Buhari has a history of smuggling in looted funds – Atiku

Continues on page 34

Buhari has a history of smuggling in looted funds – Atiku

Former Vice President and Presidential candidate of the People’s Demo-cratic Party (PDP), Atiku

Abubakar, has said that Presi-dent Muhammadu Buhari has a history of smuggling in looted funds into the country to serve his nefarious interests.

The former Vice President said this in reaction to the accu-sation against him by President

Muhammadu Buhari that he is planning to smuggle in looted funds into the country just be-fore the February 2019 election.

Atiku in a statement he per-sonally signed and made avail-able to BusinessDay on Sunday, said this new accusation against him like their previous allega-tions, is another infantile out-burst that tells more about the accuser than Atiku Abubakar.

The statement said further that for the avoidance of doubt,

history shows that rather than smuggle in looted cash, the Wa-ziri Atiku Abubakar has a record of preventing looted funds from being smuggled into Nigeria.

“In 1984, it was Atiku Abuba-kar, as head of the Murtala Mo-hammed International Airport Command of the Nigerian Cus-toms and Excise Department, that stopped the ADC of the then Military Head of State, Muham-madu Buhari, from smuggling in 53 suitcases of looted money into

the country.“Young Nigerians and Mil-

lennials who may not be aware of this incident will do well to Google it. Only the guilty are afraid. It is President Muham-madu Buhari who has a history of smuggling in looted funds and not Waziri Atiku Abubakar,” the statement said.

Atiku quoted Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, a fa-vourite of the President and a chieftain of the All Progressives

Congress, as saying on October 4, 2010, that “in 1984, Buhari al-lowed 53 suitcases belonging to his ADC’s father to enter Nigeria unchecked at a time the country was exchanging old currency for new.”

The PDP flag bearer noted that only recently, his plane was searched, his accounts have been perused and his businesses have been thoroughly investigat-ed with a fine tooth and nothing

R-L: Akinwunmi Ambode, governor, Lagos State; Hakeem Muri-Okunola, new Head of Service, and Bola Tinubu, national leader, APC, during the swearing-in ceremony of the new Head of Service, at the Lagos House, Alausa, Ikeja, yesterday.

NEWS YOU CAN TRUST I **TUESDAY 01 JANUARY 2019 I VOL. 15, NO 214 I N300 @ gg gwww.

InsideNigerian students, business people stranded after US Embassy’s indefinite shutdown P. 2


LOLADE AKINMURELE

The New Year is upon us and there are five things corporate boardrooms in

Nigeria must critically examine in preparing for the year.

Naira downsideThe first thing and probably

the most important is what the New Year holds for the naira.

With the naira set to buckle under the weight of lower oil prices and an OPEC-induced production cut, businesses must put foreign exchange hedging strategies in place.

That simply means converting a good chunk of cash currently denominated in naira to dollars.

That way, in the event of a naira devaluation or deprecia-tion due to a drop in the supply of foreign exchange into Nigeria on the back of lower oil prices and production, businesses are sufficiently shielded from revalu-ation losses.

Brent crude, the benchmark grade for Nigerian oil, ended the year at $53.8 per barrel, the low-est since July 2017. That’s lower than the $60 benchmark price in the 2019 budget. This year has only begun, but this could be an early sign of a bumpy ride for oil

Five things businesses must prepare for in 2019

Cocoa Gold Crude Oil

US$2,415.00 $53.33$1,283.90

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businessday market monitor

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15.54

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Market Spot ($/N) 3M 6M

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364.00 -0.02 -0.01

307.00 14.27 13.41

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5 Y

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Currency Futures NGUS MAR 27 2019 NGUS JUN 26 2019 NGUS DEC 24 2019

364.89 365.34 366.24($/N)


CCNN tops market gainers in 2018 ahead expanded listing from mergerLOLADE AKINMURELE

Cement Company of Northern Nigeria (CCNN) emerged t h e t o p g a i n e r among listed equi-

ties on the Nigerian Stock Ex-

change in 2018, after advancing 104 percent.

There is optimism going into the New Year for the cement maker after regulators, share-holders and a court gave approv-al to a planned merger between the company and BUA Cement.

Approvals came from the Securities and Exchange Com-mission, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, and the shareholders, the companies said in an emailed statement made available to BusinessDay

Monday.With this, the shares of the

expanded entity are expected to be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, they said.

The merger raises the total

INNOCENT ODOH, Abuja

NEWS

Total Upstream has failed to deliver on the much-expected 200,000 barrels first oil from the $16-bil-lion Egina, a deep-water

field, which was expected to happen in December 2018.

There are possibilities that the first oil would be pumped soon, but this could not be confirmed, as there has been no official explanation from Total Upstream Nigeria the operator of the field and the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) with regards to the reason for the failure of the field to pump first oil by the December deadline.

Emails and phone calls put across to officials of the company by Busi-nessDay were not responded to.

The implication of this is that there is a delay in the additional vol-ume of crude oil Nigeria had hoped to get by the end of last year. Nigeria’s

NNPC, Total fail to deliver on 200,000 barrels first target date from Egina field

Muster emerges winner of BusinessDay’s Business Idea of the Year Award

Nigerian students, business people stranded after US Embassy’s indefinite shutdown

Muster, which de-scribes itself as Af-rica’s first shared h o u s i n g m a r k e t

place, has emerged as Business-Day Business Idea of the Year 2018. Muster beat two other nomi-nees, Go Kada and Kobo360 in a twitter poll to emerge winner with 50% of more than 2000 votes cast.

Muster tackles a unique prob-lem in a fast growing mega city like Lagos, especially for millennials who are faced with rising rent prices, and scarcity of affordable accommodation.

Millennials struggling to find their feet in fast growing urban cities, usually do not have the income to rent accommodation in preferred areas. Besides, increas-ingly, because of the instability in their incomes, millennials have an increasing preference for flexible nomadic lifestyles.

As Africa’s first shared hous-ing market place, Muster enables young people in African megaci-ties to access affordable housing by unlocking available rooms in these cities through a peer-to-peer shared housing marketplace.

Muster is democratising the housing market by removing fric-tion, injecting trust and increasing affordability. By renting rooms through Muster, verified people are able to pay for just the space they occupy, thereby saving on rent and bills whilst people with spare rooms are able to make extra income. The platform is built in a way that the users have total con-trol of their experience and they are part of a Muster community.

Amongst others, Muster solves the problems of inflexible rental terms, upfront annual rent pre-payment requirement as well as not fit for purpose developments.

Muster.ng was started by three young Nigerian visionaries, Ibra-heem Babalola, Ugo Okoro and Akinola Adeola, with one singular aim to revolutionise the housing market so that people (especially young people) will have undis-rupted access to good, clean and affordable housing.

According to one of its found-ers Ibrahim Babalola “Muster.ng is Nigeria’s first rent-share platform. Muster connects people looking for other people to rent proper-ties with, people that already have

properties and want to sublet part of it, agents with properties that can be shared by two or more people, and co-working locations. With Muster.ng, we are hoping to create an ecosystem where shar-ing is enabled and encouraged by disrupting the traditional property lettings space”.

Muster is a glimmer hope for cities that are being saturated with rising population. In crowded African cities it is not unusual to find rent prices to be more than salaries made by young people.

As a result of this, young people find it very difficult to get afford-able housing. This is one of the problems that Muster.ng aims to check. It offers a digital platform that houses a peer-peer shared housing marketplace that unlocks available rooms in crowded cities. Muster basically breaks down high exorbitant rent prices.

With Muster.ng you find verified people to share rent with so that clean, exclusive neighbourhood wouldn’t be years down the line. Muster adds a new flare to the tradi-tional housing market that is valued at $137b, it makes this market more accessible to young people.

It guarantees control, wealth creation, affordability, flexibil-ity, bill management and fraud prevention within the housing market. It also opens the market to endless possibilities that are beyond its financial value. Muster offers social interaction possibili-ties, bringing together people of diverse language, religion and tribal identity. These people are brought together under the com-mon bane of the need to have to access affordable housing.

“We have been bootstrapping but are currently in talks with a number of investors who believe in the po-tentials of Muster.ng and are willing to partner with us as we provide Nigerians with a new way to rent”.

One of the founders Ugo Okoro was recently interviewed on Fi-delity Bank’s SME forum. On the show Okoro shared expert insights on the ways he and his team have managed to a monetize a social initiative such as Muster.ng;

“Our fundamental focus at Muster.ng is to create value and cater to the need of people look-

budget for 2019 is premised on daily production of 2.3 million barrels at an average price of $60 per barrel.

Some industry operators how-ever told BusinessDay that the first production could not have been achieved because of what they described as some “slight technical issues” encountered on the field shortly after the Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading unit (FPSO) was moved to site from Lagos.

They explained there was not enough pressure to pump crude oil and because of this another project close to the field had to be quickly em-barked upon to raise the pressure high enough to bring forth oil from the field.

Egina is the deepest offshore development carried out so far in Nigeria, with water depths over 1,500 meters, according to the manage-ment of the company. Its operations will generate significant activities for local contractors in various sectors and continue to provide avenues

for the training and development of Nigerians in various domains.

The project is being operated by Total Upstream Nigeria Limited (TUPNI) on behalf of it partners, Ni-gerian National Petroleum Corpora-tion (NNPC), Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, Sapetro and Petrobras.

The Egina FPSO is the first of such projects ever installed in Nigeria and is about 330 metres long. It was an-chored at the newly built 500-metre FPSO integration quayside at the SHI-MCI Yard, LADOL Island, Lagos, where the integration of six locally fabricated modules took place over a period of six months in 2018.

Nicola Terrez, managing director of Total had at the anchoring of the FPSO said: “We have taken a unique posi-tion to continue to invest significantly in Nigeria especially when things are difficult, for example two years when oil prices was below $50 per barrel, we were on the few private firm who still remain committed to Nigeria.”

OLUSOLA BELLO

L-R: Abiodun Oshode, zonal head, Zenith Bank plc; Kayode Fayemi, governor, Ekiti State, and Tope Fasoranti, executive director, Zenith Bank, during a courtesy visit by the bank’s management to the governor in Ado-Ekiti.

Staple, export crops may remain stable in 2019 H1 – AFEXTEMITAYO AYETOTO

Prices of staple and export crops such as rice, yam and cocoa beans are likely to remain stable within the

first half of this year, on high output recorded in 2018.

The prices will also be sustained by current stability prevailing in the international markets, according to Ayodeji Balogun, country manager at AFEX Commodities Exchange Limited, an e-trading platform for agricultural commodities.

The Commodities began last year on low prices, but rose quickly to peak at about the end of the first half, and then began to drop, trend that continued till the end of the year. For instance, maize and soy-beans started with average prices of N94.67 and N133.31 respectively per kilogramme, but ended the first half higher at N101.95 and N181.78.

Paddy rice made an exception on the AFEX commodity price re-port by ending the first six months lower at N125.88 per kilogramme after beginning at N133.20.

At the end of the second half, maize and soybeans had fallen by 18.9 percent to N82.59 and 30.8

percent, respectively. Paddy rice lost just 6.24 percent to end the second half. “There is a lot of supply already,” Balogun noted.

Generally, Nigeria’s foremost agricultural commodities e-trading platform, AFEX Commodities Ex-change Limited, traded over 40,000 metric tonnes of these produce and injected inputs worth $3.8 million into farming activities across eight states during the 2018 wet season farming, according to Balogun.

The financial support, which came as an offshoot of partner-ships with corporate clients in-cluding LAPO Microfinance Bank, Dangote Rice, Thrive Agric and Farmcrowdy, among others, en-abled over 20,000 farmers to access alternative financing to boost their productivity and yield.

The AFEX has kicked off input disbursement for the 2019 dry season input programmme in Kebbi state, with plans afoot for Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano and Jigawa, according to Balogun. Its target is to reach an additional 10,000 farmers for the dry season to shore up the total number of recipients for the 2018 period.

Trading of agricultural com-

modities recorded some improve-ment in 2018 as the platform ex-panded the aggregation and trad-ing of cocoa, Balogun explained.

AFEX is poised to ramp up the volume of trading under its part-nership with Binkabi and Sterling Bank to incorporate blockchain technology in solving the challenge of financing while facilitating inter-national trade.

Through it, farmers would now be linked directly to consumers and retailers, creating security for off-taking and minimising post-harvest losses. The blockchain technology is also expected to solve the issue of lack of price transpar-ency in the supply chain, helping farmers obtain fair prices for their produce and leading to increased income.

“The platform will bring price discovery as buyers and sellers will be able to trade and settle their transactions remotely. It will also allow both retail and institutional investors to be able to invest in Agriculture through the exchange,” Balogun said.

2 Tuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY @ ggwww.g

IFEOMA OKEKE

Thousands of Nigerians, from students to busi-ness people, who need to obtain visas to travel

to the United States anytime from now may find it difficult to do so after the US Embassy in Abuja and its consulate in Lagos were shut down with no specific timelines for re-opening.

The US Embassy in Nigeria said in a Facebook post that the development was caused by the government shutdown in the US.

“Due to the current US govern-ment shutdown, the American centres located in the embassy, Abuja and Consulate-General, Lagos are unfortunately closed. They will re-open once the US government shutdown is resolved. Sorry for any inconvenience to our valued patrons,” the Embassy said in the post.

Students who had come back to renew their visas are currently stranded in Nigeria over inability to get visa appointment dates.



•Continues online at www.businessday.ng

Tuesday 01 January 2019 C002D5556 3BUSINESS DAY

Tuesday 01 January 2019C002D5556BUSINESS DAY4


Nigeria to have 25,685 babies on New Year day - UNICEFUNICEF Nigeria’s acting rep-resentative, said on Monday in a statement to the News Agency of Nigeria.

“At current life expec-tancy rate, a child born in Nigeria today is likely to live only to the year 2074, which is 55 years of age, while those born in Denmark are likely to live until the 22nd cen-tury,” Ironside said.

The statement noted also that only children born in three countries today have a lower life expectancy than that of Nigerian children, including Central African Republic, Chad and Sierra Leone

In October this year, Nige-ria’s acting finance minister, Zainab Ahmed had said the country’s increasing popula-tion growth is one of the great-est challenges confronting the successful implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

According to Ahmed, the Federal Government has been engaging critical stake-holders like traditional and religious leaders to advise

their members on child spac-ing … a measure she said will help curb the country’s esca-lating population growth.

This statement however sparked up criticisms among analysts who spoke with Busi-nessDay, as they claimed that an increasing population if checked properly could serve as a plus to a nation.

“We do not think the ris-ing population should pose a threat to the growth of the economy considering the vast amount of natural and min-eral resources that the coun-try is endowed with, majority of which are still untapped,” analysts at CSL Stockbrokers, a subsidiary of First City Mon-ument Bank Group, said.

“In fact, a growing popu-lation provides a nation with robust human capital need-ed for productive purposes as well as a large market for goods and services produced. However, where it is not har-nessed or utilised effectively, as is the case of Nigeria, it becomes detrimental to the growth and development of the nation,” the stock broking

Nigeria is expected to have an esti-mated 25,685 new born babies add-

ed to its existing population on New Year day, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says.

This figure makes up 6.5 percent of the estimated 395,072 babies born globally on New Year day, and about 40 percent and 23 percent of those born in West/Central Africa, and in sub-Saharan Af-rica, respectively.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) put the country’s population at 198 million people. If this estimate falls through, the country’s population may hit over 207 million by year-end 2019, according to Busi-nessDay estimate, depend-ing on the number of deaths recorded in the year.

“Globally, over half of the world’s births are esti-mated to take place in just eight countries, including Nigeria,” Pernille Ironside,

firm said.According to UNICEF,

about one million babies died the day they were born in 2017 globally, while 2.5 million died in just their first month of life.

It said that in Nigeria, about 262,000 babies die at birth each year, the world’s second highest national total; while 257 babies die within their first month of life.

“Among these children, most died from preventable causes such as premature birth, complications during delivery, and infections such as sepsis and pneumonia, a violation of their basic right to survival”,

However, more could be done to ensure children born in Nigeria survive their first day of life. “In Nigeria today, only one out of every three babies is delivered in a health centre, decreasing a newborn baby’s chance of survival and this is just one of the issues that need to be addressed in order to improve the chances of survival of those babies born today and every day”.

L-R: Elisha Attai, founder, African Women in Leadership Organisation; Ezinne Kufre Ekanem, chief executive officer, Rosemary’s, The Soft Furnishing Company; Kufre Ekanem, managing director, Philosoville Limited, initiator of Hymnodia, and John Senaya, chief executive officer, J S and Associates, during the flag-off of Hymnodia, a reality TV programme, at Ikeja City Mall, Lagos.

Federal, State, LGs shared N788.14bn in November 2018shared N58.19 billion as 13% derivation funds and N70 bil-lion was kept in Excess Crude Account.

The breakdown of the gross revenue allocation of Federal Government is as fol-lows – N284.395 billion from statutory account, N371.663 million from exchange gain allocation and N15.144 bil-lion from VAT. For the 36 State governments, N144.249 bil-lion from statutory account, N188.512 million from ex-change gain allocation and N50.482 billion from VAT.

For the 774 local govern-ments, N111.210 billion from statutory account, N145.335 million from exchange gain allocation and N35.337 billion from VAT.

Revenue-generating agen-

Federal Allocation Committee (FAAC) disbursed N788.14 billion to Federal,

State and Local Governments in November 2018 from the revenue generated in October 2018, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The amount disbursed comprised N682.16 bil-lion from statutory account, N105.17 billion from value-added tax and N806.39 billion from exchange gain allocation.

Allocation to the Federal Government was N299.19 billion. States government received N194.92 billion, and N146.69 billion was shared between the 774 local govern-ments. Oil producing states

ISRAEL ODUBOLA

NEWS6 BUSINESS DAY Tuesday 01 January 2019 www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDayNG

2019: Okowa urges Deltans to remain united, peaceful

Edo residents upbeat for 2019, as city wears new look

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State has called on the people of

the state to remain united to the cause of developing the state, irrespective of ethnic or party differences.

Okowa, in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Charles Aniagwu, felicitat-ed with all Deltans as they stepped into 2019 and ex-pressed gratitude to God for the grace granted Delta and its citizens in 2018.

Praying for the unity and peace in the state, which, he noted “is the bedrock of meaningful development in any given society,” he ex-pressed the hope that 2019 will be a year of fulfilling a greater and stronger Delta.

He said, “Given our success story in the past three and half years in office, I have no doubt that with the same level of co-operation from the good peo-ple of Delta State, our govern-ment will achieve more in all facets of governance.

“Our optimism is driven by the support we enjoy from our Youths, leaders, the legislature, the judiciary, the civil service, my team of political appoin-tees, agencies of government, both at the federal and the state levels, as well multilateral donor agencies.”

Governor Okowa noted, “As one of the first states to sign the 2019 budget, our govern-ment was prepared for the task of governance and provision of key infrastructure which made us to hit the ground running from day one.

“I must emphasise that the consistent early passage of our state budget has given me and indeed the state the advantage of early starters, both in the appreciation of what Deltans expect from their government and in the development of solutions to meet such expectations.”

Residents of Edo State are filled with high hopes for the New Year, as churches and

public buildings, including event centres wear new look in Benin City, the state capital, to usher in 2019.

A cross-section of residents who spoke with journalists in Benin City yesterday said they hope the New Year would usher in new opportunities for prosperity, and that managers of the country would expertly navigate the numerous eco-nomic and political events that would shape the New Year.

When asked about how he intends to celebrate the New Year, John Ojehomon, said, “I will be in my church for the cross-over service to thank God for the blessings and gift of life in the year 2018. I am happy to be alive and to be cel-ebrating 2019 in good health. I believe there is a lot to look forward to in the New Year. We hope that Nigeria will over-come the numerous hurdles in 2019.”

Victor Lax, who operates an event centre, said, “We are set to host customers who will be visiting the centre to celebrate cross-over into the New Year. We are expecting customers after the end of the crossover church service. We will be open for business all through the night as fun seek-ers will be around to celebrate the New Year.

Joy Idehen said, “The new year celebration is a perfect opportunity to go out with the children. My husband and I will visit an event centre to mark the day. As God has blessed us with life and good health, nothing stops us from celebrating to-gether as a family.”

Pastor Monday Osazee said members of his congre-gation would be holding a thanksgiving crossover service to thank God for his blessings and protection in the year 2018, and pray for a successful year 2019.

FRANCIS SADHERE, Warri

MICHEAL ANI

USPF organises hackathon, incubation event for tech enthusiasts

Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), an arm of the Nigerian

Communications Commis-sion (NCC), is organising the ‘Change maker challenge,’ a hackathon and incubation event where people with technology background and business vision come to-gether, form teams around a problem or idea, and col-laboratively code a unique solution from scratch.

The competition, sched-uled to hold from January 25 to 27, 2019, will have bright, creative minds between ages 18 and 45 years old competing to win over N3.5 million for creating an in-

JUMOKE AKIYODE-LAWANSON novative solution, usually in the form of websites, mobile apps, IOT and robotics.

Interested persons below 18 years would require their parents/guardians to fill out a permission slip and accom-pany their ward to the event.

According to the event organisers, the innovative ICT solution and entrepre-neurship development pro-ject would provide an av-enue for self-expression and creativity among technology start-ups, through the use of modern technologies.

The theme for the third edi-tion of the Changemaker chal-lenge is “The Future is here: Disrupting legacy ecosystem with technology”, USPF said in a statement, while encour-aging Nigerians with relevant

solutions that could address specific challenges, to apply at www.uspfchangemaker18.ng and stand a chance to develop their idea.

“The USPF Changemaker challenge event is the perfect place to network and con-nect with brilliant, software developers, UX designers, data scientists, ICT experts, budding entrepreneurs, strat-egists, angel investors, idea funders, public policy experts, incubation experts and tech-nology enthusiasts. It will be a weekend of freedom to cre-ate a new product, learn new techniques for your future development, and be part of a community of new ideas and ventures thus ideas festival, investors delight,” the organ-isers said in a statement.

cies also benefited from the funds. Nigerians Customs Service (NCS) received N4.99 billion as cost of collection, while Federal Inland Revenue Service as well as Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) received N7.59 billion and N5.82 billion, respectively.

According to the report, out of N299.19 billion dis-bursed to the Federal Gov-ernment, N243.96 billion was transferred to the consoli-dated revenue account of the Federal Government, N5.41 billion was shared as share of derivation and ecology, N2.70 billion as stabilisa-tion fund, N9.08 billion for natural resource develop-ment and N6.38 billion was allocated to Federal Capital Territory (FCT).


Data on vital economic in-dices released by different (national and

international) agencies are most times inconsistent, and users of those data such as analysts, investors, poli-cymakers and stakeholders are confused, as they do not know the one to hold true.

Experts and analysts sometimes question the authenticity of data on key economic statistics given the conflicting figures pub-lished by different statis-tical bodies like National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), World Bank, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and International Labour Organisation (ILO), to men-tion a few.

“Most of them got their data from different sources and it is needful for them to always disclose the source(s) where those data are gotten from,” Olusola Arawomo, an economics lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo Univer-sity, told BusinessDay.

The ILO in partnership with the World Bank report-

Unreliability besets key economic statistics as different agencies report conflicting dataISRAEL ODUBOLA ed that Nigeria’s unemploy-

ment rate was 7.04 percent. Meanwhile, BusinessDay analysis of the average un-employment rates released by the NBS from the first to fourth quarter of 2017, which is equally the annual average unemployment rate, settled at 17.46 percent, a sharp con-trast of 10.42 percent.

UNCTAD and World Bank’s data on FDI in-flows to Nigeria in 2016 and 2017 conflicted. While UNCTAD reported that Ni-geria attracted FDI worth of $4,487.7 million in 2016, World Bank’s figure was $4, 445.1 million, indicating a variance of $42,600.

FDI inflows to Nigeria in 2017 equally differed by $580,000. World Bank put FDI inflows to Nigeria in 2017 at $3,497.2 million, and UNCTAD - $3,503.0 million.

Information on Nigeria’s crude oil production for first and second quarter of 2018 reported by the NBS and Energy Information Ad-ministration (EIA) slightly contrasted. According to the NBS, daily oil production av-eraged 2.00 million and 1.84 million barrels in first and second quarter of 2018, dif-ferent from 2.11 million and 1.92 million barrels reported

by the EIA.The report of NBS disa-

greed with that of World Bank on the country’s an-nual average inflation rate (consumer prices) for the previous year, 2017. While the World Bank put Nigeria’s annual average inflation rate at 16.5%, the annual average inflation rate of NBS for that year settled at 16.54%, a pal-try divergence of 0.04%.

“The divergence could also have emanated from the methodologies these agencies employ to collect and collate data. Using dif-ferent methodologies to collect and collate data will definitely produce different results,” Olusola said.

To Paul Afolayan, a data scientist and analyst, dis-parity in data reported by different agencies is largely connected to the fact that the sub-indicators used to compute these metrics are different.

The demand for good-quality statistical data has continued to be on the up-ward trend over the years. Reliable data are needed to set baselines, identify pri-vate and public actions, set goals and targets, monitor progress and evaluate im-pacts.

NEWS8 BUSINESS DAY Tuesday 01 January 2019 www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDayNG

Akeredolu proposes N190bn as fiscal estimates for 2019Consequently, 2019 Budget is an offshoot of the 2019-2021 MTEF.

“We have used the 2018 Fiscal year to lay the founda-tion of the economic trajec-tory designed for the State. Most of the programmes and projects will crystallise in the 2019 Fiscal year.

“In the same vein, most of the major MoUs orches-trated through ONDIPA, in-clusive of the Deep Sea Port are expected to fully blos-som in 2019. It is in view of this that the 2019 Budget has been aptly tagged “the Budget of Advancement.”

He affirmed that the budget presentation, the second since he assumed office in February 2017, captured the essence of his administration’s blueprint.

“Mr Speaker, you will re-call I informed this honour-able House here last year that we had engaged some

Governor of Ondo State, Oluwaroti-mi Akeredolu, on Monday presented

a total sum of N190.023 bil-lion budget for the 2019 fis-cal year to the Ondo State House of Assembly.

BusinessDay reports that the proposed 2019 budget - N190. 023 billion exceeded that of 2018 fis-cal year - N171 billion with N19 billion in size.

In the 2019 budget, Governor Akeredolu ear-marked N82.179 billion for recurrent expenditure, representing 43.2 percent and N87.906 for capital expenditure representing 46.3 percent.

According to the gov-ernor who tagged the pro-posed budget as ‘Budget of Advancement’, the budget has been prepared based on the projections of the 2019-2021 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).

“Mr. Speaker, MTEF is one of the statutory provi-sions of the Ondo State Fis-cal Responsibility Law (FRL) which this Honourable House passed in 2017.

“The Law makes it man-datory that every yearly budget must be prepared on the basis of the next three years projections of MTEF.

YOMI AYELESO, Akure revenue consultants to complement the existing ef-forts in revenue generation and to overcome the chal-lenges posed by inadequate revenue.

“I am happy to inform you that the effort has been yielding a positive result ranging from appreciable blockade of some revenue leakages to increase our revenue base, a situation which has led to the State generating an average monthly IGR of N1.263 bil-lion as against N905 million monthly average recorded in 2017.

“Yes, we are not there yet, but with the combined ef-forts of the consultants and the vibrant autonomous Board of Internal Revenue, as well as the various finan-cial reforms being carried out by this Administration, we shall achieve the desired result in no distant time.


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10 Tuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY C002D5556

2019: Nigeria’s true year of destiny

deep pains in the hearts of these victims. Secondly we need to pray with greater intensity for the mercy of God on Nigeria and its leaders. The blood of the innocent shed all over Nigeria continues to cry for judgement, justice and appease-ment. Unless God shows mercy, there will neither be sleep nor rest for the perpetrators of the crime, their agents, collaborators or those who failed to exercise the duty of protection over the innocent.

Thus we arrive 2019, a year that is already pregnant. What shall it deliver? A child of destiny or a child of perdition? Me I think a child of destiny, though the signs indicate it will be otherwise. In 2015, the world predicted that Ni-geria would walk down the road of

perdition. It was widely predicted that Nigeria would split. But Nigeria disappointed the world. That was essentially because the church prayed. Is the church pray-ing for 2019? True, the church is praying hard. In addition, 2019 elections is not between the North and South, neither is it a contest between Islam and Christianity. For the real first time in Nigerian political history, religion and re-gion will play very minimal role influencing voting preferences at national level. And for me that is a good thing. For instance, the two principal contestants for the presidency are from the North and they are both Muslims. Thus other critical criteria will play significant roles in determining who wins. The first criterion in my view is believability. Which of the principal candidates do Nigerians believe most? Making promises is the forte of politicians, but living up to promises is what differenti-ates one politician from another. I am persuaded that most Nigerians can differentiate between facts and propaganda. Luckily both leading candidates have been in the public space and Nigerians can assess who is best able to fulfil promises or political campaign manifestos. I believe that Nigeri-ans have been disappointed too many times that they must be wise enough to interrogate all political promises. They must now be wise enough to separate propaganda

from reality. I will like to believe that Nigerians can predict what a politician can do in the future from what he did in the past. If you promise buoyant economy, is there evidence that the economy was buoyant when last you were in power? If you promise a secure and safe nation, what was the situation last time you influenced national security. If you promise employment, how much jobs did you create at the last opportu-nity. If you promise democratic freedom, how much freedom did we see at your last opportunity? If you promise a nation free from corruption, what was the situa-tion the last time? If you promise peace and unity, how peaceful and how united was Nigeria when last you were in position to influ-ence both?

I truly believe that Nigerians have never had a better opportu-nity to make rational decisions as to who governs them at state and federal levels this time than they ever did in the past. That is what gives me hope that 2019 will be truly a year of destiny. My prayer therefore is that Nigerians must take the opportunity and respon-sibility with both arms. If we miss it, then we must blame ourselves not ethnicity or religion. 2019 is our year of manifest destiny. Happy New Year Nigerians!

Welcome to 2019. Let us thank God for granting us the grace of en-tering into the

new year. Thank God we are not in the statistics of those killed by Boko Haram insurgents, militant cattle herdsmen, kidnappers, armed robbers, police/ military stray bullets and sundr y ma-rauders who combined to turn Nigeria into a killing field in 2018 particularly. We thank God that we did not die on the road, on the sea, or in the air. We really must thank God that there was no fatal air crash, despite several reported near misses, including air craft doors opening in mid flight or cabins being decompressed in flight. I am starting this way, be-cause it is normally necessary to thank God for crossing from one year to another but every Nige-rian, including the military must

give more thanks for surviving 2018. It was a bloody year from the first week of January starting in Benue State and concluding in the last week of December in Zamfara State.

