The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Retreats

  • As 2017 retreats

    As 2017 retreats

    This is one heck of a year with a mix of pleasant and unpleasant memories, which does not cease baring its fury as it roars by to its end. Of course, for better or for worse, we will remember A.D. 2017. Whether, on balance, history will be kind to it is too early to tell.

    We feel the impact of events differently due to different personalities and temperaments. What touches me as tragic and unbearable may be of little importance to you. An event that appears to some as negative may be perceived as positive by others. Think electoral victory and loss. In the matter of the impact of a year on a nation, therefore, relativism holds sway.

    Despite this relativity of outcomes, it is not out of the ordinary for fellow-citizens to agree that a year has been particularly good or bad, if events are categorized according to their impact on the nation. A famine that leaves half of the population dead is catastrophic compared to winning an international soccer match. While we may rejoice over the latter and be thankful for small mercies, the former is a scourge of unforgettable proportion.

    On balance, is 2017 a year of positive developments? On the positive side, insurgency was degraded and denied a territory to lay claim to. Second, though we walked in the valley of the shadow of a second civil war, reason prevailed. Lesson learnt? We must continue to seek the best approach to governance in a multi-national state. Third, while we started the year with apprehension and unease with respect to the health of the Number One citizen, we are ending it with the president in good health.

    There are also negatives. The nation is still divided along primordial lines of resistance, almost sixty years after independence. We operate a quasi-unitary system to promote unity. Yet we are like separate unfriendly countries. Lesson learnt? Try a different direction. The economy stumbles along in fits and starts. The latest is the avoidable fuel shortage crisis that spoils the fun of Yuletide for many families, spawning conspiracy theories which further endanger desired unity. Politics, the institution that should provide leadership for national greatness, has unfortunately capitulated under the weight of corruption and nepotism.

    On the international scene, there are positives and negatives as well. There is a consensus on the urgency of a collective war on terrorism and the need to help the displaced and dispossessed victims of civil wars and terrorist attacks around the globe. ISIS has lost ground and cannot now boast of a caliphate headquarter. The battle is, of course, far from over as the wounded snakes still constitute imminent danger.

    The world needs peace to tackle issues of hunger, poverty and disease that afflict millions of its inhabitants. But the proliferation of nuclear weapons and biological agents continue to pose danger. The energy that ought to be directed to solving economic challenges gets dissipated while nations confront divisive issues of disarmament and geopolitics.

    Unfortunately, we witnessed the retreat of a once powerful leader in the promotion of freedom and justice around the world. Thankfully, others who still believe in the oneness of humanity are on hand to fill the vacuum. Just as individuals are not indispensable, nations also aren’t, and none should take others hostage. If the international community braces itself up to its calling, it can, through the United Nations, always count on the coalition of the willing. Recent events point to the resolve of that body to reassert its moral authority.

    From the foregoing, it seems clear that we have a mix of positives and negatives across the national and international platform. However, I am not willing to allow pessimism to get the better of me. Therefore, I conclude that in 2017, the positive outweighs the negative.

    However, the real reason that 2017 is a positive year for me is the spirit of community that trumped every negativity. Followers of this column may recall that in mid-October, I wrote about Okeho, my beloved country home, as it celebrated the centenary of its relocation to its present site. I see Okeho as an exemplar of the community spirit that is needed to make our nation great. If individuals can invest their time and resources in lifting and advancing their communities, the nation will be lifted and advanced.

    Officially, Nigeria has a total of 774 local governments. Each of these has an average of 20 towns or villages for a total of 15,480 local geographical communities. These local communities are deprived of many basic amenities. Their children go to school but there are no employment opportunities for them in their immediate environment and they have not been trained to be self-employed. There was a country and a region which prioritized gainful employment and provided opportunities for young school leavers to go into farming by establishing farm institutes, or go into artisanship by establishing trade centers. That was so yesterday!

    Without opportunities for progress in their village communities, young Nigerians invade the regional or state capitals where they drift along, often getting into trouble and into criminal gangs, populating prisons and detention centers. Children whose parents are in the forefront of virtue education back home arrive in cities and find themselves recruited into circles of vice. It is the worst nightmare of parents.

    Fortunately, while some thus find themselves in the belly of the whale in cities, others escape and make good lives for themselves, their parents and their children. That is the story of Okeho and the reason for my excitement in October. The many young men and women that made it to the celebration of the centenary were an inspiration to me. Since my family and I departed the country more than 25 years ago, I have only been back so infrequently that I hardly encountered the young professionals that I met in October.

