The Nation Newspaper

Category: Business

  • Group condemns Plateau over workers’ strike

    Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR) has condemned Governor Jonah Jang’s alleged refusal to pay Plateau workers the N18,000 minimum wage structure, which has forced workers to embark on indefinite strike.

    In a statement signed by the Publicity Secretary, Chinedu Bosah, the body said it is illegal for any government to refuse to implement the N18,000 minimum Wage since it has been passed into law.

    It stated that the government should rather be working towards a new minimum wage that takes care of the rising inflation trend.

    “Plateau State Government claimed it has no capacity to pay the N18,000 due to unavailability of funds. This has been the sing-song of many of the state governments who daily engage in waste of public resources and outright looting of public treasury.

    “Is it not contradictory for the same Jang to be constructing another government house/palace costing more than N4 billion whereas a paltry N18,000 minimum wage structure cannot be paid to workers.

    “Besides, the same government is paying idle top political office unjustified huge salaries and allowances while workers do not deserve what is obviously a poverty wage. “

    CDWR, therefore, demands that the state government open its books to the public and to be scrutinised by an elected committee of workers to ascertain how the state’s funds have been utilised and the true state of accounts.

    “We demand that Jonah Jang-led administration pay all backlog of salaries still owed to workers on the N18,000 minimum wage structure and to work out a basis for periodic increment in line with the rate of inflation. We reject and urge workers to stoutly oppose any plans by government to downsize,rightsize or retrench the workforce as a basis to pay the new wage.

    “We also call the trade union leaders to engage workers in more mass actions as a means of sustaining the ongoing strike. CDWR has always urged the trade union movement not to believe for a moment that state governments would comply with the Minimum Wage Act without struggle and not to rely on trade union diplomacy alone as a means to bringing about the full implementation of the Wage Act.

    It warned that it will require the continuous mass struggle of workers to force the state governments to implement the minimum wage act and to get more concessions from the government.

    “Fundamentally, every government that subscribes to neo-liberal capitalist policies, which only guarantee the privilege and profit of a few at the expense of the working masses will do everything to undermine workers’ welfare. It is fool hardy to expect that anti-poor political parties and politicians can guarantee workers interest. Hence, it is high time workers and the organised labour movement began the building of a new mass working class political party armed with socialist policies of creating jobs, payment of living wage and sustained infrastructural development under working class democratic control and management,” it urged

     

     

     

  • 19 US states reject new health insurance market

    Nineteen states have turned down the Obama administration’s invitation to run the new health insurance markets that will begin serving millions of uninsured Americans less than a year from now. That puts a huge task on the feds, a defining challenge for President Barack Obama’s second term.

    Friday is decision day for states to notify Washington if they will set up their own insurance exchanges under the federal health care law. Monitoring by The Associated Press finds a divided nation moving ahead, despite the misgivings of some state officials. Half the states now say they will participate in some way.

    Still, drafters of the law did not anticipate that so many states would remain on the sidelines at this late stage. Federal control of the new state markets where individuals, families and small businesses will shop for taxpayer-subsidised private coverage was seen as a failsafe, not the standard for nearly half the country. Critics predict delays.

    All of the states refusing are led by Republicans.

    On the other side of the ledger, 17 states and Washington, D.C., say they want to set up and run their own markets. The administration has already started granting approvals. Eight other states have indicated they want to pursue a partnership with Washington, and more may do so. Only six remain undecided.

    Exchanges are the gateway to the new health care law for individuals and families who buy their own health insurance, as well as for small businesses.

    Currently, it’s hard to tell what’s a good plan or a fair price. You can get turned down if you have a medical problem, charged more if you are older or a woman. The health care law forbids insurers from turning away the sick, limits what they can charge older people and bans gender-based surcharges. It also requires virtually all Americans to get coverage or face fines.

    Exchanges are supposed to make picking health insurance like buying an airline ticket from an online travel site like Orbitz or Expedia.

    There will be a website, and you’ll be able to put in your ZIP code and get a list of available health plans. There will be a section where you can find out if you qualify for subsidies, or for Medicaid. There will be cost calculators to allow you to compare different levels of coverage: platinum, gold, silver and bronze. There will be tools that allow you to see if your doctor or hospital is with a particular plan.

    Middle-class consumers will be able to find out if they are eligible for government help with their premiums for private insurance. Initially, nearly nine of every 10 taking part will get assistance.

    Low-income people can use the exchanges to find out whether they are eligible for expanded Medicaid coverage under the law. In addition to deciding how to implement exchanges, states must also decide whether to accept the Medicaid expansion. There’s no deadline set for that decision, and most are still weighing options.

    Open enrolment for exchange plans starts next October 1, and coverage begins January 1, 2014. Initially about 10 million people are expected to sign up, growing rapidly thereafter. California, New York and Kentucky are among the states that have opted to create their own exchanges. Among those passing are Texas, Georgia and Kansas. Partnership states include Illinois and West Virginia.

    Republican governors rejecting state exchanges have cited a variety of reasons. Some say the administration has not provided enough information. Others say there’s too much federal regulation. Most have concerns about costs. But some Republican leaders have broken ranks, including governors in Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico, and the insurance commissioner in Mississippi.

