₦airaland Forum

anonimi:
Hmmmmm......wasn't so sure....

O ma se o.

She jus ran you off the cliff...#egomassagetnz

You have you answer. Please act quickly.

Attraction happens everyday, but this guy has access to almost all your private and available moments so it is different from attraction to the opposite sex at a distance.

It happens to us all but save yourself and your loved ones from one moment of emotional vulnerability.

Cheers and best of luck. ..

They over-borrowed against poorly projected oil revenues, to finance wasteful recurrent expenditures. The thinning oil revenue has increased their borrowing cost, reduced their credit rating and is causing them to be on the verge of needing IMF support.

There are typical fundamental issues of central planning, poor tax revenue structures, poor capital/ infrastructural developments which is common to African economies.

This has led the the current state of their needing to pay more borrowing as the value of their local currency reduces because of fears of faleen revenue and wasteful spending.

Basically selfish leadership and lack of alignment between the interest of the elites and that of the masses...

Salut tout le monde!

Il semble que tout les gens francaises de nairaland sont chretiens.

Pourquoi le silence hier?

www.duolingo.com

www.babbel.com

Or enter any of those names on your android or iphone app. Entrez aucun des noms sur votre android ou iphone

Also on app/ encore sur l'app: sept jours sur la planete

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA0710U20140108?irpc=932


Reuters

All Norwegians become crown millionaires, in oil saving landmark

By Alister DoyleOSLO | Wed Jan 8, 2014 12:25pm ESTSHARE THIS ARTICLEEmailFacebookTwitterBy Alister DoyleOSLO (Reuters) - Everyone in Norway became a theoretical crown millionaire on Wednesday in a milestone for the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund that has ballooned thanks to high oil and gas prices.Set up in 1990, the fund owns around 1 percent of the world's stocks, as well as bonds and real estate from London to Boston, making the Nordic nation an exception when others are struggling under a mountain of debts.A preliminary counter on the website of the central bank, which manages the fund, rose to 5.11 trillion crowns ($828.66 billion), fractionally more than a million times Norway's most recent official population estimate of 5,096,300.It was the first time it reached the equivalent of a million crowns each, central bank spokesman Thomas Sevang said.Not that Norwegians will be able to access or spend the money, squirreled away for a rainy day for them and future generations. Norway has resisted the temptation to splurge all the windfall since striking oil in the North Sea in 1969.Finance Minister Siv Jensen told Reuters the fund, called the Government Pension Fund Global, had helped iron out big, unpredictable swings in oil and gas prices. Norway is the world's number seven oil exporter."Many countries have found that temporary large revenues from natural resource exploitation produce relatively short-lived booms that are followed by difficult adjustments," she said in an email.The fund, equivalent to 183 percent of 2013 gross domestic product, is expected to peak at 220 percent around 2030."The fund is a success in the sense that parliament has managed to put aside money for the future. There are many examples of countries that have mot managed that," said Oeystein Doerum, chief economist at DNB Markets.Norway has sought to avoid the boom and bust cycle by investing the cash abroad, rather than at home. Governments can spend 4 percent of the fund in Norway each year, slightly more than the annual return on investment.Still, in Norway, oil wealth may have made the state reluctant to make reforms or cut subsidies unthinkable elsewhere. Farm subsidies allow farmers, for instance, to keep dairy cows in heated barns in the Arctic.It may also have made some Norwegians reluctant to work. "One in five people of working age receives some kind of social insurance instead of working," Doerum said, despite an official unemployment rate of 3.3 percent.(Reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Alison Williams)

chizel: I keep saying it that we Nigerians are very fake when it comes to appreciating who we are and what we have,we tend to copy from other people without giving a dam what the consequences maybe more especially we the igbo's and that is really very bad and this is where I doff my heart to the hausa's,they love and speak their language wherever they maybe find themselves,if it's possible for them to do so in heaven I bet you they would do so with pride.

To second what you have just said, if anyone has the time, go listen to Tafawa Balewa or Sir Ahmadu Bello on youtube! Hausa language did not dent their diction in english by any means!

This is an introspective topic so I don't expect many to be here.

The language crisis is a further fallout of African inferiority complex and chronic xenophilia.

We probably have a larger population of people each speaking yoruba, hausa or igbo than people who speak say Italian, Greek even german.

One of our major shortcomings as africans is our failure to transfer knowledge as well as desirable cultures in other languages to our native language. Is it far-fetched if a tv station is run as an Ibo-only station which can show some animal documentaries in local igbo language?

Is it not pathetic that more than 50 years after independence hardly is any university degree taught for skills other tham language in Africa?

I realize that even people with scandalizing diction insist on soring ears with their dismastery of english. Girls you want to talk to in local language insist on forming accent - with very irritating outcome- even on their disastrous use of english.

I can go on and on...

Salut, tout le monde!