    Meeting them was exciting. But knowing that they were all so dedicated to the progress of the community to make opportunities available for the ones left behind in the marathon of life was even more thrilling.

    At the end of the celebration, these young people decided to get involved. They set up committees for economic development, health and wellness, environment and infrastructure, education and mentoring, and history and tourism. They identified short-term, medium-term and long-term goals to achieve and they have been making progress in their deliberations on how to tackle the many developmental issues. I am elated.

    Of course, there are Nay Sayers. There are sadists whose intent is to inflict the most harm just to daunt your spirit. They will drag you to the mud to suck life out of your optimism. But they are in the minutest minority and the majority do not relent. This is the spirit that I appreciate in my fellow communitarians who believe that one with all is better than one with self. They give me reason for hope. Even when I was rudely shocked by some nastiness, I quickly warn myself not to empower dispiriting agents.

    Here then is my wish for my readers. Each of us comes from a community that needs us at this moment when all else appears to be against the spirit of community. If we lose our small communities to rural-urban migration, we lose the values that they inculcate in the youth. We will not have a nation that is value-conscious if we do not have communities that instill values. Looking back to offer help to communities in need does not detract from our national consciousness. For these communities are the indispensable cords that join the nation.

    Go then to your community. Set up community development organizations. Get involved in the struggles of the young ones trying to make something out of their lives. Encourage them and offer any assistance within your reach for their progress. In so doing, you are helping to build the blocks of national development. That used to be the spirit of our African ancestry not too long ago. We need to revive it in this age of rabid individualism.

     

    Happy New 2018!

     

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  • Education: summits and retreats (3)

    Education: summits and retreats (3)

    Equal opportunity for school children is undermined by establishment of specially endowed schools—Mega, Model, Super, etc.

    Fully implement and enforce the provisions of the Universal Basic Education Act with emphasis on gender equity in primary and secondary school enrollment whilst improving the quality and substance of our schools; targeting up to 15% of our annual budget for this critical sector whilst making substantial investments in training quality teachers at all levels of the education; implement performance based education as against the current certificate based qualification; enhance teacher training and improve the competence of teachers along with vigorous national inspection; develop and promote effective use of innovative teaching methods/materials in schools.
    -APC Manifesto for 2015 National Elections

    That State Government, Philanthropists, Old Students Association, PTA and Corporate Organizations should embark on aggressive renovation/reconstruction of dilapidated school structures to make such schools learners friendly; that Mega schools in the State should be put into more functional, optimal and better use by government to address the current state of underutilization of some of them.
    From Communique at the Ondo State Education Summit

    Last Sunday’s column identified some of the causes of poor quality in the current educational system, such as underfunding, poor teacher preparation, poor infrastructure for teaching and learning, etc.

    At the beginning of this series, we claimed that in the 21st century, citizens in Ondo State and the entire country deserve to have unfettered access to free, compulsory, and qualitative public primary and secondary education. We also argued that those in charge of public service need to be given the right values and training to ensure that they enforce the rights of citizens in this respect by monitoring and promoting access, quality, and equality/equity. The first two pieces have addressed access and quality. This last piece will examine the importance of ensuring equality and equity in the provision of public education.

    It is gratifying and not surprising that the final response of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu to the communique issued at a recent Ondo State Education Summit is, contrary to recommendation of the summit that free public education be ended at primary school, that the state government will continue to provide free qualitative education at the primary and secondary levels. Congratulations to Arakunrin for responding promptly to clear expression of citizens’ aspirations to live in a state that abhors creation of Knowledge Underclass, i.e. citizens without understanding and skills to survive in the information-rich environment of today.

    Just as the underlined quotation above from the communique indicates, the problem facing public education in Ondo and other states is beyond provision of free primary and secondary education. It includes finding the right policy to sustain equal opportunity for all citizens and a level playing field for all children in public schools. Even with the governor’s assurance on provision of free primary and secondary education in Ondo State, without making primary/secondary education compulsory, the state is still at the risk of breeding a knowledge underclass. An insurance against such possibility is for the state to make sure that all children of school age are in school and parents of children under 18 are prosecuted for failing to enroll their children and wards. It is important for every child to complete secondary education and be awarded certificate of completion on the basis of performance, as distinct from obtaining five credits in subjects that include English and mathematics. Even those who fail to have qualifications to enter tertiary institutions will still have functional literacy to participate in a modern society.

