Showing posts with label Central Bank of Nigeria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Central Bank of Nigeria. Show all posts

Monday, December 28, 2009

International Drug & Explosives Detection Firm IDenta Corp. Issues Statement Concerning Airplane Explosives

28 Dec 2009 16:00 Africa/Lagos

International Drug & Explosives Detection Firm IDenta Corp. Issues Statement Concerning Airplane Explosives

JERUSALEM, Dec. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IDenta Corp. (PINKSHEETS: IDTA) CEO Yaacov Shoham today issued the following statement concerning airplane explosives and the incident in Detroit last week.


Stated Shoham, "Concerning the airplane incident last week, (Northwest Airlines Flight 253) IDenta Alert Explosive Identification kits could have easily and accurately helped to identify the suspected substance, especially since, according to the news, the explosive was PETN, one of the standard and well-known explosives (already used in the past by terrorists). IDenta has IDenta Alert Explosive Identifiers available to identify all of the substances already known to be explosives. The IDenta test is an instant test, inexpensive, very reliable, safe, easy to use etc."


PETN is a stronger explosive than TNT which is the most standard known explosive, the effect of 1 kg of TNT = to 0.60 kg of PETN.


The airports in France are in the beginning stages of using IDenta Alert Explosive Identifiers and are the first to do so.


As previously released, two large International companies (connection established at the 2009 Explosives Detection Symposium and Workshop in San Diego) that are manufacturing electronic devices to detect explosives at airports, have inquired about and received information and samples of IDenta Alert Explosive Identifiers kits. IDenta expects to penetrate this very important market of airport security also. These electronic devices are being used extensively at airports and the two companies are looking to provide an inexpensive and reliable chemical explosive kit as a backup for the electronic devices. In our opinion IDenta Alert is the best kit to be used as a backup for the electronic devices for detecting and identifying explosives and illicit drugs.


However IDenta Corp. is already selling the IDenta Alert Explosive Identifiers for different Homeland Security and Army agencies around the world, and as we have released since the 2009 Explosives Detection Symposium and Workshop in San Diego, the penetration to the different agencies in USA is developing rapidly.


We want to emphasize that the new connections developed at the San Diego workshop are in addition to the DOD test.


We have been in the last few months in contact with the DOD officers to finalize the tests for IDenta's Alert Explosive Detectors. IDenta has helped them to develop and establish a special protocol how to use the explosive kits.


The DOD test is still in progress, and hopefully will be concluded positive in a relatively short period.


At The San Diego Explosive Detection 2009 Symposium and Workshop, in our opinion, we have been able to receive the best possible connections and exposure for IDenta's Alert Explosive Detectors.


Information concerning IDenta's Alert Explosive Identifiers may be found at www.IDenta.biz


Meanwhile, IDenta has already made all the changes requested by the still yet unnamed American agency (previous news release) and expects to have a signed agreement for the initial order of 100,000 Alert Explosive Identifiers very shortly.


ABOUT IDENTA


Since 2003, IDenta Corporation has been recognized as a worldwide leader in the development of proprietary on-site drug, drug precursor and explosive detection kits. IDenta develops, manufactures and distributes products for both the professional and civil markets which consistently pass the highest qualifications and testing procedures of law enforcement and security agencies around the world.


Information concerning IDenta's entire product line may be found at www.IDenta.biz


DISCLAIMER


Certain of the statements contained herein may be, within the meaning of the federal securities laws, "forward-looking statements" that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on management's expectations as of the date hereof, and the company does not undertake any responsibility to update any of these statements in the future.


For Investor Relations, lobbying interests or information concerning IDenta's products internationally or the development of new chemical detectors, contact: Yaacov Shoham, IDenta Corp., CEO, Tel: +972-52-6554487, fpi@drugsdetector.com, www.IDenta.biz.


For information about the Accutest® - IDenta products in the US, please contact: Mr. Eyal Golan, COO, JANT PHARMACAL CORPORATION, 16255 Ventura Blvd. #505, Encino, CA 91436, Toll Free: 800-676-5565, 661-478-0582 (mobile), golan@accutest.net, www.accutestIDenta.net.


Source: IDenta Corp.

