malpass met with Dr. Zainab Ahmed, Nigerian Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, and Mr. Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

“President Malpass encouraged work toward an exchange rate unification, highlighting the importance of moving decisively to benefit growth and wages.

“President Malpass emphasised that a liberalised exchange rate will significantly benefit the poor, reduce inflation, and attract private investment to support Nigeria’s recovery from COVID-19,” the statement posted on the bank's website stated.

It added that Malpass told

the minister of the World Bank Group’s eagerness to support critical development issues in Nigeria as the country works towards a green, resilient and inclusive recovery.

“The president and minister also discussed further reforms to phase out energy subsidies, noting the importance of compensatory measures for the poor and vulnerable,” it added.

The World Bank leadership stated that it discussed the need for the Nigerian government to ramp up the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines throughout the country, saying that the organisation will assist the country, whenever asked to do so.

It added: “President Malpass and Minister Ahmed discussed Nigeria’s ongoing COVID-19 response and the need for fast deployment of vaccines. President Malpass confirmed the World Bank Group’s readiness to support the vaccine distribution process, as well as for procurement of additional vaccine doses.”

BANKS’ IMPAIRMENT CHARGES SOAR BY 113% TO N228BN federal government on the need to remove all forms of subsidy on petrol and electricity supply and to harmonise the forex rate.

Although while the total provisioning by banks rose by 82 per cent, some individual bank raised their impairment charges by over 200 per cent with Stanbic IBTC increasing its charges by 509 per cent from N1.632 billion to N9.935 billion.

GTBank Plc recorded a jump of 299 per cent in impairment charges, from N4.911 billion in 2019 to N19.572 billion in 2020.

Access Bank Plc posted impairment charges of N62.893 billion, showing a jump of 212 per cent from N20.189 billion in 2019.

Ecobank posted impairment charges of N86.734 billion, indicating an increase of 79 per cent from N48.316 billion booked in 2019. Zenith Bank Plc made provisioning of N39.534 billion in 2020, up 64 per cent from N24.032 billion in 2019. FCMB Group’s impairment charges stood at N22.307 billion in 2020, indicating an increase of 62 per cent from N13.747 billion in 2019. Fidelity Bank Plc, which had a write-back of N5.292 billion in 2019, made a provision of N16.858 billion in 2020.

United Bank for Africa Plc booked impairment charges of N22.443 billion last year, up by 35 per cent from N16.336 billion. Similarly, Sterling Bank Plc increased its impairment charges by 35 per cent from N5.838 billion in 2019 to N7.906 billion in 2020.

However, FBN Holdings Plc’s impairment charges declined from N51.093 billion to N50.596 billion.

Investment and financial

analysts said the higher impairment charges did not come as a surprise given the headwinds in the economy last year.

According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Blackstone Capital, an investment management firm, Dr. Lizzie KingsWali, the rising cost of risk of banks, which is simply referred to as higher impairment charge observed in banks’ audited 2020 financial statements is a reflection of the rising NonPerforming Loan (NPL) ratio and weakening fundamentals of the economy.

"Notably, the industry’s NPL steadily rose in the second half of the year, printing at 6.01 per cent

by December 2020, some 101 basis points above the prudential tolerance of 5.0 per cent, hence necessitating a higher impairment charge.

In fact, the NPL growth is higher in nominal terms, except that the double-digit growth in loan book partly masked the effective rise in the NPL ratio. More so, the relatively weak fundamentals of the economy exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest resulted into higher portfolio impairment charge on stage 1 loans, despite being performing assets," she stated.

Kings-Wali added that the percentage of stage two loans, which though performing but had shown stress and likelihood of delinquency over the near term had increased across the industry, therefore deserving the conservative stance of banks and their auditors to proactively take a higher anticipatory impairment charge on such loans.

“Hence, the rising cost of risk is a reflection of the lagged impact of the realities of the economy and banks’ inherent credit risk. Whilst the CBN and banks are apparently seeking measures to stem this potential erosion to banks’ profitability going forward, I expect more credit losses in 2021, as the full impact of the macro weakness, takes toll on banks’ asset quality," she said.

However, she said the situation would not degenerate into a crisis as NPL ratio should possibly peak in the year and begin to moderate in 2022.

"More importantly, the impact on banks would be uneven. For instance, banks that have lent foreign currency to domestic entities like those in the power sector, which generate naira revenues maybe hard hit, as the impact of naira devaluation and relative FX supply shortages balloon their debt service and potentially impair borrowers’ ability to effectively meet obligations as at when due.

Likewise, recent delay in international and local ports, occasioned by COVID-19 and other structural factors have increased the cash conversion cycle of importers, thus potentially weakening the credit strength of importers, especially as most players maybe unable to fully pass the impact of longer import cycle, reduced margins and naira volatilities on the final consumers of the imported products, given the already stressed-consumer wallet and pressured purchasing power of the average Nigerian," she stated.

Also, the Executive ViceChairman of Funds Matrix &

W’bank Insists on Subsidies’ Removal, Unified Exchange Rate.

The World Bank has intensified pressure on the federal government on the

SULTAN URGES NIGERIANS TO EMBRACE INTER-RELIGIOUS HARMONY Council, Sokoto, Prof. Sambo Junaidu, said: “This is to inform the Muslim Ummah that Monday, April 12, which is equivalent to the 29th day of Sha’aban 1442AH shall be the day

to look for the new moon of Ramadan 1442AH. “Muslims are, therefore, requested to start looking for the crescent moon on Monday and report its

sighting to the nearest district or village head for onward communication to the sultan.’’

Junaidu gave telephone numbers that could be used directly to report

the sighting of the new moon to the committee to include 08037157100, 07067416900, 08066303077, 08036149757, 08035965322 and 08035945903.

The News Agency of

Nigeria (NAN) reported that Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar observed by Muslims worldwide as a month for fasting, prayer, reflection and assisting the needy.

TOP GAINERS HONEYWELL SOVETRUST JAPAULGOLD LIVESTOCK FCMB TOP LOSERS GUINNESS UNITYBANK ABCTRANS

NGN NGN 0.10 1.23 0.02 0.25 0.05 0.63 0.13 1.93 0.18 2.92 NGN 3.30 29.70 0.07 0.64 0.03 0.30 MBENEFIT 0.03 0.39 UPDC 0.05 0.80 HPE Nestle Nig Plc ₦1,420.00 Volume: 160.649 million shares Value: N1.281 billion Deals: 3,507 As at Friday 9/4/2021 See details on Page 37

% 8.8 8.7 8.6 7.2 6.5 % 10 9.8 9.0 7.1 6.2

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COMMENT

Editor, Editorial Page PETER ISHAKA Email peter.ishaka@thisdaylive.com

GOVT AS METAPHOR FOR MARKETVOLATILITY

Sola Oni urges government to address the issues that can bring about a genuine market rebound

E

quity investors in Nigeria are navigating choppy waters.

They sleep and wake with more downswing than upswing.

The market ended bullish last year despite the impacts of COVID-19 on operations of the quoted companies and many investors became instant millionaires. By Bloomberg’s report, in 2020, The Nigerian Stock Exchange posted a one-year return of +50.03% to top S & P 500 (+16.26%) and Dow Jones Industrial Index (+7.25%).

The market late last year was largely driven by the low yield on fixed-income securities policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Much as speculators are desirable as providers of liquidity into the market, they do this with decorum. They press panic button whenever they spot opportunities for superior return on investment anywhere.

There is an inverse relationship between money market and capital market. For instance, whenever the interest rate is low, speculators take flight for safety and move their money to equity market for superior return and vice versa. This is why institutional investors, including pension funds take advantage of every opportunity provided by MPR to set the tone for the market. When they buy, market is bullish. When they sell bearish market resumes. Although corporate earnings among other variables influence investment decision on the stock market, the management of Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), the nominal anchor, by the CBN, is a single factor that drives the market in recent time. It is on this basis that one can explain what has become a zig-zag market trend.

An equity investor with a long time view of the market can become an instant millionaire when the CBN lowers the MPR but the same investor may helplessly watch his wealth dipped in a matter of days.

Fixed income securities are good for risk averters. The return on investment is known at the beginning. The securities offer opportunities for diversification, capital preservation and income generation. But the two major downsides of fixed-income securities are inflation and default risks. The yield on fixed-income is fixed and does not increase with the pace of inflation. In the ongoing regime of stagflation in Nigeria, investors in fixed-income are not receiving normal value for their investment.

Default risk depends on the quality of the issuer. But government bond ranks higher than corporate bonds.

At the formative stage of The Nigerian Stock Exchange, trading on fixed-income securities overdwarfed equities. But when stockbrokers slept, bankers took over the juicy food from the table. It is now that securities traders are warming up to reverse the trend. Every decision taken by the apex bank on the MPR is indicative of direction of trading in the capital market. It operationally appears as golden share for the CBN. At the moment, stakeholders in the Capital Market ecosystem are languishing in uncertainty. If checked, emotional temperature of every market participant will be running high. Uncertainty has continually exposes the market to needless volatility. Everyone is nervous. Projections are difficult to make and every forecast is wrapped in proviso.

Let us separate signal from the noise. The federal government is the agent of uncertainty, and mother of market volatility. Government has not been able to fix the economy. Macroeconomic vagaries are widening by the day. At 33,33 percent, Nigeria’s unemployment rate is said to be the second highest on global list. Headline inflation rose to 17.33 percent in February, the highest in four years. It is therefore not surprising that Misery Index is 15.75 percent and this comfortably puts Nigeria on the

AT THE MOMENT, STAKEHOLDERS IN THE CAPITAL MARKET ECOSYSTEM ARE LANGUISHING IN UNCERTAINTY. IF CHECKED, EMOTIONAL TEMPERATURE OF EVERY MARKET PARTICIPANT WILL BE RUNNING HIGH

unenviable league of the most miserable countries in the world. Stock market mirrors the economy and until the economy rebounds and quoted companies operate optimally, the capital market may not have respite. News of killing, maiming and wanton destruction have further worsened the precarious state of the economy by increasing the country risk. It is no longer news that financial press is replete with screening headlines of what investors lose from the market. But such stories hardly include the fact that bullish trend is a buy signal as prices of blue chips with strong fundamentals are affordable. The worsening security profile of Nigeria may have prompted the British Envoy, Catriona Laing to say that the country was struggling and needed help.

Transactions on Nigerian Capital Market should not depend solely on the movement of MPR. Government’ should do a lot more to deepen the capital market. Over the years, stakeholders have consistently leveraged every forum to advise the government to utilise the market to finance infrastructure. Moribund government enterprises should be privatised and listed on the market. Incentives such as tax holiday and deliberate patronage of products and services could be dangled as carrots to attract Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to seek quotation while cost of listing and other market charges should be pocket-friendly for every participant.

What stops the federal government from privatising the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or part of it and list the shares on the securities exchange to deepen the market? What about some companies in the downstream sector of oil and gas? When will the pension funds’ participation in the market be reviewed for increased activities? Impact analysis of the Capital Market Masterplan is desirable to align the content with the current realities in the operating environment.

In their forecast for 2021, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and LPL, Financial expect S & P to grow by 6 percent as against Goldman Sachs’ projection of 17 percent upside. Morgan Stanley hinged its forecast on anticipated growth of cyclical stocks in discretionary industries such as airlines and restaurants. But the firm warned that likely increase in inflation could reverse broad market gains, especially in expensive growth stock. According to Morgan Stanley, if such happens, S & P may plunge as much as 8 percent.

The Wall Street experts should come and make forecast for the Nigeria’s stock market where increase in inflation has instituted a regime of negative return on investment. The Group CEO of the newly established Nigerian Exchange Group PLC (NGX Group), Mr Oscar Onyema had earlier based his expectation of The Exchange’s performance for this year on cautious optimism. This was his position while appraising the 2020 market performance in January this year.

The soft spoken Executive cannot afford to play to the gallery. Onyema knows the power of invisible hand of MPR on the performance of The Exchange. Unless the government addresses the issues that can bring about a genuine market rebound volatility may continue to stymie investor confidence in the market. At the moment, when the CBN sneezes, the market catches cold.

Oni, Communication Consultant, Chartered Stockbroker and Commodity Trader, is the Chief Executive Officer, Sofunix Investment and Communications

AVERTING IMPLOSION IN 2023

The proliferation of dangerous weapons, among other things, poses a threat to Nigeria in 2023, contends A. A. Gadzama

T

he likelihood of violent implosions in 2023 is an eventuality patriotic Nigerians are having sleepless nights over. The fears are predicated on some potentially dangerous happenings in the country that may get worse before or in the aftermath of the 2023 elections. Among these potentially contentious issues are reactions to spates of ethnic killings by herdsmen, wanton killings by lawless individuals or groups and general insecurity across the country. Attempts by political parties to assert political dominance and individuals and political parties resorting to undemocratic practices such as manipulating elections and results could also ignite mayhem. The failure of INEC to be a truly independent and impartial umpire could precipitate violent reactions with serious consequences on the nation’s stability in 2023.

Reconciling the terribly polarized nation requires early preparations and very responsive strategies.

In this regard, sentiments surrounding the desirability of shifting the Presidency are critical. Signs of massive divisions are already manifesting over the issue and contending positions are potentially explosive. The recent violence in Imo State which resulted in the burning down of the State Police and the Correctional Headquarters buildings are pointers to what to expect in 2023. There are also growing agitations of the Igbos in the South East and differences between politicians that could be compounded by contestations over the 2023 Presidency.

The APC National leader, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu is at the moment known to be seriously mobilizing support both within the APC and across the country in his bid to clinch the 2023 Presidency.

The North on the other hand is surreptitiously

counting on its political dexterity, population and current hold on power to upstage the calculations of the other groups, thereby setting the stage for serious political confrontations. The other development that cannot be overlooked is the increasing consensus from some radical groups and elites in parts of the North that power should shift to the South East in the spirit of national unity and fairness. The other group whose views cannot be ignored is the Northern minorities who are increasingly ventilating their political preferences through the Middle Belt Forum. It is important to note that agitations of most Northern minorities are against their alienation and absence of adequate representation in government. It is noteworthy that most minorities in the North also allege marginalization even in their states of origin.

There are indications that the Northern minorities are likely to sway political support in favour of aspirants who identify with their plight if their concerns are not addressed.

A politically related issue that could contribute to the feared implosion is the current level of insecurity and lawlessness that have engulfed the country in the last few years. There is no denying the fact that the spate of lawlessness such as hostage taking, siege on public highways and banditry could compound security threats in the country in 2023.

From past experience, incidents of electoral violence emanate mostly from electoral irregularities and imposition of unpopular aspirants. Political violence in recent years has been precipitated by promotion of inordinate ambitions of individuals and groups and manipulation of elections, especially the results. Banditry and activities of other criminallyminded non-state actors are veritable sources of political upheavals. Although those in power want

to deny the fact that the insurgency in the North East affected the past elections, those in the impacted communities know that there were no elections.

Besides, anti-democratic activities of secessionist agitators and plainly subversive groups are major threats in 2023. Groups whose activities need to be closely watched include religious extremists who could sabotage the elections in 2023 by waylaying electoral personnel and materials.

The proliferation of dangerous weapons to perpetuate violence also poses a threat to 2023. Almost all parts of the country are currently awash with dangerous weapons. Some sources have intimated that there are approximately six million small arms and light weapons in circulation in the country.

The competence of the INEC is another factor that will determine the ability of the nation to avert implosion in 2023. People will only trust an election that is transparent and an electoral body that is able to discharge its function without creating doubts in the minds of the electorate. The performance of the Commission must be above board and its management should take a cue from the Prof. Attahiru Jega’s era. Also important is signing the new Electoral Law. Any demonstration of incompetence, unreliability and partisanship by INEC could plunge the country into chaos.

The prognosis of widespread acts of violence across the country in 2023 is predicated on the present level of disaffection and the fact that the 2023 elections will be hotly contested because of what is at stake and the determination of some interests to upstage the current political order by all means and others to remain relevant after 2023. The groups that include insurgents, secessionists and others whose activities could destabilize the country in 2023

should accordingly be dealt with promptly. Other triggers for violence and upheavals in 2023 are those who promote inciting and subversive utterances.

In a fragile political environment like ours, inciting utterances are all that is required to precipitate serious upheavals that could have very destabilizing effects on unity and stability of the country. Steps should accordingly be taken to deal with politically, religiously and ethnically influenced provocative utterances, that are currently widespread. The National Assembly, the Presidency and the security agencies must therefore take steps to check the tendency of some individuals and groups making provocative utterances that offend the sensibility of others. Closely related to this is the practice of some individuals clandestinely indulging in acts of sabotage by orchestrating some activities that could threaten the corporate existence of the country. If these potentially explosive threats to the security of the nation are not promptly addressed, the country could be set ablaze in 2023. The time to take out security threats like the insurgency in the North East, criminal attacks by herdsmen and banditry by non-state actors and saboteurs is now. All patriotic citizens must in addition rally round the President to midwife a smooth transition from this government to 2023.

The role of security organizations in election management is another issue with serious implications on 2023. In order to ensure there is no breakdown of law and order, the security organizations especially those with roles in 2023 elections must commence preparations immediately.

Gadzama OFR, mni is Chairman, Governing Board of National Institute for Security Studies, Lower Usman Dam, Abuja

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EDITORIAL THE MINT AND NATIONAL SECURITY Printing our security documents internally is good for our image and economy

T

he move by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) to collaborate with National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPMC) on how to checkmate fake certificates in Nigeria is a commendable one. The idea is to have the NSPMC print these certificates with bar code features that make authentication very easy. The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) is also exploring the possibility of a similar idea for the printing of Certificates of Occupancy for landed properties. As we have argued in the past, printing our security documents internally is good for our image, national pride, integrity and indeed the economy since jobs are created and sustained besides the conservation of scarce foreign exchange.

Two years ago, in response to the huge cost in foreign exchange, President Muhammadu Buhari directed the NSPMC to take over the production of Nigerian e-passports and other related security documents. “Once the country’s current production contracts expire, the printing of Nigerian e-passports will be handed over exclusively to the DOMESTICATING Nigerian Security PASSPORT PRODUCTION Printing and Minting IS BOTH AN ECONOMIC Company,” said the AND NATIONAL SECURITY president. While the challenge was taken IMPERATIVE with all seriousness by the NSPMC Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mr Abbas Umar Masanawa, there has been no response from the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), despite the problem associated with the production of Nigerian passports.

Established in 1963, the NSPMC (simply called Mint) was for a long time the largest banknote and security documents specialist printing company in West Africa.

But at some point, its fortunes started dwindling with many functions outsourced to foreign companies. It was even unable to meet the annual banknotes demand by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), thus forcing the apex bank to import most of the currency requirement from

Letters to the Editor

Europe at huge expense to the nation. The situation reached a head in 2007 when the production of the e-passport was given to the Iris Corporation of Malaysia to handle.

H

T H I S DAY EDITOR BOLAJI ADEBIYI DEPUTY EDITOR YEMI AJAYI, DAVIDSON IRIEKPEN, MANAGING DIRECTOR ENIOLA BELLO DEPUTY MANAGING DIRECTOR KAYODE KOMOLAFE CHAIRMAN EDITORIAL BOARD OLUSEGUN ADENIYI EDITOR NATION’S CAPITAL IYOBOSA UWUGIAREN MANAGING EDITOR JOSEPH USHIGIALE

T H I S DAY N E W S PA P E R S L I M I T E D EDITOR-IN-CHIEF/CHAIRMAN NDUKA OBAIGBENA GROUP EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS ENIOLA BELLO, KAYODE KOMOLAFE, ISRAEL IWEGBU, IJEOMA NWOGWUGWU, EMMANUEL EFENI DIVISIONAL DIRECTORS BOLAJI ADEBIYI, PETER IWEGBU, ANTHONY OGEDENGBE DEPUTY DIVISIONAL DIRECTOR OJOGUN VICTOR DANBOYI SNR. ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR ERIC OJEH ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS PATRICK EIMIUHI, SAHEED ADEYEMO CONTROLLERS ABIMBOLA TAIWO, UCHENNA DIBIAGWU, NDUKA MOSERI DIRECTOR, PRINTING PRODUCTION CHUKS ONWUDINJO HEAD, COMPUTER DEPARTMENT PATRICIA UBAKA-ADEKOYA TO SEND EMAIL: first name.surname@thisdaylive.com

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YINKA ODUMAKIN: VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS

T

he news of the passing on of an irrepressible human rights activist and socio-political advocate, the genial Yinka Odumakin hit my nerves like a thunder bolt. It was Williams Shakespeare who said that death is a necessary end that will come when it will come. As much as I agree, I would not know why death decided to visit Yinka at a time he has more to offer his nation and mankind. His honest deposition no matter whose horse was gored endeared him to many. He was a voice for the voiceless. At the Afenifere, where he played the role of a publicity secretary, he exhibited courage, forthrightness and excellent analytical mind in line with his mandate. Yinka’s achievements in nation-building are well documented.

His pro-activist struggles date back to his student days. But he became a more prominent figure in his struggle to return Nigeria to democratic governance. As at a time many wished to remain in their comfort zone and to go where their bread was buttered, Yinka chose to be with the downtrodden masses who yearn for equity and justice in an egalitarian society.

Yinka’s unparalleled efforts and that of others paid off when Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999. Since Nigeria’s return to democracy, Yinka’s voice has been on the front burner on socio-political issues. He does not mince words on any issue.

He served the Yoruba race with all his might.

He says it as he sees it. Yinka was an uncommon Nigerian.

As a columnist, he wrote on every issue. His column was an extension of his activism. I read his column once and fell

owever, 2014 signalled a new future when under the chairmanship of a new CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, the Mint decided to modernise and refurbish. It has invested heavily in high-tech currency printing equipment, technical training of its staff, research, and development. The company has added new production line in Abuja and a state-of-the-art digital print-line for security document production in Lagos. In 2018, for instance, some 2.6 billion banknotes were produced from an average of one billion banknotes in 2014. In addition, the Mint has engaged a team of competent personnel with private sector orientation to complement the efforts of the existing staff. Now, the company has a staff strength of more than 1000, all Nigerians.

The investment is paying off. Apart from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which printed 20 per cent of its electoral materials for the 2019 general election at NSPM, the company is also playing a major role in meeting the security document requirements of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC), etc. But more can be done.

It is particularly noteworthy that since 2014, not one single currency was imported apart from the N100 commemorative notes. The Mint is now repositioned to print security documents such as banknotes and coins, to cheques, visa vignette, postage stamps, motor vehicle licence, revenue receipts, certificates, examination papers, ballot papers and of course, international passports.

With its enhanced capacity, the NSPMC can now print all security documents in the country. And we consider no document more important than the passport which citizens carry which is why we urge the NIS to collaborate with Mint. Domesticating passport production is both an economic and national security imperative.

in love with it. Nigeria has lost a great gem. This could be seen from the outpouring of grief since his death. Some may misunderstand him as an ethnic jingoist.

This is because he loved his Yoruba race and would do anything to protect it. He believed in the unity of Nigeria based on equity and even distribution of power. He was one of those who believed that there is so such power at the centre and that the regions should be allowed some level of autonomy.

His knowledge of the Yoruba politics is excellent. Another man who has an excellent knowledge of such native politics is Odia Ofeimun. Yinka, due to his real nature, was able to manage politics and activism and made the best of each. Yinka will not be easily forgotten and there is no doubt that his death is a big blow to Afenifere and the Yoruba as a whole. His truthfulness at times pitched him against some notable personalities in Yoruba land. But at all times, it is not difficult to know where Yinka belongs.

His beloved Nigeria is not where Yinka supposed her to be. There is no doubt that Yinka would have loved to see a better Nigeria. His dream of Nigeria was that of a happy and prosperous nation where one is not afraid of herdsmen, where Boko Haram is properly deradicalised, a pride of other nations.

Sadly, Yinka did not get to see this before he boarded the flight to eternity. I have no doubt in my mind that the irrepressible spirit in Yinka will continue to fight for all these even in death.

Chimezie Elemuo, Old Aba Road, Port Harcourt

A PROBLEM WITH PROBLEM SOLVING

T

he Australian Curriculum Authority has proposed concentrating on teaching problem solving in mathematics whereas surely the emphasis should be on solving the problems of mathematics teaching. Problem solving is an important skill, but the basics should be mastered first and fully as no one wants a mechanic who can fix an engine but doesn’t know which fuel to use in it.

Despite the silliness of the example, this could be the outcome when solving a sudoku puzzle is more important than knowing your times tables. This problem occurs in most, if not all countries.