    Equal opportunity for school children is undermined by establishment of specially endowed schools—Mega, Model, Super, etc. I admit that all the schools referenced as extraordinary in many parts of the Yoruba region are beautiful and capable of attracting children and encouraging them to want to learn, but such schools undermine the principle of equality of opportunity. Since such schools require payment of fees that most parents cannot afford, whatever advantage that comes to children whose parents can afford special fees charged by such schools stands denied to other citizens whose parents cannot afford to pay the special levies to enter or remain in specially endowed schools. All public schools should have similar facilities and standards.

    It does not serve the interest of equitable allocation of resources to school children to create school buildings and facilities for just one or two schools out of hundreds in each local government. The government needs to create a new policy on design of school buildings and facilities. Such policy should ensure that whatever improvement the government can make for existing schools should be uniform, to give children the impression that “what is good for the goose is good for the gander”, a cliched way of expressing the principle of equal opportunity. For instance, the recommendation at the recent summit that “Mega schools in the State should be put into more functional, optimal and better use by government to address the current state of underutilization of some of them” illustrates that mega schools in the state are fast becoming white elephant projects because of poor patronage by parents. Many new public-school buildings across the country may not be as eye-catching as Ondo State’s mega schools, nevertheless, they look good enough to compare with schools in many other countries. It is not the flashiness of school buildings that matter as much as quality of teachers, adequate facilities for teaching and learning, motivation of students to benefit from education, and cooperation of their parents and guardians.

    The sudden recession and the fear about the future of petroleum may be enough to scare any government about funding free and compulsory public education. But governance is not for the faint-hearted as Mr. Akeredolu’s announcement of continued commitment of Ondo State Government to provision of free primary/secondary education has demonstrated. It is also too late in the day for any government to find excuse to abandon its responsibility for modern governance under the excuse of lean government and withdrawal from social subsidy. Not at a time that the United Nations is recommending that developing countries spend at least 26% of annual budgets on education, should any state or country find reasons to escape from this important social burden, unless they want to become ready sources of cheap slaves for people in Libya and other countries.

    Like everything else about the human condition, education and funding of education remain part of the inevitability of change. Responsible governments will continue to look for means to provide the type of education that the time demands. One thing that seems to have remained constant for long in this respect is that governments encourage citizens to pay taxes, especially education taxes to prevent their children from drawing water and hewing woods for other countries. Just as no responsible parent can abandon looking for ways to feed their children during famine, so must responsible governments resist abandonment of their duty to provide free public education that can emancipate citizens from lifelong illiteracy, deprivation, and poverty.

    Public debates on the future of education should be encouraged; this is the only way to get answers to crucial problems about individual and national progress. Issues such as what level of government should fund and regulate education, what should be the role of central government in regulation of education in a multinational and multi-religious federation, which level of government should be responsible for curriculum design and monitoring in a federation, and how public education can ensure non-sectarian education and promotion of secular governance are some of the issues that call for regular debates among stakeholders. But the right of the citizen to free primary/secondary education in the Yoruba region had been settled decades ago, to the point that it has become part of the vision and mission of every citizen in the state, as recent post-summit representations to the governor of the state has shown.

    While congratulating the Ondo State Government for accepting the importance of free public education, this column calls on the governor to quickly make education compulsory for every child under 18 years of age. The column also calls on President Buhari to extend free and qualitative education beyond JSS3 to SS3. This is the least that citizens in the countries we are bound to compete with expect from their own governments.

    Concluded

    Roposek@msn.com

  • Education: summits and retreats (2)

    For many decades, education of teachers is projected as the least demanding of the three tertiary institutions

    The significance of this summit is obvious. We cannot progress beyond the level and standard of our education. Today, it is those who acquire the most qualitative education, equipped with requisite skills and training, and empowered with practical knowhow that are leading the rest. We cannot afford to continue lagging behind. Education is our launchpad to a more successful, more productive and more prosperous future. This administration is committed to revitalizing our education system and making it more responsive and globally competitive.
    – President Buhari at a recent Education Retreat
    That curriculum contents in schools should be reviewed and domesticated to meet relevant needs while implementation should be enforced; that School Based Management Committee; Schools Board of Governors and Parents Forum should be re-invigorated in the state’s secondary and tertiary institutions; that state government should recruit teachers to fill all relevant vacancies in public primary and secondary schools; that the state government should provide well stocked libraries in schools to bring back reading culture while the process of migration to e-library should commence with first generation secondary schools in the state.
    —From 2017 Ondo State Education Summit