Je m'ai enseigné française depuis 1997. Le compétence d'entendre c'est la probleme, et je n'ai pas le temp pour participer à l'Alliance. Maintenant, je vois TV5 et utilise www.duolingo.com pour ameliorer mon compétence...

xynerise: Merci cher. Je juste l'ai vu maintenant

Il y a des erreurs dans le correction.

" Elle a le sourire d'une deesse" c'est pour le text...

Hmm... pourquoi as-tu mis le pix de ton ami sur NL. Ou est le tien?

jesuslovesme123: Where in the bible does it say that the miracle of healing will be guaranteed for all sick Pastors, or for everyone? People tend to think that the 'benefits' of Christianity include access to 'freebies' such as healthcare, miracles, etc. Those who think this way have missed the point.

The one thing that is guaranteed for all (TRUE) Christians (who die in Christ) is an eternity with God, rather than one in hell.

Yes - God heals people, but God always looks at the bigger picture and grants healing in line with this bigger picture. He knows what we don't.

Guy you for ignore na, you no see say na Ayatullah dey ask ignoramus q? small bible verse wey wind carry go their ear dem go dey quote out of context...

Oil companies in emerging markets
Safe sex in Nigeria
Court documents shed light on the manoeuvrings of Shell and ENI to win a huge Nigerian oil block and on the dilemmas of their industry
Jun 15th 2013 |From the print edition

DEALS for oilfields can be as opaque as the stuff that is pumped from them. But when partners fall out and go to court, light is sometimes shed on the bargaining process—and what it exposes is not always pretty. That is certainly true in the tangled case of OPL245, a massive Nigerian offshore block with as much as 9 billion barrels of oil—enough to keep all of Africa supplied for seven years.

After years of legal tussles, in 2011 Shell, in partnership with ENI of Italy, paid a total of $1.3 billion for the block. The Nigerian government acted as a conduit for directing most of that money to the block’s original owner, a shadowy local company called Malabu Oil and Gas. Two middlemen hired by Malabu, one Nigerian, one Azerbaijani, then sued the firm separately in London—in the High Court and in an arbitration tribunal, respectively—claiming unpaid fees for brokering the deal.
In this section

Safe sex in Nigeria
Hiring digital 007s
An ill wind
Street plan
Superman v Spider-Man
I dreamed a stream
Redeemers of a macho society

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Africa
Nigeria

The resulting testimony and filings make fascinating reading for anyone interested in the uses and abuses of anonymous shell companies, the dilemmas that oil firms face when operating in ill-governed countries and the tactics they feel compelled to employ to obfuscate their dealings with corrupt bigwigs. They also demonstrate the importance of the efforts the G8 countries will pledge to make, at their summit next week, to put a stop to hidden company ownership and to make energy and mining companies disclose more about the payments they make to win concessions. On June 12th the European Parliament voted to make EU-based resources companies disclose all payments of at least €100,000 ($130,000) on any project.

The saga of block OPL245 began in 1998 when Nigeria’s then petroleum minister, Dan Etete, awarded it to Malabu, which had been established just days before and had no employees or assets. The price was a “signature bonus” of $20m (of which Malabu only ever paid $2m).

The firm intended to bring in Shell as a 40% partner, but in 1999 a new government took power and two years later it cried foul and cancelled the deal. The block was put out to bid and Shell won the right to operate it, in a production-sharing contract with the national petroleum company, subject to payment of an enlarged signature bonus of $210m. Shell did not immediately pay this, for reasons it declines to explain, but began spending heavily on exploration in the block.

Malabu then sued the government. After much legal wrangling, they reached a deal in 2006 that reinstated the firm as the block’s owner. This caught Shell unawares, even though it had conducted extensive due diligence and had a keen understanding of the Nigerian operating climate thanks to its long and often bumpy history in the country. It responded by launching various legal actions, including taking the government to the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.

Malabu ploughed on, hiring Ednan Agaev, a former Soviet diplomat, to find other investors. Rosneft of Russia and Total of France, among others, showed interest but were put off by Malabu’s disputes with Shell and the government. Things moved forward again when Emeka Obi, a Nigerian subcontracted by Mr Agaev, brought in ENI (which already owned a nearby oil block). After further toing and froing—and no end of meetings in swanky European hotels—ENI and Shell agreed in 2011 to pay $1.3 billion for the block. Malabu gave up its rights to OPL245 and Shell dropped its legal actions (see timeline).

The deal was apparently split into two transactions. Shell and ENI paid $1.3 billion to the Nigerian government. Then, once Malabu had signed away its rights to the block, the government clipped off its $210m unpaid signature bonus and transferred just under $1.1 billion to Malabu.