    In announcing his support for a state exchange this week, Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter said, “it would be irresponsible of me to simply abandon the field to federal bureaucrats. In the face of uncertainty we must assert our independence and our commitment to self-determination, while fulfilling our responsibility to the rule of law.”

    Indeed, exchanges have a Republican pedigree. The idea was pioneered in Massachusetts under then-Governor Mitt Romney’s health care overhaul.

    “All this is full of irony,” said consultant Jon Kingsdale, who founded the Massachusetts exchange for Romney. “If you had asked many of those (Republican) governors four years ago before this got politicized, it would have been a no-brainer: `We want the states to do it.’”

    The health care law increased the power of the federal government, but states that run their own exchanges retain important roles overseeing insurance plans, addressing consumer issues and coordinating between the new marketplace and their Medicaid plans. That last item may be the most important, since Medicaid is a major component of state budgets.

     

  • Pension assets available to finance infrastructure

    Pension assets available to finance infrastructure

    As he prepares to exit PENCOM, the Director-General Muhammad Kabir Ahmad spoke to a select group of journalists including Nduka Chiejina (Assistant Editor) on the PenCom scheme. He said it is an improvement on the previous one and is designed to encourage savings. Excerpts

     

    After eight years of the contributorypension scheme administration inNigeria, what are the prospects and challenges?

    Basically, we started an industry that never existed. There are three issues that we need to focus on. One, we had a pension reform that had intended to establish a scheme that is fully funded and to be privately managed in a more efficient manner. A scheme that was also to replace other old schemes, particularly at the federal level so that we can have a more transparent scheme. The reform also provided that it should be managed by regulated entities, but beyond that, should be regulated and supervised by the government agency called the National Pension Commission.

    Today, we have the National Pension Commission, some of us have been associated with the scheme from the beginning and, hopefully, by the end of December, we are exiting and new people would take over from us.

    We have a regulatory and supervising institution that is charged with regulating and supervising pension activities, whether at the state, federal or in the private sector. Pension assets have been accumulated over a period of time. We do have an industry and quite a few states have also complied with that.

    We have also been able to license and regulate operators, like asset managers and custodian. In a nutshell, these are the things that we have been able to do.

    Have there been challenges?

    There are challenges. As an industry and precisely as a regulator, we decided to focus on educating and enlightening Nigerians to secure their acceptance of the scheme, because if they buy-in, you will have a voluntary compliance. They know what you are doing, they know the benefit and so they will voluntarily comply.

    The next issue is compliance. Private sector compliance. Do they get their employees registered? Are they contributing? For the formal sector, majority are complying, either they have got their staff registered and are paying regularly, or at least their staff are registered and the payments are not regular.

    But the bulk of employers are actually in the informal sector, given the fact that we are looking at employment of five people. Now, how do you capture that group? Historically, an economy like Nigeria’s managing the informal sector is the most challenging, whether you are looking at a tax issue or compliance issue.

    The reason is that you don’t have a structure as per what the informal sector is all about. Businesses are not properly registered. Today, you cannot go to any agency or office in this country where you can pick a list of active registered businesses or employers of labour.

    Recently, SMEDAN and I think the National Bureau of Statistics did some survey on employers that employee three to five workers and hey came to a figure of about 14 million and if you multiply it by three that gives you a rough situation of what the employment situation is. The challenge is how do you get the data and how do you structure issue of getting the benefits paid.

    What is the way out?

    We needed to have a separate structure of how payment of pension could be done and how PFAs can go and get money. We are developing a regulation on regulatory framework for the informal sector where we believe the bulk of our employees are. We also want to link it up with an important elements of pension reform that has not been implemented, that is the mini pension guarantee.

    How?

    The intention of the mini-pension guarantee is to encourage saving. We are still working on the structure and we hope it will be incentive for people to save. If I started saving, let’s say N100 every month and at the end of 20 years, my pension is not up to N18,000, then the government would have to pay the difference so that I can have something to fall on.

    The third issue has to do with the states. The states are supposed to establish their own pension schemes. Lagos is the flagship; they have a very effective contributory pension scheme. We have about 21 states that are in different stages of compliance, but unfortunately, the compliance is a bit slow and haphazard.

    The old scheme is under probe because of corruption. People are scared that the new scheme may go the old way. What are the striking differences between the old and the new scheme, and what have you put in place to ensure that the new scheme does not go the old way?

    At the federal level, prior to 2004, we have what we called, the defined benefit-Pay As You Go. In other words, the Federal Government never set aside money for the payment of pension. On an annual basis, it had an estimate, X number of people would be retiring, let’s pay pension. Funds were not been made available, that is one reason.

    The second reason is that it was a defined benefit based on final salary. Come rain come shine, the employer has agreed that when he/she retires, I am going to get 80 per cent of my salary for the rest of my life. This is how it was structured, but it was not funded. Beyond that was that pension departments were established, where the government paid money to them to pay pensioners. They placed the money in the banks, what happened and what is still happening is what brought about the Senate public hearing.

