Video - Nigeria to issue Islamic bond to address gap

Nigeria plans to generate nearly 5 billion dollars to help fund a budget deficit through issuing the country's first sovereign Sukuk or Islamic bonds this year. The budget gap is a result of a slump in oil revenue.

Nigeria owes airlines $575 million in fares

Nigeria owes airlines more than half a billion dollars in outstanding air fares as the oil-price slump depletes reserves of the U.S. currency and prompts the government to limit the amount of money that can be moved abroad.

Some $575 million was due to carriers as of March 31, according to the International Air Transport Association, even after the Central Bank of Nigeria released funds to pay off part of the backlog.

Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo told IATA Chief Executive Officer Tony Tyler this week that airlines must agree “a realistic and achievable payment schedule,” the trade body said. Carriers could begin severing links if the issue isn’t resolved, damaging Lagos’s standing as an aviation hub, IATA said.

The Nigerian economy contracted for the first time since 2004 in the first quarter as the drop in crude prices eroded the value of oil exports. Foreign-currency reserves have slipped to $26.5 billion, the lowest in more a decade, prompting the limits on dollar repatriation.

Carriers including United Airlines, Delta Air Lines Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. pulled capacity from Venezuela during a similar dispute in 2014 as a 61 percent inflation rate limited the state’s access to dollars. Airlines had the equivalent of $3.9 billion trapped in Venezuelan bolivars, IATA estimated.

British Airways parent IAG SA and Air France-KLM Group said in March they were unable to access ticket proceeds in Egypt as political instability there eroded foreign exchange reserves, and demand for the Egyptian pound faded.

IATA said Wednesday it’s still “optimistic that a solution will be found.”

Bloomberg

Nigeria to sign visa-free pact with 8 African countries

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Geoffrey Onyeama, says plans have been concluded to sign visa-free pacts with a bloc of eight African countries to promote economic partnership on the continent. 

Onyeama announced this in Abuja on Tuesday at a news confernce to mark one year of President Mohammadu Buhari’s Administration. 

The minister, who did not disclose the names of the countries making up the bloc, noted with concern that trading among African countries had been very low. 

He, however, said that with the new idea by the President Mohammadu Buhari led administration, “it is expected that there will be upsurge in economic activities.

“ Africa is the centrepiece of our foreign policy but it is a paradox that as a Nigerian, you cannot go to an African country without a visa unlike what is obtainable in Western Europe. 

“To address this as a leader in the continent, the country is at a point of introducing an initiative to promote African trade as part of the country’s foreign policy of Africa as the centrepiece”, he said. 

Onyeama said Nigeria was trying to come up with an initiative, like the one in Western Europe where one could enter any sister country without a visa. According to him, what we are trying to do at the ministry is to promote visa-free, free movement of business people. 

“We want to start with about eight countries or see if they come up as a group of eight countries. At the presidential level, they agreed to that, and signed up to free movement. 

“If we can achieve that within a year, then other countries may want to join and we believe this is a better way to go than institutional ECOWAS etc, as countries take so long to ratify agreements. 

“We believe we can just start off, eight countries and they agree among themselves, then others will come in,” he said. 

Onyeama also added that it would not help if the continent continued to export just raw materials to developed nations. 

He said the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment was working towards enhancing doing business with ease in Nigeria. 

Onyeama said the ministry was working with the immigration to see rise in the number of visa issued to businessmen and investors.

“It is one of the cardinal strategies for the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment to facilitate investors doing business in Nigeria”, he said. Onyeama said the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment had been mandated to ensure that there was reduction in the time it took to register companies.

Vanguard

Spain dragged into Nigeria's tomato crisis

The streets of the eastern Spanish town of Bunol turn red and gooey every year on the last Wednesday of August, as tens of thousands of people gather to celebrate La Tomatina. It's not an event that has caused much of a stir on social media outside the country, but in the past few days Nigerians have been been distracting themselves from their own tomato crop crisis by making good-humoured jabs aimed at the European festival.

The topic of tomatoes - a staple of the Nigerian diet - is currently not a laughing matter outside the digital realm in Nigeria. A state of emergency has been declared in the tomato sector in Kaduna state, in the north of the country and farmers are said to have lost up to 80% of their tomato crop.

The culprit is a moth called Tuta Absoluta. The agriculture commissioner in Kaduna state said the price of a punnet has risen from $1.20USD to more than $40. Some reports said that in three local government areas, about 200 farmers lost 1 billion naira ($5.1 million) worth of their tomatoes.

Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, told local media that his office had commissioned experts to look at the issue as "ordinary pesticides cannot tackle the disease because the tomato moth multiplies so fast."

The situation is so bad that it was dubbed 'Tomato Ebola' and the term trended on Twitter for hours on Wednesday.

But what's all this got to do with Spain and La Tomatina?

Well, if you've not heard of the festival, tens of thousands of people from all over the world gather in Spain to take part in an enormous tomato fight. Some estimates say that more than 100 tonnes of tomatoes are thrown during the event. And this has not been lost on Nigerian social media.

One Nigerian news site even posted an article entitled "Five tomato photos that will make Nigerians cry" which featured shots of revellers mucking about in the red gold at La Tomatina.

But what does Bunol think of this reaction? The town's mayor told BBC Trending that the festival "should not be blamed" for Nigeria's tomato crop crisis and that he is "open to (see) how we can help, but the problem is very big and we are very small."

Rafa Pйrez Gil told us that he was aware that Nigerians had taken to Twitter and Instagram recently to lament (albeit in a very tongue-in-cheek manner) the waste of tomatoes in La Tomatina, but he wanted to assure them that most of the tomatoes used in the August food fight were past their sell-by-date and on the verge of rotting.

"Their problem would exist whether our festival happened or not," the mayor said. He added that he would be open to talking about the issue with Nigerians but was unsure what they as a town could do about it. He conceded that food wastage was an issue that merited a wider discussion. "If you look at the garbage bins in Spain, there is more waste thrown away every day than tomatoes used at La Tomatina."

We are not certain whether this information will comfort Nigerians or make more of them see red.

BBC

Video - Nigeria adopts flexible foreign exchange rate

Nigeria has adopted a flexible foreign exchange rate policy signalling a policy U-turn as the country teeters on the brink of a recession. The move is expected to boost exports and attract foreign currency to an economy badly hurting from the low global prices of oil. Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele said that details of the new rules would be published in coming days.