Tom Mayne of Global Witness, an NGO, has followed the case closely; he believes things were structured this way so that Shell and ENI could obscure their deal with Malabu by inserting a layer between them. Mr Agaev, Malabu’s former fixer, lends weight to this interpretation. It was, he says, structured to be a “safe-sex transaction”, with the government acting as a “condom” between the buyers and seller.

It is not hard to see why the oil giants would want to avoid being seen to be dealing directly with Malabu, a shell company with tainted provenance. Its ultimate beneficial owner is widely believed to be Mr Etete, the very minister who had awarded it the block while serving under Sani Abacha, the late, staggeringly corrupt dictator.

In 2007 Mr Etete was found guilty of money-laundering by a French court. His conviction was upheld in 2009. The trial centred on bribes he had allegedly demanded from foreign investors while in government. He used these to buy, among other things, a French mansion and about €1m-worth of Art Deco furniture, according to French court documents.

Then in 2011 Mr Obi, one of the middlemen in the final deal with Shell and ENI, took his claim for unpaid fees to the High Court in London, calling on Mr Etete to give testimony. For unclear reasons, he agreed to do so—but the hearings had to be moved briefly to Paris so that Mr Etete could give evidence, because he had been barred from Britain for failing to disclose his French conviction on entering the country.

Mr Etete claims he has never been more than a consultant to Malabu. If so, he is unusually hands-on. He was the company’s main negotiator and its representative in the High Court, where he admitted to being the sole signatory on its bank accounts. Indeed, there is no evidence of anyone else making decisions for Malabu.

When asked in court about others purportedly linked to the company and its record-keeping, Malabu’s company secretary, Rasky Gbinigie (who describes Mr Etete as a “family friend”), insisted that he had lost the firm’s copy of the register of shareholders and all minutes of meetings, that there was no written correspondence between him, the directors and the shareholders, and that he had no documents to verify who put up the company’s original share capital.

A not-so-secret alias

Last year Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) looked into Malabu after Mohammed Abacha, a son of the former dictator, complained that he had been a founding shareholder but had been illegally cut out. In an interim report later in the year, the commission said that one Kweku Amafegha “stood in” as a nominee director for Mr Etete. In the High Court’s hearing in Paris Mr Etete admitted that he had himself used the surname Amafegha to open accounts in the past. It was, he said, an alias that “I have always used when I go out for secret missions internationally.”

In the same hearing Mr Etete said of OPL245: “I put my blood, I put my life into this oil block”—quite a commitment for a mere consultant. Yet, when asked directly if he was its owner through Malabu, he denied it. When presented with transcripts of a recording in which he supposedly claimed that “It is my block”, he dismissed the transcripts as inaccurate.

Shell and ENI did not respond to The Economist’s questions about whom they believed to be the beneficial owner of Malabu. Whether or not they suspected it to be Mr Etete, their dealings with him were extensive. He met ENI executives repeatedly. High Court testimony indicated that Shell officials had met him as recently as December 2009, after his money-laundering conviction was upheld. In an e-mail that came out in court, a Shell man talked of having had lunch and “lots of iced champagne” with Mr Etete, who had requested figures from Shell on what it was willing to pay Malabu for the block.

ENI says it considered cutting a deal with Malabu directly, until it emerged that the firm might not have full ownership of the oil block because of “existing disputes”, including with Mr Abacha. Mr Obi testified that Shell broke off direct talks with Mr Etete for the same reason, and because he was “an impossible person to deal with”.

But the oil giants were clearly reluctant to throw in the towel. Shell was loth to walk away from a block in which it had already invested tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. (The company will not say how much.) ENI was attracted by the size of the block, the prospect of accompanying tax holidays and a waiver of the usual requirement that production revenues be shared with the national oil company.

Shell and ENI reject the suggestion that their joint purchase was a thinly disguised transaction with a dodgy brass-plate company. Shell says it made payments to the Nigerian government only and that it has acted at all times in accordance with Nigerian law. It previously said it had “not acted in any way that is outside normal global industry practice”. ENI says its payments to the government “were made in a transparent manner through an escrow arrangement with a major international bank”. That bank was JPMorgan Chase. A Lebanese bank had earlier declined to handle the payments, it emerged in court.

The companies’ claim that they bought the block from the state, not Malabu, is disingenuous, says Mr Mayne of Global Witness. It is also contradicted by Nigeria’s attorney-general, Mohammed Bello Adoke, who told a parliamentary committee last July that the companies “agreed to pay Malabu”, with the government acting as an “obligor” and “facilitator.”

The attorney-general was unusually active in helping the deal along. He held meetings with Shell, ENI and Malabu, helped to structure the final agreement and even advised on payments to middlemen, according to Mr Obi. In Nigeria it is highly unusual for an attorney-general to be so involved in a big oil deal. The lead is typically taken by the petroleum ministry, which in this case was said to be livid at being sidelined—particularly when Mr Adoke requested that it extend the deadline it had given Malabu to pay its long-owed signature bonus. Mr Adoke, it was suggested in the High Court, had been lawyer to none other than Mr Etete before serving in government. (Mr Adoke could not be reached for comment.)

