₦airaland Forum

Olalekan Adetayo

I like it when state governors, ministers or other top government officials gather for meetings inside the Villa. It is always fun listening to these big men and women crack jokes and exchange banter. Beyond the hostilities some of them who belong to different political camps display in public, when they meet, they have ways of reaching out to one another. I always wish their followers who kill or maim because of them are present to learn the spirit of sportsmanship from their idols.

Most of the subjects of their discussions do not make the list of stories in the media most times, but that is what this column has been achieving over the years – serving you news behind the news.



A meeting of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum was held on Wednesday night inside the old Banquet Hall of the Villa. State governors elected on the platforms of the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party attended.

The most interesting part of the meeting was when Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, arrived the venue. He arrived at the same time with his Ebonyi State counterpart, David Umahi. Both of them are of the PDP.

[b]Immediately Wike stepped into the hall, he saw the Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, who was busy perusing the documents given to him by members of staff of the forum’s secretariat. Some other state governors like Nasir El-Rufai, were already seated at the time. Wike started shouting, “State of Osun! State of Osun!!”  Aregbesola of the APC stood up to acknowledge his colleague’s greeting. Both of them embraced as photojournalists clicked away. Holding tight to each other, they kept laughing in a manner that suggested that they knew something that we did not know.

While that was playing out, Kwara State Governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, who is also an APC governor joined them. Then Ahmed started hailing Wike by saying, “Rivers, Rivers.” Aregbesola thought he could seize the opportunity to hit Wike. He helped Ahmed conclude his statement by saying “Rivers of violence!”

The Rivers State Governor would not allow that go unchallenged. He replied Aregbesola, “Which violence? The one you brought to the state?” While the three of them were still laughing, the Osun State Governor denied being behind any violence in Rivers State. But Wike was not through with him yet. He held Aregbesola tightly and said, “You plotted and plotted and plotted, but the people of the state said no way!” He must be referring to the efforts made by the APC to win elections in Rivers State. They all laughed.

Wike stepped out to exchange pleasantries with some other persons and by the time he returned, somebody else had sat on the chair he wanted to sit on beside Aregbesola. A chair was provided for him between the Delta State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, and Umahi. He said jokingly that he was happy to be far from Aregbesola.

While he was still throwing banter, the Chairman of the NGF, Abdulaziz Yari, called the meeting to order and asked Wike to offer the opening prayers. The hall erupted in laughter. The governor wanted to know the reason  he was saddled with that responsibility. “Why me?” he asked Yari. He however did not wait for the reply before he told the Zamfara State Governor who is also an APC governor that, “I don’t even know whether to pray for you to survive.” They all laughed again. Thereafter, Wike proceeded to pray for the success of the meeting.

The following day, the National Economic Council’s meeting was held and again, Wike stole the show. This time, it was Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, who embraced and held Wike’s hands for a very long time, repeating, “He used to be my friend,” just as photographers were busy.

They were joined by Yari and the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi. During the ensuing discussion, Wike and Fayemi made allusions to the Rivers and   Ekiti elections and there were accusations and counter accusations on alleged rigging. Wike asked Fayemi why the APC was bent on “taking” all (states). “Didn’t you (PDP) take all in my (Ekiti) state?” Fayemi asked. The Rivers governor told the minister that the PDP won  in Ekiti but Fayemi would not hear that. “You won or you rigged?” he asked again. Wike insisted that the PDP won and they all laughed again.[/b]

A national newspaper on Friday published the dramatic photograph of that encounter showing Wike, Tambuwal, Fayemi and Yari on its front page and wondered what was responsible for what it described as “executive excitement” depicted in the picture. I hope I have helped in providing the answer.

Yahaya Bello of Kogi State who I reported here last week that he was planning to become President Muhammadu Buhari’s son-in-law also joined another group of governors where he introduced Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State as his in-law. “He is my in-law. He gave me a wife. You can confirm from him,” Bello told those who cared to listen. The former labour leader confirmed the assertion by nodding.

There has been concern that Boko Haram, perhaps because it is on the retreat, is increasingly using its hostages as suicide bombers. Few observers appear to put much stock in the assertion by Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, that the militant group is technically defeated.

babakol:
The dangers of too much hope.Skeptics are treated like blasphemers and critics are termed haters....God help us all

Quakertellicus1:
Please....move it to front page...please.not the article on actersses fighting over x...