Importantly also, we must continue to pray, first for the comfort of the family of the bereaved. Except you have been through similar experience, it is difficult to truly understand how it feels to lose a family member through brutal human violence. It is extremely distressing to go to sleep and wake up in the morning to see your home ablaze and sometimes watch family members who are running away from danger being cut down with guns and knives as hap-pened in several parts of the middle belt during the outgoing year. What is worse, is when no meaningful effort is made by the authorities to arrest and punish the perpetrators of the heinous crimes. Then some busybodies arrive to preach peace to you asking you to live at peace with your neighbors, only for them to depart and the attackers return, sometimes under the watch of security agents, to kill and destroy what was left from the earlier attack. That is the burden, some of our country men and women are carrying today and largely everyone else gets on with their lives, oblivious of the

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I truly believe that Nigerians have

never had a better opportunity to make

rational decisions as to who governs them at

state and federal levels this time than they ever

did in the past

(OSSAP) on SDGs, has ‘formulated’ and ‘adopted’ a number of policies aimed at achieving the goals. But it is claimed that a number of challenges including paucity of and late release of funds, Lack of legal framework to institutionalize SDGs, lack of politi-cal will at some government levels, securities issues, ownership issues around the SDGs, data collection and integrity of same, among oth-ers, are constraining the efforts of the government in achieving the required mileage on the goals.

In spite of the challenges, how-ever, the government says it has achieved a lot on the platform of the SDGs and wants to convince us that the feats are evident in the follow-ing- construction of minor irrigation system, building of VIP latrines in schools and hospitals, training of health workers, provision of insecti-cide treatment nets, maternal /child health centres, classroom blocks, school desks, benches, including health advocacy. Others include construction of teachers’ quarters, fencing of schools, and provision of First Aid Boxes among others. These are no mean achievements anyway; but how significant are they in the context of the SDGs? To which of the targets do these activities relate? Have we not been fencing schools, providing VIP toilets and so on? What difference do these make in the context of the SDGs that we are prematurely celebrating? In-spite of the ‘feat’, Nigeria still lags behind many less endowed Africa countries.

It would appear that those charged with implementing and monitoring the SDGs need more knowledge of the targets and indicators and thus, the government needs to redefine its understanding of the SDGs.

Though the challenges identified are acknowledged but what is lack-ing is insights into the targets that make up each of the goals. If the whole national budget is released and the activities are off the targets, no goals would be achieved. If the presidential candidates at a loss in terms of what to do in the next four years, let them adopt or adapt the Road Map for localizing SDGs which was drawn up by the Global Task-force of Local and Regional Govern-ments, UNDP and UN Habitat to support cities and regions to deliver the 2030 agenda. The road map is non-prescriptive but a portfolio of strategies that could be adapted to the specific contexts and needs of different environments. Time is of the essence. Let’s pursue the 2030 agenda in the truest sense of politi-cal responsibility and commitment. The time for government to hide and the citizens to bide is over and no matter how slow we are in our political development, let us never walk back. The SDGs represent the strength, direction and commitment required never to disown the poor or bend the rules for the insolent political profiteers.

Adopting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as political party manifestomaps for localizing, implementing and monitoring developments around the goals because of the enormous poten-tial to transform all aspects of national endeavours. The 17 SDGs and 169 targets present opportunities for the political parties to take advantage of to create significant value in the political, economic, social and cultural order in Nigeria. We must take a cue from many African countries where SDGs have become a flagship issue and serious steps articulated and taken to ensure maximum delivery by 2030.This is evident from the African SDG Index Report of 2018. The report was prepared and presented by the Sus-tainable Development Goals Centre for Africa and Sustainable Develop-ment Solution Network and provides a snapshot of the progress made so far by African countries ranked on the SDGs. The result of the ranking indicates that the ‘giant of Africa’ with a score of 48 is only ahead of some ten impoverished countries in Africa while Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritius, Algeria, Cape Verde, Ghana, and Egypt are blazing the trail. Besides, some coun-tries have fully achieved at least one of the goals such as: The Gambia and Sao Tome and Principe (SDG 12, Respon-sible consumption and Production); Comoros, DRC, Guinea, South Sudan and Uganda (SDG 13, Climate action); and Burundi, Gabon and Sierra Leone (SDG 15, Life on land).

While these countries are making progress, the Federal government of Nigeria through the Office of the Sen-ior Special Assistant to the President

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That Nigeria failed lamen-tably in all aspects of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is now his-

tory whose sad melody lingers on. As has been noted by a commentator, the implementation of the MDGs in Nigeria “lacked the high-minded-ness of the Millennium Declaration and the ambitiousness of some leaders because despite the avail-ability of funds the required political commitment never arrived.” I guess the country cannot afford a repeat of that sordid performance in the con-text of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in which Nigeria is already three years in arrears of any tangible commitment. The quality of the current electoral campaigns does not suggest that issues of SDGs are known to the political parties and their flag bearers. As opined by Chris Akor in his article “why Buhari, Atiku’s job promises are unrealistic” published in the Business Day of

Thursday December 13, 2018, “the main challengers for the presiden-cy, Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar have continued, like in the past, to make bogus promises of creating millions of jobs in their manifestoes and policy documents without going into specifics of ex-actly how those jobs are going to be provided and by whom.”

This is not surprising because the main presidential candidates do not know what they should be talking about. All that we hear about the next four years is a bunch of razzmatazz. Instead of properly articulating their party manifestoes, they are busy throwing tantrums here and there. They seem unaware that we are tired of moderating our displeasure. Because they don’t know what they are expected to do in the next four years, the SDGs provide a ‘soft landing.’ They should simply adopt the SDGs as their party manifestoes. The goals are clear and the indicators well defined. There is no issue or programme of essence that they would want to pursue and implement in the next four years and beyond in their wisdom or lack of it that is not embedded in the SDGs.

Issues around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become extremely critical in Ni-geria and no political party should pretend about it. The issues require a synergy of uncommon kind and political commitment to tackle. Many countries have devised road

’

‘Mazi SaM Ohuabunwa OFR, FPSn

[email protected]

FRanciS iyOhaProfessor Iyoha is of the Department of Accounting, Covenant University and

Research Fellow, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN). He wrote

[email protected]

(there are many) on Whatsapp she was a member of. Something caught her attention: a driver announced he had just made a huge sum from a trip. She stood up and left for the door.“I just told him I’m coming I want to use the restroom”. She did not go to the bathroom. Blessing went back to work. Of course, she lost the gentleman. Like her male colleagues, she has mouths to feed, school fees to pay for siblings and so on. And like everybody else, her fixation on her economic goals have come at a personal cost. But how safe is it for a female Uber driver in Lagos? Has she been attacked before? “I have been harrassed, they blocked me. But they didn’t take anything because I fought back. I lost a fingernail…We got to Yaba, an isolated area, so I told him the price, 2000 something, he was like ‘give me your phone,’ I laughed, I thought maybe now, maybe he is trying to crack me up or scare me”. No, he was not. Her friends told her she should give up her phone next time. Blessing insists “anything that has to do with my money, I have to fight for it.”

Apart from driving for Uber, Blessing also drives clients to loca-tions outside Lagos. Asked if she is ever worried about the risks. She takes precautions, working only with people she has known for a while or referred to by trusted acquaintances. And at the destina-tion, she lodges at a different hotel from the client. As many females would admit, most men in Lagos would make advances at women they find attractive; especially one whose details they already have via the Uber app. Harassment is rare, however. But with their phone numbers in hand, Blessing and the other few female drivers get a bar-rage of calls. Solution? She keeps two phones. And for the business

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The experience of female Uber drivers in Lagosline, she blocks the errant male call-ers. Ironically, it is the female riders that tend to be more problematic. “I don’t talk to drivers”, goes one. And when making requests, some do so at the top of their voice, barely hiding their disdain. “Transferred aggres-sion” is what Blessing calls it. Cash in hand afterwards, Blessing could care less. It is a hustle. It must be a lucrative venture, then. Not as much as before, she admits. Uber used to take a lower cut of their earnings be-fore. But yes, it still pays the bills. In a good week, she could earn as much as 100 thousand naira. A bad week is when she earns half as much. Out of that amount, she makes a weekly payment of 30 thousand naira to fulfil her hire purchase agreement obligations. The car would be hers after she completes the payments.

Any future plans? Wouldn’t she rather do something else? Does she not want to settle down? And clearly there are not many Nigerian men, if any, that would allow her continue as an Uber driver after taking their vows. Most female Uber drivers are single or divorced with kids. She would not mind being a housewife if she finds a good husband, Bless-ing admits. As the retail business interests her, a supermarket might be something she would try her hands on. She could also buy cars for drivers to make payments to her, be-come a “partner”, that is. Does Uber provide any support for its female drivers? There is a “Woman week”, Blessing says. But she believes they could do much more.

• An edited version was published by New African magazine in December 2018

11BUSINESS DAYTuesday 01 January 2019 C002D5556

The odds that you would happen on a female Uber driver in Lagos are slim. Still, Nigeria is not Saudi Arabia; women

are free to do whatever they like here. Well, mostly. And if you make the error of thinking they could not drive any better than their male counterparts, kindly try fighting for right of way with a woman in Lagos traffic. Needless to say, you may hesitate to do so next time. There are probably as many women as there are men on Lagos roads. Women at the wheel of public transport ve-hicles are not as many. It is not the norm. So even as there are many of them driving all sorts of vehicles in their private capacity, from those with little engines to the ubiquitous sport utility vehicles (SUVs), it is still a novelty to find female chauffeurs. If there are, they would certainly be reluctant to work for men. And their fellow women are not likely to hire them. Wives would certainly shud-der at the thought in these parts. And even Uber itself found out all too quickly how difficult it was to se-cure cars from “partners” (car own-ers) for their few female drivers. That is, when the firm used to facilitate the connection. Now, it does not. At least, that is what Blessing Onuh, one of the ride-sharing firm’s first

female drivers in Lagos says. “I was actually the first female

Uber [driver] that went for the ex-ams…there were more than hundred guys and I was the only lady…they actually thought I was one of the officials.”A few years ago, having just arrived from Abuja, after be-ing let go at a government job over there, Blessing took an interest in being an Uber driver after taking a ride with one. She applied, did the training and eventually got a car. That last bit did not come about easily. Many of the car owners she approached turned her down for no other reason than she was a woman. “Women have issues”, was the typical refrain. As Blessing herself admits, many potential riders would cancel their trips the moment they see her picture. When asked how she knew this, she says since she is able to tell from the app if she is the only driver in an area, if a potential rider cancels a trip persistently, there could be only one reason why. Turns out a couple of those who did choose to take a ride with her sometimes did so for mischievous reasons. One was “laughing and touching my lap” during a trip, she vouchsafes. Even as she stood firm against his advances, he persisted. Eventually, she stopped the car and confronted him. He got the message. Even then, the male rider was furious. He wondered how she could be indifferent to the “dol-lars” he was flashing, his long custom that day already and so on.“If you don’t want it, you say you don’t want it”, was his final remonstration. Turns out male drivers also get sexually harrassed. Some female riders, upon reaching their destinations, would instead of paying the fare, offer to pay in kind, Blessing reveals, confirming views from an earlier interview with one of her male colleagues, who says he never took anyone of them up on

I have been harrassed, they blocked me.

But they didn’t take anything because I fought back. I lost a

fingernail…We got to Yaba, an isolated area, so I told him the price, 2000 something, he

was like ‘give me your phone,’ I laughed, I thought maybe now, maybe he is trying to

crack me up or scare me



China’s 2019 growth outlook

Amid the Christmas melt-down, the Dow Jones plunged to less than 22,000, the lowest since Septem-

ber 2017. Thereafter, it soared over 1,000 points; the biggest single-day point gain ever. Nevertheless, it has declined 4,000 points in two months.

It is this historical market volatility associated with the Trump adminis-tration that now overshadows world economy and China. In recent weeks, the U.S. economy has become in-creasingly exposed to policy mistakes and drastic market fluctuations.

In 2019, Chinese economy will have to cope with great international uncertainty and even more extraor-dinary market volatility.

Short-term fluctuations versus longer-term trends

Recently, New York Times re-ported that China was amid “a steep downturn.” Indeed, since the U.S. trade wars last spring, there has been much chatter in the West about the “China’s economic slowdown.”

Once again, the not-so-informed observers have focused on quarterly growth, at the expense of annualized growth. In this regard, 2018 was an exceptional year in China and elsewhere. In the first half, global recovery was still gaining ground. In the second half, Trump’s trade wars caused substantial collateral damage that will be felt even more in 2019, in the absence of a constructive reconciliation.

Yet, China’s growth forecast for 2018 remains 6.5- 6.6%, after a strong first half. Moderation will ensue in the second half and especially in 2019, depending on U.S. tariffs and slower demand worldwide.

For 2019, Chinese GDP growth could eventually achieve around 6.2% in full-year growth, assuming policymakers succeed in the chal-lenging balancing act to sustain higher-quality growth while sup-pressing faster debt accumulation.

The government’s GDP growth target, which may be formally an-nounced only next March, is likely to reflect steady deceleration, due to in-ternational headwinds, particularly the trade wars, and more secular pressures, such as demographics,

slowing cyclical growth, and other environmental, debt and real estate market issues

Overall, such deceleration is nor-mal after years of rapid industrializa-tion and growth acceleration, however.

Decelerating growth, but rising incomes

If Chinese government would ignore its commitment to poverty eradication, higher living standards and sustainability, it could achieve more rapid growth, but only at the cost of people’s livelihood, living standards and environment.

On the other hand, policymakers cannot accept too much deceleration either. While the country’s economic growth is decelerating, Chinese living standards should continue to rise. The effort to double average incomes – as measured by GDP per capita, with pur-chasing power parity – between 2010 and 2020 requires growth to remain around 6.1% in 2019-2020.

In international comparison, Chi-nese growth rate is currently posi-tioned to decelerate from 9.6% to 5.6% between 2008 and 2023. Despite this deceleration, living standards will al-most double. In 2008, Chinese GDP per capita was less than $7,900. By 2023, it could increase to more than $21,200. That would indicate that Chinese liv-ing standards would almost double in 2010-20.

Furthermore, since current growth is around 6.5%, policy authorities are

likely to prefer gradual deceleration, which fosters stability, over more abrupt slowing growth, which is perceived as disruptive.

Finally, China’s potential growth continues to indicate that a growth rate that exceeds 6.0% is achievable and viable, though certainly not an easy task in the current international environment.

Fiscal, monetary accommoda-tion, and rebalancing

The government is likely to prefer supportive fiscal policy as the prima-ry tool to ensure stable growth. In this quest, fixed investment, particularly infrastructure, is expected to play a key role as consumption and export growth are likely to slow – the former due to increasing consumer caution, the latter due to the trade wars.

China’s monetary stance is likely to remain accommodative, which implies mild, but manageable rise in inflation (closer to 2.5% rather than 2.2% in 2018). Consequently, Chinese yuan is likely to soften against the U.S. dollar up to 7.0, as long as the current tensions overshadow the bilateral U.S.-Sino relations.

While Washington is pushing for abrupt changes in Chinese economic policies, Beijing will stay the course, as President Xi Jinping said in the re-cent 40-year anniversary of Chinese economic reforms.

In practice, policy focus will con-tinue to shift from cyclical stimu-

lus and debt-fueled growth toward structural reforms, higher-quality growth and the rebalancing of Chi-nese economy from investment and exports toward consumption and innovation by 2030.

Elusive international headwindsIf, in the course of 2019, U.S. trade

wars broaden disruptively from ex-ports to investment and intellectual property, international environment may require substantial downgrading of economic prospects in many major economies.

Even in a benign scenario, the global recovery that began in the advanced West in the aftermath of the global crisis of 2008, thanks in great part to China’s dramatic growth through those years, is set to slow down in 2019-20.

The major advanced economies are heading toward a complicated, economically challenging and po-litically divisive stagnation. Unfortu-nately, much of these downside risks remain under-valued in the West.

The greater the gap between mis-guided perceptions and economic realities, the more challenging will be the awakening.

• The original briefing was published by Chinaorg - China’s official govern-ment portal - on December 28, 2018.

’

‘

the offer. But surely she must have liked

some of the riders who made ad-vances at her, and perhaps dated one? After a while, she admits to having dated one. He was not like the others who would say “come to my house!” at the slightest chance, she says with a chuckle.“That ‘come to my house’ is so annoying”, she adds. Let us just say she thought this one was a gentleman and was vindicated afterwards by how he treated her; going on inter-esting dates and so on. It did not last, though. What happened?“I did not have time for that relationship” On a date one time, while watching a movie at the cinema, Blessing glanced at her phone and understandably, perused an ongoing chat in the Uber group

Rafiq Raji“Dr Raji is chief economist at Mac-roafricaintel. He was previously an Africa Economist at Standard Char-tered Bank, London, UK. (Twitter: @

DrRafiqRaji)”

DaN STEiNBOCK

Steinbock is the founder of Differ-ence Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute

(US), Shanghai Institute for Interna-tional Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see

http://www.differencegroup.net/

2018 is a year to for-get for many Nigeri-ans. The year began with punishing fuel queues and grue-

some killings by herdsmen and cult gangs that are yet to be identified and brought to justice. If Nigerians thought the authorities will act to stop the killings, they were wrong. One senior member of the government after an-other weighed in on the side of the killer herdsmen with one advising those being killed that it was better for them to surrender their lands to the killers rather than be killed. Sadly, the year is end-ing with a resurgence of the Boko Haram and ISIS attacks in Borno state putting a lie to the often repeated claim by the government that the Boko Haram insurgency has been technically defeated. Many brave Nigerian soldiers in their thousands have lost their lives in recent months to bold attacks of the insurgents. Rather than concentrating their attacks on soft targets, the insurgents have taken the initiative and are on a major offensive against Nigerian troops across the various ar-eas of operations. That is not the tactics of a defeated or even weakened enemy. It is

the tactics of a reinvigorated and determined foe singularly committed to winning the war.

Sadly, the Nigerian govern-ment and military authorities took so much delight in the early successes against the in-surgent groups and thought all was over and returned to busi-ness as usual. Although billions of dollars were allocated to security both in the budget and via special request by the presi-dency, stories from the fronts show a dispirited, confused, badly equipped and under-fed army taking a beating from a determined, highly equipped and mobile insurgent group(s).

As we suspected, a Defence and Foreign Affairs report pub-lished by the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) – a Washington-based non government organiza-tion - have identified massive corruption among the military chiefs as one of the reasons Ni-geria is losing the war against the insurgent group(s). The ISSA report was categorical that the government has lost control of the engagement with Boko Haram and could show no instance when the govern-ment presently had tactical, theatre, strategic, or informa-tion dominance of any aspect of the conflict. According to its assessment, while the insurgent

groups grow stronger, the Nige-rian military grows weaker and beset by morale collapse.

Like we all suspect, the re-port avers that the top brass of the military is more interested in stopping the leakage of infor-mation about massive corrup-tion in the military in the name of fighting Boko Haram than actually fighting the insurgent group.

On the economy, nothing has really changed. Although the economy exited recession, it is still growing far below popula-tion growth meaning Nigerians are still getting poorer by the day. It is no wonder the World Poverty Clock ranks Nigeria as the country with the most peo-ple living in extreme poverty in the world; and that the figure will continue to rise as 8, 000 people slide into the extreme poverty hole in a day.

No doubt, the policies of the administration are largely to blame. Haven inherited an economy in danger due to fall-ing oil prices, the administra-tion wrongly decided on a raft of policies meant to shrink the private sector and restore the primacy of the state in the economy. This had the effect of crowding out the private sector, resulting in huge job loses and de-industrialisation in such massive scale that Nigeria is

now grappling with unemploy-ment in such a scale that the number of its unemployed and hopeless citizens is more than the populations of many coun-tries on the African continent. This is a waiting and ticking time bomb the government has no clue as to how to handle.

On the final piece of policy so dear to the heart of the presi-dent – fighting corruption, we have seen how the whole concept has been turned into a joke and the anti-corruption agencies, especially the EFCC being turned into an agency of the All Progressives Party (APC) harassing and persecut-ing only opposition politicians while APC stalwarts credibly accused of corruption with ample evidences continue to exercise untrammelled powers and bestrides the polity as great political colossus. The names of former Secretary to the Gov-ernment of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, Kano state governor, Abdullahi Ganduje readily comes to mind.

We hope this year, the gov-ernance of the country will ex-perience a rebirth and whoever wins the forthcoming elections will put machinery in motion to rebuild trust and begin to tackle the myriad problems bedevil-ling the country. We wish you all a happy new year!

Hoping for a better year in 2019

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National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria has assessed the al-ready low level of Ease of Doing business in

Nigeria and believes that the hos-tile engagement by National Lottery Regulatory Commission, NLRC with some corporate organisations can compound the situation and dis-suade investors from Nigeria.

The Institute said the Commis-sion has been engaging corporate organisations demanding for pay-ment

of certain percentage of their budgets on consumer and sales pro-motion to the commission because of the Commission’s understanding that consumer and sales promotions are in relation to its roles in the man-agement of lotteries in Nigeria.

According to the Institute, no-where else in the world are consum-er and sales promotions defined and classified as lottery. It clarified that consumer and sales promotions are recognised globally as integral part of the marketing function designed to offer additional incentives of a temporary nature to consumers.

It therefore said that “the harass-ment of our corporate members by the Commission is not helping the nation’s business environment; par-ticularly now that the federal govern-ment is promoting the ‘ease of doing business’ campaign to ensure that Nigeria is the preferred destination for investors”.

Stating the Institute’s position at its fellows forum in Lagos recently, its President Tony Agenmonmen said NIMN has examined the regula-tions setting up the Commission and believes that it was patently clear that it was set up to regulate the ac-tivities of companies that have been

Marketers’ body says Ease-of-Doing business under threat over harassment of companies by NLRC

established for the sole purpose of lotteries . “Our corporate member companies are not established for lottery purposes and their memo-randum and Articles of Association do not cover such activities”

He said the marketing and invest-ment world is watching the drama being enacted by NRLC in shutting down a very serious and responsible organisation like Nigerian Breweries that has been doing business in Ni-geria for over 70 years.

The body therefore implored the Vice President and Minister of trade and investment to call NRLC to or-der before the Commission creates negative image for the achievement in the ease of doing business in Ni-geria.

Also speaking at the forum, Chris Ogbechie, immediate past chair-man, Board of Directors, Diamond

Bank Plc underscored the turbulent environment occasioned by chang-ing consumer needs and expecta-tions and therefore said marketers need to understand this and adjust accordingly.

“Even where consumer disposa-ble income is dropping, can market-ers give them what they can afford to pay. That affordability becomes important. If consumers don’t buy, that means manufacturers are not selling. If consumers are not buying what we are selling now, what else can we produce for them”

Ogbechie who is also on the board of other private and public companies including Red Star Ex-press Plc and National Salt Compa-ny of Nigeria Plc further challenged marketers and manufacturers to be more creative and innovative to give consumers what they can

BATA JEREMIAH

Stories by DAnIEl OBI Media Business Editor

Nigeria’s re-branding responsibility rests on citizens

Both federal and state governments in Nigeria have over the years not paid serious attention to

nation re-branding efforts. Some of the initiatives in this direction were not enduring and did not yield measurable impact as the

country continues to stand on poor image rating in the global market with its socio-economic consequences.

With government lethargy in this course, the private sector which deeply understands the significance of branding among comity of na-tions, is taking the responsibility of image building to the citizens. This is because the value of the Nigeria brand directly affects Nigerians personally.

A project, IAMBRANDNIGRIA focusing on Nigerians has therefore begun with the aim of devising vari-ous means of getting the attention of the critical mass and “getting them to see the need for us to protect, pro-mote and jealously guide our most valuable asset, our national brand”, says Taiwo Oluboyede, CEO of Top

50 Brands Nigeria, the initiator of the project.

“It is a private sector driven ini-tiative towards enhancing the value of the Nigeria brand, a clarion call to 190 million stakeholders of the brand for open endorsement and enhanced association as we use the stories of tenacity, resilience and the entrepreneurial spirit of many individuals and corporate brands that have been able to achieve suc-cess against all odds as a positive and better narrative to enhance the brand Nigeria. This is called the Nigeria spirit”

Taiwo said Nigerians have com-pelling stories of achieving success against all odds. “We are a very te-nacious people, we are aspirational. These are undeniable qualities that always differentiate a Nigerian and a

9mobile gains second highest on ‘Top 50 Brands Nigeria’ Ranking

9mobile, Nigeria’s youth-fo-cused telecommunication company, has emerged one of the highest year-on-year

gainers on the list of ‘Top 50 Brands Nigeria’ 2018 ranking.

According to the ‘Top 50 Brands Nigeria’ 2018 report, also code-named #IAMBRANDNIGERIA, which was unveiled in Lagos re-cently, the telco moved 12 spots up this year, a significant leap from the position it occupied in 2017.

The report also stated that 9mo-bile was ranked among the top 50 brands for its innovation, custom-er-centricity, youth empowerment and impactful Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Speaking at the ceremony, the Editor in Chief of Brand Nigeria, Taiwo Oluboyede, said, “9mobile is also a socially responsible brand, and its CSR is based on platforms of Education, Health and the En-vironment.

13Tuesday 01 January 2019 BUSINESS DAY www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDayNG

afford. For instance, a consumer does not need a cow to drink milk, therefore a marketer can give con-sumers milk without compelling them to buy cow.

On what is limiting marketers to move ahead, Ogbechie said it de-pends on creativity to achieve a rea-sonable course. “The bottom line is that if a marketer cannot get custom-ers to buy his products, then the cre-ativity is not working. For instance, how come many people are not buy-ing insurance products, if you make insurance simple, build trust, then there will be market”

He said what grows any busi-ness are customers and if marketers cannot bring customers to buy the products, then the business will not grow. The rule therefore is how to understand the customer and serve him or her.

sellable value too. We are using this positive attribute as a better narra-tive and how we should be perceived by people”.

According to him, one of the main activities in the project is the annual #IAMBRANIGERIA Award where the project will specially recognise and celebrate certain individual and corporate brands who have become proponents of value addition to the Nigeria brand through their endeavour, putting the brand on the global map for the right reasons.

The award is recognising Nigeri-ans and Nigerian brands in Humani-tarian, Journalism, Entertainment, Academic, Political Office, Govern-ance, Sport, youth influencing, New Initiative, Innovative Product among others.

Apple exudes luxury, affordability, launches iPhone XR in Lagos

Putting luxury and afford-ability at the front burner, Apple, the world’s leading smart phone maker, has,

unveiled its largest smart phone device, iPhone XR at it’s store in Ikeja City Mall, Lagos.

The iPhone XR, which is now available in all iPone outlets, is said to be brilliant in every way as it pos-sesses an A12 bionic shape which allows processing to be very fast.

It also has a Liquid Retina Screen Display, making it one of the best screen every done by Apple on an

iPhone.Speaking to Businessday, Kola-

wole Ogunwumi, the assistant mar-keting manager Redington Nigeria, said that the iPhone is beautiful in every way as it possesses features that are amazing.

He also expounded on the afford-ability of the product. “The product is more affordable than some other iPhone products which include the iPhone 10x and 10x Max.

L -R: Mayokun Fadeyibi, head, commercial operations Cars45; Mohammed Iyamu, VP Trading Cars45; Etop Ikpe, CEo/ co-founder Cars45; Julius Lawal Adenuga, national chairman, NATA and Adebayo Rasheed at the signing of the Cars45 - NATA Partnership Deal.

BRANDING

Stories by Daniel Obi

PR practitioners tasked to be innovative, professional to grow, survive competition

Public Relations professionals in the country have been urged to be awake to innova-

tive ideas that could resolve issues relating to the profes-sion and their clients in order to attain the needed growth required as well as respect-able position among their counterparts.

This was the submission of the Chief Consultant of TPT International, Adetokunbo Modupe, who was guest speaker at the December 2018 edition of the Lagos PR Clinic of the state chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Pub-lic Relations (NIPR) under the theme: Ideapreneurship: The Nature of our Trade.

He postulated that PR practitioners are ideapre-neurs who should be driven by intellectual ideas that are well tailored towards clients’ needs and their target publics for desired results, and not be inundated with business gains in the manner of entre-preneurs.

Modupe, a Har vard-

trained ideapreneur with over two decades experience in PR, affirmed that since the profession is dynamic, prac-titioners should re-examine their business modules as ideapreneurs, think and de-velop ideas that would in-variably translate to income generation.

“Don’t let the world drive you, drive the world with your ideas. This keeps us in a more respectable position before our clients who should not think that we are in the busi-ness just to make money. We should not see ourselves as

entrepreneurs but there is nothing wrong in thinking about wealth” he explained.

Modupe described idea-preneurs as deep thinkers who create jobs, have a mind of their own; explore alterna-tives to the norms by fostering ideas and are not motivated by pedestrian or temporary success but enduring legacies.

He further stated that PR is about thinking and man-aging thought processes for the benefit of other people’s reputation, and likened it to innovation pentathlon, a structured process that re-

“33” Export last week rewarded 33 friends with Boxing Day gifts.

This initiative was borne out of the desire to remind its consumers on the reason for the season and the true essence of Boxing Day.

The beer brand took to its Facebook page to an-nounce the competition on Christmas Eve, Facebook users were asked to simply

nominate a special friend they would like to gift a Box-ing Day surprise.

The selected 33 winners were so delighted, taking to social media to share their excitement, whilst thanking the beer brand for making the festive season extra spe-cial and rewarding.

One of the lucky win-ners who preferred to re-main anonymous spoke of his excitement.“I felt really special. Knowing that my friend nominated me to get a Boxing Day gift makes me feel really proud and thank-ful. “33” Export has really put a smile on my face this season.”

“33” Export is a qual-ity lager beer brewed to the highest standards for a crisp and refreshing taste.

“33” Export rewards 33 friends with Boxing Day gifts

Marketing expert gives Nigerian states brand positioning strategies

It is estimated that more than US$2 billion is spent every day on in-ternational tourism and

this figure is increasing. Many nations and cities including some African countries such as Rwanda are seriously embarking on destination branding and marketing as a lucrative product to tap into the opportunities this offers as next industry.

Recently, Lolu Akinwun-mi, the CEO of Prima Garnet therefore offered some sug-gestions to sleepy Nigerian states, using Lagos as a case study to shirk off lethargy, in-duced by easy oil money and key into international tourist destinations with the objec-tive to generate sufficient earnings to ensure economic growth.

Recognising that there is no perfect brand, as nations and cities have their strengths and weaknesses, Lolu who spoke at Brand Journalists Association of Nigeria an-nual lecture in Lagos strongly advised Lagos State in addi-tion to other states to set up a structure as part of PPP arrangement for their brand-ing project, a trending global scenario.

