₦airaland Forum

Major importers of cars into the country are at one another’s throats over allegations made by a group comprising Elizade, Toyota Nigeria Limited, Globe Motors, Coscharis, SCOA and CFAO that one of their competitors, Stallion Group of Companies, was privy to insider information on the new automotive policy, thereby giving it unfair advantage over them.

In a petition written by the group to President Goodluck Jonathan, the auto dealers have warned that the federal government stands to lose about N134 billion in revenue due to a leak of the new automotive policy before it was announced.

But the Chairman/CEO of Stallion Group, Mr. Sunil Vaswani, has dismissed the allegation and challenged them to proper competition if they have the capacity to do so.
The Automotive Policy, which the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved on October 2, was formulated to encourage local manufacture of vehicles and the gradual phase-out of the importation of used and new vehicles to save Nigeria about N1 trillion spent annually on the importation of vehicles.

Under the policy, the federal government hopes to fast track the industrialisation of the country, reduce foreign exchange demand by importers of vehicles, and create thousands of jobs in the country.

The federal government had made public the new automotive policy on October 2, 2013 and set October 3, 2013 as the deadline for the establishment of Form Ms to import under the current tariff regime until February 28, 2014.

As at October 2, the duty on fully built units (FBUs) passenger cars was between 20 and 35 per cent, while a 10 per cent flat rate was imposed on commercial vehicles.
In order to encourage local manufacture of cars, the automotive policy jacked up the duty on passenger vehicles to 70 per cent and 30 per cent for commercial vehicles.

This means that all letters of credit (L/Cs) opened after October 3 would attract the new duty, while all L/Cs opened before October 3 would attract the old duty until February 28, 2014.

However, the group under the auspices of Auto Manufacturers' Representatives Group in Nigeria is alleging that Stallion Group, which imports Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Volkswagen and Audi brands of vehicles into the country, among others, had a pre-knowledge of the details of the automotive policy and used it to its advantage.

In a petition dated November 6 by the group to the president, it alleged that as the deliberation on the automotive policy was on-going at FEC on October 2, the Stallion Group, headed by Vaswani, rushed to open letters of credit to the tune of $382 million to cover three years of imports for 20,000 cars.

The petition was signed, among others, by Chairman, Elizade Motors, Chief Michael Ade Ojo; Managing Director, Toyota Nigeria Limited, Mr. Chandrasheker Krishnadas Thampy; Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Globe Motors, Chief William Anumudu; Chairman, Coscharis Nigeria Limited, Mr. Cosmas Maduka; and Chairman, CFAO Motors, Chief Molade Okoya-Thomas.

The letters of credit, THISDAY learnt, were opened with five banks on October 2 to beat the new tariff regime contained in the automotive policy.
This means that the federal government could lose about N134 billion because of the information leaked to the Stallion Group.
Sources said normally, Stallion Group opens letters of credit of about $100 million annually, but by shipping its imports on cars to beat the new tariff regime, the group has effectively distorted the market and created unfair competition.

The suspicion is that someone either in FEC or the Automotive Council of Nigeria leaked the information to Stallion Group.

THISDAY further learnt that Stallion Group was aware of the day FEC was going to meet and consider the memo on the automotive policy because it helped in drafting the new regulation.

The manufacturers’ representatives in the petition in which they are seeking audience with the president to iron out the grey areas, said: “It is obvious from this that the proposed automotive policy has been compromised and has resulted in providing undue advantage to one single group whose track record as a business entity has been monumentally notorious and whose owners have been deported twice in the last 10 years for economic sabotage.

“The federal government will be committing a grave error if such a group is given monopoly over the automotive industry in Nigeria.”

They also urged the federal government to probe the Stallion Group for allegedly evading the proposed duty increase by opening letters of credit and ordering vehicles thrice above its annual average import.

They also implored the federal government to set aside “what is apparently an unfair action taken and request that a fair and level playing field be provided to all members of the industry.”

They also said there was no representation from the Global manufacturers' representatives in the committee that drafted the automotive policy and therefore called for the constitution of a body comprising representatives of the federal government and stakeholders to review the policy and report back within six months.

Besides, they sought a two-year deferment of the implementation of the automotive policy to allow some serious investors complete their ongoing feasibility studies and plans to establish motor assembly plants in the country.

But reacting to their petition, Vaswani, who spoke to THISDAY from the United Kingdom yesterday, said the petition was baseless in its entirety.
He said it was not true that he had fore knowledge of the automotive policy as all car dealers – importers and manufacturers alike – were carried along by the Minister of Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga for more than a year when the policy was being formulated.

“They were all in the know and made their input. Chief Ojo of Elizade, in particular, was one of the biggest advocates of the policy and all of them were aware of the duty increase before the policy was taken to the Federal Executive Council for approval.

“Besides they were wrong when they said that the duty regime came into effect on October 3. It would only come into effect when the circular on the new duties for commercial and passenger cars are released by the Ministry of Finance,” he said.
Vaswani said as long as the circular had not been released, his competitors were free to take advantage of the window till February 28, 2014 to beat the deadline.