Back to the article



Yes...it is happening. The problem is....do you let it happen at a very fast rate....or at a slow rate?

If we devalued....not only would forex be depleted, but prices would go up, and inflation would rise...because most locally produced goods rely on imported raw materials....and because you would need more naira to buy them so to speak.




Russia, Kazhakstan and Mexico have alternative sources of forex. We don't.

IF African countries used 2013 as the base year for measuring the size of their economies, then Egypt would overtake Nigeria as the largest economy on the continent.


[b]But even without that, with Africa’s oil producers battered by low crude prices and enfeebled currencies, it would seem Egypt President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government has a leg up as it is making the tough policy calls that his Nigerian counterpart Muhammadu Buhari is reluctant to do to fix its economic malaise.

Faced with the same currency predicament, the Central Bank of Egypt allowed the biggest one-time depreciation of the pound since 2003 on March 14, and promised to adopt a more flexible exchange rate.

The moves were designed to revive investor interest in Egypt to ease a dollar crunch, much like Nigeria’s, that has hampered economic growth and fueled a black market for the currency.

For its part Nigeria - Africa’s biggest economy and oil producer – doubled down on the capital controls and restrictions on some imports in a bid to prop up the naira, which has been effectively pegged at 197-199 against the dollar since March 2015.

Those measures have deterred foreign investment and led to a scarcity of dollars, with the black-market exchange rate falling to around 325 naira per dollar.

 Buhari has backed the central bank’s stance and ruled out a devaluation on the grounds it would cause prices to rise. That’s already happening, with inflation surging to a three-year high of 11.4%  in February from 9.6% the previous month.

Contrasting fortunes[/b]
The contrasting results of Egypt’s actions already clear in this short period. Foreign investors bought $500 million in Egyptian debt and stocks in the weeks since the central bank devalued the currency, according to central bank Governor Tarek Amer, who said more measures will be taken to attract funds.

Amer, in a televised interview late on Saturday, said he expects at least $5 billion in portfolio investments—purchases of stocks and bonds—within the coming four months.

Foreign direct investment from China alone could reach $30 billion in the next two years, he said.

Hard currency deposits in local banks, increased after the central bank started “to fix the status of the currency,” Amer said.

‘Greed and speculation’
The pound weakened in the black market after the devaluation because of “greed and speculation,” and the central bank will take more measures to organise the market over the coming three months, he said, without giving more details. Egypt doesn’t suffer from a currency crisis but a “crisis in regulating the exchange market.”

Amer said the central bank also plans to sell stakes in three banks it owns or partially controls by the end of 2016. It will sell The United Bank to a strategic investor and raise Banque du Caire’s capital by selling a 20% stake on the stock market. 

The central bank and Kuwait investors also plan to sell 20% each of their stakes in the Arab African International Bank, Amer said.

For Nigeria,meanwhile, barely a week ago Unilever’s Africa President Bruno Witvoet joined the growing number of business leaders pushing for a different direction, saying  it would be misguided for the West African giant to persist with currency policies that have led to a record difference between the naira’s official and black-market rates

Speaking at a conference in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, Witvoet said; “It would be very insane to continue like this for months and months.” Clarity on what the “right rate” would help businesses “make more sensible decisions,” he said.



Both Sisi and Buhari are former generals and military rulers of their countries. Buhari has reinvented more successfully as a democrat, having won the presidency in March last year in Nigeria’s first election in which an opposition leader defeated the incumbent.

Sisi, was elected in a vote boycotted by the Opposition in 2014, having earlier masterminded the military ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government led by president Mohamed Morsi.

He has since overseen what critics say is the most extensive and extreme crackdown on Islamist opponents and secular opposition.

On the economy though, he has shown greater ambition and guts than Buhari. The coming months will indicate if he will also have the last laugh.

Growth slumped to 2.8 percent last year, the slowest since 1999, and will decelerate to 2 percent in 2016, according to Morgan Stanley. In dollar terms, the economy in 2019 will still be 17 percent smaller than its 2014 peak of $542 billion. Only two years ago, McKinsey & Co. said Nigeria had the potential to grow 7.1 percent annually until 2030 and build a $1.6 trillion economy.