Where did the money go?

The attorney-general has rejected as “without basis” claims in the Nigerian press that much of the money the government paid to Malabu in the 2011 deal was “round-tripped” back to bank accounts controlled by public officials. But where that money did end up is shrouded in mystery. Of the $1.1 billion, $800m was paid in two tranches into Malabu accounts. This was then transferred to five Nigerian companies that appear to be shells. One of these, Rocky Top Resources, received $336.5m, some of which seems to have been passed on to unknown “various persons”, according to the EFCC’s report. Some $60m went to an account controlled by Mr Etete, who has said that he received $250m in total for his role in the deal. He said in court that “Malabu shareholders decided to spend their money the way they deemed fit” and that he is investing on their behalf.

Among the listed owners of three of the recipient companies is Abubakar Aliyu, who is reported to have close business ties to a senior politician, Diepreiye Alamiesegha, the former governor of Bayelsa state. Mr Alamiesegha’s skills in escapology would impress Houdini. Detained in Britain on money-laundering charges in 2005, he jumped bail. After returning to Nigeria, he was sentenced in 2007 to two years for each of six corruption-related charges, though he served only a few hours in prison. In March 2013 he received a controversial pardon from Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s president. Local press reports have made unsubstantiated allegations linking both the president and Mr Alamiesegha to the Malabu deal.

The EFCC’s report states: “Investigations conducted so far reveal a cloudy scene associated with fraudulent dealings. A prima facie case of conspiracy, breach of trust, theft anmd [sic] money laundering can be established against some real and artificial persons.” Officially, the EFCC’s investigation is still open, but a source familiar with it says that its sleuths have been discouraged by higher-ups from moving forward. However, other countries’ fraudbusters have taken an interest. At least one of the parties involved in the oil-block sale has been contacted by America’s Department of Justice.

As for the legal actions brought in London against Malabu by the middlemen, the High Court is expected to rule soon on Mr Obi’s claim for $200m. Mr Agaev’s separate arbitration case, in which he sought payment of a $65.5m “success fee”, was recently settled behind closed doors.

Shell and ENI now each own half of an attractive oil block. To get it, however, they have had to strike a deal that brings with it reputational and legal risks. They might conceivably face action under their home countries’ anti-corruption laws, if enforcers reject their claim to have dealt only with the Nigerian government, not Malabu. Shell “would obviously have preferred to secure OPL245 without going within a million miles of Malabu and Etete,” says someone who was involved in the negotiations.

Ethical dilemmas

The saga is a striking example of an ethical dilemma that is growing more acute for international oil companies. They are desperate to replace their shrinking reserves with new finds, but many of the most attractive fields are in unstable or poorly governed places. Worse, the industry has to contend with increased resource nationalism in oil-producing countries, making it harder for outsiders to secure reserves, and with greater competition from state-owned firms in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, which may not have to operate to the same ethical standards.

As a result, firms that refuse to touch any deal with the slightest whiff of impropriety risk eventually going out of business, says Peter Hughes, an energy consultant and former BP executive. They may feel that the best they can do, short of walking away, is to put as much distance as possible between them and the source of the bad smell, as Shell and ENI apparently tried to do with their two-part transaction.
Mr Etete in his heyday as oil minister
How arm’s-length is arm’s-length enough? That depends on the company’s “threshold of ambiguity”, says Cory Harvey of Control Risks, which helps companies to manage political and reputational risk. This will vary from company to company and will be perceived differently by management, regulators and NGOs. Ms Harvey has seen oil-industry clients walk away from deals because of concerns about the reputation of, or lack of reliable information on, a seller or local partner. But energy transactions in difficult places can be “spectacularly complex”, she says, making it hard to gauge the acceptable level of risk. Nigeria is “arguably the most complex environment of all”.

Mr Hughes argues that when foreign companies turn a blind eye to questionable aspects of a deal, it can sometimes benefit developing countries with natural resources. The publicly traded oil majors are, on balance, a force for good, raising overall standards of behaviour by trying to operate as cleanly as possible in most circumstances, he says; better that than leaving the field to less scrupulous operators. Ethically speaking, the industry “has to be viewed in relative, not absolutist, terms,” he argues. Mr Hughes points out that Shell periodically talks of scaling back its Nigerian operations, which he believes to be “part of a political-risk management strategy” to exert pressure on the government to act more cleanly and predictably.

Global Witness prefers to see the OPL245 affair as “a lesson in corruption” that demonstrates how important it is for rich-world governments to press on with transparency initiatives, on two fronts. The first front concerns payments to governments. In the past year America and the EU have begun to require resources firms listed there, and large unlisted firms in the EU, to report, project-by-project, their payments to governments. Had this been in force at the time, it would have picked up the $1.3 billion transaction with Nigeria. This would have prompted public scrutiny of the deal and the subsequent money flows through Malabu, which in the end came to light only because the two middlemen decided to sue.