    The Federal Government disburses money to the pension departments, they open bank accounts, keep the money in the banks in a fixed deposit accounts, as a result of which people who are retired are not put in the payroll. Those on the payroll, their names are on-and-off. Every year, there is a verification exercise, the administration was not transparent. It was cumbersome. You have to come to Abuja for the verification.

    It appeared that those in charge of the pension administration took advantage of the internal weakness the offices created. At the end of the day, you have the government making payment and somebody in between is getting the benefit.

    On the other hand, the contributory pension scheme ensures that it is fully funded. In other words, funds must be set aside on a monthly basis. You don’t need to wait for budgetary allocation.

    Two, an employee must open a retirement savings account where his collection is paid into. It is an account owned by an individual that can be traced. If somebody touches that account, there  are appropriate sanctions that can be taken. The money is privately managed by licensed institutions that are regulated by the National Pension Commission with specific rules and regulations. They are monitored and supervised and, therefore, you can easily challenge them.

    Beyond that is the fact that you have two institutions- the administrators and the custodians. The administrator that manages the fund does not have access to the fund.

    Clearly, there is separation of duties and even in the event that there is hiccup. Whatever happens to the fund, the shareholders of the custodian is oblique to make good whatever fund that might have been lost, either as a result of fund trapped in any of he banks or financial institutions.

    It is impossible that what happened under the old scheme would happen in the new contributory scheme. That is why, today, we have not heard of any incidence that the funds have been diverted. It is very difficult.

    This funds are invested in diversified portfolio. It may be treasury bills, bonds, equity and so many other instruments. It is not as if the funds are kept in a vault of the pension board.

    How has it been administered so far?

    The people retiring under the new scheme started retiring in July 2007. Basically, five years. In the last five years, as at September this year, 54,000 contributors have retired, and close to N150 billion have been paid as lump sum to those in the public and the private sectors that have contributed.

    However, there is also another challenge. The challenge is that those who have retired under the federal and the state government, we have a period that arrears were due for, towards the end of last year to the middle of this year. Section 29 of the Pension Reform Act provides that the Federal Government should be setting aside five per cent of its bill into a Pension Fund Account, to be managed by the Central Bank of Nigeria for redeeming such liability for those who are retiring under the new scheme.

    But the five per cent was not been paid. The reason being that appropriate appropriation was made by the budget office, but it took us a long time to convince the National Assembly that this was a statutory requirement. Up till the middle of 2011, and in that intervening period, we had a large number of people that have retired, either as a result of tenure system, and it was not anticipated.

    It was not part of the five per cent, or people that voluntarily retired or deceased employees.

    How are you addressing that?

    National Pension Commission encourages employees to come and register so that we can calculate their liability and advise the government one year in advance. Those who are retiring in 2013, we have already captured and advised the government how much will be required. Until recently, employees don’t want to do that.

    But since the records are there, why can’t the PfAs do the update, get the data from the organisations and pay the retirees?

    Let me tell you how it works. The PFAs write to all the prospective employees, six months in advance. Majority do not care to respond. Some will say they have not seen the letters, or were busy tidying up. It is only the employees that can provide those documents.

    For us, six months is enough to provide these documents and the benefits are processed in advance. We don’t have that problem with the private sector, it is the civil servants at the federal level, who normally do not think the process is relevant, but it fast-tracks the process, that is our concern.

    A pensioner lamented that after the lump sum is paid, what he takes home every month is very little to take care of his family. Another one complained that he retired at the same level with his colleague but his colleague was in the old scheme but earns better pension than who that operates the new scheme. He also raised another issue about increase in salary, saying whenever there is an increase in salary, it affects the take-home of pensioners but it is not the case with the new scheme. There is also this issue that says after 20 years, you must have finished your fund; after that what happens to the pensioner?

    Let me take the three issues one after the other. They are two different schemes. The defined benefit Pay As You Go Scheme is the final salary scheme. In other words, when you retire you get 80 per cent as your pension for life. I can tell you it is one of the most generous in the world.

    Except for Saudi Arabia that has a 100 per cent, Netherlands has about 105 per cent, most African countries have under 40 percent, or what they call replacement ratio. Most emerging economies have under 40 per cent. 40 per cent is the ILO Convention.

    There are two things, you either have your money now, or you assume that somebody is going to give you money. The group of people you are looking at, are those who work for the Federal Government. The private sector does not have that because they do not have the money to support such a generous scheme. The point is that in this new scheme, you will have your money, the money is there. The other schemes are dependent on budgetary allocation, which may and may not come.

    Obviously, it is lower in the new scheme than in the old scheme, because the new scheme is about sustainability. The cohorts of those who would be retiring  in the next 10 years, perhaps from 2007, their pension will be low, but those who have time to save, I can tell you that by the end of the day, they are going to accumulate more money than those under the old scheme because they have longer time to save.

    How are the assets invested, where and at what ratio?

    Investment management is the most critical aspect of the contributory pension scheme. We contributed over a period and, therefore, the returns on investment is supposed to go into our savings. What we do is to ensure that the investments are managed in a more transparent manner.

    What we did was to issue an investment regulation. Generally, there are two options. You either allow the investment manager to decide because he is a professional, a very transparent person, he can take a decision on your behalf. Most developed countries have that because they have a more transparent process.