    Last week’s column raised the following issues: i) ideology is pivotal to any nation’s readiness to provide the right education for citizens; ii) such ideology does not have to be communist or capitalist to see the importance of education in a knowledge-driven world; iii)  any government that seriously believes in the power of knowledge to individual and national advancement is bound to give both real and rhetorical emphasis to public education; iv) far-reaching reforms of public education will come from belief by national leaders that education is not just for individual upward mobility but also for advancement of the nation; v) that summits and retreats by stakeholders may not be enough to ensure adequate commitment of government to expansion and sustenance of access of citizens to public education; vi) that free and compulsory public education for citizens at both primary and secondary levels is the least that any that governments that want to want to achieve individual and national productivity and prosperity can do to make investment of citizens’ tax in education profitable

    Today’s focus is on quality of education as source of good returns on investment of public funds on education of citizens. This view is most aptly put by President Buhari in the selection above from his opening remarks at a recent retreat on education in Abuja. Emphasis in the quotation is the author’s. Just like provision of education, assurance of quality also depends on or derives from commitment of government leaders to investing in adding values to citizens.

    Admittedly, public education is not the only way for citizens to acquire education, but it is the only way to ensure that all citizens, regardless of economic power, are given opportunities to acquire the basic knowledge needed for them to survive and thrive in today’s complex world. By basic education, I mean at least 12 years of structured learning for each citizen from the age of five. In a country seeking development like Nigeria emphasis of stakeholders should not be on sharing the financial burden of educating citizens between government and citizens. On the contrary, stakeholders should encourage government to pluck the political will to ensure that its citizens are given unfettered access to free and qualitative education until they turn 17 or 18 years of age.

    Providing quality public education cannot but cost governments money, like every other thing expected to bring good returns in the modern world. Stakeholders, especially such as those who met in Akure recently, are right to worry about cost-effectiveness, without necessarily casting such concern as cost avoidance on the part of government. And stakeholders at the Akure meeting are right to worry about how to achieve quality education as they do in the recommendations quoted in the epigraph. Very pertinent is the call for review and domestication of the curriculum and efficient management of teaching and learning.

    But the threat to quality of teaching and learning need to be examined not in an atmospheric manner but in specific terms that capture contribution of each stakeholder to quality or lack of quality: government, teachers, students, and parents. The government is the principal stakeholder; it provides the philosophy and regulations that guide education, including determining who becomes teachers in the society. If the government is happy to just get by, its choice will have implications for the product of schooling. For example, in a country where teaching is considered an occupation for citizens who do not qualify to do regular undergraduate degrees in specific disciplines, there should be no surprise if teachers are unable to make learning interesting and attractive to learners, a basic pedagogical requirement for success in learning.

    For many decades, education of teachers is projected as the least demanding of the three tertiary institutions. We started many decades ago with a policy allowing candidates with lower qualifications in WAEC to enter colleges of education. The policy in 2017 on admission to college of education is still the same. For example, a score of 200 in Joint Admission and Matriculation Board examination is required of students for admission to study in regular universities, candidates with 150-180 out of a total score of 400 are admissible to college of education. Without mincing words, what this policy admits is that teaching is the occupation for high school students who could not obtain 50% pass on of the questions asked on admission and matriculation examinations. A government—national or regional—that admits its weakest students to the profession that generates and propagates knowledge has chosen deliberately to provide anything other than quality education.  It is unusual for people who plant okra to expect to harvest garden egg. Countries that score high in international examinations like PISA: Finland, Scotland, South Korea, Netherlands, to name a few, not only admit their best into the teaching profession, they also give their teachers enviable salaries and benefits.

    The government is also expected to provide conducive learning environment. Just as it is with the choice of candidates for the teaching profession, school infrastructure and learning conditions in our country are not the type to make learners curious. Generally, public school environment is drab and more likely to depress than excite teachers and students in them. It must have been an attempt by some governments to respond to the socio-fugal learning environment of public schools that made them create special public schools called mega or model schools even in the region that served as trailblazer for universal primary and secondary education. The effect of such schools is ghettoisation of most public schools in many parts of the country. There will be more on this next week in the section on equity.

    Furthermore, the culture of public service that is needed to create and sustain quality in public education has also declined considerably. How many civil servants can tell their governors today that more money should be voted to public education than to salaries and perquisites of political office holders and civil servants? Chief Awolowo’s budget on education was more than the 26% of budget being recommended by UNESCO today as minimum that developing countries should commit to education. In the days of Chief Simeon Adebo, ministers and legislators did not have the last say on what they wanted to earn as salaries and fringe benefits in a government that told everybody that education of citizens was its cardinal goal and walked its talk on this.