He also denied that he had established Form Ms to import 20,000 cars, stating, “The quantity Stallion Group is bringing is much lower than that, and that includes the value of the L/Cs which we opened.”

He said it would be physically impossible for Stallion to bring in 20,000 units between October and February.
“Between Toyota and Elizade, which bring in the most cars into the country, they only import 17,000 units per annum, so how can Stallion bring 20,000 units in a space of five months.

“This just smacks of sour grapes on the part of those people who have written the petition because the grace period is still there for others to import before the circular is released.

“If they have failed to do so, it simply means they lack the capacity to import,” he said.
On the automotive policy, Vaswani said as a Nigerian citizen (he holds a Nigerian passport), he is very passionate about the policy, as it would create thousands of jobs.
He said Nigeria imports some 500,000 units of used cars annually and 60,000 units of news cars, but with the new policy, manufacturers could make cheaper cars that are accessible to more people in the country.

“The automotive industry is one of the best things that has happened to this country. Less than a week after it was announced, the Chairman/President/CEO of Nissan, Carlos Ghosen, announced that Nissan was entering into a joint venture with Stallion Group to assemble cars in Nigeria.
“The likes of Innoson Group is also very happy with the policy, and so is Peugeot Automobile Nigeria Limited (PAN),” he said.

Also, as a manufacturer of cars from Stallion Group’s Volkswagen of Nigeria (VON) assembly plant in Lagos, he said his company would rather produce cars that attract no duty than import.

“If we can manufacture at zero duty why would I want to import three years stock? It does not make sense because I will have to pay interest to the banks for the entire period and hold on to stock that is aging because model specifications of cars change so often.

“Our intention is to reduce our stock of imported cars from next year and churn out more cars from our plant.

“At VON, we have an installed and expansion capacity to assemble 45,000 units of complete-knock-downs (CKDs) units and semi-knock-down units.

“With NISSAN, we shall be rolling out Nissan Patrol SUVs by April next year, and move on to other passenger vehicles and buses, so efforts of manufacturers should be encouraged not run down by competitors who are resistant to the new policy,” he said.

When contacted, Aganga also dismissed the allegations by the group that it had not been carried along when the automotive policy was being formulated.
He said all the auto dealers were in the know and even went with the ministry to South Africa for a retreat on the policy.

According to Aganga, “The new policy is an adaptation of the South African Automotive Policy. Since South Africa started manufacturing cars, the industry today contributes 7 per cent to the country’s GDP, it accounts for 12 per cent of exports, and is the second largest employer of labour there.

“Also, Chief Ade Ojo was one of the first persons who approached me to adopt the South African model. It was for this reason I studied what my counterpart in South Africa had done to the extent that their minister became our consultant.

“As a result, when the policy was eventually approved on October 2, Chief Ojo was in my office on October 4 to intimate me of the plans he has with Toyota to set up an assembly plant.
“This is what I expect the policy will do: encourage investment and catapult us to industrialisation, not accusation being hurled by importers who want the status quo to remain.”

He said he was not surprised that some car importers were resisting the automotive policy and have asked for a deferment, but vowed that he would block it with every ounce of his being.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/elizade-globe-coscharis-others-trade-tackles-with-stallion-over-car-imports/163986/

Obi and APGA foolishly buried their chances the moment they schemed out soludo! Up till today am still baffled about dat decision.....I hav no single sympathy for them if they loose this election.

They dug their grave with their own hands foolishly.

Believe me producers of dis film didn't spend more than 18,000 naira in making dis,

And they want to do world war Z

iterator25: who cares

Maltina does!

Who wrote this piece?.....this is the best piece on lagos I have read for a long time.

Neutral,comprehensive and analytical....by the way am igbo!

The struggle to tame Lagos

A walk along the two kilometers of light rail that Lagos
authorities have managed to build in three years gives a
sense of how hard it is to impose order on one of Africa’s
most chaotic cities.

From either side of the concrete structure – no track has
yet been laid – the crowded slums and highways of
Nigeria’s lagoon-side commercial hub teem with activity.
Its trademark yellow buses overtake, undertake and
force their way down impossibly narrow side streets,
where women stir pots next to canals clogged with
rubbish.


With between 15 million and 21 million people – the
upper estimate is the official one, though no one really
knows – and generating a third of GDP for Africa’s
second biggest economy, Lagos has become almost as
alluring to yield-hungry investors as it is to the 4,000 or
so economic migrants who turn up each day.
Violent crime, mushrooming slums, police extortion and
widespread fraud have often held investment back, but
in the past decade, authorities have started trying to
tackle some of the obstacles, especially maddening
traffic bottlenecks.


Just keeping Lagos roads moving without rail, pushing
that kind of tonnage just through our road network, now
that’s the eighth wonder of the world,” says Governor
Babtunde Fashola.
Fashola and his predecessor, Bola Tinubu, have tried to
turn the city from a byword for squalor into a glitzy
business hub. Their success will rest on projects like the
light rail, which has involved massive and controversial
slum clearance.

If they manage, it could become an investment hub in
Africa and a model for fast-urbanizing African nations. If
not, it might face a dystopian crime-ridden future not
unlike its past.