The promise of Africa’s biggest economy has turned to peril.
Companies drawn to Nigeria by the prospect of a population bigger than Germany and Turkey’s combined are retreating; those staying have publicly criticized the president, a military strongman in the 1980s who came back to power via an election last year; and foreign investors are pulling their money out.
The corporate tribulations that began with a slide in oil prices and accelerated after the imposition of capital controls are also entangled in a global emerging-market slump. In propping up the naira in a futile bid to contain inflation, officials have jacked up pressure on an economy running out of cash, deepening a black market in currency trading and causing shortages of imported goods from fuel to milk. U.S. officials said they will press their Nigerian counterparts to change tack during talks in Washington this week.


“Our clients, Fortune 500 and other multinationals, are all quite concerned by the state Nigeria finds itself in,” said Alexa Lion, a senior analyst at Washington-based Frontier Strategy Group, which advises companies looking at developing nations. “Sentiment has worsened. There’s a lot of anxiety.”
Frustration too.
After four years trying to gain traction, Truworths International Ltd., a South African clothing retailer, last month gave up. It closed its last two outlets in Nigeria, in the southeastern cities of Enugu and Warri. Willing to tolerate dilapidated infrastructure, complicated red tape and expensive rent, the company said the import and foreign-exchange restrictions caused it to throw in the towel.
‘Impossible’
“We were happy to lose money for a few years while we developed the business and opened new stores,” Chief Executive Officer Michael Mark said in an interview. “The straw that broke the camel’s back was not being able to get stock into Nigeria. You can’t have a clothes shop with no clothes. With all the other things, it just wasn’t worth it. It was impossible to do business.”
Nigeria’s appeal has faded as the price of oil, source of 90 percent of export earnings, has crashed. [Growth slumped to 2.8 percent last year, the slowest since 1999, and will decelerate to 2 percent in 2016, according to Morgan Stanley. In dollar terms, the economy in 2019 will still be 17 percent smaller than its 2014 peak of $542 billion. Only two years ago, McKinsey & Co. said Nigeria had the potential to grow 7.1 percent annually until 2030 and build a $1.6 trillion economy.
As Nigeria lags, other countries in sub-Saharan Africa have gotten more appealing. Last month, Nigeria fell from first to fourth, behind Ivory Coast, Kenya and Tanzania, in a ranking of business prospects by the research unit of Nielsen Holdings Plc.
Portfolio investors including Aberdeen Asset Management Plc and Ashmore Group Plc, which together oversee about $450 billion of assets, have retreated from Nigerian markets. The main stock index is down 10 percent this year, while the MSCI Frontier Markets Index has lost 2.8 percent. Nigeria’s local-currency bonds are the only ones among 31 emerging markets tracked by Bloomberg to have generated aloss this year. Foreign direct investment this year is set to be the lowest since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, according to data from the central bank.
For now, President Muhammadu Buhari and Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele say they aren’t budging from their strong-naira policy. While both acknowledge that businesses are struggling to source enough dollars, Buhari says that a devaluation and easing of capital controls would be akin to “murdering” the naira and send prices up. That’s already happening as manufacturers struggle to buy foreign inputs, with inflation accelerating to a three-year high of 11.4 percent in February.
Markets are betting Nigeria will be forced to follow oil exporters from Russia to Kazakhstan and Mexico and let the currency weaken. While the naira has been all but pegged at 197-199 per dollar since March 2015, forward prices suggest it will drop 29 percent to 280 in a year. The black market rate has weakened to 320.

Bruno Witvoet, the Africa President of Unilever, whose Nigerian subsidiary has seen its shares plunge 31 percent since Buhari came to power, said it would be “very insane” for the country to persist with the currency policies. Nestle SA says its local unit, which has fallen 18 percent in that period, has had to widen the number of banks it uses so that it can access enough foreign exchange.
Not all companies are gloomy. In January, Coca-Cola Co. agreed to pay about $240 million for a 40 percent stake in Chi Ltd., which is based in Lagos, and makes fruit juice and dairy products. Boston Consulting Group this month opened its first office in Nigeria.
“It’s an immense market,” said Geoffrey White, CEO for Africa at Kuwait-based Agility Public Warehousing Co K.S.C., which plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building four warehouse and logistics parks in Lagos and the capital Abuja by 2020. “You can’t really have an African policy without having Nigeria high up on the list.”
For Frontier Strategy Group’s Lion, Nigeria is too important for foreign companies to exit en masse.
“But a lot will depend on what happens with the currency,” she said. “For now, the opportunity cost of not being there is too high. That could change if the currency situations worsens. It’s definitely a pivotal time.”