Under the structure, he

suggested for an ad hoc committee made up of sea-soned professionals and experienced civil servants to determine the strategy and scope of the branding project. “On approval of its recommendation, the com-mittee will hand over to a special purpose vehicle set up by the government to be known as the Lagos Brand-ing Project Business Support Group (LBPBSG).

“The mandate of the group would be to imple-ment the agreed strategy of the Committee by putting a structure and strategy in place to run the project. It will also generate the funds and goodwill needed for the implementation through the agreed PPP process, but especially from the private sector, showing them op-portunities and benefits for

involvement”.Lolu further said that for

reasons of probity and ac-countability, and to assure prospective sponsors and the Nigerian public, “we propose the setting up of the Lagos State Branding Project Fund (LBPF) which will be man-aged under the supervision of whomever the governor designates, the CEO and the LBPBSG Advisory Board. The LBPF will be independent of direct government control and be open to regular audit from a properly appointed independent audit firm. The board and management will also ensure that quarterly reports are generated which will be made available to all sponsors and donors and all stakeholders to the Fund. We expect this to further engender believability and trust from stake holders. The state government should be prepared to add its own counterpart fund for every Naira generated through this source”.

He said what states like Lagos need is a strategic brand management plan which goes beyond the tradi-tional approach of brand pro-motion. “This way, the start-up point is a holistic audit of

14 BUSINESS DAY Tuesday 01 January 2019 www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDayNG

moves the risk of failure as ideas progress.

According to him, great men like Steve Jobs, co-found-er of Apple; Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Mo-tors; and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon who have all made global impact in their various endeavours were driven by creative ideas.

“It is time we sit down and say to ourselves, what do we really do? If you do not know you are an ideapreneur, you will let yourself down. So let’s change the way we do our business, as we need to con-quer our fears,” Modupe chal-lenges his fellow practitioners.

He noted that the PR in-dustry is hardly recognised, and it is partly responsible for the way clients rate prac-titioners.One of the reasons he identified as responsible for this is the proliferation of quacks, which is fallout of the porous entry barrier into the profession. “This has earned the profession a depressing image,” he added.

The TPT boss however called on the NIPR to take bold steps in checkmating the activities of these quacks in order to attain development in the industry.

Brand Lagos through the eyes of all its stakeholders”

However, Lolu, former chairman of Advertising Practitioners Council how-ever said the government needs to “live the brand”. “What you are saying must not be any different from what you are projecting”.

During the panel dis-cussion, Mar y Ikoku, a media expert encouraged marketing professionals to help states by projecting positive aspects of Nigeria. Shola Fajobi of Brooks and Blake PR, challenged gov-ernment to put infrastruc-ture in place and citizens will be the first marketers of Nigeria.

Odion Olebua, a PR expert regretted that the state of in-ternational airport in Lagos, first entry point of most for-eigners is not in good condi-tion and should be addressed by the government, while Joe Onuorah of APCON called for the strengthening of law and order as a strategy to achieve state branding.

Speaking earlier, former chairman of BJAN, Goddie Ofose said the discussion on destination branding was aimed at eliciting stakehold-ers’ awareness on tourism.

BD Brand TalkWhy are integrated media campaigns so challenging?Mike UMogUn

The latest Getting Media Right finds that marketers globally continue

to struggle to assess their marketing performance due to disconnects in strat-egies for reaching consum-ers. So why are integrated media campaigns so chal-lenging

Now in its fifth year, Get-ting Media Right examines the current state of market-ing in a connected world and it is based on input from 468 senior market-ers spanning advertiser brands, media companies and agencies globally. It reveals an industry that continues to diversify its media usage and increas-ingly requires better un-derstanding of how ideas, content, and media need to be activated in tandem to create holistic marketing that drives brand growth.

Disconnects between growth strategies mean that many marketers are missing opportunities for growth, with 40 percent still using ROI measure-ment approaches that are primarily focused on short-term sales. This, despite an overwhelming majority of respondents, 85 percent, saying that the most important ap-proach to ROI is a blend of both short and long-term measures.

Key findings include:While confidence has

grown from last year, less than half of advertisers are sure of their ability to create insights from data. Even within agencies and media companies, fewer than 20 percent are very confident, indicating the industry is struggling to manage all the data that is available.

Creating insights is de-pendent upon pulling to-gether the right informa-tion and tools to monitor and optimize campaigns, yet marketers are strug-gling to connect the dots on performance across channels. 78 percent strongly or somewhat agree that it is difficult to assess how well brands perform across channels. An even greater 84 per-cent say a contributing factor is the blind spots in digital measurement.

Advertiser confidence in their media mix has grown slightly from last year, but 45 percent are still not confi-dent that their organization has the optimal media mix, of which only 13 percent say they have very integrated media strategies.

82 percent of marketers believe they have inte-grated marketing strategies, but the ir efforts are not translating fully to con-sumers. Conversely, our recent AdReaction: The Art of Integration study found only 58 percent of consum-ers see campaigns as being integrated.

Michael. Umogun @kan-tarmillwardbrown.com

COMPANIES & MARKETSCOMPANY NEWS ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT

Leadway Pensure looks to 2019 with new

Lagos branch

Pg. 16

Tuesday 01 January 2019 15

GUEST WRITER

What to expect, as Otedola divests holdings in Forte Oil

Forte Oil Plc, a ma-jor downstream oil and gas player has taken major deci-sions in 2018 that

will change the structure, operations and management of the company in 2019.

In May 2018, the company announced plans to divest from its power generating (Amperion Power Distribu-tion Company), upstream servicing (Forte Upstream Services Limited, FUS) busi-nesses, along with its down-stream operations in Ghana (AP Oil & Gas Ghana), to focus its core operations around the marketing and distribution of petroleum products and lubricants. This was approved by shareholders at the Annual General Meeting held during the year.

On the 24th of December 2018, the management also notified the public of the de-cision by the majority share-holder, Mr Femi Otedola, to divest his entire holdings, of 75%, in order to focus on opportunities in refinery and petrochemicals. This includes his 186.26mn units of direct shares and 838.47mn shares in indirect holdings. The hold-ings are to be sold to the Pru-dent Energy Team, through Ignite Investments and Com-modities Limited.

Due to the liquidity is-sues in the power sector, the company’s decision to focus on the downstream segment can be a good strategy to fully harness the opportuni-ties within the downstream value chain. The company’s effort in expanding its retail footprint alongside the intro-duction of new higher margin products, like Havoline and Solar, should support the company’s bottom-line going forward. Asides the positive long term performance of the company, the corporate governance of FO might also be strengthened further given the institutional ownership of majority of the shares, in the aftermath of the divestment.

However, the major down-side is the sentiment sur-rounding the proposed exit of the majority shareholder, as this decision raises varying questions as to the long term outlook of the company. We believe the company could have expanded its portfolio by raising capital to go into refin-

ing and petroleum chemicals, hence, the question therefore remains why this option was not explored. Also, the dearth of information on the Prudent Energy Team and Ignite In-vestments and Commodities

OIL & GAS

Limited raises concern over the proposed transaction, as we are not able to further ac-cess the strength of the stated firms.

On the back of this, we advise a SELL for investors

with short-term investment horizon as the current rally on the stock is temporary be-cause it is neither supported by the current state of opera-tions of the company nor the outlook based on the recently

announced 75% divestment. For investors seeking long term value, we do not fore-see the price staying above NGN40.00, hence, we also advise a SELL for investors that currently have the stock.

A re-entry at a lower price, possibly between NGN21.00 - NGN25.00, with an exit range between NGN35.00 – NGN41.00 should however yield more benefit over the long-term.

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Edited by LOLADE AKINMURELE ([email protected]) Graphics: CHINEDUM ONYEMA

COMPANIES & MARKETSTuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY16

L-R: Tajudeen Quadri, senior special assistant to the Lagos State governor on community affairs; Akeem Omoyele Sulaimon, special adviser to the Lagos State governor oncommunities and communication; Fola Padonu, permanent secretary, Lagos State Ministry of local government and communication affairs, and Sherifat Ewumi-Dosumu, director, community development department, Lagos State Ministry of local government and communication affairs, during the 2018 community day celebration and end of the year Get-Together by the ministry in Lagos. Pic by Olawale Amoo

The consumer goods start-ed the year on the back of bullish in-

vestor sentiments, but at the close of the year the sector closed in the red zone.

The year-to-date re-tu r n a s i n d i cate d by the NSEFBT10 stood at -24.35%, as the sector b re a d t h f o r t h e ye a r stood at 0.06x, reflect-ing one (1) gainer and Seventeen (17) losers.

Vitafoam Plc was the only gainer this year, w i t h i t s s h a r e p r i c e advancing 33.33%, to close at NGN4.00.

On the other hand, Dunlop shed -60.00% o f i t s s h a re p r i c e t o top the losers’ chart, c l o s i n g a t N G N 0 . 2 0 . PZ Cussons (-44.42%),

I n t e r n a t i o n a l B r e w -eries (-44.04%), Dan-gote Flour (-43.62%) and Nigerian Brewer-ies (-39.21%) were the other laggards for the year.

With stiff competi-t i o n a m o n g b re w e r-ies and declining sales revenue across board, unimpressive earnings triggered sell-offs lead-ing to lower valuations save for sector heavy w e i g h t l i k e N E S T L E and UNILEVER.

Analysts at Lagos-based Meristem do not envisage an upturn in the near term consid-e r i n g t h e i n f l a t i o n -a r y r i s k s d u e t o t h e forthcoming election spending which may d a m p e n c o s t i n p u t s thereby putting pres-sure on earnings.

CONSUMER GOODS

Vitafoam emerges sole gainer

@Businessdayng@Businessdaynghttps://www.facebook.com/businessdaynghttps://www.facebook.com/businessdayngwww.businessday.ngwww.businessday.ng @Businessdayng@Businessdayng

Fidson beats Neimeth, Morison to top spot

HEALTHCARE

Fidson (+33.78%) emerged as the top gainer in 2018, closing at NGN4.95. Nei-

meth Pharmaceuticals and Mori-son were also gainers in the year, with respective price advance-ments of 14.67% and 3.77%.

In contrast, Union Dac (-46.00%) was the top laggard in the year. Other losers were Phar-madeko Plc (-36.44%), Glaxo-smithKline (-32.90%), Meyer (-15.71%) and May & Baker (-5.77%).

Healthcare stocks under the coverage of Meristem closed the year in the negative zone, as the index shed -18.83% in the year. With three (3) gainers and five (5) losers, the sector breadth settled at 0.60x.

The unimpressive perfor-mance of many counters in the sector affected investor senti-ment. In the coming year, there are expectations for a modest improvement in earnings per-formance. The relatively low valuations of the counters should also drive the share price perfor-mance of the players in the sector.

Leadway Pensure looks to 2019 with new Lagos branch

ment from the company sent to BusinessDay noted that this is in response to clients’ needs and a step in furtherance of the brand’s

If you look around I am certain you will agree we are in the process of creating an ambience which will be welcoming to both clients and staff.”

The branch unveil-ing event which brings the total to 13 branch-es across Nigeria, also provided an opportu-nity for attendees to network and celebrate the new milestone with the organization.

Adedeji described the clients as “the rea-son we exist and the reason we will never cease to innovate and expand our delivery of value. On behalf of our board, management and members of staff, I say thank you for shar-ing our dream, for giv-ing us the opportunity to serve you and for joining us in celebrat-ing the opening of our new branch office.

Aside 13 branches, Leadway Pensure also has 20 service centers nationwide. A state-

As 2019 beckons, Leadway Pen-sure has expand-

ed its services to cus-tomers living within Victoria Island, a major business hub for Nigeria’s commercial capital. The new branch which the company unveiled in December has a mandate to offer unparalleled customer experience.

“We have come a long way from where we began in 2005 and we are determined to continually grow with our customers who have entrusted us with their financial future,” Ronke Adedeji, manag-ing director, Leadway Pensure PFA said at the launch cocktail that took place at the new branch’s vicinity. “This branch has been put together with care and attention fit for a branch such as ours.

FRANK ELEANYA

commitment to providing customers with memorable and excellent services.

“It is worthy of note that Leadway Pensure PFA

is one of Nigeria’s most capitalized Pensions Funds Administrator and a mem-ber of the Leadway Group, one of the country’s big-

ges financial groups with investments in insurance, pensions, asset manage-ment amongst others,” the statement noted.

PENSION FUNDS

Unity emerges best performing bank stock in 2018

ers’ end was Access bank (-34.93%), Union bank (-28.21%), United Bank of Africa (-23.79%), Jaiz bank (-19.05%) and Fidelity bank (-18.70%).

At the end of the year, the sector closes with seven (7) gainers and nine (9) losers with the top gainers being the Tier 2 banks and penny stocks in the sector. With the Tier 2 banks holding more poten-tial for stronger gains, given their relatively low prices, we saw bargain hunting activities pervade these counters.

However, all gains were offset by the losses on the heavyweight counters in the sector.

In the coming year, expec-tations are thatTier 1 banking stocks will improve, support-ing the expected gains on Tier 2 banking stocks.

However, the possibility of political uncertainties, emerg-ing market tensions and strong capital outflows, could snuff out any gains.

BANKING

The banking space has been active, flooded by material trading infor-

mation; delisting, retirement of board members, divest-ments and even mergers. It is little wonder why the stocks from the sector continued to rank on the top traded volume chart week on week.

Market tensions and po-litical uncertainties, however, weighed as the sector’s per-formance.

Similarly, the sector breadth at 0.78x, was in fa-vour of the laggards, as nine (9) bears outpaced seven (7) bulls apiece.

Unity Bank ranked as the top performing counter this year with a share price in-crease of 84.91% to close at NGN0.98.

Trailing the counter were Sterling bank(+71.30%), de-funct Skye bank (+54.00%), Diamond bank (+32.67%), and First City Monument Bank (+31.08%).

However, on the los-

NEM is top dog for third year running

INSURANCE

The sector underper-formed this year with the 9.62% YoY decline in the

NSEINS10 Index. Five (5) gain-ers and twenty (20) losers settled the sector breadth at 0.25x.

NEM Insurance closed the year at the top of the gainers’ chart for the third consecutive year. The stock gained 54.22% YoY to close at NGN2.56.

The counter was followed by Continental Reinsurance, Cus-todian, AIICO, and PRESTIGE, which gained 36.43%, 34.96%, 32.69% and 2.00%.

However, AFRINSURE, Cor-nerstone Insurance , SUNU Assuarnce, Mutual Benefits, REGALINS, STDINSURE, UNIC, and UNIVINSURE were the worst performing stocks in the sector, with a loss of 60.00% each.

The price of most coun-ters slid this year, following the implementation of the par value rule in January 2018. The performance of the sector also reflected the bearish trend in the market for the most parts of the year. However, stocks like NEM, CUSTODIAN, and AIICO had impressive outings in 2018.

COMPANIES & MARKETS

The industrial goods sector closed the year in the red zone, in line with the gen-eral market.

The sector index has re-turned -37.73% this year. How-ever, seven (7) gainers and four (4) losers emerged, pegging the sector breadth at 1.75x.

Cement Company of North-ern Nigeria (CCNN) emerged as the year’s top gainer, following a 110.00% advancement of its share price to close the year at

NGN19.95. Beta Glass (33.11%), Port-

land Paint (14.55%), CAP (2.50%) and Berger (1.30%) also featured on the top gainers’ chart for the year.

On the other hand, Lafarge WAPCO emerged as the year’s worse performing counter, shed-ding -72.15%, to close the year at NG12.50. First Aluminium (-28.00%), Dangote Cement (-20.43%) and CUTIX (-11.44%) were the other losers in the sector.

The sector’s weak perfor-

mance can be attributed to the decline in the prices of heavy-weights; Dangote Cement and WAPCO, which was largely driven by unimpressive earnings and debt burden on WAPCO.

Although the Company has since proposed a rights issue of NGN89.21 billion, analysts still hold a bleak outlook on its performance. The market will be on hand for impressive financial scorecards from Dangote Ce-ment and CCNN that have the potential to drive prices north.

CCNN advances by 110.00%

Business Event

L-R: Uaboi Agbebaku, company secretary/legal adviser, NB Plc.; Onyebuchi Nwangwu, Brand Manager, Star Lager Beer, and Emmanuel Oriakhi, marketing director NB Plc., at Warri again concert powered By Star Lager Beer.

L-R: Grace Omo-Lamai, human resource director, Nigerian Breweries; Aniekwe Onyinye Jessica, winner, Star You Too Can Shine Competition, and Oludare Olateju, senior brand manager, Star Lager Beer, at the One Lagos Fiesta sponsored by Star Lager.

L-R: Bemigho Awala, consultant, XLR8; Calixthus Okoruwa, chief executive officer, XLR8, and Mukhtar Sirajo, president/Chairman of Council, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, during the award presentation to XLR8 as PR Consultancy of the year, at the LaPRIGA Hattrick edition in Lagos

L-R: Friday Momoh, area sales manager, NB Plc, Owerr; Austine Okweni, regional trade marketing manager, NB Plc; Flavour Nabania, Life Continental Lager Beer brand ambassador; Chidi Egwu, brand manager, Life Continental Lager Beer, NB Plc, and Idowu Adeshina, regional business manager, NB Plc, at the recently concluded Bridge Of Progress Party in Owerri, Imo State.

Tuesday 01 January 2019 17

In the course of 2018, bearish sentiment pre-vailed in the oil & gas sector as the NSEOILG5

index declined by 11.89%. One (1) gainer and eight (8) losers settled the sector breadth at 0.13x.

ETERNA emerged as the only gainer in the sector this year, after advancing by 15.76% to close at NGN4.70.

On the losers’ list were J A PAU L O I L ( - 6 0 . 0 0 % ) , F O ( - 2 6 . 7 5 % ) , O A N D O (-18.20%), CONOIL (-16.96%) and TOTAL (-14.76) to close at NGN0.20, NGN31.85, N G N 4 . 9 0 , N G N 2 3 . 2 5 , NGN196.00 respectively.

Geopolitical tensions such as the withdrawal of US from Iran’s nuclear deal, supply

The ser vices sector m ov e d i n t a n d e m w i t h t h e g e n e r a l

market, getting dominated by the bears this year. This performance was reflected by the 5.59% decline in the MERISER U index this year. Five (5) counters gained while fourteen (14) others declined to settle the sec-tor breadth at 0.36x.

LEARNAFRCA outper-for me d other counters, gaining 54.55% to close at

T here was only one gainer and three losers in the agri-

cultural sector for the year. Hence, the sector breadth closed at 0.33x.

Okomu was the sole gainer in the sector this year, hav-ing gained by 12.57%

disruptions in Libya, Angola and Venezuela and improved demand supported crude prices in most parts of 2018; thus, driving the Brent crude oil price to a 4-year high of USD84pb in October 2018.

The increased shale oil production, rising US crude inventories, higher produc-tion data from major oil producing countries, along-side the temporary waivers granted on some Iranian exports dragged prices below USD60.00pb towards the end of the year. Brent crude price settled at USD52.03pb as at Friday, the 28th of December 2018.

The current downstream cost structure which impact-ed margins of most down-stream players fueled the

NGN1.36. Other counters featured on the gainers’ l ist include C AVERTON ( + 4 7 . 2 9 % ) , C I L E A S I N G (+37.98%), AIRSERVICE ( + 2 1 . 8 5 % ) , a n d M E D -V I E WA I R ( + 0 . 5 0 % ) . I n c o n t r a s t , N S L T E C H alongside TAN TAL IZER was the worst perform-ing stock in the sector, as they shed 60.00% each to close at NGN0.20.

Other laggards in the year include ABCTRANS

to close the year at NGN76.20.

FTNCOCOA on the other hand was the worst performing stock in the sector, having lost 60.00% of its price to close at NGN0.20. LIVESTOCK and PRES-CO lost 39.76% and 6.57%, prevailing as

Oil companies endure bearish year

Weak investor sentiment pulls sector underwater

Okomu emerges sole gainer

OIL AND GAS

SERVICES

AGRICULTURE

negative investor mood to-wards counters in the space.

The better performance of companies in the upstream sector was evident in the up-ward movement of SEPLAT’s price at the beginning of the year.

The general market mood, however, dragged investor’s appetite, hence the price decline and there may be no major improvement in senti-ment surrounding the sector.

Operations of most down-stream players may generally remain the same, hence no enticing news to significantly drive prices.

Analysts however expect improved investor sentiment on counters like SEPLAT and MOBIL to drive the sector’s performance in 2019.

( - 4 2 . 0 0 % ) , R T B R I S C O E ( - 2 4 . 0 0 % ) a n d D A A R -COMM (-20.00%).

T h e p e r f o r m a n c e o f t h e s e c t o r w a s c h a r a c-terised by negative sen-timent, in l ine with the bearish mood of the eq-uities market in general. In the coming year, the s e n t i m e n t t o w a r d s t h e sector will continue to be reflective of the earnings performance of players in the sector.

the other under-per-formers in the sector.

The performance of the counters in the sector was driven by corporate earnings performance during the year, with inves-tors penalizing players with unimpressive out-ings.

@Businessdayng@Businessdaynghttps://www.facebook.com/businessdaynghttps://www.facebook.com/businessdayngwww.businessday.ngwww.businessday.ng @Businessdayng@Businessdayng BUSINESS DAY

INDUSTRIAL GOODS

C002D555618 Tuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY

GUIDEAVIATION

in association with

How Ethiopian Airlines is connecting Africa to the world - Nakasone

What are the benefits of this new air service by Ethio-pian Airlines through Lome to Los Angeles?

We are very excited that Et h i o p i a n Airlines has commenced

service from Lome to Los Angeles Airport (LAX) and this does not just include this new air service but it goes back to 2015 when they first started their service from Addis Ababa via Dublin. This particular new air service is of interest to us too because it actually connects West Africa to LAX. We feel there are a lot of potentials because there is a large Ethiopian community from the perspective of Ethio-pia but there is also a large Nigerian community from Los Angeles. So I think there are a lot of opportunities for growth for Ethiopian Airlines and we are so excited to be working with them. Like I said, we have had this relationship since 2015 and at the same time, we work very closely with LAX in encouraging new air services especially from parts of the world where there is not a lot of services at this particular time.

In terms of figures, from 2015 till now, have you ob-served growth in passenger movement through Ethio-pian Airlines to Los Angeles?

As far as passenger move-

ment and growth is con-cerned, obviously, the more new air service we get, the more increase in visitations we get. Right now what is key with Ethiopian Airlines as a partner with Los Angeles is that it connects Africa to LAX. The numbers may be smaller compared to our other key markets but that is where we find a challenge for us into making sure that there is respectable growth from this area of the world.

What is your projection on passenger movement for the next ten years?

It is difficult to project but it is also a matter of supply and demand. I think working with Ethiopian Airlines and working very closely with the travel trade in providing online training capabilities, so as to train them and give them additional information about Los Angeles as a destination will increase the numbers. We tell them things like how we sell it, what we have to offer, what to see, what to do and how to get around, amongst others. Once we are not there physically, we have our very large online presence where we can make up for not being present at any location.

Nigeria, which as a very big market has some colo-nial attachments with Brit-ain. In Egypt and Ethiopia, there are lots of artefacts and historical locations.

What do you think will make an average African prefer coming to Los Angeles, than other places?

From an international visitation perspective, Los Angeles is a diverse city and community. For visitations all over the world and glob-ally, we are very fortunate. We are very active in promot-ing tourism to Los Angeles with all of our partners and from that perspective; we are the entertainment capital of the world. We have a large arts and cultural scene, we have things to see and do from every budget level. We have something for every-

one, whether from a small budget all the way up to the most luxurious visitor to Los Angeles. Whether you want to do a helicopter tour or a bike tour of Los Angeles and everything in between, there is something for everyone here in Los Angeles and we are very welcoming. So, that is our mantra and we look forward to welcoming more visitors from Africa.

In your partnership with Ethiopian airline, what are you both doing together to make LA a tourism destina-tion you desire?

Sponsoring a familiarisa-tion trip like this shows that

we want to showcase Los Angeles as a destination so that when you go back to your cities, you can pass the information of Los Angeles as a destination and how attractive it is that everyone should visit. We also work with Ethiopian airline on a travel trade side. So, we are hoping to operate with them on more travel trade busi-ness. On the travel trade side, we will be welcoming tour operators and travel agents who have the potentials to sell our destinations and are also supporters of Ethiopian airlines. We try to match all of it together and work together as one team. On a broader perspective, we also work with the state tourism board in California as well as our national tourism in USA. We work collectively as a tourism component to ensure we are successful in what we do. We are all interested in increas-ing the numbers no matter where in the world. We find this particular new air service interesting and we are excited about it.

You said the propose modernisation of LAX will cost about 14billion dollars. What does this modernisa-tion entails and how do you think other airports can emulate from this?

This is modernising the passenger experience. So, upon arrival, that is your first

Ethiopian Airline (ET) recently commenced its inaugural flight through Lome to Los Angeles. This is after the carrier had flown from Addis Ababa via Dublin to Los Angeles since 2015. Lome has therefore become the only and first to connect non-stop the West Coast of USA with West Africa. Connections to major West Africa cities: Lagos, Abuja, Accra, Dakar, Abidjan. This therefore implies that Los Angeles Airport (LAX) is only one of two airports in the world to service six continents with nonstop flights and the only U.S. West Coast gateway airport with nonstop service to Africa. This new air service is part of ET’s plans to connect more African countries to the United States of America and the rest of the world. Los Angeles no doubt is one of the most visited cities across the world, little wonder why ET is helping make travel experience seamless for passengers who would love to visit the city. In this interview with Ifeoma Okeke, Stephanie Nakasone, senior director, Tourism for Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board speaks on the Board’s partnership with ET and how this partnership will benefit passengers.

Stephanie Nakasone, senior director, Tourism for Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board

key experience in the destina-tion. So Los Angeles World Airport in the tourism board perspective also wants to pro-vide the most perfect passen-ger experience upon arrival or departure, whether it means getting them through security quickly, providing amazing dining or shopping and not just the regular average air-port retail shop or restaurant. So, what we are looking at is bringing Los Angeles as a city and a destination to the overall experience of LAX as well. So, a lot of our local restaurants have set up shops at LAX. So, we are also looking at LAX and working with them in making LAX a destination as well.

In terms of passenger fa-cilitation, how do you com-pare LAX and other major airports across the world?

Each airport is different and unique. For us, in work-ing with our partners at LAX, we ensure that the passenger experience is a very positive one. We have got programmes where we have volunteers with dogs and puppies for passengers who may be a little bit on edge, to also help put a smile on your face when you are working with dogs. It helps also with families travel-ling with children. Just little things like these that we hope is really big in these small little ways I just mentioned helps ease the travel experience.

Stories by Jumoke Akiyode LAwAnSon

TECHBD in association with

Tuesday 01 January 2019 BUSINESS DAY 19

9mobile plans to break new grounds in IoT, data services, mobile money in 2019

9mobile, has expressed gratitude to its custom-ers and indeed all Nige-rians for their steadfast support and loyalty in

2018, and assured them of contin-uous delivery of excellent services in the New Year.

Stephane Beuvelet, acting managing director of 9mobile, in an end-of-year message, said the new management of the telecom-munications company is deeply grateful to customers and other stakeholders for their unwavering support and confidence 9mobile amidst the operating challenges in the outgoing year.

The acting MD said, in further-ance of its commitment to deliver-ing superior customer experience, 9mobile is set to break many new grounds in 2019 by kick-starting a new strategic direction with bold

initiatives that guarantee opti-mum value to customers.

“From an aggressive enhance-ment of network capacity and innovative features to boost HD

voice and video/data services, LTE network coverage expansion to 15 new cities, more innovative data offerings including triple play and streaming service, to digital

services that support your every-day needs such as our 9Pay pay-ment service, we are set to break fallow grounds in emerging areas like Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning capabilities to drive superior customer experi-ence,” Beuvelet said.

He assured further that 9mo-bile would continue “to expand our 3G and 4G networks to bridge mobile broadband service gap, deliver cloud-enabled services to support SMEs and financial inclu-sion capabilities, and deploy an array of innovative brand loyalty reward programmes.”

He said the successful recapi-talisation of the company which outcome includes a seamless change in shareholding structure and the inauguration of a new board and management, was ded-icated to the customers, employ-ees and other stakeholders for be-lieving in the 9mobile brand.

“In the spirit of the season, I would like to take a moment to

Western Digital Corpo-ration, a global data technology compa-ny, has expanded its

portfolio of data storage devices in Nigeria. The expansion will allow Nigerian consumers to access a wide range of WD®- and SanDisk®-brand products.

As part of the expansion, West-ern Digital has introduced prod-ucts catered to mobile storage solutions, which includes the iX-pand™ flash drive, SanDisk Ultra™ Dual Drive m3.0, microSD™ and SD™ cards (SanDisk Extreme™ and SanDisk Extreme PRO™); in ad-dition to SanDisk external SSDs; WD internal SSDs, and a range of internal and external hard drives, while offering after-sales support for consumers across Nigeria.

Speaking on the expansion,Ghassan Azzi, Senior Sales Manager for Africa Western Digital said, “At Western Digital we offer high-performance, high-

Western Digital expands product range in Nigeriacapacity and high-quality storage solutions to fit theincreasingly dig-ital lifestyles of consumers. More and more Nigerians are capturing moments and creating and sharing memories with their smartphones, high-resolution cameras, drones and action cams. We want every-one to know that Western Digital and its consumer brands have the right storage solutions for their needs.”SanDisk Mobile Storage SolutionsiXpand– The iXpand flash drive is ideal for the iPhone or iPad that en-ables you to free up space, back up your camera roll and even watch videos straight from the drive. iX-pand flash drives are equipped with a lightning connector and a USB 3.0 connector so users can move files between iPhone, iPad, and Mac or PC computers. Users can also set the iXpand mobile app to automatically back up their iPhone or iPad camera roll anytime the product is connected. It comes

in 32, 64, 128, 256 GB capacities.Dual Drive– The SanDisk Ultra

Dual Drive m3.0 is for Android™ devices and enables the movement of content from your OTG-enabled Android smartphones to your computer. Quickly free up space on your Android smartphone or tablet so you can take more pic-tures and videos. It comes in 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 GB capacities.

400GB micro SD card –The SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card is perfect for recording and watching Full HD video, with space for hours of video. Ideal for Android based smartphones and tablets, this card’s A1 rating means that you can load apps faster too.This card racks up transfer speeds of 100MB/s and can move 1,200 photos per minute. It meets the A1 App Performance Class speci-fication which allows it to load apps faster. With a breakthrough capacity of up to 400GB, you can store even more hours of Full HD

video on the card without worrying about running out of space for the videos, photos, music, movies and other files you want to shoot, save and share.SanDisk external SSDsSanDisk Extreme Portable SSD – This ruggedized portable SSD delivers high-speed transfers of up to 550MB/s making it perfect for saving and editing hi-res pho-tos and videos. With an IP55 rating and a solid state core, it also stands up to rain, spills, dust and drops. It comes in 250 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB capacities.

