Nigeria’s local-currency bonds are on a roll, rising for the last eight days and driving their yields below Turkey’s for the first time in more than two years.
The average rate on Nigerian government bonds has fallen around 400 basis since an August-peak to 13 percent. Yields are now 100 basis points below the central bank’s benchmark interest rate of 14 per cent, where its been held since July 2016.
Investors have piled into the naira market thanks to slowing inflation, a stable currency and rising Brent crude prices, which climbed about 25 per cent in the past six months to more than $70 a barrel. In contrast, they’ve turned bearish on Turkey, which has the worst-performing local bonds in emerging markets this year, because of accelerating inflation and loose monetary policy.
The Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Godwin Emefiele, may be tempted to commence his long-touted easing cycle and help revive an economy that has faltered since the 2014 oil crash. While that would reduce the attractiveness of naira assets, Nigerian yields are still high relative to other major emerging markets. Aside from Turkey, Argentina and Egypt’s bonds are the only ones to yield more in the Bloomberg Barclays EM Local Currency Index.
The Lagos State Government has promised to stem the high rate of electricity-induced fires in the meropolis.
It vowed to bring to book any distribution company (Disco) found culpable.
Lagos State Safety Commission (LSSC) made the pledge at the weekend at the launch of the pilot phase of sensitisation on hazard identification and risk scrutiny.
Its Head of Zonal Operations, Todo Wede, said investigating and bringing erring firms to book for negligence was necessary to avoid potential risks and avoidable tragedies.
The move followed the death of a family of five in a fire triggered by power surge in Surulere last Wednesday.
The government, Wede said, would strengthen the LSSC’s collaboration with electricity companies and other relevant agencies to ensure a hazard-free environment.
He said: “We will write the Eko Discos and invite them to discuss this particular issue. They know why power surges are happening and we will resolve it.”
According to him, strategic initiatives have been developed to keep a tab on inimical activities and conditions in the state before they deteriorate.
Wede said this year’s awareness campaign labelled “Remove the hazard, save a life’ would span three months and cover six local council development areas (LCDAs), including Alimosho, Ikeja, Onigbongbo, Orile, Agege and Ojodu, adding that two safety marshals have each been deployed to the respective areas.
Aiyetoro community in Ilaje Local Government Area of Ondo State has been ravaged by another sea surge barely one month after a similar incident destroyed properties worth millions of Naira. DAMISI OJO reports.
It was yet another tearful day for the inhabitants of the Aiyetoro community when another devastating sea incursion ravaged the community few months after an equally overwhelming incident wreaked havoc on the coastline community.
Time and again, the seashore communities in the South Senatorial District of Oyo State, covering the Araromi Waterside Boundary with Ogun State have been submerged.
The affected communities are Araromi, Oke Zioni, Ori Oke Iwa Mimo, Gbabijo, Ugbanre, Abetogho, Erunna, Idi-ogba, Ile Pete, Awoye, Ikorigho, Oghoye, Abereke, Ogogoro and Aiyetoro.
According to an eyewitness, Emmanuel Aralu, the incursion occurred one Monday afternoon around 4:15 p.m. after a downpour which lasted till the following morning.
Aralu stated that the havoc caused by the disaster was much more devastating than the first one on September 1.
•An old man wading through the flood
An elder in the community, Lawrence Lemamu, decried the abandonment of the community at the mercy of ecological disaster. He said the incident had wiped away more than three kilometres of their lands and threatened their existence as a people.
He said: “Is it until we all perish in the sea and all our hard-earned properties and precious ones are washed away that the government at all levels will come to our rescue?
“We urge the government to quickly save us, save our civilisation, save our generation, save our land which our fathers gave us more than 68 years ago.”
Members of the community, which was founded on January 12, 1947, pleaded with the Federal Government to complete the embankment project it began long ago.
Lemamu revealed that since the establishment of the community, it has not benefited from any project by the state government. He said their power project in 1953 and the roads in the community were achieved through communal efforts.
