According to the debt management office (DMO), the country is seeking two lead managers and a financial adviser to organise the issuance of $1 billion (N315 billion) of Eurobonds in 2015.
This is coming a few weeks after Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, informed Nigerians that the country would be borrowing from foreign sources in the third quarter of 2016.
“We have been borrowing largely from the domestic market because we needed to get the exchange rate sorted out to enable us to borrow from the international market. The international borrowings will begin to come in Q3,” Adeosun said in July.
The issuance of the bond is part of a $4.5 billion Nigeria global medium-term issuance programme, which is to run through 2018.
“The move will enable Nigeria to have the flexibility of quickly taking advantage of favourable market conditions in the international capital market to raise funds if and only when the need arises,” Bloomberg quoted the statement to have read.
The government is reported as seeking to appoint two international banks as joint lead managers and a local lender as financial adviser for the whole program.
With bids expected to be submitted by midday on September 19, the Eurobond sales would be the first since July 2013.
Nigeria is aiming at spending its way through one of the worst economic crisis in about three decades, with gross domestic product (GDP) projected in negative territories.
Nigeria’s GDP shrunk by 0.36 percent in the first quarter of 2016, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Nigeria is expected to borrow about $10 billion to fund the 2016 budget deficit, around N3 trillion.
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Monday, August 8, 2016
Video - Boko Haram leader Shekau dismisses reports of his replacement in the group
Boko Haram's shadowy leader Abubakar Shekau has appeared in a new video shrugging off an apparent split in the hard-line jihadist group. Last week, Shekau said in an audio message that he was still the head of Boko Haram despite his purported replacement by former Boko Haram spokesman, Sheikh Abu Musab al-Barnawi. Shekau ridiculed suggestions that he was dead, and looked more composed and energetic than in previous appearances.
Video - German Gernot Rohr set to become new Nigeria manager
Nigeria's national soccer federation has finally found a technical advisor to the national team, the Super Eagles. After French coach Paul Le Guen turned down their offer, the NFF says ex-Burkina Faso coach Gernot Rohr is the new man for the job.
Video - Nigerian women trafficked to Europe for prostitution at 'crisis level'
The trafficking of Nigerian women from Libya to Italy by boat is reaching “crisis” levels, with traffickers using migrant reception centres as holding pens for women who are then collected and forced into prostitution across Europe, the UN’s International Office for Migration (IOM) warns.
About 3,600 Nigerian women arrived by boat into Italy in the first six months of this year, almost double the number who were registered in the same time period last year, according to the IOM.
More than 80% of these women will be trafficked into prostitution in Italy and across Europe, it says.
“What we have seen this year is a crisis, it is absolutely unprecedented and is the most significant increase in the number of Nigerian women arriving in Italy for 10 years,” said Simona Moscarelli, anti-trafficking expert at the IOM.
“Our indicators are the majority of these women are being deliberately brought in for sexual exploitation purposes. There has been a big enhancement of criminal gangs and trafficking networks engaging in the sexual exploitation of younger and younger Nigerian girls.”
Although a thriving sex trafficking industry has been operating between Nigeria and Italy for over three decades, there has been a marked increase in the numbers of unaccompanied Nigerian women arriving in Italy on migrant boats from Libya. In 2014, about 1,500 Nigerian women arrived by sea. In 2015 this figure had increased to 5,633.
“Already we have seen nearly 4,000 women come in the first six months of this year,” said Moscarelli. “We are expecting the numbers to have increased again by the end of this year.”
She warned that the current policy of placing Nigerian women in reception centres along with thousands of other migrants was playing to the traffickers’ advantage, with women regularly going missing.
“There is little understanding of the dynamics and nature of this form of trafficking,” said Moscarelli.
“The reception centres are not good places for trafficked women. Just last week six girls went missing from a reception centre in Sicily, they were just picked up in a car and driven away.”
Nigerian women who are entering Italy among migrants on boats from Libya should be immediately identified and treated as trafficking victims. Instead of being processed in reception centres, they should be placed in specialist shelters where they can be given the advice and support needed to break the chain of sexual exploitation, she said.