CONTACT: Yaacov Shoham, CEO of IDenta Corp., +972-52-6554487, or
fpi@drugsdetector.com


Web Site: http://www.identa.biz/

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI IS “NIGERIANS REPORT” MAN OF THE YEAR 2009



“NIGERIANS REPORT” MAN OF THE YEAR 2009

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi: A ‘sanitary officer’ to bank on for cleansing the stench in our banking stables

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, 48, has a strong mind. And he’s not afraid to open it up, especially to the clamourous clan of conspiracy theorists who rose up at the mention of his name, wielding prickly pens. But he has the last word on their tango: “Journalists and writers must respect the intelligence of their readers and understand that we read columns to be educated and not misled.” Fair enough. The naysayers have since realized they have a match in him.

At his inquisition-style confirmation hearing before the Senate for his suitability for the post of head of the Central Bank of Nigeria., CBN, SLS (it’s a close homonym of ‘excellence’), as he’s fondly called by friends and foes alike, took a swipe at the president’s hackneyed mantra of state of “7-point Agenda”; it is as effective, he surmised, as chasing after many rabbits. It was June 3, 2009; the apex legislative house would clear him to take up his presidential appointment.

And it was all in a day’s work for the lugubrious Big Man’s spokesperson who came out, nostrils flaring, with a retort to SLS. SLS would show he cared even less whose wrists were bloodied in the wake of the ‘bank-quake’ he set off on a very historic 14th day of August, 2009, which saw hitherto sacred cow topnotch bank executives booked for gross misconduct. That first wave swept away CEOs of one-fifth the Augean banking stables. He has sacked the president’s personal banker in the second wave of his decisive action taken to safeguard the financial sector from systemic collapse.

With a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the prestigious Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, SLS first took up university teaching before going on to become Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of First Bank Plc, Nigeria's oldest bank and one of the biggest financial institutions in Africa. He was first Executive Director, Risk & Management Control, part of what commended for his latest assignment.

In Greek mythology, King Augeas’s stables had not been cleaned in 3 decades. Heracles got the unenviable task of cleaning them all in one day. He achieved the Herculean task by diverting two rivers through them. (Hercules is the Roman equivalent of the same sanitiser fellow.)

‘Augean’ is now an adjective for filthy fair, a dirty situation extremely difficult and unpleasant to handle--unless you possess know-how and are willing to use it to the best of your judgment. A second requirement is a tough skin.
Underneath the perfumed stench in the sector was a funny odour carried over from predecessor governor Charles Soludo’s consolidation drive; it had long been suspected that rot was rife in the sector.

More change would come to define things and the pace of things in the crucial sector. His call on the rarefied chambers of banking dons has now left many mantel place showpieces toppled, swept off their high horses. As the Yoruba of the Nigeria’s South-West say: The wind has ruffled feathers, now we can see the rump of the fowl.

Although Sanusi’s forebears are Fulani aristocrats from the North of the country, he’s never been far from Nigeria’s erstwhile federal and continuous financial capital. It was where he had his secondary education, at the elite yet egalitarian King's College, Lagos.

In a country where cleavages of religious and ethnic derivation always set pulses racing, his announcement that the Islamic banking model already ratified by his predecessor was ready for takeoff set off alarms. A highly conscientious Muslim, SLS uncharacteristically didn’t panic into a retreat on account of the seeming ‘conflict of interests’. He maintains his austere profile courageously as a ramrod posture under the fiery flurry of accusations of a ‘Northern agenda’ to take over banking in the country.

He’s made crystal clear the “need to strengthen” the regime of “consolidated supervision.” “It’s a learning point for regulators”; there’s “obviously…the need for risk-based supervision. If we have a risk-based supervision framework in place, anybody looking at the discount window would have been put on alert that there was the need to check certain things relating to certain banks, especially given the fact that the liquidity stresses came at the time of the global [economic] meltdown.
“And we know that [this] has affected Nigeria through two key channels—the oil price channel and the Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, outflow channel—which led to the crash in the stock market. Now, it would have been very clear that the problems of the banks were related to their exposure to the capital market and the oil market.”

We get the point now. Now the system is being set right side up. SLS burst onto the scene quietly not to rattle ‘the system’; he came to bell the very big cats in it. Married with children, SLS is widely published in many academic journals, books and newspapers in many lands.


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Friday, October 30, 2009

Nigeria: The Abyss of Ignorance in the Land of Fools




I stood with the vendors under the flyover at the Obafemi Awolowo Road roundabout in Ikeja, Lagos. I was waiting for Kazeem the Chairman of the vendors to bring copies of a magazine we needed for our advert executives. I loved to watch the rush hours of the morning and evening as commuters hurry to their different destinations. Most of them seemed ill at ease and I did not blame these people who are traumatized by the irony of living in the most populous country in Africa with abundant human and mineral resources but ranked among the poorest of the poor in the world. Nigerians are in the turmoil that would be best dramatized as Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomie.