My own 35 years of teaching teenager’s mathematics has seen a number of students struggle as they lacked the basics of numeracy and had a poor recall of the tables. Despite the pleasures gained by being able to solve Quadratic Equations most people need little more than their tables, the four main operations and a reasonable knowledge of fractions and yet not all master these skills.

The solution seems simple enough,

have enough qualified and skilled maths teachers to deliver these lessons to all and effectively but there are not enough teachers and certainly not enough capable teachers.

Why is poor mathematics teaching still a problem when it has been known about for so long? Why is there not already a best way of teaching mathematics when little of the material has changed in centuries? Why aren’t teachers more respected and better paid? Why is the change driven by the embarrassing results in international testing rather than the value of citizens being confident in their own abilities in mathematics?

There are many questions and solutions that can be proposed although the best approach may be to actually ask those that are and have taught for a long time what they suggest but that doesn’t seem to happen that often. Old teachers, especially those from before the new mathematics, might be worth listening to. Please!

Dennis Fitzgerald, Melbourne, Australia

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T H I S D AY ˾ MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021

Group Politics Editor NSEOBONG OKON-EKONG

POLITICS

Email: nseobong.okonekong@thisdaylive.com 08114495324 SMS ONLY

M O N D AY D I S C O U R S E

Politics of the National Sports Festival Duro Ikhazuagbe writes on the multifarious intricate issues which often attend big sporting events, for instance, the 20th National Sports Festival, codenamed Edo 2020, closing in about 48 hours, in Benin City

Buhari

Osinbajo

Obaseki

I

n 1936, Germany’s maximum leader, Adolf Hitler, attempted to use the Olympic Games hosted in his country to showcase his Nazi regime and the ideologies it stands for: The supremacy of the Aryan race to the rest of the world. He was greatly humbled by an African-American track and field athlete, Jesse Owens. Without saying a word, Owens won four gold medals to best all the ‘superior’ athletes Hitler was flaunting at the time on his home soil.

Because of the political climate surrounding the games, Owens’ performance was a very loud political statement that reverberated around the world.

Fast forward to 1968. At the Mexico City Olympic Games, U.S. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised their blackgloved fists during the playing of the US national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner” while on the podium, receiving their 200m gold and silver medals respectively, in solidarity with the Black Power movement.

Four years later at the Munich Games, 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped and killed by a Palestinian terrorist group despite the International Olympic Committee’s insistence that the competition was a ‘nonpolitical’ one.

Both the 1980 Olympic Games and the 1984 editions had the trappings of politics.

While the Americans boycotted Moscow ‘80, the Soviets similarly turned their backs on Los Angeles ‘84 in retaliation. It was the era of the ‘Cold War’.

In 1976, 29 countries mostly from Africa and Asia led by Nigeria also boycotted the Montreal Games (in Canada) in protests over the IOC’s refusal to ban New Zealand from that edition. New Zealand’s All Blacks national rugby union team had toured South Africa that year in defiance of the United Nations’ calls for a sporting embargo against the apartheid regime in that enclave.

That year, the most eagerly anticipated events at the Montreal Olympics was the 1500m showdown between John Walker of New Zealand and Filbert Bayi of Tanzania.

But Bayi would not compete as Tanzania was the first African nation to announce that it would boycott the games.

Nigeria’s Charlton Ehizuelen also missed the chance of going down in the country’s history as the first Olympic gold medalist as he had a world lead jump leading to the games.

There are other countless examples of how politics has crept into sports. Others include American boxer Cassius Clay’s refusal to enlist in the army to fight in the Vietnam War. Clay in protest changed his religion from Christianity to Islam and took the name Muhammad Ali. Of course, Ali was banned from boxing by U.S. authorities because of his stance, he soon became a figure of black power and the civil rights movement.

L-R: Chairman, Local Organising Committee, Edo 2020 and Edo State Deputy Governor, Rt. Hon. Comrade Philip Shaibu; Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki and the representative of President Muhammadu Buhari and Minister of Youths and Sports Development, Chief Sunday Dare, during the official launch of the newly refurbished Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium and opening ceremony of the 20th National Sports Festival taking place in Edo State

Even the current ‘Take a Knee’ in the English Premier League is political. It is a subtle fight against racism in the football arenas. It is a clear reminder of the brutal killing of African-American George Floyd in May last year by some police officers in the USA. It led to the “Black Live Matters” protests around the globe.

Going down memory lane to recall some of the issues that have shaped the world’s understanding of sports and politics globally is to give insight into the beginning of the National Sports Festival in Nigeria.

After Nigeria’s civil war between 1967 and 1970, the National Sports Festival was originally conceived as a “unifying tool” with the main purpose of promoting peace and cross-cultural affiliation in Nigeria. It was also meant to serve as a development and training event to aid athletes prepare for continental and international meets like the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and the then All Africa Games (now African Games). It had the following as its core objectives: r 5P CVJME B SPCVTU UBMFOU QPPM PG BUIMFUFT

Initially, President Muhammadu Buhari was scheduled to inaugurate the newly refurbished Ogbemudia Stadium on Tuesday April 6, but following his trip abroad for medical check up, the duty fell on the laps of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. But in a twist of fate, the nation’s Number Two Citizen could not land in Benin City for the cutting of the tape.

While officially the inability of the Vice President to land in Benin Airport was adduced to the storm that accompanied the late afternoon rainfall, rumour mill was awash with all manners of postulations that Professor Osinbajo dumped the inauguration because Edo State was an opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) state. Shaibu merely shook his head in disbelief, insisting that those inventing such unfounded idle talks must have been responsible for the rainstorm that made it difficult for any airplane to land at the Benin Airport that fateful Tuesday afternoon

r 5P FOIBODF BOE FMFWBUF TQPSUT BU HSBTTroots level r 5P FTUBCMJTI B TUBOEBSE QSPHSBNNF GPS athletes’ succession r 5P DVSC BHF DIFBUJOH JO 4QPSUT r 5P FODPVSBHF FBSMZ QBSUJDJQBUJPO JO 4QPSUT r 5P FOHBHF ZPVOH BUIMFUFT JO UIF 0MZNQJD Movement, skill development and social responsibility r 5P FOIBODF DVMUVSBM BOE FEVDBUJPOBM development r 5P QSPNPUF /BUJPOBM VOJUZ And of course, it was natural to have Lagos with the glittering, newly-built National Stadium by the Yakubu Gowon military administration as host of qthe very first edition of this ‘Unity Games’ essentially meant to welcome the Easterners back into the Nigerian state after the needless fracas that lasted three years. The festival, a biennial multi-sport event has been organised since inception in 1973 by the Federal Government of Nigeria through the National Sports Commission or the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development, whichever applies, for athletes from all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Between Lagos ‘73 and this 20th edition taking place in Benin City for the third time, has the festival met its advertised objectives of being an avenue for discovering talents for the country? Is it playing the role of uniting the country as envisaged by the founding fathers? A former Captain of the national football team, the Green Eagles, Chief Olusegun Odegbami who was discovered and nurtured to stardom during the first edition recalled those beautiful moments of the sports fiesta.

“I was an athlete at the first two festivals in 1973 and 1975, representing Western State, comprising present day Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Ekiti states. Those festivals set me up firmly for a full-time career in football.

Before the Festival, I was just a player for a few clubs in Ibadan, even though as a student at The Polytechnic, Ibadan,” Odegbami reminisced on how he came to limelight through the festival in one of his weekly columns for Complete Sports.

Just like Odegbami, countless numbers of Nigeria’s former and present athletes were discovered during the festival and went ahead to attain global status in their respective sports. The likes of David Imonitie, Nduka Odizor, Sadiq Abdullahi, Veronica Oyibokia (tennis), Modupe Oshikoya, Joe Orewa, Peter Konyegwachie, Jeremiah Okorodudu (boxing), Charlton Ehizuelen (long jump), Felix Imadiyi, Brown Ebewele (decathlon), Yusuf Alli, Henry Amike, Ajayi Agbebaku, Chidi Imoh, Falilat Ogunkoya, Mary Onyali (track &field), Babatunde Obisanya, Atanda Musa, Segun Toriola, Funke Oshonaike, Bose Kaffo (table tennis), the Ezinwa brothers (Davidson and

T H I S D AY ˾ MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021

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MONDAY DISCOURSE

Okowa

Shaibu

Dare

Osmond) and several others too numerous to name here all made marks in the ‘Nigerian Olympics’ before earning global recognitions.

Those were the good old days of the National Sports Festival. In Odegbami’s words: “ The festival held every two years in those days – 1975 in Lagos, 1977 in Kaduna, 1979 in Ibadan, and so on. Somewhere down the line, the sequence was broken!”

First was the elimination of the junior and the intermediate categories. Most budding talents that always look forward to competing with their contemporaries from other states of the federation got shut out of the fiesta.

Youths with abundant talents were thrown into the midsts of ‘hyenas and jackals’ to find their feet. Only the strong survived this ‘getting matured by force’. Several other youths got lost in the labyrinth.

Next was the coming of the word ‘poaching’. Instead of the nursery in the states throwing up athletes through the school system, several states with the ‘cash to spare’ went for ready-made stars rather than funding the grassroots programmes ‘catching them young’ from primary and secondary school competitions to represent the states. The result of this poaching system was the creation of ‘mercenary athletes’ who were on the lookout for the highest bidder states. It was no longer unusual to see athlete ‘A’ compete for Rivers at this edition but wearing the yellow and green colours of Kano State at the next edition.

And so, the system put in place in most of the states to ensure steady flow of athletes from the grassroots began to wither and ultimately crashed.

As if enough damage has not been done to erode the gains of nurturing from the grassroots, some of the states with programmed athletes they are funding in foreign universities began to recall these ‘professionals’ to come home to help them win the festival.

The bottom line of these ‘cutting corners to winning’ was killing the very essence for which the festival was instituted under the watch of legendary sports administrator, Dr Isaac Akioye.

A former director of sports in one of the South-south states (name withheld), told THISDAY that “winning was all that matters now because governors now see emerging overall champions as some sort of prestige.

This is why budgets for ‘participation to win’ in the festival year is usually four times more than what they usually vote for sports in other years.” Nearly all the states are guilty of this practice as winning the festival or finishing in the top bracket has become political.

However, what Edo State has done with the provision of world-class infrastructure to host this edition, is a pointer to the desire of the Godwin Obaseki/Philip Shaibu administration to return to the old era when Midwest/Bendel State ruled the country’s sports like a birthright. It is a return to the Samuel Ogbemudia days as Military Administrator when sports was given same treatment as any other important sector of the economy. Ogbemudia set the tone for sports develoment in the region as he toured the various local governments of the state to scout for talents from the grassroots. He built the then famous Afuze Sports Centre where talents were trained and retrained.

He created a template of competition in the zones with only the best showing up at

the Ogbe Stadium built during his tenure for the region’s mini-Olympiad. It was a general saying those days that any medalist in the Midwest finals was a sure-bet to return to Benin City with either the gold or silver hanging on his or her neck from the National Sports Festival. So it was little surprise that because of the ingenuity of Ogbemudia, Midwest region won the first three National Sports Festival held in Lagos in 1973 and 1975 and in Kaduna in 1977.

The region had the infrastructure and the template in place. Ogbemudia was literally staying with the athletes in camp in Afuze.

There is even a report that revealed that Ogbemudia once held his cabinet meeting in that Afuze camp!

Speaking on the determination to return as the ‘home of sports in the country’, Deputy Governor of Edo State and Chairman of the Local Organising Committee (LOC) of the 20th edition in Benin City, Rt. Hon. Philip Shaibu said on Wednesday that the state was lucky to have a technocrat with private sector background as the governor of Edo. “For us in Edo, we are lucky to have a governor that actually believes in sports and I am also lucky that I am a sports man. I just don’t have the interest alone, I played right from my school days up till this moment. This is why my governor saddled me with the sports sector.

“I look beyond that passion but as a privilege to serve sports. In the past, our parents were obstacles, stopping great talents from reaching top level because they believed that only those that go to school that can make it in life. But now we have decided to combine what the parents want and the desires of their children. We want the children to go to school and also live their dreams of being a sportsman (or woman) either as a footballer or badminton player or any other sport. This is the reason we decided to go with the option of doing what they do in the advanced countries and that’s: the private sector drives not only the economy but also sports. Government’s duty is to provide the enabling environment like facilities; creating actors to buy in, so when the facilities and actors are involved it will attract the private sector to drive it.

So, as a government, we need to provide the facilities and not just turning the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium to sports complex far beyond the dream of that village boy in a

far away village with no access to travel to Benin. The Ogbemudia Stadium is a sort of headquarters while we replicate smaller versions in our schools in each of our 18 local government areas. We want to create athletes that will combine education with sports. We want to use one stone to kill two birds by making the dreams of parents come true to see their children as medical doctors, engineers, lawyers etc who are also great sportsmen and women. We want to achieve that by having our own Socrates of our time who are medical doctors and footballers. Socrates played for Brazil to the World Cup level and still retired to his medical profession. We want to achieve that in Edo. “Instead of of creating these facilities in open government land, we are replicating them in 20 mini stadia in our various schools that have space. We have done some in Benin City and will identify similar schools that have big space and we will build the facilities there. Some of these schools will have mini stadia with tracks side-by-side with a tennis court, markings for handball, volleyball, basketball etc,” revealed Shaibu who is a registered player with the state owned Bendel Insurance FC. After providing these infrastructure, the Edo State Government is moving in the direction of using them rather than locking them up for only big occasions.

“We are now moving to secondary schools so that at the end of the day, we can reintroduce the former Principals’ Cup, Governor’s Cup and the Inter- school games and the inter house sports.”

The deputy governor hinted that the state government is going to fund these competitions for the first one year of reintroduction.

“After that, we are going to ensure there is something to attract the corporate Nigeria to these brands that we have created so that they can become self sustaining. For instance, First Bank may want to identify with our basketball competition. The Inter-House Cups and the Governor’s Cup should attract brands like Cowbell, Peak Milk because they can easily identify their products with youths.

“Unlike other states that spent hundreds of millions of Naira to refurbish their facilities but failed to put in place structures on how to maintain them, Shaibu revealed: “We are

It was natural to have Lagos with the glittering, newly-built National Stadium by the Yakubu Gowon military administration to host the very first edition of this ‘Unity Games’ essentially meant to welcome the Easterners back into the Nigerian state after the needless fracas that lasted three years. The festival, a biennial multi-sport event has been organised since inception in 1973 by the Federal Government of Nigeria through the National Sports Commission or the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development, whichever applies, for athletes from all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Between Lagos ‘73 and this 20th edition taking place in Benin City for the third time, has the festival met its advertised objectives of being an avenue for discovering talents for the country? Is it playing the role of uniting the country as envisaged by the founding fathers?

Odegbami

going to have an independent maintenance agency which is already on ground and understudying the contractor that built the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium. “It is part of our agreement that the contractors will teach our agency how best to handle the things we have on ground here,” observed Shaibu.

On the threat by the Edo State Government to shut down the games if the Federal Government’s counterpart funding of the festival was not released by last Friday, Shaibu said the intervention of the Presidency in the matter has helped cool frayed nerves. “ We were actually going to shut down the games by Friday afternoon if there was no commitment from the Presidency. The cost of hosting soared with the COVID-19 pandemic. When we were going to host March last year, we were ready but this COVID-19 wiped away all our projections.

This was why we approached the Presidency and explained our predicament if Edo State is still to host the festival. We received assurances but as the festival progressed, our contractors and vendors became restless as they wanted their payments. Because we didn’t know how much was coming and when it would be paid, it was difficult for us to approach any bank for a facility to continue to host the Festival. Our food vendors threatened to shut down the kitchen providing food for the athletes and you sure know the implications of that happening,” Shaibu explained.

Asked if the reluctance to release funds to Edo State was as a result of belonging to an opposition party, Shaibu dismissed such insinuations coming from any quarter.

“This has nothing to do with politics.

We were worried because there was no commitment from any quarter. The Sports Minister, Chief Sunday Dare, kept promising us that there was an approval but only waiting for funds to be released. That was not enough. It certainly has nothing to do with politics,” explained the Deputy Governor who ordered the lock up of the MOC secretariat of the festival but only reopened it after the Presidency intervened on Thursday morning.

Initially, President Muhammadu Buhari was scheduled to inaugurate the newly refurbished Ogbemudia Stadium on Tuesday April 6, but following his trip abroad for medical check up, the duty fell on the laps of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

But in a twist of fate, the nation’s Number Two Citizen could not land in Benin City for the cutting of the tape. While officially the inability of the Vice President to land in Benin Airport was adduced to the storm that accompanied the late afternoon rainfall, rumour mill was awash with all manners of postulations that Professor Osinbajo dumped the inauguration because Edo State was an opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) state.

Shaibu merely shook his head in disbelief, insisting that those inventing such unfounded idle talks must have been responsible for the rainstorm that made it difficult for any airplane to land at the Benin Airport that fateful Tuesday afternoon.

As curtain is going to be drawn on the games in the next 48 hours, it will be suicidal to hazard any guess where the pendulum of victory is going to swing even as defending champions Team Delta has continued to maintain a lead since the first day of competition.

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T H I S D AY ˾ MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021

POLITICS

The Dilemma of A Winner Ugo Aliogo narrates the travail of House of Representatives member from Ogoja/Yala Federal Constituency in Cross River State, Hon. Agom Jarigbe Agom, which shows that winning a tightly contested senatorial by-election may be the easiest task, but being sworn-in to begin his legislative duties has become an unbelievable nightmare

Lawan

W

hen Senator Rose Oko representing Cross River North senatorial district passed on after a protracted illness, the position became vacant. As it is always the case, the jostling by those who considered themselves eminently qualified began. Ultimately, like the biblical saying goes, many are called but only few are chosen. A lot of those who started the race fell by the way side leaving two contenders: A two term ranking member of the House of Representatives from Ogoja/Yala constituency, Hon. Agom Jarigbe Agom and Dr. Stephen Odey were left as two of the last men standing.

In the ensuing hair raising drama that kicked in, few days to the primary election, rumours started flying around that Agom had been disqualified from contesting the election. But like the man whom God wants to crown a King, Agom, in local parlance jump am pass and emerged victorious at the polls and also in the courts.

However several months after his victory, he is yet to be sworn in to begin his legislative duties in the same vein as the senate has refused to communicate with him and keeping him incommunicado while his opponent whom the Supreme Court has already ruled against is still attending plenary sessions.

Agom admitted that “I am yet to be communicated to by the Senate. My Certificate of Return and all the judgments of the respective courts, including that of the Supreme Court have been submitted to the Senate through the Office of the Clerk of the National Assembly.”

He explained that he was also aware that, the Legal Department of the National Assembly had advised the Senate President that he should be sworn in, in compliance with the judgment of the Supreme Court and the Certificate of Return issued to him by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

“To my astonishment, my opponent is still being allowed to attend plenary by the leadership of the Senate. The Senate is the apex institution of law making and cannot continue perpetrating an illegality. The Senate leadership has stopped listing my opponent’s motions and bills on the Order Papers because they know that whatever he does in the Senate at this point, is null and void because it is inconsistent with the Rule of Law. “My only fear is that this will set a bad precedence and after the next elections, some governors who decide to be brutish, can move to Abuja and stop the

Odey

Senate from swearing in whoever they do not endorse from their respective states,” Agom lamented.

While he has come under intense pressure from his supporters and persons of good will urging him to return to the court to seek a writ of mandamus compelling the Senate to do the needful, Agom replied emphatically that “I am not going back to the Apex Court. The judgment is unambiguous and does not need any further interpretation. My next line of action will be dependent on what happens as the Senate resumes plenary.”

As a cognate member of Parliament he warned that he should not be pushed to a point, that will make him react like an outsider. “If the leadership of the Senate continues to treat me like an outsider and with total disregard to my office, as ranking member of

Agom

Parliament, I will have no choice, but behave exactly like an outsider. No matter how ruthless we decide to be, we should display camaraderie. I will not be pushed by the governor to get ballistic,against an Institution, I am an integral part of,” he assured.

The Senator-designate pointed out that his victory was not a fluke as he was the most prepared for the position after the demise of the late Senator Rose Oko. He added that after serving two terms as member of the House of Representatives in Cross River State, everyone who has become governor, since 1999, got sworn in as governor before they got to age of 50, including the incumbent going by the records he made available to the party.

He pointed out that Ogoja LGA, where he comes from is the mother local government area of Cross River

Several months after his victory, he is yet to be sworn in to begin his legislative duties in the same vein as the senate has refused to communicate with him and keeping him incommunicado while his opponent whom the Supreme Court has already ruled against is still attending plenary sessions. Agom admitted that “I am yet to be communicated to by the Senate.

My Certificate of Return and all the judgments of the respective courts, including that of the Supreme Court have been submitted to the Senate through the Office of the Clerk of the National Assembly.” He explained that he was also aware that, the Legal Department of the National Assembly had advised the Senate President that he should be sworn in, in compliance with the judgment of the Supreme Court and the Certificate of Return issued to him by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). To my astonishment, my opponent is still being allowed to attend plenary by the leadership of the Senate. The Senate is the apex institution of law making and cannot continue perpetrating an illegality. The Senate leadership has stopped listing my opponent’s motions and bills on the Order Papers because they know that whatever he does in the Senate at this point, is null and void because it is inconsistent with the Rule of Law

North and the people have never had the Senate seat, since the advent of democracy. Agom said it was unfair.

“Where is the equity they talk about.

Above all, I think I have done well for my Federal Constituency and expanding my horizon politically, is the way of the future.

We have victory already. What’s happening right now is incontrovertibly inconsistent. The Parliament must rise above this and do the needful,” he stated.

On whether he has any doubt in his mind where the pendulum would swing, the Senator-designate was full of optimism and stating emphatically that “I will be Inaugurated and all I will do is to consolidate on my achievements but extend the benefits of what the Federal Constituency is enjoying to the whole Senatorial District. I discover that Obudu, Bekwarra Obanliku Federal Constituency needs my intervention.

The various communities need social amenities and proper infrastructure.

These can only be achieved by being selfless and understanding the workings of parliament.”

He told THISDAY that he was an incurable optimist who believes strongly in the fact that no one can truncate the collective resolve of the people and the grace of God upon his life and that of any man, adding that “The dream has already been realized. I am not the proverbial “ doubting Thomas”.

Speaking on a recent threat by an aide to the governor who vowed that he will never set his foot on the senate plenary except his ghost, Agom explained that “The guy that posted that,happens to be one of the governor ’s aides. It’s unfortunate that we have a government populated by comedians, who only think through the food on the table.”

He assured that the security agencies were aware of the statement from the governor ’s aide adding that Investigations will commence soon on that.

He recalled that this was not the first encounter as members of his supporters group have been faced with far more threats by agents of the state government.

He narrated what transpired during the primary election pointing out that “One of my supporters was killed in the house of a serving commissioner one day to the primary. The venue of the primary election was like a battle ground, with security men attached to the governor, shooting indiscriminately at my supporters. The DSS is aware of the threats to my life. The Nigerian government and God will protect me and also keep my supporters away from their evil plans.”

T H I S D AY ˾ ͯͰ˜ ͰͮͰͯ

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FEATURES

Group Features Editor: Chiemelie Ezeobi Email chiemelie.ezeobi@thisdaylive.com, 07010510430

Driving the Tree Planting Initiative Firm proponents of the need to save the planet, the STEAM club members of Caleb British International School, comprising year seven to Year 11 students, have been driving a tree planting advocacy by creating a 3D recycled project on 'Restoring our Forests' which highlights the benefits of planting trees geared towards instilling the culture of maintaining the ecosystem and sustaining the rainforest. Chiemelie Ezeobi reports that the project recently won them the David Shepherd Award in London at the 2021 Global Canvas Art Competition

The tree planting exercise in commemoration of the International Day of Forests

The 3D Recycle Project on 'Restoring our Forest'

I

n the quest for urbanisation, most cities were replaced by buildings, asphalt roads and bridges with no care for how trees could still remain in the landscape. The resultant effect is a degraded environment left at the whims and caprices of climate change.

In fact, this has prompted some environ-

mental experts to postulate that without the environment, man will be nothing since human activities are made possible by the existence of his environment.

Firm proponents of the need to save the planet, the STEAM club members of Caleb British International School (CBIS), Lagos, Nigeria, have been driving tree planting

advocacy, with the goal being to actively engage the students to help make the world a more just and sustainable place. This they have done by creating, protecting and appreciating the green environment, in a bid to bequeath a sustainable environment to the next generation.

Interestingly, the movement towards

planting trees and replenishing the earth has assumed center stage in global discussions in the last decade. Essentially, tree planting has become expedient because it has been proven that the quality of man's health largely depends on the number of trees around.