    The other option is a restrictive regulation, clearly defined bucket. These are the areas for you to invest in and these are the requirements. There must be rating, performance-based mark and there is also the limit. You cannot invest more than X  per cent of your portfolio in a particular class of asset, or in a group of assets.

    The last time we did a comprehensive work was in December 2010. What we did was to see how you diversify investment instruments. As at today, there are basically three instruments where pension assets are invested. Federal Government Bonds, which takes about 60 per cent. It came down from about 80 per cent. Interbank placement, money market instruments and then the equity market. For money market, I think it has dropped to about 14 per cent and for equity, it is about 12 per cent.

    The reason you have substantial portion of the asset being invested in Federal Government Bond is because they are sovereign risk and they offer the highest yield.

    Of recent the states are coming to the capital market to raise bonds, but we have requirements. For pension assets to be invested in state bond, the state must be in compliance with the contributory pension scheme and that has assisted us in getting quite a few of them to come on board and to join the new scheme. We hope that will encourage others to do the same.

    As at today, we have about N3 trillion pension that have been contributed. The growth rate per annum is about 30 per cent annual growth of pension asset. Hopefully, in the next five years, you can estimate what that means. It is a gradual process and it has been consistent so far. The private sector have been contributing significantly to that.

    Some people don’t know how their contributions are invested; again, can you throw more light on the issue of minimum pension guarantee?

    As at today, what the contributors have is what is called the Retirement Savings Account statement on a quarterly basis. You can have a hard copy, some PFAs can give you access to their website so that you can see your balance 24 hours seven days. That gives you an idea how much has been contributed by you, by your employer and what returns are earned over a period and you get an alert on that. But by the time we create these funds, you now choose where you want your funds to be invested.

    On pension guarantee, what is it is saying is that there are people, particularly, small workers who may not contribute enough. Or migrant workers who have worked for six months, rationalised and moved to another company the following year, and within the interval I saved and that savings will not accumulate huge amount over a period. For that reason, what the guarantee is saying is that for those of us who have saved for a minimum number of years, when they are retiring, the pension they will take is minimal, it is an incentive for people to come on board. The challenges we have today in our society is: who will bear that cost. Could it be part of social security? But someone at the age of 60 needs to be taken care of. At least, let him have a minimum wage. It is a conditional grant that you are supporting an individual who has made an effort. In the long run, national savings promote economic development and for every country to succeed, it must have national savings. The idea is to assure somebody that at the end of the day, there is something for you and this will encourage even those who are not saving to join. The benefit for the government is that large funds are been made available and instead of borrowing from banks, the government can borrow and invest in infrastructure. Worldwide pension assets constitutes an average of about 100 per cent of the GDP in most countries. They rely on pension and insurance assets for growth and development and not on bank assets. That is what we hope the pension reform will promote.

    What is your response to the debate that pension asset should be provided to develop infrastructure in the country?

    That is what pension assets should do because pension assets are long term assets and they should finance long term assets. Because they finance long term liabilities, they are available. However, there must be clearly defined rules and regulations. There must be clearly defined terms. Exit terms that those investments are secured.

    In a country where you borrow from outside to finance projects when you have pension assets lying, how far have you gone with your offshore investment? How far about marginal players? What would you like to be remembered for and what would you call your major challenge?

    We believe the ICRC needs to play a greater role. MDAs should be able to work with the ICRC to come out with clearly identified long term projects that long term funds can be invested in, that is the starting point. Concessionaires should also come out with a real starter process. Should we continue to finance infrastructure from the budget when we have private sector? I don’t think so. There is this debate that make the bride beautiful before you offer it to the groom, is that the argument? If an activity can be financed by the private sector, give it to the private sector to finance. Why don’t we have all the enabling environment for them to finance that. As a country, we need to agree on that. If we do that then we don’t need to borrow to finance infrastructure.

    The last time we interacted with the media, we said there are two PFAs that have not complied. The IGI and Citi. IGI has indicated their interest to comply. To the two of them we issued notice to the board. Our law says that you must give notice for revocation. You can’t revoke immediately and the notice is 28 days, which means you are given the opportunity to meet up. Most likely, for IGI when our board meets we may take a decision and ask them to return the licence, because they are prepared to do that. They have the funds and they say they are going to do that. Unfortunately with the Citi Trust, they decided to take us to court, we are in court with them. As at today, you could say we have 21 PFAs, plus IGI.

    Do we expect more of them to have merged? Yes. We raised their minimum capital from N150 million to N1 billion. The argument was that is the N1 billion not too small? Of cause not! They are asset managers and don’t need huge capital. They don’t take credit risk. But they needed capital for expansion to provide effective services to the public. We have been discussing with them. We encourage mergers and acquisition. What we are saying is that the more accounts you have, the better you are generating resources to manage your business. We say, for instance, if after 90 days, there is shortfall in this N1 billion capital, we can withdraw the license. It is a huge task, especially for some of the marginal players for them to maintain that N1 billion continuously. We will continue to encourage them through moral suasion. It is better to operate in a bigger environment and get more reliable returns than to be a managing. In most countries, Chile, Mexico started with a large number but over the years ended up curtly with six or seven. Some people say no you will create an oligarchy. The bottom line is that the stronger they are, the better.