“WE CAN’T STOP THEM COMING”
If Lagos were a country its GDP would make it Africa’s
seventh biggest economy – more than twice the size of
Kenya’s. Its large consumer market is already well
established for firms like Unilever, Heineken and Nestle.
One of Africa’s biggest stock markets sits here, as does
its second biggest market in government bonds. Industry
is hampered by poor power generation, but the service
sector is booming.
Lagos accounts for more than half the non-oil economy
of Africa’s leading energy producer, says economist Paul
Collier, who sees it as key to breaking the country’s
dependence on oil.


“Lagos is Africa’s best chance of a productive megacity,”
he wrote in The Plundered Planet. “As oil runs down and
is replaced by a new economy … Nigeria’s economic
future lies in Lagos.”
But it faces a daily challenge just trying to keep up with
the pace of population growth, much of it on the edge of
water.


Nigeria, already pushing 170 million people, will be home
to 400 million by 2050, making it the world’s fourth most
populous country, according to the global Population
Reference Bureau (PRB). Lagos will have roughly doubled
in size by then, Fashola and demographers agree.
On top of Nigeria’s high birth rate, there is migration.
“The more successful Lagos is, the more people it
attracts. That’s the Catch-22,” said Kayode Akindele,
partner in a Lagos-based consultancy. “Social services
can’t keep up.”
Fashola’s planning commissioner Ben Akabueze thinks
Lagos could have 35 million people by 2025 on current
growth rates. In 1970, authorities say, there were just
1.4 million Lagosians.
“We can’t stop them from coming,” Akabueze told
Reuters from his office in mainland Lagos’s noisy,
heaving Ikeja district. “There’s been a net positive
migration almost on a daily basis.”
To try to cope better, the government is rolling out a
compulsory residents’ registration. “Everybody is
welcome,” Akabueze says. “But we want to document
the people who stay.”



VEHICLES FOR CHANGE
The influx puts pressure on inadequate housing, and
spawns unemployed youths with few options for making
a living outside the street gangs – the infamous ‘area
boys’ who informally control territory and extort money
from passers by.
But the biggest headache is travel. The transport
authority says there are 9 million road trips a day in the
city. Some Lagosians get up at 4.30 a.m. to make the
office by nine.
Things are improving; highways were widened and police
stationed at bottlenecks. New ferry services now beat
traffic by crossing the lagoon in a state one fifth of which
is water.
Tutu Adewale, an assistant to a financial professional,
used to spend three or four hours each way commuting
by bus along a tangle of bridges. Now it takes her 45
minutes by boat.
“I made do with it, but it’s such a relief now,” she said.


The $2.5 billion light rail project will take more time.
China’s state-owned China Civil Engineering Construction
Corporation (CCECC) began work in 2010, but there are
still 25 km left to build on the $1.3 billion east-west line,
and no work has started on the 35 km north-south one.
The project is behind schedule because there is barely a
stretch of land on which someone isn’t living or trading.
Thousands of illegal settlements erected by slum
dwellers have been destroyed this year. No one has been
compensated, because they were never supposed to be
there to begin with.


Amnesty International in August condemned the eviction
of 9,000 residents of Badia East and the razing of their
homes in February, leaving many to sleep in mosquito-
infested streets.
In one incident, 72 traders from the Igbo ethnic group
were deported to their ancestral lands after their houses
were bulldozed. That appeared to give slum clearance an
ugly ethnic dimension, and Fashola made a reluctant
public apology.
“My shop was just right in front of that bridge,” said Igbo
trader Uche Okonkwo, 43, surveying the wreckage of a
market trashed to make way for the rail. “They
demolished the warehouse, the shops, the offices, the
showroom, everything.”



FUTURE FOR THE POOR?
Fashola’s defenders say slums have to be removed if
projects like the light rail are to happen, but critics say
the heavy-handed approach shows a lack of sensitivity to
the poor.
The governor is fixing the city for the besuited business
types, they say, but has been slow on things like low-cost
housing to help those sleeping under bridges or on
rubbish tips.
“Much as I admire Fashola, I don’t see enough being
done to help those at the bottom,” blogger Tolu Ogunlesi
told Reuters in a chic art cafe in the prestigious Victoria
Island, an area housing one the world’s highest
concentrations of millionaires.
“They’re talking about building 1,000 low-cost housing
units a year, but we need hundreds of thousands a year,”
he said.


There’s no shortage of housing projects for the rich.
Moss-dusted colonial-era houses in leafy Ikoyi district are
becoming rare as they get torn down and swapped for
luxury flats.
At Bar Beach on the Atlantic Coast, tonnes of sand is
being poured into the ocean to reclaim it for the
proposed Eko Atlantic city, a Dubai-style gated
community that will have chrome skyscrapers, business
parks, palm trees and a marina.
Being on water is the only thing it will have in common
with the Makoko slum a few miles away, where 100,000
fishing people live in houses on stilts with no sanitation.