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T H I S D AY ˾ ͯͰ˜ ͰͮͰͯ

FEATURES

Project participants; Chisom Okonkwo, Kanyinsola Jegede, Milly-Jane Dzikwi and Timandra Usoroh with the Project Coordinator, Prince Olusegun Adeniyi

Project participants; Naomi Adeyemi and Daniella Ayeyemi with the Project Coordinator, Prince Olusegun Adeniyi

Nsa Tenley and Prince Olusegun Adeniyi (the STEAM project Coordinator)

The school principal, Mrs Esther Ebor, Mrs Adeniyi and the STEAM project Coordinator, Prince Olusegun Adeniyi

Climate Change Without a doubt, the effects of climate change have led to adverse weather conditions. One of the many reasons include the fact that mankind fell trees in multiples but fail to replace any, and because trees use up carbon dioxide and give us oxygen to breathe, the felling of trees without replacement leaves more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which causes ozone depletion.

This simply means that the iceberg separating the sun from having direct impact on the earth cause rapid melting of the ice from above, while the excess carbon dioxide from the earth also enhance rapid melting of the ice from under.

This and more are reasons why experts and indeed students of Caleb British International School, have continued to clamour for enhanced tree planting by everyone to checkmate the effect of climate change.

Expectedly, nowadays, environmental issues are receiving attention at global levels and the global community are continuously making efforts towards ensuring that the world is a better place for human habitation.

Their efforts are to ameliorate the continuous threat of climate change challenges the world faces, which includes global warming, greenhouse gas effects, flooding, acid rain, typhoons, earthquakes, windstorm, land and mud slides, desertification, tsunami, erosion, volcanic, hurricane and pollution, amongst several others.

Role of Trees on the Ecosystem It is often said that 'when the last tree dies, the last man dies'. Undoubtedly, trees have their roles in the eco system, thus the need to improve on the environment because they contribute to the oxygen. Asides providing oxygen that humans consume and absorb whatever carbon monoxide that is in the atmosphere especially during the day, trees provide shelter and barrier against rain and windstorms.

When trees are cut down or forests are cleared, the earth becomes poorer. Essentially, trees give, improve, and sustain life, prevent erosion, fight flood, regulate climate change, provide habitat for wild life and ensure clean oxygen.

It is also known that trees are quite germane to human existence directly or indirectly. For instance, it's insufficient trees and grass that cause conflict in animal grazing for the different ethnic groups.

Thus, planting trees could be one of the easiest ways to reclaiming such grounds

from desertification.

Also, a healthy environment ensures healthy living. Again, apart from the aesthetic value of trees, the health and environmental benefits of trees are also innumerable, as well as the transformation and greenery of open spaces.

Economic-wise, planting of trees generate paid employment opportunities for horticulturists, pruners, gardeners, welders, tanker drivers, security personnel, down to the water boy, all of who help to keep the trees alive.

Deforestation in Nigeria Sharing insight on what aroused their interest in saving the planet through trees, the CBIS team said: "About half the land in Nigeria used to be covered in trees. Today, Nigeria has lost 96 per cent of its forest due to deforestation. This is alarming and catastrophic!

"As of 2005, Nigeria has the highest rate of deforestation in the world according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Between 2000 and 2005 the country lost 55.7 per cent of its primary forests, and the rate of forest change increased by 31.2 per cent to 3.12 per cent per annum.

"Forests are being cleared for logging, timber export, subsistence agriculture and notably the collection of wood for fuel which remains problematic in western Africa. The country's rainforests are fast declining. And if action is not taken, we will continue to experience increase in temperature due to global warming.

"The fact is that our planet is becoming warmer every day, which is known as global warming. Global warming is one of the greatest problems in the world today. Global warming is a phenomenon of climate change characterised by a general increase in average temperatures of the Earth, which modifies the weather balances and ecosystems for a long time.

"It is directly linked to the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, worsening the greenhouse effect. Humans are increasingly influencing the climate and the earth's temperature by burning fossil fuels, cutting down rainforests and farming livestock."

Taking Action against Deforestation Putting action to words, the students, parents and teachers of CBIS recently took "Action for Forests Restoration: In Celebration

of the International Day of Forests (usually marked on March 21)".

To mark it, the students, parents and teachers took action against deforestation by planting trees in commemoration. The project was led by the school Principal, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Esther Ebor, supported by two CBIS parents, Mrs. Adetula and Mrs. Oseremen. According to them, the event was to further advance their tree planting advocacy and to put their concept into implementation.

Shedding further light on this, the principal said: “The STEAM project is an interdisciplinary learning approach that enables our students to integrate multiple fields of studies for creative, innovative and critical problem-solving.

"We engage our students in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to develop their core competencies which allows them to solve their community issues and contribute to contemporary global issues at both national and global levels as informed, engaged, responsible and responsive global citizens. We want our students to actively engage with the world, and help to make it a more just and sustainable place.”

Bagging the Shepherd Award Barely four days after, the Tree Planting Advocacy STEAM project of Caleb British International School won David Shepherd Award. The final was hosted online from DSWF office in London on Thursday, March 25 and 2,219 children from 26 countries participated. CBIS won one of the five awards at the competition.

The award was their second time of clinching it, but this time, they won with their 3D recycled project (Tree planting advocacy) at the Global Canvas Art Competition 2021.

Participants The participants comprise Year seven to Year 11 STEAM CLUB members of Caleb British International School, Lagos, Nigeria.

The list of the Global Champions includes: Oluwaferanmi Favour Oyeyipo, Gilead Okechukwu, Kanyinsola Jegede, Okonkwo Chisom, Timandra Usoroh, Milly-Jane Dzikwi, and Keziah Archer.

Others include Melogo Bosah, Daniella Ayeyemi, Umeh Adetutu Rita, Ikechukwu Iheannacho, Nsa Tenley, Mykelti Ogbeide, Kosochuku Cyril-Ukpaka, Adedokun Ayomide, Akinsanmi Sharon, Obi-Chinedu David, Olabiyi Gideon Tomilola, Oladipo Agboola

Samuel, Onosetale Osegbale, Iweha Esther, Anyaogu Emmanuella, Onugo Stephane, David Kela, Usoroh Galadriel, and Elliot Ibiyeapuye.

The STEAM project was coordinated by Prince Olusegun Adeniyi and supervised by the school Principal, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Esther Ebor, with support of Mr. Inyang David Edet, Mr. Imah Okokon, Mrs. Osundiya, Mr. Edosa David and Mr. Magnus Ogho.

3D Recycled Project In credence to the above, the STEAM students of CBIS, Lagos, also created 3D recycled project to drive tree planting initiatives and advocacy titled: Restoring our Forests (Afforestation and Reforestation). The project highlights the benefits of planting trees which is geared towards instilling the culture of maintaining the ecosystem and sustaining the rainforest.

Reiterating that without the plants, the climate may become dryer and growing food could become impossible for many, they further posited that "rainforests play a practical role in keeping our planet healthy by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing the oxygen that we depend on for our survival.

"The absorption of this CO2 also helps to stabilise the Earth's climate. As trees grow, they help stop climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air, storing carbon in the trees and soil, and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere.

"This project was executed with about 90 per cent recycling materials. Recycling is an absolute necessity for dealing with waste and another response to reducing global warming. The goal of this project is to champion the culture of planting trees in order to restore our forests, preserve biodiversity, prevent climate change and reduce global warming.

"This project is related to SDG 13: Climate Action; SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production; SDG 15: Life on Land.

More about this project can be learnt at www.calebsteamhub.blogspot.com".

Given that it's no longer news that the global environment has been ravaged by eco-degradation leading to climate change as a cumulative effect of years of environmental negligence on man's part, it is therefore expedient that best efforts are put in to rehabilitate the environment, especially through tree planting, which is known to make a huge impact in the fight against environmental problems, including global warming.

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MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021 • T H I S D AY

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T H I S D AY ˾ ͯͰ˜ 2021

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Quick Takes MTN Nigeria Sponsors ICAN Conference

STOCK-TAKING

L-R: Managing Director/CEO, GuarantyTrust Bank Plc, Mr. Segun Agbaje; Chairman, Mrs. Osaretin Demuren; and Company Secretary, Mr. Erhi obebeduo, at the 31st annual general meetingofthebankheldinLagos...recently PHOTO:ETOPUKUTT

FG to Launch Web-based Solution for Project Monitoring Sunday Ehigiator The Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba has revealed plans by the federal government to launch a web application to be christened ‘Eye-Mark’, aimed at empowering Nigerians to report any poorly executed government projects to the government.

He also disagreed with reports that the health and educational sectors of the economy were underfunded.

The minister made this known recently, while speaking with THISDAY at a two-day National Assembly/Budget Office of the Federation of Nigeria (BOF) retreat holding in Lagos.

According to him, the federal government was planning on using technology, “so that we get Nigerians to be the one to

ECONOMY monitor and evaluate projects for us.”

He explained: “So, we are developing a web-app, which we have named the ‘Eye-Mark’, because we want Nigerians to eye mark the projects for us, while the government ear-marks.

“And it’s going to use geospatial technology. So an ordinary Nigerian that sees a road being constructed, but the quality is not good, will take a picture of it, and send it to us, so we know exactly where it is.

“Haven received this, we will go to the responsible Ministry or Agency and take it up with them. With this, we are no longer relying on just the Monitoring and Evaluation team from the MDA’s, because when you are

monitoring yourself, of course you will say you are doing well.

“So, we want Nigerians to be the ones really doing those monitoring. This isn’t a takeaway from the monitoring and evaluation team, but to ensure checks and balances and carry Nigerians along.”

Speaking further, he said he does not agree that the health and educational sectors are not been properly funded, saying “what happens is that, most people who are analysing just take a look at what had been given under the ministry of health, or the ministry of education.”

He added: “But when talking about the sector, there are fundings that are meant for those sectors that aren’t domicile in those ministries.”

He argued that the Universal Basic Education (UBEC) fund, for instance, is not domiciled with

Ministry of education, adding that the TET-Fund is also not domiciled with the Ministry of Education.

“So if you want to talk about the education sector you have to talk about what has been given to the ministry, TET-Fund, UBEC, and it doesn’t even stops there.

“Ministry of Works is doing a lot of intervention in federal universities, doing roads and all, which is educational sector.

Ministry of Finance, Budget and Planning has got schools where statisticians are trained, but the funding for that does not show in Ministry of Education. Agric has got schools too.

“So if you want to look at the sector, you put all of it together and you find that they are well Continued on page 58

Report: IncreasedBorrowingMay TriggerStructural Reformsin Nigeria Peter Uzoho As Nigeria is projected to raise $3 billion this year meet its infrastructure needs, which is expected to increase its public debts, the situation will force the country’s policy makers to implement structural reforms, the Chief Executive Officer, Financial Derivatives Company (FDC), Mr. Bismarck Rewane has stated.

He stated this in his latest Lagos Business School’s executive breakfast meeting presentation, a copy of which was obtained at the weekend.

The April 2021 edition of the monthly report, entitled “Oil Illusion and Financial Delusion,” was a review of the economic performance of the country in the just ended first quarter of 2021

ECONOMY and a peep into the second quarter performance.

He said the depth of recession experienced in 2020, would leave a large fiscal and debt hangover for most African countries and would reduce the scope for policy makers to respond with stimulatory measures, citing Zambia as the first country in the region to default in its Eurobond repayment.

The report notedd that several African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa were planning to borrow from the international capital markets.

Ghana recently successfully issued $3 billion Eurobond.

“Nigeria will raise $3 billion in 2021. Increased borrowing to meet infrastructure need will

force Nigerian policy makers to implement structural reforms,” Rewane wrote in the report.

For Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the FDC CEO said pro-business policies and structural reforms would help bolster economic activity over the longer term, stressing that policy initiatives to address lagging productivity, skills and infrastructure would progress slowly.

On the kind of recovery expected in SSA, he forecasted an inverted V-shaped recovery, noting that recoveries were diverging across and within countries.

He projected that SSA economy would expand by 3.4 per cent in 2021 and four per cent in 2022, while Inverted V-shaped recovery was expected to occur in Nigeria and South Africa.

However, the FDC boss said

the informal sector was going to spur the projected recovery, predicting that unemployment in the formal economy would decline slowly.

He added that while jobs in the informal sector will rebound faster as restrictions eased, inflation was projected to average 8.1 per cent in 2021, before edging down to eight per cent in 2022.

“From our perspective, we can say that Nigeria will experience an inverted V-shaped recovery while battling persistent inflation.

“Institutional and domestic investors are jittery as they attempt to make sense of ambiguous pronouncements and conflicting data,” he stated in the report.

Noting that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World

MTN Nigeria recently disclosed that it sponsored the 50th Annual Accountants’ Conference that held from April 5th to 9th, 2021, at Abuja.

This year’s event with the theme: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Boom for the Accounting Profession and Panacea for the Pandemic,” hosted over 7,500 local and foreign delegates.

The hybrid event (physical and virtual attendance) was streamed to participants who were unable to attend the event physically due to limitations posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking at the conference, the Chief Transformation Officer, MTN Nigeria, Olubayo Adekanmbi said, “We at MTN Nigeria are so proud to be identified with this honorable profession and we are glad that we are helping to drive this conversation. This is our way of ensuring that in the wake of the pandemic, practising professionals remain up to date and add value to our nation in a changing world.”

Delivering his presentation on the importance of Internet ofThings (IoT) in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Adekanmbi stated that, “With IoT, things that takes us years in our auditing, asset tracking and efficiency can be fast-tracked and accelerated. IoTallows you to reduce operational costs because you can track anything, everything, everywhere and you can serve your customers readily.

“For IoT to work, there are certain things that are critical because it is one device talking to another device. It means that you need an internet that is super powered and that is what broadband does effectively.

“MTN Nigeria has one of the fastest, accelerated broadband quality in Nigeria. A few months ago, through the honorable minister, we were able to test 5G in Nigeria. These are the enabling infrastructure we are already experimenting in Nigeria,” he added.

China Fines Alibaba

China slapped a record 18 billion yuan ($2.75 billion) fine on Alibaba Group Holding Limited on Saturday, after an anti-monopoly probe found the e-commerce giant had abused its dominant market position for several years.

The fine, about four per cent of Alibaba’s 2019 domestic revenues, comes amid a crackdown on technology conglomerates and indicates China’s antitrust enforcement on internet platforms has entered a new era after years of laissez-faire approach.

According to Reuters, the Alibaba business empire has come under intense scrutiny in China since billionaire founder Jack Ma’s stinging public criticism of the country’s regulatory system in October.

A month later, authorities scuttled a planned $37 billion IPO by Ant Group, Alibaba’s internet finance arm, which was set to be the world’s biggest ever. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announced its antitrust probe into the company in December.

While the fine brings Alibaba a step closer to resolving its antitrust woes, Ant still needs to agree to a regulatory-driven revamp that is expected to sharply cut its valuations and rein in some of its freewheeling businesses.

“This penalty will be viewed as a closure to the anti-monopoly case for now by the market. It’s indeed the highest profile anti-monopoly case in China,” head of research BOCOM International in Hong Kong, Hong Hao said.

“The market has been anticipating some sort of penalty for some time ... but people need to pay attention to the measures beyond the antimonopoly investigation.”

Petrobras, Govt Plan Sepia, Atapu Sale

The board of Brazilian state-run oil company, Petrobras, has approved an agreement with the government regarding the compensation that must be paid to Petrobras in the event of an auction of reserves in two offshore oil areas, the firm said on Friday.

Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as the company is formally known, will receive $3.253 billion if reserves from the Atapu field are auctioned off, and $3.2 billion if reserves from Sepia are sold off. The payments would be made over the course of roughly a decade.

The government tried and failed to auction off reserves in the Atapu and Sepia offshore oil blocks in 2019, though officials are keen to try again.

As Petrobras has already done exploration and development work in those regions, the company is eligible for compensation.

“TThe urgency and need to unlock the potential of this generation is imperative for the security of our collective future” Chairman, United Bank for Africa Plc

Continued on page 58

Tony Elumelu

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BUSINESSWORLD FG TO LAUNCH WEBBASED SOLUTION FOR PROJECT MONITORING funded.”

Also speaking with THISDAY, the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, expressed optimism that there would be an improvement in oil revenue, to further help funding of the budget.

“We expect to build on some performance of 2020 which was a very difficult year. Notwithstanding, on the winning side, we were able to achieve up to 73 per cent of our revenue projections, and on the expenditure side, we achieved 100 per cent funding of it.

“We expect to sustain that performance for the second year running, we are going to pass the budget so that implementation will commence January. That itself is a contributory factor towards better overall performance of the budget,” he added.

“By the time we take stocks of first quarter performance, we will have a better view of how things are going,” he noted.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Jibrin Barau, expressed confidence in the 2021 budget performance.

REPORT: INCREASED BORROWING MAY TRIGGER STRUCTURAL REFORMS IN NIGERIA

Bank, at their spring meetings in Washington, expressed optimism about Nigeria’s economic recovery, he argued that the upward review of their projections on the West African country, rests heavily on optimal vaccine rollouts and stronger oil prices.

The IMF last week revised its 2021 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth projection for Nigeria to 2.5 per cent from one per cent, this, Rewane said was “a confidence boost for the much needed investment inflows.”

He warned, however, that the snares of insecurity, hyperinflation and policy uncertainty in the country could force investors to take their funds elsewhere.

On exchange rate policy, the FDC boss argued that the nuanced interpretation of flexible or floating exchange rates by policy makers, made investors wary and was seen as a missed opportunity to embark on a unified exchange rate system.

NEWS

FG Pledges to Implement Report on $1bn Abandoned Oil Facility Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja The federal government has received the report of the compensatory contracts and other incentives committee on the abandoned $1 billion Kaztec Engineering Limited (KEL) fabrication yard, located in Ilase village, Snake Island, AmuwoOdofin Council, Lagos State.

Submitting the report to the Minister of State, Petroleum, Mr. Timipre Sylva, in Abuja, Chairman of the Committee and Member of the Board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Senator Magnus Abe, described the assignment as sensitive.

Members of the inter-ministerial committee were drawn from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), federal ministry of defence, ministry of finance, ministry of justice and the NNPC. The chairman explained that the federal government would not sit by and allow such humongous waste of resources on the project, stressing that aside the 3,000 jobs lost to the collapse of the facility, over $650 million had already been expended on the abandoned project.

Abe noted that the facility was to add over 19 million barrels to the national oil reserve before Addax Petroleum declared a force majeure on the project which has not been operational since 2015 due to contractual issues.

The facility was designed to make it the first wholly indigenous engineering, procurement, fabrication, and offshore installation

company to deliver complex offshore and onshore oil and gas projects until the operational challenges occurred.

“This has been a very sensitive assignment. This committee was inaugurated 14 August last year and we sought an extension and we have finished our task, submitted our interim report. But we thought the public needed to know what is happening on this project.

“In keeping with that, we thought we needed a formal report. It is important that Ni-

gerians realise what happened on this project. As we speak, this was a project that was to extract or add 19 million barrels to our existing reserves and would have been part of the daily national production.

“After that project was ready and everything was in place, contracts had been awarded and close to $1 billion had been invested in it, addax petroleum called a force majeure on issues that were totally unrelated to this particular project at hand,” he lamented. The NNPC board

member noted that the action put over 3,000 Nigerians out of work and wasted hard earned foreign currency that the country would have used for other things, adding that, “Nigerians will weep over what happened there,” when allowed to visit the site.

The committee chairman noted that Nigerians ought to know the extent of damage that was done not only to the indigenous oil company, but to the economic interest of the country.

He stated that not only were the workers there affected, but a lot

of jobs that were supposed to be done in-country that would have been useful even in the execution of other projects, were still being done abroad.

“As a result of that, the entire investment of the Nigerian company went to waste, more than, 3,000 laid off, ships were abandoned and the entire investment collapsed.

“So, when the president got wind of it, he set up this committee to go and find out the way it could help revitalise that project so that it isn’t lost or wasted.

UNVEILINGNEWBANKINGSOLUTION

L-R:Director,MicrofinanceDevelopmentCompanyLimited(MDCL),Dr.DanielOgun;ChiefExecutiveOfficer,ObinnaOnunkwo;DirectorofFinance,Winifred Oche;Chairman,RogersNwoke;KeynoteSpeakerandPartner,KPMG,LawrenceAmadi,duringthelaunchoftheIntermemberLiquidityPlacementPlatform (ILPP)formicrofinancebanksinLagos,recently.

Court Grants Permission to Serve Processes on ETI Abroad Davidson Iriekpen

of Facts filed against ETI and its subsidiary, Ecobank Development Corporation (EDC) on December 11, 2020, Kamgaing alleged that he was fired for raising or refusing to condone inappropriate and possibly criminal transactions at various times, notably in the Securities, Wealth and Asset Management (SWAM) business in 2020 in Cote d’Ivoire.

Kamgaing joined ETI, the Lomebased holding company of the Ecobank Group in February 2014, as Managing Director of EDC (a Lomé subsidiary of ETI housing IB and SWAM) and as Group Head of IB. He started in Accra and was seconded to EDC Nigeria in November 2016, but remained an ETI staff.

Until the termination of his contract as Group Head of IB, Kamgaing was managing 12 front

The stage may have been set for a showdown between Ecobank Transnational Inc (ETI) and one of its former senior executives, Moyo Kamgaing, as the National Industrial Court sitting Lagos, has ordered him to serve court processes on the organisation (ETI) at its head office in Lomé, Togo.

Justice Elizabeth Ama Oji granted the application while ruling on the preliminary objection filed by ETI to challenge the service of the court processes on it in Lome by courier.

ETI terminated the employment of Kamgaing with effect from October 1, 2020, allegedly on economic grounds, to end ETI’s Investment Bank (IB) as a stand-alone unit.

In a Complaint and Statement

office staff based in EDC vehicles in Abidjan, Accra, Lagos, Douala, and Nairobi.

In his witness statement, Kamgaing said he joined Ecobank, like many Africans attracted to its mission, to contribute with his then 28-year experience to building a world class bank.

IB was one of six products within the Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB). What he found was very different from ETI’s mission.

As MD of EDC, Kamgaing had a unique view of SWAM. In 2016, SWAM lost $95million on a Ponzi scheme in Ghana due to poor controls.

These had been identified in a 2012 audit, but were left unremedied, causing the largest single operational loss in the history of ETI. Kamgaing said a business with

$3million in revenues that lost $95million should be closed.

But the ETI CEO, Ade Ayeyemi, chose to keep it, bailed out SWAM and absolved the business head, Paul-Harry Aithnard.

Kamgaing asserted that an intentional campaign by his supervisor and Head of CIB, Amin Manekia, ensued to undermine IB and his professional competence by (a) misrepresenting the cost structure of the business, (b) allowing an erosion of revenues internally and externally, (c) failing to apply bank policy on bonuses and causing staff exits, and (d) manipulating the appraisal process to underscore his performance ratings.

In October 2019, an audit uncovered that unapproved loans of $30million had been granted in Abidjan from 2015 using client funds.

After an inquiry, Mike Coffi (Head of SWAM since 2018) was fired in April 2020.

Manekia announced that the file was closed, without further forensic investigation, in a clear attempt to whitewash.

Kamgaing sent an email on April 17, 2020 to Amin Manekia explaining that the incident was foreseeable, and invoking his supervisory responsibility.

The reaction was swift. On April 23, 2020, Ayeyemi, the CEO, called Kamgaing to say that he would close IB, and Kamgaing would be terminated.

Ayeyemi made various threats, and referred to the aforesaid email of 17 April 16, 2020.

Kamgaing insisted at an EDC Board meeting in May 2020 that a culture of impunity had been allowed to foster in SWAM for many years.

Group Business Editor

Obinna Chima

Firm Offers Solution to Gridlock, Port Congestion

Capital Market Editor

Goddy Egene

Comms/e-Business Editor

Emma Okonji Asst. Editor, Money Market Nume Ekeghe Senior Correspondent

Raheem Akingbolu (Advertising) Correspondents

Chinedu Eze (Aviation) Eromosele Abiodun (Maritime) James Emejo (Finance) Ebere Nwoji (Insurance) Chineme Okafor (Energy) Emmanuel Addeh (Energy) Reporters

Nosa Alekhuogie (ICT) Peter Uzoho (Energy)

Eromosele Abiodun A Nigerian firm, the Mercury Maritime Concession Company (MMCC), has proffered a solution to the congestion at the nation’s seaports and related traffic gridlock in Lagos.

