By Felix Onuah and Ulf Laessing
When protesters marched on Nigeria&#8217;s presidential villa earlier this month to complain about a biting recession, they were not repelled by baton-wielding policemen, the usual fate for anyone arriving uninvited at the gate of the country&#8217;s power centre.
Instead, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who is standing in for the country&#8217;s sick leader, sent a vehicle to ferry the protest leaders to his office, where they complained about widespread corruption.
In a frank admission, Osinbajo acknowledged the government had failed to make as much progress fighting graft as it had hoped.
&#8220;We hear you loud and clear,&#8221; he told the protesters.
President Muhammadu Buhari has been in London for six weeks on medical leave, raising questions over his capacity to govern Africa&#8217;s largest economy.
In his absence, diplomats and business leaders say the presidency has acted with an energy rarely seen in the two years since Buhari, 74, was elected.
Civil servants say they are handling heftier workloads, while investors are praising a new, long-needed foreign exchange policy. Meanwhile, diplomats say Osinbajo&#8217;s inner circle is gaining influence inside the presidency.
To be sure, Osinbajo has made clear his loyalty lies with Buhari, a retired general who has struggled to define a clear strategy to deal with Nigeria&#8217;s slide into recession and stands accused by opponents of inaction.
But the 59-year-old lawyer is getting work done. He has relaxed visa rules to lure foreign investors &#8212; a plan drawn up by Buhari but which like others got stuck in his chief of staff&#8217;s office, according to diplomats.
Officials in the Aso Rock presidential complex in Abuja have seen their working hours extended to 7 p.m. when Osinbajo leaves, or later. Buhari and his aides typically close shop at 4 p.m., officials said.
&#8220;This man is a workaholic,&#8221; one presidency insider said. &#8220;I wonder whether he rests at all because he even shifts some of the meetings to his official residence.&#8221;
 
&#8220;BACK ON TRACK&#8221;
Nigeria tumbled into a full-year recession in 2016 for the first time in a quarter of a century as a slump in crude oil revenues hammered the OPEC member&#8217;s public finances.
The Treasury has faced an acute shortage of hard currency that has piled pressure on the Naira, which still trades at a more-than 30 percent premium on the black market even after policymakers effectively devalued the currency for private individuals last Monday.
After stiff resistance from Buhari for a full devaluation throughout last year. With the president absent, last week&#8217;s move was seen as testing the waters for a broader weakening.
The central bank&#8217;s move came after the National Economic Council, an advisory body headed by the vice president, called for an urgent review.
&#8220;We believe the reform agenda is back on track,&#8221; said Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Lagos consultancy Financial Derivatives. &#8220;The reform agenda has always been there but is more visible now with the vice president,&#8221; he said.
The president&#8217;s office has posted pictures on social media of Buhari recuperating to allay rumours his health was worse than publicly acknowledged, though none have been published for more than a week.
For now, there is no clarity on when Buhari, from the predominantly Muslim north, will return.
 
BUHARI&#8217;S BACKING
Osinbajo&#8217;s leadership appears to have been accepted in the north, which under an informal deal with the Christian south should have its turn at the helm of power.
And he has won praise from southerners who felt neglected by Buhari, visiting both the commercial capital, Lagos, and the oil producing Niger Delta on several occasions. Buhari has visited neither as president.
Local residents say militant attacks on pipelines in the Delta have fallen since Osinbajo promised to drag the region out of poverty in a flurry of speeches.
Moreover, Osinbajo has showed himself to be swift to act.
On one trip to Lagos&#8217; international airport, he challenged officials on why the air conditioning and a luggage carousel were not working, and even inspected the toilets. The next day he fired the bosses of Nigeria&#8217;s civil aviation.
Aides to Osinbajo stress that he is acting with Buhari&#8217;s consent.
&#8220;President Buhari &#8230; ensures that everyone falls in line,&#8221; said Osinbajo&#8217;s spokesman, Laolu Akande.
It is a message that Buhari loyalists are quick to reinforce. The president&#8217;s political adviser, Babafemi Ojodu, said the two men spoke every day.
&#8220;There is nothing that has been done since the vice president started acting that is not something that started far back in the past,&#8221; said Ojodu.
 
