Ghana bans goods from Nigeria

Ghana has prohibited some items from entry into its domain, following Nigeria’s foot steps that restricted 41 items from access to foreign exchange.

Ghana however has placed a ban on some goods from being imported into the country. Ghanaian Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah stated yesterday that Ghana and Nigeria are said to account for some 68 per cent of the ECOWAS region’s Gross Domestic Product.

Nigeria accounts for almost 10 per cent of Ghana’s foreign trade volume, whereas Ghana is listed as the 9th largest trade partner to Nigeria.


Favourite investment hub

In spite of the difficulties, Ghana remains Nigeria’s largest trade partner and favourite investment hub in the West Africa sub-region, as Ghana imports the largest share of all Nigerian oil exports in the West African sub-region.

While ‘bagged cement’ is on Nigeria’s prohibition list, Dangote Cement brings in and bags some 750,000 tonnes of cement a year for the Ghanaian market, and is expected to increase this to 1.5 million tonnes by end of this quarter. The Chief Executive Officer of Ghanaian Association of Ghana Industries stated that there should be a clear letter written to the Nigerians complaining about this, and then also try and use some diplomatic means to quickly resolve it,”

“If it does not work then we must also look at countervailing measures…it could be product targeting,” he said.

“If we also make it difficult for them to export, then we would have to find common ground,” Kate Quartey-Papafio, CEO of Reroy Cables argued.


Even for those who are able to export to Nigeria, you have to get different certificates for different customers and it takes a whole lot of time to get it.

It makes the whole thing so cumbersome. You are exporting the same thing but you have to go and get certificates for each of the customers,” she said.

Nigeria has used an “Import Prohibition List” to refuse certain goods entry into that country, including a host of pharmaceutical products. Also, the Managing Director of Intravenous Infusions Limited, a pharmaceutical company, Mr Richard Okrah noted that his company could have generated an additional 25% of export turnover from the Nigerian market.

“We have been making efforts through our agent in Nigeria to get us off this list. But it is becoming a very difficult job for us,” Richard Okrah told the B&FT by phone. The company, he said, currently produces close to 6million IV fluids of various sizes per year, and that: “We have the capacity to step this up to 15 million because we are installing a new semi-automated plan that should be up and running by the middle of April this year”.

He said his company faces no such restrictions from Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire and other countries where it exports to.


Vanguard

2 year old boy abandoned by family for superstitious beliefs rescued by foreign aid worker

Desperately emaciated, the 2-year-old boy could barely stand as he thirstily gulped water from a bottle.

The boy was abandoned by his family, who accused him of being a witch, according to the aid worker who found him in Uyo, southeast Nigeria.

Danish aid worker Anja Ringgren Loven says the boy, whom she calls Hope, had been living on the streets and survived on scraps from passersby.

When she found him, she says, he was riddled with worms and had to have daily blood transfusions to revive him.

"Thousands of children are being accused of being witches and we've both seen torture of children, dead children and frightened children," she wrote in Danish on Facebook, as she appealed for funds to pay for food, medical bills and schooling.


Loven is the founder of African Children's Aid Education and Development Foundation, which she created to rescue children labeled as witches.

Posting on her Facebook page on February 12, Loven says: "Hope is getting so much better. Already gaining a lot of weight and looking so much more healthy. Now we only need him to talk.

"But that will come naturally when he is out of the hospital and starting his life among all our children.

"Children become stronger together."

It is a criminal offense in Akwa Ibom state, where Hope was found, to label a child a witch, but the practice persists.

Attempts to reach Loven and local officials were not immediately successful.

Belief in witchcraft thrives worldwide. In 2009, about 1,000 people accused of being witches in Gambia were locked in detention centers in March and forced to drink a dangerous hallucinogenic potion, human rights organization Amnesty International said.

In 2014, a report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees stated that human rights violations were taking place in Nepal, leading to violence against women, children, disabled people and the elderly.

In 2010, CNN reported on the plight of children in Nigeria who undergo frightening exorcisms and are sometimes killed by their own family.

One 5-year-old boy, named Godswill, had been accused of being a witch and neglected, beaten and ostracized by his own family and community. At the time, an Akwa Ibom state official acknowledgedsome cases, but said reports of child rescues were exaggerated.

Sam Ikpe-Itauma, of the local Child's Rights and Rehabilitation Network, which rescues children like Godswill, told CNN: "Once a child is said to be a witch, to be possessed with a certain spiritual spell capable of making that child transform into, like, cat, snake viper ... a child could cause all sorts of havoc like killing of people, bringing about diseases, misfortune into family."

Ikpe-Itauma doesn't believe in witchcraft and tries to raise awareness in communities gripped by hysteria. He believes poverty is a key factor that drives the belief in witchcraft. He says: "Poverty is actually a twin sister to ignorance."

CNN 

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Nigeria's government is pushing more people to invest in the country's agriculture sector which was once a top source of employment in the 1960s. The country wants to diversify from oil reliance as well as ease the rising cost of living. In the north, one company is working to boost the dairy sector and promote locally made milk and yoghurt. The challenges though, are nothing if not stiff.

President Muhammadu Buhari sacks budget chief after just six months on the job

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has sacked the head of the country’s budget office just six months into a four-year term.

Yahaya Gusau, the director general of Nigeria’s budget office, will be replaced by Tijjani Abdullahi, a statement from the Nigerian presidency said on Monday. Gusau was appointed in August 2015 for a term of four years but has overseen a period of controversy surrounding the 2016 budget, which was presented by Buhari in December 2015.

No official reason was given for Gusau’s dismissal. Abdullahi, a former banker, will be assisted by Ben Ifeanyi Akabueze, who was appointed as special advisor on planning to the minister of budget and national planning, Udoma Udo Udoma.

Buhari proposed to raise spending by 20 percent in 2016 to a record 6.1 trillion naira ($31 billion) in a bid to help Nigeria rebound from the plummeting price of oil, which makes up more than a third of the country’s GDP. The budget, however, is yet to be approved by the Nigerian National Assembly (NA) after suffering repeated delays. Copies of the budget document reportedly went missing from the Nigerian Senate in January, delaying deliberations on the budget.

Buhari later wrote to the NA to say that the original document contained errors and submitted corrections. Nigerian civic groups have alleged that the budget has been padded out as certain ministries seek to increase their allowances, with examples including 795 million naira ($4 million) being set aside to update the website of an unnamed ministry and 10 billion naira ($50.3 million) in the education ministry’s spending plan having no allocated purpose, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Buhari has launched a crackdown on graft since being inaugurated as Nigerian president in May 2015. Several high-profile figures, including former National Security Advisor Sambo Dasuki, have been arrested in connection with an arms scandal in which $2.1 billion of government fundsearmarked for buying arms to fight Boko Haram went missing. The president of the Nigerian senate, Bukola Saraki, is also facing trial for corruption offenses. The country’s anti-graft agency has also recovered more than $2 trillion of stolen public funds since 2003, according to Abubakar Malami, the Nigerian attorney general and justice minister.

Yet Nigerians still appear to perceive their government as corrupt. A December 2015 report by corruption watchdog Transparency International found that 75 percent of Nigerians believed thatgovernment corruption had increased over the previous 12 months.


Newsweek

Video - Nigeria to increase oil production to 2.5 million barrels per day

Nigeria's Minister of State for Petroleum Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, has announced plans to increase crude output to up to 2.5 million barrels per day by the end of 2016. The government has made reforming the oil sector a priority as a slump in oil prices hammers the country's economy. Nigeria's oil and gas output has been relatively stagnant as big offshore projects have been held up by much-delayed government funding and uncertainty over fiscal terms.