According to the firm, its proposed Creek Industrial Estate project which is awaiting the approval of the Lagos State government will bring an end to the epileptic congestion of the ports that has continually

given the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), truck drivers as well as residents of the Lagos metropolis constant nightmares.

Chairman of the MMCC, Rear Admiral Andrew Okoja (Rtd) stated this during a courtesy visit to the Commissioner of Waterfronts Infrastructure Development at the Lagos State Secretariat, Alausa in company of traditional rulers in the Snake Island community.

The traditional rulers led by Kamoru Bolarinwa were at Alausa

to seek answers to the delay in the take-off of the Creek Industrial Estate project after several years of its proposed commencement.

Okoja, noted that the project on completion would provide a tunnel road that links the eastern and western axis of Lagos from Badagry through the Snake Island, Ogogoro Island to join the Ahmadu Bello Way on Victoria Island. “Technically, it will link the three sea ports - Tin Can Island, Apapa and Ibeju Lekki in Lagos.

The Creek Industrial Estate will

also provide a platform along with its annex located in Ikorodu with the delivery of cargoes by barges and through this provide a marine option for decongesting the ports.

“By this option, trailers will not have to come into Lagos to pick up cargoes for delivery to their hinterlands destinations, “he said.

The former Nigerian Defence Adviser further noted that aside from eradicating ports conjunction and making traffic gridlock caused

by trailer operators a thing of the past, the Creek Industrial Estate will provide a 1,000 hectares of land for industries, 600 hectares of land for residential/ commercial layout and 120 hectares of land for resettlement as well as create 15,000 job opportunities with an Independent Power Plant of 1,200 megawatts of power all to be funded by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) sourced from Switzerland/China and United Bank for Africa (Nigeria to the tune of $2.7 billion.

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Bauchi Releases N300m for Fertilizer Revolving Scheme Segun Awofadeji in Bauchi As part of efforts towards enhancing agricultural production, the Bauchi State government has released the sum of N300 million to the State Agricultural Supply Company (BASAC) as a revolving scheme for fertiliser blending and distribution to farmers in the state.

The state Commissioner of Agriculture and Rural Development, Samaila Adamu Burga disclosed this while declaring open a 5- day training workshop for staff of the BASAC organised in collaboration with Namus Agro - Consult Nigeria Limited, held in Bauchi.

Burga, who emphasised the present administration’s determination towards developing the agricultural sector boost its economy said the scheme was aimed at eliminating all hindrances to availability of the commodity to peasant farmers across the state.

The commissioner said the Company (BASAC) was established in 1981 by government in order to provide succor to the plight of farmers every year.

According to him, “The company is to ensure that the farmers got quality farm inputs in order to boost production.

Over the years, the company has done well as can be seen in the produce of our farmers yearly.”

He added that, “in order to ensure that the farmers got fertilizer without hitches, the government has released the sum of N300 million to BASAC as a revolving scheme to procure the commodity from the blending company, sell it to the farmers and go for another round of supply, with that, there will be no break in supply of the commodity.”

He, then urged participants to pay attention to the training in order to be able to serve the people better. According to him, effective service delivery will attract patronage from the farmers.

Earlier, the General Manager, BASAC, Engr. Ibrahim Yushau Isah Duguri, said the company was involved in ensuring farmers in the state got quality service in order to boost produce production.

He also said for effective service delivery, the company has three zonal offices and sales outlets across the state where its services can be accessed by the farmers especially the peasants who do not have the financial backing to make purchases.

The BASAC GM commended the state government for supporting the company in its determination to improve on the agricultural production in the state saying that people of the state are collaborating with the company to boost their businesses.

Nigeria Seeks to Boost Cowpea Export to Europe, Others James Emejo in Abuja The federal government is currently working to boost its cowpea exports to Europe, following the rejection of the Nigerian commodity due to poor quality standards in recent times, THISDAY has learnt.

Trial Manager for the PBR Cowpea Nigeria Project, Mr. Mohammed Lawal Umar, said though there was a high demand for cowpea in Europe, Nigerian exports had been jettisoned largely because of their heavy chemicals components usually used on farms and during preservation.

He said efforts were on top gear to reverse the trend to allow Nigerian cowpea exports re-access the European market and the global markets at large.

Umar, who is also Head of Department, Plant Science, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, added that ongoing initiatives were aimed at ensuring adoption of best practices in the production

of the commodity as well as improving the health of consumers and environmental protection.

In an interview with journalists over the weekend, he said the project was collaborating with local companies on the multiplication of genetically produced cowpea variety as well as awareness campaign among farmers.

He said three seed companies have been thoroughly assessed and engaged to carry out the seed multiplication and distribution tasks across the country to enhance the potentials of cowpea, which according to him, could boost the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as farmers will use less chemical and save the money for other businesses.

He pointed out that it will henceforth prioritise interventions based on where cowpea was grown mostly in the country to know where the seeds will be distributed.

Umar said: “Engaging seed companies alone will not

be the last stage, we want to also conduct promotion exercise and prioritise where cowpea is grown most that is about 24 states including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Though we are going to extend it to the South-south and South-east.

“We are targeting not less than 2,000 farmers across the country, though this is not the final figure, it will be more than that because last year we had demonstration about nine states including FCT and we were able to retrieve the seed from the farmers where we had post-harvest assessment for analysis. Very soon will inform the public where the seeds will be available.”

On adulteration, he said the new cowpea variety would be monitored closely so as to maintain the purity of what is produced.

According to him: “Anything that comes new, we have to monitor it so that there is no adulteration, we want to maintain the purity of what

we produced, this is because we have told farmers that the seed requires only two times spray and if farmers buy the adulterated seed and find out that it requires more than two times spray, then what we have worked hard to achieved will be wasted.

“We are working on the production guide and very soon it will be ready where each farmer that buys the seed will be issued the guide on how to produce for maximum yield.

“Currently, we are working on the additional Insect Resistant Management (IRM) plant, we are going to see other ways we can support the current gene the variety was developed to extend the protection against the insect, we are trying to incorporate it into the variety it was developed.”

He added that with less chemical in Nigeria’s cowpea, the country will go back fully into cowpea export which will generate a lot of revenue.

FG: Why Presidency Rates ITF High in Job, Wealth Creation Seriki Adinoyi in Jos The federal government has given reasons the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) is rated by the Presidency as the foremost agency of government at the forefront of government’s job and wealth creation.

It said the Fund has done well in assisting government’s efforts to lift the country out of poverty and unemployment.

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Adeniyi Adebayo, who disclosed this in Jos, at the 2020 ITF Merit Award ceremony at the weekend, therefore urged the ITF management not to relent in empowering Nigerians with technical skills, but to train more Nigerians and by so doing etch the name of the ITF in gold.

He said, “The commitment of the federal government to diversify the National economy and put it back on the path of growth has never been in doubt. Through policies, including the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), the Economic Sustainability Plan and the various support schemes for the MSMEs sectors of the economy, the federal government is determined to doing all it entails to lift the country out of poverty and unemployment.

“I must note that one Agency that has been at the forefront of these efforts is the Industrial Training Fund, and I will like to use this opportunity to say that the Fund has done tremendously well in this regard, and has become a dependable ally

of the federal government, by the implementation of several skills intervention programmes that have trained over 500,000 since the Director-General, Sir Joseph N. Ari assumed office in 2016.

“It is equally noteworthy that the ITF has been mentioned and identified by the Presidency as the foremost Agency of government at the forefront of federal government job and wealth creation policy.

“The Fund was among the few agencies requested by the federal government to forward submissions on the best approach to lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.

“It is for this reason and in appreciation of its contributions to National growth, that the Council for the Development of the Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), headed

by His Excellency, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo rewarded the ITF with the prestigious Award of Excellence as outstanding MSMEs clinic star partner and the award for outstanding contribution to the development of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria respectively.”

The Minister commended the management and staff of the ITF for carefully applying the meagre resources available to it to do the enormous work of ensuring that Nigerians are equipped with requisite skills, and also building its capacity to effectively deliver on its mandate, particularly with regards to expanding its infrastructure.

HUMANCAPITALDEVELOPMENT

L-R:Trustee,AbdulLateef&SanniFoundation,Mr.AbdulWasiuSowami;ProgrammeDirector,Mr.GaniyatSowami;ProgrammeAdvisor,Ms.AishaAminuUmar; Trustee,Mr.MoshoodOlajide,andProgrammeCoordinator,MsZahraAbdulkareematthelaunchofAbdulLateef&SanniFoundationlearninganddevelopment centreinLagos...recently

‘PrivitisationofSugarCompanies WillBoostInvestment,Self-sufficiency’ Hammed Shittu in Ilorin The Executive Secretary, Nigeria Sugar Development Council (NSDC) Mr. Adelabu Adedeji has said the federal government efforts on privatisation of sugar companies in the country will boost the value chain in sugar investment, self-sufficiency and enhance quality sugar production.

Speaking at the sensitisation workshop for the take-off of the multi-billion Bacita Sugar Company held in Edu local government council area of Kwara state, over the weekend, Adedeji said the development would also make the country to be self-sufficient.

The workshop was attended by royal fathers, community leaders, socio-cultural groups like Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa.

The company is currently owned by the new investor,

KIA Africa Group of Companies Limited.

Adedeji added that the privatisation of the sugar sector would assist investors to produce over 70 per cent capacity that would go a long way of improving economic prosperity.

Represented at the event by the NSDC Director of Policy, Planning and Statistics, Mr. Hezekiah Kolawole, the Executive Secretary stressed further that, there was no doubt that the commencement of the Bacita sugar company would return the nation’s hope in the sugar refinery that would boost the economic growth of the host communities and the country in general.

Adedeji who solicited the support of the host communities and other adjoining areas of Bacita said that, “the NSDC that is supervising council

would continue to work harder in order to see to the full take off of the company by giving useful advises thatvwoukd develop the company into a greater height.”

He recalled the circumstances that led to the delay of the commencement of the operation of the sugar company, saying the death of the former investor affected the commencement of the operation by the company.

He noted that, “And with the new investor that has taken over the company now, all is set to bring new initiatives to the company that would transform the sugar company into economic development of the area.”

Adelabu opined further that, “with the take- off of the company now, banks and other economic activities in Bacita would pick up and

the farmers would be able to produce more sugar for the company and thereby boosting greater chain values Investment in the sugar business in the area”.

Also speaking, the chairman, board of NSDC and Etsu of Tsaragi, Alhaji Aliyu Abdullahi assured the new investor of maximum support that would help the company to move forward.

Represented at the event by the Makama of Tsaragi, Alhaji Buhari Muhammed advised those still using the land of the company covered by the certificate of occupancy to leave the land so as to assist the company to utilise the land for the cultivation of sugar varieties.

He, therefore, urged the new investor to rise to the needs of the host communities so as to bring healthy relationship.

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Auwalu: Crude Oil Will Remain Relevant in Next 50 Years The Director/Chief Executive Officer, Department of Petroleum Resources, Engr. SarkiAuwalu, in this interview spoke about the achievements and strategic business plans of the regulatory agency. Obinna Chima brings the excerpts:

W

e would like to know if you engaged Addax Petroleum to find out the challenge they were having before the decision to revoke their licences was taken and what condition did you give to the new company that is taking over the assets?

First, there is no company that we do not have constant interaction with. The DPR is the lifeline of every oil and gas company in Nigeria. We assess their performance, we give them visibility, when they produce, we give them extra parlay, and we manage their reserves. So, the issue of interaction is there. In fact, it was the interaction that brought about all the issues that we found out in those assets when they were under Addax; issues such as none responsibility for maintaining the reserve, making sure that the reserves are discovered and utilised - because we need investment. So, when we observe that and we have evidences written during our usual interactions, it makes it necessary for us to know that company A or B is not doing well. There is a process in which we follow which is the Petroleum Act. And I can guarantee you that those processes were adequately followed and all our interactions did really confirm to that the company was not fully in compliance with the provisions of the Petroleum Act. Then, for companies that were re-awarded; the withdrawal of 123, 124, 126 and 137, a consortium was given – Kaztec and Salvic Consortium - and it is on same terms and conditions that were given to Addax. The condition needs to be met, if you don’t meet the conditions, the consequences are there. That is why Nigerian petroleum laws are in such a way that when you implement, you can see the result.

The issue smuggling, irregularities and frauds are challenges in the downstream sector, what is the DPR doing about that, and earlier you talked about acquiring Covid-19 vaccines for the industry, when are the vaccines expected?

Smuggling gives us a direction of the borders that are very vulnerable and we are working with the relevant government agencies and giving them that information. Because that information was not available, you just get volume from Lagos, Calabar or Port Harcourt and it just varnishes. But right now, you will know the volume, you will know the movement, you will know where that volume is going. So, we just advice the relevant security agencies and we have been doing that and there have been success from that. And for other irregularities, a lot of marketers are complaining. You see a marketer with 10 or 20 stations, but always when they come for our annual marketers’ meeting, they complain that they made this investment and there is no profit.

Sometimes they sell at loss because most of the time, you see that they under-dispense. When you catch them, you charge them, and ask why they are under-dispensing? They will tell you that, well, any time there is shrinkages. So, with our Downstream Remote Monitoring System (DRMS), what happens is that you know who is really shrinking you - the workers. So, that is why they are very happy. Because right now, that complain has really gone down, because a marketer has 10 stations in 10 states, he is looking at the operations daily. So he knows how much volume he receives, how much volume is sells, and if he under-reports or he did not report at all, when he goes to lift or obtain the product from the depot, he will not be allowed to do that. So, the loop is so complete and that is why we are so confident in what we have seen. Marketers have reduced complaints, and we know the vulnerable borders and all the smuggling areas in the country. I am sure all the information we are passing to the relevant agencies, they are doing something with them. Then, as for the time we are expecting the vaccine, you know it is a window and after the politics of AstraZeneca in Europe has been cleared, the demand for the vaccine went up. Initially when we started, there was a window for Nigeria oil and gas to get two million doses, which we lost it. So, what we are pushing is for any window we see. We encourage the companies to work directly with the health management organisations (HMO) that is responsible and good enough it is the same HMO that is working with the Nigeria primary healthcare agency. We try to make it seamless

Auwalu in a way that the industry will have their own vaccine because they are the engine room of the economy. And we are getting support from all the agencies. So, whenever there is a window, the industry can pay or the company that is ready can pay so that we get the vaccine easily.

What is the DPR doing to address the issue of tank farms and oil depots in residential areas?

Some of these depots, the residents actually met them there. They start to build houses and they now occupy those facilities - that is the case with 80 per cent. And now people are occupying that area and they are now pushing back what really attracted them. The DPR does not issue approval without approval from the planning authority of the respective states. That is because what the state government has is the ground – the ground rate belongs to the state, and the DPR seldom give any approval of any infrastructure without having a no objection from the state. So, when you put these two together, you find out that the complaints largely coming from depots that are occupied by residence, it is somehow when you look at it. There was a committee set up by the National Assembly to really look into this and when they came, we gave them this information especially with respect to how these facilities were licenced before the residence came. It is interesting to know that some realise it is actually the other way round because most of those residence you can hardly see certificate of occupancy on the land they occupy. And we even experience that not only for residence, but also for pipeline right of way. You will see that for pipeline right of way, schools are even built on them. I know it is hard, but this is the hard truth. The only thing we are seeing is that state governments are looking for revenue so they seldom want to push this, because when you push them, it reduces revenue for them and for safety point of view, we now compel each and every facility to develop what we call safety case. And that safety case is a case for safety and why that facility should remain in operation.

And you the owner of the facility, you make a case that whatever happens, you are 100 per cent responsible for it and that case is reviewed and renewed every two years because things change.

So, from DPR that is what we hold on. Based on the history and based on the condition that we find ourselves, we request that they make a case for safety, identify all the risks, do a study to reduce it to a low and practicable level and in a way that their operations, emergency and interaction is being taken care of so that if something happens, you are 100 per cent responsible. So, we are working with all the stakeholders to see how we can relocate that. In fact, when the National assembly set up

that committee, for us it was a good one because we helped them with a lot of data and they are in politics, they know how to manage that very well. What are we doing on the tanker incidences?

Recently, we said every tanker must have a safety valve because if there is tanker incidence, the fuel will explode. So now it is compulsory for every tanker to have a safety valve. It is a no return valve, when the tank is filled up, the product cannot really open, in fact you cannot even siphon the tank. And the discharge point also has no return valve. You can only use the lock of the valve to open it. For all the major marketers, their tankers are fitted with safety valve, in fact, 95 per cent of the major marketers, their tankers are fitted with safety valve. Now, the big issue is the independent marketers. We gave them final deadline of February 28th to comply but when we start implementing it, we found that there were queues everywhere, both in Lagos and Abuja. So, we realised they needed some time, and they needed to import the safety valve it from abroad. So, we now looked at it that it may create unnecessary scarcity. So, we said if you have two trucks, you can only use one and you must put one away. And we give them moratorium and we identified the source of the safety the safety valve. And we said let their union, not individual, be the one to bring in the safety valve. That is, you must be a Petroleum Tanker Driver (PTD) member, for the safety of the drivers. And there is National Association of Road Transport Owners. So, we brought the two unions together and we all agreed three years ago that we will phase out every tanker that don’t have safety valve. The major markets have complied, now it is remaining the independent marketers.

Some of them have complied, but the compliance level was about 20 per cent before February. But, right now, because of the measures we took in bringing them together, using their union to get the safety valve, on union basis. I can tell you since March 1, we have recorded about 47 per cent compliance and that was because we said each and every office that manages depot in Nigeria should enforce it. And we have a template whereby we know the tanker, the product it took, whether it has safety valve or not, the number, the owner and everything. So, we are tracking them to ensure compliance and I believe that with time, tanker incidence will reduce drastically. With the safety valves, even if the tankers fall, the products would not spill because it is the spillage of the products that causes the major havoc on the roads. And all the major marketers have fixed all their tankers with safety valves three years ago.

What is the DPR doing to support the transition to renewable and clean energy, which is presently the global trend?

This is energy politics as you know. The developed nations used brown energy to develop. They are the highest consumers as we speak and oil would remain relevant for more than 50 years to come everybody knows that. And Africa in particular needs fossil fuel to develop. There is no industrialised nation that is developed with renewable energy and renewable energy will only be developed with non-renewable means. What it means is diversification of energy. You have to diversify the energy, use more of gas, use oil, which is crude oil, because we need to refine. If you want to build electric car, you only get polyethylene, polypropylene; and all the polymers from the refinery, you can’t get it from gas.

So, we the developing nations, we should not really take it that we need to join the race of getting renewable, ours is to use this brown energy like China, India and Brazil, all did. No one can say China or India should stop searching for crude oil because that is the ingredient of development and same thing for Nigeria. We know from World Energy Outlook that crude oil would remain very relevant in the next 50 years and it is an ingredient for developing economies. The matured economies can afford to use renewable, but the developing nations, we cannot. The energy security Nigeria is just around 25 per cent; 75 per cent do not have access to energy, let alone renewable. What we are emphasising on is responsible use of energy, which is to diversify energy use. And what are we doing on this? You see today we are saying we are migrating to gas. There is no refinery now without petro-chemical attached to it. Even the modular refinery, you see that they produce diesel, heavy fuel oil (HFO) and naphtha. Naphtha is the building block for petrochemical. So, we are engaging and pushing for hydrogen on one part because it is something that is gaining ground.

Before now, you granted a couple of licenses to modular refineries and most of them have remained largely unutilised?

Our License to Establish (LTE) are for two years and once you are issued LTEs for two years and you don’t use it, it is null and void; you have to reapply afresh. So, when we introduced this policy, it really encouraged a lot of them to start preparing the site.

They come for our Approval-to-Construct (ATC), which is renewable, but you have to pay. With the ATC, you have already committed money and you have started building. So, that is the strategy we are using. So there is no LTE that is dormant now.

After two years, you know, you lost the money, you lost everything, so you have to start afresh.

Can you speak to us about where we are in terms of reduction of oil production cost?

No two fields are same. To benchmark and say your cost of production is X per barrel is not appropriate. Every field has its attendant cost because you use different strategy to extract. But the average as it is now, we want to lower it, at least not to be more than optimal. Some you can produce at $10 per barrel, some at $15 per barrel, some even below $10, and some at maybe $18. But what we want is when you take costs, the average should be between $13 or $14 per barrel. But we know cost of producing in deep water is different from cost of producing in inland basin. It is different from cost of producing in swamp. So, we don’t have a single figure. What we do, which is why we have the National Oil and Gas Excellence Centre (NOGEC), we have a software here that helps to find out the optimal cost per barrel for each field. We have started, we have it there on the sixth floor.

So that we know the cost per barrel and get the aggregate cost for that particular company and we charge the company based on its terrain. That is because working offshore is different from working onshore, the costs are different. In offshore, maybe the security cost is less and offshore it is higher. There are so many parameters. So, that was why we said we need to optimise the cost. The cost of drilling need to be benchmarked, we already have a benchmark. All the basic costs in same terrain must be the same thing, but additional cost in terms of management and in terms of a handling can be different.

NOTE: Interested readers should continue in the online edition on www.thisdaylive.com

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Lekki Free Zone: Key Element in Nigeria’s Economic Revival, Sustenance Eniola Olakunri

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ecently, Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, undertook a 2-day working tour of Lekki Free Zone with members of his cabinet including Commissioners -Tunji Bello (Environment and Water Resources), Gbenga Omotosho (Information and Strategy),Olayinka Oladunjoye (Commerce,Industry and Cooperatives), Idris Okanla Salako (Physical Planning and Urban Development), among others.

The much-awaited visit which took officials of Lekki Free Zone, Lagos Free Zone and Lekki Worldwide Investments led by the Chairman, Abiodun Dabiri, months of preparations and interfaces with officials of Lagos State; Dangote Refinery; and other institutional investors in the Zone, took off finally on March 19th, 2021.

To underscore the premium the Lagos State Chief Executive places on the Zone, he and his crew got to the Lagos Free Zone premises right on cue, at 11am - the time set by the hosts for their arrival.

It was a radical break from the habitual pattern of public officials (nationwide) arriving hours late for public events, which Nigerians have had to live annoyingly with, over the years.

As the saying goes, ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’. That singular act of the team’s punctuality, set the tone for the important business at hand. Decked in a fitting blue jeans trousers, white shirt, a dark blue blazer with a matching dark blue fez cap, and of course, a white KN95 face mask (a sure reminder that the covid pandemic is still here), the Governor went straight into business after exchanging pleasantries with the organisers, the royalty, stakeholders, distinguished guests and ordinary citizens. A short while later, the Chairman, Abiodun Dabiri, welcomed the Governor formally to the Zone and expressed gratitude to him and the Lagos State team for setting time aside for the visit in order to get gain first-hand knowledge of project activities, and witnessing various milestones being recorded.

He took everyone on a 19-year odyssey in the life of the project, highlighting the environmental, political, procedural and financial challenges encountered in getting Lekki Port on steady, and on track.

He said the project received a lot of traction in the last four years, especially, due to the efforts of the Lagos State government in granting settlements to dislocated indigenes; the federal government’s renewed commitment; and the desires of institutional investors championed by the Tolaram Group (A Singaporean Conglomerate), to fund it.

In no time, work on the Port (the first deep sea port in Nigeria and the deepest in West Africa), was started in earnest by China Harbour Engineering Company once funds were secured, and it kept moving at an incredible pace. The tenaciousness of the promoters was deemed quite laudable and this soon paid off. To the delight of everyone, the prestigious Project Financial International (PFI), awarded the ‘2019 Best African Infrastructural Deal’ to Lekki Port; thus generating a huge amount of goodwill for the project worldwide.

In his response, the Governor said “....I have come here to see things for myself and given the initial reports I have seen, The Lagos Free Zone under the Tolaram Group has indeed made tremendous improvement.... especially as last year (2020), being a difficult year for all of us and was such a good excuse for any investor to walk away but indeed you did not walk away and I want to thank you very very much for that.”

The Governor is right. The year 2020 was a rough one for most economies of the world (Nigeria inclusive), due to the bitter onslaught of the Covid-19 which occasioned the slowdown of financial activities considerably by investors, as everyone grappled with the realities of the pandemic.

Tolaram Group, the principal promoters of the Lekki Port, rather than dither, stood its ground and ramped up it’s activities. That astuteness and rare commitment as demonstrated by the Group, has culminated in getting the Port close to about 50 percent completion at the time of the Governor’s visit. From feelers the Port promoters are sending

out, the project should be completed by the third quarter of next year with commercial operations billed for the first quarter of 2023.