    What the law provides for offshore investment is that no pension assets can be invested abroad except with the approval of the president and in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Let me tell you why we have been reluctant. One, we needed long term funds to be invested in infrastructure. Domestically, we need funds, and encouraging funds to be taken outside would not be in best interest. The second issue is that our operators and us need to understand investment instruments. Thirdly, we needed to build confidence. We don’t want contributors to start saying we contributed and PFAs take my money abroad. We needed that confidence that Nigerians would trust PFAs, will trust PenCom. In the intervening period, what we did was to say that for private equity fund to provide only five per cent, the funds they generate they can invest 75 per cent locally and invest 25 per cent abroad. The reason is that most of them have cross border establishments. Also, PE funds are usually provided by outsiders.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • ‘Fed Govt may retain N52b unclaimed dividends’

    ‘Fed Govt may retain N52b unclaimed dividends’

    Except a bill is passed for companies to keep unclaimed dividends in perpetuity, the Federal Government may walk away with about N52 billion unclaimed dividends.

    Director/Secretary, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr Kennedy Aigbekaen, said though the exact amount trapped in the unclaimed dividends funds is unknown, a bill would be passed for companies to keep the unclaimed dividends in perpetuity, or in the alternative, the money will revert to the government.

    According to Aigbekaen, “as regards the figure, there is some harmonisation going on. I cannot say what the exact figure is; some say it is N40 billion, while others say it is N52 billion.The point is there is a discrepancy in the figures registrars have.”

    He added: “In other parts of the world, when dividends are unclaimed, they revert to the state because dividends are like property, no property can be vacant. In every society once a property is vacant, it goes to the state because the state takes care of everybody.

    “That is the way unclaimed dividends must be treated. People must be able to claim their funds as long as they can prove it, that will require changing the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), or making new laws to attend to this,” he stated.

    He said the “Monitoring and Investigation Department of the SEC, is meeting with Registrars and other stakeholders to harmonise positions and come up with the exact figure that is trapped as unclaimed dividends, adding that many stakeholders are responding so the figures may change, it may be higher or lower, depending on the harmonisation that is going on.”

    He said SEC has sent the “unclaimed dividends bill to the National Assembly, but was shot down, probably through the efforts of other stakeholders who didn’t like it.”

    He noted: “Once dividend is declared, it is no longer the fund of the company, it becomes a debt the company owes the shareholders. As at today, if after 12 years a dividend is unclaimed, the company can use it outside its operations.”

    Aigbekaen said unclaimed dividends persist because of change in address, cases of multiple applications as some people can no longer remember the addresses they used to receive their warrants and they did not update the information on their applications, and the refusal of many banks to pay dividend warrants into savings accounts.

    One way of dealing with the problem, he said, “is for dividends to be issued electronically and once that is done, all the registrar has to do is to credit the accounts of investors within hours of the declaration of dividends rather than having investors wait for years before they get their dividends.

    “Another way of dealing with the problem will be through government’s intervention by making laws and passing the unclaimed dividend bill because with CAMA, as it is today, you cannot get your dividend after a specified period, but if that bill is passed, it will be in perpetuity so that anytime you get to know about your unclaimed dividends and you can prove it then you can have it from the unclaimed dividend trust funds office.”

    The SEC Board secretary also disclosed that the capital market will soon have investors’ complaints procedure for resolving disputes between investors and stock brokers.

    According to Aigbekaen “as at today what we are trying to do is to formalize it so that everybody will know what the process is. The process that is being proposed is before the rules committee of the commission and will soon be finalized, why we have not finalized it is because there is something being done by the market itself so also the committee on investor confidence is doing something and we need to harmonize positions.”

    The format he disclosed is “if you raise a complaint we will tell the complainant to go and discuss with the person he is laying the complaint against, that operator must be able to resolve the complaint within ten days, if he is unable to resolve the matter then it gets to the stock exchange and the stock exchange will have not more than 90 days to deal with the complaint, that is the way the framework is fashioned, if the exchange is unable to resolve the matter then you come to the commission where we will evaluate the matter.

    The SEC he said trying to institute alternative dispute resolution mechanism in which case the market will have a pool of arbitrators so that when such a matter comes before the commission the complaint will be sent to the tribunal or arbitration depending on the nature of the complaint, what it means is that the commission will no longer be addressing customer complaints.

    As soon as all those involved harmonize positions with the market there is the issue of length of time which has to be addressed before the mechanism takes off for complaints management systems.

    He lamented that “it is not healthy for market, NSE and the Commission to be dealing with a particular at the same time so complaints will now be in stages.”

    The SEC he added will “also encourage electronic complaints that will be sent to the portals and once that is done, the SEC will see it, NES will see it and the operator who is complained against will see it, in which case if the operator is not doing anything the NSE and the SEC will know because the time the complaint was filed will be seen on the portal. So if in ten days nothing happens we expect the NSE to ask questions.”

