Nigeria's Online Blog

Forbes magazine has announced its inaugural list of Africa's top 40 richest people, highlighting Nigerian magnate Aliko Dangote as the continent's richest man. Forbes said its decision to launch the 40 Richest People in Africa is a "testament to the growing global importance of the continent."

"Fortunes are being created everywhere from South Africa clear north to Morocco and Egypt in a diverse array of industries," the magazine reported. Nigeria's Aliko Dangote made his fortune, estimated at $10.1 billion, at Dangote-Cement Plc, a construction company with a strong presence in Africa. According to Forbes, the company manages vast amounts of construction resources including a gas power plant, a gas pipeline and a dam with a total storage capacity of 5.1 million cubic meters.

The company employs 3,468 people.

Second to Dangote comes Nicky Oppenheimer, a former member of South Africa's diamond 80-year-old dynasty. Oppenheimer, who sold his family's remaining stake with De Beers in November to mining giant Anglo American. The historic transaction made headlines in November as Oppenheimer abdicated his role as Africa's top diamond magnate. "This has been a momentous and difficult decision as my family has been in the diamond industry for more than 100 years and part of De Beers for over 80 years," Oppenheimer said in a statement.

Egypt has the largest number of billionaires in Africa, according to Forbes, seven of them belonging to two families, the Sawiris and Mansours. Forbes said six African countries are represented on the list, including Kenya and Zimbabwe.
"Notable for their absence from the list: women. All 40 members are men," the magazine reported.

LAGOS — Oceanic Bank,Monday, said it will transfer 100 per cent of its share capital to Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, ETI, and merge its operations with ETI’s local unit in a bid to recapitalise ahead of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, September deadline.

Oceanic said ETI will pay N38.5 billion ($24m million) worth of its ordinary shares and N16.5 billion in preference shares for total control of the rescued Bank. It said the shares will be paid to existing shareholders and a state-owned asset management company AMCON, without stating in what proportion.

Oceanic will hold a shareholders’ meeting on September 27 to approve the deal.

In a statement, Oceanic Bank said: ”ETI will own 100 per cent of the share capital of Oceanic Bank, while existing shareholders of Oceanic and AMCON will become shareholders in ETI. Subsequent to this, ETI will merge Oceanic Bank with Ecobank Nigeria.”

Under the deal, holders of Oceanic Bank will get one ordinary share and 0.428 preference share of ETI for every 20 Oceanic shares held on October 4, 2011. Oceanic will subsequently be delisted from the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Oceanic is the fourth lender to reveal details of its recapitalization plans.

AMCON was set up last year to absorb non-performing loans from nine rescued lenders including Oceanic in exchange for government bonds, making them attractive for new investors to recapitalize them.

Oceanic and ETI subsequently signed a merger agreement in July, paving the way for the rescued lender to be recapitalized, in what shareholders’ hope will draw a line under Oceanic’s crisis.

Nobody's perfect. And despite generally strong reviews and record early sales, the iPhone 4S is no exception.
Apple's new phone went on sale Friday in the U.S. and six other countries, and maybe no rollout this massive (Apple reported selling 4 million of the new phones over the weekend) could be expected to be without problems.
So far, there's been no 4S equivalent to the iPhone 4's "Antennagate." But as folks put their new gadget through its paces, some early complaints have appeared on online message boards.

Some of these may be early-run blips (that's how we're going to categorize the problems that some customers had activating their phones over the weekend). Whether they become enduring causes of headaches remains to be seen. (Apple did not immediately respond to our request for comment.) But here are five of the most frequent complaints we've heard about the iPhone 4S:

1. Slow service on Sprint
The big news on the carrier front for the iPhone 4S was that Sprint would be added as an approved mobile carrier, joining AT&T and Verizon. But some Sprint customers didn't get off to a very good start. Many users were reporting slow data speed for the first couple of days. A thread on the Sprint community forum has 23 pages of people talking about slow data speed.
"Sprint, we need some answer. Are you guys doing iPhone specific throttling?" one person posted. "You will lose your customer if the customer finding their iPhone unusable ... " This isn't the first time Sprint's speed has come into question. In PCMag's June survey of the fastest mobile networks, Sprint trailed Verizon and AT&T in most regions of the country. A Sprint news release said Friday was the biggest sales day of a mobile device in its history, surpassing expectations. "As always, Sprint is carefully monitoring the performance of the 3G network," Sprint spokesman Scott Sloat said in a written statement to CNN. "We are looking into a small number of reports of slow data speeds when using the iPhone 4S, however there are also reports showing that Sprint's network is the fastest, such as the Gizmodo report that came out earlier today."

2. Weak battery
At the October 4 presentation unveiling the iPhone 4S, Phil Schiller , Apple vice president for product management, praised its "fantastic battery life" that would allow people to talk for eight hours before needing to charge the device again.
But that's not the experience everyone is reporting. Apple review site iLounge published a review of the phone, including battery-life comparisons. "After three days of non-stop testing, we had a clear answer: The iPhone 4S is generally more power hungry than the iPhone 4, and Apple has only made the slightest capacity improvement to the iPhone 4S's battery," the review reads. "Moreover, whereas Apple underpromised with the iPhone 4's battery estimates, it comes closer to overpromising with the iPhone 4S."
The review says that using Wi-Fi consistently and using the phone mainly for calls and Web browsing wears the battery out at roughly the same speed as the iPhone 4, while playing videos and music or using a 3G connection will drain it faster.