(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Richard Lough)﻿

Buhari's sick leave re-energizes Nigeria's presidency

Nigeria&#8217;s gross domestic product contracted by 1.5 percent in 2016, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday
Africa&#8217;s largest economy slid into recession for the first time in 25 years in the second quarter of 2016 as a slump in crude prices hammered the OPEC member&#8217;s public finances. Crude sales make up two-thirds of government revenue.
Fourth quarter output shrank by 1.3 percent, the statistics office said.
 
(Reporting by Chijioke Ohuocha and Ulf Laessing)﻿

Nigeria's economy contracted by 1.5 pct in 2016

A Nigerian court will rule on March 13 on a request by Royal Dutch Shell and Italy&#8217;s Eni to lift the temporary seizing of a long-disputed oilfield, a judge said on Monday.
The court last month ordered the temporary seizing of assets and the transfer of operations of the OPL 245 field owned by Shell and Eni, among others, to the federal government on request of the country&#8217;s financial crime agency EFCC. The case is the latest of several inquiries, following those by Dutch and Italian authorities, into the 2011 purchase of the OPL 245 block, which could hold up to 9.23 billion barrels of oil, according to industry figures.
&#8220;The matter is adjourned to the 13th of March 2017 for ruling on the applications,&#8221; Justice John Tsoho told a court hearing.
Shell&#8217;s lawyer Kayinsola Ajayi said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had failed to follow the necessary steps such as issuing an arrest warrant first before seeking a forfeiture.
EFCC lawyer Johnson Ojogbane dismissed this.
According to court papers seen by Reuters last month, the inquiry is investigating whether the $1.3 billion purchase of OPL 245 involved &#8220;acts of conspiracy, bribery, official corruption and money laundering.&#8221;
 
(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Mark Potter)﻿
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Nigerian court to rule on Shell & ENI dispute with authorities

Two German archaeologists who were kidnapped in central Nigeria have been freed, a police official said on Sunday.
No ransom was paid when they were freed late on Saturday, the official said, without giving details. The two Germans had been abducted on Wednesday during excavation work at Jajela village in Kaduna state.
The kidnapping took place near a road running between Abuja and Kaduna, which will serve as a temporary entry point for air travellers coming to the capital next month, when Abuja&#8217;s main airport will be closed from March 8 for six weeks for repairs.
Abuja-bound travellers will have to make the 100 mile (160 km) journey from Kaduna to Abuja by bus. Several kidnappings have occurred along the road in recent years &#8211; one victim, last July, was Sierra Leone&#8217;s deputy high commissioner.
Most international carriers have said they will not fly to Kaduna, and some embassies in Abuja intend to minimize staff travel while the airport is being repaired.
 
(Reporting by Garba Mohammad; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Dominic Evans)﻿
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German archaeologists kidnapped in Nigeria have been freed

