Nigeria must consider selling stakes in joint ventures with oil majors and other assets as talks to borrow abroad have not succeeded yet and would in any case not generate enough funds to stimulate economic recovery, the leader of the Senate said.
Senate President Bukola Saraki, the third most powerful official in Africa's biggest economy, also said the oil producer might struggle with recession for up to nine months or even longer unless it got serious about attracting investors.
The government said this month it had approved loans from China, the World Bank, Japan and the African Development Bank, but Saraki, whose relations with the president have cooled since last year, said such talks were still ongoing with no deals yet.
"There is a big hole now in the fiscal deficit because that funding is not coming through. So we've got to look for alternative ways to fund that," Saraki said in a joint interview with the Financial Times on Monday when asked about the loans.
The government has said it plans to borrow as much as $10 billion, with half of that coming from foreign sources, including a planned $1 billion Eurobond issue, to fund a budget deficit of 2.2 trillion naira ($7.21 billion) and boost an economy hammered by low oil prices and hard currency shortages.
Saraki said that even if the loan talks succeeded, the amount raised would not be enough to plug the hole in public finances. "My take is that even if it does come through, it's money too little, too late," he said, referring to the loan talks.
He said Nigeria needed to sell stakes in oil and gas joint ventures, oil exploration contracts and refineries to raise funds. "In my view, I really can't see any other pathway to recovery. We need investors, we need to raise capital."
Such an asset sale would be necessary even if global crude prices recovered to $70 a barrel and Nigeria managed to restore oil production to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) with an end to militant attacks in the Niger Delta oil hub, Saraki said. Officials say the attacks have reduced output by 700,000 bpd.
Saraki said Nigeria could overcome recession in six to nine months if swift action was taken -- a more downcast view than that of the government, which has forecast a quick recovery.
Central bank governor Godwin Emefiele was due to hold a news conference at around 1315 GMT (09:15 a.m. EDT) after a meeting of the rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee. The finance minister said on Monday the central bank should lower interest rates so that the government can borrow domestically to boost the economy.
Economists polled by Reuters last week predicted that the central bank would keep its key interest rate at 14 percent and reiterate its focus on resuscitating growth.
The government has said it is considering asset sales, but has given no details.
"If we do things right, the confidence will come in," Saraki said. "If we carry on waiting for government revenues to go up, if we don't do anything seen as thinking out of the box" the recession could drag on longer.
Nigeria's 2016 budget was the largest in the nation's history, but the oil price drop and Delta attacks have left the government scrambling for funds.
Saraki is from the same ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as President Muhammadu Buhari, who was elected in March 2015 on a promise to end graft and mismanagement in the West African nation.
But relations between the two have been strained since Saraki ran unopposed for the position of Senate president last year, mainly with the backing of the opposition. He was not the APC's preferred candidate.
(1 = 305.0000 naira)
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Boko Haram claimed to have killed 40 troops in Nigeria
Nigeria's army claimed victory Wednesday in "a fierce battle" in a remote desert trading post where Islamic extremists said they killed 40 troops from a multinational force.
Army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman said troops recaptured Malam Fatori town on Tuesday and killed several extremists, but the insurgents regrouped at the nearby border with Niger.
The Islamic State's West Africa Province, one faction of the Boko Haram extremist group, hours earlier claimed it had annihilated "a convoy of the African Coalition Crusader forces" at Malam Fatori, killing more than 40 soldiers and wounding dozens, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist communiques.
There was no way to independently verify either side's claim.
Tuesday's battle was the first Nigeria attack claimed by the Islamic State group since August, when it named a new caliph in Nigeria, provoking a leadership struggle. Leader Abubakar Shekau pledged Boko Haram's allegiance to IS in 2015, giving the Islamic State its first sub-Saharan franchise. But IS last month announced it had replaced Shekau in a dispute around his indiscriminate killings of Muslims.
The town of Malam Fatori has changed hands many times in the seven-year Boko Haram uprising that has killed more than 20,000. Many residents fled to Niger in 2014 after soldiers in a punitive raid burned down hundreds of huts because a wounded extremist was given refuge there.
Tuesday's was the fourth insurgent attack in northeast Nigeria in three days.
Eighteen people were killed Sunday and Monday when extremists gunned down Christians leaving a church service, beheaded a village head and his son and ambushed a convoy within miles of Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast.
No one has claimed responsibility for those attacks.