“MORE ACCOUNTABLE”
At his desk piled high with papers, Fashola resents the
notion he has neglected the poor. He points to projects
like massive mains water provision, which will when
finished provide 10-20 liters a day to Lagosians, even if
the city swells to 35 million, he says.
But the state’s message is: if you leave the poverty of
your village to live on the streets in Lagos, that’s your
lookout.
“If you have nowhere to stay, then stay in your village.
You can’t simply jump on a bus and come live under a
bridge,” Akabueze says.
The governor has won praise for dealing with crime.
Many area boys have been co-opted – some as yellow-
shirted traffic cops, while others keep order in bus
terminals.
Violent crime has steadily fallen since he took office in
2007, though there was been a spike in kidnapping this
year.

“There was a time security was a big problem, especially
robbery, but you have to hand it to them, things got a lot
better,” said Lagos tycoon Tony Elumelu.
Many fret about what will happen when the governor
steps down in 2015.
“Everything Fashola’s done can easily be reversed. You’d
just have to do nothing, it would be reversed,” said
Akindele.


Yet a growing number of business people feel the state’s
efforts to bring some kind of order to Lagos may be
becoming irreversible. Corruption is rife, but institutions
function; rubbish is collected, streets are swept, hedges
trimmed.
“Lagos is depersonalizing politics,” United Bank for Africa
CEO Philips Oduoza said. “Institutions are becoming
more important than people, and that could outlast the
governor.”
Reinforcing this are rocketing tax receipts; 65 percent of
state revenues are now non-oil.
The governor, who gets up at 7 a.m. and works until 3
a.m., says his to-do list isn’t getting any shorter.
“In a football match, the last 15 minutes can be the most
decisive,” he says, creaking back in his leather chair.
“So I intend to finish with as much pace as we started.


www.businessdayonline.com/2013/10/the-struggle-to-tame-lagos/

Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allison Madueke, has joined the league of newspaper publishers in the country, with the introduction of a weekly title, ‘The Union’, DailyPost has learnt.

It was gathered that the paper has an all-gloss pullouts for its Entertainment, Sports, Fashion and Style sections.


A close insider hinted that the publication would kick off fully as from January 1, 2014, but at the moment, they are trying the market with a weekly publication, which covers every aspect of normal newspaper reportage.

It was also gathered that the newspaper operates from an office located in GRA, Ikeja, Lagos, while the former Managing Director of the Champion Newspaper, Emma Agu, is currently managing its operations.

Sources said reporters would be paid N250,000 monthly, while Editors will get about N500,000 per month.

DailyPost learnt that some journalists have been jostling to join the new publication, which kicks off fully January next year.


http://dailypost.com.ng/2013/10/23/allison-madueke-establishes-the-union-newspaper-to-pay-reporters-n250000-monthly/?utm_source=&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=allison-madueke-establishes-the-union-newspaper-to-pay-reporters-n250000-monthly

Do the wife take in every year.....those kids cant be more than one apart

I Dont know if this is good news or bad news! but i think it is good news for now......no fuel scarcity for a long time to come!

The Pipelines and Product Marketing Company (PPMC) has suspended fuel importation, as excessive orders in the wake of the fuel subsidy scandal last year has created a petrol glut, Reuters news agency reported Thursday.

PPMC, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) responsible for the supply of petroleum products to the domestic market, according to Reuters, will not make purchases in November, as it tries to work through a 10.2 million barrel (1.2 million tonnes) surplus petrol waiting offshore.

Traders reportedly hinted it was possible that the suspension may extend until the end of the year, which will hit European refiners that supply the market.
Petrol gluts have occurred in the past in Nigeria, but the scale is far worse than usual and a suspension of import deals is very rare.

“All previously agreed laycans (deliveries) have been cancelled,” one regional trading source said, “Nigeria has about 1.2 million tonnes offshore waiting to discharge,” the report added.

Spokesman of PPMC, Nasir Imodagbe, was quoted as stating he was not aware of any cancellation of orders, but that a decision to suspend imports would be that of the regulator, the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).

“Whatever volume the PPPRA allocates to us, we ensure to deliver it. If there’s going to be any suspension, it should come from the PPPRA,” Imodagbe said.
PPPRA spokesman also denied there had been any suspension, but added: “We are a regulatory body, we don't import ourselves.”

However, the report noted that ship tracking data on Reuters showed around 45 oil product cargoes anchored off the coast of the port of Lagos, where the fuel comes in, waiting to discharge.
The import halt will likely hit oil refineries in Europe, which supply most of the fuel to Africa's most populous nation. At least 3.8 million barrels (450,000 tonnes) of gasoline (petrol) is now expected to be looking for new buyers in the coming month, the report added.

Nigeria normally imports around 7.6 million barrels (900,000 tonnes) of gasoline each month, with PPMC responsible for roughly half of the buying.

PPPRA, which allocates the other 50 per cent of gasoline imports to private traders, has not yet announced its final requirements for the fourth quarter.

Market sources said the companies allocated imports by PPPRA are not expected to book any gasoline purchases before December.

Industry sources said the glut had been created by a crude-for-gasoline swap programme that was expanded by the Nigerian government last year in the wake of the fuel subsidy fraud.

“It's a direct consequence of the crackdown on fuel subsidy fraud,” an official working for a major Nigerian fuel marketer said.
“A lot of marketers are not being paid subsidy, so the government had to order the fuel itself. To do that, they had to sub-contract to a lot of people to bring the fuel in. They ordered too much.”