Western Digital internal SSDsA wide range of Western Digital

internal SSDs which bolster your PC with upgraded speed and reli-ability.

WD Green™ SSD - The WD Green SSDs are meant for a quint-essential level of performance. These can be best suited for day-to-day functionality and can reach read and write speeds of 540 MB

express our deepest gratitude to you all our stakeholders, for keep-ing faith with us in the globally challenging and a uniquely blus-tery year. We have come this far only because we had you stand-ing strong with us every bit of the way; and it is not just this year, but indeed, since our inception”, he said.

Beuvelet added that 9mobile management sincerely appreciates both the commitment of its inter-nal stakeholders and encourage-ment from external stakeholders.

“Our key stakeholders in one way or the other provided the critical lifeline that we needed to thrive. Most importantly, as our valued customers, you stayed with us, demonstrating unalloyed loy-alty and confidence in 9mobile. As a result, today, we are here standing, and we are grateful”, he asserted.

Buevelet urged all Nigerians to enjoy the holidays and wished ev-eryone a Happy New Year!

per sec and 405 MB per sec respec-tively while using ultra-low power draw mode.

WD Blue™ SSD– It is the best option for those who are looking for a performance that excels in SATA standards and reaches read and write speeds of up to 545 MB per sec and 525 MB per sec respec-tively.

WD Black™ PCIe SSD - WD Black PCIe SSDs are equipped with sequential read speeds up to 2050MB/s, unlocking a new level of performance for high-perfor-mance PC users.WD external hard drivesMy Passport™ - The My Passport portable drive is trusted to store the massive amounts of photos, videos and music you love. Available in an array of vibrant, fun colours, the sleek style fits comfortably in the palm of your hand, so you can eas-ily take your treasured content ev-erywhere you go. It comes in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB capacities.

BDTECHE-mail: [email protected]

Tuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY20

Jumoke Akiyode-LAwAnson

Just 17 years ago, Kodak had 170,000 employ-ees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years,

their business model disap-peared, and they were bank-rupt.

This may happen to the Computer Society of Nigeria in the next 10 years - even if we don’t see it coming. Ko-dak was not the only casualty. There were also Sony and Fuji who made tons of money selling Cameras and films; especially films. We have al-ways loved our pictures ask Facebook and Instagram what their successful business model is based upon.

Indeed, who is not excited by the flash of the camera lights in their faces? Today you are sure that the flash of the mobile phone signals a picture, but in those days the photographer just continued flashing away even when he ran out of a film, just to keep the crowd happy.

It is rather ironic that the geometric growth in photog-raphy was negatively corre-lated to the fortunes of these photography giants. As we tend more towards a knowl-edge-based economy led by technology, the fortunes of the NCS seem ironical to be negatively correlated. The is-sue seems to be an ardent aversion to embracing change and innovation.

When the destructive Po-laroid technology was invent-ed to bypass the paper film, these industry leaders en-sured its swift death by studi-ously ignoring the innovation. What they did not see com-ing were the tech companies

We need to save Nigeria Computer Society from extinction - Austin Okere

nothing more seems to have changed. Are we in touch with our millennials today?

Do we have any connec-tion with Government tech-nology Agencies such as NITDA and NIGCOMSAT? Do we make any inputs or con-tribution into Government technology strategy policy? I ask these questions because it seems that a myriad of other groups has emerged that are filling out relevant vacancies.

Take for instance a What-sApp Group called Fintech 1000, to which I belong. They have a crisp and clear vision and purpose. It seems that all the leading technology lead-ers are on that platform be-cause they identify with the vision and want to contribute to achieving it. They have very meaningful interaction, and some of their initiatives and input into Fintech policy doc-uments will make us green with envy.

Her members include the CEOs of budding young in-novative companies such as Paystack, Paga, flutterwave and established ones such as CWG, Interswitch, Chams etc. Many banks and telecoms leaders across Africa regularly make contributions. People join an Organization because they identify with the vision, which should be inspirational and aspirational enough to at-tract them.

They want their presence and contribution to meaning-fully impact their society...

How many people still remember the vision of the NCS? It is possible that the old vision has run its course and we need to craft a new direc-tion for ourselves, in these

who would eat not only their breakfast but also their lunch and dinner as well.

The likes of Apple and Samsung who neither used paper films nor Polaroid pa-per. Just seamlessly click away and take as many pictures as you like, and you can even customize the pictures to look much more beautiful or hand-some. Sometimes you have to disrupt yourself to emerge a better and more effective you. We have to learn to unlearn and relearn.

What worked perfectly many years ago may not work today and certainly not to-morrow; that is the inevitabil-ity of innovation and change. The camera and paper film industry is by no means the only casualty of disruption. Look no further than Uber and AirBnB to see how the taxi and hotel industries have been disrupted. And more

significant disruption is cer-tainly coming by way of Artifi-cial Intelligence, Big Data and Cognitive Computing.

Think of all the drivers that will lose their jobs to driver-less cars and many of us that may lose our jobs to IBM’s Watson. Our beloved NCS is in danger of becoming irrel-evant...

Did Mark Zuckerberg visit or even acknowledge us when he visited Nigeria? When Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on June 11, 2017, named 28 Tech Entrepreneurs into the Ad-visory Group on Technology and Creativity, was NCS con-sulted?

I remember as a student being a very proud Student member of the Computer As-sociation of Nigeria and at-tending many insightful con-ferences. While we have gone through two name changes from CAN to COAN to NCS,

rapidly changing times.Is our foundation vision

robust enough to stand the test of this fourth industrial revolution? We used to be a very large association and found comfort in our num-bers. Things have changed, neither age nor size guaran-tees relevance; in those days we used to say that the big fish will eat the small fish. Today, it is the fast fish that eats the slow fish.

Perhaps some of the ad-vocacy that could make the NCS more relevant would be championing the campaign for Original Equipment Man-ufacturer (OEM) Partners of our local companies to shoul-der their own tax burden than leaving it all onto the local partner, even though the ma-jor part of the deal goes to the OEM. The local Partner is therefore left with a huge withholding tax burden on his meagre margin and is chroni-cally cash-strapped, leading to anaemic growth if at all.

Another advocacy point could be campaigning for the OEMs to accept their portion of payments in local currency, as currently happens in Ke-nya; so that the local company is not left alone to bear the ex-change risk.

I charge us to recommit and re-imagine our beloved Association, the NCS. Poster-ity will judge us harshly if the NCS becomes extinct under our watch. The best time to act was 10 years ago. The next best time is now.

Austin Okere is the Founder of CWG Plc and the Ausso Lead-ership Academy.

MTN Nigeria launches business survey tool

After founding and successfully stir-ring the affairs of the Africa Infor-

mation and Communica-tion Technologies Alliance (AfICTA) for six years run-ning, Jimson Olufuye has stepped down as its found-ing Chairman.

This is as AfICTA at its 6th Annual General Meet-ing held in Nairobi, Kenya recently and in line with its constitution, elected its sec-ond Chairman, Hossam El-gamal of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

AfICTA is a concerned private sector led alliance of ICT Associations, multi-

Olufuye steps down as AfICTA Chairman, Elgamal takes positionnational corporations, com-panies, organisations and individuals in the ICT sec-tor in Africa.

Olufuye, who has been in the vanguard of African digital inclusion in his fare-well speech while narrating his success story outlined seventeen achievements recorded during his tenure.

Some of his achieve-ments included the articu-lation of the constitution of the Alliance. Development of the AfICTA strategy doc-ument; development and hosting of the website and successful migration from .org to .africa, registration of the alliance in Nigeria, registration in Nigeria of the trademarks: Africa ICT Champion and Africa ICT

Personality Awards, setting up of a self-sustaining AfIC-TA secretariat with 2 staff, unbroken organisation of the Alliance summit for the past 6 years, among others.

Olufuye listed other achievements to include, signing of memorandum of understandings (MoUs) with Software Engineer-ing Competency Centre (SECC), IT Industry Devel-opment Agency (ITIDA), Egypt, National IT Devel-opment Agency (NITDA) Nigeria and Asian-Oceania Computing Industry Organ-isation (ASOCIO), World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WIT-SA), Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), enhanc-ing links between business

Austin Okere

It has been estimated that by 2023 govern-ments will begin to ex-plore replacing census

with big-data technologies. That is the rate at which technology is constantly changing our realities and forcing more organisations - start-ups or establish-ments- to get on board, le-veraging data to drive rev-enue growth.

Leading this technol-ogy charge in Nigeria, tele-communications company, MTN Nigeria in partnership with Communication and Marketing Research Group Limited (CMRG) launched a first of its kind business tool for customer insight, focusing on delivering a better business experience.

Called MTN Smart Sur-vey, the service offers sur-vey delivery through the USSD channel to MTN subscribers that have been profiled based on specific attributes, such as age, gen-der, location, etc. The tool has also been designed in a way that rewards custom-ers with N100 MTN airtime upon completion of ques-tions administered through the survey.

Speaking at the launch event, Lynda Saint- Nwa-for, Chief Enterprise Busi-ness Officer, MTN Nigeria, explained that businesses and organisations who sub-scribe to the service are pro-vided with analysis, reports and recommendations based on the feedback of the respondents through an accredited research agency.

Lynda also reiterated MTN’s commitment to pro-viding tailor made solutions for everyday business chal-lenges.

“We are excited to know how this platform will help in sharpening business ideas and directions in the Nigerian market and MTN Nigeria remains committed in providing platforms to provide seamless business flow, the MTN Smart Survey is not just a tool but a strate-gic driver and a real enabler of business performance.”

Guests in attendance from different business sec-tors in Nigeria were oppor-tune to test the survey plat-form beforehand to know how this business tool can interest their customers and business at large.

MTN says it is commit-ted to continuously seek ways to contribute to the Nigerian economy by ex-tending its partnership ca-pabilities to brighten the lives of small business own-ers within the country.

and governments across Af-rica, boosting intra-African Business Match-making for trade and wealth creation across Africa, initiating the “1m Jobs Initiative by 2025” powered by EITESAL, con-tinuous engagement with the African Union especial-ly on IGF and the growth of member countries from six to thirty with twenty four Af-rican countries to go.

Meanwhile, current members are from Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Namibia, Cote d’Ivore, Gha-na, Tunisia, The Gambia, Niger, Mali, Ethiopia, Bu-rundi, Rwanda, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zam-bia, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Chad, Benin, DRC, Senegal, Uganda, Mauritius, Camer-

oon, Gabon and Lesotho.In his acceptance

speech, Elgamal thanked Olufuye for all the good works he had done and promised to take the Alli-ance to greater heights in collaboration with his col-leagues on the board and members in general.

AfICTA says its vision is to fulfil the promise of the digital age for everyone in Africa while its mission is to encourage multi-stakehold-er dialogue fostering ac-celerated and ICT enabled development in Africa and the use of cutting-edge in-novative technologies in-cluding mobile, computing and satellite technologies to achieve an Information so-ciety in Africa.

EDUCATION‘Policy implementation to drive investment in education sector in 2019’

Go v e r n m e n t ’s early resolution of issues such as funding, high rate of out of

school children, teacher qual-ity, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike among others challenges that bedeviled the education sector in 2018 would bring the much needed investments, industry watchers in education say.

Also there is the need for government to address the current situation where the Nations education system struggles to meet all the four-key school-level ingredients for learning: prepared learners, effective teaching, learning focused inputs, and the skilled management and governance that pulls them all together.

Educationists observe that in 2018 as in previous years, budgetary allocation to the sector has consistently fallen short of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cul-tural Organisation’s (UNESCO)

KELECHI EWUZIE

Weekly insight on current and future trends in education Primary/Secondary Higher Human Capital

recommended 26 percent.The fallout is that lecturers

demand higher pay on a regu-lar basis and grind academic activities to a halt with strikes, most tertiary institutions are dilapidated, libraries are poor-ly stocked with relevant mate-rials, examinations like WAEC, NECO and JAMB record mass failures and the best brains in academia are constrained to look for greener pastures

abroad.Assessing the performance

of the education sector in 2018, Hakeem Subair, founder/ CEO, 1 Million Teachers said although there were pockets of excellence across the country, especially among the high-end private schools that represent less than 0.5% of students, but the majority are falling behind, and no society thrives where the majority are falling behind.

Subair says that to get out of the education crisis, manag-ers of the education system not only need to increase enrolment and access, but need to go beyond schooling to prioritise learning because schooling is not the same as learning.

To him, “Our education system should equip students with the skills they need to lead healthy, productive, and

meaningful lives”.“Our education system

should equip students with foundational cognitive skills as well as higher-order cognitive skills such as reasoning, cre-ativity and problem-solving”.

“Our education system should equip students with socio-emotional skills, some-times called soft or non-cog-nitive skills such as conscien-tiousness, perseverance and the ability to work on teams that help them acquire and ap-ply the foundational and other skills”, he said.

Isaac Adeyemi, former vice chancellor, Bells University, Ota Ogun State observes that Nigeria has never had a good history when it comes to policy implementation.

“I would advocate that in 2019 there should be a policy implementation monitoring committee of some sort which should consist of industry professional, government and ministry personnel to follow up on these policies”.

“These policies have time table which is a good intent. It should show the time frame

Bridge Schools among the best in Kenyan National Primary Exams POISE NIGERIA deepens Nigerian graduates employability prospect with certification programme relaunchBridge International

Academies, leader in the provision of affordable education

through cutting edge technol-ogy in underserved communi-ties have achieved impressive success in the Kenya Cer-tificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams; for the fourth consecutive year.

This is following the pub-lication of a DFID report in Lagos by the UK Government, revealing equity of learning in Bridge schools.

Bridge runs over 60 schools in Lagos and Osun, but has yet to sit the National Common Entrance Exams. As such, education stakeholders are closely watching the learning outcomes being achieved in other countries across Africa where the social enterprise is working.

In Kenya, over a million children took the KCPE exam this year and for the first time there was no passing or failing. Following sweeping policy changes, all children are now eligible to attend secondary school. The KCPE score sim-ply determines which type of secondary school.

Rhoda Odigboh, Academic director at Bridge, said, “In four consecutive years, Bridge pupils have performed excel-

Through its transfor-mational curriculum called Poise Gradu-ate Finishing Acad-

emy (PGFA), Poise Nigeria, an etiquette training firm, has relaunch the PSENSE certifi-cation programme structured not only to make the Nigerian graduates employable in the labour market but also more globally competitive.

Asher Adeniyi, chief mar-keting officer at Poise Nigeria said the decision to re-launch the programme was as a result of the firm desires to transfer knowledge that will not only enhance the soft skills of young executives but also improve their dexterity, knowledge and attitude to excel in the work place.

Adeniyi explained that PSENSE advance certifica-tion will now be run for 10 weeks. “The first five weeks will be basically be targeted at developing soft skills program while the remaining five weeks will be use to develop other global skills that are targeted at employment such as ICT, sales and management, busi-ness development, business

lently well in the Kenya Prima-ry school exit (KPCE) exams, and shown significant learning gains in Nigeria, Uganda and Liberia. We are delighted that the evidence of learning gains Bridge provides gets stronger each year. At Bridge Nigeria, Equity is the buzzword. Re-gardless of parental income, education background or lan-guage ability, our students perform above level in Literacy and Numeracy.”

For the fourth consec-utive year, Bridge pupils have outperformed their peers; cementing the trend that Bridge pupils do better. Thousands of Bridge pupils sat the exam and excelled, despite coming from disad-vantaged communities.

The performance of girls in Bridge schools is also note-worthy. The individual perfor-mances of top scorers Stacy Linda Achieng from Bridge Getembe (409 marks) and Victoria Juarez from Bridge Lamu (403 marks) have paved the way for local and national celebration. Group results are also promising. For the fourth consecutive year, girls attending Bridge for five or more years were the highest performing cohort, averaging 281 marks.

The average score for

analysis and human resources which will significantly im-prove the performance of the young executive in the work place.”

“All this sections will be facilitated through experiential learning exercise,” Adeniyi said at the event.

Adeniyi noted that one of the root problems of Ni-geria’s high unemployment rate is lack of technical skills. “Although an average young Nigeria graduates are willing to work, however they lack the required technical skills to ex-cel in the work environment.”

“Our previous success rate was 87 percent right now we have even we have take a step closer to 90 percent,” Adeniyi said.

Nonye CallyBechi, chief operating officer at Poise Ni-geria said the firm remains committed in helping young executive better which is why they are increasing passionate about training people from all works of life in technical and soft skills.

“Eight years ago we identi-fied a gap, we noticed although there are so many graduates around however majority of them are not employable,”

Bridge pupils increases for each year they study in the school. Pupils who have spent the majority of their primary education at Bridge (five or more years) averaged almost 30 points higher than the national average and are 43% more likely to score at least 250 marks than the average Kenyan pupil.

Bridge pupils are often the first in their families to complete primary school or have access to secondary ed-ucation, demonstrating how Bridge is a springboard for social mobility. The results have proved, once again, that poverty isn’t destiny. It has demonstrated that children from impoverished com-munities can successfully compete with the wealthiest sections of Kenyan society; all they need is opportunity. This is not only true in Ke-nya but, as has been seen through the DFID study, it is true in Lagos.

As the Nigerian Govern-ment remains focused on improving education out-comes across the country they should look at results being achieved in other countries across Africa and ensure that these approaches are effec-tively adopted for the benefit of Nigerian children.

when each policy should be achieved. They need to moni-tor the implementation of these policies. When this is done, I think we will see an ap-preciable improvement in the education sector in the coming years. But we got to have com-mitment from government by all of the stakeholders”, Adey-emi said.

Peter Okebukola, former executive secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC) told BusinessDay that the National Policy on Educa-tion in Nigeria is one of the finest documents on educa-tion in Africa.

According to him, “It virtu-ally covers all angles in the delivery of education. It is not working as envisioned in some areas because many are satis-fied with flouting its provisions since the penalty for transgres-sion is weak”.

Pai Obanya, Emeritus Pro-fessor in the Institute of Educa-tion, University of Ibadan said strategic planning of Educa-tion is an antidote to most of the ills we have experienced in recent times with the sector.

“They don’t have essential skills which is employ-ability skills or competency that are essential in every work place. Such as problems solving skills, self management, ini-tiatives and other soft skills that are required in the work place,” CallyBechi said.

Deborah Ameh, business development manager at Poise Nigeria said beyond the training, we also link young executive actively to job opportunities through job fairs, recruitment methods and employer engagement programs so they can have the desired job in the labour market.

At its last graduation cer-emony, over 20 graduates were offered immediate employ-ment and are currently making good progress in their careers. The Project Lead, EkoBits & EdoBits, Innih Ikhide stated that the management of Poise Nigeria took conscious steps to monitor the progress of its young executives to ensure that they are making signifi-cant impact in their place of work and would do the same for graduates that will gain employment through the ini-tiative.

DIPO OLADEHINDE


Isaac Osae-Brown works for the Compton Unified School District in California as an Education Specialist and a beginning Teacher Mentor. He is a resource person, an advocate and a speaker for Special Educa-tion services in the United States and abroad. www.facebook.com/inclusive-mindset/

Isaac Osae-BrOwn

EDUCATIONFocus on special education: Inclusive classrooms

KELECHI EWUZIE

Just when we thought we had seen it all, the sec-ondary school students at Greensprings School

Lekki astonished the audi-ence with their breathtaking performance of the “Afri-canized’ version of Shake-speare’s “Romeo and Juliet”.

The students also per-formed a memorable Zulu dance to the epic song ‘vu-lindlela’ by Brenda Fassie. One would have thought they were professional danc-ers from South Africa.

The show took place at the soon to be completed centre for performing arts theatre in the Lekki campus, a venue that will serve as a world-class location for training upcoming music and performing artists in the near future.

Over 400 attendees, com-prising parents, teachers and students couldn’t stop clapping at the end of almost every drama scene, unable to hold back their cheers because of the excellent de-livery of this classic master-piece. It was a phenomenal

display of several months of hard work and prepara-tion on stage, which ended with the much anticipated fireworks!

“I think this epic perfor-mance should be re-staged for a fee at Muson centre, Royal arts academy or Terra-culture”; said Captain Fred, CEO PGK Studios and par-ent of Greensprings School student, who witnessed the performance.

Feyisara Ojugo, Sec-ondary School Principal, Lekki Campus said “I am

very proud of my students for delivering such an amazing performance. They worked super hard and therefore deserve all the accolades”

The other campuses of Greensprings School in An-thony and Ikoyi also deliv-ered incredible Christmas show stage performances. This consistency across all 3 campuses is an indication of the high number of talented students in Greensprings School.

Greensprings has always

Greensprings deepens extra-curricular aspect of learning for students

LAUTECH alumni hail appointment of new vice chancellor designate

The Ladoke Akintola University of Tech-nology (LAUTECH) Alumni Association

Abuja Chapter has congratu-lated the new vice chancellor designate, Michael Olufisayo Ologunde of the Department of Food Science and Engi-neering in the University who will succeed the incumbent Vice Chancellor, Adeniyi Su-leiman Gbadegesin.

The Chapter represented by Toyin Ajenifujah-Solebo, the Chairperson, and the Sec-retary, Kunle Adigun made it known that it is a new dawn for the University as a new Vice Chancellor Designate alongside other Principal Officers that have been se-lected to lead the affairs of the institution.

According the duo, “Being a foundation member of staff of the institution, we believe that the new vice chancellor designate have a full under-standing of the institution and he will reposition the in-stitution to an enviable status which it belonged to in the comity of tertiary institutions in the country.”

“We are proud alumni of LAUTECH and we have gladly represented the institution across the globe. We would want the younger generation

The term inclu-sion according to education re-searchers cap-tures, in one

word, an all-embracing societal ideology. Inclusion secures opportunities for students with disabilities to learn alongside with their non-disabled peers in gen-eral education classrooms.

An inclusive classroom is a general education envi-ronment in which students with and without disabili-ties learns together. It is essentially the opposite of a special education class-room, where students with disabilities learn with only other students with disabili-ties. Honestly establishing a successful inclusive class-room varies in complexity,

based upon the challenges created by the disability at hand. A knowledgeable ap-proach and positive attitude toward inclusion begins by understanding the concept and the theory behind it. Why integrate children with special needs into a general education classroom? Who benefits? What results?

Inclusion is important because through our diver-sity we certainly add to our creativity. If you don’t have a diverse classroom or a di-verse world, you don’t have the same creative levels and I think our strength lies in our diversity.

If inclusive classrooms are going to be successful, there must be changes in the traditional general edu-cation classroom of students in rolls sitting quietly, read-ing and taking notes with their tablets. Research re-veals that students with dis-abilities could benefit from the classroom if two basic changes in the classroom practice are made: Modify-ing the school curriculum to enhance relevance for each student and modifying instructional techniques. These modifications of in-structional techniques are often in keeping with what

is characterized as good teaching. Here, teachers use more hands-on- activities through blended learn-ing with fewer worksheets, more oral interaction, re-teaching of critical skills using computer technology supports as students need them for desirable results. How different are inclusive classrooms from the tradi-tional classrooms in gen-eral? The essential assump-tion is that all children can learn and can be successful in the traditional general classrooms but research reveals that in inclusive classrooms, expectations for all students are high. Students with disabilities have the opportunities to be exposed to much of the materials and academic and functional resources presented in the classroom. In short, teachers in suc-cessful inclusive classrooms assume that every child should be there and that every child can be success-ful in the classroom. Teach-ers in inclusive classrooms are responsible for creat-ing learning opportunities and removing barriers to learning and participation in their classrooms. Here, both the general educator’s

and special educator’s role and responsibilities shift in inclusive setting. These teachers are responsible to assess and accommo-date individual academic, behavior and emotional needs. Special education teachers are facilitators and collaborators. Both gen-eral and special educators need to clarify their roles, responsibilities and beliefs about the inclusion of stu-dents with disabilities with a stance of purpose and commitment. Flexibility al-lows interactions between teachers and students and provides the opportunity to participate within the social context of the classroom in many different ways. Re-search describes the princi-ples that clarify the general considerations of inclusive classrooms as follows: De-velopment of foundational skills: This includes suc-cessful interaction with all students, solving and con-tributing to the classroom activities. Individualisation: This means that the priori-ties for every student in the classroom may not be the same since there is a reason one student is participating in an activity from another. Opportunity to experience

mastery and accomplish-ment: This would mean that teachers would ensure that students learn and master lesson objectives. Quality of each student’s different educational experience: The classroom should be a place where activities are designed for the benefit of all students.

Inclusive classrooms build normalisation; this means that a person with a disability has the oppor-tunity to live as similarly to others as possible. In this case, everyone is welcome at assemblies, presenta-tions and extracurricular activities like community field trips. Many challenges confront teachers striving for inclusive classrooms for their students in Nigeria and other African countries. Classroom composition, lesson planning, teacher collaboration and assis-tive technology needed to implement blended learn-ing remain a task. School principals tend to place students who are challeng-ing with teachers who are incapable to attend to the needs of these students. If our school leaders and all stakeholders embrace the principles that clarify the

general considerations of inclusive classrooms as highlighted in this article, there will be much growth in adopting inclusive class-rooms where every child, both typical and atypical can coexist in the same classroom using technology and co-teaching strategies from the special educa-tion and regular education teachers to enhance all stu-dents’ learning. Implemen-tation of inclusive class-rooms in Nigeria schools will no doubt breed normal-ization, self-determination and self-esteem for all chil-dren. When this is achieved, added behavioral problems that confront our children like bullying, physical and emotional abuse will be obliterated from our school sites and communities.

22 BUSINESS DAY Tuesday 01 January 2019 www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDaynG

to also be confident in rep-resenting the institution. We want to urge the state govern-ments and the VC-Designate to evolve strategies that will put an end to the perennial strikes that the institution has been lately renowned for,” they added.

They also commended Isiaka Ajimobi and Gboyega Oyetola governors of Oyo and Osun States and the Govern-ing Council for the transpar-ent way in which the new officers were selected.

Ologunde born in 1954 hails from Ajagunlase-Iwo in Ola-Oluwa local govern-ment, Osun state. He had his first degree from the Uni-versity of Nsukka; his Mas-ters’ degree at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and his PhD at the Ladoke Akintola University of Tech-nology. He is a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Food Science and Technology and a member of the World Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Other appointments that have been made are Kayode Ogunleye as the new Reg-istrar and Abayomi Okediji as the new Bursar. All these new officers are expected to assume office on February 14, 2019.

been deliberate towards de-livering well-rounded edu-cation to its students, with a strong focus on sports, music and performing arts alongside ensuring aca-demic excellence. Over the years Greensprings has pro-duced superstars like of Dayo Okeniyi who featured the world-acclaimed Hunger Games movie and Jimi Odu-koya who played a major role in Nollywood’s Okafor’s Law, amongst other alumni engaged in performing arts around the world.

Olusola Bello, Team lead, Analysts: Isaac Anyaogu, Stephen Onyekwelu, Graphics: Joel Samson. Email: [email protected], Tel: +234-8023020011; +234-7037817378

Oil & Gas Power Renewables Environment

Energy Report

Babatunde Fashola

23BUSINESS DAYC002D5556Tuesday 01 January 2019

Power sector: little achievement after so much noise in 2018

In what looks like ad-mission of fai lure the Minster of Power Works and Housing, Babtunde Raji Fashola

publicly told Nigerians to hold the private sector re-sponsible for not getting ad-equate supply of electricity.

The minister said, busi-nessmen operating in the sector should be blamed for the poor state of electricity supply to Nigerians.

He made the declaration while speaking at the Nextier Power Dialogue on recently in Abuja.

The minister argued that since the sector had been privatised, it was not the Ni-gerian government’s fault if citizens fail to enjoy to stable electricity supply.

“There are problems with-out a doubt and we must deal with them,” the minister said.

“But let me remind you, all of the assets that the Min-istry of Power used to control were sold by the last admin-istration before I came. And so if you don’t have power, it is not the government’s problem. Let us be honest,” he was quoted by the media as saying.

“The people who are op-erating the power sector, generation and distribution are now privately owned companies. I am here be-cause I am concerned. If your telephone is not working, it is not the minister of com-munication that you go to. Let us be very clear.”

The minister explained that in other sectors of the economy, the blame of poor services do not necessarily go to the government but those operating in the sector.

He said, “For those of you

who want to weaponise elec-tricity, face the businessmen who have taken it up.

“My role is regulatory, oversight and policy, but I have a problem which is the fact that I can’t see a prob-lem and turn my back; so I ’m getting involved. So the people you should be talking to about transformers is not me, the ministry doesn’t sup-ply transformers anymore.”

Really, the power sector has made very little impact on the socio economic lives of Nigerians from where the last administration of Presi-dent Goodluck left it.

Inspite the huge hues and cries about the efforts the current government has put in place to improving the power sector the impact has not been much.

The present administra-tion met the power sector that was hugely deficient in terms of generations, distri-bution and transmission. All these it promised to address when it came to power. The generation level when it assumed power was about 3,000 megawatts while the transmission capacity was 5,000megawatts. This has however been increased to7, 000 megawatts. The dis-tribution networks which were already in the hands of private investors before the advent of this government have also been faced by sun-dry challenges which have incapacitated them.

However it must be men-tioned that significant in-vestments have been made but this has had very little impact on power supply as it still remains largely un-steady. For instance, there was the launch of the N701 billionPayment Assurance Programme designed to re-solve the liquidity challenges in the Power Sector by guar-

anteeing payments to gen-erating companies and gas suppliers. But this has made little impact as gas suppliers maintain that they are being owed huge amount of debt by generating companies. The generating companies on the other hand are saying that the Discos are not paying them for the electricity they supply.

The worse thing that has ever happened to the priva-tised power sector in Nigeria is the inability of the govern-ment to implement reflective cost tariff regime which was one of the cardinal points both government and inves-tors agreed upon before the exercise. This coupled with the capping of investments that each of the distribution companies has messed up the power sector.

While the government is attributing the current epileptic power supply to lack of gas supply, Austin Avuru, managing director of Seplat Petroleum Develop-ment Company, at a recently held conference in Lagos debunked this claim when

OLUSOLA BELLO

he said say that it was the generating companies that are not picking gas instead.

Also Chukwueloka Umeh, managing director of Century Power some of the challenges in the power sector have to do with ac-cessing funds.

“The people, the banks and investors that we are going to borrow money from wants to know how much we are making and the percent-age return and what is the guarantee that when the power is produced and sold the investors would get paid for it. That is a big problem, is a big lacuna, that question is not been answered but when we talk to NBET, it expresses real concern. we produce power we sell to NBET and they buy it and sell to the Discos, the Discos are not able to collect the money for the power that they sell to people. Number one, the Tariff is too low. Number two, the ATC&T losses are way too high, so they are collecting about 35percent money for the power that they distrib-ute. That’s never going to

Eko Electricity Dis-tribution Company (EKEDC) in a bid to meet its strategic

direction of ensuring quality customer satisfaction com-missioned a new customer complaint unit at Lekki in Lagos.

