A group of Nigerians in the Diaspora have concluded plans to establish N9bn automobile assembly plants in the country under the patent called Zhope Automobiles.

The group is led by a professor of engineering systems and Director, Machining Research Centre, Faculty of Engineering Science and the Built Environment, London South Bank University, Prof. Emmanuel Ezugwu.

Displaying a model of a 15-seater air-conditioned bus at the premises of the National Automotive Council in Abuja, on Wednesday, Ezugwu said that the plants would manufacture and assemble made in Nigeria automobiles in the six geopolitical zones of the country.

He said, “This innovative project incorporates over 25 years, research and development experience in the area of advanced manufacturing technology for sustainable development.

“We are working with local resources on the ground to put forward a technology road map that will serve as a hub for vehicle export to other parts of West Arica.”

Speaking during the event, the Chairman, Zhope Automobiles, Mr. Marcel Ezenwoye, noted that the project would commence by the first quarter of 2011, adding that the plants had been structured to create about 14, 000 jobs in Nigeria.

He said, “There is a projection that not less than 4,000 jobs will be created on the line function and over 10,000 in ancillary related services centres.”

“The training policy of Zhope envisages the training of local engineers like the roadside mechanics, who will in turn train other middle level operators in Zhope automobile technology. For this reason, Zhope’s technical partners from Europe and China will come to Nigeria for the training and technical support.”

He noted that discussions were currently going on with the National Automotive Council for the domestication of Zhope brand in Nigeria.

Ezenwoye said, “We have a forecast of an average monthly sales of 100 number of buses and an annual gross of 1,200 number of buses. Zhope intends to initiate the KDK strategy with a view to reducing overall production cost per unit of the buses. Our target is to get up to 40-50 per cent local content to minimise importation by 2020 if we have the enabling environment for manufacturing.”

For this product to attract very high demand and higher prices, it must be well-processed and must maintain very high acceptable international standards, and must be handled with the deserved professionalism. This is a profitable project to invest on this year 2010.

Market position
The demand for industrial starch is world wide. This product is highly demanded in Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, and Federal Republic of Germany. It is also widely demanded in Taiwan, Asia, and USA. The local demand is also encouraging. Starch can be produced in dry or wet forms. Both wet and dry starch is needed in Europe. It has a lot of industrial uses, and can be used as ingredient in the preparation of bread, custard, sauce, snacks, pap. The industrial uses include textile, book binding, glue making, paper board, batteries, cosmetics, paint and soap. Starch is also used in weaving, spinning, and dye works, paper boards, dressing paints, leather adhesive, paste stamps and carpets.

It can also be used in artificial honey, fruit juice sweets, beer, and canned fruit confectionaries and pharmaceutical industries. Because of different uses starch can be subjected to, global demand is over 18 billion metric tons per annum. The supply on the other hand has not been encouraging in the international market. Apart from Zaire and Brazil which supplied a total of 18.2 million metric tons in 1999 and 26.5 metric tons in 2001, the gap has been longing for bridging. There is a gap of about 16.3 billion metric tons of starch for industrial uses; therefore, there is plenty of cassava and other root crops or tubers in Nigeria for the production of world starch requirement.

Plants, machinery and equipment
The major equipment needed include cassava peeler, sifter, slicer, grater, extractor, pulveriser and dryer (if dry starch is required), hammer mill/disintegrator, automatic or semi automatic weighing, and packaging machine and sitches/seakers. Production capacity of the machine under consideration has a full capacity of 10 metric tons of starch per day on two shifts. This implies that about 75, 000 metric tons will be produced in a year.

Quality, packaging standards
It should be noted that this product is demanded in metric tons by end users. It is therefore advisable that the end product be packed as such and to maintain the international market water content standard of about 8 percent. The product is packaged in 100kg jute bags for export. How the products should be preserved to avoid producing irritating odours will be discussed when we are contacted for further clarifications by prospective investors.

International prices/foreign markets
The price fluctuates between $650 and $800 per metric ton. Locally, it is sold between N42, 000 and N45, 000 per metric ton. Prospective investors would be assisted in the area of getting foreign buyers at reasonable prices.

Financial implication
The project can be started on a medium scale of N10.6 million as shown below. Since the machine produces 75,000 metric tons per annum, working for 300 days, the total sales revenue at full capacity will be $18.6 million within the first year of operation. Realising however that our industrial capacity cannot be realised, the capacity is placed at 50 percent, resulting in total annual income of $9.4 million (N1.3 billion).

Having considered the availability of raw materials, convincing technological position, government encouragement to non-oil export-oriented investors and availability of human resources, as well as huge profit margin from exporting this product; we recommend this project to Nigerians to invest in. Uba Godwin’s contact: Tel: 01-4721550, 01-7349363; 08023664368, 08034494437, Email: “mailto: ubagodwin@yahoo.com

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How long has MoneyGram been operating in Nigeria?

MoneyGram started operating in Nigeria in 1998 and has steadily expanded its network of well established and respectable banks.