The manufacturing industry has collapsed and many of the leading banks have crashed in the meltdown of the Nigerian Capital market and aptly illustrated by the prolific Nigerian novelist Bisi Daniels as a tower of Babel.. The shocking report that over 20 million Nigerian youths are unemployable and they are even ignorant of this fact and have chosen to wallow in the troubled waters in resignation of their fate in the hands of their brazenly corrupt rulers whose sons and daughters and arse-kissers continue posing and posturing with their false airs and graces in Nigeria, but cannot walk tall among "The real McCoy" in the developed countries. Even the only Nigerian bank that seemed to have escaped my danger list Skye Bank Plc has just admitted that it had swung to a 12.63 billion naira ($85 million) pretax loss in the 12 months to Sept. 30, compared with a pretax profit of 20.42 billion naira in the same period last year.


Inside Lagos city

It was Karl Maier Who saw it all in This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria, but as I feared, the sick patient refused to accept the diagnosis of his crisis and chose hemorrhaging instead of taking the bitter pills. And millions of her equally ignorant retards prefer to waste their time chasing shadows on Facebook that they are abusing and misusing as a dating site and are really clueless on why Mark Elliot Zuckerberg and his Harvard classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes created and launched it on February 4, 2004.

Well, what can these millions of the vacuous youths do in a nation sinking in the abyss of ignorance?

I do really feel sorry for them as I see them hanging around and loitering with their cell-phones and sagging pants with their heads in the clouds while their visionless rulers in their stinking corridors of power bury their heads in the sand like ostriches. I wonder how many of the millions of them on Facebook have even attempted to develop applications on the Facebook Platform. How many of them can compare themselves to the First Class scholar Reuben Abati who had his Ph.D at 24 and Ben Okri who won the Booker Prize for his classic novel The Famished Road when he was 32 and many of us who were already authors and editors of national newspapers and magazines when were in our early 20s. I do feel sorry for them, because they are wasting away as they are celebrating their ignorance and mediocrity in their banal Hip-hop songs and pornographic videos, but cannot mention three books they have read since January to date. A generation of Intellectual morons? No. They are the Lotus-eaters of a generation sinking and wasting in the the abyss of ignorance in the land of fools.


Obafemi Awolowo Road, Ikeja, Lagos.

The greedy political contractors in power are misplacing our priorities and scuttling the great prospects of the innovations developed by the Nigerian intelligentsia of gifted artists, scientists and scholars who have proposed practical solutions to the problems plaguing the nation.

Millions of Nigerians say that Nigeria was better under military rule and have recalled that even though the country was bad under military tyrants, the corrupt shareholders of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) have made things worse.

It is unfortunate that the majority of the youths have decided to join in the rat race of the crooks and rogues and careless about nation building.
The youths must stop fooling themsleves by aping the Joneses and take up the challenges of the 21st century as the visionary youths of the Asian Tigers are doing and they are making great progress in the world.


Our destinies are not in the stars, but in our own hands.




Friday, March 20, 2009

Alder Consulting is Responsible for the Failure of the Nigeria: Heart of Africa Project

“We intend to source money from the public sector, which is government, private sector and the people of Nigeria. Re-Branding Nigeria is not a jamboree for spending money. We intend to account for all funds.”
~ Prof. Dora Akunyili

It is shocking that over N1 billion was wasted on the ill-fated Nigeria: Heart of Africa project. The honourable Minister of Information and Communication said, N750 million was appropriated for the “Heart of Africa” project in 2007, N308 million was allocated to the project in 2008 and N299 million has already been spent out of the N308 million. And N150 million has been appropriated for the Nigeria: Heart of Africa project in 2009. But believe it or not, the National Assembly is ignorant of any budget for the Nigeria: Heart of Africa project!

How can the elected lawmakers be ignorant of the budget of a national project that was conceptualized by Alder Consulting as a duly registered contractor of the Federal Government of Nigeria?


The Heart of Africa Project

In 2004, the Federal Ministry of Information & National Orientation was desirous of a cohesive image programme for Nigeria that would promote the country’s national brands while at the same time, address the negatives.

To accomplish this, Alder Consulting conceptualised what is known as the Heart of Africa Project (aka the Nigeria Image Project), a programme for Nigeria's image management and economic progression.