    The vision and values of public service half a century ago no longer seem to matter today to the country’s political leaders, lawmakers, parents, and school children who have been made to see education as a means of acquiring just credentials rather than knowledge.  How else is one to interpret the call for provision of library – analogue or digital – in every school. Aren’t libraries and schools Siamese twins by tradition? For example, I went to Ondo Boys High School, (Nigeria’s first Community Secondary School established in 1919) about sixty years ago, and the first item of Orientation in 1958 was a visit to the library!  Threats to quality education from loss of vision and decline in values cannot be neutralised by proclamations made publicly in Akure and whispered across the country in retreats, that government should provide primary education and parents secondary and tertiary education.

    Apart from being called upon to vote periodically, citizens need to be involved more directly in determining which projects their taxes are spent on, whether provision of access to education and health or purchase of bogus edifices or aircraft for rulers. A governance system that gives citizens opportunities in referendums to indicate their preference on how tax money is spent must be central to restructuring, especially now that the country may be entering the post-petroleum ethos and returning to productive economy, alias Diversification.

    • To be continued

     

  • Education: summits and retreats (1)

    The three major issues about education all over the world are access, quality, and equity

    When all the talents in society are not fully developed, it is not the individuals that are adversely affected alone who suffer; the society as a whole suffers as well. Now, granting that every Nigerian is given an opportunity to develop his talents, it is imperative that he should also be given an opportunity to employ these developed talents. Full development of man and his full employment are not only social imperatives, but also inseparably inter-connected and complementary.-Address delivered to Ondo State House of Assembly (1980)
    Boosting education will be a direct counterbalance to Boko Haram’s appeal. In particular we must educate more young girls, ensuring they will grow up to be empowered through learning to play their full part as citizens of Nigeria and pull themselves up and out of poverty.- President Muhammadu Buhari
    My single advice is that we must take education seriously, and we must do much more to educate our children.-President Buhari after returning from medical treatment in London
    That the issue of Education funding is too important to be left in the hands of Government alone if we must achieve functionality in education. It must be the business of all stakeholders. That Government should fund education at the Primary school level while parents should be responsible for the education of their children at the Secondary and Tertiary levels.
    •From Communique of a recent Ondo State Summit on Education

    In the last three weeks, there have been two important meetings on education: a summit in Akure and a retreat in Abuja. These meetings show the importance the two levels of government attach to exploring and solving the myriad problems confronting education in the country. National and subnational debates on education had been regular in the country even before independence. The quotations from Awolowo, Buhari, and from the communique of the Akure meeting above illustrate how politicians and government leaders have been paying attention to education, especially in the last two decades. Undoubtedly, summits and retreats are some of the ways to address some of the issues in the troubled and troubling education sector. But before communiques can be transformed into policy, there are lots of issues that need to gain attention of citizens, governments, and politicians.

    Without doubt, education is a matter that has pivotal bearing on the future of the country, and its place in the context of globalisation. And education is too important for its reform to be settled at summits and retreats, unless other critical issues have been identified, studied, and agreed upon by all that stand to benefit from education and training that are becoming increasingly indispensable in the modern world. Pointedly, deliberations by “stakeholders” need to be supported by deep philosophical and ideological debate by citizens and their leaders. Such stakeholders summit also need to be supported by data assembled by professional researchers.

    If the national and sub-national governments have held several summits and retreats on education in the last two decades and are still holding such meetings even under governments of optimism and change voted into power two years ago, it means that summits or retreats by themselves are not capable of bringing needed solution to this sector. The multifactorial decline of education in terms of access, quality, and equity is too deep-rooted to be sorted out in a two-day meeting of stakeholders, regardless of how talented such stakeholders are, more so in an atmosphere that seems devoid of clear ideological thinking on the role of education in the 21st century.

    The three major issues about education all over the world are access, quality, and equity. All governments and stakeholders that had used education to improve the quality of life of their citizens and of people of other countries through trading of products of improved minds of people in Europe, the Americas, and Asian Tigers are in the habit of continually reviewing and renewing their education sector from these three angles. And none of the countries cited for political and economic success today: UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Russia, U.A.E., Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Japan, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, etc., had moved away from the model of reducing public education to just six years of schooling. Not even the United States of America, the world’s richest capitalist country nor China, the world’s wealthiest communist country.

    Without believing that the communique issued at the end of the recent summit on education in Akure was designed to serve as a policy document that to limit citizen’s access to free primary education to primary school in the state, this column believes that ‘summiteers’ were rather insensitive to the concerns of citizens in the state. Announcing what amounts to an end to a tradition of 67 years of free primary education and 38 years of free secondary education in the state at the end of a two-day meeting by a few wise men require more explanations on the part of government about a meeting that many citizens must have considered to be fact-finding.