Nigeria&#8217;s authorities may soon devalue the naira but won&#8217;t fully relinquish control over it, instead taking steps to narrow the gap between the official and black market rates to boost confidence in the economy, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.
A shortage of dollars in Nigeria &#8211; for big and small needs including capital imports to the manufacturing process, travel and school fees &#8211; has led the black market to charge a higher premium in compensation for that scarcity in the official market.
A Reuters survey of 18 analysts taken in the past two days showed they are sceptical of the extent officials can fully liberalise the naira after it made dollars available on Monday to a few private individuals.
The poll suggests there is a 45 percent chance that the central bank will devalue the naira in coming weeks amid speculation that the government is stepping closer to liberalising it.
The central bank this week effectively devalued the naira for private individuals by offering them dollars at a rate of 366 naira, instead of the official 305 rate which it has held since last summer at the behest of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Still, the survey further suggested that if the naira were to be devalued, any float would still be managed as the central bank intervenes to keep it within desired levels.
&#8220;We don&#8217;t expect the authorities to ever fully relinquish control over the naira. A gap to the black market is a permanent feature,&#8221; said Philip Walker of the Economist Intelligence Unit.
&#8220;However, the size of this gap will come down over time as the market realities force the hand of the authorities and the naira is repeatedly devalued over time,&#8221; Walker added.
Nigeria&#8217;s central bank auctioned $230 million in forward contracts on the official market on Thursday after selling $370 million earlier in the week to boost dollar liquidity and help narrow the gap between the official and black market rates.
The poll showed that the timing for how long it would take to narrow that gap is uncertain. Analysts say it depends on how far the central bank is willing to go, although a free float would take months instead of years to squeeze the spread between the two rates.
Devaluations are painful, mostly to the poor, as the cost of living increases. But analysts say they are necessary to fix the broader economy.
Egypt floated its currency in November, and it subsequently halved in value against the dollar. But it is now more than 20 percent above its low at 15.7 per greenback.
Financial Derivatives Company, a research think-tank in Nigeria, wrote that the only reasonable way to reduce the disparity between the interbank and black market is by restoring market confidence through the consistent implementation of transparent and market-driven policies.
&#8220;A float of the naira is not necessarily a magic wand which will resolve the current economic malaise. Instead, it will simply provide a premise for the introduction of policies, which will encourage inward investment and support economic growth.&#8221;﻿

Risk of Nigeria devaluing naira rising – Reuters Poll

Nigeria&#8217;s central bank took a step nearer to outright devaluation of the naira currency on Tuesday, providing 23 commercial banks with a combined $370.8 million at forward exchange rates up to 15 percent weaker than the official rate.
On Monday, the central bank effectively devalued the local currency for private individuals, who account for about 20 percent of total foreign exchange demand in the country.
On Tuesday, it said it sold dollars using one- and two-month forward exchange rates to commercial banks whose bids ranged from 315 naira to 360 naira per dollar, up to 15 percent weaker than the official rate of 305 naira that commercial importers typically use.
Forward exchange rates are rates at which banks agree to exchange one currency for another at a future date.
Selling the dollars at new one- and two-month forward rates may set expectations for the central bank to allow the naira to trade at a weaker level in the future, after the government had kept it at an artificially strong value according to critics.
Banks bought $216.5 million in one-month forwards, and $154.3 million in two-month forwards, said the central bank.
Nigeria&#8217;s dollar supply has been throttled by foreign currency restraints and low exports of crude oil. The government devalued the naira last June but still kept it at just over 300 to the dollar &#8211; as much as 40 percent stronger than black market rates in the following months.
Despite calls from businesses and economists, the government had refused to take steps to devalue the naira further until now, while President Muhammadu Buhari, a staunch opponent of devaluation, has been on medical leave in Britain for over a month.
On Monday, Nigeria weakened the naira rate for private individuals days after a top advisory body demanded an urgent review at a meeting chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who is currently acting president.
It was Osinbajo who unveiled the idea of a more flexible exchange rate last year, also while Buhari was on medical leave, leading to a 30 percent devaluation weeks later.
In Tuesday&#8217;s statement, the central bank said it had offered $500 million to banks, &#8220;but not all of them provided enough naira backing to pay fully for their respective bid amounts&#8221;.
The central bank said it was &#8220;more than ever ready to support the inter-bank market by ensuring liquidity and transparency to guarantee efficiency in the Forex market.&#8221;
 
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Additional reporting by Chijioke Ohuocha and Ulf Laessing in Lagos; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Hugh Lawson)﻿

Nigeria steps nearer to devaluation with central bank dollar sale

Nigeria&#8217;s Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has launched a 60-day action plan to improve the business climate in Africa&#8217;s biggest economy struggling with recession, his office said on Tuesday.
&#8220;There are improvements which we expect to see at our ports. Improvements at our airports, improvements at the seaports, improvements in immigration visas,&#8221; Osinbajo said in a statement.
Last month, President Muhammadu Buhari put Osinbajo in charge while he is on sick leave in Britain.
 