In a statement issued

Eko Disco opens customers complaints unit at Lekkiby Godwin Idemudia, the company’s general man-ager, Corporate Commu-nications, he said the new customer complaint unit is part of several efforts made by the company to improve its services and accomplish 100 per cent customer reso-lution.

He said: Residents in the area often complained about the proximity of the Lekki district office and how it discourages them from laying complaints.

“Our reaction to this was to bring our services closer to them, so this New CCU is a symbol of our commit-

work and that is part of the real problem”, he said.

The federal government inability to takes urgent mea-sures to stem the tide of illi-quidity currently confronting the electricity distribution companies, has deemed the hope of a stable power sup-ply in the near future .

The Nigerian power sec-tor has been plagued with structural issues in all key ar-eas that include generation, gas supply, transmission, and distribution.

Sadly, the operational ca-pacity of the country’s power plants is less than a third of their installed capacity.

Transmission Expan-sion and Rehabilitation Pro-gramme has resulted in a 50 percent expansion in Grid Capacity since 2015, from 5,000MW to 7,125MW as at December 2017.

This is yet to be tested as the generating capaci-ties have not gone beyond 4000mw.

The government claimed it would have added more than 2,000MW to power gen-erating capacity by the end of 2018. Nigerians are waiting for that to happen – some of it via publicly owned plants (Afam Fast Power, 240MW); others through private sec-tor investment supported by the Federal Government. Nigerians are waiting for that to happen.

Policy in consistency con-fused investorsUnder this administration there has been series of poli-cy inconsistencies which has left investors more confused.

They are seen as dis -in-centive by the Discos and other major stakeholders that want to invest in the sector.

The eligible customer’s policy was one thing that has

put the distribution compa-nies at loggerhead with the government. The Discos feared that their custom-ers, some of which form the bulk of their revenues are being taking away from them through this policy. Then the Embedded Power which some of the discos had also keyed into earlier but became stunted because most of the promoters don’t have the financial muscle to do because the bank’s ex-posure to the sector is huge and the banks are not ready to finance their projects to the bank.

The launch of Energiz-ing Economic Programme aimed at bringing reli-able and efficient power to economic clusters / mar-kets around the country. Again,the Discos have been hit below the belly as their market shares are being re-duced.

Even though these are parts of the efforts at making power get to critical areas of the economy but imple-mentation is seen in some quarters as attempt by the federal government to frus-trate serious investment in the sector. Despite the fact that the sector is privatised.

The worse of them all is the inability of the govern-ment to implement reflective tariff regime which was one of the cardinal points for the investors that bought the power assets, this coupled with the capping of invest-ments that each of the distri-bution companies can make.

The government also in-troduced Meter Asset Pro-vider (MAP) regulations to which it has even deployed a fund of N37 billion toward supplying meters through private sector. Nigeria is yet to see the result of this development.

ment to our customers and to the improvement of our services.

The EkEDC’s spokes-man said the office was un-veiled by Adeoye Fadeyibi, managing director of the company.

Idemudia quoted Ad-eoye Fadeyibi, managing

director who unveiled the office as saying that the company plans to open nine customer complaints unit’s in 2019 with the next one scheduled for Parkview Estate, Ikoyi, Lagos State.

The EKDC boss said: “The goal remains the same, to be the leading customer

centric utility company in Africa, we plan to use this initiative to get closer to customers and listen to all their complaints. Be it outrageous billing or faulty equipment. Feedback is important to us because it is needed for us to improve the quality of our services.”

Energy Report

Lagos eyes LNG imports to launch private power plan

Akinwunmi Ambode

Nigeria’s most economical-ly successful state wants to go it alone,

improving gas feedstock supply in a bid to woo pri-vate power project investors

According to Petroleum Economist, Lagos State is attempting to rewrite the rules of Nigeria’s power sector by developing an independent power project (IPP) programme, based on both pipeline gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG), that would also lead to the creation of its own mini grid within the national grid structure. The state envisages some 3 gigawatts (GW) of new gas-fired pow-er capacity being deployed in the next three-to-five years, building on the 900

megawatts it already takes from the national grid. To achieve this, it wants to sanction the construction of 10 IPPs at strategic locations around the state, selling on the power at what will be cost-reflective tariffs,

Overtime, other inven-tors have come up with sun-dry forms of electric light bulbs which have become quite useful in all facets of human lives.

Today, across the world, even in the most concealed village, electric lights are integral part of human ex-istence. In our clime, one of the most fundamental ways that any government could actually touch the lives of the citizenry is through pro-vision of basic light infra-structure.

It is this realization that prompted the Akinwunmi Ambode administration in Lagos State to embark on the Light up Lagos project.

The project is conceived to light up major highways and streets in the Lagos metrop-olis with the ultimate goal of boosting commercial ac-tivities, enhancing security, improving the citizenry’s

standard of living as well as boost the aesthetics of the City-State.

The ultimate target of the project is the development of a Lagos that is safe and secured Lagos, that operates

OlusOla BellO

Th e S e n a t e a n d House of Represen-tatives Committees on Local Content

have given their nods to the $48 million pipe coating plants of Solewant Group as standard model under the Nigerian Content Oil and Gas Industry Content De-velopment (NOGICD) Act for domestication of works previously being executed outside the country by proj-ects owners.

The NOGICD Act is de-signed to enhance the level of participation of Nigerians and Nigerian companies in the country’s oil and gas industry.

Highlight of the visit was tour of the facilities of Sole-want Group by the Senate and House of Representa-tives Committee on Local Content. The facilities in-spected by the delegates in-clude, Anti-Corrosion Pipe Coating Plant and Concrete Weight Coating Plant

Others include Solewant Field Joint Mobile Coating Equipment as well as the state of the art Laboratory.

Sen Adeola Olamilekan Solomon, chairman Senate Committee on Local Con-tent, who led the delegation during a facility visit to the company said the National Assembly Committee in the Senate and House of Repre-sentatives are satisfied with the standard of facilities at the pipe coating plant of Solewant Group.

He said with their visita-tion they have been able to confirm the competencies of Solewant Group as an indigenous company. The company is truly 100% Nige-

rian Content compliant and not a commissioned agent. “With the huge investment in modern facilities under local content requirement in each plant visited and local manpower, the assurance we are giving to them today is that we are with them all the way,” the Local Content Committee Chairman as-sured.

He said the government needs to support Solewant to sustain service delivery considering huge invest-ment in anti-corrosion plant with over 250 Nigerian staff fully skilled in their employ-ment.

“We are here today on a fact finding visit, to access their competence and with what we have seen, the al-legations or claims that the company lacks the capacity to carry out its Local Content obligation are false.”

The Senator promised that the Upper Chamber will amend the Local Content Act to accommodate other sectors such as, construc-tion, Information Commu-nication Technology(ICT) ,Communication and even Technology to the benefit of Nigerians.

“As far as we are con-cerned with Solewant, we are satisfied with what we saw today. Even for those Nigerian companies who cannot meet up with the provision of the Local Con-tent Law, they should up-grade their equipment to meet up with the guideline of the NOGIC Act and as for us in the National Assem-bly, we will continue to give them the needed support,” Solomon said.

Also speaking during the visit, Emmanuel Ekon, Chairman House Commit-tee on Local Content, Fed-eral House of Representa-tives described Solewant as pride of Local Content in Nigeria. According to him, the delegation is satis-fied with what they saw. “I started something in the House of Representatives to amend the Local Content Act to cover other areas such as construction and com-munication. The process is on course, so there is no reason why Nigerian Gov-ernment will go to China to borrow money to fund Local Content. We shall therefore expand the Act to accommodate other sectors so that the IOCs will not con-tinue to dominate Nigerian Companies,” the lawmaker explained.

Earlier in his speech, Sol-omon Ewanehi, managing director/CEO of Solewant Group, described Solewant as a product of Local Con-tent.

He said Solewant Group business is built on expert knowledge, outstanding client service and the high-est quality work for each client that they serve. He said that they started with the acquisition of mobile coating plants and have since expanded their scope of services and competen-cies to include, Pipe Coating Services; anti-corrossion pipe coating services, 3LPP to 5LPP coating solutions and Conrete weight Coating Services.

“In order to further build capacity and take opportu-nity of the existing gap in the

Nigeria line pipes milling and production industry, Solewant Group, in 2013 acquired 139,000square meters of land for the pur-pose of building a world class pipe coating and pipe milling/production plant facilities in Nigeria”

The strategic plan he said, is to provide end to end Pipeline (manufactur-ing, Coating and Protection) construction services to the Oil, Gas, Manufacturing, Chemical and other Indus-tries in Nigeria.

The company he stated is strategically positioned to provide oil and gas com-panies the unique pipes and pipe coating solutions that help deliver projects on schedule and within bud-gets, stressing further that, apart from it state of the art pipe coating Laboratory, the Solewant multi-layer pipe coating plant was designed, produced to also provide pipe double joint coating solution for deep offshore locations and that the plant equipment are First class EU 3D manufactured.

“We are determined and very focus in provision of the state of the art pipe/metals coating solutions to oil and gas industry. Solewant is work in progress and we are moving on as you all will agree with me today that the high operations and the speed of our Concrete weight coating plant centre, is a further testimony of our value creation to the industry. We are pipe/met-als coating company and we will continue to deliver qual-ity projects to the country and beyond,” he said.

Mo s t m a j o r i n v e s t m e n t b a n k s a r e forecasting a

rebound in oil prices in 2019. Price forecasts vary widely, but most have both West Texas Intermediary (WTI) and Brent above cur-rent spot prices.

Bank of America Merrill Lync, for instance, sees WTI averaging $59 per barrel in 2019. Citi is at the bearish end with a $49 price target. For Brent, Barclays says the benchmark will average $72, and a half dozen other investment banks have price estimates within a few dollars of that price.

However the volume of LNG shipments heading to Northeast Asia hit a record high in December, driven by demand from China and cold weather. LNG imports into the region – including China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan – hit 20.5 million tonnes so far in December, or 5 percent higher than the previous monthly record.

$48million pipe coating plants of Solewant Group receives national assembly blessing

Oil prices will rebound in 2019

a 24/7 economy.In a bustling African

mega city like Lagos, there are a number of benefits to be derived from highway/street lightning. For one, it promotes security as hood-lums and criminals who hitherto hide in the dark to perpetrate evil would no longer have the leeway to operate.

Street lighting also im-proves safety for drivers, commuters, riders and pe-destrians. It is a common knowledge that pedestrians and vulnerable road users suffer from decreased vis-ibility at nights. For these reason, one sure way of reducing the risk to all road users during the night hours is to light up the highways and streets.

Research has shown that driving outside of daylight hours is more dangerous as only very few people could actually drive well at nights.

Though quite a few people are on the road at nights, yet it has been discovered that this period accounts for 30% of most fatal road crashes in our country.

Improved night econo-my is one other major ben-efit of the Light up project. In most major cities of the world, socio-economic ac-tivities take place 24 hours around the clock.

This is especially true of developed countries where a 24 hour socio-economic system is in operation. A 24 hour economy is one in which socio-economic ac-tivities do not halt at night. New research from across the world has indicated that many cities, over the past two decades, have deliber-ately put in place a strategy to run a 24 hour economy. The hospitality and enter-tainment industries, in par-ticular, thrive better in a 24/7 economy.

24 BUSINESS DAY Tuesday 01 January 2019 www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDayNG

U.S. shale is hitting ma-jor oil exporters from the Middle East on multiple fronts. For one, soaring pro-duction is lowering prices. But also, U.S. shipments of light crude to Asia are un-dercutting Saudi exports to the region. Moreover, U.S. exports of refined gasoline and naptha is creating a glut of those products in Asia, forcing prices lower.

However, analysts now believe that oil could expe-rience a recovery in 2019. Fresh production curbs from OPEC and its allies will begin to have an im-pact on crude supplies, aided by Canada. Pipeline bottlenecks are also likely to impede U.S. production.

With oil prices on the rise heading into 2018, shale drillers in the U.S. were on pace to generate a signifi-cant amount of cash flow. Many analysts anticipated that they would use this money to ramp up their drilling activities and boost production.

Tips Talking Points&Harvard Business Review

BUSINESS DAYTuesday 01 January 2019 25

TALKING POINTS

Help Wanted

23%: Korn Ferry, a consulting firm, found that about 23% of U.S. retailers were un-able to hire all the temporary workers they sought for the 2017 holiday season.

+

Stuck in the Middle

26%: Twenty-six percent of American workers are employed at midsize com-panies.

+

Failure to Launch

One-third: CIO, an American-based magazine, wrote that about one-third of customer relationship management, or CRM, projects end up failing.

+Automation Forecast

47%: According to a University of Oxford study, 47% of U.S. jobs are predicted to be automated in the future.+

Change in the Air

69%: Duarte’s survey of company execu-tives found that 69% of respondents are planning organizational change projects.

Every good manager wants their team to have the skills to succeed. So it makes sense to

invest in training, right? Not so fast. Training can be powerful when it addresses an underdeveloped skill or knowledge deficit. But too often managers turn to training or formal learning when it won’t actually solve the problem it’s meant to. When is training worth trying? First, be sure your internal systems support the newly desired behavior. For example, training in proactive decision making won’t help employees if senior lead-ers make all the decisions in your company. Second, there needs to be a commitment to change. If your team isn’t willing to address a prob-lem’s root cause, training won’t have the intended benefit. Third, the train-ing needs to be connected to strategic priorities. If employees can’t see how what they’re learning relates to where the company is headed, you’ll waste your money — and their time.

(Adapted from “When Companies Should Invest in Training Their Employees — and When They Shouldn’t,” by Ron Carucci.)

How to manage a boss with a zillion ideas

Visionary bosses can be fun to work for. But they can also be overwhelm-ing if they seem to have an endless supply of ideas. How can you pos-sibly implement everything they

come up with? First of all, don’t assume your boss expects you to do something every time they have a brilliant thought. It’s OK to just lis-ten and respond with a simple, “That’s a great idea” or “I’ll take a look,” and then wait to see if it comes up again. That way you’ll be able to tell whether the idea is actually important to

c 2017 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate

your boss. If your manager does expect you to take action, shape and contain the idea by asking where it fits into the team’s goals and how your boss wants you to prioritize it. By connecting the idea to other, ongoing projects, you can help your boss assess it from a strategic perspective.

(Adapted from “How to Work for a Boss Who Has a New Idea Every 5 Minutes,” by Elizabeth Grace Saunders.)

When offering your team training is a bad idea

Create ways for your employees to learn from each other Covering for a colleague without drowning in work Know your idea, audience and objective before giving a speech

When you’re cov-ering for a co-worker who is

out of the office, it can be difficult to keep up. To maintain your sanity and stay productive, put the onus on your colleague to do a clear handoff of responsibilities. Ask for a plan with details on the status of projects, next steps, deadlines and key contacts. Once the col-league leaves, focus on deadlines and what’s crit-ical to accomplish each day; less-urgent tasks will have to wait. But keep an eye on what’s coming up

You need to have three things clear in your mind be-

fore giving a speech: your main idea, your audience, and your ob-jective. Start preparing by focusing on your idea: Why are you the right person to deliver this talk? What unique perspective can you of-fer? Then, consider who will be in your audience and craft your talk with them in mind. For ex-ample, if you’re speaking on a small panel, you can frame your remarks in more intimate, personal terms. If you’re at a confer-ence for professionals, you can use technical terms. Speaking the same language as your listeners increases the odds that they will understand and be inspired by you. And finally, make sure you’ve pinpointed your

objective. Maybe you want to get the audience to donate to a worthy cause, or spread the word about the importance of your topic. What-ever your goal is, it will inform your preparation and delivery.

(Adapted from “To Give a Great Presentation, Distill Your Message to Just 15 Words,” by Tricia Brouk.)

rules around honoring con-fidentiality and accepting feedback graciously can help. During sessions, be sure that learning is tied to real-world situations and problems so that partici-pants can apply the skills they’ve learned quickly. And encourage employees to network, whether online, at networking events, or through another method, so that anyone in the company can get involved.

(Adapted from “How to Help Your Employees Learn From Each Other,” by Kelly Palmer and David Blake.)

next. You may need to work further ahead than usual, be-cause there’s a greater chance that something unexpected will happen, or that multiple deadlines will be clustered together. And you may be tempted to spend extra time in the office, but don’t overdo it. Putting in long hours can make you resentful and lessen your productivity. There’s only so much you can do each day — and that’s OK.

(Adapted from “What to Do When You’re Covering for Colleagues — and Can’t Keep Up,” by Elizabeth Grace Saun-ders.)

Peer to peer learning can be a power-

ful (and free) de-velopment tool. Research shows that when people want to learn a skill, turning to colleagues for help is of-ten the first thing they do. You can encourage this kind of learning in your organization by setting up a formal program for it. Start by appointing a facilitator to oversee the program. It’s important to have a neutral party — who is not the team’s manager — to organize sessions, keep everyone on topic and maintain a positive atmosphere. You also need to build a safe environ-ment so that people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, experiences and questions. Setting ground

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Politics, technology to shape real estate investment in 2019, experts say

Concerns as mortgage industry ends 2018 low despite FG’s interventions

…2019 looks to be another challenging year for landlordsStories By CHUKA UROKO

Besides urbanisation, demographic shifts, sustainability and competition from emerging markets

which will play disruptive role, politics and technology are two major factors that will shape real estate investment and develop-ment in 2019, experts have said.

It follows that these are the two main issues that investors would watch as they make their investment decisions and projections into the New Year. To ignore them may turn out a wrong step forward.

Politics is a dominant ac-tivity in Nigeria today ahead of the February 2019 general elections. The implication of this to the various sectors of the economy including real estate is that investments will have to be put on hold till after the contest, the result and the emergence of a new government.

It is expected that business activities will slow down, de-mand for new space, especially for offices or business premises, will drop significantly while in-vestors will adopt ‘sit-don-look’ attitude, waiting to see policy di-rection of the new government.

“If Buhari the sitting presi-dent wins, that means the presi-dent economic condition slow-down will persist, but if Atiku or any of the presidential candidate emerges as president, there will be a change of perception, leading to new investment in the economy”, argues John-son Chukwuma, a structural engineer, insisting that which-ever way the result of the election turns, no meaningful activity will take place in the real estate space before June next year.

Technology has been de-scribed as the new face and future of real estate. Already, as seen in the financial sector where Fintect (financial technol-ogy) is dictating and pointing

What developers do differently providing homes for mid-low income buyersIn spite of the lull in the Ni-

gerian real estate market, many developers have

been on the vanguard of pro-viding homes for Nigerians and have been doing this in ways that are remarkably different from those of other developers.

For many of them, it has been a fulfilling experience helping people achieve one of their major dreams of owning homes through their roles as advisors. This means that home buyers are prop-erly advised on how to buy property for residential or investment purposes.

“We advise clients on how best to buy their homes or hold property for invest-ment purposes. We segment the market, look at buyers based on their type of job

Nigerian mortgage industry in the last 12 months could not rise to impact-level

despite interventions by the federal government in the mortgage and housing sec-tor, raising concerns among stakeholders that the industry may continue to lag for too long which leads to mortgage being inaccessible and unaf-fordable.

After the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) and the National Housing Fund (NHF), the next biggest inter-vention by the federal govern-ment in the mortgage industry is the establishment of the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) with a mis-sion ‘to break down barriers to home ownership by providing liquidity, affordability, acces-sibility and stability to the housing market in Nigeria which has the mandate of increasing’.

In addition to these, there have been other initiatives such as the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Author-ity (NSIA) which created the Family Homes Fund (FHF) and voted N1 trillion for af-fordable housing for Nigerians with potential capacity to gen-erate upto1.5 percent increase in GDP by 2023.

This was followed by the Federal Integrated Staff Hous-ing (FISH) programme of the federal civil service to enhance affordable mass housing delivery just as the Mortgage Warehouse Fund-ing Limited (MWFL) also came on board as a special purpose vehicle that serves to provide short term funding for financing primary mortgage originations.

Experts explain that there are problems with the coun-try’s mortgage industry which, in their view, are fundamental. One of such problems is ac-

cessibility and the second one is clarity. Accessibility is a big issue because when a bor-rower approaches a mortgage bank for loan, the bank will begin to ask for things that he cannot provide. And these are things he cannot really pro-vide in his life, meaning that, for such a person, mortgage is not accessible.

In terms of clarity, there is no unified system. Paul Onwuanibe, CEO, Landmark Group, explained to Business-Day that there is no where government has published a mortgage rate which the mortgage banks have to buy into or a mortgage standard or process which the banks have to fit into.

“I don’t really know. It is obvious that there is no clarity in the mortgage system here and if there is any such thing, it is not yet published and so people don’t know and if people don’t know, it means such a process does not exist”, he posited.

Besides accessibility and clarity, there is also the prob-lem of interest rate which is hard to take because a borrow-er with low income cannot take a long term mortgage loan with double interest rate. It is simply not viable. This is because if the loan seeker borrows at 20 per-cent rate, it means that every year, he owes twice as much, and that is how bad it is.

The implication of this is that if someone who has taken a mortgage loan is using it to build a house and he is build-ing at a slow pace because his salary remains the same over the period, he will be in trou-ble because the rate will be rising whereas his income is static. His salary needs to rise at the same geometric pro-gression with the rate for him to be able to cope. This is why experts advocate a legislation towards this process which, of course, depends on how the legislation is applied.

the way, proptech (property technology) is, increasingly) as-suming the new backbone of real estate transactions.

The forecast by PwC for 2019 in Europe also presents an interesting perspective. Ac-cording to research carried out, there needs to be a widening of traditional meanings of real estate to accommodate real as-set related services businesses going into the future.

For this reason, experts ad-vise that investing in infrastruc-ture should go beyond tradi-tional assets such as railways or utilities to include a whole new investable asset classes to service the digital economy, in-cluding 5G infrastructure, data centres and charging points for electric and, increasingly, autonomous vehicles, all of which provide a social return to consumers through better connectivity or the environment in terms of lowering carbon emissions.

“In Africa, for instance, the private sector has to start think-ing of the big picture, seeing the gaps in government infrastruc-ture, step in and invest not only in traditional real estate but in relevant assets related services such as co-work spaces, studio

homes within central business districts to reduce the home-to-work commute and child care facilities within work metropolis; whether individually or through collaborative efforts”, Udo Okon-jo, CEO, Fine and Country West Africa, told BusinessDay.

Udo’s submission responds to the changing real estate land-scape and PwC’s forecast on the immediate future for Africa which shows that by 2020, in-vestable real estate will have grown by more than 55 percent compared to 2012. By 2025, there will be 37 ‘megacities’, up from 23 today, and 12 of these will be in emerging markets while by 2025, emerging markets will host 60 percent of global construction activity.

The potential for not just profit (for the investors) but the development of the society is immense because, as Okonjo explained, at the end of the day, the efforts are all geared towards developing a more sophisticated and well-rounded society that is at par with the rest of the world.

Globally, the New Year looks another challenging year for landlords whether it is the ones in the commercial and retail segments of the market or those playing in the up-market resi-

dential real estate space who are already contending with issues around policies, fees and costs in Europe and economic down-turn as in Africa and Nigeria in particular.

“On the face of it, the lettings market in the UK has been flat in 2018 with not much prospect of growth this year with policy changes relating to fees and costs due to kick in”, notes Prop-ertyWire, an online platform which tracks residential housing markets in over 100 countries of the world.

Ray Clancy, the editor of the online platform, believes that is likely to be the case in London with the latest reports suggesting a slow outlook. The November lettings index from Hamptons International shows that rents increased just 0.1 percent year-on-year in Greater London.

Clancy quotes the Associa-tion of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) as saying it is certain that this year will be a challenging one for landlords and lettings agents acknowledge this. Rent costs in the UK’s private rented sector will rise in line with in-creased demand from prospec-tive tenants and the impacts of the expected tenant fees ban in 2019.

and income level. We struc-ture payments for people according to their cash flow and they are always excited to see what we are able to do”, Oladipo Idowu Agida, CEO, Dradrock Real Estate, explained to BusinessDay.

Dradrock is a frontline real estate investment and development company in Nigeria. Besides its advisory role, Dradrock also offers structured payment that makes it possible for buy-ers, especially Nigerians in Diaspora who want to have houses back home, to key into their schemes.

In terms of numbers, Dradrock has been able to help about 500 people to own property. These are mainly those in high income class, the mid-income earners

and not many low income earners.

But they have started offering something for the low income. In terms of percentage, the distribution is 10 percent for low income, 40 for the high income and 50 for mid-income earners.

“We have also contributed to the growth of the economy by providing jobs for people. We have all classes of work-ers on our employ—skilled and unskilled labour, profes-sionals, artisans and others.

The company’s Annapo-lis brand of our products are located in the burgeoning Lekki peninsular. “We have Annapolis Garden at Lakowe where we have ser viced plots and 30 units of 2-bed-room apartments. We have another Annapolis Resi-

dence at Sangotedo where also we have serviced plots, 2-bedroom, 3-bedroom and terraces of 4-bedroom.We also have Annapolis Court at Ibeju Lekki where we have about 1000 serviced plots and developments for low income earners”, the CEO disclosed.

He explained that the objective of the Annapolis brand is to create a place for people where they can live and have the kind of lifestyle they desire. This is for all classes of people including the upper class, middle class and the lower class. For the Sangotedo scheme, their serviced plots are going for N10million -N20 million per plot. This caters for the upper middle class.

The scheme in Lakowe

caters for the lower middle class where a plot sells for N5 million. The Ibeju scheme ca-ters specifically for the middle class. “We expect that in the next 10 years, that area will explode because of the kind of developments coming to that area. But one of the chal-lenges we have in the housing industry is that even when you cater for the lower class, they cannot still afford.

“This is why we are coming up with an initiative where anybody that earns $200 dol-lars will be able to buy our plot. This is why too we are working with a lot of part-nerships and creating mort-gage systems whereby people will be able to finance their housing purchase”, the CEO assured.

Idowu Agida assured that

the rate on the mortgage sys-tem they offer is much better than what is on offer in the market at the moment. He, however, identified a problem with the mortgage industry in, in his view, was cultural. “People borrow from micro-finance banks and don’t pay. This also happens in mort-gage banks and that is why operators complain of huge non-performing loans in their books”, he said.

The Nigerian mortgage industry is tottering today because its huge non-per-forming loans valued at over N1trillion. This, according to the CEO, underscores the need for a good credit system in the country, arguing that if Nigeria had a good credit system that captures people’s credit history, it would help.

26 Tuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY www.businessday.ng https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng

Now is good time to buy real estate in Nigeria NMRC boosts liquidity in mortgage market, refinances N18bn housing loans

EndurancE OkafOr

EndurancE OkafOr

At a time when Nige-ria’s property market showed signs of re-

bound, election uncertain-ties morphed into what the industry experts refer to as a ‘nightmare’.

The country’s real estate sector has responded differ-ently to the last two presiden-tial elections, as such industry experts imagine the forth coming general election will follow suit.

Jide Ogunleye, CEO of Denaro properties Ltd, a busi-ness and investment strategies expert with emphasis on real estate said the 2019 general election will have a lot of im-pact in the direction the real estate will take.

“As a developer, I have al-ready started getting feedback as regards the forth coming election. If the election goes on peacefully, and regard-less of the political party that wins and there a peaceful transition, it is going to hold well for the real estate sector, Ogunleye told BusinessDay.

A survey by Busi-nessDay revealed that now is a good time to be buying home, land, office

and mall from Nigeria’s prop-erty market as less competi-tion has reduced demand’s power to influence the price.

The unattractiveness of the country’s property market to investors due to uncertain-ties of the forthcoming elec-tions, declining income on the part of its citizens, prop-erty glut and the aftershock of economic recession are the reasons why there is plunge in property demand.

Olurogba Orimalade, Chairman of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) Lagos State Branch said one cannot get property in Nigeria real estate market at a better time than now.

“It is a good time to buy because, unfortunately, the episode from last two years, in term of economic reces-sion have led to a situation where a lot of property own-ers and developers are being flexible and are easing up, as they are ready to just get what you can call ‘any profit’,” Orimalade said.

Figures by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that Nigeria real es-tate sector has been in reces-sion for the 11th consecutive quarter through to Q3 2018 since the first quarter of 2016.

Nigeria’s GDP growth rate of 1.81 percent in the review quarter could not rub off the

Nigeria’s real estate performance in 2019 dependent on election outcome…as investors adopt watch and see technique

country’s property market as it reported -2.68 percent growth in the quarter under review. Although it was 1.21 percentage point better than the -3.88 percent reported in the previous quarter.

Ibraheem Babalola, Co-Founder/CEO of Muster, a shared housing marketplace said a lot of politicians want to sell their real estate in-vestments to generate funds for campaign and this has impacted property prices in the country.

“Now is a good time to buy properties because prices are actually lower resulting from the fact that a lot of empty properties owned by politicians in major cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Har-court, which were vacant are now been be put up for sale because they want election campaign and they want to quickly turn these properties into cash,” Babalola said.

He concluded by giving an instance that a friend of his wants to buy a property in one of the most expen-

sive property hubs in Lagos, not because she planned to acquire the property but “because she heard of a very attractive deal in the market.”

According to Association of Housing Corporation of Nigeria (AHCN), more than 90 percent of new homes utilise funds from personal savings for incremental con-struction which as a result of underdevelopment of Nigeria Mortgage sector in driving home ownership and AHCN says it is “worrisome.”

Yemi Stephens, Partner at Estate Links Limited said power to negotiate on the side of the buyer has more than doubled.

“The property market is not buoyant as we speak, as there are very few buyers. As a buyer, you are able to negoti-ate well now because very few people are buying,” Stephens explained.

He however painted a picture of the current state of the property market and he said it is like a situation where a property that four

Figures by the state funded bureau revealed that Nige-ria real estate sector showed pointer of upbeat note for the second consecutive quarter in Q3 2018.

Although still in contrac-tion mood, the sector did better than the -3.88 percent growth rate recorded for Q2 by 1.21 percentage points.

However, Nigeria’s GDP growth rate of 1.81 percent in the third quarter of this year could not rub off on the coun-try’s property market. This is now couple with the fact that the road ahead for the sector appears bleak owing to the uncertainty around the 2019 elections.

“If the 2019 presidential election becomes toxic, the real estate sector is one of those that will suffer the most,” an industry expert who pre-ferred not to be quoted said.

Nigeria with about 20 mil-lion units housing deficit has reported 11 consecutive quar-ter recession for its property market since the first quarter of 2016 when BusinessDay started tracking the data.