    When the Action Group government of Obafemi Awolowo initiated free primary education in January 1955, revenue to the state then was not up to 10% of what comes to the state today, just as the population of school-age children then was not more than 10% of the people residing in Ondo State today. Awolowo and his advisers were also told that the Western Region could not sustain free primary education. But the government then believed in its vision and pursued it by raising taxes and establishing Western Nigeria Lottery to finance what now made it possible for millions of people of Western Nigeria now in diaspora to be sending to the eight states in the region to remit close $15 billion to the states carved out of the region. That vision that knowledge is needed to improve quality of life of the individual and the status of the society appeared to have been absent at the recent summit in Akure. But it is not too late restore that vision, especially that the governor has not commented on the summit.

    If President Obasanjo initiated free Universal Basic Education scheme for the first nine years of schooling in his first term,  former Governor Mimiko was able to upgrade many schools to mega level, and the entire country is coming out of recession caused in 2015 by collapse of oil price, what could have gone wrong to the point that Ondo State would want in 2017 to reduce access to free public education to six years, at a time that other countries are insisting that every child should add two years of pre-school to public education? Believing strongly that the recent Ondo State summit must have been designed to find out the extent of the problems in the education sector rather than solutions, it ought not to have presented a communique that smacked of a solution searching for problems.

    If the problem identified by stakeholders at the summit included government’s funding of  secondary education, the recommendation that free public education should stop at primary six certainly needs more data to convince citizens on the solution proffered by the summit. Citizens need more data: number of students in the state receiving free primary and secondary education; cost of providing this education per student; size of the cost in relation to the budget of the state; prioritisation of projects for funding in the state; etc. The reason for this information is that citizens have accepted that the only way out of individual and collective poverty in the state is provision of public education that guarantees access to free and compulsory primary and secondary education to citizens of the state.

    Even if Nigeria prefers to be the servants of the modern world, globalization has made (and is increasingly making) this choice impossible. All successful countries—socialist and capitalist—have a consensus about the importance of education in today’s world, and restricting access to free public education to six years of schooling is not part of preparing citizens for the society of the future. Fine-tuning the ideology of governance in the state is the first step in the task awaiting those charged to review recommendations by the Akure summit. Although the federal government is still at the incipient stage of turning its manifesto promise on education into reality, President Buhari is not in doubt about the importance of education:”My single advice is that we must take education seriously, and we must do much more to educate our children.”

    • To be continued

    Roposek@msn.com

  • Naira retreats on falling oil price, rising import demand

    Forex utilisation in percentage

     

    Weakening oil price and rising import demand have been threatening the naira’s stability in recent weeks. The local currency weakened 0.4 per cent against the dollar in the Inter-bank and has lost 1.3 per cent of its value since January based on data compiled last Friday. The depreciation reflected increased dollar demand to cover import bills and other foreign exchange obligations. The naira closed at N158.20 to a dollar.

    Ecobank Nigeria Currencies Analyst, Olakunle Ezun said that aware of the risks posed by changes in global oil prices, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is targeting smooth exchange rate changes. He added that since the CBN has several policy objectives, it is not always possible to reduce naira volatility.

    “Recent movements in oil prices pose risks to the short term outlook given Nigeria’s oil dependency. Lower oil prices have also raised concerns over Nigeria’s fiscal prospects given the high dependence on oil,” he explained.

    Ezun said given the close link between exchange rate and monetary policies, primary market yields will continue to remain strongly influenced by the monetary policy stance, CBN liquidity management efforts, and the value of the naira.

    “Yields are not expected to change significantly in the short term, as the CBN is likely to continue with its tight monetary policy stance in order to tackle accelerating inflation and underpin the naira. However, there are risks to this largely stable short term outlook. The key risk is a significant drop in oil prices, which would have a widespread, adverse effect on the economy,” he said. He said the naira depreciation was further driven by speculation that there could be a reversal of foreign portfolio inflows and falling oil prices.

     

    Return on Equity

    Guaranty Trust Bank led Zenith Bank Plc and First Bank of Nigeria Limited on delivering returns to investors in 2012, a report by Renaissance Capital (RenCap), revealed. GTBank outperformed its peers delivering Return on Equity (RoE) of 34 per cent against Zenith’s 24 per cent and FirstBank’s 18 per cent.

    In an e-mailed report obtained by The Nation, the investment and research firm, said that GTBank created N41 billion of value in 2012 against Zenith’s N25 billion and FirstBank’s N1.4 billion.