(Reporting by Ulf Laessing and Felix Onuah; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)﻿

Nigeria's VP launches 60-day plan to improve business climate

The government has imposed a 24-hour curfew on parts of central Nigeria, a government spokesman said on Tuesday, after clashes killed at least 14 in the region.
Conflict over grazing land and water, chiefly between semi-nomadic Muslim herders and Christian farmers, has piled pressure on authorities already facing an Islamist insurgency in its northeast and rebels in the oil-rich south.
Gunmen shot dead at least 14 villagers and destroyed property in an attack on the Kaura village of Takad in southern Kaduna state on Monday, said Enock Andong, a local community leader.
As a result of violence in Kaura and the Jema&#8217;a region, the state government imposed a 24-hour curfew on the two areas, Samuel Aruwan, a spokesman for the governor of Kaduna, said in a statement.
Kaduna &#8211; a flashpoint for north-south, Muslim-Christian frictions &#8211; has in recent months seen the worst violence since 800 people were killed in riots after elections in 2011.
Aruwan said a curfew &#8220;became necessary to protect life and property and avoid the further breakdown of law and order&#8221;.
&#8220;Only essential workers and those on humanitarian services are allowed movement after due clearance by security agencies,&#8221; he said.
The fighting over scarce resources comes at a particularly sensitive time for Kaduna city, which is about to become the main air hub in central and northern Nigeria, as the capital Abuja&#8217;s airport closes for runway repairs in March.
The Kaduna state government said on Monday a garrison commander from the Nigerian Army&#8217;s First Division had been sent to the southern region to coordinate a response to such attacks.
 
(Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Louise Ireland)﻿
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Curfew imposed after 14 killed in ethnic fighting in central Nigeria

Nigeria&#8217;s President Muhammadu Buhari met the country&#8217;s senate head in London on Sunday evening, the presidency&#8217;s official Twitter account said, amid concern over the leader&#8217;s month-long absence for undisclosed medical reasons.
Word of Buhari&#8217;s meeting with Senate President Bukola Saraki in London, their second in less than a week according to the presidency, may help alleviate worries that the leader&#8217;s health is worse than officials publicly admit.
&#8220;This evening President @MBuhari met with Senate President @bukolasaraki, at Abuja House,&#8221; the official @NGRPresident Twitter account wrote.
But many Nigerians are sceptical of such announcements even when accompanied by photos.
The presidency publishes almost daily pictures of 74-year-old Buhari receiving visitors in his London drawing room. He took a phone call from U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday, both administrations say.
Officials refuse to disclose what is ailing Buhari, saying only that he has been having tests and is not in a serious condition.
 
(Writing by Paul Carsten; editing by Susan Thomas)﻿

Nigeria's president meets head of senate as sick leave continues

Nigeria&#8217;s &#8220;bad bank&#8221; said on Thursday it had taken over the day-to-day running of Arik Air in an attempt to rescue the country&#8217;s largest airline, which it placed in receivership last week after it was unable to pay workers or creditors.
Michael Arumemi-Ikhide, the founder of Arik Air, has said the government seized the airline to meet a political goal of creating a &#8220;national carrier&#8221; and told Reuters he would challenge the move in court.
Arik Air, which controls around 55 percent of the domestic market and is West Africa&#8217;s biggest airline by passenger numbers, has been hard hit by Nigeria&#8217;s currency crisis as its customers has to pay for fuel in dollars not naira.
Arik owes AMCON, Nigeria&#8217;s bad bank, around 147 billion naira and another 165 billion naira to four commercial lenders, AMCON&#8217;s chief executive, Ahmed Kuru said in a presentation to lawmakers on Wednesday following the takeover.
Its founder Michael Arumemi-Ikhide owed AMCON 263.7 billion naira from other businesses and Arik Air, the bad bank said. Arumemi-Ikhide was not available for comment on Thursday, while Arik Air declined to comment.
&#8220;We have deployed people there (at Arik) to manage it, pending when we can stabilise it and then bring in investors to take (it) over,&#8221; Kuru said, adding that AMCON would review the next steps after managing the airline &#8220;for about six months&#8221;.
Arik had wanted to expand internationally both to bring in more hard currency, as well as to cushion the impact of the economic slowdown at home, and was looking for new investors to help it grow rather than using debt.
However, AMCON said the state of the airline had turned off prospective investors, with only about 10 planes flying out of a fleet of 30 and total assets of less than 40 billion naira.
&#8220;Converting the airline to a national carrier is not on the table. Government does not have plans to do that. The interest of government is that we must continue to fly,&#8221; Kuru said.
Arik generates around 7 billion naira monthly but would need around 10 billion naira to stabilise it, Kuru said, adding he expected the airline to be able repay the intervention monies within the next three months.
AMCON was thinking of suspending Arik&#8217;s international flights to save cost and focus on domestic routes, Kuru said.
 
(Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Alexander Smith)﻿

Nigeria takes controls of Arik Air to stabilise it ahead of sale

Nigeria&#8217;s central bank has disbursed $2.83 billion to critical sectors of the economy in December and January, it said in a statement on Thursday, in an attempt to kickstart a struggling economy and alleviate a drought of foreign currency.
Nigeria&#8217;s economy is wallowing in its first recession in a quarter of a century, hamstrung in part by low exports of the crude oil on which the government depends for revenues and bringing in foreign currency.
That lack of dollars in particular has left businesses struggling to import overseas products they need. The situation has been exacerbated by a government-imposed exchange rate that critics say artificially keeps the naira around 40 percent stronger than it should be.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said it favoured the manufacturing, raw material and agriculture sectors when disbursing the dollars in December and January, hoping to create employment and spur wealth creation.
The raw materials sector received $609 million in December and $228 million in January. Manufacturing got $53 million in December and $71 million in January, the CBN statement said.
The central bank is determined to continue to ease the foreign exchange pressure on critical sectors, the statement cited Isaac Okorafor, acting director of the communications department, as saying.
Nigeria&#8217;s dollar reserves have risen 8.39 percent since the beginning of the year, mirroring a rise in global oil prices, but remain far from a peak of $64 billion in August 2008.
Nigeria&#8217;s naira hit a new low on the black market on Wednesday. That spurred the head of the bureau de change association to urge members to help stabilise the currency, the continued weakness of which has become a &#8220;major concern&#8221; for the central bank.
 
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh and Chijioke Ohuocha; Writing by Paul Carsten)﻿
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Nigeria's central bank disburses $2.83 bn to boost economic recovery

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ABUJA (Reuters) &#8211; Nigeria has not decided yet how much it wants to borrow from the World Bank, its budget minister said on Wednesday, to help pay for record spending of $24 billion this year.
Diplomats and officials told Reuters last week the oil producer plans to present the required economic reform proposals to the World Bank this month to borrow at least $1 billion.
&#8220;The figure will depend on the (2017) budget approved by the National Assembly,&#8221; Udoma Udo Udoma, minister for budget and national planning, told reporters when asked about the application.
&#8220;We are waiting for the passage of the budget by the National Assembly so that we will know the budget gap or the actual deficit before we can go to the World Bank for loan.&#8221;
Nigeria, which relies on oil revenue for most of its income, is struggling to drag itself out of its first recession for 25 years. It needs to plug a gap in its record 7.3 trillion naira 2017 budget aimed at stimulating the economy.
It had planned to apply for a World Bank loan last year but the process ground to a halt because it failed to submit its economic recovery plans by the end of December as initially promised, sources told Reuters last month.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) has been holding back the second, $400 million, tranche of a $1 billion loan because it is also awaiting a reform plan from the government.
Nigeria will present its economic proposals to the AfDB at the same time as the World Bank, government officials said last week.
 
(Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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© Thomson Reuters 2017 All rights reserved﻿

Nigeria yet to decide how much it wants to borrow from the World Bank

Nigeria declared an air pollution emergency in a major southern city on Tuesday and closed an asphalt plant there after residents complained about the fumes from its furnaces, in a country plagued by corruption and poor governance.
Residents staged a protest in Port Harcourt, a harbour city in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, waving their hands in the air to show the soot stains from touching cars.
&#8220;The Federal Ministry of Environment has declared the air pollution in Port Harcourt an emergency situation and has subsequently issued a notice to temporarily shut down an asphalt processing plant&#8230;belching out thick smoke,&#8221; the government said in a statement.
It did not name the firm, but a state government statement said it was from China.
&#8220;If I am having my bath, the colour of the water, the stains on the sink are always black,&#8221; businessman Charles Adolor said. &#8220;Before we can use already-washed plates we have to rewash them again.&#8221;
Adolor and his wife and son have been wearing face masks inside their apartment to protect themselves from the soot that covers everything from the windows to the bathroom.
In the Niger Delta&#8217;s oil-producing swamps, residents complain about crude spills from broken or blown-up pipelines and acid rain from gas flaring, the burning of natural gas at oil wells.
Under British colonial rule, Port Harcourt was known as a &#8220;Garden City&#8221; due to its green parks, but a rapidly growing population has congested its pot-holed roads and cramped its residential quarters.
 
(Reporting by Tife Owolabi; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Hugh Lawson)﻿

Nigeria declares pollution in Port Harcourt an emergency

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari discussed a possible new arms deal with U.S. President Donald Trump by telephone on Monday to help the West African nation fight terrorism, the Nigerian presidency said.
Nigeria has been fighting since 2009 against an insurgency by Boko Haram militants trying to set up an Islamic state in the remote northeast. The unrest has killed thousands and displaced more than two million people.
Abuja has been trying to persuade the U.S. to sell it military aircraft, a request being reviewed by Congress.
&#8220;President Trump assured the Nigerian president of U.S. readiness to cut a new deal in helping Nigeria in terms of military weapons to combat terrorism,&#8221; the presidency said in a statement. Buhari is currently on medical leave in Britain.
It gave no other details of the call, their first since Trump&#8217;s inauguration, except that the U.S. president had invited Buhari to Washington.
Under Buhari&#8217;s predecessor Goodluck Jonathan, the United States had blocked arms sales and ended training of Nigerian troops partly over human rights concerns such as treatment of captured insurgents.
U.S. officials told Reuters last May that Washington wanted to sell up to 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to Nigeria. Congress needs to approve it.
Broader U.S. military cooperation would be a victory for Buhari, who took office in 2015 pledging to crack down on the corruption that has undermined the armed forces in Africa&#8217;s most populous country.
Under Buhari, the army has recaptured much of territory initially lost to Boko Haram, but the group still often stages suicide attacks in Nigeria and neighbouring countries.
 
(Reporting by Ulf Laessing and Felix Onuah; Editing by Tom Heneghan)﻿
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Nigeria's Buhari discusses possibility of U.S. arms deal with Trump