Another industry source added that the oversupply had been exacerbated by low wholesale prices of petrol in Europe, which had encouraged refineries and traders to do crude-for-gasoline deals this summer.

Traders in Europe had moved to dump a surplus of gasoline into West Africa in return for barrels of crude oil.

Despite being Africa's largest oil producer, pumping 2.11 million barrels per day, Nigeria is reliant on imports of products like petrol and kerosene due to an ageing refining system.

Last year’s probes into the fuel subsidy programme exposed a web of corruption and fraud by government officials and fuel marketers that had cost the country billions of dollars, with much subsidised fuel never being ordered or being diverted to neighbouring countries.
That led to the expansion of the crude-for-gasoline swap programme, in a bid to remove cash payments from the system.

“When NNPC proposed to switch to a system of swapping crude for gasoline, everyone thought it was a brilliant idea as you deliver gasoline, get your crude and don't face payment problems,” an executive at a trading explained.

“But then somehow, allocations went to too many people, who kept delivering gasoline even before getting crude. So as a result, the issue of oversupply arose,” he added.


http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/nnpc-halts-petrol-imports-as-excessive-orders-cause-glut/161987/

Apc goons pls compare fashola power plant cost and a power plant cost of a private company! And let God help u have conscience in ur judgment!

Nigerian multi-millionaire tycoon Abdulsamad Rabiu is reportedly constructing a $500 million ultra-modern cement plant in Edo State in the south of Nigeria.
The cement plant, which will have a three million metric tonnes per annum (mtpa) capacity, is near completion and is expected to be commissioned early next year. Abdulsamad Rabiu disclosed this much last week in London during the signing of a $35 million contract agreement between his company, BUA Group and Siemens for the construction of a gas turbine power plant for the new BUA Group Edo Cement factory. Siemens is expected to supply three SGT 500 turbines with a total capacity of 45 megawatts to supply power to the cement plant.
With this new cement production facility, Abdulsamad Rabiu will compete with Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, for a share of Nigeria’s lucrative cement market.
Rabiu, who is worth $675 million by FORBES’ latest estimates, is easily Aliko Dangote’s fiercest and most formidable competition in Nigeria. Rabiu’s conglomerate, the BUA Group, has substantial interests in the key sectors Dangote is heavily vested in- cement, flour and sugar production. Dangote has always held the upper hand in all these sectors, but BUA Group has been a worthy challenger. With BUA’s new facility, Dangote’s monopolistic dominance in the very lucrative cement sector might be endangered, but only a little bit. BUA’s 3 million-mtpa facility is only a tiny fraction of Dangote’s cement production assets in Nigeria,which have a combined capacity of 20 million mtpa.
Rabiu learned the rop

The Richest People In Africa 2013


1. Aliko Dangote

$20.2 billion

Industry: Manufacturing

Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria

Age: 56

Marital Status: Married

Africa’s richest man started building his fortune three decades ago after taking a business loan from his maternal uncle to begin trading in commodities such as flour, sugar, rice and cement. In the early 2000s, he started producing these items himself. His Dangote Group is now the largest manufacturing conglomerate in West Africa and owns sugar refineries, salt processing facilities, a beverage manufacturer and a string of cement plants across Africa. In October 2012, Dangote sold a controlling stake in his flour milling company to Tiger Brands, a South African manufacturer of consumer goods. He pocketed $190 million from the sale. Dangote’s biggest asset is Dangote Cement, a $20-billion (market cap) cement manufacturer with operations in 14 countries and an annual production capacity of 30 million metric tonnes. In June this year, South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation acquired a 1.5-percent stake in the company for $290 million. Dangote is also Africa’s most generous philanthropist. Within the last 12 months, he has given away over $100 million to causes ranging from youth empowerment to flood relief, religious causes and education. His younger brother, Sani Dangote, is Vice Chairman of Dangote Group.


2. Allan Gray

$8.5 billion

Industry: Financial services

Country Of Citizenship: South Africa

Age: 75

Marital Status: Married

This media-shy South African moneyman controls two investment companies that collectively manage over $50 billion in assets. After Gray received an MBA from Harvard, he worked for eight years at Fidelity Management and Research in Boston before returning to Cape Town in 1973, when he founded Allan Gray Limited, now the largest privately owned asset manager in South Africa. It is also the most successful with assets under management at approximately $30 billion. According to inside sources at the company, Allan Gray’s global mandate share portfolio has achieved an average annual return of 28 percent since 1974. Keys to success include rigorous research and the consistent application of Allan Gray’s ages-old and time-tested investment approach of buying heavily into companies whose share price is less than their intrinsic value. Gray is also the founder of Orbis, an asset manager in Bermuda, which he founded in 1989. Orbis has over $21 billion under management. Gray’s son, William, is President of Orbis and equally serves as portfolio manager of the Orbis Funds. Gray and his family are the controlling shareholders of Allan Gray Limited and Orbis. In 2007, Gray endowed his Allan Gray Orbis Foundation with $130 million, the single largest charity gift in Southern Africa at the time. The foundation funds scholarships for poor but promising South African high school students.


