Sunday Mba scores the winning Goal to make Nigeria Champions of Africa!

Super Eagles of Nigeria finally emerged as Champions of Africa.

Praise God!

The Burkinabes have come of age in African football.

FG to arraign Lawan over $620,000 bribe this week.

The Federal Government will this week begin the prosecution of the suspended Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Education, Hon. Farouk Lawan, over the $620,000 bribe-for-clearance deal involving him and business mogul, Mr. Femi Otedola.
Lawan’s arraignment and subsequent trial will be effected under Section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Act 2000.
Indications to this effect was given at the weekend by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN).
Responding, however, to enquiries from journalists on the implication of a letter, written by a lawyer, Mr. Festus Keyamo, threatening to commence private prosecution of the embattled lawmaker, the AGF through his lawyer, Chief Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN), said: “I will not react to the matter.”

Is this another drama-rama? When will this episode end?

Nigeria to remodel 11 more airports in 2013

Nigeria has revealed plans to commission the remodelling of 11 airports in 2013
The 11 airports form a second set of airports that have been scheduled for remodelling seperate from the 11 airports that have recently been undergoing remodelling.
The country has a total of 22 airports, including four international airports, a state-owned airport located in Akwa Ibom state, and several airstrips and airfields spread across the country.
The minister of aviation, Stella Odua, revealed the remodelling plan for the second set of airports recently, stating that the work would be started as soon as the first set of airports are ready and functioning.
Odua said, “The second set of designated airports would receive government attention as soon as the first set of 11 airports, currently undergoing remodelling, are completed and commissioned by the end of the first quarter of 2013.”

Suicide bombers attack MTN, Airtel offices

Two suicide car bombers attacked the offices of mobile phone operators India's Airtel and South Africa's MTN on Saturday in Kano, killing themselves but no civilians, police said.

Kaduna: Race for deputy gov’s position heats up !

Nigeria is 7th biggest money laundering nation - Report

Barely one week after Transparency International corruption perception index placed Nigeria 135th out of 176 corrupt countries, the country has again placed seventh out of the 20 biggest exporters of illicit financial flows over a decade, with cumulative figure of $129 billion and an average of $12.9 billion, according to a new study by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based research and advocacy organisation.

The report also revealed the 20 top exporters of illegal capital in 2010, with Nigeria occupying the same position with $19.66 billion. The report, covering 2001 to 2010 and co-authored by GFI Lead Economist Dev Kar and GFI Economist Sarah Freitas, is due to be submitted next week.

The report, the first by GFI to incorporate a new, more conservative estimate of illicit financial flows facilitating comparisons with previous estimates from GFI updates, identifies crime, corruption and tax evasion at near historic highs with nearly $6 trillion stolen from poor countries within the decade and $859 billion in 2010.

China is leading the pack with $274 billion average ($2.74 trillion cumulative); followed by Mexico with $47.6 billion avg. ($476 billion cum.); Malaysia, $28.5 billion avg. ($285 billion cum.); Saudi Arabia, $21.0 billion avg. ($210 billion cum.); Russia, $15.2 billion avg. ($152 billion cum.); and Philippines, $13.8 billion avg. ($138 billion cum.).

Raymond Baker, GFI director, said the development was capable of further impoverishing the developing countries, while observing that it was a call for leaders to halt the trend.

“Astronomical sums of dirty money continue to flow out of the developing world and into offshore tax havens and developed country banks. Regardless of the methodology, it’s clear: developing economies are haemorrhaging more and more money at a time when rich and poor nations alike are struggling to spur economic growth. This report should be a wake-up call to world leaders that more must be done to address these harmful outflows,” Baker said.

Giving insight into the report, Kar said, “The estimates provided by either methodology are still likely to be extremely conservative as they do not include trade mispricing in services, same-invoice trade mispricing, hawala transactions, and dealings conducted in bulk cash. This means that much of the proceeds of drug trafficking, human smuggling, and other criminal activities, which are often settled in cash, are not included in these estimates.”

The report noted that crime, corruption, and tax evasion cost the developing world $858.8 billion in 2010, just below the all-time high of $871.3 billion set in 2008 – the year preceding the global financial crisis.

“As developing countries begin to loosen capital controls, the possibility exists that the methodology utilised in previous GFI reports – known as the World Bank Residual Plus Trade Mispricing method – could increasingly pick up some licit capital flows. The methodology introduced in this report – the Hot Money Narrow Plus Trade Mispricing method – ensures that all flow estimates are strictly illicit moving forward, but may omit some illicit financial flows detected in the previous methodology,” said the report.

The $858.8 billion of illicit outflows lost in 2010, according to the report, is a significant uptick from 2009, which saw developing countries lose $776.0 billion under the new methodology. “This has very big consequences for developing economies. Poor countries lost nearly a trillion dollars that could have been used to invest in healthcare, education, and infrastructure. It’s nearly a trillion dollars that could have been used to pull people out of poverty and save lives,” said Freitas.