Shell says it favours greater transparency, if applied globally. It opposes the existing project-by-project initiatives because they omit companies not listed in America or Europe, thereby handing them a competitive advantage.

The second front for improving transparency concerns the use of murky corporate vehicles. Hopes are growing that the G8, which meets next week with Britain’s David Cameron in the chair, will take steps towards ending the use of anonymous shell companies. Had corporate registries been collecting, and making publicly available, information on beneficial owners back in 1998, the identity of Malabu’s owners might have been clear from the start. And it would have been much more difficult to move the proceeds of the sale to Shell and ENI into the corporate equivalent of a black hole, seemingly out of the reach even of Nigeria’s anti-corruption commission.

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21579469-court-documents-shed-light-manoeuvrings-shell-and-eni-win-huge-nigerian-oil-block

WARRI, Nigeria (Reuters) - After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness.
Ship's cook Okene, 29, was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May 26 due to heavy Atlantic ocean swells around 30 km (20 miles) off the coast of Nigeria, while stabilizing an oil tanker filling up at a Chevron platform.
Of the 12 people on board, divers recovered 10 dead bodies while a remaining crew member has not been found.
Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African divers eventually rescued him.
"I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it's the end. I kept thinking the water was going to fill up the room but it did not," Okene said, parts of his skin peeling away after days soaking in the salt water.
"I was so hungry but mostly so, so thirsty. The salt water took the skin off my tongue," he said. Seawater got into his mouth but he had nothing to eat or drink throughout his ordeal.
At 4:50 a.m. on May 26, Okene says he was in the toilet when he realized the tugboat was beginning to turn over. As water rushed in and the Jascon-4 flipped, he forced open the metal door.
"As I was coming out of the toilet it was pitch black so we were trying to link our way out to the water tidal (exit hatch)," Okene told Reuters in his home town of Warri, a city in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta.
"Three guys were in front of me and suddenly water rushed in full force. I saw the first one, the second one, the third one just washed away. I knew these guys were dead."
What he didn't know was that he would spend the next two and a half days trapped under the sea praying he would be found.
Turning away from his only exit, Okene was swept along a narrow passageway by surging water into another toilet, this time adjoining a ship's officers cabin, as the overturned boat crashed onto the ocean floor. To his amazement he was still breathing.
FISH FEASTED ON THE DEAD
Okene, wearing only his underpants, survived around a day in the four foot square toilet, holding onto the overturned washbasin to keep his head out of the water.
He built up the courage to open the door and swim into the officer's bedroom and began pulling off the wall paneling to use as a tiny raft to lift himself out of the freezing water.
He sensed he was not alone in the darkness.
"I was very, very cold and it was black. I couldn't see anything," says Okene, staring into the middle distance.
"But I could perceive the dead bodies of my crew were nearby. I could smell them. The fish came in and began eating the bodies. I could hear the sound. It was horror."
What Okene didn't know was a team of divers sent by Chevron and the ship's owners, West African Ventures, were searching for crew members, assumed by now to be dead.
Then in the afternoon of May 28, Okene heard them.
"I heard a sound of a hammer hitting the vessel. Boom, boom, boom. I swam down and found a water dispenser. I pulled the water filter and I hammered the side of the vessel hoping someone would hear me. Then the diver must have heard a sound."
Divers broke into the ship and Okene saw light from a head torch of someone swimming along the passageway past the room.
"I went into the water and tapped him. I was waving my hands and he was shocked," Okene said, his relief still visible.
He thought he was at the bottom of the sea, although the company says it was 30 meters below.
The diving team fitted Okene with an oxygen mask, diver's suit and helmet and he reached the surface at 19:32, more than 60 hours after the ship sank, he says.
Okene says he spent another 60 hours in a decompression chamber where his body pressure was returned to normal. Had he just been exposed immediately to the outside air he would have died.
The cook describes his extraordinary survival story as a "miracle" but the memories of his time in the watery darkness still haunt him and he is not sure he will return to the sea.
"When I am at home sometimes it feels like the bed I am sleeping in is sinking. I think I'm still in the sea again. I jump up and I scream," Okene said, shaking his head.
"I don't know what stopped the water from filling that room. I was calling on God. He did it. It was a miracle."
(Editing by Tim Cocks and Giles Elgood)
http://weather.yahoo.com/nigerian-cook-survives-two-days-under-sea-shipwreck-134158223.html

The Q is a bit vague.

There is mobile money linked to bank accounts and the one linked to virtual pockets, traditionally marketed by telcos but which Sanusi has hijacked from them.