    The report also showed that that although all the three lenders showed improvement in operational performance from previous year’s levels, the underlying earnings drivers varied significantly, with GTBank having the most favourable mix.

    RenCap said GTBank’s superior returns were driven by better gross yields, a lower-than-peers impairment charge and a lower cost base.

    “We calculate that all three banks created value in 2012, although FirstBank only marginally so. We analysed last year’s result to estimate the absolute naira value creation by each bank. We measure value created as the excess return over the Cost on Equity as a percentage of the average equity for the bank. GTBank produced the highest excess return – at 16 per cent against Zenith at six per cent and FirstBank at a marginal 0.3 per cent,” it said.

    RenCap noted that in some years back, the trio created no value, and in fact, destroyed value. In 2009, GTBank had negative value creation when its RoE fell to 13 per cent about five per cent below its Cost on Equity (CoE). Aside from that year, GTB generated value each year. Zenith Bank and FirstBank fared worse, it said.

     

    Reforms

    Nigeria’s slow implementation of structural economic reforms is limiting its chances of a credit-rating upgrade, Moody’s Investors Service told Bloomberg. It said while economic growth is “resilient,” any chance of an update from its Ba3 rating, three levels below investment grade, is hindered by corruption, weak institutions and its vulnerability to oil price drops, Edward Al-Hussainy and Dietmar Hornung, credit analysts at Moody’s said.

    Nigeria’s economy expanded an estimated 6.6 per cent in the first quarter of the year, compared with 6.9 per cent in the previous three months, data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) showed.

    Oil contributes as much as 70 per cent of the government’s fiscal revenue, leaving it sensitive to a downturn in global prices, Moody’s said.

    “Momentum for addressing challenging structural reforms has slowed. Most critically, legislation to revise the fiscal regime in the petroleum industry and to deregulate the downstream oil and gas sector has stalled, holding up significant foreign investment while the sector’s productivity declines,” Al-Hussainy and Hornung said.

     

    Eurobond

    The Federal Government has appointed Citi Bank and Deutsche Bank to manage a $1 billion planned Eurobond, the head of the debt management office (DMO) told Reuters. “The Federal Executive Council approved the appointment of Citi and Deutsche as joint book-runners for the planned $1 billion Eurobond,” DMO Abraham Nwankwo said.

    Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minster of the Economy Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had said at the recently concluded World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) Meetings in Washington D.C, United States, that the Eurobond will be used to finance the power sector and gas development.

    The Minister said the Federal Government will float a Eurobond before the end of this year, stressing that a time table had been put together. The minister said: “The Ministry of Finance will undertake road shows in Europe and America to attract investors to subscribe to the bond. This will be our second Eurobond on offer, the yields on Nigeria bonds are good, this is an auspicious time for us to go and launch the Eurobond and so we are continuing.”

     

    Cash-less

    The planned extension of the cash-less policy to five states as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) from July 1, is sacrosanct, Deputy Governor, Operations, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Tunde Lemo said.

    The cash-less policy, which began in Lagos in January last year is billed to be extended to six more states ( Rivers, Kano, Anambra, Ogun and Abia as well as the FCT) in July 1.

    Lemo, who is responsible for driving the policy, said the additional states were chosen because of the large volume of cash transactions in some of their major cities.

    He said: “Recall that we started this programme actually in January last year and we are only just continuing. We are only just moving to phase two, so we have learnt all the ropes in phase one in cash-less Lagos and we believe we are ready to roll out to other six locations in Nigeria.

    He said the previous challenge of the cash-less policy was connectivity. “We have over 150,000 Point of Sales (PoS) machines in Lagos area where we had the cash-less Lagos. However, only 25 per cent of them are active largely because we don’t have General packet radio service (GPRS) and connectivity alive in some of the clusters and because of that, it has affected the rate at which those machines are used,” he said.

    Lemo however, said these challenges are being overcome. He said: “We believe very much that it is getting better because we monitor the transactions on daily basis and we are beginning to record large volume and value of transactions done under the Point of Sales (PoS). We are not even looking only at the PoS as a major of channel for cashless; we are now looking at all the other major channels for cashless. We have the mobile telephone, which we will use to drive the cashless policy.

    The cash-less policy is aimed at reducing the dominance of cash in the system. It specifies penal charges for individuals and corporate organisations that want to withdraw or lodge cash above the prescribed limits.

     

    Bank to bank report

    Fidelity Bank Plc last week inaugurated ‘Managed SMEs’ business meant to address the rising mortality ratio of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the country.