Army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman said troops recaptured Malam Fatori town on Tuesday and killed several extremists, but the insurgents regrouped at the nearby border with Niger.
The Islamic State's West Africa Province, one faction of the Boko Haram extremist group, hours earlier claimed it had annihilated "a convoy of the African Coalition Crusader forces" at Malam Fatori, killing more than 40 soldiers and wounding dozens, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist communiques.
There was no way to independently verify either side's claim.
Tuesday's battle was the first Nigeria attack claimed by the Islamic State group since August, when it named a new caliph in Nigeria, provoking a leadership struggle. Leader Abubakar Shekau pledged Boko Haram's allegiance to IS in 2015, giving the Islamic State its first sub-Saharan franchise. But IS last month announced it had replaced Shekau in a dispute around his indiscriminate killings of Muslims.
The town of Malam Fatori has changed hands many times in the seven-year Boko Haram uprising that has killed more than 20,000. Many residents fled to Niger in 2014 after soldiers in a punitive raid burned down hundreds of huts because a wounded extremist was given refuge there.
Tuesday's was the fourth insurgent attack in northeast Nigeria in three days.
Eighteen people were killed Sunday and Monday when extremists gunned down Christians leaving a church service, beheaded a village head and his son and ambushed a convoy within miles of Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast.
No one has claimed responsibility for those attacks.
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Video - Nigeria's state-owned oil company accused of evading payments
Nigeria’s state-owned oil company, NNPC and 22 other petroleum firms, reportedly owe the government 86.4 billion naira. The government agency tasked with fighting corruption says the debt is the result of years of collusion between NNPC officials and private oil companies.
Nigerian makes Miss Transsexual final
“Here all of us are winners already, we won our life,” said runner-up Tallen Abu Hanna from Israel. Persecuted by their governments, victims of discrimination or rejected by their own families, many of the 25 candidates went through hell and high water before summoning up the courage to strut their stuff in swimsuits or evening gowns. “This is an attempt to engage society,” said Thara Wells, the contest founder. “We want to go beyond beauty and tell the life story of each girl.”
Escape or death
Among the candidates were transsexuals from Japan, South Africa, Colombia, Turkey, and Nigeria, whose activist chat stood out. Sporting a cream dress with a plunging neckline, Miss SaHHara glided down the runway without a hint of shyness, drawing in the 300-strong audience with her light-green eyes. Nothing much remained from the young 19-year-old man who fled Nigeria for London more than a decade ago. “I had severe disphoria.
My breasts weren’t growing, I didn’t have a vagina, I looked at myself in the mirror and I did not feel comfortable with my body,” she told AFP before the gala final Saturday. Miss SaHHara, as she is known, always knew she was a woman. She would put on make-up and wear her mother’s high heels. But in Nigeria, where homosexuality and transsexuality are illegal and punishable by 14 years in jail, her situation was tough. “In the street, they were always attacking me, harassing me,” she said. “I came back home and my family would harass me, they said ‘you’re wrong, you need to change, act like a man’.”
She twice attempted suicide and says she was imprisoned in Nigeria for wearing women’s attire before escaping to London, first as an illegal migrant, then as a refugee. “There was no way I could have survived in Nigeria, this is why I had to leave,” she said. In Britain, she underwent surgery to become a woman with long, curly blond hair, big breasts and full lips.
She works as a model and singer, and also manages her own NGO to help transsexuals. “London gave me the opportunity to pursue my dreams and be my true self,” she said. “I’m hoping that by speaking out and coming to Miss Star, I will try to influence people or perhaps influence my government to revoke 14 years imprisonment for LGBT inNigeria.”
2,000 murders since 2006
In recent years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people have scored small victories around the world. Nepal, Argentina, Bolivia and Ireland are just some of the countries to have approved laws recognising transgender people and the United States is considering allowing them into the army. But there is still a lot to do. LGBT people are still persecuted in some 80 countries, and more than 2,000 transsexuals have been murdered since 2006, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project, part of the Berlin-based Transgender Europe NGO. “We have very few opportunities in life, very few,” said contest founder Wells. Israel’s Tallen Abu Hanna concurred, saying transsexuals have huge difficulties in finding jobs. “In the end, lots of them have to have sex for money.”