The authors of the report advocated “that world leaders increase the transparency in the international financial system as a means to curtail the illicit flow of money.”

They also called for addressing the problems posed by “anonymous shell companies, foundations, and trusts by requiring confirmation of beneficial ownership in all banking and securities accounts and demanding that information on the true, human owner of all corporations, trusts and foundations be disclosed upon formation and be available to law enforcement; reforming customs and trade protocols to detect and curtail trade mispricing and requiring the country-by-country reporting of sales, profits and taxes paid by multinational corporations.”

Other solutions suggested include “requiring the automatic, cross-border exchange of tax information on personal and business accounts and harmonising predicate offences under anti-money laundering laws across all Financial Action Task Force cooperating countries, while ensuring that the existing anti-money laundering regulations are strongly enforced.”

Source: BusinessDay

ICT contributes 5.7% to GDP in Q3 2012 – Minister

Omobola Johnson, the Minister of Communication Technology, says the ICT sector contributed about 5.7 per cent to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the third quarter of 2012.
Johnson made this known at a Forum on Emerging Leaders and the State of the Nation at the 18th Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja on Wednesday.

She said the sector was the fourth largest contributor to GDP in the third quarter of 2012 and was growing at about 29 per cent, faster than any other sector of the economy.
It will be recalled that the sector contributed 5.46 per cent to GDP in 2010 and 2011, making it the fastest growing sector of the economy.
Official statistics attributed the growth to mobile network operators,device sales and distribution; value added services, equipment sales and distribution as well as software sales and distribution.
Johnson expressed delight that young persons in Nigeria were driving innovation and creating businesses in the sector.
She said that the ICT sector was the next most prominent after the agricultural sector out of the 1,500 awardees of the Federal Government’s YOUWIN programme.
She said the ICT sector accounted for 11 per cent of the grants issued to emerging entrepreneurs under the YOUWIN programme.
According to her, many young Nigerians have realised that the sector provides one of the best opportunities to become an entrepreneur and make money.
``Skills are much easier to acquire by young people and it does not require huge capital, compared with other businesses.
``India is an example where ICT employs 2.5 million professionals and contributes 6.4 per of GDP, which is about 100 billion dollars for India’’, she said.
According to the minister, Nigeria and India share so many similarities in terms of demography, GDP per capita, human development index and poverty rate.
She, however, noted that India had been able to develop a very strong global world class ICT sector in spite all these challenges.
``We can also do this in Nigeria despite all the challenges we have,’’ she said.
In recognition of the need to grow the sector, the minister said the Federal Government was promoting an incentive and support scheme targeted at youth’s entrepreneurship in the ICT sector.
Johnson said the government had also worked assiduously to quicken the availability of broadband in the last 12 months.
She announced that the ministry would launch IT Incubation Centres in Lagos and Calabar to create an infrastructure-rich environment that would enable ICT entrepreneurs to thrive.
``The ICT entrepreneurs will bring their ideas to these incubation centres and would have people that will mentor them through the process in addition to providing them with the infrastructure they need.’’
Johnson also announced that government would soon launch an ICT Innovation Fund that would raise about 20 million dollars for ICT entrepreneurs.
The minister said the fund would be launched early in 2013.
She said the ministry was also collaborating with the banking and oil and gas industries to launch its software development initiative, Techlaunch Pad.
She said that the initiative, which would be launched on Monday, would give software developers opportunities in more established businesses and industries.

Source: BusinessDay

Nigeria tops Africa’s FDI with $8.9bn!

Wow! Nigeria has become the leading investment destination in Africa, recording a foreign direct investment(FDI) of $8.9billion in 2011.The Minister of Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, revealed this at the ongoing FBN Capital Conference which kicked off Thursday in Lagos. The $8.9 billion represents 16 percent of Africa’s total FDI of $55 billion in 2011. Read more.

What is FDI?
It is an investment made by a company or entity based in one country, into a company or entity based in another country.(Investopedia)

Now, doesn't it baffle you that Nigerians are still travelling out and seeking 'greener pastures' abroad!

The Data War Gets Hotter in Naija!

Visafone and RIM launch CDMA-enabled Blackberry smartphones in Nigeria

The competition in the data market seems to have taken another interesting turn this season as Visafone has taken a bold step to partner with RIM(Research in Motion) maker of Blackberry, to provide Blackberry services on its Code Division Multiple Access(CDMA) mobile network. Hence, Visafone is set to compete with the likes of MTN, Etisalat, Glo etc.in this data market.
The interesting thing about this move is that Visafone initiative seeks to keep the CDMA technology alive in the Nigerian mobile market as most CDMA operators have not been doing so well in this market space.
Read more here.

What dynamics do we expect in the Nigerian mobile market  with this game-changing move by Visafone?

Please post your comments.

Thank you.