To be sure of the impact Lekki Port (granted a 45-year concession by the Nigeria Ports Authority under a Build, Own, Operate and Transfer) will have on the Nigerian economy, it is worthy to note the sweeteners the project carries along with it: r4PNF #JMMJPO UP CF TQFOU PO àYFE BTTFUT .JMMJPO FBSNBSLFE GPS DPOTUSVDUJPO *169,972 jobs to be generated from direct port operations *Direct and induced business revenue impact PG #JMMJPO That is not all.

Revenue to state and federal agencies from taxes, SPZBMUJFT BOE EVUJFT BSF FTUJNBUFE UP CF CJMMJPO for the period under concession. The port is also NBQQFE UP HFOFSBUF B (%1 PG #JMMJPO GPS the same period. To put this in perspective, it is germane to note that the GDPs of Ghana, 3XBOEB BOE ,FOZB GPS XFSF CJMMJPO CJMMJPO BOE CJMMJPO SFTQFDUJWFMZ In short, the Lekki Port “...offers a multiplier effect of more than 230 times of total costs” according to the promoters. Other key actors in the Lagos Free Zone (apart from the Port), include BASF (Germany), Sana Building Systems, Insignia Print Technologies, Colgate, Kellogg’s, Aria Foods (Dano Milk), Raffles Oil (Power Oil), to mention a few, have also made over CJMMJPO JOWFTUNFOU DPNNJUNFOU UP UIF ;POF "EEJUJPOBM CJMMJPO JOKFDUJPO JT FYQFDUFE GSPN this group in the next 5 years and together they are looking at generating over 100,000 jobs for Nigerian indigenes in the next 10-15 years, via the industrial and services sector.

In sum, this group provided over N13 billion to the federal government in custom duties on final products sold into Nigeria in 2020. Over N200 million was also remitted as Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) taxes and other levies during the same period.

For Lekki Free Zone, the landlord of all; anchor

tenants such as Alaro City, Longrich and so many others have already taken root.

Longrich - producers of the popular long rich toothpaste and cosmetic products, is spending VQXBSET PG NJMMJPO PO JUT GBDUPSZ XIJMTU significant oil and gas companies have also decided to make the Zone their home.

One of those oil companies with a giant ambition is Pinnacle Oil and Gas Ltd. The company which is 100 percent Nigeria owned, is upending (for the better), the current mode by which imported petroleum products are being discharged in Lagos Ports. Pinnacle has finished constructing a 230 million storage facility in the Zone. The facility is DPOOFDUFE WJB B LN MPOH QJQFMJOF JOUP UIF PDFBO where LR 1 (Mother Vessels of 60,000 metric tonnes capacities), can berth and discharge their cargo of petroleum products.

According to Pinnacle’s CEO, Peter Mba, the facility will be a, “game changer” in a way Nigeria has not witnessed before. Currently, mother vessels are moored in the ocean (due to their humongous sizes), and their cargoes are discharged into daughter vessels for conveyance to storage tanks onshore. It takes anywhere between 15-30 days to fully discharge (or ‘lighter’) a mother vessel depending on her size, and with other external factors in tow.

With the Pinnacle facility in place, a mother vessel LJMPNFUFST BXBZ XJMM CF BCMF UP HFU IFS DBSHP discharged within 24 hours via the laid underwater pipelines, thereby saving Nigeria, huge operational costs. Also, the company provides for 22 discharge outlets, capable of filling 22 petroleum products’ tankers simultaneously, within 30 minutes. That way, more than 500 tankers could actually be serviced in a day. t0MBLVOSJ UIF %JSFDUPS 0BUT (MPCBM &OFSHZ BOE QVCMJD TFDUPS BOBMZTU XSJUFT GSPN "CVKB NOTE: Interested readers should continue in the online edition on www.thisdaylive.com

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Driving Sustainability in Nigeria’s Upstream Sector

Wunti

Uchenna Okoro Kalu

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he Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has under its current leadership continued to focus on improving efficiency as well creating avenues to significantly increase revenue to the federal government.

One of the subsidiaries of the federal government agency which is critical to achieving the set objectives of the current NNPC leadership is the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), which is its Corporate Services Unit (CSU) in the Exploration and Production (E&P) Directorate.

NAPIMS is charged with the responsibility of managing the federal government’s investment in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry.

Its objective is to enhance and maximise the margin accruing to the federal government through effective supervision of the Joint Venture Companies (JVCs), production sharing companies (PSCs) and service companies (SCs). The subsidiary of the NNPC carries out these responsibilities through adequate supervision of budgets and performance, as well as ranking of projects that give higher returns on investment to the government and also engages in direct exploration of the frontier and inland basins.

In March 2020, the NAPIMS family was reinvigorated with a new energetic management team charged with the responsibility of steering the ship through the turbulent wave of the COVID-19. That was the management team led by its Group General Manager (GGM), Mr. Bala Wunti After 365 days, Wunti, who leads a team that is at the heart of fulfilling the NNPC’s tripartite role of resource custody, ensuring national energy security and catalysing the nation’s economic development has continued to steer the organisation on the path of transformation and efficiency.

The Group General Manager started his tenure with a visit to NAPIMS’ partners to deliver the mandate of the NNPC GMD, Mallam Mele Kyari, and to seek their collaboration.

This mandate which cascades from President Muhammadu Buhari; Kyari; and down to the Chief Operating Officer, Engr. Adokiye Tornbormieye, is to unlock more opportunities and reposition the organisation on the right trajectory to realise its vision to be a world class portfolio manager of the federal government’s investment in the upstream oil and gas sector.

Of utmost importance to NAPIMS is the federal government’s cost optimisation drive to achieve sub-$10 in operating cost, to support the drive to increase crude oil production to three million barrels per day and reserves growth to 40 million barrels, among others.

Clearly, through the implementation of the NNPC’s Transparency, Accountability and Performance Excellence (TAPE) agenda, NAPIMS has entrenched processes to ensure steady production growth and profitability.

The Transparency component of the agenda

Kyari aims at maintaining positive image, share values of integrity and transparency to all stakeholders, the Accountability assures compliance with business ethics, policies, regulations and accountability to all stakeholders.

In terms of the two-prong item of Performance Excellence, the idea was to entrench a high level of efficiency anchored on efficient implementation of business processes which would also emplace an appropriate reward system for exceptional performance among the workforce.

Indeed, the Wunti-led management team at NAPIMS got into office just as the country was forced into a nationwide lockdown due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Owing to this, economic activities were brought to a halt, uncertainties rose and oil price plummeted.

But the NAPIMS rallied the upstream community to offer intervention across the country.

To ensure uninterrupted crude oil and gas flow, NAPIMS immediately deployed a brilliant business continuity plan which was adopted industry-wide and it recorded incredible results.

Indeed, in the past 365 days, NAPIMS has recorded several successes. For instance, NAPIMS ensured that Nigeria’s First Exploration and Petroleum (E&P) development project started oil production from the Anyala West field, located in Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 83 and 85, offshore Nigeria.

Also, with over $1 billion savings from contract renegotiation, premium payments and rate reductions, NAPIMS achieved reserve increase of 181.5 million barrels of oil equivalent; reduction of unit operating cost to about $13 dollars per barrel and an annual production of about 6.8 billion cubic feet of gas per day.

Equally, despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, NAPIMS achieved the high oil production with 95 per cent plant availability.

It is also worthy to note that under the current leadership, NAPIMS is undergoing immense business processing, improvement with the implementation of the BCP pro-solution for budgets, cash call and performance administration.

The organisation is driving the implementation of the electronic content management solution, in line with its drive to reposition and deliver a robust, more efficient and profitable NAPIMS. The current management team secured the NNPC’s top management approval for crucial gas sales agreement and negotiation strategies.

As part of its capacity-building initiative, NAPIMS last year held a strategic business retreat, to re-evaluate its mid-term development strategies and initiatives, such as the self-funding proposals for the JVs, took centre stage. The benefit of this exercise was harvested in a recent promotion exercise where 82 NAPIMS staff bagged promotion to management positions across the corporation.

The current leadership has made it a culture to recognise and acknowledge outstanding performance as during the 2020 NAPIMS end of year engagement, many staff were rewarded. Consequently, the entire staff have fully subscribed to the fast-moving train of the new management team under Wunti .

He has maintained a cordial relationship

Tombomieye with the two labour unions in the organisation - PENGASSAN and NUPENG – which has ensured that operations are not interrupted.

Also, the Wunti-led management brought to the fore the implementation of the selffunding policy via the proforma profit and loss, which has also changed the way the business is looked at.

Particularly, in the number of commercial agreements that NAPIMS has initiated conversations around as well as those that had been executed. In addition to that, even in the face of all the challenges of COVID-19, the organisation was able to increase and bring on stream additional gas production.

NIPEX achieved 100 per cent portal ability in 2020 and 288 bids were successfully managed with over nd 26,870 suppliers processed.

Also, under the Wunti-led management, governance, regulatory and compliance department has increased NAPIMS’ compliance level with regulatory requirements from 75 per cent to 100 per cent.

Its strategy is already yielding dividend with the search of Nigerian Upstream Cost Optimisation Programme (NUCOP). The key objective of NUCOP is to enhance and optmise NAPIMS’ processes towards increased profitability for the investors which includes government and all the stakeholders.

To further reposition NAPIMS to greater heights, a new asset-based business architecture is being implemented.

Part of the achiements under Wunti in the last one year includes timely completion of the NAPIMS 2019 audited financial statements and prompt remittance of taxes; launching of the NAPIMS employee handbook and migrating to a smart office model which created an additional 115 work spaces.

Commenting on his one year at the organisation, Wunti said: “One year ago when I arrived at NAPIMS, I found something pleasantly surprising to me. What I found was the quality of human resources they have.

“I realised that there are a lot of talented individuals across all demographics of the company. We have some of the best and brightest staff the Nigerian labour market can provide.”

While speaking about the drive to reduce production cost, he said: “A key factor is that if the cost is high and the price is low, the consequence would be that we would not be able to deliver on our mandate of delivery revenue to the federation.

“So we had to take an urgent step to curb the cost, which we did aggressively. We not only repositioned the budget. But, we also went after the cost considering it as a common enemy. In addition, we renegotiated a lot of contracts and we tried to reposition all our priorities which would not have been possible without building a coalition amongst ourselves, the contractors and the operators.”

According to Wunti, there was a compelling need to ensure continuous production of crude oil and gas because any disruption would hinder power operation and without power it would hinder the entire economic

activities in the country.

“Secondly, we had to keep producing because we needed the revenue. Without the revenue it would create a great risk to our financial security. Achieving that for me is a major milestone as there was never a disruption.

Instead what we witnessed was a growth in our production.

“For the first time in many years on the 17th of April 2020, we were able to record over two billion barrels of crude oil production out of NAPIM’s portfolio alone. That was by no means a great achievement.”

Interestingly, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Wunti-led management ensured that none of the projects were halted.

Consequently the first E & P asset commenced production.

“Bringing down the cost of production was by no means significant, within the first six-month we took out $3 dollars and we maintained that cord across the year 2020. Thus, we were able to save $1 billion and that translates in terms of adding to the national treasury. That is a very significant saving,” he pointed out.

To Samuel Danladi, there is a brighter future for the organisation, “where we as non-operators asset managers that are not directly connected to the operators are now in control of the operations.”

“The need for the business architecture cannot be over emphasised, as it would place NAPIMS on a higher pedestal in our portfolio management responsibilities. We are excited about the future of NAPIMS by the things we have put in place, particularly the structure that would drive our activities, there is no doubt that we are in for good times at NAPIMS,” he said.

He described Wunti as a leader who leads from the front and leads by example.

On her part, Bamitale Erinle, pointed out that one of the major achievements of the current NAPIMS management under the leadership of Wunti is the approval by the top management of NNPC for the NAPIMS Business Architecture.

According to her, the need for the business architecture cannot be over emphasised because it is going to seriously place NAPIMS on a high pedestal in our portfolio management responsibilities.

“I am excited about the future of NAPIMS with the things being put in place, particularly the structure that is going to drive our activities.

There is no doubt that we are in for a good times at NAPIMS,” she added.

Also, Shettima Dambatta said Wunti has been a forward-thinking person and his vision for the organisation goes down to the very bottom of the organisation, saying every staff seems to have aligned with his vision and mission, which aligns with the vision and mission of the organisation.

The forgoing shows that NAPIMS’ management team means business and they are not done yet. Looking ahead, the future looks bright for NAPIMS. t,BMV XSJUFT GSPN "CVKB PJOH GPS (SPXUI 3PVOEUBCMF JO .BSDI

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IMAGES

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Photo Editor ÌÓÙÎßØ ÔËÖË Email ËÌÓÙÎßØ˛ËÔËÖË̶ÞÒÓÝÎËãÖÓàÏ˛ÍÙ×

L-R: Chief of Policy and Plans, Nigerian Navy, Rear Admiral Christian Ezekobe; Director of Information, Commodore Suleman Dahun; Chief of Military Public Information Office, Multinational Joint Task Force, Colonel Muhammad Dole; Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo; Force Commander Multinational Joint Task Force, Maj. Gen. Jeleel Ogunlade; Chief of Training and Operations, Nigerian Navy, Rear Admiral Abraham Adaji and Chief of Logistics, Rear Admiral Muhammad Nagenu , during the Force Commander’s visit to the Naval Headquarters in Abuja...recently

L-R: Former Super Eagles Player, Daniel Amokachi; CEO, New Tech Engneering Ltd, Mr Humphrey Nsofor; National Leader of APC/Chairman of the Occasion, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Managing Director, Nigerian Inland Waterways, Chief George Moghalu during the presentation of the Book Aisha Buhari being different at the Presidential Villa in Abuja ...recently

Corporate Affairs Director/Company Secretary, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Rotimi Odusola (left) and Customs Area Controller, Lagos Industrial Area Command (NCS), Compt. M. A Shaahu during a courtesy visit to Guinness Nigeria Plc, Ogba Brewery in Lagos...recently

L R: The Vice President, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Mrs. Comfort Olu Eyitayo, Commissioner for Finance Lagos State, Rabiu Olo Onaolapo; Executive director, Public sector, First Bank, Abdullahi Ibrahim and ICAN President, Dame Onome Joy Adewuyi, during the closing ceremony of ICAN’s Annual Accountants Conference in Abuja....recently PHOTO: KINGSLEY ADEBOYE

R-L: The Executive Governor, Kebbi State, Sen. Abubakar Atiku Bagudu and the Managing Director, Bank of Industry, Mr. Kayode Pitan during a courtesy visit to the Kebbi State Governor to progress the collaboration between the Kebbi State government and BOI on SMEs and development projects, in Abuja...recently

L-R: Executive Officer- Federal Ministry of Education, Sarah Akper; Deputy Director, Gender, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs Abukar Ajanigo and Founder of WARIF, Dr Kemi DaSilva-IBru during the presentation of a copy of the School Related Sexual and Gender-based Violence Prevention and Response Protocol for Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria to the ministry of Education by DaSilva-Ibru in Lagos...recently

L-R: Anambra South APC zonal Chiarman, Hon Izuchukwu Okeke, Hon Edozie Madu and Anambra APC state Chairman Chief Basil Ejidike during the declaration of Madu for Anambra State governorship under APC party at the party’s secretariat, Awka...recently

L-R: Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba; Chief Executive Officer, Zenith Bank and Founder, James Hope University, Lekki, Lagos State, Jim Ovia; Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed; and Lecturer, Department of Physiology, UNIBEN, Prof. Leonard Ozorbah , during the official presentation of provisional licenses to twenty (20) new private universities in Abuja...recently PHOTO: ENOCK REUBEN

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THE NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE: SEPARATING FACTS FROM FICTION The National Minimum Wage has generated intense attention and debate in the past few weeks. This is consequent upon a vexatious Bill presented to the House of Representatives which seeks the transfer of the National Minimum Wage as an item from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) feel that it LV QHFHVVDU\ WR VHSDUDWH IDFWV IURP ÀFWLRQ HQOLJKWHQ Nigerians on this very important matter of law and also set the records straight.

Minimum Wage benchmark. The Federal Republic of Germany increased its National Minimum Wage from 8.84 Euros (2017 rate) to the current 9.35 Euros in 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic outbreak!

Some persons may retort that the economic asymmetry between Nigeria and these economies DUH LQFRPSDUDEOH EXW RXU TXLFN UHVSRQVH LV WKDW other facts espoused in this piece will illuminate WKH VRFLDO HFRQRPLF DQG LQGXVWULDO ZLVGRP LQ WKLV DSSURDFK ,QGHHG 1LJHULD LV DGYLVHG WR HPEUDFH WKLV best practice rather than the regressive intentions of this proposed Bill.

Organized Labour considers the attempt to transfer the National Minimum Wage as an item from &ORVHU KRPH *KDQD .HQ\D DQG 6RXWK $IULFD the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent (countries with which Nigeria is regularly peer/HJLVODWLYH /LVW EDVHG RQ WKH ÀFWLWLRXV FODLPV RI reviewed) also have the national minimum wage in federalism and restructuring as an attempt to return their Federal laws. Ghana reviews its law every two 1LJHULD WR WKH HUD RI VODYH ZDJHV VHUYLOH ZRUN years. conditions and severe industrial crisis. We reject this Nigeria belongs to African Regional Labour Advisory %LOO LWV HVVHQFH SKLORVRSK\ DQG LQWHQW :H DVN DQG Council (ARLAC) Bloc for the English-Speaking call on well-meaning and progress-loving Nigerians Countries of the ILO and all members have National of all walks of life to repudiate this narrow and self- 0LQLPXP :DJH LQ WKHLU ([FOXVLYH 1DWLRQDO /DZ serving piece of legislation. whether practising the Parliamentary or Presidential The premise of our position and concerns on this matter are as follows: The National Minimum Wage as a Global Standard

system of governance.

The argument that the transfer of the National Minimum Wage from the Exclusive to the Concurrent List is part of the efforts to restructure the country is a poor attempt to call a dog a bad name in order to hang it. Twenty-six countries of the “old democracy bloc” that retain the National Minimum Wage in their national laws including the United States of America and Germany practise federalism. Some of these countries have practised federalism for more than two hundred years.

The National Minimum Wage is the national benchmark minimum below which no employer of labour can pay a worker. The fact is that the National Minimum Wage is a global standard. The National Minimum Wage is a wage anchor and a denominator to which wages cannot and should not fall below.

It is not a gift or largesse but a consciously crafted LQVWUXPHQW WR HQVXUH WKDW ZRUNLQJ SHRSOH HVSHFLDOO\ ,I WKHUH LV DQ\WKLQJ WKDW QHHGV UHVWUXFWXULQJ LW LV the lowest wage earners are not left behind by the WKH PD[LPXP ZDJHV DUELWUDULO\ À[HG E\ HOHFWHG dynamics of the market and the intent to maximize SROLWLFDO RIÀFH KROGHUV DQG ZKLFK KDV QR EHDULQJ SURÀW E\ RZQHUV RI FDSLWDO whatsoever in international law or standards. It is The National Minimum Wage was adopted by GLIÀFXOW WR LPDJLQH WKDW WKRVH ZKR HQMR\ YHU\ IDW the International Labour Organization (ILO) as ZDJHV DOORZDQFHV SHQVLRQV DQG RWKHU SHUNV RI Minimum Wage Fixing Machinery Convention 026 RIÀFH ZRXOG EH WKH RQHV WKLQNLQJ RI VQDWFKLQJ IURP of1928 and reinforced by Minimum Wage Fixing workers’ mouths the little minimum wage we are Convention 131 of 1970. It was also captured in struggling to survive on. This action only smacks of Article III subsection (d) of the ILO Philadelphia a class war indicative of the intents of a privileged Declaration which demands that every country few to wilfully pauperize and enslave the mass of our people. pursues… “policies in regard to wages, earnings, hours and other conditions of work calculated to ensure a just share of fruits of progress to all, and minimum living wage to all employed and in need of such protection” Each ILO member State that adopts the Minimum Wage Conventions undertakes to establish a system of minimum wage which covers all the economic sectors including the Organized Private Sector ZKLFK ZDJHV DUH WR EH SDLG KRXUO\ GDLO\ RU PRQWKO\ depending on what the Social Partners adopt. As SURYLGHG IRU LQ ,/2 0LQLPXP :DJH &RQYHQWLRQV we adopted a monthly wage system in Nigeria through social dialogue.

The Minimum Wage Fixing Machinery Convention ZDV UDWLÀHG E\ 1LJHULD E\ D GHPRFUDWLF government on 16th June 1961. A successive democratically elected government under the leadership of the late President Shehu Shagari in May 1981 paid a national minimum wage whose dollar value or equivalent is more than twice the GROODU HTXLYDOHQW RI WKH SUHVHQW 1 QDWLRQDO minimum wage.

Minimum wage laws are in force in about 90% of ,/2 PHPEHU VWDWHV ,Q WKH 8QLWHG 6WDWHV RI $PHULFD D IHGHUDO VWDWH WKH VRFLDO SDUWQHUV DGRSWHG DQ KRXUO\ national minimum wage of $7.25 preserved in the federal laws of the United States. The different federating states can pay higher than the national minimum of $7.25 but no State pays lower. )RU *HUPDQ\ D IHGHUDO VWDWH LQ :HVWHUQ (XURSH it also sets her National Minimum Wage on KRXUO\ UDWH ZKLFK FXUUHQWO\ VWDQGV DW (XUR The regional governments ensure that wages in their domains do not fall lower than the National

from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent Legislative List is nothing but a mischievous effort to IRVWHU FULVHV FKDRV DQG DQDUFK\ The National Minimum Wage as a Tool for Social Inclusion It is important for us to reiterate the fact that the national minimum wage is a product of negotiations EHWZHHQ /DERXU 2UJDQL]HG 3ULYDWH 6HFWRU DQG *RYHUQPHQW 'XULQJ WKH QHJRWLDWLRQV JRYHUQPHQW is represented at both Federal and State levels and a number of issues are taken into consideration with data provided by relevant federal and state LQVWLWXWLRQV DQG DJHQFLHV $W WKH HQG RI QHJRWLDWLRQV WKH ÀQDO RXWFRPH RQ WKH QDWLRQDO PLQLPXP ZDJH LV UHDVRQDEOH UHDOLVWLF DQG LPSOHPHQWDEOH 3UHFHGHQFH shows that ability to pay does not depend on surplus UHVRXUFHV EXW RQ ÀVFDO GLVFLSOLQH DQG WKH ZLOO WR SD\ The fact is that since the implementation of the 1DWLRQDO 0LQLPXP :DJH LQ 6WDWHV WKDW FRXOG EH FRQVLGHUHG DV EHLQJ OHVV ÀQDQFLDOO\ HQGRZHG DUH XVXDOO\ WKH ÀUVW WR SD\ WKH QDWLRQDO PLQLPXP ZDJH ZKLOH 6WDWHV ZLWK KLJKHU ÀQDQFLDO UHVRXUFHV DUH usually the last to implement the national minimum wage. In the life of the current national minimum ZDJH RI WKLUW\ WKRXVDQG QDLUD -LJDZD <REH DQG %RUQR 6WDWHV ZKRVH UHYHQXH SURÀOHV DUH QRW DV VWURQJ DV VWDWHV OLNH /DJRV DQG 5LYHUV 6WDWHV ZHUH WKH ÀUVW WR pay while the latter were forced to pay after strident campaigns and advocacy by Organized Labour.

The difference is the zeal for social justice and the political will to prioritize workers welfare far above the semantics of the so-called cost of governance.

The recent negotiations that produced the current National Minimum Wage of thirty thousand naira provides a very good example of the sound model of social inclusion that the national minimum wage represents. During the negotiations for the current national minimum wage which commenced on 'HFHPEHU DQG ODVWHG WLOO 1RYHPEHU DOO the social partners were part of the negotiations.