The first one is currently more successful than the second. It appeals to the working class especially the upwardly mobile in major cities. As for me, I was able to even run most transactions on my account from outside Nigeria with just my mobile phone. It was as if I never left the country. I have been using mobile banking since 2008, so it has become a lifestyle. Unfortunately it has also contributed to my impatience. I used Intercontinental Bank and after a slight hiccup, eased into Access Bank's mobile services. I have only been successful with Diamond on the web. My mobile service experience with them is a disaster.

The purpose of the 2nd one was to reach all populations within mobile phone coverage and of all ages too. However, the CBN has defeated the intention of the second because telcos could have done better at marketing it than banks and all CBN needs do is to make it a form of money in circulation which telcos will remit info on, to CBN.

Let's hope future policy makers at CBN will be more flexible.

Guy

You are working... I salute o!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Seun

There is a high likelihood that the truly skilled/ informed investment practitioners may not have the time to coordinate as moderators.

Maybe you may want to indicate the structure if the moderator's work to help other interested people make a decision.

Cheers...

The judge is ignorant.

The "State" refers to an intangible entity that has the legal monopoly of use of violence/force. In secondary school subject of government, a state has four features: a government, a defined territory, a people and a constitution.(Hence the Federal govt, the state governments, and the local government even EU are each a trust for its state in their own rights respectively). So the state encompasses all these 4 parties but the government is the legitimate entity which acts on the state's behalf.

The government acts on behalf of the state within the limits defined by the constitution.

Matters usually taken to courts are usually between 2 parties. However, when a crime is committed, it is against the state, no matter who the crime victim is, and the government as the legitimate trust for the state prosecutes the offender.

Our constitution recognises the distinctiveness of each state. Sometimes the word state is used to describe a territory. And sometimes the word Lagos State can be interchangeably used as the State of Lagos.

This judge has only succeeded in bringing ridicule to the Lagos Judiciary which is supposed to be the most sophisticated of all the judiciaries within the second-tier (state) governments.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/03/the-mistakes-rotimi-williams-and-i-made-about-nigerias-constitution-nwabueze/

BY GBENGA OKE

…North is in the middle of a civil war…
PROFESSOR Ben Nwabueze (SAN), the chairman of The Patriots, a group of eminent Nigerian citizens is disturbed that the transformation agenda is on the wrong step and might not yield the desired result. In this interview with VANGUARD, he proffers suggestions on how to re-track the agenda. He opposes calls for amnesty for Boko Haram sect and doubts the ability of the congregating opposition parties to dislodge the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in 2015. Excerpts:

His assessment of President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda
The transformation agenda of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration is inadequate because of its limited objectives. To begin with, it focuses only on the economy. Even as limited to the economy, it does not aim at a radical change in the nature or character of the economy. Its aim as stated in its enabling document is to engender economic growth and development in a way to achieve improvement in the welfare of the citizens.

The word ‘transformation’ according to the dictionary definition of it, is “change in condition, nature of character of a thing”, ‘a change into another substance.’ A new approach in the management of the economy may well bring about a great improvement in the economy in the form of enhanced growth and development and welfare services, but such improvement cannot in any meaningful sense be described as changing the Nigerian economy into something radically different in nature or character or changing it into another substance.

The Transformation Agenda is inadequate for another more fundamental reason. It has absolutely nothing to do with, not a word to say about, the transformation of our society from moral decadence into which it has sunk. No agenda, in the context of Nigeria, is worth being called a transformation agenda, which does not aim at the moral and ethical transformation of our society. Its focus must enhance the entire society or nation not the economy alone.
Prof Nwabueze

Prof Nwabueze

On how to improve the transformation agenda
What this country needs is national or social transformation not just economic transformation. I can think of nothing more disastrous for this country than an enhanced growth and development built or superimposed upon a morally and ethically decadent society, a society bereft of a sense of justice, probity, integrity, accountability, civic virtues and noble values.

The vice-President in a speech at the Obafemi Awolowo Prize for Leadership Award Ceremony on March 6, 2013 said that government planned as part of the transformation agenda programme to establish mega universities, each of which can take up to 200,000 students. The establishment of such universities will be a disaster, a disastrous misplacement of priorities when it is taken in the context of the incredible decline in educational standards in the country as attested by the phenomenon of near-illiterate university graduates, the existence of magic schools all over the country whose students are guaranteed automatic success in the school certificate examination, not of course by merit, certificate racketeering; examination malpractices etc.

His take on perceived looming revolution
For the present, unless the situation deteriorates to a point where the mood and reaction of the people can no longer be controlled, what I advocate for Nigeria is a peaceful, non violent social and ethical revolution led by a person imbued with a revolutionary ardour for national transformation. And I implore Mr. President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan to lead it.