“Most Nigerian women who arrive in Italy are already victims of trafficking, many have been subjected to serious sexual exploitation on their journey. Many are forced into prostitution in Libya,” said Moscarelli.
“The women we are seeing are increasingly young, many are unaccompanied minors when they arrive and the violence and exploitation they face when they are under the control of these gangs is getting worse. They are really treated like slaves.”
Salvatore Vella, the deputy chief prosecutor in Agrigento, Sicily, who led the first significant investigation of Nigerian trafficking rings in Italy in 2014, said that the reception centres are increasingly being used as pick-up points by those intending to exploit Nigerian women.
The Nigerian women are given a phone number when they leave Nigeria, which they use to inform a contact in Italy that they have arrived.
“The mobsters just come to the camp and pick [women] up,” he says. “As easy as going to a grocery store. That’s what these women are treated like, objects to trade, buy, exploit and resell and the reception centres are acting as a sort of warehouse where these girls are temporarily stocked.
“They wait until the woman has her residence permit or refugee status document and then they just go and pick her up.”
Many Nigerian women arrive in Italy with debts of about £40,000 for their journey from Nigeria to Italy, which they are expected to pay back.
Nigerian trafficking gangs use a toxic mix of false promises of legitimate employment and traditional “juju” ceremonies to recruit and gain psychological control over their victims.
The women are led to believe that terrible things will happen to their families if they fail to honour their debts. They are then forced into prostitution on streets and brothels across Europe.
“Currently the shelters and services we have for those women we manage to identify are at breaking point,” said Moscarelli.
“We must give police prosecutors the financial resources to tackle the traffickers and improve access to legal services if we have any chance of reducing the numbers coming in.”
Related story: Nigeria's international sex-trafficking ring
Argentina beats Nigeria 94-66 in Olympic Basketball
Perennial medal contenders Argentina eased past Nigeria 94-66 in each team’s Rio Olympic debut as Facundo Campazza scored 19 points on 5-of-8 shooting from three-point territory.
Manu Ginobili of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs added 12 points and the Brooklyn Nets’ Luis Scola 18 as the more experienced Argentines proved too much for the sloppy African qualifiers.
Argentina is the only country since 1988 to have won an Olympic basketball gold medal other than the USA.
They won in Athens in 2004 on the strength of their “golden generation” of core players including Ginobili, Scola and Andres Nocioni.
But with Ginobili now 39 and the other two 36 years old, time is running out for that decorated cadre to take home another medal.
Cheered on by a boisterous turnout of fans from their nearby homeland, which borders on Brazil, Argentina jumped out to an 11-0 lead.
They never looked back, using tough defence and superior ball movement to set up eight first-half three-pointers and take a 50-31 halftime lead.
More of the same followed in the second half, with the Argentines cruising to the final buzzer. They finished with 15 three-pointers.
Nigeria was led by Ikechukwu Diogu’s 15 points and 13 rebounds, and 14 points from Ebi Ere.
Manu Ginobili of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs added 12 points and the Brooklyn Nets’ Luis Scola 18 as the more experienced Argentines proved too much for the sloppy African qualifiers.
Argentina is the only country since 1988 to have won an Olympic basketball gold medal other than the USA.
They won in Athens in 2004 on the strength of their “golden generation” of core players including Ginobili, Scola and Andres Nocioni.
But with Ginobili now 39 and the other two 36 years old, time is running out for that decorated cadre to take home another medal.
Cheered on by a boisterous turnout of fans from their nearby homeland, which borders on Brazil, Argentina jumped out to an 11-0 lead.
They never looked back, using tough defence and superior ball movement to set up eight first-half three-pointers and take a 50-31 halftime lead.
More of the same followed in the second half, with the Argentines cruising to the final buzzer. They finished with 15 three-pointers.
Nigeria was led by Ikechukwu Diogu’s 15 points and 13 rebounds, and 14 points from Ebi Ere.
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