3. Mike Adenuga

$8 billion

Industry: Oil, telecoms

Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria

Age: 60

Marital Status: Married

Nigeria’s second richest man made his first fortune in his mid-twenties by distributing lace fabrics and Coca- Cola, and by handling lucrative government contracts during the regime of former Nigerian military President, Ibrahim Babangida. In the early nineties he founded Conoil Producing, an indigenous oil exploration and production outfit that was the first Nigerian company to strike oil in commercial quantities. Today, Conoil Producing’s assets produce more than 100,000 barrels of crude a day. Adenuga’s other holdings include Globacom, a Nigerian mobile telecommunications network that boasts more than 25 million customers in Nigeria and Republic of Benin. He also owns a 74-percent stake in Conoil PLC, a petroleum marketing outfit listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.





4. Folorunsho Alakija

$7.3 billion

Industry: Oil

Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria

Age: 62

Marital Status: Married

Africa’s richest woman sits atop Famfa Oil, a Nigerian oil company that owns a 60-percent stake in OML 127, one of Nigeria’s most prolific oil blocks located at Nigerian offshore Agbami deepwater field. Daily production at OML 127 stands at over 200,000 barrels per day. Alakija studied fashion design in England in the eighties, returning to Nigeria to found Supreme Stitches, a Nigerian fashion label which enjoyed patronage from the more successful women in Nigerian high society. One of her clients was Maryam Babangida, the wife to former Nigerian military President, Ibrahim Babangida. Alakija is believed to have ridden on the crest of this relationship to acquire an oil block in 1993 at a relatively inexpensive price. Famfa immediately entered into a joint venture agreement with Star Deep Water Petroleum (a subsidiary of Chevron and Brazil’s Petrobas), ceding a 40-percent stake to the two companies. Famfa owned a 60-percent interest in the block until 2000, when the incumbent Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, forcefully acquired a 50-percent stake in the block, transferring it to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation – a government-owned oil company. Famfa Oil immediately went to court to challenge the acquisition in a case that dragged on for 12 years. In May 2013, the Nigerian Supreme court reinstated the 50-percent stake to Famfa Oil. Alakija also owns $200-million of real estate in the United Kingdom.




5. Nicky Oppenheimer

$6.5 billion

Industry: Mining, investments

Country Of Citizenship: South Africa

Age: 68

Marital Status: Married

Diamonds are not forever. In November 2011, Nicky Oppenheimer made the momentous decision to sell off his family’s stake in De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer, to mining behemoth Anglo American. The landmark $5.1-billion deal ended the Oppenheimer family’s eight-decade control of De Beers, which began when Nicky’s grandfather, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, took over the firm in 1927 and consolidated the company’s global monopoly over the world’s diamond industry. In 2011, E Oppenheimer & Sons, the family-owned investment firm which Nicky controls, partnered with Temasek, the investment firm of the Government of Singapore, to form Tana Africa Capital, a $300-million private equity fund that invests in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and agriculture sectors.




6. Johann Rupert

$6.1 billion

Industry: Luxury goods and retail

Country Of Citizenship: South Africa

Age: 63

Marital Status: Married

Johann Rupert is the chairman of Swiss-based luxury goods company, Compagnie Financière Richemont SA, which owns premium brands such as Cartier, Dunhill, IWC Schaffhausen, Piaget and Vacheron Constantin, among many others. It is the sixth largest company on the Swiss stock exchange and the third largest luxury goods company in the world. Johann’s father, Anton Rupert, founded a small cigarette manufacturing operation, Rembrandt, in his garage in 1941 with a £10-investment. Rembrandt became incredibly popular among young South African smokers and by the 1950s, was already one of the leading tobacco firms in the continent. Anton, ever the visionary, diversified from tobacco into the industrial and luxury branded goods sectors, splitting Rembrandt into two divisions: Remgro (an investment company with financial, mining and industrial interests) and Richemont (the Swiss-based luxury goods group). Johann is chairman and the largest individual shareholder in both companies. He also owns two of South Africa’s best-known vineyards, Rupert & Rothschild and L’Ormarins, and founded the Franschhoek Motor Museum, which houses his personal collection of over 200 antique motor vehicles.




7. Nassef Sawiris

$5.2 billion

Industry: Construction

Country Of Citizenship: Egypt

Age: 53

Marital Status: Married

Nassef Sawiris is the youngest of the three sons of Egyptian billionaire and founder of the Orascom conglomerate, Onsi Sawiris. He heads Orascom Construction Industries (OCI), one of the largest companies in the North Africa region. In January this year, Nassef announced that OCI was exchanging all global depositary receipts of the company for newly issued shares of OCI NV on the NYSE Euronext in Amsterdam or in exchange for cash. A consortium of investors, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, provided the $1 billion in fresh capital required to pay off investors. The overwhelming majority of the shareholders accepted the buyout offer, which subsequently led to the company’s delisting on the EGX. Nassef also serves as a director at Lafarge, the French cement giant, and the Dubai international Financial Exchange.