Standing5:
What else do u xpect frm a Dasuki employee?

IF African countries used 2013 as the base year for measuring the size of their economies, then Egypt would overtake Nigeria as the largest economy on the continent.


[b]But even without that, with Africa’s oil producers battered by low crude prices and enfeebled currencies, it would seem Egypt President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s government has a leg up as it is making the tough policy calls that his Nigerian counterpart Muhammadu Buhari is reluctant to do to fix its economic malaise.

Faced with the same currency predicament, the Central Bank of Egypt allowed the biggest one-time depreciation of the pound since 2003 on March 14, and promised to adopt a more flexible exchange rate.

The moves were designed to revive investor interest in Egypt to ease a dollar crunch, much like Nigeria’s, that has hampered economic growth and fueled a black market for the currency.

For its part Nigeria - Africa’s biggest economy and oil producer – doubled down on the capital controls and restrictions on some imports in a bid to prop up the naira, which has been effectively pegged at 197-199 against the dollar since March 2015.

Those measures have deterred foreign investment and led to a scarcity of dollars, with the black-market exchange rate falling to around 325 naira per dollar.

 Buhari has backed the central bank’s stance and ruled out a devaluation on the grounds it would cause prices to rise. That’s already happening, with inflation surging to a three-year high of 11.4%  in February from 9.6% the previous month.

Contrasting fortunes[/b]
The contrasting results of Egypt’s actions already clear in this short period. Foreign investors bought $500 million in Egyptian debt and stocks in the weeks since the central bank devalued the currency, according to central bank Governor Tarek Amer, who said more measures will be taken to attract funds.

Amer, in a televised interview late on Saturday, said he expects at least $5 billion in portfolio investments—purchases of stocks and bonds—within the coming four months.

Foreign direct investment from China alone could reach $30 billion in the next two years, he said.

Hard currency deposits in local banks, increased after the central bank started “to fix the status of the currency,” Amer said.

‘Greed and speculation’
The pound weakened in the black market after the devaluation because of “greed and speculation,” and the central bank will take more measures to organise the market over the coming three months, he said, without giving more details. Egypt doesn’t suffer from a currency crisis but a “crisis in regulating the exchange market.”

Amer said the central bank also plans to sell stakes in three banks it owns or partially controls by the end of 2016. It will sell The United Bank to a strategic investor and raise Banque du Caire’s capital by selling a 20% stake on the stock market. 

The central bank and Kuwait investors also plan to sell 20% each of their stakes in the Arab African International Bank, Amer said.

For Nigeria,meanwhile, barely a week ago Unilever’s Africa President Bruno Witvoet joined the growing number of business leaders pushing for a different direction, saying  it would be misguided for the West African giant to persist with currency policies that have led to a record difference between the naira’s official and black-market rates

Speaking at a conference in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, Witvoet said; “It would be very insane to continue like this for months and months.” Clarity on what the “right rate” would help businesses “make more sensible decisions,” he said.



Both Sisi and Buhari are former generals and military rulers of their countries. Buhari has reinvented more successfully as a democrat, having won the presidency in March last year in Nigeria’s first election in which an opposition leader defeated the incumbent.

Sisi, was elected in a vote boycotted by the Opposition in 2014, having earlier masterminded the military ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government led by president Mohamed Morsi.

He has since overseen what critics say is the most extensive and extreme crackdown on Islamist opponents and secular opposition.

On the economy though, he has shown greater ambition and guts than Buhari. The coming months will indicate if he will also have the last laugh.

NgeneUkwenu:
The ineffectual Buffoon appointed him to curry Yoruba Votes..

The Executive Director is said to regularly brag about his family background and the fact that he is an in-law to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.