He said: “We anxiously wait for the results of the pressure which the state government promised it would mount on the Federal Government for a thorough work on the embankment projects, awarded by the Niger Delta Development Commission NDDC.”
The residents appreciated the state government and its delegations led by the Commissioner for Environment, Sola Ebiseni and the chairman of Ondo State Oil-Producing Areas Development Commission (OSOPADEC), Johnson Ogunyemi respectively for the distribution of relief materials to the victims.
The duo visited Aiyetoro and the submerged schools were relocated to new sites so that both primary and secondary school pupils could continue with their studies.
An observer, Smith Ogunbanwo, from Ori-Oke Iwa Mimo, said the people would want government to put up ocean control mechanism as obtained in civilised climes.
He contended that government should rule out the possibility of relocating and evacuating the people to other areas considered safer, saying that the area is suitable for their fishing occupation and which ensures their closeness to their ancestral homes.
Ogunbanwo noted that his community is putting up efforts with the state government to relocate the submerged schools in the community to a new site as was done in Aiyetoro and Gbabijo communities.
An officer at the NDDC Igbokoda office declined comment on the development, saying he was not competent to speak on the issue of the multi-billion Naira shoreline protections awarded by the commission since 2004, without any meaningful development.
Ebiseni and Ogunyemi pointed out that the state government was working hard on providing relief materials for the affected communities on Friday.
The Senator representing Ondo Southt District, Yele Omogunwa, sympathised with the people living along the coastline over their losses and threats to their lives occasioned by the disaster.
Omogunwa assured the people that the government at all levels would not abandon them, saying as their representative in the National Assembly, he promised to ensure there will be lasting solution to the frequent sea incursion.
The lawmaker, who was the former Commissioner for Works in the state, affirmed that he is committed to the welfare of the people. He said as a Senator working on the mandate of the people, he would complement the efforts of the state government to bring succour to them.
MORE than 2,000 Syrians – almost half of them pro-government forces – have been killed in just over two weeks of fighting in Syria, marking one of the worst death tolls in the country’s three-year civil war, opposition activists said Monday.
The reports reflect a recent surge in deadly attacks by the al-Qaida-breakaway Islamic State group targeting President Bashar Assad’s forces, signaling shifting priorities as Sunni militants seek to consolidate their hold on territory and resources in northern Syria.
Assad’s forces have gained momentum in the fighting with rebels seeking to topple him from power. Infighting also has hurt the rebel cause, with Islamic extremists battling more moderate fighters who have been greatly weakened by lack of weapons and clashes with the militants.
But a series of recent setbacks for the Syrian government at the hands of the Islamic State group threatens to overturn government successes, pitting the Syrian army against a formidable force that now controls large chunks of territory in the country’s north and neighboring Iraq.”Now that they’ve mopped up rebel resistance to them in the east, the Islamic State (group) can turn to the regime,” said Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on militant factions in Syria and Iraq. “It may have been a benefit (to the Islamic State) to deal with rebels first, but the assault against the regime was inevitable.”
The recent attacks came after Assad was re-elected last month to a third, seven-year term in a vote that was confined to government-controlled areas and dismissed by the opposition and its Western allies. In his inauguration speech on July 16, he confidently declared victory and praised his supporters for “defeating the dirty war.”Since then, fighters from the Islamic State group have launched attacks against army positions in three different provinces in northern and central Syria. In the past week alone, the militants captured a government-controlled gas field and two major army bases in three different provinces.
More than 300 soldiers, guards and workers at the Shaer field were reported killed by Islamic State militants in a three-day offensive to capture the field.
The army recaptured Shaer this past weekend.Militants last week also overran the sprawling Division 17 military base in the northern Raqqa province, killing at least 85 soldiers inside.
Amateur videos posted online by activists showed more than a dozen beheaded bodies in a busy square said to be in Raqqa.
Bonds are rallying from the United States of America (USA) to Germany to Australia amid speculation the Federal Reserve will disappoint investors looking for signals it’s moving closer to raising interest rates from a record low.