8. Gilbert Chagoury & Family

$4.2 billion

Industry: Construction

Country Of Citizenship: Nigeria

Age: 67

Marital Status: Married

The Nigerian-Lebanese industrialist and diplomat is a co-founder of the Chagoury Group, a large, multi-faceted Nigerian conglomerate with interests in manufacturing, construction, real estate, hospitality and healthcare. Gilbert was born in 1946 in Lagos by Lebanese immigrant parents. After studying at the College des Freres Chretiens in Lebanon, he returned to Nigeria where he kick-started his business career. In 1971 he started GrandsMoulins du Bénin Flour Mills, a milling company in Cottonou, Republic of Benin, which formed the foundation of the Chagoury Group. Today, the Chagoury Group owns five flour-milling companies in Nigeria and Republic of Benin. Chagoury’s milling operations collectively produce over 3,700 metric tonnes of wheat flour every day. The Chagoury Group also owns a glass bottle manufacturing plant and a plastic bottle manufacturing operation. Other assets include Eko Hotel, a five-star Hotel in Lagos, and Hotel Presidential, a five-star hotel in Port Harcourt. One of the newer companies within the group is South EnergyX, a real estate development company that is developing Eko Atlantic, a new $6-billion metropolis on land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. When completed, Eko Atlantic is expected to provide residential accommodation for up to 250,000 people. Chagoury’s property portfolio also includes Ocean Parade, a series of 14 tower blocks overlooking a lagoon in Banana Island, Nigeria’s priciest residential community. Gilbert Chagoury’s career has not been without controversy. In 2001, in a British court, he admitted to helping the family of deceased Nigerian dictator, Sani Abacha, transfer $300 million into foreign accounts. He returned the money and was indemnified of charges.




9. Nathan Kirsh

$3.6 billion

Industry: Real Estate, Distribution

Country Of Citizenship: Swaziland

Age: 82

Marital Status: Married

Nathan Kirsh made his first fortune after he founded a successful corn milling business in Swaziland. He deftly reinvested his profits in food distribution and real estate. The bulk of his fortune is held in various property and distribution companies. His investment company, Kirsh Holding Group, owns a 50-percent stake in Swazi Plaza Properties – the company that owns the largest shopping mall in Swaziland. He also owns a 29-percent stake in Minerva, a London-based property developer, and a 63-percent stake in Jetro Holdings, which operates Jetro Cash and Carry stores and Restaurant Depots in the New York City area. Jetro enjoys a near monopoly in supplying wholesale goods to small stores and restaurants in the New York City area and had revenues of over $6 billion in 2013. Kirsh is also the largest individual shareholder in Magal Security Systems, a developer and supplier of control systems and intruder detection systems.




10. Christoffel Wiese


$3.4 billion

Industry: Retail

Country Of Citizenship: South Africa

Age: 72

Marital Status: Married

The South African businessman is the chairman and greatest individual shareholder of Shoprite, Africa’s largest discount retailer. After studying Law at the University of Stellenbosch, Wiese took up a job as an executive director at Pep Stores, a discount clothing chain his parents co-founded. In 1979, Pep Stores diversified into groceries through its acquisition of Shoprite, a small South African retail chain. When Wiese became chairman of the company in 1981, he changed the company’s name to Pepkor and made a series of acquisitions including Ackermans, a prominent clothing chain. He went on to list Shoprite on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. He owns a 15-percent stake in the $7-billion (market cap) company. While his Shoprite stake remains his biggest asset, he also owns significant stakes in other Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies, including Invicta Holdings, PSG Holdings, Tradehold, and private equity firm, Brait. Other assets include a private game reserve in the Kalahari and Lourensford Wine Estate.



http://www.ventures-africa.com/2013/10/richest-people-africa-2013/

imranay: Dear Friends
I work for the Nigerian Turkish Nizamiye Hospital so let me feed you with some information. Hospitals are not supposed to make adverts but something that good for society should be announced.
Nigerian Turkish Nizamiye Hospital is a private (Non – governmental) hospital related to Turkish Colleges which has branches in Abuja, Lagos, Ogun, Kano, Kaduna and Yobe. Our group doesn’t have any ambition to make money and carry it back to Turkey. Instead we invest in Nigeria with schools, university, charity organization and a hospital. We have 400 scholarship students schooling in our schools and also at universities in Turkey.

Most of the doctors are Turkish but we have Nigerians also and we will recruit more Nigerians when we get more patients. We have 100+ Nigerian Staff in our hospital.

Hospital is close to Kado Fish Market, to be certain at the back of Citec Estate. So assuming you are coming from Life Camp Junction you should take first right after Citec Estate (Opposite Kings Court Estate). Then first right again after climbing the hill. You will see the hospital building right in front of you. We have signboards arround so you can follow. Look for blue - White H sign.

Here is the link for the contact information and map.
http://www.nizamiyehospital.com/iletisim

On the contrary to general approach prices are not higher than other reputable hospitals considering the good quality service. Since you are not traveling abroad you are also saving ticket and accommodation costs.

We started on 12th of August and started doing surgeries. We are registered with FCDA and soon will be accredited to NHIS.