    Speaking at the launch of the scheme in Lagos, the Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Plc, Reginald Ihejiahi said the move to create the ‘Fidelity Managed SMEs’ was necessitated by the need to address the challenges affecting small businesses, especially in the Nigerian business environment.

    He explained that many small businesses find it difficult to sustain their operations due to inadequate information on how to harness the opportunities in the market. He said the scheme would help to guide small businesses in their efforts to penetrate the market by providing advisory support and enhancing capacity building programmes that support the survival of such businesses.

    Skye Bank last week inaugurated its business account named: Skye Business Account.The product is to cater for the banking needs of small business units, traders and other market people who otherwise may have been left out of the financial inclusion drive, which seeks to integrate the informal sector into the banking world.

    In a statement, the bank said the Skye Business Account is a current account with an affordable opening balance for traders and small business owners for whom the product was specifically created. The product also has the complement of the inscription of the customer’s name on the MasterCard issued to account holders.

    The bank’s Head of the Small Business Group, Mr Wole Aderinkomi, said that the Skye Business Account offers full internet access to the account holders in addition to the MasterCard debit card, which enables customers to carry out business internationally.

    FBN Capital Limited, the investment banking and asset management subsidiary of FBN Holdings Plc, has launched Nigeria’s manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI).

    In a statement, the bank said the product was done in collaboration with NOI Polls Limited. This adds Nigeria to the list of countries, which makes use of this economic indicator that gauges the performance of the sector at monthly intervals.

    The FBN Capital Limited PMI will join some existing surveys of business and consumer expectations and it is expected that this will develop into a core forward economic indicator for analysts, policymakers and financial market players as it is the only sector specific, monthly index.

     

  • Retreats and rhetoric

    Retreats and rhetoric

    •Will President Jonathan walk his talk on sports development?

     

    AS has become his accustomed practice, President Goodluck Jonathan recently hosted a presidential retreat on sports development. The occasion, which brought together many of Nigeria’s best-known sports administrators, coaches, sponsors, journalists and other stakeholders, was aimed at taking a comprehensive look at the state of the country’s sports, especially its talent-development processes, infrastructural deficiencies and funding issues.

    In the light of Nigeria’s relatively poor outings in international sports tournaments, as well as its unsavoury reputation for age-cheating, the utilisation of mercenaries and other unethical practices, there can be no doubt that there is a pressing need for the country to take a hard look at its sports.

    To that extent, President Jonathan is right to convene a sports retreat. The assemblage of the major players in one location provides a valuable opportunity for them to speak frankly with one another, and to discuss problems and solutions in the presence of those who have the authority to enforce whatever remedial measures may be proposed.

    However, while there is no problem with the convening of retreats as a strategy, there are several difficulties with ensuring that they are put to effective use. Since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999, there have been several presidential retreats on issues as diverse as agriculture, education, the aviation sector, the economy and security. Papers have been delivered, worthy sentiments have been expressed, and lofty goals have been set. Yet, very little has been achieved in reality. The aviation retreat, for instance, proposed several far-reaching measures designed to improve safety standards and the sector’s economic viability, but recent tragedies have exposed how little was really done.

    In a manner similar to the conveners of previous retreats, President Jonathan has expressed his determination to ensure that Nigeria “rules the world” in sports. The president’s ambitious vision involves the country attaining sports supremacy in Africa and ranking among the top four in the Commonwealth of Nations, on its way to global sporting domination.

    It is gratifying that the nation’s leader should be so bold. It apparently expresses an unshakeable faith in the ability of Nigeria to achieve these targets. The trouble is that the president has spoken in similar tones before. During the presidential election campaigns of 2011, he promised to transform the country; more recently, he promised a definitive end to the Boko Haram insurgency in June 2012. Not only have such promises failed to materialise, there is little evidence that his administration is even taking coherent steps towards the fulfilment of his pledges.

    Jonathan’s forthright statements on sports are likely to encounter a similar gap between announcement and action. In spite of all the useful ideas that were mooted at the retreat, there is nothing to show that the Federal Government is beginning to tackle the roots of under-performance in sports.

    It has not, for example, started to address the pervasive corruption and lack of transparency that has enriched administrators and impoverished athletes. The Nigerian Football Federation and other sports federations are continually embroiled in financial scandals which are almost never resolved. The audited accounts of the country’s disastrous outing at the 2012 London Olympics are yet to be released publicly, despite the controversy over how an estimated N2.6 billion was spent to prosecute it.

    Victory in the sporting arena is the end-result of dedication and competence. All the speeches in the world will count for nothing if the Jonathan administration does not realise this fact and act accordingly.