  • Lagos explores alternative energy for e-learning centres

    Lagos explores alternative energy for e-learning centres

    The Lagos State government is planning an alternative energy source to run the computer laboratories it is building for secondary schools in the state, its Commissioner for Science and Technology, Mr Adebiyi Fatai Mabadeje, has said.

    He spoke in Lagos, saying the state government sees the need to encourage pupils to embrace technology at an early stage, adding that a smaller version of the magnificent e-Learning centre built by the government in Lagos would be built in all the secondary schools across the state.

    This is against the backdrop of the incessant power failure by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). He said using solar energy to power the computer labs would be a nice option going by global trend and reliability of using alternative energy source.

    “Fossil fuel is increasingly becoming unfashionable because of its impact on the ozone layer. In Germany, more than 50 per cent of the energy needs of the country is met through solar energy. We have the advantage in our part of the world. So, we are looking at all the options to power the e-learning centres that will be built in the schools across the state,” the commissioner said.

    To underscore the reliability of solar power, he said an office in Alausa Secretariat has been running on solar power in the last one year without hitches. “The office has been running perfectly on solar in the last one year or so. The only thing we do is to bring the solar panel down and clean the surface. It has been functioning. The only problem could be the initial cost of entry which may be high,” he said, adding that the cost will begin to fall after installation.

    He said the state government places high premium on Information Communication Technology (ICT) training as an integral part of education, thereby underscoring regular training of personnel of the state in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) beginning from basic to knowledge to engineering. He said the state trains 600 teachers yearly on ICT tree, an international standard training recognised globally.

    He added that the government through the Ministry of Science and Technology has an ICT vision to improve the quality of education in institutions of learning and improve access to information for various research activities.

    Speaking about the e-learning Centre, he said it was upgraded from the then Lagos City Library built in 1964 and embodies a state of the art ICT learning environment utilizing the latest electronic and digital technology.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • FG partners firm on renewable energy

    FG partners firm on renewable energy

    PNN, a leading pan-African technology service provider in the development of communications and power sectors in nine African countries, has entered a partnership with the National Universities Commission (NUC) to undertake a train-the-trainer scheme to develop university personnel for the renewable energy sector.

    The train-the-trainer programme was developed by PNN in conjunction with the NUC in response to the federal government’s plan to produce 40,000MW of electricity in Nigeria, with at least 10% of the power coming from renewable energy sources.

    25 staff per national university will be invited to participate in the train-the-trainer programme, to be delivered in collaboration with the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria (NAPTIN) and the Renewable Energy Technology Institute (RETI), over the next four years.

    Otunba AbdulRahman Abiola-Odunowo, the CEO of PNN, noted that the renewable energy sector in Nigeria has suffered from a lack of technical skill and value in service delivery, hence the decision by his firm to develop this training scheme.

    “What PNN and NUC aim to do with the train-the-trainer programme is fill the gaps in skills acquisition and delivery, such that we are able to transfer knowledge to university lecturers throughout Nigeria, which can then be passed on in a structured, systematic way to the men and women who will work directly in the green energy sector,” he said.

    PNN is an official development partner of the Federal Ministry of Environment’s Renewable Energy Programme, and one of the pioneering companies that undertake the building of the renewable energy sector in Nigeria.

    “As an FGN-approved renewable energy partner, we are making sure the train-the-trainer programme falls in line with the capacity building efforts of the federal government for the burgeoning renewables sector,” says Abiola-Odunowo. He added that it will prepare Nigerian lecturers and others to support a massive drive for personnel training throughout the country.

    Professor Olu Lafe, the RETI founder, said the programme is aligned with NAPTIN’s curriculum and certification standards and that to achieve full certification, participants will be expected to go through 5 levels of training with each level comprising various hours of classroom and field exercises.

    “At the end of the programme, these trainers will have acquired extensive knowledge of every aspect of the design and operation of renewable power systems, in accordance with international codes of safety. Trainers who complete the course successfully will then be called upon to train staff working in various capacities within the renewable energy sector throughout Nigeria, which will create continuity in the sector,” he added.

    The Executive Secretary, Nigerian Universities Commission, Professor Julius Okojie, expressed great optimism for the project, saying, “Nigerian universities have always been a part of capacity building in this country.  Now, through the train-the-trainer programme, they are being prepared to contribute in a systematic way to a very technical field.”

    Participants in NUC’s train-the-trainer programme will be the key resource people for the deployment of renewable solutions in all Nigerian local government areas under the PAWA 774 community power franchise initiative.

  • Brand Management by Numbers

    Brand Management by Numbers

    Let us start by putting in perspective the grand rules for business and brand success; brands management is based on strategic planning and implementation. The strength or success of any brand or business is directly a function of the operating strategic input. That explains why ideal corporate persons engage top end executives to develop winning strategies.

    A strategy is an overall approach towards achieving identified goals or objective. It focuses on the articulate interpretation of extraneous values-influencers, controllable and otherwise, in relations to own-strengths and weaknesses. Strategy evolution for brands and businesses is based on proper understanding of the broader context operative in the business environment of interest. A strategy is directive, instructive and rewarding.