“If the whole process does not go well and there is unrest in the system, the recession will are seeing in the real estate sector will continue,” Ogunl-eye said by phone.

The real estate perfor-mance under different lead-ers showed that the real GDP growth recorded in the sec-tor in Q2 of 2011, the same quarter former president, Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in, stood at 10.48 percent- the sector positively welcomed the leader.

This is compared to the 2.97 percent recorded for the same quarter in 2015 when Muhammadu Buhari, the in-cumbent president was given the baton.

The sector didn’t quite smile at the president’s vic-tory, as the figure reported was less than the rate recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2014, and marginally lower than growth reported for Q1 2015 by 1.98 percentage points and 0.10 percentages points respectively, as compiled from NBS figures analysed by Busi-nessDay.

The third and fourth quar-ter growth for the property market under Jonathan fol-lowed in appreciation trajec-tory while Buhari’s went in opposite direction.

Meanwhile, Jonathan whose primary goal was to achieve stable electricity sup-ply in Nigeria earned the du-bious distinction of being the first president in Nigerian his-tory to lose an election.

The former president con-ceded the election to chal-lenger Muhammadu Buhari, who was sworn in to succeed him on 29 May 2015. Jonathan said in a statement he issued on 31 March 2015 that “no-body’s ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian.”

Olurogba Orimalade, Chairman of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) Lagos State Branch said the real estate sector is going to drag because of the political un-certainties. Although he men-tioned the sector will eventu-ally bounce back regardless of whether the present govern-ment remains or not.

The Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC ) has ref i-

nanced mortgage loans to-taling N18billion as at De-cember 2018.

This is in line with the company’s mandate to pro-mote affordable home own-ership in the country by lever-aging funding from the capi-tal market to deepen liquidity in the primary and secondary mortgage markets.

NMRC refinances mort-gage loan portfolios of its member primary mortgage lending and commercial banks that comply with its uniform underwriting stand-ards.

The deployment of the N18billion to refinance mort-gage loan portfolios of mem-ber lending institutions has helped to boost liquidity in the Nigerian housing market, thus enabling mortgage lend-ers to provide more housing loans and encouraging long-term mortgage loan creation.

Speaking on the develop-ment, the Managing Direc-tor/Chief Executive Officer of NMRC, Kehinde Ogundimu stated that the company is working hard to further boost its refinancing operations.

In the quest to providing liquidity to Nigeria’s mort-gage industry, NMRC carried out Series 2 Bond issuance at the end of H1 2018. The issuance was carried out at a lower cost compared to the initial issue in 2015.

Speaking on the impact the issuance will have on the country property market, an expert who asked not to be quoted said going forward NMRC will be able to lend at a cheaper cost.

“Because if they borrow at a cheaper cost it means they will be able to refinance mortgage lenders at a cheap-er cost, which the ultimate beneficiary are the individu-als that are taking the mort-gages,” an industry expert who ask to be quoted on the condition of anonymity said.

The opinion of another analyst was not different as he said generally, the impact of the issuance would mean that the cost of mortgage lending will come down.

“This means that people that are trying to get mortgage will be able to access the loan at a lower interest rate,” the analyst said on the condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the mortgage interest rates in Nigeria range between 7-10 percent for the Federal Mortgage Bank 0f Nigeria (NHF) and between 15-25 percent for commercial mortgage institutions, this analysts have said is one of the highest in the world, as compiled from BusinessDay survey.

NMRC said it has com-pleted its N11billion 13.80 per cent Series 2 Bond Issuance under its N440 billion Me-dium Term Note Programme. It said it is part of its primary mandate of providing liquid-ity to the country’s mortgage market.

The net proceeds of the exercise will be used to re-finance eligible mortgage loans originated by the par-ticipating mortgage lending banks.

Ogundimu said in a state-ment that the bond issuance reinforces NMRC’s com-mitment to “encourage and promote homeownership in Nigeria by linking the capital markets with the housing sector and establishing an operating and viable second-ary mortgage market to sup-port the primary mortgage market.”

This is coming after its inaugural N8 billion 14.9 per cent Series 1 Bond issue in July 2015 – which was fully deployed towards refinanc-ing legacy mortgage loan portfolios of the participating eligible member-mortgage lending banks.

The Series 2 Bonds are unconditionally and irrevo-cably guaranteed by the Fed-eral Government of Nigeria (FGN) and thus ascribed an ‘AAA’ rating by both Global Credit Rating Co. and Agusto & Co.

The order book was sub-scribed by over 200per cent. The bonds were subscribed to by domestic investors with the Pension Fund Adminis-trators (PFAs) representing over 70 per cent of the inves-tors.

Africa’s most populous nation however require bout 20 million units to meet its housing needs and indus-try experts say effectors by NMRC are directed at bridg-ing the country’s huge hous-ing gap.

The government of Af-rica’s largest economy has however disclosed plans to inject 500 billion naira ($1.4 billion) to the Federal Mort-gage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) for over the next five years in an effort to spur home ownership that has failed to take off in Africa’s largest oil producing nation.

NMRC is a CBN-licensed mortgage liquidity facility with the core mandate of developing the primary and secondary mortgage markets by raising long-term funds from the capital market, and thereby promoting affordable home ownership in Nigeria.

NMRC was incorporated on 24th June 2013 and ob-tained its final license to op-erate as a non-deposit taking financial institution from the CBN on 18th February 2015.

27Tuesday 01 January 2019 BUSINESS DAYwww.businessday.ng https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng

people used to struggle for is now left with just one person. “With the ability to buy now, you can sit down with the landlord and negotiate to a very good price,” Stephens mentioned.

Nigeria with about 20 mil-lion units housing deficit has one of the lowest mortgage to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate at about 0.5 per-cent, which obviously lags Ghana’s 2 percent, South Africa’s 30 percent, the U.S rate at 60 percent and that of the UK at 70 percent.

Rafiq Raji, chief econo-mist at Macroafricaintel ex-plained that mass housing, for which there is huge de-mand, is probably not attrac-tive because incomes are low and credit is dear.

“More high-end property, plenty of which are empty in places like Abuja, have not enjoyed much custom because the rent economy, fuelled by political patron-age, has been in dire straits for the past 3 or more years,” Raji said.

Anti-dumping in international trade Writ of fiery facias

LOCUS CLASSICUS

Cooper v Phibbs (1867) lr 2 hl 149

legal functions and attributes of money

Duties of a customer to a bank

Meaning of dumping

Dumping is the importation of the products of a coun-try into another country

‘at less than the normal value of the products.’ Dumping is regard-ed as an unfair practice aimed at causing injury to domestic com-panies. Therefore, anti-dumping frowns at the selling of foreign goods in another economy at a price that will cause injury to a domestic industry. Anti-dumping laws permit the imposition of temporary duties on goods that are guilty of dumping.

Anti-dumping is usually em-ployed as a tool to combat the adverse consequence of trade liberalization as local industries are open to competition from foreign products. Officially, anti-dumping laws are meant to guard against “predatory pricing.” Anti-dumping is the most used trade defence instrument in modern time.

E l e m e n t s t o e s t a b l i s h dumpingWhen trying to establish that dumping exists and, as a result, invoke the provisions of anti-dumping laws, some important elements/features must be pres-ent. The elements that must be established are –

i.That the price of the foreign product is lesser than the normal value.

ii.Show that material injury is being inflicted on the domestic market.

iii.There should be a causal link between the dumping and the injury.

As simple as these three ele-ments seem to look, they have been the subject of heavy criti-cism due to their unascertainable nature. More details will be given on the criticisms under a different subhead.

The CriticismAnti-dumping as a trade defence measure have come under heavy criticism based on the ambiguity in the wordings of the law which has subjected its implementa-tion to the discretion of member states. Basically, the wordings that have introduced complexi-ties into anti-dumping law are- ‘normal value’ and ‘material injury’.

Due to the lacuna created by the ambiguity in the wordings of the law, anti-dumping duties are often imposed on very unreason-able grounds. In essence, this boils down to the fact that the success rate of an anti-dumping investigation will be high due to the loopholes in the law. In the United States of America for ex-ample, dumping has a conviction rate of 96%. To further buttress the foregoing point, most appeal against anti-dumping duties before the WTO Dispute Settle-ment Body ends in favour of the complainant.

Bank customers have duties which they need to comply with from time to time in

the course of relating with a bank. It is not a one sided relationship, so there are some duties that the relationship imposes on them too. Some of the duties a customer owes a bank are identified below-

1. Duty of care- there is an implied duty on a customer to operate his or her account with the bank in a way that fraud or loss is not attributed to such a customer. So the customer is to take reason-able steps to prevent fraud. In the case of Salawa v Union Bank (1986) 4 NWLR (Pt 38) 701, 707 the court noted that “ a customer has a duty to take reasonable and ordinary precaution against fraud and if as a direct result of the neglect of such precaution loss is sustained, he must bear the loss as between himself and the bank”. The process of determining whether there has been a breach of this duty depends on the peculiarities of each case.

2. Duty to give unambiguous

It is also called the Writ of Fifa. It is often used for the purpose of debt recovery. Under this

procedure, a sheriff is instructed to seize and sell the properties of a judgement debtor in order to sell and apply the proceeds of the sale to satisfy the debt being owed the judgement creditor.

In a situation where the pro-ceeds of sale from the moveable properties that were seized does not satisfy the debt, then an appli-cation can be brought to levy exe-cution on the debtor’s immovable properties too. The application to court for this is usually by way of motion on notice supported by affidavit evidence. This shows that the party whose properties are to be attached (judgement debtor)

Fact: Mr Cooper who is the plain-tiff is a nephew to the person that owns Salmon Fishery. He leased the fishery from his uncle. His uncle later died before the expi-ration of the lease and he had to renew the lease from his aunt. It was later discovered in the uncle’s will that the uncle already granted life tenancy of the fishery to Mr Cooper. Therefore, there was no need to renew the lease with the aunt in the first place. A dispute arose when it was time for pay-ment of the next rent. The issue

The phrase ‘your money or your life’ is a language commonly used by men

of the underworld. This shows the importance attached to money as some people even put their life at risk to protect it. Money is usually the yardstick to measure wealth. It also in-dicates the economic status of a person or society. Economic yardsticks like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Per Capita Income (PCI) are represented in monetary terms.

The functions of money can be inferred from its economic definition. Money works as a medium of exchange, means of payment, unit of account and store of value. RM Goode in his book on Commercial Law identifies five important char-acteristics of physical money. They are- “1. Its value in law is not its intrinsic value as paper or metal but the sum or unit of account in which the note or coin is denominated 2. Money is not bought for exchange. It

LegalPerspectives With Odunayo Oyasiji

The requirement to prove that a good is being sold at a price be-low its normal value is a complex one. There is no straightforward way to decide what a normal price or normal value is. Often times, normal value means the value of the product in its home market. Therefore, a company that fixes a lower price for its product overseas than what it sells locally can be accused of dumping.

Another huge lacuna in the anti-dumping law is in the fact that the law permits the country alleging dumping not to use the domestic price of the exporting country to determine the normal value of the product. Hence, the country alleging dumping is free to use the export price of a third country. China is a typical example of a country whose do-mestic price is usually not used to determine the normal value of a product having been classified as a non-market economy i.e. the domestic prices of Chinese products are not true reflections

instructions- The bank is under an obligation to carry out the instruc-tions of a customer. The foregoing places a burden on the customer while instructing the bank to al-ways give clear instructions that will not mislead the bank. A bank can only be held liable in a situ-ation where the customer gives a clear and unambiguous instruction to the bank.

3. Duty to repay- The customer owes the bank the duty to repay

is aware of what the judgement creditor wants to do. Also, the judgement debtor has the right to file processes opposing the ap-plication.

It must be noted that there is an established or identified process of disposing the money realized from sale of the debtor’s property. The proceeds of sale is disposed as follows-

1. The sheriff is paid for any amount and expenses due.

2. Payment to the auctioneer (if any) of the prescribed fees and expenses of sale.

3. Payment to the judgement creditor of the amount to be levied together with costs (if any).

4. Payment to the judgement debtor.

that came up for determination was whether Mr Cooper was the owner of the fishery and whether the lease was void.

Judgement: The court held that the contract and lease that existed between Mr Cooper and the defendant was voidable. This is because he (Mr Cooper) was already the beneficial owner of the Salmon fishery and there could not be a lease. It was held that the agreement would be set aside for common mistake by both parties as to the ownership of the fishery.

is either borrowed or received. It comes to the holder by way of gift or in discharge of an obligation 3.money is fully negotiable 4. Unless otherwise agreed a creditor is not entitled to demand or obliged to accept anything other than money in discharge of a debt owed 5. Money is a fungible so that any unit is legally interchangeable with any other unit or com-bination of units of the same denominated value.”

whatever debt he or she owes the bank.

It must be noted that a breach of any of the above duties will ei-ther give the bank a good defence against any accusation of breach of contract or the right to institute an action against the customer. There-fore, there is need for a customer to always give clear and unambigu-ous instruction to the bank. Also, a customer needs to manage the account in a responsible way.

Tuesday 01 January 201928 BUSINESS DAY www.businessday.ng https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng

Stakeholders list conditions to boost education sector in 2019

instead of the “society” as a centre of development.

Tolu Odugbemi, former vice chancellor, Ondo State University of Science and Technology (OSUTECH), says, “Education is a tool for development if properly handled from childhood to adulthood through various systems - primary, second-ary and tertiary levels.”

Odugbemi notes that in 2019 character building must accompany any form of learning in the various levels of education so that products of these institu-tions will to be relevant to society development.

He calls on managers of the economy to reassess their strategies to rebuild our soci-eties by refocusing our val-ues on positive and virtuous traits, which a robust educa-tion sector provides.

According to Odugbemi, “In 2019, I desire to see a Ni-geria that is in the forefront of scientific and technologi-

cal achievements that will advance the standard of liv-ing of Nigerians.

“I want to see a country with proud and cohesive people and where appropri-ate values and attention are placed on key sectors such as education, health, human rights and security by gov-ernment.”

To him, “The investment in these key areas and in particular, the educational sector, will go a long way in bringing a future and a hope for this generation and fu-ture generations.”

Isaac Adeyemi, an edu-cationist and former vice chancellor, Bells University of Technology, Otta, Ogun State, observes that the issue of leadership in our educa-tion sector needs to be reas-sessed and reappraised in Nigeria.

He is worried that suc-cessive governments have failed in providing good and effective leadership and ap-

Ahead 2019 cal-endar year, in-dustry experts in the educa-tion sector have

listed character building, political will, resolution of bottleneck with Academic Staff Union of Universi-ties (ASUU), among others, as conditions necessary to boost education sector.

They observe that the ed-ucation sector in Nigeria in 2018 faced numerous chal-lenges that affected it gener-al performance, adding that discipline is very important in attaining any significant achievement in human cap-ital development.

According to them, at the moment, Nigeria is at a cross road, instead of our present educational system helping to propel us forward in development, we face a gloomy picture of decay be-cause of wrong ideas and teachings that made “self”

propriate policy directions for the relevant sectors, edu-cation inclusive.

Adeyemi points out that there are supervisory bodies (School Boards, Governing Councils, Committees on education, set up to moni-tor growth and development of education in our schools and institutions of higher education.

He is worried that in the past years, some members of such supervisory bodies are generally uninformed of their duties, and responsi-bilities attached to their of-fices. Some work very hard for excellence while some see being in such bodies as opportunities to ‘make it.’

“Projects meant to be su-pervised by their superviso-ry bodies become ‘projects’ they execute with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. Even the funds for ex-ecution of projects are usu-ally thought to be ‘money for sharing,’” he notes.

L-R: Motunrayo Ade-Famoti, CEO, MoneyStewards; Aderemi Banjoko, CEO, dkbMARKETS Limited; Gbenga Shobo, deputy managing director, FirstBank, and Ibukun Awosika, chairman, FirstBank, at the FirstBank Youth Empowerment Programme in Lagos.

Ambode swears in new HoS, 6 perm secretariesgun (ministry of youth and social development); Segun Adeniji (Health Service Com-mission); Abosede Adelaja (ministry of tourism, arts and culture); and Lateef Lawal (Primary Healthcare Board).

Describing the appoint-ments as thoroughly deserv-ing, Ambode said a new chap-ter has been opened in the state public service, and par-ticularly urged the appoin-tees to justify the elevation by working harder to satisfy the expectations of the people.

While expressing strong optimism in the ability of Muri-Okunola to effectively take charge on account of his capacity, knowledge, expo-sure, experience and youthful energy, Governor Ambode nonetheless said it was impor-

Governor Akin-wunmi Ambode of Lagos State on Monday swore in

Hakeem Muri-Okunola as the 21st Head of Service (HoS) of the state, with a charge on him to inject fresh ideas that will take the public service to new heights as well as make Lagos a globally recognised city-state.

The governor also swore in six new permanent secretar-ies already deployed to vari-ous Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

The new permanent sec-retaries, include Titilayo Gon-calves (ministry of health); Adeyemi Kosoko (Education District IV); Sherifat Balo-

JOSHUA BASSEY

NEWS29Tuesday 01 January 2019 BUSINESS DAY www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDayNG

Nigeria risks weak investor confidence over political uncertainty - Moody

Moody’s investors service, a leading credit rating and research agency,

said Nigeria could risk weak investor and consumer con-fidence over political uncer-tainty and social unrest.

The global rating agency, in its 2019 outlook on Africa - banks and sovereigns, iden-tified Nigeria alongside South Africa and Tanzania as one of the African countries bedev-illed with such “an ever-pre-sent” challenge.

As a result, Moody’s said Nigeria’s growth would be more subdued at 2.3 percent as “more stable oil prices will drive economic acceleration” in the country.

Nigeria goes to the polls next February to decide its President among ruling Presi-dent Muhammadu Buhari, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, the presidential flag bearer of the opposition party and 57 other aspirants. The country is also expected to conduct elections for gov-ernors as well as state and federal lawmakers.

Growth in Africa’s largest economy stood at 1.81 per-cent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2018, according to data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and has been projected to hit 1.9 per-cent in 2018 and 2.3 percent

OLUWASEGUN OLAKOYENIKANKELECHI EWUZIE

Amosun assents to N400.3bn Ogun fiscal estimates for 2019

ECA hails continental free trade pact as Africa’s milestone policy

Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State on Monday assented to N400.3

billion 2019 Appropriation Bill earlier passed by the Ogun State House of Assembly into law, making it approved fiscal estimates for the new year.

Recall that Governor Amosun, in November 2018 presented a N402.63 billion Appropriation Bill before the State House, which was made up of N254.055 billion capi-tal expenditure, representing 63.1 percent and recurrent expenditure of N148.5 billion, representing 36.9 percent of the total budget.

But, the State House, af-ter much deliberation and

RAZAQ AYINLA, Abeokuta consideration of the whole estimates, slashed the Appro-priation Bill to N400.3 billion, taking off a total sum of N2.6 billion as part of fiscal review made on the total size of the fiscal estimates proposed for the new year.

After signing the Appro-priation Bill at the confer-ence room, Governor’s office, Abeokuta, Governor Amosun commended the speaker and the Honourable members of the House for doing the need-ful by passing the bill on time.

The governor appreci-ated the Ministries of Budget and Planning and Finance for a job well done, assuring that the budget would be ad-equately funded for the bet-terment of the people.

According to Amosun,

UN Economic Com-mission for Africa (ECA) on Monday said the African

Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement was one of Africa’s milestone trade policy. ECA noted that the policy would serve as imputes toward transforming Africa’s future development.

“The AfCFTA is one of the milestone trade policy devel-opments in Africa which is

‘’throughout the eight years of our administration, our budgets have always been presented and considered by the House and signed into law on time. This shows that we have not taken our people for granted.”

The governor while re-viewing how his adminis-tration had faired in budget preparation and implemen-tation, expressed optimism that the next government would improve on it.

Speaker, Suraju Ishola Adekunmbi, who had earlier presented the clean copy of the budget to the Governor in the company of other honoura-bles, disclosed that, after taking a critical look at the proposed budget, the House decided to approve the sum of N400.3bn.

expected to change the way Africa does trade and catalyse transformation in a way trade policy has not done before,’’ the ECA said in a statement on Monday.

Noting the vital signifi-cance of continental free trade agreement, ECA also urged its member countries to commit themselves through the inclu-sion of the major pillars of the agreement in their national policies.

tant for him to lead by example and encourage accountability and professionalism.

“Following the swearing in of the new Head of Service, a new chapter has just been opened in the history of the Lagos State Public Service. It is a new chapter with high ex-pectations for the injection of new energy and vibrancy that will move our public service to new heights.

“As the number one civil servant in Lagos State, you must demonstrate leader-ship and lead by example for others, including the Body of Permanent Secretaries, to fol-low. You have a responsibility to provide direction and en-courage accountability, trans-parency, professionalism and high sense of discipline.

in 2019 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In spite of these, the rating agency sees banks showing strong financial resilience in 2019 but warned that tight-ening global financial condi-tions are a key downside risk.

It said although its outlook for African banks was stable, risks are tilted to the down-side even though external shocks such as falling com-modity prices, drought, or an escalation of global trade wars, could hurt African cor-porates and their ability to repay debt.

According to the outlook, rising US interest rates lead-ing to capital outflows across emerging markets, in con-junction with rising govern-ment debt and currency de-preciation could significantly harm banks’ loan quality and access to foreign currency.

Higher oil prices and partial liberalisation of the foreign-exchange market have eased pressures on “unhedged” borrowers and normalised foreign-currency liquidity, according to the credit agency.

“Capital buffers are strong for the bigger banks, but weaker for smaller banks,” Moody’s forecasted adding that it expects most rated banks to maintain stable prof-itability, build up their capital buffers and retain ample local currency funding in 2019.

Tuesday 01 January 2019C002D5556BUSINESS DAY30


Nigeria’s South-ern and Mid-dle-Belt Lead-ers Forum has raised alarm

over alleged plans to rig the 2019 general election, urging the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to resist pressures from those bent on sabotaging the poll, asking the commission not to compromise the general election.

In a statement to journal-ists in Lagos, Monday, signed on behalf of the leaders of the forum, by Yinka Odumakin, Bassey Henshaw and Isuwa Dogo, the group noted that there were reports that INEC

Southern Middle-belt leaders allege plans to rig 2019 pollsInIobong Iwok “If these reports are true,

it may just confirm the fears that the perpetual boast by the ruling party and its allies of assurance of victory in the 2019 presidential poll even before it holds is not based on winning the hearts of the people but through under-hand means “

The group stressed that rigging often starts with the changing of results an-nounced by the Polling Of-ficers as party agents are ex-pected to countersign results but the refusal of any agent to sign does not invalidate the results, while often allowing compromised polling officers to change figures between the Polling Units and the Ward Collation centres.

Gana

The group advised INEC to be mindful that the credibil-ity of the conduct of the 2019 elections depended much with the continued exist-ence of Nigeria as a country and therefore, must be above board.

According to the Forum, “INEC must use form EC 60 E which will contain the scores of every candidate at every Polling Unit (PU) which must be pasted at every PU and transmitted to a central server by the presiding officer in the presence of agents.”

The group urged Nigerians to be on the alert as it may be possible that some forces are already in talks with some for-eign mercenaries to interfere with next year’s elections.

had come under pressure to delete the electronic trans-mission of results from the Polling Units (PU) to a cen-tral server and the pasting of results at the polling units in the proposed guidelines for the 2019 elections.

“Our attention has been drawn to media reports on Sunday that the com-mission has come under pressure to delete the elec-tronic transmission of re-sults from the Polling Units (PU) to a central server and the pasting of results at the polling units in the proposed guidelines for the 2019 elections in sync with the refusal to sign the Electoral Bill passed by the National Assembly.

InIobong Iwok

Buhari’s ineffective leadership responsible for incessant killings of soldiers - Ezekwesili

SDP: Jerry Gana campaign group faults Falae on court judgment

Obiageli Ezekwesili, presidential can-didate of the Allied Congress Party of

Nigeria (ACPN), has blamed incessant killings of Nigerian soldiers during confrontation with insurgent group, Boko-Haram in the Northeast on the failure of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s admin-istration.

In a statement to journalists in Lagos, Monday, Ezekwesili frowned at the unabated kill-ings in Zamfara State, saying that the once most peaceful state of the Northwest region had been turned into a theatre of terrorism.

According to her, the secu-rity situation in the country shows a lack of effective lead-ership by President Muham-madu Buhari, this is demon-strated in the very troubling inertia to decisively confront and end the frequent killings of our citizens; especially our sol-

diers on the frontline of battle.She added, “The killings

have tragically earned Nigeria the designation of the 16th most dangerous country in the world, according to the Global Peace Index. Nigeria is also the 15th most fragile country in the 2018 Fragile States Index by the United States Fund for Peace.”

The presidential candidate, expressed concern over reports of 700 Nigerian soldiers killed in Baga by Boko Haram ter-rorists, lamenting that the un-confirmed report also alleged that over 2,000 of the country’s soldiers are missing.

“Although the military and the Presidency have denied the reports, the serial cred-ibility challenges of the Bu-hari administration and the security team he leads as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces have created public distrust of any rebuttal by government. And that is gravely worrisome.

According to her, “The only

The G19, the Presiden-tial Campaign team of former Minister of In-formation, Prof. Jerry

Gana, has faulted the National Chairman of the Social Demo-cratic Party (SDP), Samuel Olu-Falae, over his position on the court judgment that declared-Gana as the right presidential candidate of the party in the 2019 election instead of former governor of Cross River state, Donald Duke, earlier picked by the party.

The Group in a statement issued at the weekend by its Director General Dr. Ike Ne-liaku, noted that the group after numerous enquiries and calls from esteemed Party supporters and concerned members of the public from within and outside Nigeria, was constrained to respond to the Press Statement reportedly issued by the National Chair-man of SDP, which suggests his unwillingness to obey the valid court order.

Dr. Neliaku stressed in the statement that the group had waited for any denial of the authorship of the said state-ment, especially in the light of earlier directive of the National Chairman that only Prof Tunde Adeniran is authorised to issue further statements on the mat-ter under reference.

“Following an FCT High

Court Judgment of 14th De-cember 2018 in favour of Prof. Jerry Gana as the 2019 Presi-dential Candidate of the SDP, and in the spirit of our avowed commitment to Party Con-stitution, Prof. Gana wrote the National Chairman on December 17th to inform him of the judgment and sought audience on December 19th to brief the National Working Committee (NWC) on the agenda and roadmap of his campaign thrust. The Na-tional Chairman through the Deputy National Chairman South, Prof. Tunde Adeniran responded on December 18, conveying his inability to be in Abuja as requested.

“On December 19, Prof Gana personally submitted his nomination form to the Party which was received by the Deputy National Chair-man (North) Dr Abdul Isiaq and other members of the NWC on behalf of the Party; for onward transmission to INEC in line with the court Judgment and Order. DrIsiaq announced at the public occasion that the Party will obey the court order. To our surprise, we understand that the National Chairman at the last minute instructed the Party not to proceed with the form to INEC, which is a flagrant disobedience to the court judgment,” the Director General said.

The group pointed out that after waiting for about 10 days without any information from the National Chairman on moving forward, and being under tremendous pressure to commence campaigns in the light of limited available time, Prof Gana wrote a second letter dated December 27 notifying the National Chairman of his intention to unveil his cam-paign vision to the Media on December 29 2018 and meet with Stakeholders on January 5, 2019.

“While expecting the Na-

way to ensure accuracy of the casualty that Nigeria is suffering as a result of coun-ter-terrorism at this stage is to inaugurate a citizens-led independent investigation panel. Such an initiative would go a long way to eliminate the opaqueness of the counter-terrorism war and restore public confidence, as the case may be.

Ezekwesili further stated that the constitutional man-date of the government to ensure the security of life and property of all Nigeri-ans had been poorly han-dled, especially within the last decade.

“Tackling this will require commencing a security dis-course and planning away from a narrow focus on mil-itary responses, to a more collective and participative conversation of the structure of the Nigerian state and our security architecture. Our ACPN administration would without fail prioritise this.”

2019: Okowa urges Deltans to remain united, peaceful

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State has called on the people of the

state to remain united to the cause of developing the state irrespective of ethnic or party differences.

Okowa, in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Charles Aniagwu, felicitated with all Deltans as they stepped into 2019 and expressed gratitude to God for the grace granted Delta and its citizens in 2018.

Praying for the unity and peace in the state, which, he

FrancIs sadhere, warri noted “is the bedrock of mean-ingful development in any given society,” he expressed the hope that 2019 will be a year of fulfilling a greater and stronger Delta.

He said, “Given our success story in the past three and half years in office, I have no doubt that with the same level of cooperation from the good people of Delta State, our gov-ernment will achieve more in all facets of governance”.

“Our optimism is driven by the support we enjoy from our Youths, leaders, the legislature, the judiciary, the civil service, my team of political appoin-tees, agencies of government,

both at the federal and the state levels, as well multilateral donor agencies.”

Governor Okowa noted that, “as one of the first states to sign the 2019 budget, our govern-ment was prepared for the task of governance and provision of key infrastructure which made us to hit the ground running from day one“. “I must empha-sise that the consistent early passage of our state budget has given me and indeed the state the advantage of early start-ers, both in the appreciation of what Deltans expect from their government and in the development of solutions to meet such expectations”.

tional Chairman’s response to the letter, our attention was drawn to a Press Statement re-portedly issued by the National Chairman, Chief OluFalae on the subject matter of our letter, even to the extent of threat-ening Party members not to attend the events.

“To say the least, we are shocked at the National Chair-man’s sudden shift of position, after making commitment to both our Candidate and other legitimate stakeholders, that as Social Democrats he and by extension, the Party, are obliged to obey the court judgment and orders; and would expectedly work with the position of the court,” the group said.

The statement said fur-ther that for the avoidance of doubt, the reliefs granted in consequence of the case by the FCT High Court are all DECLARATORY, which could ONLY be vitiated by a contrary judgment of an appeal court. It added that it speaks volumes that the National Chairman would prefer an Appeal pro-cess, yet to commence and determined, in total disregard to a subsisting valid judgment and order by a court of compe-tent jurisdiction.

“We have consulted with other leaders of the Party who represent about 90% of both the National Working Com-mittee and National Execu-tive Committee of the Party, and arrived at the conclusion that the views of the National Chairman are not in tandem with the majority.

“For record purposes and ensuring that Party members are well informed of the facts, may it be known that up till the last time I checked before issu-ing this statement, Prof. Jerry Gana has not been served of any Court of Appeal process, and as such has not engaged any counsel to prosecute any imaginary appeal on his be-half.