On calls by major northern stakeholders for amnesty to the Boko Haram sect
I think the call for amnesty for the Boko Haram people is misplaced and it is based on mis-guided comparison between the amnesty granted to the militants in the Niger Delta. These are two different things, completely different. The Niger Delta militants were fighting for justice, it is not an insurgency. Boko Haram is an insurgency, revolt against constituted authorities.

Carrying arms against the state, that is what insurgency means. Militants in the Niger Delta never revolted against the state when they were protesting and that is the difference between militancy and insurgency. These Boko Haram people are insurgents therefore there should be no question of amnesty. However, I sympathise with them because they are revolting against the absence of social justice.

Now, forget the hardship and suffering, these are not the only cause for their insurgency, it also has political and religious undertones. The origin of the group Boko Haram is political, it was what happened after the death of (former President Umaru Musa) Yar’Adua, the North said the South has ruled for eight years under President Obasanjo and therefore it is their turn justifiably or unjustifiably, that was their argument.

They also said after the acting tenure of President Jonathan, that power should return to the North and that the price of that is what Nigeria is experiencing now. That is the political angle to it. I have mentioned the economic side of the revolt, which include hardship, suffering and poverty as well. They have now added a position which is untenable by adding religion to it. They say they want to convert Nigeria into a Muslim state; that is incredible.

On The Patriots recurring call for a National Conference, resistance from the National Assembly and next line of action

We are still going ahead with the National Conference. The arguments from the National Assembly are again misplaced. They are representatives of the people who are elected members, elected by the people, but what is their mandate? There is a clear difference and distinction between the National Assembly and the Constituent Assembly or National Conference. The National Assembly are elected and given a mandate to govern according to the Constitution.

The Constituent Assembly, the National Conference is an assembly for just one specific purpose, the purpose of making a constitution. Their mandate is not to govern, the mandate is a special one and that is making a constitution. The people are the constituent power; the constituent power in any country is in the people as a sovereign people. The National Assembly is not sovereign, the people are sovereign. In exercise of their constituent power of their sovereignty to deliberate on their constitution and how they are to be governed, that is the whole purpose of the demand for a National Conference.

APC-PDP



On areas that need amendment in the 1999 Constitution
Quite frankly, there are many flaws and many errors in the content of the constitution. So many errors and I as a person was partly responsible because I was a member of the constitution drafting committee set up by the military government in 1978. I was not only a member but chairman of one of the sub-committees that produced Chapter 2, the fundamental objectives and one of the cardinal flaws in the constitution is the concentration of powers in the centre.

That is why I accept that I am partly responsible for that because at the time, late Chief Rotimi Williams, a close friend of mine and nearly everybody in the Constitution Drafting Committee were so overwhelmed with this feeling, this patriotic feeling that we needed unity and the most effective way to achieve unity of the country is by having a very strong central government.

Most of us in the committee shared that idea at the time. Chief Williams shared it because of the patriotism in us and we wanted a united Nigeria, we feel we can achieve unity by having a strong central government. Then, what did we do to achieve our mis-guided objective? We took away 50 per cent of the items on the concurrent list and gave it to the centre.

We feel by doing this, we are establishing unity. We did not stop at that. We looked at the residual matters, these are matters exclusive to the states, we took a large part of it, more than 30 percent and close to 50 percent; we took it away from states and gave to the centre. And the result is the almighty Federal Government, but what we discover was that instead of producing unity, we produced disunity because of the intensity of the struggle to control the centre.

The intensity is so much and it is not just in the political power that was concentrated at the centre, much of the money also went to the centre and so by action, we destroyed what is called fiscal federalism. Too much money at the centre increased the struggle for the control of the centre and the control of the money itself and that has remained the feature of the Constitution up till today.

So when people struggle and agitate for true federalism, for fiscal federalism, they know what they are talking about and they are right, that must be changed and until it is changed, we might not achieve true federalism because the basis of which we did it has proved to be misguided, the unity we thought we will achieve was not achieved and what we achieved was more disunity than unity because of the struggle.

So I am not sure the rectification of that error is what the National Assembly can do because so much is involved. We have to restructure the territorial basis of the federation. Even if we have to take power away from the centre, whom are you going to give it to?

The 36 states, many of them carry even the power they have now not to talk of bringing back what has been taken away. Many of them are so small to carry those powers. So not only restructuring in political power, not only restructuring in financial power, you have to restructure territorial basis of zones. Six zones as suggested already but there is nothing sacrosanct by number of zones, it can be six, seven or eight but realistically six zones. So that has to be done. Can the National Assembly do it?

That is why again the entire people, all the 300 or more of the ethnic groups in the country need to come together and discuss and there are also many other things in the Constitution which experience has proved cannot work and it is not a matter for National Assembly alone and that is why I said let us have a National Conference to look at the whole thing both the more fundamental issues, the source of authority and the content of the Constitution.

3rd Mainland SHOULD vibrate.