Pam Patsley

What is your assessment of the Nigeria Remittance Market?

Information we have indicates that the Nigeria Remittance Market is worth over $10bn annually. We believe the market shrank a little in 2009, as a result of the global economic crisis and its effects on employment statistics for migrant workers in key corridors. With the easing of the financial crisis, especially in the US, we expect remittances to Nigeria will experience positive growth.

Our business has experienced good growth both in terms of number of transactions, value and our network. We have been able to achieve this modest growth thanks to the support of our agent banks. With new agents and additional network, we expect our business in Nigeria to grow tremendously in the coming years.

How significant is the First Bank launch of MoneyGram service? Will MoneyGram be signing any more agents in Nigeria?

We are happy to have signed on First Bank and to have the MoneyGram service delivered through an additional 500 First Bank locations nationwide. This will make the MoneyGram service more accessible and convenient to many more customers.

In many markets where we operate, any new agent brings in its wake increased transaction growth and we expect this to be the case with First Bank.

MoneyGram will continue to forge alliances with credible financial institutions as the laws of Nigeria allow to bring our services even closer to our customers. They are a few more agreements in the pipeline which should be concluded over the next couple of months.

What is MoneyGram doing in the area of fraud prevention in Nigeria?

MoneyGram has initiated key actions to combat fraud in Nigeria; Key amongst them are;
Successfully implemented the locking down of a transaction to the location that first viewed

Have added as compulsory a receiver questions for all our transactions in Nigeria to provide additional security
We continue to provide periodic compliance training for the compliance officers and product managers of all our agents.

MoneyGram’s Director of fraud from the U.S. visited Nigeria in April this year,, organizing workshops for all our agents in Nigeria and also meeting with enforcement agencies to presents MoneyGram’s anti-money laundering and compliance efforts

The Regional Compliance Manager for Africa  also visited Nigeria to meet with the EFCC (law enforcement agency) and the agents and present MoneyGram’s efforts on anti-money laundering and compliance generally. The feedback from both events has been very positive.

MoneyGram is also working with agents to restrict locations that pay out fraud induced transactions.
We continue to collaborate with key regulatory authorities i.e. Central Bank of Nigeria, Economic and Financial crimes commission (EFCC) and Special Fraud Unit (SFU).

Ninety minutes on a football pitch can make a world of a difference. That the Super Eagles did not qualify from the group stage of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is like a nightmare for most Nigerians. Football fans that have been looking over their shoulders since the match against Greece in Bloemfontein are now depressed as Nigeria ended the group matches with a 2 – 2 draw with South Korea in Durban and did not qualify for the knockout stages.

What is wrong with the Super Eagles? Many things are wrong with football in Nigeria. In truth, the Super Eagles team has never been at its best in recent years. Not all the matches played by the team in the past four years have been vintage performance. The squad only exhibited a steely determination to prevent a massacre in their 0 – 1 loss to Argentina in Johannesburg with an outstanding performance from goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama.

I talked to a hell of a lot of people. Managers, coaches, scouts, players and friends and what came back was uninanimous. They all felt that most of the players and Coach Lars Lagerback made mistakes in all their group matches. The technical ability of the Gaffer was tested in South Africa. He had to prove that his appointment was not a mistake. Personally, I doubted Lagerback’s ability to lead the Super Eagles to South Africa. He had nothing to offer because he was a spent force. He had not upgraded his coaching career in Sweden and failed to lead the Swedish national team to the world cup finals in South Africa which led to his resignation from the job showed that he was not the right coach and did not have the pedigree to take the Eagles to the next level in the world cup and beyond.

The gaffer failed technically and he adopted wrong tactics and formations in the three matches played. His starting line-ups were not the best. Not only that, in an apparent display of insufficient knowledge of the Nigerian players, he played some of the players out of their positions which affected the performance of the team. Most of the players had the reputation for shirking the grittier aspects of the game. The coach and the team made lots of mistakes. Even in the Pro Zone age of football where the coach’s team selections are influenced by the distance a player completes each game, there will always be no place for majority of the forwards he took to the world cup.

Nigeria is a country with a proud tradition of outstanding right wingers like Segun Odegbami, John Chidozie, Sam Okpodu, Tarila Okorowanta, Clement Temile, Dimeji Lawal, Pius Ikedia, Tijani Babaginda, Julius Aghahowa and Finidi George. However, the coach decided to field a player in the right wing whose lackadaisical style and a moment’s exhibition of madness earned him the red card and cost the team the match against Greece. Even the most creative elements of Lagerback’s side did not show any willingness to sacrifice themselves for the team. They could not ally graft to their craft.

.Now, the players are talking and complaining about Lagerback and his tactics as well as the playing time given to them. They are also complaining about the quality of players Largerback picked for the world cup. These same players had praised the coach after they played three friendly matches before the world cup. These players failed the nation and they are masters of the dark arts of media manipulation. These players are the delight of journalists. They are open mouths in search of a microphone. This a joke but nobody is laughing. The players to the South Africa 2010 world cup were not the best Nigeria can provide. Only the best players should don the nation’s colours in future competitions

So what is the way forward before the next world cup in Brazil in 2014?

