An aide to Nigeria's former President Goodluck Jonathan has been charged with $15 million fraud.
Warpamo Dudafa, the former special assistant for domestic affairs, appeared before a High Court in Lagos on Thursday to answer to a six-count charge filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Six other accomplices are facing 15 counts related to conspiracy and fraud.
They are Amajuoyi Briggs, Adedamola Bolodeoku and four companies, Pluto Properties and Investment, Seagate Property Development, Trans Ocean Property and Investment and Avalon Global Property Ltd.
The first, second and third accused pleaded not guilty after the charges were read.
Meanwhile, the four individuals representing the companies listed in the charge each pleaded guilty to the offences.
Prosecutors asked the court to allow time for a review of the facts.
Justice Babs Kuewumi, however, declined and adjourned the case to September 27.
He also ordered the accused to be remanded in custody.
Friday, September 16, 2016
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Video - Nigeria’s real estate sector suffers as luxury houses stand vacant
Nigeria's real estate sector is going through a tough time as the country grapples with a recession, and a sharply devalued currency. If there's one city that's taken a direct hit, it's Lagos, the commercial capital. The number of vacant houses, especially at the higher end of the market, has risen sharply over the past year, as Deji Badmus, reports.
How Nollywood got ready for its close-up on the global film festival stage
At times it feels like Nollywood has been around forever, such has been the Nigerian movie business’ impact on pan-African pop cultures and awareness around the world—and in Nigeria itself.
In truth, the modern version of Nigeria’s famed movie industry is less than 25 years old, making it a relative youngster by film industry standards. That might be why this week’s showcase of eight Nollywood movies at the influential Toronto Film Festival (TIFF) feels like a coming out ball for Nollywood to the global movie industry.
For years, the industry has attracted interest globally with an exciting but mixed reputation. Its low-budget, high-volume production levels helped it grow rapidly to become the world’s second biggest movie industry by volume, behind only India’s Bollywood. Then, there’s its well-documented problems with piracy with which the industry continues to struggle. But in Toronto the world’s leading movie makers and marketers will be taking a close look at Nollywood for the right reason: the much improved quality of its films.
Toronto Film Festival is probably best renown for identifying early Oscar contenders but it’s also an important venue to meet a variety of North American distributors from cable TV to movie theaters. Nigerian movie makers will be keen to be seen with a new slate of higher quality movies compared with the early days of the industry.
There’s been a growing shift from movie quantity to quality in recent years. In the past, Nollywood filmmakers had a reputation for breaking up feature films into unnecessary stretched out sequels in a bid to eke out as much revenue as possible by selling more home movies on DVD. But now, rather than put out multiple films annually, filmmakers are beginning to spend more time and resources to making fewer but better movies with the aim of being on the big screen in movie theaters.
This is largely down to increased investment in creating content. Africa Magic, a television channel owned by digital satellite giants, Multichoice, has been at the forefront of content creation, commissioning the development of Nollywood dramas and sitcoms. Multichoice is a division of Africa’s largest company, the South African media giant, Naspers.
The movies selected for the festival have small budgets by Hollywood standards, but huge in the context of Nollywood. For example ’76’, a historical fiction drama, cost $3 million to make and is supported by Africa Magic. EbonyLife TV, a Nigerian entertainment network, helped produce ‘Wedding Party’, which has had a high profile at the festival.
In addition to the selected movies, Lagos, Nigeria’s bustling commercial capital, will also be in focus having been selected as part of the City to City programme for the film festival. For many in the industry, the recognition by the Toronto film festival is seen as a nod to Nollywood’s rapid growth and evolution over the years.
With deeper pockets, investors are starting to bankroll the production of better quality movies, thus raising standards across the board.
“Standards have financial implications—you can’t expect certain standards on low-budget production,” says Chris Ihidero, the Lagos-based producer of popular TV sitcom, Fuji House of Commotion and drama series, Hush. He says better quality is inevitable with increased investment. “Filmmakers have always been skilled but have lacked finance. What we’re seeing now is a result of investors putting money on the table.”
Pirates of Lagos Lagoon
In the past, the motivating factor for putting out multiple movies was down to the lack of revenue structure in the industry. Movies were typically released straight to DVD or Video CD (VCD) as producers sold distribution rights to promoters for small profits. More often than not, promoters then facilitated the piracy of the films to recover their costs.
When Nigerians didn’t buy pirated movies, they rented them for a small token from home video rental shops which were popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. Crucially though, the revenues generated from the hundreds of rental stores hardly made it back to the producers. But that has changed over the past decade as the local cinema infrastructure, and consequently movie culture, has evolved and grown.