Dangote Rice, a subsidiary of Dangote Group is set to launch a multi-million naira rice outgrower scheme in Sokoto state ﻿with the prospect of hiring hundreds of thousands of people from its rural communities. 
President of the Group, Aliko Dangote disclosed at the weekend that the Company will on Wednesday, flag off with a pilot project of 500 ha by Gonroyo dam, in Goronyo community. Gonroyo dam is the second largest in the country, after Kainji.
The flag off ceremony which will be performed by the governor of the state, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwa will witness seedlings being distributed to the primary local farmers who will in turn plant the seed after which Dangote Rice company will purchase from them for milling and final processing.
 Sokoto state is the second after Jigawa out of the 14 states spread across the state where Dangote Rice plans to operate outgrower scheme to empower local farmers and create job opportunities for community dwellers and reduce migration to the cities.
 Dangote Rice projects in the 14 states, when, operational, will generate a significant number of jobs and increase take-home income for smallholder farmers, all while diversifying Nigeria’s economy and reducing the nation’s food import bill.
 Statistics from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) estimates that rice demand in Nigeria reached 6.3 million MT in 2015, with only 2.3 million MT of that demand satisfied by local production.
 This local production shortfall leaves a gap of 4.0 million MT that is currently being filled through formal importation of rice or illegal imports over land borders.  
 By year-end 2017, Dangote Rice plans to produce 225,000 MT of parboiled, milled white rice. This will allow us to satisfy 4% of the total market demand within 1 year. Our model can then be successfully scaled to produce 1,000,000 MT of milled rice in order to satisfy 16% of the domestic market demand for rice over the next 5 years.
 Due to the current economic crisis, domestic prices for agro-commodities have risen dramatically over the last 12 months, making local agriculture an attractive investment. Dangote Rice Limited  seeks to take advantage of this economic trend and the favourable policies laid out in the FMARD’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda.
 Dangote Rice has a mandate to locally high-quality milled, parboiled rice for the Nigeria market. This goal will be achieved by sourcing the raw material (paddy) required from the Dangote Rice Outgrower Scheme.
 Through the Dangote Rice Outgrower Scheme, DRL will partner with outgrowers (smallholder and contract rice farmers) to cultivate and grow rice paddy. Specifically, DRL will provide inputs, technical assistance, extension services and land preparation services and equipment directly to farmers. At harvest, DRL will recoup the costs of inputs and services in-kind and will act as a guaranteed offtaker for paddy that meets certain pre-agreed quality standards. Smallholder farmers will provide land and labour. 
 The centralised outgrower model enables a high level of control over product quality and quantity. The purchasing price given to farmers will reflect each season’s market price and will be set after an extensive market price survey and consultation with all stakeholders.
 In the short-term, Dangote Rice will be responsible for importing all of the inputs needed for cultivation and making them available to the outgrowers.
 By end of 2017, Dangote Rice will have 25,000 Ha under rice cultivation across 3 sites in Northern Nigeria having identified rice-growing communities in Jigawa State (5,000 Ha), Sokoto State (10,000 Ha) and Zamfara State (10,000 Ha).
 The 25,000 Ha will be farmed by nearly 50,000 outgrowers in the selected site areas. These outgrowers are already organized into cooperative associations. We will engage with these organizations to register and sign contracts with each farmer.
 In addition to the outgrowers, an additional ~260 jobs will be created by year-end 2017. These individuals will serve as agronomists, credit officers and staff of the mill.
 Upon harvest, Dangote Rice will offtake rice paddy and transport the paddy to be processed. One centralized mill will mill the stored paddy rice from all 3 sites.
 Dangote Rice plans to produce one million MT of rice from 150,000 Ha in the next 5 years over. They intend to accomplish this by scaling the business model described above to more sites and rice growing communities. These communities have been identified and relationship building and sensitization has already begun. In addition to scaling the above model, DRL will establish and manage a high-quality seed development farm at Numan in Adamawa to reduce the costs of seeds.
 Dangote Rice will establish raw material reception, drying, hulling, parboiling units and silos in strategic areas throughout the country near our additional outgrower communities. Each site will store dried, hulled, parboiled bran rice. DRL will then transport this bran rice to a mill, where finished rice will be produced.

Dangote to launch rice outgrower scheme in Sokoto

Nigeria has recovered some $151 million and eight billion naira ($26.32 million) in stolen state funds in less than two months as part of an anti-graft drive, the government said on Sunday.
The West African nation launched late in December a whistleblower scheme entitling those who help find stolen assets to up to five percent of the recovered sums, part of a drive by President Muhammadu Buhari to root out endemic corruption.
Sunday&#8217;s announcement was the first since the middle of last year to give an official figure for recovered assets.﻿
&#8220;The looted funds &#8230; were recovered from just three sources through whistleblowers who gave actionable information to the office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation,&#8221; the Information Ministry said in a statement.
&#8220;The biggest amount of $136,676,600.51 was recovered from an account in a commercial bank, where the money was kept under an apparently fake account name,&#8221; it added. The other recovered funds were in dollars or naira.
On Friday, Nigeria&#8217;s anti-corruption watchdog said it had seized $9.8 million in cash from the former head of the state oil company NNPC, a recovery also made possible under the whistleblower programme.
Graft, particularly in the oil sector on which Nigeria relies, has taken large sums from the country&#8217;s coffers.
Buhari rode to victory in 2015 on an anti-corruption platform after widespread anger at the plundering of the state under his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan.
But some have criticized the current administration&#8217;s efforts as ineffective and called it a witch hunt against Jonathan&#8217;s supporters.
($1 = 304.0000 naira)
 