Talk to an engineer...

Revolva: Well truly ABC is d best..and advisable to use..but if you try using all these cabs @ Mile2 haaa u go suffer tire body go tell you

Ditto...you guys initially scared me. Enter ABC, my only problem is the noisy home video that runs all through the journey, else, it's cool...

Biggybountz: Please can anyone give honest advice on the procedures to buy Nigerian shares when one is not physically resident in the country, I have tried the various companies' website but they weren't helpful, not sure how it can be done online.

Thanks.

Try this:

http://www.vetiva.com/vcm_index.php

Vetiva Capital Management Limited
Plot 266B, Kofo Abayomi Street
Victoria Island
Lagos, Nigeria

Tel: - 01-4617521-3, 01-2700657-8
Fax: - 01-4617524

Billyonaire: If you wanna make a kill in Nigeria, make sure you have funds to buy at least 5% of any company stock and be a Director, anything less in this clime doesnt just make sense financially. I advise people to get brokers in USA and trade with established Stocks in USA using Merryl Edge, Charlesschwab or Etrade, simply the best way to sleep while your funds keep growing.

a1solution: the best post in this stock market issue.

You are taking panadol, panadol-extra and ibrupofen for the same thing: there are different types of investors and different motives for investment.

Haven't you heard of investors who buy up a business in order to sell off the assets?

I bought shares in Bagco, Oceanic, UBA and AIT.

The rest is history, but the experience has improved my training as a market analyst of underdeveloped emerging/ frontier markets.

Nigerian listed capital market has become subject to high volatility after the financial liberalization of the early 1990s because
- Our local investors do not have large enough funds to hold the market steady, so the (large) shortfall is held for us by foreign portfolio investors
- The large portfolio investors are usually watching our currency valuation which is determined solely by crude oil price (because our export economy is not diversified enough). So the prospect of a fall in oil price will fall our market too (hence our experience in 2008).
- Political instability, local, regional or continental is also a factor (see the effect of Arab spring on the market, later worsened by our local election)
- The earning strength of most stocks in the Nigeria market is poor because of poor purchasing power of the populace or strong competition in the sectors. If you look at the analysis of our GDP growth, you'll see that the growing portion reflected in the stock market is small. Sectors like Telecom, Hospitality, Retails are largely not represented in the market. The current price rises have been driven mainly by expectations of results from bank recoveries/stabilization on one hand and consumer sectors whose performances are relatively stable to positive on the other.

- The market is near saturation if not already, except there are possible growth opportunities which might arise soon (from public listings or major economic changes that could possibly affect the stock market). Watch out for oil price prospect and political stability (local, 2015 confirmed!) as well any international financial crisis. Any of these 3 factors can trigger a major downward run on our market. Current falls in the index is largely due to profit taking base.

Eventually, you'll get the Access Bank share certificate.

You should visit the registrars to obtain info on what has become of your shares and dividends and treat this as urgent..

How do you mean your money will mature....?

If you have a deposit fixed somewhere, break it and collect your fixed deposit proceeds, only the interest portion will be affected.

Or else, you can borrow from someone interest-free...?

The principles are sound, but relative to investing to investing in the local markets, there are other factors to consider.

Rule of Thumb if you are investing for the long term without professional investment adviser:

- Use your current age to represent your percentage allocation to fixed income
- Deduct the fixed income % from 100% to represent your allocation to equities
- Adjust the allocation on a yearly basis
- You are advised to invest the equity portion in a mutual fund (IBTC Equity, ARM Discovery, UBA Equity etc. if you do not have an investment adviser)

Cheers.....

You might need to confirm the status of your certificate because there was a time that a syndicate was lifting various certificates and dividends from the mail system and converting them while passing off as the owners.

You might do well to call them first.

@ Juliebest: It seems your question might be different. Did you buy the shares during a public offer? If yes, same as earlier discussed applies to you.

If the stockbroker helped you purchase on the floor of the stock exchange, your shares are lodged with CSCS under the custodianship of the stockbroking firm your stockbrokers worked for at the time of the purchase. Your dividend should have been sent to the address you specified in your application form, depending on if you the company declared dividend. In any case you did not mention the name of the company's shares that you bought...

http://www.proshareng.com/quote/TRANSCORP

No dividend or reward of any kind has been paid on Transcorp to date.........learn to monitor what happens to your money...

They will require to know
- if has a copy of his application form
- a deposit slip evidencing that he paid for the shares
- if he is the true owner, by confirming his ID with an Int'l passport/ Drivers Licence
- if he can answer a few details off the bat to confirm his identity (contact address, date of birth etc.)

They will check their records to confirm the status of the application whether
- his application was rejected or
- his application was partially/ fully accepted
- he has returned money and the status of the returned money
- he has dividends and what has become of them

In any case he should ask on the latter even if they don't give him...