Treasury 10-year yields rose yesterday from almost the lowest level since May. German benchmark rates dropped to a record yesterday amid bets the European Central Bank will resort to buying bonds to spur growth. Unrest in Ukraine and Gaza is fueling the rally by boosting demand for the relative safety of government debt.Ten-year yields were at or near 2014’s lowest levels in 21 of 25 developed markets tracked by Bloomberg.
“The Fed is likely to be a bit of a damp squib,” said Nick Stamenkovic, a fixed-income strategist at broker RIA Capital Markets in Edinburgh. “Treasuries in general have been more affected by the geopolitical environment, particularly at the longer end.”
Bloomberg reported that Treasury 10-year yields added two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 2.48 percent. The price of the 2.5 percent note due May 2024 was 100 6/32. The yield fell three basis points, or 0.03 percentage point, on Tuesday after sliding to 2.40 percent on May 29, the least since June 2013.
Australia’s (GACGB10) 10-year yield dropped five basis points to 3.42 percent, and Japan’s was little changed at 0.53 percent.
German 10-year bund yields fell as low as 1.109 percent yesterday, dropping below the previous record set in 2012 when the region was in the throes of a downturn that threatened the euro’s existence. It’s little changed today at 1.12 percent.
The Bloomberg Global Developed Sovereign Bond Index (BGSV) has gained 4.8 percent this year through yesterday, recouping a decline from 2013.
“The potential implications for global growth seemed to have underpinned Treasuries and global fixed income,” said Su Lin Ong, head of Australian economic and fixed-income strategy at Royal Bank of Canada in Sydney. “It’s hard to see an end to some of these geopolitical risks.”
The Fed will keep its target for overnight bank lending in a range of zero to 0.25 percent at the end of its two-day meeting today, based on a Bloomberg News survey of economists.
US policy makers are scaling back the bond-buying program they have used to support the economy, and will reduce monthly purchases to $25 billion from $35 billion this week, based on responses from economists.
Dan Fuss, whose Boston-based Loomis Sayles Bond Fund (LSBDX) outperformed 98 percent of its competitors during the past five years, said geopolitical risks will keep the Fed from raising interest rates for at least a year.
“There’s reason to worry geopolitically,” Fuss said this week on Bloomberg Radio’s “The Hays Advantage” with Kathleen Hays in New York. “I think our central bank takes that into account.”
Traders see almost an 80 percent probability the Fed will raise the target for its benchmark to at least 0.5 percent by September 2015, based on futures contracts.
The US is scheduled to sell $15 billion of two-year floating-rate notes and $29 billion of seven-year fixed-rate securities today. The government auctioned five-year notes on Tuesday and two-year debt the day before.
An ocean surge has rendered many residents of Olori village, a riverine community in Oyo-East Local Government, homeless.
A river called Oba passes through the village. It is a threat to the villagers, especially during the rainy season. Movement to and from the community is usually hindered.
The non-availability of a bridge on the river has worsened the villagers’ plight.
A canoe is provided by the community, but it is not effective when there is a downpour, as the river overflows its bank.
Two years ago, 10 persons in the village drowned when a canoe they boarded capsized.
Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s representative, his deputy, Moses Adeyemo, visited the village. Lawmakers from the House of Assembly, led by Speaker Monsurat Sunmonu, also visited the village.
The Deputy Governor and the Speaker, who is from the village, pledged to assist the villagers by ensuring that a bridge is built across the river.
The then council Chairman, Taiwo Quasim, also pledged to provide another canoe.
The community head, Chief Teslim Adekunle II, said: “Our immediate need now is a bridge across the river. Without this, the community will be cut off from the rest of the world.”
He hailed Governor Ajimobi for transforming the state and lauded the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, for his leadership qualities.
Chief Adekunle, however, urged the government to investigate the N157 million allegedly earmarked for the building of a bridge across the river by the last administration, which was not executed.