Innocent odoh, abuja

32 BUSINESS DAY tuesday 01 January 2019 www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDayNG

Nigeria’s next president must unveil new industrial strategyODINAKA ANUDU

With the 2019 gen-e ra l e l e c t i o n s few weeks away, anybody who be-comes President

must unveil a new industrial strat-egy that will determine Nigeria’s manufacturing trajectory.

Over the years, the country’s industrial strategy has been obfus-cating as it is difficult to determine whether the country is trending towards import- substitution or export- orientation.

Import-substitution is a strategy in which local industries are es-tablished with a view to producing goods that replace imported ones.

It requires imposition of tariffs, quotas and exchange controls to protect local industries from for-eign competitors and make foreign goods expensive.

Export- oriented or substitu-tion industrialisation, on the other hand, is a strategy of exporting goods for which a country has a comparative advantage. This strat-egy has worked miracles for the Asian Tigers.

Some countries have also adopt-ed foreign private investment strat-egy, whereby incentives are put in place to attract multinationals and foreign direct investors. A typical example of a country with this policy is Ethiopia, even though it may be argued that the East African country is export-oriented or a mix of export-orientation and foreign private investment strategies.

Nigeria has adopted what is called ‘resource-based industri-alisation’, whereby firms use locally available resources, such as raw materials, man power and natural resources, to grow domestic pro-duction.

This has seen some success with local input sourcing reaching 57 percent in the first half of 2018, according to the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN). De-spite adopting this strategy, local manufacturers remain the heaviest importers of inputs, machines and packaging materials. This is why any scarcity of dollars hurts the industrial sector most.

Muda Yusuf, director-general of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), pointed out recently that the country needs a new industrial strategy targeted at shoring up non-oil export.

He, however, explained that import- substitution and export promotion could go together, add-ing that resource-based industrial is more competitive because local resources are utilised, citing an ex-

rian National Paper Manufacturing Company (NNPMC) Limited in Ogun State.

Studies show that Nigeria loses N180 billion annually from non-performance of these paper mills. Nigeria spends N50 billion on the import of papers annually, accord-ing to a research done by Abimbola Ogunwusi and Peter Onwualu, di-rector and former director-general of the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) Newspapers and publishing firms are struggling to import papers with limited foreign exchange, leading to very high cost of paper products.

“The co-investor that bought the NigeriaPaper Mill (NPM) Lim-ited did not buy it to help Nigeria,” said Samson Ololade Ogundele, ex-senior manager, NigeriaPaper Mill Limited, Jebba, Kwara State in Lagos, said at a stakeholders’ forum in Lagos in 2016.

“I know it was valued at about N30 billion in Nigeria as at 1995, but this same mill was given to the investor at N334 million in 2008. The aim of the government in hand-ing over the mill was to create jobs and improve the economy. The majority of Nigerians working in Nigeria Paper Mill –both junior and senior—are all casual,” Ogundele disclosed, adding that the Federal Government must re-visit the pri-vatisation in spite of the fact that it is the only paper mill working at the moment.

As of today, many private com-panies are either shut down or mired in intractable legal tussles. Vita Malt in Agbara, Ogun State, is shut down. Multi Trex, a 65,000 metric-tonne cocoa processing factory, the largest in the country,

has been taken over by the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON).

In 2015, the only surviving brake pads and lining maker, Star Auto In-dustries, collapsed as it was unable to compete with cheap Chinese products and could not pay back loan borrowed from the Bank of Industry.

“It is difficult to compete with Asia, with substandard, cheap brake pads. I am not happy that import duty on brake pads fell from 25 percent to 10 percent. This is the situation since 2004 and govern-ment has done nothing about it,” CEO of the firm Chidi Ukachukwu, told BusinessDay in early 2014.

Today, only three textile firms out of over 120 in the 1980s are in operation.

“What we need is the enabling environment. We cannot compete with the level of smuggling and counterfeiting going on now. We used to have about 127 textile firms in Nigeria but that has come down to two or three now,” said Grace Adereti, president of the Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association (NTMA) in Lagos at a Made-in-Nigeria stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos.

“We had the revival loans but this didn’t work because our biggest problem has never been money,” Adereti said.

Similarly, public firms such as Federal Superphosphate Fertilizer Company and National Steel Raw Materials Exploration Agency are also moribund and need a blue-print.

Fifty-four manufacturing firms closed down 12 months preceding August 2016 due to their inability to access dollars to import raw materi-als, according to a survey carried out by NOI Polls and Centre for Economic Research in late 2016.

Speaking at last year’s Manufac-turing & Equipment Expo organ-ised by MAN and Clarion Event West Africa, Aliyu Suleiman of the Dangote Group, said that an indus-trial strategy has become important for Nigeria as new governments spend half of their tenures devising plans, with little room for imple-mentation.

“Last year, the United Kingdom produced a revised manufacturing strategy— a definitive roadmap. We can do that in Nigeria and MAN is in the best position to do this,” he stated.

According to him, the industrial strategy should include the aspira-tion of industry in terms of how much GDP contribution targeted; where to play, with regard to areas of priority, and how to win, in terms of becoming competitive.

ample with the bright performance of food and beverage sub-sector which gets most of its inputs locally as a case study.

Nevertheless, facts on ground show that the country’s industrial strategy is not clear.

In 2013, for instance, the Na-tional Automotive Policy imposed 35 percent levy and 35 percent duty on imported vehicles, amounting to a total of 70 percent. This was meant to protect local vehicle assemblers.

At the same time, importers of damaged or ‘accidented’ vehicles officially enjoy a rebate of 30 per-cent. What this has done is to en-courage the importation of rickety vehicles, which make up 70 percent of imported cars today.

“If you want to develop a market for 54 companies that have got li-censes with 410,000 capacity plants and you import a huge number of used vehicles, how are you going to support vehicles being assembled, since the ones assembled locally will be more expensive?” Bambo Adebowale, chairman, Auto and Allied Sector group of the LCCI, asked in a recent interview with BusinessDay.

A new industrial strategy has become imperaitive, as local in-dustries are increasingly becoming a shadow of themselves.

What is happening to Ajaokuta Steel Complex today? The complex has gulped $8 billion public funds without producing one sheet of steel. Recently, the Senate ap-proved $1 billion from public funds to revive Ajaokuta even when there is a good case for its privatisation. The next President must not waste the country’s scarce resources on this behemoth.

Since 1994, successive govern-ments have claimed that the com-plex is 98 percent completed, but the remaining two percent has become a hard nut to crack for successive administrations. Mu-hammadu Buhari’s government budgeted N3.9 billion in 2016 and N4.27 billion in 2017 for the resuscitation of the steel, despite an earlier business case in the last administration showing that the complex could only work if properly privatised.

BusinessDay checks show that Ajaokuta Complex has the capac-ity to produce one million metric tonnes of steel, one million metric tonnes of coal , manganese and limestone, among others.

Due to lack of operations at Ajaokuta Steel, Nigeria today im-ports steel valued at $3.3 billion every year.

Frank Udemba Jacobs, immedi-ate past president of the Manu-facturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), said over 50 percent of raw materials used in the sector would have been locally available had Ajaokuta been working.

Similarly, the Aluminium Smelt-er Company, located in Akwa Ibom State, is not in operation due to a tussle between Bancorp Financial Investment Group Divino Cor-poration (BFIG), a consortium of U.S.-based Nigerian investors led by Reuben Jaja, and the United Company RUSAL, a Russian firm.

Nigeria has three paper mills that are not working. These include: Nigeria Paper Mill (NPM)Limited located in Jebba, Kwara State; Ni-gerian Newsprint Manufacturing Company (NNMC)Limited, Oku-Iboku, Akwa Ibom State; and Nige-


Continued from page 2

Muster emerges winner of BusinessDay...


Five things businesses must prepare for...


Buhari has a history of smuggling in looted...

New Year, new wears, new looks... Consumers, doing last minute shopping for New Year celebration in Lagos. Pic by David Apara


CCNN tops market gainers in 2018 ahead...

NEWS34 Tuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY @ ggwww.g

installed capacity of the merged entity to two million metric tonnes per annum, according to the state-ment.

CCNN’s expansion heats up competition in the cement sector which expanded 8 percent in the third quarter of 2018, the highest sectorial growth in the period, ac-cording to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The dearth of infrastructure in

Africa’s most populous nation means that there are opportunities for ce-ment makers to boost revenues riding on the expected upsurge in demand.

The merger also brings the total capacity of BUA’s cement operations to eight million tonnes per annum, fol-lowing the group’s recent completion of its three million MTP Obu II Cement Plant in Okpella, Edo State, it said.

The expanded CCNN will remain the market leader in its regional market of North West Nigeria, the third largest market for cement in

Nigeria by consumption, the state-ment quoted Abdul Samad Rabiu, Founder/Executive Chairman of BUA Group, as saying. The company will also continue its exploration of opportunities in the export markets of Niger, Burkina Faso and the west African region, he Rabiu added.

“Traditionally, the huge cost of transportation to CCNN’s home region from other cement plants in Nigeria – the nearest being about 900 km away – has always given us a strategic advantage in that region over competing cement companies and brands,” Rabiu said.

remotely corrupt or illegal has been found.

“In desperation, the Buhari ad-ministration released this statement to cover their shame on a day that the US based International Strategic Studies Association reported that it is the unprecedented corruption around President Buhari that has

led to the recent setbacks in the war on terrorism in the Northeast and the heavy loss of lives amongst the military rank and file. May God save Nigeria from a government that val-ues money over lives.

“We therefore urge Nigerians to note that it is Muhammadu Buhari who has a history and a record of smuggling in looted funds and it is Wa-

revenues and dollar inflows. Worse still is that Nigeria cant

pump more than 1.6 million barrels of oil daily this year, a limit imposed by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to rid the market of a supply glut and lift oil prices.

Speculative activities will also be rife in the New Year, as dollar demand by investors betting on the naira to weaken will only add to pressure on the exchange rate.

Besides, this could also be the year the naira starts to yield to rising interest rates in the US and most developed markets, which have hammered emerging market currencies from the South African rand to the Mexican Peso.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) did a good job fighting off any material depreciation in 2018, but that was a CBN that had close to $50 billion in external reserves at the peak of its powers.

Given the outlook for oil reve-nues, this year holds new prospects for the apex bank whose constant dollar supply last year to defend the naira cost it as much as $7 billion.

Higher cost of productionThe second thing businesses

must brace for in the new year is higher cost of production. If the naira weakens, it becomes more expensive for businesses to import raw materials and other inputs, thereby stoking production costs.

Businesses must therefore con-sider looking for local alternatives, where possible, for the raw mate-rials needed for their production process.

They should also limit or out rightly eliminate foreign debt, par-ticularly if they do not have foreign exchange receivables to mitigate the possible foreign exchange risk.

The borrowing burdenAnother thing every business

must know going into 2019 is that borrowing costs will rise. It would become more difficult to get credit, at least from the banks, at afford-able rates as the government could be set to crowd out the private sec-tor for the third year running.

The 2019 budget has a deficit of N1.859 trillion and the govern-ment plans to borrow about N1.65 trillion from a mix of foreign and local creditors.

However, the outlook for oil earnings puts the government’s revenue target of N6.9 trillion at risk.

In the event that revenues un-derperform, as they have done in the last three successive budgets, then the government will be forced to borrow more which will drive

yields on government securities higher and make it more expen-sive for the private sector to raise capital.

While fixed income investors may enjoy higher yields in 2019 than in 2018, businesses may suffer under rising interest costs.

Bearish stock marketThe fourth thing businesses

should prepare for in 2019 is a pos-sible bearish stock market.

The Nigerian stock market shiv-ers when oil prices catch a cold. When oil prices decline, investor sentiments take a hit and appetite for stocks wane and vice-versa.

After a torrid 2018, where stocks succumbed to a loss of 18 percent, 2019 may hold little bright pros-pects for one of Africa’s worst- per-forming stock market.

For businesses looking to go public in 2019, there might be need for a rethink as it is never a good time to face investors when sentiments are sour. It could see the company undervalued because buyers are scarce.

In a reflection of how underval-ued Nigerian stocks currently are, the average Price to Earnings ratio, which is a measure of listed com-panies’ valuations, is at a record low of 9 times, as foreign portfolio outflows and political uncertainty deals a tough blow on stocks.

At the most recent market peak in 2014, stocks were valued at 15 times earnings. That means inves-tors paid N15 for each naira earned by listed companies.

Possible petrol price in-crease

An increase in retail petrol prices cannot be ruled out this year as the subsidy burden on the government grows.

At N145 per litre, the amount Ni-gerians are paying for fuel is heavily subsidised by the government.

The political cost of hiking pet-rol prices has often deterred the current administration from mov-ing to hike petrol prices like Saudi Arabia and Mexico have done recently.

However, after the election in February, that excuse fades.

In the event that there is a hike in petrol prices, it would trigger inflation and reduce purchasing power of households. Add the ex-pected naira depreciation this year and the picture is worse.

Businesses could begin to soften the expected blow from reduced consumer purchasing power to create affordable products and services that moderate the strain on consumer wallets. Goods with elastic demand could also suffer but those with inelastic demand will be in good stead.

ziri Atiku Abubakar who has a history of preventing such from happening.

“And while they are at it, we urge them to tell Nigerians those behind Etisalat, now 9Mobile and Keystone Bank, now Polaris and how they sud-denly possessed such wealth overnight.

“Finally, Nigerians should note that the Buhari administration can-not defend their record on jobs and poverty - the things of most concern to voters- thus, their only resort is slander,” the statement said.

“I have fulfilled almost ev-erything needed to process my admission into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston except my visa. I had been sched-uled to attend a visa interview early next month. However, with this recent development, I do not know what to do, especially as school resumes soon,” a graduate of University of Ibadan, who gave his name simply as Chike, told BusinessDay.

A travel expert who craved anonymity told BusinessDay that the development was not good for the economy and business because a lot of businesses would

be put on hold as a result of this development.

The travel expert further won-dered how those with serious health challenges who had been referred to hospitals abroad would cope with the situation.

BusinessDay’s checks show that some Nigerians who had applied for visas in October 2018 were yet to get appointments and those who had gotten will now be delayed as a result of the indefinite shutdown.

The executive arm of govern-ment and the legislative arm have been at loggerheads for nearly two month over President Trump’s attempt to build a wall along the Mexican border.

ing to rent properties in an af-fordable way. Muster.ng does not charge users to create accounts, have a sharer’s contact card or list properties. However, in a bid to maintain the integrity and security of users on the platform, users can only communicate through the messaging feature on Muster.ng. We overwhelmingly advise users to keep the conversations on the platform and not share phone numbers or email address till they are “Mustered.” Muster.ng charges for initiating new conversations. There’s a 11% service fee that’s charged on the rent of every room on Muster. Seven percent of that fee is paid by the renter and 4% is paid by the host (room owner)”

How is Muster.ng different other online house hunting plat-forms you ask? Ibrahim Babalola puts it rightly:

“Muster.ng is tailored to a niche market. The reason why the prop-erties on those other platforms rarely get rented is that majority of them are unaffordable. Muster.ng

helps agents give property seekers the flexibility to split rent, thereby making the property more afford-able and closing the listing faster than on any of the other traditional property lettings platforms”

“A unique challenge for Muster.ng is the trust deficit in the Nation. The most frequently asked ques-tion that our 24-hour customer support team gets is, “I want to share but how secured will I be in the property with someone I meet on Muster.ng”. So whilst people are open to sharing, they want to be assured that they will have a good living experience.

“To address this, we get KYC documents from every sharer that creates an account on muster.ng and use that for background checks. We will also keep in contact with sharers to find out how they are getting on. In the unlikely event that a sharer wants to move out, all the person needs to do is put the property back up on muster.ng. Nonetheless, we also have tips on Muster.ng for what to look out for in choosing the perfect sharer”.

Since launch in July 2017, the company has facilitated over 600 rented rooms and people with rooms on Muster have earned over N100,000,000 in rental income.

Muster prioritised going live in Nigeria in H2:2017 over other African countries due to a larger addressable market (Nigeria is Af-rica’s most populous country) and has continued to make impressive strides, recording a week-on-week surge across measurable metrics.

In December, the Cross River State Ministry of Culture & Tour-ism announced Muster as the Official Accommodation Partner for the 2018 Calabar Carnival, enabling people in Cross River to earn money on the spare rooms in their houses.

Muster was founded on a belief in the possibility of a world with-out homelessness where every young person has access to af-fordable housing and “The plan is to do for African megacities, what AirBnB did for hospitality.”

The company is backed by local and US investors, with support from Amazon Web Services amongst oth-ers and has been featured on local and international media.


Nigerian students, business people...

Naira ends year strong helped by CBN, BDCs collaboration

Foreign exchange maintained stability as the local currency ended the year 2018 strong against the

US dollar, helped by the col-laboration between the Cen-tral Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Bureau De Change (BDC) operators.

Aminu Gwadabe, presi-dent, Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nige-ria (ABCON), who disclosed this to newsmen at the end of year briefing in Lagos, said both the apex bank and AB-CON worked together in the course of the year to achieve exchange rate stability, one of the agenda set by the CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, at the beginning of his tenure.

Gwadabe said the part-nership between both institu-tions would continue in the New Year to make the naira sovereign in the forex market.

“The strategic partnership

between the Central Bank and ABCON continued to make the naira sovereign in the foreign exchange mar-ket. The opening market rate N360/361 to dollar on the two-way quote has been sta-ble. This sustained stability made the Bureaux De Change (BDCs) to continue to be the potent monetary policy tool of CBN exchange rate man-agements,” he said.

According to Gwadabe, the market distortions by fo-rex speculators, rent seekers, currency hoarders and frivo-lous demand that usually en-dangered naira stability have been successfully checkmat-ed. He said it was no longer profitable to attack naira in the market.

The foreign exchange rates collected across dif-ferent markets and re-leased yesterday by ABCON showed that last year’s clos-ing rates in Lagos were buy-ing/selling rates for dollar stood at N358/359.5; Pounds

Aviation workers to go on strike over trade dispute

Following a long ranging trade dis-pute between the Nigeria Civil Avia-

tion Authority (NCAA) and two aviation unions comprising Air Transport Services Senior Staff As-sociation of Nigeria (ATSS-SAN) and National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), the unions have vowed to declare a state of emergency in the agency by January 2, if their demands for staff promotion are not met.

The unions disclosed their plans at the weekend in Lagos, claiming that the management of NCAA had taken them for granted with regards to the issues of pro-motion of NCAA staff.

Speaking on the issue, Lucky Izebhokun, chair-man, Joint Action Commit-

tee, NCAA, and chairman, NUATE, NCAA branch, made it clear that NCAA management would be look-ing for trouble if they do not promote the staff of NCAA by the end of this year.

Izebhokun, who said the anxiety was so high while a lot of people had been highly discouraged in the system, said there was the possibility that the ag-grieved workers would pour out their mind on January 2, 2019.

Izebhokun said, “Now the Management has so much relegated the staff of NCAA so much so that they will be employing, doing secondment and transfer of people from other organi-zations to come and boss us, we have had issues with people being transferred from NAMA especially, be-cause there is no promo-tion in NCAA, you will see

HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE Sterling, N452/N457 and Euro N404/N409.5, respec-tively.

In Port Harcourt, dollar buying/selling rates closed the year were at N359/361; Pounds Sterling, N457/N464 and Euro N405/N408, re-spectively.

In Abuja, dollar buying/selling rates closed last year at N359/360; Pounds Ster-ling, N464/N467 and Euro N407/N410 respectively. In Kano, dollar buying/selling rates for last year were at N359/360; Pounds Sterling, N465/N472and Euro N407/N411 respectively.

Gwadabe said that AB-CON last year created Nai-jabdcs.com, a live rate en-gine room created to provide uniform rate for all BDCs across the country.

The Naijabdcs App dis-plays live exchange rates for different currencies against the naira. “It was created by ABCON to bring about price discovery and transparency in

IFEOMA OKEKEIDRIS UMAR MOMOH, Benin

the foreign exchange market. The portal has the support of the CBN, commercial banks, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, Travelex, over 4,000 BDC operators among oth-ers,” he said.

He said the App can now be downloaded from the Google Play Store adding that being on the Google Play puts Niajabdcs.com in front of people using billions of ac-tive Android devices, in more than 190 countries and terri-tories around the world.

Gwadabe said the local currency stability has also been achieved in the official market, where the exchange rate closed the year at N307 to dollar despite huge campaign spendings by political parties.

He disclosed that both the CBN and ABCON have continually ensured that foreign exchange demands at the retail end of the mar-ket were met.

now bossing the people in NCAA, we have told Man-agement that we can no longer accept that.

“We wrote them and told that within the next three weeks if you do not give our people promotion, we are talking about promotion from level 14 to 15 and 16 that is senior management cadre, if you don’t promote them there will be serious issues.”

He said if the union fails to curtail this excesses for this senior cadre, it will start spiralling down to the lower cadre, and time may come when they will be no vacan-cy for levels 12 and 13.

On his own part, Ayo-dele Sofolayan, chairman, ATSSSAN NCAA branch, confirmed that the issue of staff promotion in NCAA is already generating a lot of anxiety and that the issue has been delayed for long.

Huge debt profile: MFB threatens debtors with EFCC

Worried by its huge debt pro-file, the man-agement of

Afemai Microfinance Bank (AFMB) Limited has threat-ened to drag customers to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Pius Akpaibor, chairman, board of directors of the fi-nancial institution, disclosed this at the 23rd annual gen-eral meeting of the bank that took place at his corporate headquarters at Uzuaire, Et-sako West Local Government Area of Edo State.

Akpaibor said about 16 high profile debtors of the bank were leaders and members of the communi-ty, and they owed the bank about N150 million.

According to Akpaibor, the huge debt profile is a

big challenge to the bank; Afemai MFB is one of the very few successful micro-finance banks in the coun-try, and, we are very proud to be able to establish such a microfinance bank in our community.

“We have made extra efforts to support the busi-nesses and the activities of people of Uzuaire origin or Afemai origin because we believe that this is their bank. But unfortunately, high profile members of our community that we have supported have failed to pay back this money. If they don’t have the means to pay one will appreciate but they have the means to pay and that is why we feel very bad.

“They are clear threats and dangers to our business operations. Your bank has exhausted the normal pro-

cedure for enforcing repay-ment to no avail, which has compelled, as a last resort, to take legal and other re-covery actions against these customers. These measures include recourse to EFCC as non- repayment of bank loans which is classified as economic sabotage,” he said.

Akpaibor further added that the management in compliance with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) direc-tive had set aside the sum of N150 million of its profit in the 2017 financial year to re-pay the debts.

He explained that the de-velopment has made it im-possible for the bank to pay dividend to shareholders.

He however, appealed to the debtors to do everything possible to repay loans so that the bank will have more fund to disburse to the cus-tomers.

Dangote Flour re-launches Semolina, wheatmeal products

Dangote Flour Mills in its desire to put tasty meals on the tables of Nigeri-

ans has rolled into the mar-ket two products, Dangote Semolina and whole wheat-meal. The unveiling of the two products took place in Kano and Ibadan.

Speaking at the unveil-ing of both products, execu-tive director, Dangote Flour Mills, Halima Aliko Dangote, said the new products come with ‘a taste to treasure’ as granules are better and forti-fied with micro granules for superior taste.

She stated that the two products have been forti-fied with micronutrients such as Vitamin A, Vitamin B, Niacin, Zinc, Iron, Folic acid and many more, which makes it beneficial to nutri-

Obasanjo urges Nigerians to learn from late Shagari’s forgiveness spirit, lifestyle

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has called on Nige-rians to imbibe the

good habits of forgiveness, simplicity and integrity of late former President Shehu Shagari.

He made the call on Mon-day when he condoled with the family of late President Shagari who died at the age of 93 on December 28, at the National Hospital Abuja.

Obasanjo, who arrived Shagari’s resident in Sokoto at about 9:50am and was re-ceived by Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, described the deceased as an epitome of integrity with deep commitment to Nigeria.

He recalled that they both served as Federal Com-missioners during Yakubu Gowon regime, noting that the deceased was honest and transparent.

“Late Shagari should not be mourned, but be cel-ebrated as a true, honest and sincere leader who was a na-tionalist to the core. Nigerians has lost a gem,” he said, say-ing, “Shagari is a true friend not fair weather friend, his life is embodiment of truths to celebrate. “If we learn lessons from his habits of forgiveness which he taught us, Nigeria will be a good country.”

Responding on behalf of the family, the late President eldest son, Bala Shagari ap-preciated Obasanjo for the visit and recalled that Oba-sanjo assisted his father to own a house in Abuja.

Meanwhile, the Emir of Jema’a in Kaduna State, Mu-hammadu Isa, and the Chief Medical Director Usmanu Danfodio University Teach-ing Hospital Sokoto, Anas Sabir, also condoled with the Shagari family on Monday.

tional health. Giving more insight into the features of the new products, she said, ‘Our Dangote Wheatmeal contains 100 per cent wheat for 100 per cent nourish-ment which gives it the ad-ditional benefit of being rich in fibre for easy digestion.”

Adding that delighting consumers remain the fo-cus of the flour miller, she said, “Everything we do starts with an understand-ing of the consumers and their desires. Here, we en-gage regularly with the con-sumers, users and potential adopters of our brands to understand and appreciate their points of view on prod-uct needs and aspirations. This openness has helped in getting good and invaluable feedback on product perfor-mance and improvements.”

L-R: Hassan Gbemisola, managing director, Fatgbems Group; Kabir Gbemisola, chairman; Yomi Kuku, executive director, Search and Groom, and Shamsudeen Gbemisola, executive director, Fatgbems Group, at the presentation of tropy to the winners of Fatgbems Group Football Competition in Lagos.

NEWS35Tuesday 01 January 2019 BUSINESS DAY www.businessday.ng www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng@businessDayNG

The role of security agencies on election day

Ordinarily, Nigeri-ans did not have to worry about the intimidating pres-ence of security

agencies during elections until the Ekiti and Osun state elec-tions were held in July 14 and September 22 (2018) respec-tively.

This calls for a re-examination of the role of security agencies as general elections approach next year. The heavy presence of se-curity personnel is synonymous with the era of military juntas in Nigeria.

However, the role of security personnel became a national concern after what Nigerians witnessed during Ekiti and Osun elections.

In advanced democracies elections are held almost with-out the presence of security personnel and the economy is

not shutdown. To the contrary, Nigeria still uses intimidating security presence and public holidays are being declared dur-ing elections. Admittedly, this notion emanated from years of military rule in Nigeria where it was almost seen as a norm for huge military presence during the junta’s era of unending tran-sition programmes.

As the 2019 elections draw closer, people are seriously pay-ing attention to the roles of the security personnel. The cases of Ekiti and Osun elections are always key reference points.

In Ekiti state, both All Pro-gressives Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) accused each other of using se-curity personnel to intimidate party members and supporters by giving undue advantage to the other party.

In Osun State, the heavy presence of the police was such that it called to question the priorities of the police force in Nigeria: instituted to fight crime or to monitor elections. According to reports, the Osun state election had in presence a Deputy Inspector-General of Police, eight Commissioners of Police and 40,000 person-nel. The Police hierarchy also dispatched two helicopters, 30 armoured personnel carriers and 300 patrol vehicles for the

Osun governorship election that was held September 22. These personnel included Police Mo-bile Force, Counter-Terrorism Unit ; the Special Protection Unit ; the Anti Bomb Squad; conventional policemen; the Armament Unit, personnel of the Federal Investigation and Intelligence Department, IGP Monitoring, IGP Intelligence Response teams, the sniffer dogs section and the mounted troop. All these apparatuses of coercion gave the impression that something was to go amiss during the election.

In a country like Nigeria where elections are still done with bitterness and with a ‘do or die’ mentality, election days could be violent. In this regard, one could join with the Indepen-dent National Electoral Commis-sion (INEC), which has insisted that it needs the presence of se-curity personnel for the safety of its staff and ballot materials, and general peaceful atmosphere around polling areas.

According to the electoral process, the presiding officer of a station is recognised as the chief security officer of his station. He/she is empowered to over-see the general security of the station. The security personnel are answerable to the presid-ing officer. Only him/her can request for the arrest of anyone

JOSEPH MAURICE OGU

deemed to be going against the electoral law. This means, even if security personnel are present, the presiding officer acts as their ‘commanding officer’.

According to a police docu-ment detailing the duties of the police during election days, made available to BusinessDay, police are to provide security of lives and properties, and maintain general peace at the polling stations during accredi-tation, counting and collation of results.

The security agents, particu-larly the Police, have critical roles to play to ensure smooth running of the 2019 elections. Having free, fair and credible elections largely depends on the roles of the police in the coming elections. The role of the police in championing the rule of law in the 2019 electoral process deter-mines the legitimacy of whoever emerges as the president and credibility of the police to the public.

Instead of allowing itself to be used as a tool to rig elections, the police has a duty to the Nigerian public to ensure that Nigerian votes count towards the direc-tion of the will of the people. Participating in electoral fraud to the advantage of a particular candidate, is a crime against democracy, which undermines the voice of the people.

Speaking at a public forum, the former Director General of Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Epiphany Azinge, a professor, said that the use of instruments of force to coerce people against their democratic preference is the worst crime against the rule of law.

Azinge said, “Another brazen affront to the concept of the rule of law is the ignoble role of law enforcement agencies to wit, police, state security services, the armed forces in the affairs of democratic norms and prin-ciples.

“Law enforcement agencies continue to be used as veritable tools for perpetration of elec-tion rigging in our polity. It is a notorious fact that has been on since independence. However, since 1999, it has now assumed a disturbing dimension. To use forces of coercion to undermine the wishes of the electorate in an election is simply the high-est form of debasement of the concept of Rule of Law”.

As we match towards 2019 general elections, the police and other security agencies should adhere strictly to the rules of engagement, which are to promote peace and security of the electorate, electoral officers and electoral materials, which generally promote free, fair and legitimate elections.

NEWS

Recycling, which is one of the many ways of disposing waste, has the potential to cre-

ate jobs, wealth and healthy environment, environmental activists say.

In Nigeria, waste manage-ment is still not effective due, largely, to inadequate invest-ment and lack of capacity. Again, at local, state and federal govern-ment levels, institutions that are specifically established for waste management are still lacking.

Unknown to many, wastes are a huge economic resource, es-pecially the plastic waste, which is scattered all over the place. This has a huge economic value and income potential. Accord-ing to Ola Oresanya, managing director, Globetech Remedial

Limited, “plastic collection in Lagos State as of 2015 was at 40 percent; 1kilogram of plastic flakes sells for N187; Lagos gen-erates about 1,048.7 tons daily and this has economic value of about N71.6 billion annually.”

Oresanya, who is a former managing director of Lagos State Waste management Agency (LAWMA), says waste manage-ment in Nigeria needs not just investment but also enlighten-ment and awareness creation.