There are now some 25 cinemas across the country, most opened in the last 10 years. This is a tiny number for a country of 180 million people, even if they were just focused on its burgeoning middle class—23% of its population. The good news is that the growth of local movie theaters means filmmakers now have their movies screened before going on to DVD, bringing Nollywood more in line with the traditional Hollywood model.
One of the big successes of this model is ’30 days of Atlanta’, a 2014 romantic comedy which went on to gross $434,000—reportedly the highest for a local movie in Nigerian cinema history. But Ihidero says the cinemas are not anywhere near enough yet. “We need about 1,000 cinemas,” he says. At current pace, Ihidero estimates Nollywood films average $15,000 at the box office screening for two weeks in local cinemas. “You cannot grow an industry with revenue like that,” he says.
To plug the gap, Nollywood can turn to video on-demand platforms like iROKOtv, the largest online distributor of African online video (and also a producer of movies through ROK Studios). Since launch, iROKOtv has been popular among Nollywood’s key diaspora market. But as the price of mobile data drops locally, Nigerians are beginning to consume more content on mobile than ever before.
While the cinema culture is crucial to helping local films generate revenues, piracy problems still persist. DVD sales still only contribute a tiny fraction of revenue for filmmakers. Instead, pirates bootleg films, often publicly, cutting into the filmmaker’s earnings. According to World Bank estimates, for each legitimate sale, nine others are pirated. Kunle Afolayan, a leading filmmaker and Quartz Africa Innovators 2015 honoree, has felt the brunt firsthand. Afolayan’s movie, October 1, ended up being pirated before its planned DVD release last year severely reducing Afolayan’s chances of recouping his $2 million investment in the film.
Telling our story
Regardless of the problems that persist, the spotlight on Nollywood in Toronto brings with it a chance for Nigerian filmmakers to take the lead in telling the country’s many stories. For decades, there has been dissatisfaction with how Western media has represented Nigeria and the rest of the continent. Hollywood films and music videos have also been complicit. Movies depicting war and famine as a pervasive and generic reality as well as music videos lacking nuance, like Taylor Swift’s ‘Wildest Dreams’, have come in for criticism.
Lonzo Nzekwe, a Toronto-based Nigerian filmmaker, says the growing popularity of Nollywood films and stories outside the country could help fix that. “When Hollywood goes to Africa, they’ll show you the jungles and the dirty part of the continent,” Nzekwe told Toronto Metro. “But through Nollywood films you see the excellence of Africa. You see the beauty and the positive aspects of it. That’s the good thing about what TIFF is doing now.”
As British-Nigerian Hollywood star David Oyelowo reminded the audience in Toronto, “We are storytellers.”
Oil sink to worsen as Nigeria and Libya fields restart
Amid the most enduring global oil glut in decades, two OPEC crude producers whose supplies have been crushed by domestic conflicts are preparing to add hundreds of thousands of barrels to world markets within weeks.
Libya’s state oil company on Wednesday lifted curbs on crude sales from the ports of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Zueitina, potentially unlocking 300,000 barrels a day of supply. In Nigeria, Exxon Mobil Corp. was said to be ready to resume shipments of Qua Iboe crude, the country’s biggest export grade, which averaged about 340,000 barrels a day in shipments last year, according to Bloomberg estimates. On top of that, a second Nigerian grade operated by Royal Dutch Shell Plc is scheduled to restart about 200,000 barrels a day of flow within days.
While there are reasons to be cautious about whether the barrels will actually flow as anticipated, a resumption of those supplies -- more than 800,000 barrels a day in all -- could more than triple the global surplus that has kept prices at less than half their levels in 2014. It would also come just as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia are set to meet in Algiers later this month to discuss a possible output freeze to steady world oil markets.
“If you have some restart of Nigeria and some restart of Libya, then the rebalancing gets pushed even further out,” Olivier Jakob, managing director at Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland, said by phone. “It complicates matters a lot before the meeting in Algeria.”
Libya Shipments
With a few exceptions, crude in New York and London has been stuck below $50 a barrel for months. The current global oil oversupply is about 370,000 barrels a day, according to data from the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
The resumption of shipments from the three Libyan ports would allow Libya to double crude output to 600,000 barrels a day within four weeks, National Oil Corp. Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said Tuesday in a statement on the company’s website.
The exports are possible after a substantial improvement in the security situation there, he said Wednesday in a separate statement. The Tripoli-based NOC lifted a measure called force majeure, which gives the company the right not to meet supply commitments.