3. Siri outside the United States
Demand for the iPhone 4S was clearly global. But one of its biggest selling-points, the built-in voice assistant Siri, only works fully stateside. While many of its built-in features work anywhere, location based actions don't. So, using Siri to, say, find a local business or get driving directions, doesn't work elsewhere. Even queries asking for the time of day weren't working in Canada, according to some reports. Compounding that problem (for some folks both inside and outside the U.S.) is the fact that Siri has trouble understanding heavy accents. It currently works with English, French and German (with more languages coming). But non-native English speakers have reported lots of trouble. We can only imagine how Siri's doing in Scotland.

4. Camera problems
Another big selling point for the 4S is its 8-megapixel camera, which is a pretty significant jump from the 5 megapixels on the iPhone 4 and 3 megapixels on the iPhone 3GS.
Reviews of the images the phone renders have been overwhelmingly positive, with users reporting a major difference in clarity.
But the same "shutter speed" issues users have complained about on previous iPhones appear to be back again.
In a forum discussion on Apple's site, some reported that when they'd take a photo, the camera got stuck with the shutter closed or moved really slowly. Others said the camera wasn't working at all, although it looks like they were largely able to fix that by turning the phone off and restarting.

5. Screen appearance
At least it looks like there's an easy answer for this one.
Some buyers are reporting a yellowish tint or spots on the screen of their phones, making the resolution fuzzier than older phones.
This is an issue that previous iPhones had as well. While Apple has never officially explained it (presumably because it hasn't impacted enough people), technicians have reportedly said it's residue from the manufacturing process.
The tint tends to fade after a couple of days.

WALMART, America’s foremost low-price merchandise retail store, is planning to open two stores in Nigeria soon.

Nigeria’s Ambassador to the United States, Prof. Ade Adefuye, told the Empowered Newswire on Wednesday that representatives from the famous retail store had visited him at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC as regards the plan to open the retail store in Nigeria.

“It is an indication of the growing confidence in Nigeria’s economy,” Adefuye stated, adding that he was currently engaging with the leading US store on the conditions and requirements that would have to be met to do business in Nigeria.

WalMart currently employs about 2.1million employees and the CNN ranked it as the biggest global company last year, saying that, despite the global recession, the discount retailer’s bargain prices continued to lure consumers worldwide.

The company’s plan to open stores in Nigeria is part of the strategy of its leadership team, led by its new President/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Michael Duke.

At the company’s AGM last year, Duke was reported as saying that global markets were “becoming an even bigger and more important part of our company.”

Lagos — A total of 966 workers of Bank PHB Plc were sacked on Tuesday in what the bank described as an exercise to reduce its bloated workforce.

The sacked employees represented about 13 per cent of its 7,000 staff strength.

Sources told Daily Independent that the bank hopes to save about N4.5 billion annually through the rationalisation exercise.

According to sources, Senior Management workers affected by the exercise contributed about 30 per cent, while Middle Management and Junior workers contributed another 40 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.

When contacted on telephone, Managing Director of the bank, Cyril Chukwumah, confirmed the development, saying the bank adopted a robust and holistic strategy to ensure extensive stakeholder engagement that would deliver a fair and equitable outcome for all parties involved.

"As soon as we realised the need to rationalise our staffing numbers in view of our declining performance, we ensured that representatives of all stakeholders, Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Allied Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI); National Union of Banks, Insurance and Allied Financial Institutions Employees (NUBIFIE), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Ministry of Labour were carried along before reaching a conclusion on this decision," he said.

Chukwumah explained further that in order to ameliorate the impact of this decision on affected staff, the bank implemented an Employee Release programme, which was designed to give a soft landing for affected staff recognising their contribution to the organisation over the years.

According to him, "each of the affected staff will receive an appreciable separation package, which includes but is not limited to three to 12 months of guaranteed monthly pay (not basic salary) calculated based on tenure with bank and grade level; options to pay discounted value of assets in their possession for as low as 50 per cent of NBV (Note Book Value) in some cases and write offs in other cases; three months moratorium on loans; one year access to free Medicare under the existing Health Insurance Scheme (HIS)."

Chukwumah said this package surpasses what obtains in the industry today, and is also higher than the collective agreement negotiated with the relevant unions, adding: "This is expected to go a long way in providing a platform for these ambassadors of Bank PHB to transit easily into new paths that they have chosen for themselves, moreover a complaints channel with an escalation mechanism to board level of the bank was also created to handle affected staff enquiries and resolve issues as they arise."

The CBN had on October 1, 2009 sacked the management of Bank PHB Plc, after its special investigation confirmed that the Francis Atuche-led management gave out over N400 billion unsecured loans to friends and relations contrary to laid down credit approval procedures.

The CBN consequently drafted Chukwuma, an accountant, to run the bank as Chief Executive on October 1, 2009 with the mandate to recover the huge bad loans and return the bank to profitability.

The bank's result published recently revealed a whopping loan loss provision of N232.16 billion, while its stock of non-performing loans stood at N415.11billion.

Bank PHB's net loss for the period under review stood at N438.65 billion.