Government was represented by the Federal Government and State Governments which were UHSUHVHQWHG E\ WKHQ *RYHUQRUV RI ,PR .HEEL 5LYHUV 3ODWHDX 2VXQ DQG *RPEH 6WDWHV UHSUHVHQWLQJ The National Minimum Wage Act as a Binding Nigeria’s six geo-political zones. The Organized Private Sector was represented by Manufacturers International Law Article 20 of the ILO Constitution stipulates that any $VVRFLDWLRQ RI 1LJHULD 0$1 1LJHULDQ $VVRFLDWLRQ &RQYHQWLRQ RI WKH ,/2 UDWLÀHG E\ DQ\ 0HPEHU 6WDWH RI 6PDOO DQG 0HGLXP (QWHUSULVHV 1$60( WKH of the ILO shall be communicated to the Director- 1LJHULD &KDPEHUV RI &RPPHUFH DQG ,QGXVWULHV DQG *HQHUDO RI WKH ,QWHUQDWLRQDO /DERXU 2IÀFH ZKR LQ Private Sector Employers by the Nigeria Employers WXUQ ZRXOG WUDQVPLW WKH UDWLÀHG &RQYHQWLRQ WR WKH Consultative Association (NECA). Organized Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) for Labour was represented by the Nigeria Labour registration in accordance with the provisions of Congress and Trade Union Congress. article 102 of the Charter of the United Nations and $W WKH EHJLQQLQJ RI WKH QHJRWLDWLRQV ODERXU SUHVHQWHG shall be binding upon the Member States which a demand of sixty-thousand Naira national minimum ratify it. wage. The basis for our demand and the ensuing 1LJHULD DV D VRYHUHLJQ VWDWH UDWLÀHG &RQYHQWLRQ RI QHJRWLDWLRQV DV SURYLGHG IRU LQ ,/2 0LQLPXP WKH ,/2 RQ -XQH 3XUVXDQW WR WKLV UDWLÀFDWLRQ :DJH &RQYHQWLRQV DQG 5HFRPPHQGDWLRQV LQFOXGHG the National Assembly apart from listing the National VRFLR HFRQRPLF LQGLFDWRUV VXFK DV LQÁDWLRQ UDWH Minimum in the Exclusive Legislative List also SRYHUW\ WKUHVKROG UDWH SXUFKDVLQJ SRZHU SDULW\ DQG domesticated Convention ILO 026 in Chapter 2 of periodic surveys by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution under the Fundamental $IWHU QHJRWLDWLRQV WKH VRFLDO SDUWQHUV VHWWOHG IRU Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy thirty-thousand Naira national minimum wage. This expressly demanding that the Nigerian State shall was later presented to the National Assembly as an direct its policy towards ensuring the provision executive bill and later passed and signed into law. of reasonable national minimum living wage and pensions. This makes the national minimum wage It is important to note that since the enactment of D QDWLRQDO ODZ ELQGLQJ RQ WKH )HGHUDO *RYHUQPHQW WKH ÀUVW 1DWLRQDO 0LQLPXP :DJH $FW LQ VWDWHV the sub-national governments at the state level and do not pay uniform salaries as each state has their own salary structure developed according to their at the local councils. ability to pay. The different states’ salary structures The domestication of this law in Chapter 2 of the 1999 are completely different from the national minimum Nigerian Constitution derives from the provisions wage. The two should never be confused. The of Part II of Chapter One of the Constitution which considerations for national minimum wage use the vests the legislative powers of the Federal Republic national average including the ability of each state of of Nigeria in the National Assembly. This punctures the federation to pay. a giant hole in the argument of those bent on It is also pertinent to reiterate the fact that during the transferring the National Minimum Wage from the negotiations for the current National Minimum Wage Exclusive List to the Concurrent List. How can state RI 1 DOO WKH LQSXWV IURP WKH H[SHUW JRYHUQPHQW legislatures review a law that is not originally within institutions were based on parameters such as WKHLU UHPLW WR GRPHVWLFDWH" ,W LV WKHUHIRUH FOHDU WKDW LQÁDWLRQ UDWH FRQVXPHU SULFH LQGH[ DQG ZRUNHUV· the move to remove the national minimum wage productivity index to arrive at their proposals for

MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021 • T H I S D AY

35

T H I S D AY ˾ ˜ APRIL 12, 2021

36

BUSINESS/MONEYGUIDE

Trading Value Dips 52% as Investors Stake N9bn Goddy Egene Equities investors staked only N9.193 billion on 887.037 million shares in 17,837 deals last week, showing a decline of about 52 per cent compared with N19.039 billion invested in 1.445 billion shares in 17,400 deals the previous week.

The market was bearish as the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) All-Share Index (ASI) fell by 0.13 per cent to close at 38,866.39, while market capitalisation closed lower at N20.335 trillion.

The negative performance was unexpected considering the fact that investors are still realigning their portfolios as the end of the earnings season is here, while they take position for the second quarter.

According to analysts, in the

midst of this, investors continue to realign their portfolio with eyes on yield movements in the fixed income market and dividend yields, as the market is likely to do well in this quarter and year, being a vaccine year after the extensive damage to man and economies arising from the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) to drive global and local economic recovery.

“The prevailing nation’s subsisting stagflation environment remains a potent threat to investment returns in the financial market, just as the soaring food prices, high pump price of fuel and insecurity across the country continue to drive inflation rate.

We note that the equity market remains a dependable hedge against inflation, considering the dividend yield and 10 per cent daily price movement,” analysts at

Investdata Consulting said.

Meanwhile, a look at the activity table showed that the Financial Services Industry remained the most active with 607.224 million shares valued at N6.066 billion traded in 10,125 deal, thus contributing 68.46 per cent and 65.99 per cent to the total equity turnover volume and value respectively. The Conglomerates Industry followed with 112.318 million shares worth N572.831 million in 1,450 deals, while the third place was Oil and Gas Industry, with a turnover of 57.662 million shares worth N201.453 million in 1,107 deals.

Trading in the top three equities namely Zenith Bank Plc, Access Bank Plc and Guaranty Trust Bank Plc accounted for 259.248 million shares worth N4.818 billion in 4,970 deals.

Stakeholders Want Commodities Exchanges to Commence Operations Goddy Egene Stakeholders have urged the federal government to fast-track the take-off of commodities exchanges in the country, saying, they have the potential to boost the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by revamping the ailing economy through employment generation, digital transaction of agricultural and mineral products and foreign exchange earnings among others.

Specifically, they urged the federal government should remove any bureaucratic bottlenecks that may affect smooth functioning of commodities exchanges to enable them enhance economic growth and development.

A commodity trader and Chief Executive Officer, Wyoming Capital and Partners, Mr. Tajudeen

Olayinka, said: “Commodities exchanges provide numerous benefits to an economy, especially, a developing economy like Nigeria if the relevant authorities provide appropriate support for their orderly functioning.

“Price discovery is a major driving force in this organised market. It refers to the mechanism through which prices come to reflect known information about the market.

“The fact that farmers, merchants, commodity brokers, government and other stakeholders can reasonably gauge the mood of the market from publicly available information around demand and supply, makes planning, organising, and forecasting, integral part of the market easy.”

Another commodity trader and Chief Executive Officer, Sofunix

Investment and Communications, Mr. Sola Oni, explained that the Nigerian commodities exchange’s ecosystem is a $1 trillion economy that is untapped and still largely misunderstood.

“The recent announcement of N50 billion lifeline for Nigeria Commodity Exchange (NCX) by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) may have sent a wrong signal to the global community as creating a conflicting the role between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the apex bank on the institution that regulates commodities exchanges in Nigeria.

“The investment and Securities Act of 2007, among others empowers SEC to not only regulate commodities exchanges but ensure that all commodity exchanges compete effectively on an even playing field.

PurplePay Launches Mobile App Hamid Ayodeji A digital payment solution provider, PurplePay has launched its mobile pay solution application for the world, with Nigeria as the pioneer leading country. This digital payment platform promises to offer and shape consumers’ experiencing seamless transactions with the aim to change the way businesses, religious centres and NGOs send and receive funds.

It is pocket-friendly, convenient and safest way to send and receive money, pay bills and top-up airtime with ease anytime and from anywhere.

Purplepay users get to enjoy physical dollar cards delivered

to them that can be used for withdrawals, online payments, online subscriptions and so much more.

PurplePay which is available on Android and iOS app stores has a QR code scanner that allows merchants to receive payments as well as a bulk payment feature allows users to make huge payments at once.

The peer-to-peer transfers’ feature allow users to send and receive money from other PurplePay users just with their usernames/phone numbers Speaking to the press at the launching, the MD/CEO of PurplePay, Patrick Atuche, said the Nigerian market now has something to look forward to as this application applied to

everyone.

According to him, the move was to aid the Central Bank of Nigeria’s cashless police adoption more than ever and with the Covid-19 pandemic, it has made it imminent to help prevent transmission of the virus.

He explained that with PurplePay’s cross-border payments and multicurrency wallet (local and USD), it would help the users connect with their loved ones and by doing so, bring them closer to each other.

According to him, at verified purplePay vendor outlets, its users can pay for goods and services from their purplePay app by scanning vendor QR codes at checkout points and pay with single click.

Foundation LaunchesLearning,DevtCentre Nume Ekeghe The Abdul-Lateef and Sanni Foundation has launched a learning and development centre in Ikeja, Lagos.

Also, the foundation has announced that it would be awarding scholarships to 10 secondary school students between the ages of 10 to 16 years old.

The Programme Director of the Abdul-Lateef and Sanni Foundation, Sowami Ganiyat,

in a statement made available to THISDAY stated: “Our vision is to provide the right learning environment where all children are educated, no matter their background and given the opportunity to thrive and flourish.”

In her address, Director, Academic and School Services, Ogun State Universal Basic Education Board Mrs. Agbatiogun Jokotade, said the new learning and development centre would expose students with high quality knowledge that would transform

students learning experience.

“The world is fast changing and so is the education sector.

This learning and development centre is a platform that will enlighten students on the emerging trends in different academic subjects especially in the face of technology advancement,” she said. As part of its program, the new centre will host workshops, seminars and training programs for public school students between the ages of 10 and 16 years in Lagos state.

Trading Floor

MARKET INDICATORS MONEY AND CREDIT STATISTICS

(MILLION NAIRA)

JANUARY 2021 Money Supply (M3)

38,779,455.43

-- CBN Bills Held by Money Holding Sectors

1,039,129.55

Money Supply (M2)

37,740,325.88

-- Quasi Money

21,779,302.69

-- Narrow Money (M1)

15,961,023.19

---- Currency Outside Banks

2,364,871.13

---- Demand Deposits

13,596,152.06

Net Foreign Assets (NFA)

7,414,275.50

Net Domestic Assets(NDA)

31,365,179.93

-- Net Domestic Credit (NDC)

42,916,586.63

---- Credit to Government (Net)

12,304,773.44

---- Memo: Credit to Govt. (Net) less FMA

0.00

---- Memo: Fed. and Mirror Accounts (FMA)

0.00

---- Credit to Private Sector (CPS)

30,611,813.19

--Other Assets Net

3,892,112.74

Reserve Money (Base Money

13,264,585.14

--Currency in Circulation

2,831,167.19

--Banks Reserves --Special Intervention Reserves

10,433,417.96 317,234.17

˾ ÙßÜÍÏ ̋

Money Market Indicators (in Percentage) Month

March 2018

Inter-Bank Call Rate

15.16

Minimum Rediscount Rate (MRR) Monetary Policy Rate (MPR)

14.00

Treasury Bill Rate

11.84

Savings Deposit Rate

4.07

1 Month Deposit Rate

8.82

3 Months Deposit Rate

9.72

6 Months Deposit Rate

10.93

12 Months Deposit Rate

10.21

Prime Lending rate

17.35

Maximum Lending Rate

31.55

˾ ÙØÏÞËÜã ÙÖÓÍã ËÞÏ ̋ ͯͱϱ

OPEC DAILY BASKET PRICE AS ATT HURSDAY, 8 APRIL 2021

The price of OPEC basket of thirteen crudes stood at $61.22 a barrel on Thursday, compared with $60.68 the previous day, according to OPEC Secretariat calculations.

The OPEC Reference Basket of Crudes (ORB) is made up of the following: Saharan Blend (Algeria), Girassol (Angola), Djeno (Congo), Zafiro (Equatorial Guinea), Rabi Light (Gabon), Iran Heavy (Islamic Republic of Iran), Basra Light (Iraq), Kuwait Export (Kuwait), Es Sider (Libya), Bonny Light (Nigeria), Arab Light (Saudi Arabia), Murban (UAE) and Merey (Venezuela).

SOURCE: OPEC headquarters, Vienna

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37

T H I S D AY ˾ ˜ ͯͰ˜ ͰͮͰͯ

Wema Bank‘s Financial Fundamentals Remain Strong, Says CEO Goddy Egene The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Wema Bank Plc, Mr. Ademola Adebise, has reassured customers and shareholders that the bank has strong financial fundamentals and reliable performance metrics, riding on the back of seasoned and astute leadership.

Adebise stated this against the insinuations of weak liquidity.

Wema Bank Plc posted gross

earnings of about N81 billion and profit after tax of N5.1 billion for year ended December 31, 2020. The CEO explained that the strength and viability of financial institutions were not measured on the isolated performance of one outlier year, stating that, “Wema Bank has continually exhibited not just resilience, but admirable viability over the years with a 30.95 per cent increase in earnings recorded in just 2019.

“Then came 2020, and in spite

P R I C E S MAIN BOARD

F O R DEALS

of the difficulties, we succeeded in achieving impressive results in key areas such as net earnings from fees and commissions, while growing the bank’s asset base significantly. That’s not all, customer credibility in the bank was also accentuated with a massive increase in customer deposits over the previous year.

This is an audacious show of confidence from our customers at Wema Bank. These performance metrics amongst others, are testa-

S E C U R I T I E S MARKET PRICE

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ment to our smart balance sheet optimisation approach which will be affirmed by the time the audited and official 2020 Financial Report is released in the coming weeks,” he said.

According to him, the bank’s performance in the 2020 made it one of the best performing financial institutions in the land given the challenging operating environment.

“We won the BusinessDay award for the Best SME Bank

T R A D E D MAIN BOARD

A S

of the Year for 2020. A recognition of our unrivalled support for small and medium scale businesses through loans, business advisory, and ease of payments and transactions. Also, the recently published 2020 KPMG Customer Experience Survey, showed Wema Bank making significant growth in the retail category, climbing up ten (10) places from the previous year to 2nd position, with an above industry average of 74.6 per cent

O F

Customer Experience score.

This achievement is a mark of dedication to excellent customer service and refreshing support for all our customer categories.”

The KPMG Customer Experience Survey grades banks over six universal pillars of Personalization, Integrity, Expectations, Resolution, Time & Effort and Empathy, and Wema Bank has showed a mastery of these pillars and have been outstanding at all of them,” he said.

0 9 / 0 4 / 2 0 2 1 DEALS

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38

MONDAY, ͹ͺ˜ ͺ͸ͺ͹ ˾ T H I S D AY

MARKET NEWS

Shareholders of GTBank Approve N2.70 Final Dividend Goddy Egene

Trust Bank Plc last Friday for the 2020 financial year. general meeting(AGM) held per share, having paid an approved the final dividend of The shareholders gave the in Lagos. The final dividend interim dividend of 30 kobo Shareholders of Guaranty N2.70 per share recommended approval at the annual brought the total to N3.00 last year. GTBank Plc recorded A Mutual fund (Unit Trust) is an investment floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Offer price: The price at which units of a trust or vehicle managed by a SEC (Securities and A REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) is an ETF are bought by investors.

Exchange Commission) registered Fund Manager. investment vehicle that allows both small and Bid Price: The price at which Investors Investors with similar objectives buy units of the large investors to part-own real estate ventures (eg. redeem (sell) units of a trust or ETF. Fund so that the Fund Manager can buy securities Offices, Houses, Hospitals) in proportion to their Yield/Total Return: Denotes the total that willl generate their desired return. investments. The assets are divided into shares that return an investor would have earned on An ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) is a type are traded on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. his investment. Money Market Funds report of fund which owns the assets (shares of stock, Yield while others report Year- to-date Total bonds, oil futures, gold bars, foreign currency, GUIDE TO DATA: Return. etc.) and divides ownership of those assets into Date: All fund prices are quoted in Naira as at 08- NAV: Is value per share of the real estate shares. Investors can buy these ‘shares’ on the Apr-2021, unless otherwise stated. assets held by a REIT on a specific date.

gross earnings of N455.229 billion and profit after tax of N201.439 billion.

DAILY PRICE LIST FOR MUTUAL FUNDS, REITS and ETFS MUTUAL FUNDS / UNIT TRUSTS AFRINVEST ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD aaml@afrinvest.com Web: www.afrinvest.com; Tel: +234 818 885 6757 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Afrinvest Equity Fund N/A N/A N/A Afrinvest Plutus Fund N/A N/A N/A Nigeria International Debt Fund N/A N/A N/A Afrinvest Dollar Fund N/A N/A N/A ALTERNATIVE CAPITAL PARTNERS LTD info@acapng.com Web: www.acapng.com, Tel: +234 1 291 2406, +234 1 291 2868 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn ACAP Canary Growth Fund 1.06 1.08 17.99% ACAP Income Funds 0.65 0.65 -10.41% AIICO CAPITAL LTD ammf@aiicocapital.com Web: www.aiicocapital.com, Tel: +234-1-2792974 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn AIICO Money Market Fund 100.00 100.00 3.91% AIICO Balanced Fund 3.35 3.51 -5.68% ANCHORIA ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED info@anchoriaam.com Web:www.anchoriaam.com, Tel: 08166830267; 08036814510; 08028419180 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Anchoria Money Market N/A N/A N/A Anchoria Equity Fund N/A N/A N/A Anchoria Fixed Income Fund N/A N/A N/A ARM INVESTMENT MANAGERS LTD enquiries@arminvestmentcenter.com Web: www.arm.com.ng; Tel: 0700 CALLARM (0700 225 5276) Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn ARM Aggressive Growth Fund N/A N/A N/A ARM Discovery Balanced Fund N/A N/A N/A ARM Ethical Fund N/A N/A N/A ARM Eurobond Fund ($) N/A N/A N/A ARM Fixed Income Fund N/A N/A N/A ARM Money Market Fund N/A N/A N/A AVA GLOBAL ASSET MANAGERS LIMITED info@avacapitalgroup.com Web: www.avacapitalgroup.com Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn AVA GAM Fixed Income Dollar Fund 103.49 103.49 1.75% AXA MANSARD INVESTMENTS LIMITED investmentcare@axamansard.com Web: www.axamansard.com; Tel: +2341-4488482 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn AXA Mansard Equity Income Fund 123.98 124.85 -1.74% AXA Mansard Money Market Fund 1.00 1.00 3.35% CAPITAL EXPRESS ASSET AND TRUST LIMITED info@capitalexpressassetandtrust.com Web: www.capitalexpressassetandtrust.com ; Tel: +234 803 307 5048 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn CEAT Fixed Income Fund 2.05 2.05 -18.32% Capital Express Balanced Fund(Formerly: Union Trustees Mixed Fund) 2.17 2.21 -11.53% CHAPELHILL DENHAM MANAGEMENT LTD investmentmanagement@chapelhilldenham.com Web: www.chapelhilldenham.com, Tel: +234 461 0691 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Chapelhill Denham Money Market Fund 100.00 100.00 3.29% Paramount Equity Fund 15.26 15.55 -4.55% Women's Investment Fund 128.86 130.22 -3.22% CORDROS ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED assetmgtteam@cordros.com Web: www.cordros.com, Tel: 019036947 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Cordros Money Market Fund 100.00 100.00 2.99% Cordros Milestone Fund 2023 126.32 127.19 Cordros Milestone Fund 2028 N/A N/A Cordros Dollar Fund ($) 110.71 110.71 CORONATION ASSEST MANAGEMENT investment@coronationam.com Web:www.coronationam.com , Tel: 012366215 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Coronation Money Market Fund 1.00 1.00 1.08% Coronation Balanced Fund 1.14 1.15 -4.99% Coronation Fixed Income Fund 1.40 1.40 -11.93% EDC FUNDS MANAGEMENT LIMITED mutualfundng@ecobank.com Web: www.ecobank.com Tel: 012265281 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn EDC Nigeria Money Market Fund Class A 100.00 100.00 2.42% EDC Nigeria Money Market Fund Class B 1,000,000.00 1,000,000.00 2.32% EDC Nigeria Fixed Income Fund 1,155.92 1,160.71 -3.60% FBNQUEST ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD invest@fbnquest.com Web: www.fbnquest.com/asset-management; Tel: +234-81 0082 0082 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn FBN Fixed Income Fund 1,354.70 1,354.70 5.94% FBN Balanced Fund 183.79 185.04 -2.07% FBN Halal Fund 110.55 110.55 4.30% FBN Money Market Fund 100.00 100.00 3.47% N/A N/A N/A FBN Nigeria Eurobond (USD) Fund - Retail 124.04 124.04 3.01% FBN Smart Beta Equity Fund 147.88 149.85 -2.19% FCMB ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED fcmbamhelpdesk@fcmb.com Web: www.fcmbassetmanagement.com; Tel: +234 1 462 2596 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Legacy Money Market Fund N/A N/A N/A Legacy Debt Fund N/A N/A N/A Legacy Equity Fund N/A N/A N/A Legacy USD Bond Fund N/A N/A N/A FSDH ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD coralfunds@fsdhgroup.com Web: www.fsdhaml.com; Tel: 01-270 4884-5; 01-280 9740-1 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Coral Growth Fund 3,784.47 3,834.09 0.96% Coral Income Fund 3,351.79 3,351.79 2.30% FSDH Treasury Bills Fund 100.00 100.00 2.11%

GREENWICH ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED assetmanagement@gtlgroup.com Web: www.gtlgroup.com ; Tel: +234 1 4619261-2 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Greenwich Plus Money Market Fund 100.00 100.00 1.33% Nigeria Entertainment Fund 127.85 128.01 18.44% GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED assetmanagement@gdl.com.ng Web: www.gdl.com.ng ; Tel: +234 9055691122 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn GDL Money Market Fund N/A N/A N/A INVESTMENT ONE FUNDS MANAGEMENT LTD enquiries@investment-one.com Web: www.investment-one.com; Tel: +234 812 992 1045,+234 1 448 8888 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Abacus Money Market Fund 100.00 100.00 2.45% Vantage Balanced Fund 2.68 2.74 16.85% Vantage Guaranteed Income Fund 1.00 1.00 4.50% Kedari Investment Fund (KIF) 146.03 146.41 -6.05% Vantage Dollar Fund (VDF) - June Year End 1.08 1.08 5.34% LOTUS CAPITAL LTD fincon@lotuscapitallimited.com Web: www.lotuscapitallimited.com; Tel: +234 1-291 4626 / +234 1-291 4624 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Lotus Halal Investment Fund 1.36 1.38 -0.69% Lotus Halal Fixed Income Fund 1,146.65 1,146.65 2.05% MERISTEM WEALTH MANAGEMENT LTD info@meristemwealth.com Web: http://www.meristemwealth.com/funds/ ; Tel: +234 1-4488260 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Meristem Equity Market Fund N/A N/A N/A Meristem Money Market Fund N/A N/A N/A PAC ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD info@pacassetmanagement.com Web: www.pacassetmanagement.com/mutualfunds; Tel: +234 1 271 8632 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn PACAM Balanced Fund 1.58 1.61 7.52% PACAM Fixed Income Fund 12.32 12.45 0.72% PACAM Money Market Fund 10.00 10.00 1.50% PACAM Equity Fund 1.55 1.57 -1.80% PACAM EuroBond Fund 109.96 112.75 0.55% SCM CAPITAL LIMITED info@scmcapitalng.com Web: www.scmcapitalng.com; Tel: +234 1-280 2226,+234 1- 280 2227 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn SCM Capital Frontier Fund 129.47 131.64 6.33% SFS CAPITAL NIGERIA LTD investments@sfsnigeria.com Web: www.sfsnigeria.com, Tel: +234 (01) 2801400 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn SFS Fixed Income Fund 1.00 1.00 1.96% STANBIC IBTC ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD assetmanagement@stanbicibtc.com Web: www.stanbicibtcassetmanagement.com; Tel: +234 1 280 1266; 0700 MUTUALFUNDS Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Stanbic IBTC Balanced Fund 3,104.39 3,128.09 -3.49% Stanbic IBTC Bond Fund 227.94 227.94 1.37% Stanbic IBTC Ethical Fund 1.13 1.15 -3.39% Stanbic IBTC Guaranteed Investment Fund 298.60 298.60 1.34% Stanbic IBTC Iman Fund 209.15 211.84 -4.26% Stanbic IBTC Money Market Fund 100.00 100.00 2.04% Stanbic IBTC Nigerian Equity Fund 9,754.84 9,879.10 -7.11% Stanbic IBTC Dollar Fund (USD) 1.24 1.24 1.53% Stanbic IBTC Shariah Fixed Income Fund 113.01 113.01 1.74% UNITED CAPITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT LTD Web: www.unitedcapitalplcgroup.com; Tel: +234 803 306 2887 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn United Capital Balanced Fund 1.31 1.33 -4.30% United Capital Bond Fund 1.92 1.92 1.62% United Capital Equity Fund 0.88 0.90 1.35% United Capital Money Market Fund 1.00 1.00 4.21% United Capital Eurobond Fund 119.25 119.25 1.85% United Capital Wealth for Women Fund 1.05 1.07 -3.44% United capital Sukuk Fund 1.03 1.03 2.72% QUANTUM ZENITH ASSET MANAGEMENT & INVESTMENTS LTD service@quantumzenithasset.com.ng Web: www.quantumzenith.com.ng; Tel: +234 1-2784219 Fund Name Bid Price Offer Price Yield / T-Rtn Zenith Equity Fund 11.97 12.07 0.87% Zenith Ethical Fund 13.31 13.42 8.93% Zenith Income Fund 24.26 24.26 1.18% Zenith Money Market Fund 1.00 1.00 2.00%

REITS NAV Per Share

Yield / T-Rtn

122.38 52.92

1.36% 0.99%

Bid Price

Offer Price

Yield / T-Rtn

12.36 118.27 92.79

12.46 118.27 94.52

-6.47% -2.85% -6.63%

Fund Name SFS Skye Shelter Fund Union Homes REIT

EXCHANGE TRADED FUNDS Fund Name Lotus Halal Equity Exchange Traded Fund SIAML Pension ETF 40 Stanbic IBTC ETF 30 Fund

VETIVA FUND MANAGERS LTD Web: www.vetiva.com; Tel: +234 1 453 0697 Fund Name Vetiva Banking Exchange Traded Fund Vetiva Consumer Goods Exchange Traded Fund Vetiva Griffin 30 Exchange Traded Fund Vetiva Money Market Fund Vetiva Industrial Goods Exchange Traded Fund Vetiva S&P Nigeria Sovereign Bond Exchange Traded Fund

funds@vetiva.com Bid Price

Offer Price

Yield / T-Rtn

3.59 5.53 16.66 1.00 18.65 170.42

3.63 5.61 16.76 1.00 18.85 172.42

-4.86% -2.81% 1.98% 2.11% -9.05% -22.55%

NAV Per Share

Yield / T-Rtn

107.30

13.11%

INFRASTRUCTURE FUND Fund Name Chapel Hill Denham Nigeria Infrastructure Debt Fund

The value of investments and the income from them may fall as well as rise. Past performance is a guide and not an indication of future returns. Fund prices published in this edition are also available on each fund manager’s website and FMAN’s website at www.fman.com.ng. Fund prices are supplied by the operator of the relevant fund and are published for information purposes only.