Libya has made at least half a dozen failed pledges to restart shipments. What may be different this time is that the NOC has struck a deal with Khalifa Haftar, commander of forces who took control of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf. He also has control of the oil fields and pipelines that feed them.
Qua Iboe
Meanwhile Exxon has filled storage facilities at its Qua Iboe export terminal in Nigeria and is awaiting government clearance to resume shipments, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday. Exxon declined to provide a timeline for a restart and said that a force majeure, in place since July, still stands.
In Nigeria, militant groups have repeatedly attacked oil infrastructure this year, making any resumption of flow reliant on pipeline and export terminals being secure from further incidents. Qua Iboe has been under force majeure since a “third-party impact” on a pipeline in July, according to Exxon.
“If it’s true, it’s another downward pressure for the markets because that would be a large amount to return to the market,” Thomas Pugh, commodities economist at Capital Economics, said by phone, adding that he doubts the resumptions will materialize given the situations in both countries.
West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, was 0.3 percent higher at $43.70 a barrel at 12:56 p.m. in Hong Kong. Brent gained 0.5 percent to $46.09 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.
Libya’s state oil company on Wednesday lifted curbs on crude sales from the ports of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Zueitina, potentially unlocking 300,000 barrels a day of supply. In Nigeria, Exxon Mobil Corp. was said to be ready to resume shipments of Qua Iboe crude, the country’s biggest export grade, which averaged about 340,000 barrels a day in shipments last year, according to Bloomberg estimates. On top of that, a second Nigerian grade operated by Royal Dutch Shell Plc is scheduled to restart about 200,000 barrels a day of flow within days.
While there are reasons to be cautious about whether the barrels will actually flow as anticipated, a resumption of those supplies -- more than 800,000 barrels a day in all -- could more than triple the global surplus that has kept prices at less than half their levels in 2014. It would also come just as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia are set to meet in Algiers later this month to discuss a possible output freeze to steady world oil markets.
“If you have some restart of Nigeria and some restart of Libya, then the rebalancing gets pushed even further out,” Olivier Jakob, managing director at Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland, said by phone. “It complicates matters a lot before the meeting in Algeria.”
Libya Shipments
With a few exceptions, crude in New York and London has been stuck below $50 a barrel for months. The current global oil oversupply is about 370,000 barrels a day, according to data from the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
The resumption of shipments from the three Libyan ports would allow Libya to double crude output to 600,000 barrels a day within four weeks, National Oil Corp. Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said Tuesday in a statement on the company’s website.
The exports are possible after a substantial improvement in the security situation there, he said Wednesday in a separate statement. The Tripoli-based NOC lifted a measure called force majeure, which gives the company the right not to meet supply commitments.
Libya has made at least half a dozen failed pledges to restart shipments. What may be different this time is that the NOC has struck a deal with Khalifa Haftar, commander of forces who took control of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf. He also has control of the oil fields and pipelines that feed them.
Qua Iboe
Meanwhile Exxon has filled storage facilities at its Qua Iboe export terminal in Nigeria and is awaiting government clearance to resume shipments, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday. Exxon declined to provide a timeline for a restart and said that a force majeure, in place since July, still stands.
In Nigeria, militant groups have repeatedly attacked oil infrastructure this year, making any resumption of flow reliant on pipeline and export terminals being secure from further incidents. Qua Iboe has been under force majeure since a “third-party impact” on a pipeline in July, according to Exxon.
“If it’s true, it’s another downward pressure for the markets because that would be a large amount to return to the market,” Thomas Pugh, commodities economist at Capital Economics, said by phone, adding that he doubts the resumptions will materialize given the situations in both countries.
West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, was 0.3 percent higher at $43.70 a barrel at 12:56 p.m. in Hong Kong. Brent gained 0.5 percent to $46.09 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Video - Foreign airlines flying into Nigeria start refuelling abroad
Foreign airlines flying to Nigeria have started to refuel abroad to counter a growing scarcity of hard currency and jet fuel. This is the second blow for airlines operating there, since the central bank has made it almost impossible to repatriate profits from ticket sales. The crash in the naira since its floating in June has compelled firms like Total, Sahara and ConocoPhillips, to double the retail price of fuel. Some carriers have had aircraft stranded, or were forced to cancel planned trips. Dubai-based Emirates has started a detour to Accra, Ghana, to refuel, Germany's Lufthansa is loading more fuel in Frankfurt, while British Airways, KLM and Turkish Airlines have resorted to smaller aircraft.
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