There is no general ward. Most crowded room is for 2 patients to avoid any kind of infection between the patients. There is no discrimination in terms of medical means only by luxury. All the patient rooms have same bed, central AC, nurse calling, firefighting and medical gas system, mini refrigerator, wardrobe…

We try to increase our services to the latest level so no Nigerian will have to travel again for medical reasons. Our Radiology unit with X ray, Mammography, CT scan and MRI is functional. We hope our hospital will be a referral center for Nigeria and surrounding countries. We already started getting patients from West African countries.

We also hope there will be others like our hospital so Nigerian Health System can get better and better. And if we can give our doctors (or other educated people) a good environment to work that way we can stop our brains to migrate to other countries.

For any inquiries email: info@nizamiyehospital.com

Thank you.

Thanks for the detailed information......A nice hospital you guys put up there!
Am also impressed by the bolden above, hardly seen in nigeria...hope you guys maintain the high standard you set for many years to come

Vip Rooms

Eye Theatre

Delivery Room

Single Bedded Rooms

Intensive Care Unit

Consultation Rooms

Peaceful Clean Environment(Reception Area)

A new world class hospital named Nizamiye Hospitals has opened for services at abuja! Their facilities are excellent and can compete with any hospital any where in the world.

This is one of the outcome of government policy to reverse the medical tourism that has been heavily criticized.....The federal government under the direction of ministry of health setup a committee headed by Tony Elumelu to see to setting up of Private world class hospitals all over the country, and its pleasing to report that tens of it are being constructed and established in coming months/yrs as i report. Lots of deals are being signed/Pursued by Nigerians and their foreign counterparts especially the Indians currently.

Enjoy Below the Pictures of Nizamiye hotel.... sorry hospital Abuja

The executive will also propose a legislation to back up the policy.
Nigeria currently spends about N550 billion on the importation of cars into the country annually, the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, and the Minister of Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga, disclosed on Wednesday.

The ministers, who briefed journalists after the meeting of the Executive Council of the Federation, FEC, said the Council has now approved a new Automotive Industrial Policy Development Plan for the development of the Nigerian automotive industry.


Mr. Aganga had brought a memo seeking Council’s approval of policy measures to transform the Nigerian automotive industry and attract investments into the sector.
The minister disclosed that as at 2012, Nigeria spent a total of N550 billion ($3.4billion) and N660 billion ($4.2 billion) in 2010 on the importation of cars. He added that this showed that car importation takes the biggest share of the country’s foreign reserves, followed by machinery.
While explaining the policy to journalists, Mr. Aganga said the policy was drawn over a period of nine months with the input of the National Automotive Council (NAC). He added that foreign car manufacturing giants like Toyota and Nissan are expected to start announcing their specific investments in Nigeria.


Mr. Aganga said the success of the policy will also mean a gradual phase out of fairly used (Tokunbo) cars imported into Nigeria and create a minimum of 700,000 jobs for Nigerians.


He said the pitfalls of similar policies in the past such as the non-implementation of policies, lack of infrastructure, and inappropriate tariff regime were considered and adequately addressed in the new policy. He said the Federal Road Safety Corps and local vehicle assembly plants/manufacturers were involved in the formulating the policy.
He also disclosed that Nigeria and Bangladesh were the only top countries in the world that did not have a successful automotive policy.


The minister outlined the points of the new policy to include the establishment of three automotive clusters in Lagos/Ogun, Kaduna/Kano, and Anambra/Enugu states to share resources and reduce cost of investments; the development and revival of the petrochemical and metal/steel sectors; and the tyre manufacturing industry to support the automotive sector.


He added that new tariff regimes will be adequately set to discourage the importation of cars and encourage local manufacture while government continues to take the lead in patronage of locally made vehicles. He added that banks will be encouraged to operate vehicle purchase schemes to enable Nigerians easily purchase cars.
The Council also approved the directive that all government vehicles be purchased from local assembly plants unless they are of specialized nature and NAC has certified that they cannot be produced in Nigeria. The council’s decision is to be backed by appropriate legislation to give comfort to investors that there will be no abrupt change in policy.


http://premiumtimesng.com/news/145878-nigeria-spends-n550-billion-annually-car-importation-new-policy-seeks-phase-tokunbo.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=nigeria-spends-n550-billion-annually-car-importation-new-policy-seeks-phase-tokunbo

noblezone: subsidy is one of the strongest platforms where corruption dance at full glare of the public with impunity!

Remove subsidy today! Deregulate the down stream sector 100% and see the impact!

True!

This goes to show that deregulation does not necessary means high fuel price!
This is the time to do away with fuel subsidy and use the money for our infrastructure needs....almost a trillion naira will be available.....imagine how much that will do to nigerian roads, airports, railway,universities, hospitals, etc and dis is per year.....

chukjojo: Mister, which of the two are u refering to? or do you mean the both? To educate you, nkpor flyover is located at new parts junction, along Onitsha-Enugu road. nkpor has never been close to uper-iweka where onitsha flyover is, rather it is Obosi(Awada Obosi) that is close to onitsha flyover. whereas obosi has its own flyover situated at 200mtrs after eletrical parts, along onitsha-owerri road.
So stop saying what u dont know.

Mr I too know! Is it hard for u to read statement and understand it!?

Meanwhile this is how nkpor flyover is looking so far

still not looking impressive! but work in progress sha!