In developing the overall framework for the project, we conducted a Brand Asset Audit of Nigeria and evaluated the strengths & weaknesses of those assets. (This was done to identify strong and credible Nigerian brands to be marketed). We also executed extensive research to identify Nigeria's brand eroders and their effects.
Based on the results of the Audit and research, a detailed implementation plan was developed by Alder which was adopted by the Ministry. A logo (and other graphical elements) was designed for the Heart of Africa Project. The implementation plan was subsequently presented to various stakeholders using customised multimedia presentations and Cds.

Marketing materials were designed including internal/external marketing
communication materials (print adverts, billboards, marketing brochures and other publications) and a budget and comprehensive media plan were developed. During the course of the Project, we were called upon to script a series of CNN advertisements. An advance website for the Project was also developed by Alder.

The programme is currently being implemented under the auspices of The Federal Ministry of Information & National Orientation and Alder has been retained as consultants on the project. A Business Support Group has been constituted for the Project from the Private Sector.
~ Alder Consulting


The hundreds of millions of naira appropriated to the Nigeria: Heart of Africa project have been spent and Nigerians have the right to know how they were spent.

The millions of naira of public funds appropriated to the project must have been misappropriated?

Alder has questions to answer and the management of Alder and the previous ministers of the Ministry of Information and Communication must tell Nigerians how they spent over N1 billion on their White Elephant project.

Those who embezzled over N1 billion under the camouflage of the Nigeria: Heart of Africa Project are not invisible spirits and the new Minister of Information and Communication should probe the committee that was responsible for the failure of the last re-branding project and not sweeping it under the carpet. Nigerians should not be taking for a ride again.


Saturday, March 14, 2009

Lying In The Name of God: When Ndi Okereke-Oyiuke Lied


Mrs. Ndi Okereke-Oyiuke

Lying In The Name of God: When Ndi Okereke-Oyiuke Lied

“We thank God that our market did not meltdown as much as many of the advanced stock markets. We thank God that the whirlwind did not blow too hard on our side at a time when several global giants closed shop.”
~ Mrs. Ndi Okereke-Oyiuke, Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, (NSE) on Monday January 12, 2009.

How can Ndi Okereke-Oyiuke say the Nigerian Capital Market did not do badly in 2008, when the Nigerian capital market crashed woefully?

The erroneous and ambiguous rating of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), World Bank and Standard & Poor as the 11th out of the 106 exchanges in the world is not an endorsement of the Nigerian capital market and does not mean that the Director-General of the NSE did not lie.

According to the report of Mr. A.G. Olisaemeka, the meltdown of the Nigerian capital market led to the crash of the market capitalization from a record high of N13.5 trillion in early 2008 to less than N4.5 trillion in early 2009.

Both Mr. Chukwuma C. Soludo, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Mrs. Ndi Okereke-Oyiuke have erred and lied about the state of Nigerian banks and the Nigerian capital market, because their statements have been proved to be false by the facts of the prevailing realities of the Nigerian economy.

Corruption is the bane of Nigerian banks and the anathema of anyone who is a true patriotic citizen of Nigeria. It is within the ambit of the Governor of the apex bank and the DG of the NSE to direct the course of the Nigerian economy by being honest and transparent, but they have become either shareholders or apologists of the corrupt leaders and investors who are the cankerworms of corruption in Nigeria. Their erroneous analysis of the financial crisis is the wrong diagnosis of the Nigerian economy. Their comparative analysis of the global financial crisis is wrong.


The meltdown of the Nigerian capital market is as bad as the ones Mrs. Okereke-Onyiuke called “global giants”, because the meltdown caused the massive withdrawal of foreign investors from the Nigerian capital market. But while the governments of the so called “global giants” have already implemented practical bailout plans, the Nigerian government is lagging behind in the implementation of an effective economic stimulus plan. In fact, presently, the Nigerian government is confused.

I have already passed a Vote of No Confidence on the corruption-ridden banks in Nigeria, except for the bank I can vouch for, Guaranty Trust bank (GTB). I do not need any pink account where the colour is tainted with the bad blood of blood money from illegal oil bunkering, misappropriation of public funds meant for Nigerian General Hospitals, Teaching Hospitals and Health Centres, and the embezzlement of the public funds meant for the construction of safe roads and regular power supply. The same criminals and enemies of the state who embezzled these public funds are the major shareholders and investors in Nigerian banks and other listed companies. These same criminals love using the name of God at their Annual General Meetings (AGMs) while smiling and still lying through their teeth in their annual reports.

There is time for everything, and the clock is ticking for D-Day, when we shall know for whom the bell tolls, for their judgment shall be according to their violation of the commandment: "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name”. Except they are fools. But as fools lie, so fools die.
Finis.

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