    Competitive engagement for businesses and brands start with evolving the strategic option with the most advantageous competitive advantages. Business executives begin with a careful and scientific analysis of the business environment and conditions operative in the chosen industry. Key, therefore, is the underlying logic that a company’s strategic options are bounded by the environment.

    Strategy evolution is about alignment of co-operative imperatives based on three broad propositions (1) value proposition (2) profit proposition (3) people proposition. Developing the appropriate strategy, therefore, depends on proper appreciation and alignment of these three propositions, in relation to: the structural conditions an organization operates, its resources and capabilities and its strategic mind-set. A winning team must master the handling of the planning process leading on to the development of the right strategy. A strategy is a sum total of the alignment of the three value propositions as stated above. Business, company or brand must create a complete set of consistent propositions, to produce a high-performing and sustainable strategy.

    The over-riding importance of strategy is its function of driving differentiation for competitive advantage – and positive impact on the BOTTOM – for returns on investment. Suffice that the effectiveness of any operating strategy is measured by its impact on earnings. Strategy bust drive business or brand success.

    As in broad business consideration, brands support depends on winning strategic planning. We would look at this from the input of marketing communication (advertising). Executives in brands management and advertising are constantly challenged in determining the distinctive characters and peculiarities among brands that will enable competitive advantages. Brand positioning is all about strategic planning. The difference between brands is to the extent of its strategic alignment of the basic elements and propositions. The brand must, among other things, be clear about its person, offer, value-essence, desired image, its target audience/market, its promise and place of presence, tone of voice, associates and price.

    Advertising creative process starts with a scientific analysis of prevalent market environment, target market, competition, consumer profiling – consumer behavior with focus on expectation, value touch-points, buying pattern, media habit. The above-listed add up to identify and differentiate the brand from among competition. It is only after articulating its uniqueness on all fronts, that the brand can be said to be competitive as a market player. Essentially, therefore, the strategic planning unit, in cooperation with the client service department in a professional environment, is constantly challenged in personality and value differentiation – based on effective strategic plan.

    Effective marketing communication/advertising campaign is dependent on effective and results based marketing communication. If marketing communication is about making-known, then it is imperative the operative communication strategy takes into consideration the fundamental three value propositions essential for scientific strategy evolution. The winning strategy must align the value proposition, people proposition and the resource proposition at an appropriate convergence point: they must all work together for competitive advantage and positive impact on the bottom-line (return-on-investment).

    So, from the start of agency creative process to break of campaign, the common denomination is the application of agreed campaign strategy: brand personality, unique offering, competitive challenges and advantages, consumer behavior – expectations, traits and habits. Depending on the campaign objective, the creative process may require proper alignment of the various ingredients expressive of the predominant importance of research data in the process of developing a successful strategy.

    We have had to question the competence and extent of professionalism of persons behind brands support and campaigns in recent times. To say the least, brands no longer enjoy basic differentiation which is the least of musts for competitive advantage, not to mention explicitly the value proposition. Consequently, product campaigns no longer connect with the target market at any of the critical value touch-points. The sequence for systematic sequence in the process of evolving a working strategy has been compromised.

    Fundamentally, nobody check with the figures any more. Strategy is a basic and important ingredient for business success, but strategy is borne out of scientific interpretation of figures; figures generated from a scientific research process. MC&A DIGEST posits that except research and planning is appreciated in business developmental process, stake-holders will not fully optimize the earning potentials of their invested resources. World over, businesses and brands are apportioning more value to research in the process of evolving operational business/brand strategies. One appreciates the compromises owing to laziness and greed, resulting in unprofessional engagement and inefficient creative products, but global business practice and value standard is pushing for change. Businesses and brands in our local market will continue to fail in delivering on investors’ expectations except there is a general change in the appreciation of the importance of (research) data in strategy development process. The difference between success and failure in businesses today is the extent to which data/figures, research & development planning is appreciated.

    In the coming months, MC&A DIGEST will push the case for data appreciation in business development, starting with strategy development.

  • Don stresses diversification from non-oil sector

    Don stresses diversification from non-oil sector

    For Nigeria to attain meaningful growth expected of an oil producing nation, it must diversify its non-oil export sector.

    The Director, Centre for International Development, Harvard University, Professor Ricardo Hausmann, said this at the just concluded 4th Economic Policy and Fiscal Strategy Seminar organised by the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA).

    Using data he had gathered over the years on Nigeria’s oil production, Professor Haussmann, a Venezuelan, said Nigeria’s hydro-carbon would be exhausted in the next 41 years, and if no new discoveries are made going by the current extraction rate, the nation stands the risk of a bleak economy in the absence of no clearly thought out diversification strategy to non-oil export.

    Situating Nigeria’s growth within the ranks of oil producing nations of Iran, Angola, Saudi Arabia, and Norway, the Harvard scholar conclusively said that “there is no future growth for Nigeria without non-oil export strategy. Nigeria would need a massive export strategy, a major diversification to non-oil sectors to match her oil producing nation’s peers in term of real growth.”

    He said the agricultural sector remains a hugely untapped sector that Nigeria could massively harness to record significant mileage in non-oil export which would also generate employment opportunities.

    According to him, “Nigeria’s process of development is in the process of diversification and not in the process of specialisation. Your job strategy should be in agriculture where you have 37.5 million hectare of arable land.”