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MONDAY, ͹ͺ˜ ͺ͸ͺ͹ ˾ T H I S D AY

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NEWS

FG Determined to Surmount Insecurity, Says Defence Minister Kingsley Nwezeh in Abuja The Minister of Defence, Maj. Gen. Bashir Magashi (rtd), at the weekend, said the federal government was determined to surmount the security challenges confronting the nation.

He spoke as the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor, hosted 93 retired senior officers to a send forth dinner, where he commended them for the service rendered to the nation.

The event was attended by the service chiefs - Lt.

Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru (Army), Air Marshal Oladayo Amao (Air Force), and Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo (Navy).

Former Chiefs of Defence Staff, Admiral Ibrahim Oghohi (rtd) and Gen. Martin Luther Agwai (rtd), were also in attendance.

Magashi, who was the special guest of honour at the event held in Abuja, said the federal government was determined to contain insecurity.

He said: "You have served this country very well.

Please continue to work for

the country even outside the service.

"Very soon, we will get out of where we found ourselves (insecurity)," he said.

Magashi urged the retirees to continue to work for the service of the nation.

"I know most of you may not be happy with what is going on, but I know that we will surmount it. I am also a retired general. My name was in the archive before they remembered me and made me a minister," he stated.

He commended the

military leadership for organising the event with the collaboration of the three services, which he said pointed to the future of the armed forces in terms of coordinated and joint operations.

"I appreciate the tri-service rapport in organising this event. It is the future of what the armed forces will look like," he said.

Earlier, Irabor had said the event provoked mixed feelings for him, seeing colleagues with whom he started a career as

teenagers, leave the military.

"I feel emotional that the retirees are leaving a profession we all started as teenagers. They all worked in our national interest," he said.

He added that the services of the retired officers would not be forgotten and urged them to continue to avail the military and the nation of their services.

The spokesman of the retired military officers, Air Vice Marshal N. Balogun (rtd), wished the military leadership luck in managing the security of the nation.

While thanking the leadership for the honour accorded them, he urged the service chiefs to work as a team in order to guarantee the security of the nation.

The retired generals were presented with awards by the minister and service chiefs while the wives of departed officers were also honoured.

The 93 senior officers include major generals and their equivalent in the navy and air force, 67 brigadier-generals and the equivalent in the other services.

Polytechnics Remain Shut as FG, ASUP’s Rift Deepens Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja Academic activities in Nigeria’s federal polytechnics may remain grounded as the dispute between the federal government and the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has deepened following the union’s rejection of the appointment of rectors and other principal officers for the six new federal polytechnics.

ASUP had declared an indefinite strike last Tuesday over alleged poor funding and neglect of the institutions.

However, the union has kicked against the appointment of principal

officers for the six new federal polytechnics.

When THISDAY sought for an update on the ongoing strike, the President of ASUP, Mr. Anderson Ezeibe, said the union had not been invited for negotiations by the federal government.

He said since the last meeting they held on Tuesday with the Federal Ministry of Education, which yielded no positive outcome, the union had not been invited for talks again.

"You know we held a meeting with the Federal Ministry of Education last Tuesday but since that time, all we have been hearing was that there will be meeting but we are yet to get an invitation," he added.

Also, THISDAY gathered from a source at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment that the ministry can only wade into the matter if the Ministry of Education refers the issue to it for conciliation.

However, the dispute has deepened as ASUP has kicked against the appointments of rectors and other principal officers for the six new federal polytechnics, saying it did not meet the required standards.

In a statement by Ezeibe, the union said: “Our union’s attention has been drawn to a recent press statement from the Federal Ministry of Education announcing the appointment of rectors and other principal officers

for the six new federal polytechnics situated in Enugu, Oyo, Cross River, Plateau, Borno and Benue states.”

The union stated that the appointments violated provisions of the Federal Polytechnics (Amendment) Act, 2019, adding that five out of the six new rectors were not qualified for the position having fallen short of the requirements captured in Section 8, 2 (a) (i )of the Act. Ezeibe said the profiles of the appointees showed that five out of the six persons did not fit into the requirements of the law for the appointment of rectors in federal polytechnics.

According to him, these beneficiaries include the

appointees for federal polytechnics Ohodo (Enugu), Ugep (Cross River), Shendam (Plateau), Monguno (Borno), and Wannune (Benue) .

"It is regrettable that the government, through officials of the Federal Ministry of Education has become principal violators of the laws governing the operations of Nigerian polytechnics.

“This latest assault is despite the contents of a recent ruling of the National Industrial Court in Abuja where the provisions of the Federal Polytechnics (Amendment) Act, 2019 was affirmed by the court and the Federal Ministry of Education and her officials undertaking to observe the

provisions in totality.

"Despite the contents of the judgment of the court in NICN/ABJ/12/2020 involving our union and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Minister for Education and five others in a similar issue, our union had drawn the attention of the Federal Ministry of Education on the need to adhere to the provisions of the law in this appointment process more than a month before this recent naked display of impunity," he added.

Ezeibe said part of the union’s current engagement with the government was to reverse the trend of administering polytechnics outside extant laws and regulations.

and let us see what will happen on Friday, April 16, if we will be able to attain 100 per cent vaccination target,” Ndayo said.

Also reacting to the alleged low turnout, the Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of the Abia State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr. Chinagozi Adindu, told THISDAY that the state government had not commenced public vaccination.

He added that vaccination of frontline workers was extended to April 10, 2021, to accommodate strategic leaders, who, like health workers, were constantly exposed to the public due to the nature of their jobs.

The ABPHDA boss identified the strategic leaders to include teachers, students, filling station attendants, and law enforcement agents, among others.

He said the health workers had already received their jabs, while other categories of frontline workers needed to be vaccinated before the public rollout of the vaccine.

Adindu stated that the state was working with 90 teams for the COVID-19 vaccination, adding that the number would be increased to 500 before the public rollout.

However, he said the state would have

received a second batch of AstraZeneca vaccine before the commencement of public vaccination.

COVID-19 VACCINATION LOW TURNOUT HITS FCT, TARABA, ABIA, SEVEN OTHERS However, the commissioner declined to comment when confronted with the federal government’s statistics on the state’s performance.

The state had received 78,810 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from the federal government.

In line with the federal government’s guidelines, the state Governor, Chief Willie Obiano, while unveiling the vaccine in the state had stated that half of the vaccines would be administered to residents in the first round, while half would be kept for the second dose, to ensure that those who received the first would get the second dose.

It is expected that 35,945 persons will receive the vaccine in the state.

Also, the Akwa Ibom State government said there was no cause for alarm over the percentage of the target recorded so far in the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination in the state.

The state Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Ini Ememobong, told THISDAY that “there is protocol in taking the vaccine in Akwa Ibom.”

According to him, the vaccination has not entered stage three meant for everybody, as the vaccination, for now, is for frontline health workers and stakeholders.

“There is protocol in taking

the vaccination in Akwa Ibom State. The vaccination has not entered stage three for everybody. Vaccination, for now, is for frontline health workers and the stakeholders to build confidence for the general public.

“All the strategic stakeholders have taken.

Frontline health workers are still taking. It is a process.

It is in a progressing stage.

There is no cause for alarm,” Ememobong stated.

In Enugu State, the Executive Secretary, Enugu State Primary HealthCare Development Agency, Dr. George Ugwu, said at least 10,000 residents had been vaccinated.

This figure, which tallies with NPHCDA’s assessment, represents about 30.1 per cent of the targeted population.

According to Ugwu, there has been a massive increase in the number of residents willing to take the vaccine as against when it was first received.

He said members of the public were disinterested at first because of the controversy over the safety of the vaccine, especially on the side effects.

"When they saw that we had vaccinated many public figures in the state, including the governor, the speaker of the House of Assembly, the chief judge and other top government functionaries, they developed an interest

and wanted to take too," he said.

The Acting Executive Secretary, FCT Primary Healthcare Development, Dr. Iwot Ndayo, told THISDAY that the FCT had attained the 70 per cent COVID- 19 vaccination, as against the NPHCDA’s 33.3 per cent assessment.

He said the perceived low coverage in the territory was because people were judging their performance based on the 228,000 doses that were given to them as well as the number of people on the ground that were supposed to be vaccinated.

He added that the FCT had exceeded the 35 per cent target set by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 for each state of the federation in the first phase of the administration of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.

He said the FCT received from the NPHCDA about 228,400 doses, which was far above the 120,000 doses, the FCT required.

He said the number of people targeted for vaccination was 55,000 out of which 42,000 had been vaccinated and more projected to be inoculated until April 16, when the first phase of the exercise will end.

“We are at 70 per cent coverage now. What we have captured now is above the

53,000 marks as the target for the FCT. The result we are having is the calculation based on the doses given to us that I said was too much as we should have been given 150,000 doses.

But it is helping us to push further. We are including the federal secretariat, as well as the private hospitals where we have listed 938 private hospitals and have attended to over 400 for now,” Ndayo said.

He stated that the FCT Primary Health Care embarked on an aggressive vaccination in all federal ministries at the federal secretariat and agencies in the FCT, following a letter by the Head of Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, asking civil servants to come out for vaccination.

The exercise targeted senior civil servants from the age of 50 and above and in the categories of assistant directors, deputy directors and people with illnesses.

Ndayo said the vaccination had also captured journalists in addition to the officers in the military, the immigration and the correctional centres while the men of the air force were vaccinated on March 16.

He added that a team was also deployed in the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja to capture all arriving passengers.

“We are trying our best

Kano Begins Massive Campaign for Vaccination Meanwhile, the Kano State government has commenced a massive campaign to convince the residents of the state to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

The state has vaccinated 50,931 persons, representing 48.6 per cent of the targeted population.

The state Commissioner for Health Dr. Aminu Tsanyawa, told THISDAY that the measures put in place to ensure public acceptance of the vaccine is to engage Islamic, traditional and community leaders for them to educate the people about the importance of the vaccine.

He said the state government also designated 509 centres across the state for the vaccination.

The state Commissioner for information, Malam Muhammad Garba, also said the state government was committed to ensuring wider publicity on the importance of the vaccination.

Garba said all the state executives, council members, traditional rulers and Islamic scholars had been vaccinated.

MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021 ˾ T H I S D AY

52

NEWSXTRA

Adamawa Confirms Seven Dead, 5,000 Displaced in Boko Haram Attack Daji Sani in Yola No fewer than seven persons were confirmed dead while

5,000 were displaced following attacks by Boko Haram insurgents in Adamwa State on Friday, the Adamawa State Emergency

Gunmen Kidnap Teenager in Ogun, Catholic Priest in Imo Gunmen on Saturday night abducted a 13-year-old boy, Gbolahan Ajibola, in Obada-Oko in Ewekoro Local Government area of Ogun state.

In a related development, a Catholic priest, Rev Fr. Izu Marcell, has also been reportedly kidnapped by suspected herdsmen in Okigwe Local Government Area of Imo State.

The gunmen, who struck around 9pm in Ogun State were said to have swooped on Ajibola’s family as they were about to enter their house within Destiny Estate in Obada-Oko. The attackers, who hid in a bush near the house, pounced on the family when Ajibola alighted from the car to open the gate.

The family members were returning from their shop after attending a church programme when the gunmen attacked them, beating them

thoroughly before taking Ajibola away.

The victim’s grandmother, Victoria, said the attackers were six, saying the kidnappers left behind their cloth in the bush in front of the house.

She said: “The incident occurred around 9.30pm. We normally come back home every day around 8pm but the General Overseer of our church, Pastor Enoch Adeboye came to one of our churches in Adigbe area and we attended the programme.

“Our shop where we were selling goods is very close to the church, we closed from the shop late. Whenever we come back home, it is the boy that usually opens the gate.

“When the boy alighted from the vehicle to open the gate, the gunmen came out of the bush in front of our house and pounced on us.

Obasanjo: Why Babangida Annulled June 12, 1993 Election Former President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday explained that a former Military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd) annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election presumably won by the late philanthropist, Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola due to “bad belle.”

Obasanjo said the annulment denied the Egbaland and Ogun State the rare privilege of having three of its prominent sons occupying the number one seat at different times.

The elder statesman, who was referring to former Head of Interim National Government (ING), Chief Ernest Shonekan, himself, who was first a military Head of States and elected President, apparently noted that Abiola would have become the third if the 1993 poll was not annulled.

He spoke yesterday in Abeokuta, the Ogun State shortly after his investiture as a trustee of the Abeokuta Club, a socio-cultural organisation of Egba people of Ogun State.

Obasanjo was honoured alongside MKO Abiola who was awarded a posthumous vice-patron of the club.

The former President, who recalled Abiola was his schoolmate at the Baptist Boys High School (BBHS) Abeokuta, said the late politician richly deserved the award bestowed on him by the Abeokuta club.

Obasanjo said: “When Abeokuta Club was in the process of being birthed, things in Abeokuta were not as rosy as they are today. And the sons of Abeokuta who were in Lagos put their heads together in the late Chief Sobo Sowemimo’s house to think of what they could do to improve the development of Abeokuta as a city. I pay tributes to all those founding members, those who have departed this world and those who are still here.

“I want to thank the club for this honour being bestowed on me and the honour being bestowed on my school mate, MKO Abiola, which he richly deserved.

Bandits Kill Four in Katsina Community Bandits on Saturday night killed four men at Yar Marafa Village, Yar Malami ward in Faskari Local Government Area of Katsina State.

Residents gave the names of the victims as Alhaji Lawal Damfuge, Samaila Namoali, Musdafa Senior and Ado Lafate.

They were said to be residents of the village.

The gunmen reportedly stormed the village on Saturday night and started shooting, thereby throwing the community in confusion.

Although details surrounding

the incident were still sketchy by Sunday, it was learnt that the gunmen stormed the village when residents were about to retire to bed late Saturday night.

It could also not be ascertained whether the gunmen looted items during the attack after killing the four victims.

Residents revealed further that the four victims were buried according to Islamic rites yesterday.

The reaction of the spokesman for the Katsina Police Command, SP Gambo Isah, did not respond when contacted.

Management Agency (ADSEMA) said yesterday.

There were reports that Kwapre, a village in Hong Local Government Area of Adamawa State, which lies at the AdamawaBorno boundary close to the Sambisa Forest in Borno, was attacked Friday evening.

Confirming the incident, the Executive Secretary of ADSEMA, Dr. Mohammed Sulaiman, said the attack on Kwapre affected neighbouring communities where most of the displaced had taken up temporary residence.

According to him, the insurgents stormed Kwapre in nine vehicles,

surrounded the village and killed seven people.

“During the attack, 50 houses, worship centres, markets and schools were burnt. Many people, including women, girls and men, were kidnapped by the attackers,” he said.

He added however that eight

persons among the kidnapped victims had escaped.

Chairman of Hong LGA, Hon. James Pukuma, said regular and local security personnel had been deployed to guard the community.

With the deployment of security personnel, activities were gradually returning to normal at Kwapre.

WORTHY HONOUR…

L-R: Chairman, AES Excellence Club, Chief Nike Akande; keynote Speaker and former Inspector General of Police (IG), Mr. Solomon Arase; and Chief Executive Officer, AES Excellence Club, Dr. Ausbeth Ajagu, at the presentation of excellent lifetime leadership award to Arase, at the club’s dinner /awards’ nite in Lagos…weekend ETOP UKUTT

OPL 245: Shell, Eni Should Face Prosecution, HEDA Tells Buhari President Muhammadu Buhari has been asked to ensure that oil giants, Shell and Eni face prosecution in Nigeria. Shell and Eni have been dragged to court in Milan, Italy over horrendous alleged cases of corruption in relation to the Oil Prospecting Lease (OPL) 245 The country’s foremost anticorruption group, Human and

Environmental Development Agenda, (HEDA Resource Centre) in a letter sent to Buhari urged the Nigerian authorities to ignore public statements by the oil company, ENI, that the trial in Italy should substitute for and annul any other possible legal action in Nigeria.

In the letter addressed to the President, HEDA’s Chairman, Mr.

Olanrewaju Suraju said the trial in Milan, Italy should not foreclose the oil giants facing charges of breach of Nigerian laws where applicable.

Suraju said Eni and Shell were not in a position to determine if they should be tried in Nigeria or not.

Eni had said in a recent statement that it should not be

prosecuted in Nigeria for alleged corruption in the OPL 245 deal because Nigeria “had specifically chosen the court in Milan, as the qualified and entitled venue” to bring the case against the company.

Eni also argued that a “new” trial of Eni in Nigeria would be unjustified.

Senate Queries FMBN over N3bn Irregular Contract Award Deji Elumoye and Udora Orizu in Abuja Senate Committee on Public Accounts has queried the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) over alleged irregular award of N3 billion contracts in four phases.

The Committee issued the query based on the 2018 Auditor General of the Federation’s (AuGF ‘s) report and has therefore resolved to summon the former

Managing Director of the Bank, Mallam Gimba Yau Kumo, to appear before the panel this week and explain the rationale behind the irregular award of the contracts in question.

The query reads,”Audit observed that a contract was awarded to a contractor in four phases at a total contract sum of N 3,045,391,531.97. Audit however observed that the second, third and fourth phases of the contract were

above the approval thresholds of the bank. It was also observed, from the examination of payment documents that the contractor was overpaid in the sum of N 118,717,892.72 that resulted from irregular addition of five per cent Withholding Tax in the Bill of Quantity on each of the four phases of the contract.

“Audit further observed, from physical inspection of the site that a provision of N 80, 000,000.00

was made and paid for the implementation of “Unified Access and Attendance System” but the device was not working according to specifications. A sum of N 644,040,000.00 was also provided in the Bill of Quantities for offshore training and other deliverables in the 3rd and 4th phases of the contract, but there was no evidence of execution, in contravention of Financial Regulations 70.”

Suspected Armed Robbers Kill Two Guards in Ondo James Sowole in Akure Gunmen suspected to be armed robbers have killed two private security guards working at a filling station located at Customs’ Junction, Ondo road, Akure, the Ondo State capital.

This is coming as three persons were said to have lost their lives

yesterday in an auto crash that occurred at Liyetu Village on Ondo-Akure Highway.

The lifeless bodies of the two guards, were said to have been discovered within the Lube Bay area of the popular filling station, named AA Rano by other workers, when they resumed for work yesterday.

The filling station was one of the most patronised station by motorists in the axis.

One of the victims of the robbers, was identified as as a 45 –year-old Israel while the second guard started working at the filling station, just two days before the incident.

A supervisor at the station,

Mr. Buhari Ashiru sad Israel and his colleague were found drenched in their pool of blood around 5:30am yesterday morning.

Ashiru explained that one of the security men who was 28 years old, had just spent two days at the filling station.

2023: North Central Crucial to PDP’s Success, Says Saraki Chuks Okocha in Abuja The immediate-past Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, has advised leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Plateau, Niger, Nasarawa, Kwara, Kogi, Benue States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to unite

and work together, as the successes of the party in the next national elections depend on its ability to win in the North Central zone.

Saraki, while addressing delegates during the zonal congress of the party in Aper Aku Stadium, Makurdi, Benue State, at the weekend, noted

that in all the past elections that PDP won at the national level, the party has always recorded sound victory in the North Central zone, and that the calculations has not changed.

In a statement issued by his media aide, Yusuph Olaniyanu,

the former Senate president said: “We have looked at the statistics for past elections since 1999 and projected into the 2023 elections, and discovered that for PDP to return to federal power, the party needs to return to winning ways in this zone.

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MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021˾ T H I S D AY

NEWSXTRA

CAN Knocks NSCIA for Defending Alleged Lopsided Appointments Onyebuchi EzigboinAbuja The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has chided the leadership of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) for allegedly making an indefensible claim over issues raised on the ‘lopsided appointments made by the federal government in favour of Muslims in the country’.

In a statement issued by the General Secretary of CAN, Joseph Bade Daramola, the association accused NSCIA of using ‘vulgar, immature language and unprintable words to describe CAN in its bid to justify the obvious lopsided

appointments of the federal government in favour of its members’.

According to CAN, “The council was smart by half when it picked an example of just one arm of government without addressing the totality of fundamental questions on all the arms of government.”

CAN further accused NSCIA of assuming the position of the spokesman of the federal government to respond to issues of obvious bias by the federal government.

According to the association, “Should it not have been better for the council to have been bold

UN Condemns Attack on Three International Aid Partners’ Facilities in Borno Michael Olugbode in Abuja The United Nations has lamented the incessant attacks by Boko Haram terrorists in the North-east region of Nigeria, stating that three international aid partners’ facilities were directly targeted and set ablaze at the weekend by the terrorist group in Damasak, Borno State.

A statement issued yesterday by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Mr. Edward Kallon, lamented that the attack in Damasak would affect the support given to 8,800 internally displaced people (IDPs) and 76,000 people in the host community receiving humanitarian assistance and protection.

Kallon said: “I am deeply concerned about recurrent reports of violent attacks by non-state armed groups putting the lives

of civilians under risks.

“Last night and through the morning, a violent attack in Damasak town in Borno State was reported with three international aid partners’ facilities directly targeted, set ablaze, and damage.

I continue to be concerned about the safety and security of civilians and humanitarian workers.

“I strongly condemn the attack, as humanitarian aid operations and facilities are the lifeline of the people affected by violence and conflict in North-east Nigeria, who are dependent on assistance to survive. Humanitarian operations in Damasak will be reduced due to the violent attack, which will affect the support to 8,800 IDPs and 76,000 people in the host community receiving humanitarian assistance and protection there.”

PDP will Win Anambra Guber Election, Says Spokesman Chuks Okocha in Abuja The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday expressed the confidence that it would win the November 6, 2021, Anambra State governorship election, stating that “the party represents the hope for the state to rebuild and realise its full potential.”

The PDP pointed out that the manifest dearth of electoral activities in other parties in the state has shown that they have already given up ahead of the November election.

The party asserted that the “sweeping victory of the PDP in the recent Abia State National Assembly byeelection has signalled that the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have lost all foothold in the

Southeast region.”

The party National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, stated this while playing host to a coalition of Anambra youths under the aegis of Anambra Youth Initiative For Good Governance, in Abuja, noting that the assemblage of leading aspirants as well as the surge of the people to the PDP has clearly indicated their resolve to elect the next governor of the state on the platform of the PDP. According to Ologbondiyan, “The reality of the direction which the November 6 governorship election in Anambra State will take is already manifesting.