This is exactly what Food and Beverage Recycling Alliance (FBRA) has been doing since its creation a couple of years ago. Adekunle Olusuyi, FBRA vice chairman, disclosed recently that the alliance has been inten-sifying awareness on separation of waste and environmental pollution, especially on post-consumer polyethylene tere-

phthalate (PET) bottles which can further be recycled to other useful products.

Olusuyi, who spoke at the two-day 12th National Stake-holders’ Forum of the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) in Abuja, explained that FBRA’s participation in the summit was in line with its com-mitment to the Extended Pro-ducer Responsibility (EPR) policy of government, to help build a sustainable healthy environment that leads to business growth.

“We are looking at the entire packaging lifecycle – from how bottles and cans are designed and made, to how they are re-cycled and repurposed. We want to reduce the waste we generate as much as possible, encourage recycling, and our initiatives in this regard has been well tailored

Healthy environment, job creation potential seen in waste recyclingCHUKA UROKO to achieving tangible results

along with our partners,” he said.The stakeholders’ forum,

which had the theme, ‘Circular Economy and Environmental Governance’, provided a plat-form for an in-depth discussion and array of issues focusing on the theme as well as critical factors in attaining sustainable development in the national development plan.

It also enabled stakeholders to highlight waste-to-wealth initiatives, review progress in the implementation of the EPR programme, strengthen policies and regulations to enable the recycling of food grade packag-ing waste materials by estab-lishing a national standards for recycled PET and determine how Producer Responsibility Organisations (PRO) can sup-port waste management for a

healthy environment, recycling roles, among others.

The FBRA vice chairman ex-plained further that in a circular economy, proper waste manage-ment, which involves different stages, leads to job and wealth creation along the value chain.

He pointed out that recent survey indicates that the volume of post-consumer PET waste was over 800,000 tons, requiring participation of all stakeholders at the different stages to drive a robust circular economy.

“The various roles in waste management start from waste separation, collection which our partner, RecyclePoints, takes care of, to separation, transportation, shredding at the recycling plants, production of other products and re-use. At these stages, different jobs are created, whether directly or indirectly,” Olusuyi said.

36 Tuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY @ ggwww.g

FINANCIAL TIMESFT World Business Newspaper


Stock market rout in 2018 leaves investors bruised and wary

Global stock mar-kets suffered the worst annual sell-off in 2018 since the financial crisis,

leaving investors bruised and braced for further volatility in the coming months.

The equity market rout of the past year has been stoked by concerns of a slowing global economy, tightening monetary policy, and a string of weak-er-than-expected corporate earnings in the US. Mounting geopolitical tensions, from the escalating trade war between the US and China to Brexit, have also rattled investors and weighed heavily on equities.

The widespread nervous sentiment has dragged the FTSE All World index down 12 per cent, representing its worst annual performance since the crisis of 2008.

Although most markets in Asia were closed on Monday, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up 1.3 per cent, the region has had a torrid year, with China faring the worst.

China’s CSI 300 index has lost about a quarter of its value after plunging into bear market territory in the first half of 2018, as the trade tension with the US took root. The fall marks China as the worst-performing equity market of the year. The sell-off comes despite a landmark move to include mainland-list-ed stocks — called A-shares — into the flagship MSCI Emerg-ing Markets index.

Elsewhere, sleepy trading conditions on the last trading day of the year on Monday delivered a small lift to mar-kets, but 2018 remains on track to be the worst year for the benchmark US, London and European indices since 2008.

Uncertainty over Britain’s exit from the EU has cast a cloud over sterling and the UK’s stock market, with the FTSE 100 finishing the year down more than 12 per cent. Europe has not been immune to the weak sentiment, with the Euro Stoxx 50 index lower by 15 per cent.

Investors are bracing for headwinds in 2019 from geopo-litical risks and tighter financial conditions as the US continues

Nervous sentiment after worst annual sell-off since 2008 financial crisisEmma DunklEy

to raise rates and as Europe ends its post-crisis monetary stimulus.

“For the first time in many years, markets are now pricing in pessimism instead of opti-mism,” said Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and invest-ment strategy at JPMorgan As-set Management.

The sell-off in Asia has been

particularly pronounced, in part because of the strong US dollar that has drawn money out of riskier emerging markets, and as investors take profits from a stellar run in 2017.

Fund managers at Schroders said that although “a tumultu-ous 2018 has left Asian equities significantly cheaper and pre-senting selective opportunities”,

investors must “tread carefully”.“Asian equities in aggregate

now trade close to the levels seen during the last period when regional markets experi-enced a downdraft in late 2015 and early 2016,” said Matthew Dobbs, an Asian equities fund manager at Schroders. “At this level, they are beginning to of-fer some value.”

Employees must cover own costs if they want to keep London connectionsCentral bank optimism about the global economy stands in contrast to investor outlook

Sam FlEming anD ChriS gilES laura noonan

Four big US banks have warned staff that commut-ing from London to Euro-

pean cities is “not a long-term option” after Brexit and that finan-cial support for travel and accom-modation costs will be withdrawn within months of their jobs being transferred.

International banks are plan-ning to move thousands of people from London to Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin and other locations in the first quarter of 2019 so they can continue to service EU clients after the UK leaves the bloc.

Daunted by the prospect of quitting London’s cultural and shopping attractions, many bank-ers, traders and executives had hoped they could keep their fami-lies in the UK capital and com-mute weekly to wherever their job was moved.

“It’s dawning on people that commuting isn’t a long-term option,” said one executive at a large US bank, adding that his col-leagues had been told they would only receive support to commute for a maximum of six months.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Bank of America — which are set to relocate up to several hundred staff each in the first phase of Brexit — all declined to comment.

The numbers moving are well

below the tens of thousands of jobs some had warned would be lost from the City, though banks are prepared to move more people later, depending on the terms of Brexit and clients’ reaction.

A person familiar with Mor-gan Stanley’s plans said the bank would offer “short-term support” for those who wanted to com-mute “but we want them to live in Frankfurt, Paris etc”. Staff would be able to commute for longer “if they’re paying for it”, he added.

A second person said the policy was aligned with EU regulators’ desire that the individuals in con-trol of large EU entities would be fully present in those countries.

Financial support for short-term commuters is intended to help people who do not want to move their children in the middle of the school year, or have other logistical reasons for not being able to move immediately.

At JPMorgan, these benefits, which include smoothing tax dif-ferences between two countries, and housing and travel, would typically be phased out six months after an employee transfers, two people familiar with the plans said.

Citi is taking a tougher line; one person with knowledge of the bank’s planning said there would be no commuting support

US banks to cut London-EU commuting support for staff after Brexit

The Federal Reserve versus the markets: who has it wrong?

The message sent by investors in stormy financial markets is clear: the global economic ex-

pansion could be in trouble. But the Federal Reserve remains optimistic, publishing strong growth forecasts for the US and plotting out more interest rate rises.

So are investors right to be wor-ried? World output growth for this year was projected at a healthy 3.7 per cent by the IMF in October, but the fund’s outgoing chief econo-mist Maurice Obstfeld acknowl-edged more recently that there is now “some air coming out of the balloon”.

Five advanced economies — Japan, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland — all experienced contractions in the third quarter of this year.

While the declines were spurred in part by one-off factors, includ-ing more stringent car emissions standards in Europe, together the economies affected represent a hefty 15 per cent of world gross domestic product, according to Oxford Economics.

Many economists expect stron-ger growth in the fourth quarter, but worries remain significant enough for Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, to speak of “downside risks” to the eurozone at this month’s monetary policy meeting.

Leading indicators have turned downwards, with the OECD this month noting “easing momentum”

across Europe, Canada and now the US.

Growth could be set to slow simultaneously in the US, China, Eu-rope and Japan next year compared with this year.

In the US, where the economy is on course for a 3 per cent expansion in 2018, corporate executives are getting nervous.

A total of 48.6 per cent of US chief financial officers surveyed by Duke University now believe the US will be in recession by the end of 2019, and 82 per cent think a recession will have started by the end of 2020.

Erik Nielsen, chief economist at Italy’s UniCredit bank, said he was picking up signs of anxiety in Europe as well, as global trade tensions damaged companies’ willingness to invest. “I worry more and more every day,” he said.

According to data compiled by UniCredit, global trade has slowed sharply, down to 2.25 per cent growth compared with a long-term average of 4.5 per cent.

Mr Nielsen is particularly con-cerned by the slowdown in China, where retail sales grew at the slowest pace in 15 years in November and factory output was the weakest in nearly three years.

A renewed escalation of the trade battles between the US and Beijing would do further damage to growth and investment in China and elsewhere.

The IMF estimates that, if all of the tariffs threatened to date were actually imposed, as much as three-quarters of 1 per cent of global GDP

would be lost by 2020.

“The uncertainties have re-duced investment pace,” said Lau-rence Boone, chief economist at the OECD. “This transition is also coming at a time of political risks in many countries and at a time when the normalisation of US monetary policy is starting to have more sig-nificant impact.”

Whether the declining confi-dence in markets accelerates, feed-ing into economic outcomes, will depend in part on how deftly central banks respond.

Stephen King, economic adviser to HSBC, noted that the Fed was “not great at delivering soft landings” in the US economy. “Things have a habit of going wrong, particularly when the economic cycle looks rela-tively mature,” he said.

The Fed has lifted rates nine times in three years, and is set on a balance sheet reduction programme that will contract its asset holdings by hundreds of billions of dollars next year.

This will combine with a waning US fiscal stimulus in the second half of next year. Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics expects the stimulus from US tax cuts and public spending in-creases to have evaporated entirely by 2020.

But US inflation is quiescent despite unemployment hovering at half-century lows, meaning that the Fed can afford to be patient with policy — and that is a message the central bank is likely to hammer home in the coming weeks.

China’s CSI 300 index has lost about a quarter of its value after plunging into bear market territory © AFP

37BUSINESS DAYTuesday 01 January 2019 www.businessday.ng https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng

NATIONAL NEWSFTTokyo court extends Carlos Ghosn’s detention again

Life continental beer ends year with a bang

US banks to cut London-EU commuting support...

The US Democrats preparing to wield power in the HouseNew committee chairs poised to have a big impact on Trump’s remaining time in office

Angela Merkel vows more German international ‘responsibility’Chancellor takes on Trump isolationism in New Year message with focus on co-operation

On January 3 Democrats will officially take control of the US House of Representa-

tives, giving them authority over the chamber’s committees and the power of subpoena — a new tool in their quest to take on Donald Trump.

The new Democratic committee chairs are likely to press the Trump administration on issues ranging from the personal behaviour of ad-ministration officials, to the actions of the president — both during his time in office and before. Ultimately, the Democratic-controlled House could have the power to impeach Mr Trump, a path many in the party would prefer not to take at the mo-ment, but one that exists within the realm of possibility.

Below are the three incom-ing Democratic House committee chairs who are likely to have the biggest impact on the White House and the president’s future in office.

A Democratic congressman representing Manhattan’s West Side, Jerrold Nadler has been a foe of the president’s since the 1980s and 1990s when the two locked horns over the then-property developer’s plans for multiple high-rise buildings in Mr Nadler’s congressional district. While Mr Trump prevailed back then, this time Mr Nadler has the upper hand. As the incoming chairman of the

Angela Merkel promised that Germany would “take on more responsibility” internationally

in 2019, after a year in which Donald Trump’s vocal demands that Berlin spend more on defence have badly strained US-German relations.

In her New Year’s address, the chancellor said, without mentioning Mr Trump by name, that old certain-ties on the importance of international co-operation had “come under pres-sure”.

“In such a situation, we must once again stand up, argue and fight for our convictions — more than we have in the past,” she said. “And we must — in our own interests — take on more responsibility.”

She said Germany would take up a temporary seat on the UN Security Council in 2019, and also increase its spending on humanitarian aid and defence.

In addition, the chancellor said

House Judiciary Committee, Mr Nadler, a 71-year-old trained lawyer and life-long politician, will have the power to launch impeachment proceedings against Mr Trump.

So far, Mr Nadler has given little hint over whether the committee is considering looking at impeachment articles, insisting that the discussion is premature. That could change, however, in the coming months. In the meantime, Mr Nadler has said he will focus on immigration — drill-ing down into the administration’s policy of separating families that arrive illegally in the US and taking a tough questioning line against Kirstjen Nielsen, the Department of Homeland Security secretary. Expect him to also keep a close eye on Robert Mueller’s special counsel investiga-tion, particularly with regards to the Justice Department and its new acting attorney-general, Matthew Whitaker.

A 67-year-old lawyer from Balti-more, Elijah Cummings has served in the House of Representatives for more than two decades as a member, and former chair, of the Congressional Black Caucus. In January, Mr Cum-mings will take over as chair of the House Oversight Committee.

In the run-up to his appointment, the longtime congressman has sent dozens of letters to government agen-cies, officials, as well as the Trump Organization, asking for more details on a number controversies that have dogged the administration.

Germany would fight to make the EU more robust and would also strive for a “close partnership” with the UK, even after it leaves the EU.

Germany emerged this year as Mr Trump’s favourite punch bag, fre-quently coming under attack over its large current account surplus with the US, its relatively low defence spend-ing and its support for a gas pipeline that Washington says will increase Europe’s dependence on Russian energy exports.

Germany, whose export success has been built on open borders and free trade, has also observed Mr Trump’s embrace of protectionist “America First” trade policies with increasing alarm.

But in her address, Ms Merkel stressed her continued commitment to the kind of multilateralism now scorned by the White House, saying only international co-operation could solve the global problems of climate change, migration and international terrorism.

“It’s in our own interests to resolve

Mr Cummings plans to investigate whether certain Trump administra-tion officials used government ser-vices and personnel for non-official business. He will also probe cabinet members’ travel spending habits; and whether any officials, including Mr Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, have used personal email accounts to conduct official business.

He also plans to look into the Trump Organization’s business deal-ings and how much business has come in from foreign governments to Trump hotels and properties since the president took office. Like Mr Nadler, Mr Cummings has been concerned about the family separation policy, and said he would demand further de-tails from government agencies about the remaining separated children.

For the past two years, Adam Schiff has railed against his Republican colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee, alleging that they had worked in co-ordination with the White House to prevent a real con-gressional investigation into Rus-sian interference in the presidential 2016 election and any possible links between Mr Trump and Moscow. In January, Mr Schiff will have the authority to drive the investigation, as the committee’s new chair.

It is a big moment for him. A 58-year-old Harvard-educated prosecutor, Mr Schiff has served in Congress since 2001, representing the California district just north of Los Angeles.

these issues and we can only do that when we take into account the inter-ests of others,” she said.

Ms Merkel acknowledged that 2018 had been an “extremely difficult year politically”. It had taken nearly six months to form a government, fol-lowing inconclusive elections to the Bundestag in 2017, and her “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats had been plagued by infighting. “We argued a lot and were too preoccupied with ourselves,” she said.

After a dismal performance by her conservative bloc in two regional elections in the autumn, Ms Merkel shocked the nation by announcing she was standing down as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, a party she has led for 18 years.

That triggered a succession race that pitted the CDU’s secretary-gen-eral Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a moderate who was widely seen as Ms Merkel’s favoured successor, against two conservatives, Friedrich Merz, an old rival of Ms Merkel, and Jens Spahn, the federal health minister.

Carlos Ghosn will spend at least 10 more days impris-oned and under interroga-

tion without the presence of his lawyers after a Tokyo court ap-proved a further extension of his detention.

The former Nissan chairman and current Renault chief execu-tive will now be detained until at least January 11, and could remain behind bars even longer if prosecu-tors re-arrest him a second time.

Monday’s extension, which was largely a routine decision by the court, was requested ahead of the January 1 deadline — which is a national holiday — by prosecutors who are investigating allegations of financial misconduct by Mr Ghosn.

The extension of Mr Ghosn’s detention came as Nissan has wid-ened its own internal investigation into his financial affairs. The probe, say people familiar with the details, is now examining Mr Ghosn’s dealings with business associ-ates in India, the Middle East and Latin America and could provide prosecutors with fresh lines of investigation in coming months.

Mr Ghosn was first arrested on November 19 over his alleged role in submitting financial statements that understated the true scale of his salary at Nissan — charges that have also been brought against Greg Kelly, Mr Ghosn’s close aide, and which the Japanese company itself will also face.

After more than 20 days in detention and a court ruling that his arrest on suspicion of violating securities law could not be extended further on the original charges, Mr Ghosn was re-arrested on new allegations of aggravated breach of trust. The back-to-back arrests and seem-ingly indefinite period of detention available to prosecutors have spot-lighted a tactic that, while standard practice in Japan, has attracted both domestic and international criticism.

Mr Kelly was released on bail on Christmas Day after five weeks in detention, and said in a statement that he believed he would be found innocent in court.

The breach of trust investiga-tion is looking at two strands of allegations: the transfer to Nissan of a derivatives contract struck between Mr Ghosn’s personal as-set management company and Shinsei Bank; and the background to a series of $14.7m in payments to Khaled al-Juffali, a prominent Saudi businessman, that were made after that person provided Mr Ghosn with letters of credit.

A person familiar with Mr Ghosn and his family said they did not be-lieve there was anything suspicious or incriminating about the alleged payments to Mr Juffali.

Mr Ghosn’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for com-ment but according to a person familiar with Mr Ghosn’s legal de-fence, he maintains his innocence on both the charges related to the understatement of pay and to the allegations of breach of trust.

Life Lager is ending the year with a bang following its suc-cessful yuletide festivities in

Owerri on the 28 December, after successfully hosting the “Bridge of Progress” party in Ekwulobia, Anambra state.

Headlining the Ekwulobia edition of the party was Life Beer ambassador, Phyno who thrilled the audience with his signature indigenous rap verses. Also per-forming on the night were the likes of Obiligbo Brothers, HiLife Fest King 2018, Dons Ifeanyi, and Indigenous upcoming acts.

Flavour was on ground to grace the stage at Owerri with less than 72 hours between both parties, consumers in the East are loving every bit of the non-stop enter-tainment being provided by Life beer.

Omotunde Adenusi, the portfo-lio manager, mainstream brands, Nigerian Breweries Plc, said since its emergence in the local market, Life Continental Beer has taken pride in being firmly rooted in the culture and tradition of the Igbo people. “We at Life Beer have had a very strong connection with our consumers in Anambra, Owerri and other parts of Eastern Nigeria. We wanted to celebrate the year’s end with our ever loyal consumers and also give them a taste of the things to expect from Life Beer in the New Year,” said Adenusi.

After an eventful year that has seen the beer brand engage in two remarkable initiatives; the HiLife fest and Life Progress booster, Life Continental appears to be pulling no stops in giving its consumers an exciting festive season celebration.

After the party in Owerri, Life will also be sponsoring the Flavour of Africa concert as the beer brand seeks to end the year in style. “Bridge of Progress” party, Ow-erri edition, was held at Shoprite, featuring acts like HiLife Fest King 2017, Chibest David and others.

Life Continental Lager Beer is the fine quality lager beer from the stables of Nigerian Breweries Plc., made from the choicest grains, hops and the purest of waters.

Former Nissan chairman to remain in jail until at least January 11

Leo Lewis

Courtney weaver

Guy Chazan

for the 63 people who are due to move in the first quarter, though they would receive the standard relocation package to cover the cost of moving their belongings and setting up home.

At Goldman, executives want staff who are moving to under-stand that once they go “they’re gone for good” and not on a tem-porary or commuter assignment, one person familiar with the plans said. To that end, commuter sup-ports would be limited. A second person said Goldman’s plans were still “in flux”.

A person familiar with Bank of America’s plans said the bank had not decided to discourage com-muting. BofA has already moved 100 staff from London to Dublin for its main EU banking entity. It is also moving traders to Paris.


From left, Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler and Elijah Cummings are likely to press the Trump administration on a range of issues © Reuters/Getty

38 tuesday 01 January 2019BUSINESS DAY www.businessday.ng https://www.facebook.com/businessdayng @Businessdayng


NEWS YOU CAN TRUST I TUESDAY 01 JANUARY 2019BUSINESS DAY

Continues online: @www.businessday.ng

INSIGHT/INNOVATION

Should we be happy about 2018?

As 2018 closed its curtains and 2019 opened what we hope will be new beginnings in many ways, it is typical for people to look at the events of 2018

and ask if there is reason to be happy. We ask ourselves if 2018 was a good year! As a nation it also behooves us to do the same and this is my own little contribution to that process.

On the 2nd of December 2018 I read an article published by the Vanguard Newspapers written by Clifford Ndujihe titled ‘’Nigeria’s killing fields’’ where the author tried to track the number of reported deaths caused by Boko Haram insurgency, herdsmen and farmers’ clashes, cult clashes, sectarian and communal clashes, kidnapping, ritual killings, and armed robbery and the toll came to 6,562 deaths in 11 months ( January to November 2018). Should

this shows that cost of living has grown higher month on month in 2018. Should we be happy?

Quartz Africa produced a report that shows that in 2016 about 1500 Nigerians sought asy-lum in Canada based on alleged persecution. By the end of 2017 this number has increased to over 5000. Interestingly, around 60% of Ni-gerians seeking asylum claimed to be bisexual and persecuted on the basis of their sexual orientation. By 2018, the Canadian Govern-ment is working on how to reduce the number of Nigerian illegal immigrants into Canada. Canada believes that most of them get US visa and then head to Quebec through a forest trail from New York. Should we be happy?

we be happy?I read a report published by The World

Poverty Clock as at June 2018 that shows Ni-geria has overtaken India as the country with the most extreme poor people in the world. India has a population seven times larger than Nigeria’s but has 71 million people living in ex-treme poverty. Nigeria according to this report now has 86.9 Million people living in extreme poverty. Should we be happy?

The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics shows that our unemployment data (whether by new en-trants in the job marketor existing unemployed persons) headed south in 2018. The country’s unemployment rate worsened in the third quarter of 2018 (Q3,2018), rising from 18.8 per cent in Q3 2017 to 23.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2018. Should we be happy?

2018 brought news of a fair number of suicides. Some reports state that as at June 2018 there were 80 suicides for the 12 months preceding. World Health Organization has placed Nigeria as 15th highest suicide rate in the world. Should we be happy?

Displaced population tracked by DTM in Nigeria shows that 1,702,680 were displaced as of December 2017. The same Displaced population tracked as at October 2018 shows that the figure is now 2,026,602. This means in 10 months Nigerian displaced population increased by 323922 – approximately 32,000 per month. Should we be happy?

According to TradingEconomic.com, the Nigerian Consumer Price Index (CPI) moved from 246.4 in January 2018 to 272.6 Index Points as at November 2018. In Nigeria, the Consumer Price Index or CPI measures chang-es in the prices paid by consumers for a basket of goods and services on a periodic basis. So,

Published by BusinessDAY Media Ltd., The Brook, 6 Point Road, GRA, Apapa, Lagos. Advert Hotline: 08034743892. Subscriptions 01-2950687, 07045792677. Newsroom: 08169609331Editor: Anthony Osae-Brown. All correspondence to BusinessDAY Media Ltd., Box 1002, Festac Lagos. ISSN 1595 - 8590.

Despite all that has been said, in our typical resilience and happy go lucky nature, Nigeri-ans look forward to 2019 with new hope and renewed vigour. As a people who never give up and as a deeply religious people we always look to God in faith that tomorrow will be better. Nigerians often say that God loves Nigeria and we believe it firmly. It is not all dark and gloomy and some good things happened in Nigeria in year 2018 that should help to renew our hope. One of them and perhaps the most important is the civic consciousness that as enveloped Ni-gerians in 2018. People are now more than ever interested in the 2019 elections. How do I know this? We currently have 84,271,832 Nigerians registered to cast their votes in the upcoming 2019 general elections. This is 14,551,482 more registered voters from the total of 67,422,005 in 2015. In 2015 there were 14 Presidential candi-dates, in 2018 October INEC announced that 79 Presidential candidates filed their papers for the 2019 elections. In my view, 79 Presidential candidates shows the audacity of hope that Nigerians are known for. Interestingly, some of the candidates are in their 30’s and 40’s, and that increases the audacity.

Whilst I wish us all a happy new year, I must say that 2019 is a defining moment for Nigeri-aand the pen is actually held by the 84,271,832 Nigerians who hold their voters card. These citi-zens are the ones ready to write or rewrite our history as a country. I urge everyone to come out and vote – voting is a very simple process that has far reaching consequences. Voting is not optional, it is a civic responsibility. Many things in life you cannot control, however the voting system allows you to control who rules and governs you for the next 4 years. I urge you not to take this responsibility lightly!

UCHE UWALEKE

Uche Uwaleke of Nasarawa State Uni-versity Keffi is Nigeria’s first Professor of Capital Market and the President of the

Association of Capital Market Academics of Nigeria

Whilst I wish us all a happy new year, I must say that 2019 is a defining mo-ment for Nigeria and the pen is actually held by the 84,271,832 Nigerians who hold their voters card. These citizens are the ones ready to write or rewrite our history as a country. I urge everyone to come out and vote

‘

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Regarding the 2019 budget proposals recently presented by President Muham-madu Buhari to a joint session of the Na-tional Assembly, a major concern stems

from the fact that it is already running behind schedule. Given the preoccupation of the Law-makers with political activities, it is unlikely that the proposals will receive urgent attention despite the President’s plea to members of the National Assembly to ‘’commit to an early passage of this budget in the larger interest of our people and the national economy’’. This would not be the first time. Tabling the 2018 budget proposals to a joint session of the National Assembly on 7th November 2017, the President had also appealed for a swift passage of the Appropriation Bill. Unfortunately, it was not passed until 16th May 2018, seven months after it was submitted for legislative review.

In recent times, the performance of the capital component of annual budgets has been severely constrained due to several factors ranging from shortfall in expected revenue to cumbersome procurement process. These challenges were ag-gravated by late passage of Appropriation Bills into law. The negative effect of late passage of the 2019 budget will, like the previous budget cycles, mani-

2019 budget: concerns, nuts and boltsfest in sub-optimal implementation of the capital component. For instance, by the President’s own admission, capital releases with respect to the 2018 budget only commenced after the signing of the 2018 budget on 20th June 2018 and ‘’of the total appropriation of N9.12 trillion, only N4.59 trillion had been spent by 30th September 2018 against the prorated expenditure target of N6.84 trillion’’. This adverse variance fell more on capi-tal spending in view of the fact that debt service and the implementation of non-debt recurrent expenditure notably payment of workers’ salaries and pensions were largely met. It is not an accident that annual budget performances were a lot bet-ter when the country ran a predictable January to December financial year. Much as the federal gov-ernment’s budget represents less than 10 per cent of aggregate expenditures in the economy, it has a very significant accelerator effect on the financial plans of sub-national governments including the private sector. It goes without saying therefore that the present slow pace of economic growth is due, in part, to avoidable delays in the budget process.

Besides the concern which the delayed budget process raises, there are equally other weighty issues. The 2019 budget is predicated on a bench-mark oil price of US$60 per barrel, oil production estimate of 2.3 million barrels per day and an exchange rate of N305 to one US dollar. Based on these assumptions, total revenue of N6.97 trillion is projected to fund aggregate expenditure of N8.83 trillion. The oil price benchmark, seen as too optimistic, is a source of worry. The President had justified this by stating that ‘’notwithstanding the recent softening in international oil prices, the considered view of most reputable analysts is that the downward trend in oil prices in recent months is not necessarily reflective of the outlook for 2019’’. It will be recalled however, that the sudden col-lapse of oil price in 2014 caught many reputable energy analysts gaping. Therefore, it is important to approach the oil revenue projection with cau-tion bearing in mind that the international crude oil market is highly volatile. As a corollary, the 2019 budget appears to lean more on oil revenue projected at N3.73 trillion than non-oil revenue es-timated at N1.39 trillion. This leaves the economy vulnerable to external shocks and poses a major budget risk.

Further, there is the concern that the 2019 budget will most likely witness a high level of off-budget funds masking the true picture of government fiscal position. Although recurrent (non-debt) spending of N4.72 trillion has made provision for the implementation of a new mini-mum wage, it is doubtful if this amount will be suf-ficient to accommodate the attendant bail-outs to state governments by the federal government in support of the implementation of not only the new national wage floor but also agreements with vari-ous labour unions including those of Universities and Polytechnics given the paltry balance in the Excess Crude account. Not a few also think that the conduct of the general elections in 2019 and the oil subsidy regime (in respect of which US$1 billion has been earmarked as under-recovery by the NNPC) represent a source of off-budget spending in 2019. These potential off budget funds will undermine government’s plan to ‘’pro-

gressively reduce deficit and borrowings over the medium term”. For the 2019 budget not to run into a major hitch, it is important that, as much as pos-sible, all claims on public financial resources are identified and reconciled within the framework of the budget possibly incorporating tax proposals to fund such claims in the event that the oil revenue projections do not materialize. It should equally entail obtaining approvals for the plan to borrow N1.649 trillion for the purpose of financing the budget deficit. This is vital in the light of the 2018 budget experience where the implementation of the capital component of the budget did not com-mence nearly two months after the signing of the Appropriation Bill by the President chiefly because the government’s borrowing plan did not receive timely approval by the National Assembly.

The budget breakdown is meant to provide the nuts and bolts that will facilitate budget im-plementation and control. With respect to capital spending, the breakdown lists some projects as ‘’ongoing’’ but fails to state the completion targets expected in 2019. For example, under ‘Transport’, it says N80.22 billion counterpart funding has been provisioned for railway projects including ‘’Lagos-Kano (ongoing), Calabar-Lagos (ongoing), Ajaokuta-Itakpe-Aladja (Warri) (ongoing)’’ while N13 billion has been earmarked for construction of second run-way at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja.

To see the shortcomings in this presentation, these same projects also featured in the 2018 budget breakdown where a provision of N162 billion counterpart funding was made. Even the PortHarcourt-Maiduguri railway listed as a ‘new’ project in 2018 budget is also appearing as ‘new’ in the 2019 budget. This sort of narrative does not allow for a correct assessment of progress made in the execution of these projects. The same pres-entation flaw is observed with respect to projects listed under ‘works’ in the 2019 budget where about N280 billion is meant for the construction and rehabilitation of roads including counterpart funding for the dualization of Makurdi-Enugu road, Akwanga–Jos-Bauchi-Gombe road among others.

AYULI JEMIDE Ayuli Jemide is Founder and Lead Partner of

Detail Commercial Solicitors. An entrepre-neur, public speaker and writer.

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @JemideAyuli

PROPHYLAXIS

To see the shortcomings in this presentation, these same pro-jects also featured in the 2018 budget breakdown where a provision of N162 billion coun-terpart funding was made. Even the PortHarcourt-Maiduguri railway listed as a ‘new’ project in 2018 budget is also appearing as ‘new’ in the 2019 budget

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Buhari has a history of smuggling in looted funds – Atiku

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