    Professor Haussmann also faulted the Nigerian government’s celebrated job creation strategy. While agreeing that agricultural value chain has the potential of improving the employment rate, he advised Nigerian government to adopt the Thai strategy of allocating more lands for agriculture to fewer people so that they can produce more rather than choking the farmlands with many farmers who produce less for the country.

    He noted that population in the rural areas in Nigeria was growing compared to other developing countries whose rural populace are migrating to the urban centres to work in other sectors, thus freeing up more land for the few farmers that are left in the agricultural belts.

    In another presentation by Dr. Menachem Katz, formerly of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and currently with CSEA, he highlighted “the role of fiscal policy in promoting growth,” he also faulted lopsidedness of the current fiscal policy framework in which oil and gas revenue constitutes over 75 percent of the total revenue.

    The federal government, he said, had little oversight on over half of those receipts which are allocated beneficiaries of the federation account.

    Earlier in his welcome address, the Director, CSEA, Dr Ebere Uneze, said that while it is true that real gross domestic product has grown at over six per cent in the recent year, the economy cannot be said to be competitive when compared with other emerging economies.

    He also noted that Nigeria has been sliding in key indices such as the ‘Ease of Doing Business index.’

  • Stanbic IBTC marks first year of mobile money service

    Stanbic IBTC marks first year of mobile money service

    Stanbic IBTC Bank, a subsidiary of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, has commemorated the first anniversary of it’s *909# mobile money service.

    At the commemoration in Lagos on Tuesday December 12, the bank reiterated its commitment to continuously deliver innovative products and solutions, part of which includes enhancing the robustness of its mobile banking and mobile payments systems.

    The bank was one of the first organizations licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria in October last year to operate mobile money services in Nigeria in accordance with the Mobile Payments Regulatory Framework.

    Speaking at the event attended by stakeholders from the banking, retail and telecoms sectors, the Chief Executive Officer of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, Mrs. Sola David-Borha, recalled that the bank had since 2009 shown commitment to technology-driven branch less banking and enthusiastically embraced the Central Bank of Nigeria’s drive towards an increasingly cashless economy.

    She said the organization’s decision to launch the *909# Stanbic IBTC MobileMoney solution last year was underscored by the bank’s strategic focus of strengthening its universal banking franchise by integrating Nigeria’s huge informal economy.

    According to her, mobile money is a game changer which apart from enabling customers to conduct basic financial transactions such as mobile money account opening, buying airtime, deposit and receipt of cash, as well as payment of utility bills through their mobile phones, also offers enormous benefits to the Nigerian economy by channelling the huge funds in the informal sector through the banking system to engender economic development.

    Obinnia Abajue, Executive Director of Personal and Business Banking, Stanbic IBTC Bank, said it was in recognition of the need for market-driven partnerships and alliances with the different stakeholders in the mobile money value chain, that the bank went into partnerships with all the four major telecom operators in Nigeria, enabling mobile payment services to take root, proliferate, and scale up across the country.

    According to Abajue, Stanbic IBTC has recorded significant milestones with mobile money. To date, *909# Stanbic IBTC mobile money has over 600,000 registered customers, over 790 agents nationwide and there have been over 7.7million agent airtime transactions and a total monthly transaction value of N1.3 billion. A mobile wallet can be funded through; a mobile money agent, at any Stanbic IBTC Bank branch, any ATM, person to person transfer, and online through the web, internet banking and through Quickteller, Abajue said. Stanbic IBTC recently won the Nigerian Financial Technology Award for the best use of IT in mobile money services.

     

  • Winners emerge in ongoing DStv mega promo

    Winners emerge in ongoing DStv mega promo

    MultiChoice Nigeria, a pay-tv content provider, has presented an Abuja based businessman, Mr. Alloysius Onuoha, who recently emerged as the first winner of the ongoing DStv mega promo, with a brand new Renault Sports Utility Vehicle. The SUV is one of the five vehicles on offer in the DStv mega promo.

    Mr. Onuoha, who could not hide his joy at the presentation ceremony in Lagos, said winning one of the star prizes on offer is significant especially as it coincided with his wedding anniversary.

    “I had planned to celebrate with my wife abroad but for providence, I had to cancel the trip and opted instead to purchase a DStv decoder just two weeks back. The car is coming at an auspicious time and it is indeed a wedding anniversary gift to remember” he stated.

    His plan of buying the decoder was simply to keep him company with quality programmes and it was therefore a pleasant surprise when he was called up and informed of his winning one of the Renault Duster SUVs on offer.

    Also at the presentation, an all-expense ticket to the 2013 All African Cup of Nations (AFCON) in South Africa was presented to Toyo Osai, the first subscriber to emerge in that category whilst MultiChoice is reaching out to present various prizes to winners all over Nigeria.

    General Manager, DStv Nigeria, Mr. Mayo Okunola noted during the presentation that the emergence of the first set of winners shows the commitment of MultiChoice Nigeria to consistently reward customers for their loyalty. He emphasized that many more prizes including four Renault SUVs are still available for subscribers to win over the next few weeks.