She has been lucky though
A Christian Arab Israeli, she has become a celebrity since winning a transsexual beauty pageant in her country, and wants to take advantage of this fame to inspire Arab people, who like she once did may feel trapped “inside a cage.” “I became a woman and I found peace between my body and my soul.”
Militants attack crude oil pipeline in Nigeria
A militant group on Monday claimed an attack on a crude oil pipeline in Delta state, southern Nigeria, in the second attack on the same line in less than a week.
In an emailed statement, Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate (NDGJM) spokesperson Aldo Agbalaja said "Opudo strike force, at about 23:30 on Sunday, September 18, 2016, struck the Afiesere-Ekiugbo delivery line in Ughelli, operated by NPDC/Shoreline."
The rebel group hit the same pipeline last Tuesday and vowed to "ground" the Nigerian economy, which is already in recession, in part due to plummeting oil exports as a result of sabotage.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut Nigeria's credit rating last week, saying the "marked contraction" in oil production from an average of 2.1 million barrels per day to 1.7 was hurting its economic prospects.
The NDGJM has stepped up its attacks after rival group the Niger Delta Avengers declared a ceasefire in August and entered talks with the Nigerian government.
"All agrarian products in the area surrounding the scene of the incident have been damaged as a result of the blast," a resident of the nearby Ekuigbo community, Efemena Akposire, told AFP.
A military officer added: "Unlike previous attacks carried out by the group where they hack-sawed the pipelines, dynamite was used in this case."
Poor living conditions
Nigeria's military has boosted its presence in the oil-producing southern swamplands in response to the attacks, raiding suspected militant camps and clamping down on illegal oil refineries.
Various rebel groups have complained about poor living conditions in the area, where despite massive oil wealth most people live in poverty without access to basic services such as education and health care.
Distrust in the Nigerian security forces is widespread in the region. Last week the NDGJM complained of intimidation and vowed to "match force with the oppressor's brutality".
Rebel attacks are not the only crimes plaguing the region: kidnappings for ransom are also common.
Nigerian police said Monday it had rescued 14 local oil workers and their driver after a shoot-out with their kidnappers near the oil hub of Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers state.
The employees of Nestoil Plc, an oil and gas service firm, were seized on September 2 by a gang of men who hijacked their vehicle and fired shots into the air to frighten away bystanders.
Rivers police spokesman Nnamdi Omoni said none of the oil workers was injured and no ransom was paid. Efforts were being made to track down the kidnappers, he added.
In an emailed statement, Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate (NDGJM) spokesperson Aldo Agbalaja said "Opudo strike force, at about 23:30 on Sunday, September 18, 2016, struck the Afiesere-Ekiugbo delivery line in Ughelli, operated by NPDC/Shoreline."
The rebel group hit the same pipeline last Tuesday and vowed to "ground" the Nigerian economy, which is already in recession, in part due to plummeting oil exports as a result of sabotage.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's cut Nigeria's credit rating last week, saying the "marked contraction" in oil production from an average of 2.1 million barrels per day to 1.7 was hurting its economic prospects.
The NDGJM has stepped up its attacks after rival group the Niger Delta Avengers declared a ceasefire in August and entered talks with the Nigerian government.
"All agrarian products in the area surrounding the scene of the incident have been damaged as a result of the blast," a resident of the nearby Ekuigbo community, Efemena Akposire, told AFP.
A military officer added: "Unlike previous attacks carried out by the group where they hack-sawed the pipelines, dynamite was used in this case."
Poor living conditions
Nigeria's military has boosted its presence in the oil-producing southern swamplands in response to the attacks, raiding suspected militant camps and clamping down on illegal oil refineries.
Various rebel groups have complained about poor living conditions in the area, where despite massive oil wealth most people live in poverty without access to basic services such as education and health care.
Distrust in the Nigerian security forces is widespread in the region. Last week the NDGJM complained of intimidation and vowed to "match force with the oppressor's brutality".
Rebel attacks are not the only crimes plaguing the region: kidnappings for ransom are also common.
Nigerian police said Monday it had rescued 14 local oil workers and their driver after a shoot-out with their kidnappers near the oil hub of Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers state.
The employees of Nestoil Plc, an oil and gas service firm, were seized on September 2 by a gang of men who hijacked their vehicle and fired shots into the air to frighten away bystanders.
Rivers police spokesman Nnamdi Omoni said none of the oil workers was injured and no ransom was paid. Efforts were being made to track down the kidnappers, he added.
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