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh and Felix Onuah; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Stephen Powell)﻿

Nigeria recovers $177 million stolen state funds

Nigeria wants to borrow at least $1 billion from the World Bank to help haul it out of recession and plans to present the required economic reform proposals to the lender this month, officials and diplomats told Reuters.
The oil producer, which has been hit hard by a sharp fall in crude prices since 2014, has been in talks with the Washington-based lender for a year to secure a loan to help plug a yawning budget deficit and fund badly needed infrastructure projects.
But the government has not specified how much money it was looking to borrow from the World Bank, saying only that it aimed to raise $5 billion abroad. It was previously also unclear when Nigeria planned to present its proposed reforms to the lender &#8211; which will not consider a loan before it reviews the plans to make the economy more resilient and attractive to investment.
The government now plans to present its economic reform proposals by the end of February, according to government officials and Western diplomats who declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak publicly.
One senior government official said Nigeria would seek a loan of $1 billion from the World Bank, while a second senior official said it could seek as much as $2 billion.
The Nigerian finance ministry declined to comment on the size of the loan being sought or the timing of the submission of the reform proposals.
The World Bank also declined to comment on those matters. A spokeswoman said Nigeria&#8217;s economic proposals would be the &#8220;basis of which the World Bank will determine with the government the most appropriate lending instrument to support the implementation of the reform plan&#8221;.
It was unclear what the government&#8217;s economic reform programme would contain.
 
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Nigeria, which relies on oil revenue for most of its income, is struggling to drag itself out of its first recession in 25 years. It needs money to help plug a budget deficit of 2.2 trillion naira ($7 billion) for 2016 and help fund a record budget of 7.3 trillion naira for 2017 aimed at stimulating the economy.
It had planned to apply for a World Bank loan last year but the process had ground to a halt because it failed to submit its economic recovery plans by the end of December as initially promised, sources told Reuters last month. [nL5N1F81XP]
The African Development Bank (AfDB), meanwhile, is holding back the second, $400 million, tranche of a $1 billion loan because it is also awaiting the reform plans.
Nigeria will present its economic proposals to the AfDB at the same time as the World Bank, according to the government officials.
A spokeswoman for the Abidjan-based AfDB declined to comment.
It is unclear why the government has not previously submitted its reform plans to the two international lenders. A funding deadlock could throw into doubt badly needed projects planned for this year, including new roads and improvements to power infrastructure.
The government is selling $1 billion of Eurobonds this week but this falls short of the $5 billion Nigeria said a year ago it wanted to borrow abroad including the World Bank.
 
&#8216;CRITICAL REFORMS&#8217;
Nigeria&#8217;s government has butted heads with investors over the best course for the economy.
A reluctance by Nigerian authorities to apply a more flexible foreign exchange rate policy and other macroeconomic reforms to stimulate foreign investment has hampered talks to secure loans abroad.
The AfDB has criticised Nigeria&#8217;s central bank&#8217;s decision to curb access to hard currency, which has forced the closures of manufacturing plants unable to import raw materials.
The World Bank says it supports &#8220;critical reforms for restoring macroeconomic resilience&#8221;. Western diplomats say the bank wants to see how Nigeria plans to lower its dependence on oil revenues and boost investment, which has been hit by a high official exchange rate for the naira currency.
Nigeria&#8217;s central bank, backed by President Muhammadu Buhari, has kept the naira rate to the dollar at 40 percent above the unofficial &#8211; or parallel &#8211; market rate, which has dried up dollar supplies on official channels.
The policy has also made investors reluctant to commit new projects as they expect the central bank will have to devalue the naira eventually.
($1 = 315.0000 naira)﻿

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