“Anambra people are very industrious, resourceful and inventive, and they have collectively realised that they can only achieve their full potential on the platform of the PDP.

enough to examine the entirety of appointments made by President Muhammadu Buhari as serially referenced by CAN? “The NSCIA evaded those troubling issues that are well known not only to Nigerians but members of the international community; those knotty issues that have pushed our country on the edge of precipice. By so doing, NSCIA has unwittingly exposed itself as a promoter of bad governance, divisiveness and injustice in Nigeria under the Buhari administration.”

CAN, which accused the Muslim group of unwarranted and disrespectful attack, said while it can back its allegation of lopsided appointments with facts and figures, NSCIA has no basis for its counter claim.

The Christian body said: “We dare either the federal government or its self-appointed spokesperson NSCIA, to publish names, state of origins and religions of the appointments made by President Buhari into the following offices since 2015 to date: ‘Ministers of Defence, Police Affairs and Interior; the National Security Advisers (NSA), the Inspectors-General of

Police (IG), Director-Generals of the State Security Service (SSS), National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA); past and present Chairmen of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC); the Director-

General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA); the Comptrollers-General of Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) and Federal Fire Service, as well as

the Commandant-General of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), and Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC)’. Out of all these, maybe only one or two are Christians and from the South.

INTERNAL PARTY DEMOCRACY…

Former President of the Senate and Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party Reconciliation & Strategy Committee, Dr. Bukola Saraki, during the PDP Zonal Congress in Makurdi…weekend

Judges Shouldn’t Manage Judiciary Funds, Says Falana-led Coalition The Alliance on Surviving COVID-19 and Beyond (ASCAB), led by human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) has said that the Judicial Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) should put in place a transparency mechanism that will exclude judges from managing funds budgeted for the judiciary.

The group stated this in a

statement issued yesterday and titled, ‘ASCAB Seeks Transparency Mechanism to Manage Funds for the Judiciary,’ which was signed

by Falana.

According to ASCAB, the mechanism would prevent judges from being subjected to undue interference by legislative bodies and investigation by anti-graft agencies.

The group said this would

also allow judges to concentrate on the discharge of their core constitutional mandate of administering justice in an atmosphere of independence and impartiality in line with international best practices.

Falana-led ASCAB described as embarrassing, the mismanagement of public funds by chief judges and chief registrars

The group also rallied support for the strike, adding that it was meant to actualise the relevant provisions of the Nigerian Constitution, which requires that any amount standing to the credit of the judiciary in the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federal government or state government shall be paid directly to the heads of the courts concerned.

Kwankwaso Incurred over N50bn Liability on Roads in LGAs, Kano Govt Alleges Ibrahim Shuaibu in Kano The Kano State Government yesterday alleged that former state Governor, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso administration left a liability of N54, 408, 259, 638.05 billion on the five km road projects across the 44 local government areas of

the state.

The state Commissioner for Information, Malam Muhammad Garba, who made the disclosure yesterday, was highlighting to journalists the outcome of the State Executive Council meeting held at the Government House in Kano.

He said the council received

the report of the technical committee to assess the 5 km road projects, all of which were awarded by the previous administration under the defunct Ministry of Land and Physical Planning with the state Urban Planning and Development Authority (KNUPDA) as supervising

agency.

Garba said the committee visited 39 local government areas, where its detailed report indicated awarded contract sum for the projects, present site conditions, value of executed works, amount certified and amount released for the projects.

Group Calls for Prosecution of Amnesty Office Workers Involved in Frauds The Niger Delta Anti-Corruption Forum has called on the Interim Administrator òf the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Col. Milland Dikio (rtd) and the relevant agencies to ensure the prosecution of culprits of contract and scholarship racketeering in the office.

Coordinator of the NDACF, Mr. Samuel Joe Samuel, said in a statement yesterday that

the affected officials of the PAP who have perpetrated years of contract and scholarship scam in the agency should also face prosecution in addition to outright dismissal.

The group commended Dikio for the courage to flush out the corrupt elements who had connived with external elements to steal billions of Naira from the programme .

The group said, recent reports of the dismissal of some officials of the office who for long had been milking the PAP came as a pointer to Dikio’s integrity and military background.

Samuel whose statement came after a quarterly meeting of the group in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, said the dismissed officers were all known to have enriched

themselves through phony contracts and scholarship racketeering running into billions of naira.

The NDACF leader said that it was rather reprehensible that between 50 to 60 per cent of contracts in the Amnesty Office were handled illegally by members of staff of the PAP through cronies and collaborators.

ACTDF boss, Dallaji Loses Brother Petro Union, CBN, UBN £2.5bn Case to Resume Tomorrow at S’Court The death has occurred of Dr. Isiaku Aliyu Dalaji; aged 57.

In a statement yesterday by the Dallaji family of Wornu, Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area of Bauchi State, the deceased died after a brief illness.

The statement signed on behalf of the family by his brother and founder of the non-governmental organisation, the African Children Talent Discovery Foundation

(ACTDF), Mr. Noah Dallaji, disclosed that the deceased was until his death a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, near Jos. In a tribute to his late brother, the ACTDF boss reminisced on the fact that life is short but that the family was consoled by the dignified life the late Dallaji lived as a role model.

Davidson Iriekpen The Supreme Court will tomorrow continue its hearing in the case involving the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Union Bank of Nigeria (UBN) and an oil and gas company - Petro Union Oil and Gas Limited (Petro Union) over an alleged £2.550billion fraud.

The series of incidents upon which the case is based began in 1994 when Petro Union was alleged to have fraudulently procured a cheque from a branch of Barclays Bank in the UK with a value of £2.556 billion and presented it at one of Union Bank’s branches in Lagos, with a claim that it had a contract purportedly for the purpose of constructing two

refineries, a fertilizer plant and a cement paper bag plant.

Subsequent due diligence investigations by Union Bank at the time revealed that the Cheque/Bill or Instrument dated 29th December 1994 for the sum of £2,556 billion drawn in favour of Gladstone Kukoyi & Associates, was alleged by Barclays’ Bank to be fake.

In addition, Gazeaft Limited, the drawers of the bill of exchange for the sum of £2,556billion was also alleged

by Barclays Bank not to have an account with Barclays.

Gazeaft Limited was alleged by Barclays not to be on the list of Registered Companies in the UK by the Companies Registry in the UK.

54

˜ ͹ͺ˜ ͺ͸ͺ͹ ˾ T H I S D AY

MONDAYSPORTS

Group Sports Editor Duro Ikhazuagbe Email duro.ikhazuagbe@thisdaylive.com 0811 181 3083 SMS ONLY

PREMIER LEAGUE

Iheanacho’s Brace Not Enough as West Ham Dent Leicester’s UCL Bid The quest of Leicester City to end the season among the top four-finishers in the English Premier League and play in next season’s UEFA Champions League suffered a major dent last night as the

former champions lost 2-3 to host, West Ham United.

Although Super Eagles forward, Kelechi Iheanacho, was on target twice, his goals were not enough to deny Jesse Lingard his West Ham

Egbe Lifts Bayelsa’s Gold-crazy Swimmer, Gagbe, with N.5m Cash

teammates from celebrating the victory that has now catapulted them back to the top four of the English topflight.

Lingard scored twice in the first half to set the Hammers on course for a crucial victory over fellow Champions League hopefuls Leicester City.

The two sides came into the weekend occupying the last two Champions League spots, before wins for Chelsea and Liverpool on Saturday

nudged West Ham down to sixth place.

But David Moyes’ men showed they are up for the challenge of qualifying for Europe’s top club competition for the first time, climbing back into fourth after going 3-0 up against Leicester, who had the hosts hanging on after a late rally.

The Hammers took the lead as Arthur Masuaku’s cross went through to right-back Vladimir Coufal, who cut back

for Lingard to sweep the ball inside Kasper Schmeichel’s near post from the edge of the box.

Jarrod Bowen then beat the offside trap to race on to Issa Diop’s long ball and square for Lingard to tap into an empty net for his eighth goal in nine Premier League games since arriving on loan from Manchester United.

The 28-year-old forward, whose recent form earned him an England recall, then played a part in West Ham’s

third goal right after half-time as Bowen poked in from Tomas Soucek’s pass to round off a clinical team move.

Kelechi Iheanacho pulled a goal back to give Leicester hope, before grabbing his 11th goal in 11 games in stoppage time, but the Hammers held on to ensure they did not surrender a 3-0 lead for the second straight home game and move within a point of third-placed Leicester.

Says the state can rule the world in water sports The Chief Executive Officer of Monimichelle Sports Facility Limited, Ebi Egbe, has pledged a N.5m cash gift for Bayelsa’s queen of the pools, Ifiezibe Gagbe who won eight gold medals in the swimming events of the on going Edo 2020 National Sports Festival.

Egbe while making the pledge yesterday noted that Gagbe’s performance clearly shows that Bayelsa can rule not just Nigeria but the world in water sports.

The Monimichelle boss who is still basking in the euphoria of the medal sweep by the Bayelsa swimmer said the feat is one every Bayelsan should celebrate.

He stressed that Bayelsa can rule the world in anything water sport if the right things are done and the needed facilities put in place.

In his words: “We can rule the world at the Olympics in Canoeing and Rowing because we have the best regatta pavillion

and fantastic lake in West Africa for training in Bayelsa State.

“Oxbow Lake and Regatta Centre Pavilion in Yenagoa is the best canoeing and rowing training centre in West Africa.

I am also happy today because I did contribute my little quota to the fine run of Bayelsa in Edo 2020.

“The facilities I constructed and donated to my state saw our athletes training at home in our dear state for the first time ever, before storming Benin for the festival,” observed the sports facility expert.

Egbe was quick to add that he is happy Bayelsa is being run by a governor who loves and knows sports inside out having served as a sports commissioner in the past.

“Gov Diri understands and loves sports...he was a sports commissioner in my state and with that background, he knows what to do to take Bayelsa sports to the next level,” Egbe concluded.

Edo 2020: Okezie Storm to 400m Gold for Team Delta Team Delta’s Chidi Okezie brushed aside all oppositions to storm to the 400m gold medal yesterday at the ongoing 2020 National Sports Festival in Benin, Edo State.

At the last edition in Abuja, the US-based quarter miler failed to get to the final and there was anxiety around his performance as he failed to win his heat.

However, here at Edo 2020, Okezie came out smoking from the block as he raced to a new Personal Best to win the title for Delta State.

In a tension-filled final, which provided a fitting climax to the Day 1 and 2 of the track & field events inside the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium, it was the Delta State athlete who

delivered, claiming a decisive victory in 45.60secs, 0.48secs clear of Team Lagos’ Emmanuel Ojeli.

The third member of the ‘terrific trio’ Sikiru Adeyemi – who was the second athlete to run inside 46secs this year – had the consolation of snatching bronze in 46.51secs following a strong late surge. Samson Nathaniel was fourth in 47.18.

The women’s 400m final provided an enthralling spectacle for the few fans at the Samuel Ogbemudia stadium, and in a race that was billed as experience against youth, it was the youth that prevailed as Nse Uko Imaobong produced a rip-roaring victory to snatch victory from Patience OkonGeorge.

Kelechi Iheanacho scored a brace as Leicester City succumbed to a 2-3 defeat at West Ham...yesterday

Oragwu, Emmanuella Clinch Gold for Delta, Oyo in Blitz Chess Femi Solaja The 2012 World Chess Olympiad debutant, Chukwunonson Oragwu of Delta State and Trust Emmanuella of Oyo State won gold medals last night in the male and female categories of the blitz event at the on-going National Sports Festival.

The duo’s performances marked the beginning of the medals rush in the cerebral event. There are 16 medals at stake in the sport to be won in the next few days.

To reach the mark, Oragwu edged out Chess Olympiad gold medalist in 1998, International Master Odion Aikhoje of Bayelsa State in

the men’s final event just as Emmanuella overcame the best of Toritsemuwa Ofowino of Delta State in the female final.

To reach the final, Oragwu had edged out fellow prodigy, Daniel Anwuli of Oyo State while Aikhoje was better against Abimbola Osunfuyi in the pulsating semi-final duel over three round of short games.

Osunfuyi however picked the consolatory bronze medal against Anwuli just as Peace Samson of Oyo State won the bronze in the female section after her win over Joy Onoja.

In the team event which resumed last night with 7th round matches, Oyo State was leading in the male category with 3-1 win

over Ogun State as at press time.

It was Kennedy Onokpite who set the tone of the day for his team with victory over Bamidele Oluwalasimi just as Femi Balogun followed up on board three with win over Fred Fabeto.

Akinseye Abiola completed the rout with win against Oluwole Oladele but Peter Ajayi picked the consolatory win for Ogun with win against lethargic Anwuli but the state still maintained the lead with 12 points with three more round of matches to go.

Bayelsa and Delta are trailing behind with 10 and 11 points respectively as both teams played 2-2 last night.

Hosts Edo secured a 3-1 win over Bauchi to reach nine points.

In the female section, Delta and Oyo lead the pack with 11 points after 3-1 win against Lagos and Edo respectively. On top board, Hasfat Belo-Osagie edged out Yemi Osundinakin while Dachene Cheneye doubled the lead with win against Abiodun Oke and Princewill Queen also defeated Chinyere Ehirim. Tumininu Oni puts Lagos back on track with win against Udemba Chinyere to leave score line at 3-1.

In all, there are 16 medals to be won in the team male and female. Six each on individual board order and the blitz event in both categories.

Gold Rush for Team Rivers at NSF Team Rivers yesterday increased her medal haul at the ongoing National Sports Festival tagged Edo 2020 in Benin, Edo State.

It was a commanding victory for Team Rivers in the finals of the Men’s Beach Volleyball as they defeated Team Imo 2-0.

Chidiebere Okeke and Emenike Ezike showed class in the two sets leading from start to finish as they won by 21-16.

Speaking after the victory, Okeke told reporters that it was a great game against tough opponent but happy winning the title.

“I am happy that we won the gold,” he said.

“As a team, we have been working hard and getting the gold was the icing on the cake after so much hard work from training to competition proper.

L-R: Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Chief Sunday Dare, eight gold medals winner in swimming for Bayelsa State, Ifiaezibe Gagbe, Bayelsa State Commissioner for Sports, Dr Daniel Igali, shortly after the swimmer created the record at the ongoing Edo 2020 National Sports Festival in Benin City...at the weekend

MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021 • T H I S D AY

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MISSILE

SERAP to FG “Judges should get all to which they are reasonably entitled, and it is unfair, illegal, unconstitutional, and discriminatory to continue to treat judges as second-class people’ while high-ranking political office-holders enjoy lavish salaries and allowances” – SERAP slamming the federal government for paying judges poorly.

ALEXOTTI OUTSIDE THE BOX

TR

alex.otti@thisdaylive.com

Massive Government, Miserable Populace On Tuesday, March 9, 2021, I was privileged to deliver the 10th anniversary lecture of the Adeleke University, Ede, Osun State. I have taken the liberty here to share excerpts of the paper with you. Interested readers can go to the university website (www.adelekeuniversity. edu.ng) to read the full paper.

M

y Igbo origin avails me a plethora of philosophies, wise sayings, and moral values on the foolishness of having resources at your disposal while members of your immediate family or constituency suffer the anguish of a systemic lack. When you liken the above to a more recent and immediate reality, you’d see the Nigerian predicament laid bare.

Nigeria, no doubt, is a rich country, at the minimum, potentially. There is massive deposition of such natural resources as crude oil, zinc, gold, steel, rubber, palm, granite, rich and arable soil for the cultivation of different kinds of crops, abundant water bodies and above all, human resources, by way of talent, academic brilliance, and willingness to work. Suffice it to say that Nigeria has it all. But the irony here is that Nigeria is also a poor country. The World Poverty Clock reports that at the latest count, Nigeria had 43% of its population or about 90million people living below poverty line of less than $1.90 per day.

It was Chinua Achebe who, in his 1984 pamphlet, The Trouble with Nigeria, stated that “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership”. It is doubtful if there is any debate about the fact that we run a very wasteful and expensive system of government. In the past, various federal government administrations had made reasonable attempts to rationalise government agencies ostensibly to bring down cost of governance. The most recent but more comprehensive effort on the issue of streamlining government agencies and cutting down on cost of governance, is the Oronsaye report, which recommended the pruning down of statutory agencies of government, from the current number of 263 to 161 representing a 40% cut.

The Presidency gulps a large chunk of our annual revenue. There is a retinue of aides, ranging from Special Advisers to Senior Special Assistants to Special Assistants to both the President, Vice President, and other senior government officials.

Can we not also ask that we cut the Presidency down by about 40%, using the same logic introduced by the Oronsaye report? Presently, we have 43 ministers each with its retinue of aides and special assistants. This is not only unwieldy and inefficient, but very expensive.

The constitution recommends that there should be a minister per state. Some of us believe that that part of our constitution should be amended quickly. Is it not possible to cut this number by the same 40%, wind up with no more than 17 ministers and still run these ministries efficiently?

India, with a population approaching 1.4 billion people, has only 19 ministers in her cabinet and presided over by the Prime Minister. Germany also has 15 cabinet ministers and Ghana’s constitution allows for a minimum of 10 cabinet ministers and a maximum of 19. Some of the countries we highlighted here are unitary governments while in our case we still have these roles duplicated in the 36 states by commissioners.

Our federal legislators are the second highest earning worldwide after Singapore, that has one of the highest levels of income per capita, in the world, but it is arguably the most professionally run in the world. America the model of our own democratic experiment, does not occupy a pride of place in countries with jumbo pay for

President Buhari their legislators. The Senate has 109 members while there are 360 House of Representatives members from the different constituencies in the federation. Together, they are entitled to about 1,880 legislative aides amongst other support and personal staff.

Our National Assembly is expected to sit for 180 days in a year and be on holidays and recess for the remaining 185 days in the year.

We will ignore the allegation made recently by Prof. Attahiru Jega, the former INEC Chairman, that legislative committee work and oversight functions have been turned into bribe taking and bribe giving pursuits.

What concerns us today is how the National Assembly can help Nigeria to reduce her cost of governance. The budget allocations to the National Assembly is over 15% of the annual combined budgets for education and health for 200m Nigerians. While the number of legislators remains steady at 469, the population of Nigeria keeps growing and about 6 Nigerians drop into poverty every minute. It would not be out of place to ask how fair this arrangement is and even if not important, whether it is really sustainable.

We dare ask, is a bicameral legislature necessary, desirable and sustainable in Nigeria? Our belief is that we should do away with the bicameral system and maintain a single National Assembly structure as this would avoid role duplication and immediately save the country a lot of money.

Our second recommendation deals with the ideal size of the legislature for a country like Nigeria with all its multifarious economic problems? America’s 535 legislators for a country of 330m people translates to one legislator to every 618,000 people. India with a population of 1.38billion people has a parliamentary size of 790 people. This means one legislator to 1.7m people.

Even the European Union, with a population of 446m people, has a parliamentary size of 751, giving a ratio of 1 to 600,000. Nigeria with an estimated population of 200m and National Assembly size of 469 works out at 1 legislator to just 426,000 people. If we take a cue from India, we should be looking at about a National Assembly size of about 117 people.

Our third issue of focus is on the compensation package for members. There is no doubt that the National Assembly members take more than their fair share of the national cake. We should remove all perks and pay only sitting allowances to members. This means that they only get paid when they sit. Again, the legislative function

should be part-time. That is the standard practice for board members of institutions and companies.

The fourth issue is in the quality of people who would be fit to serve as National Assembly members. The minimum standard should be people who have succeeded in their chosen fields of endeavour and are not merely in search of jobs or relevance.

The fifth suggestion is in the structure and mode of sitting. Today, many meetings are held virtually including the Federal Executive Council.

Events like weddings and others, are attended virtually, through such applications as Zoom and Skype. In like manner, we should adopt virtual meetings for the National Assembly. Members should live and remain in their locations and hold meetings for which they would earn allowances each time they sit. We would therefore save on travels, accommodation and other inconvenience allowances. Physical meetings should be held, say, quarterly if and where necessary.

Finally, there is the long pending issue of the constitution. The 1999 constitution was foisted on us by the military and the flaws are so glaring that there is no gainsaying the fact that it is one of the major factors holding the country down. The National Assembly should pass a law requiring that each of the 6 geopolitical zones elect only 20 members to the National Assembly from 2023. It can even go the whole hog and legislate away the state structure in favour of the 6 regional structure to help us rein in the persisting high cost of governance.

The state governments, on their own, constitute the bulk of the waste of scarce resources in the public sector. According to the approved sharing formula, 56% of Federal Allocation funds goes to the Federal Government, while the remaining 44% is shared by the states. Of this amount, 20% should theoretically go to the local governments through the Joint Local Government Account (JAAC), a body that in all practical terms, is also controlled by the states. This is because the local governments are accountable to the state governments. In most cases, in order to control the funds in the JAAC account, states refuse to conduct local government elections, preferring the subterfuge of appointing ‘Transitional’ Council Chairmen and officers, who are completely accountable to the governors.

In its report titled “State of the States 2019 Edition”, Budgit, a public and civic organisation, revealed that out of the 36 states in Nigeria, only three, Lagos, Rivers and Kano, are fiscally sustainable. From a purely economic point of view, most of the states in the country are not viable. Before the pandemic, majority of the states had been unable to successfully deal with their cash flow challenges. Some State Governors have even been unable to pay the basic salaries of civil servants and other government employees for several months. Many of them have already sunk their states into unsustainable debt. Many states have had to depend on non-guaranteed sources of funds like Paris Club refunds, budget support funds and bailouts from the federal government, and outright loans and advances from Commercial Banks.

Healthcare delivery in most of the states is in a state of neglect. Many states have no standard hospital that can attend to victims of the coronavirus pandemic. Infant mortality remains very high, maternal mortality, access to drugs, access to medical personnel and doctor-patient ratio remain in the very poor quadrant. A look at the state of infrastructure reveals the alarming level of decay in most states of the federation.

Roads have completely collapsed, housing is

not even being mentioned in some states and drainages, water, electricity and transport systems have practically decayed. All these come as no surprise because most of the states have found themselves in the same problem that the federal government has been, as more than 70% of their annual budget goes to recurrent spending while a meagre 30%, is allocated to capital expenditure.

The urgent question that needs to be addressed now is whether we should continue to keep our existing unviable governance structure even when we are convinced that it is a drain on the nation’s scare resources. We argue that we can and should put a stop to looting and ‘re-looting’ funds and also cut the cost of governance. Even with the best of intentions, government does not have the capacity to maintain many people on its payroll, rather, it should focus on its proper role of creating the enabling environment for a strong and virile private-sector-driven economy that would create jobs for the populace. By releasing the funds used to run government and channeling same to building infrastructure in a massive manner, government would be able to reduce cost of doing business and help the private sector create jobs.

It is impossible for us to continue doing things the way we had been in the last few years.

Nigeria has borrowed up to her neck given that she now owes close to $85 billion and still counting. We are using 85% of our revenue just to service our debt, leaving us with so precious little to do other things. We are clearly running a huge deficit budget and we are seriously in trouble, a twin trouble of dwindling revenue and mounting debt which shows that we have a serious economic crisis in our hands, though some people still live in denial as if by so doing, it will cease to exist.

There is also the issue of internally generated revenue in the states and local governments.

Going to share money in Abuja, is not a sustainable way to run government. To generate revenue locally, governments must invest in creating the enabling environment for businesses to thrive and share in the prosperity it has created. Frankly speaking, they must give scope for the private sector to lead economic activities in the states. Expecting that it is possible to collect taxes without making the state and local governments competitive is like attempting to squeeze water out of a rock. Some state governors refuse to invest in viable locations for political reasons. What those who indulge in this fail to realise is that as they punish their enemies in those towns by not investing in infrastructure and renewals, they at the same time kiss their IGR goodbye.

We maintain that the only reason the masses are suffering amid plenty, the only reason profligacy seems to have triumphed over prudence in Nigeria is that the citizens condone and accept it. The saying that every society gets the kind of leadership it deserves, cannot be truer.

The World Poverty Clock reports that about 12% of the world’s poorest people are accounted for by Nigeria. One is left to wonder why such is our story and our fate. Why are many Nigerians still this poor? The answer, lies in amongst other things, a structural defect, that ensures that we spend over 70% of our budget in the payment of salaries and allowances and less than 30% on Capital expenditure. We must restructure this country to streamline and tame cost of governance and focus on pulling our people out of poverty. We can choose to do it voluntarily or wait for economic forces to force us to do it. The choice is ours.

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