I suggest that all the senior professionals in the Super Eagles who have been talking about throwing in the towel, should quit international football now. Most people might think that some of the senior pros are playing too well to retire from the national team. They might say this decision is a bit too hasty. But the players are big enough to be aware that they are taking a risk with football supporters because a few average performances will raise questions about their retirement from the national team.

The older players are the standard bearers. They are the ones that set the standard. The senior pros have to be the ones to show what it is all about and there is no better example than to quit now. The next world cup is in 2014. The younger players in the team should be groomed with new invitees to the Super Eagles to play in the next Nations Cup Competitions and then the world cup.

While people are taking the mickey out of some players, it is the Nigeria Football Federation, (NFF) that is mainly responsible for the problems of football and it needs a total overhaul. Every association has its values and at the moment, the NFF miss that. I think it is important for the nation’s football that the NFF should be overhauled because with the present players and coaches in the national team, we will never be a leading football country in the world in the coming years. Criticisms of the game are good for Nigerian football.

Presently, the NFF secretariat in Abuja must be littered with e-mails, faxes and letters from supporters who cover every generation. The message to the NFF is that they have failed the nation. The new chants on the streets are “give us a new NFF in the next elections”. Surely, the NFF cannot overlook the stream of correspondence. They should resign immediately and not wait until their elections in August, 2010. The NFF has failed to launch a bold plan to revolutionise the country’s football since they came to office. They have been unable to draw a strategic plan with enough concrete proposals to tackle the nation’s underachievement head-on. The plans of the NFF if any sound bland and boring. Their strategy lack obligatory buzzwords such as vision, purpose and values.

There is nothing uplifting and positive about the NFF with all its lies, deceits, crooked agents and absurd financial structure. The conduct and utterances of the NFF always send people laughing. While the zany twittering of the NFF is sending people into fits of giggles, I am not amused at the amateurishness that is rife in football coaching in Nigeria.

Amodu Shuaibu was sacked by the NFF as the coach of the Super Eagles for doing a commendable job by qualifying the team for the 2010 world cup and for winning bronze at the Nation’s Cup in Angola. He was accused of getting the results but not performing. This excuse was the cruellest joke. It will be recalled that millions of Nigerian football fans and other stake holders called for the removal of Coach Amodu. It would be remembered that the Presidential Task Force (PTF) recommended for Amodu’s sack and a sound foreign technical adviser to be employed. When Amodu was fired, the NFF sent people into reels of laughter by concluding the second-coming of former Super Eagles technical adviser, Frenchman Phillipe Troussier, whose most famous television documentary was how he spilled the blood of a hapless chicken in a bowl for his Burkina Faso players to lick ahead of a match.

The NFF is guilty of epitomizing triumph of style over substance. The NFF should be overhauled immediately. The new NFF should have an approved coaching qualification. Nigeria is the only major football country that does not have it. The new professionalism will spell the extinction of dinosaurs that prefer big talk to tactical awareness. They should launch a school for managers as part of plans to overhaul the game. Aspiring bosses should not be allowed to manage their clubs unless they have an NFF approved qualification. The important thing is to raise standards. Every other country has a mandatory coaching qualification. This scheme backed by the league managers association will also help the coaches get jobs abroad. Only Samson Siasia and Augustine Eguavon improve themselves by attending coaching courses and seminars abroad at their own expense.

Christian Chukwu failed technically during the France 1998 world cup qualifiers that the then captain of the team, Austin Okocha had to arrange coaching lessons for him under Sam Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers football club in England.

The new NFF should clamp down on agents by overseeing all transfer negotiations. Clubs should have their finances reviewed annually to make sure that all deals are above suspicion. Agents who cream millions of naira from the game should come under a bung-busting unit. Clubs should be required to tell the NFF where all the money in a transfer has gone and which agent is involved. Teams often get less than foreign clubs pay. But making all international and domestic transfers to go through the NFF will thwart such dodgy practices.

The new NFF should plan a radical shake-up of the games in the grassroots. A national football center should be opened. The quality of coaching in the soccer academies should be attacked and a professional women’s league set-up. Super clubs should be nurtured. A non-league club should have lots of sides of all ages under his wing. This will improve football at the community level and produce fantastic young players. The aim is to give the various national teams, the raw materials to be more successful. The hows, whys and wherefores should not be vague. Stakeholders should organize seminars and meetings for the NFF to go to, people to talk to and a new football culture to be introduced. The country’s youth development should be the envy of Africa. We already see the benefits of soccer academies and the youth teams of some organizations and clubs in the country.

This should be a wake-up call for an association that has been standing still. The NFF should not rest until there is a fundamental overhaul of the game. Nigerians are waiting.

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