Nigeria: 1,356 federal directors fail promotion exams

THE Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) has released the 2014 promotion examination conducted for the directorate levels in the Federal Civil Service, with only 1, 917 of the candidates, who sat for the examination coming out successful.

Chairman of the commission, Deaconess Joan Ayo, who briefed newsmen in Abuja, on Monday, said a total of 3,273 sat for the examination and that those, who passed had already been promoted.

She said the 1,356 candidates, who failed to make it this time, would have to wait till next year to try their hands on the examination again.

According to her, the exercise would be conducted annually to discourage stagnation in the civil service.

Ayo, however, said this year’s result was an improvement against the 2013 performance, saying “a total of 3,273 candidates participated in the 2014 promotion/evaluation exercise, as against 4,493 candidates in 2013. Out of this number, 1,917 candidates were successfully promoted, as against 2,672 in 2013.

Candidates were drawn from the administrative officers’ pool of the office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Foreign Affairs Ministry, offices of the Accountant-General, Auditor-General and Surveyor- General of the Federation and professionals in other agencies of government, as well as state counsels in the Ministry of Justice.

The FCSC chairman said that Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Nigeria Institute of Management alongside proven retired and serving officers served as resource persons to set and mark the “professional questions, while FCSC commissioners set and marked the civil service and current affairs questions.”

She stated that to maintain the integrity of the process, strict measures were employed, including the introduction of biometric accreditation by the Department of State Security, customised answer sheets, invitation of the police, Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and the National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) for monitoring.

Over $300 million illegal payment from Nigeria ease out Afren bosses

Afren has shown its chief executive, chief operating officer and two associate directors the door after an independent review confirmed all had received illegal payments from a Nigerian oil company. The scandal certainly raised concerns over Afren’s internal controls, and the search is now on for a new management team.

11 employees, both past and present, were found to have benefited from payments from Nigeria’s Oriental Energy Resources, including CEO Osman Shahenshah, COO Shahid Ullah and associate directors Iain Wright and Galib Virani.

In exchange for multi-million dollar funding, Oriental paid 15 percent of the agreed net cash flows from its Ebok project into Ntiti Limited, a special purpose vehicle owned and/or controlled by CEO Shahenshah and COO Ullah. From the $45 million paid in for 2013, “extraordinary” bonuses were paid to themselves and other members of staff they didn’t want to lose, the statement said. The CEO and COO paid themselves $17.1 million in bonuses that year. The Afren board are not thought to have known about the arrangement.

The review also looked into three instances of Afren allegedly failing to comply with reporting obligations.

In 2012, Afren agreed to pay $100 million to Oriental and, in an effort to avoid disclosing the agreement under listing rules, Shahenshah organised the two tranche payments to be in lieu of oil from Oriental’s Ebok project, thus a seemingly ordinary source of revenue. With the payment agreed to represent up to 5 percent of Afren’s market capitalisation, the first payment of $93 million was followed by a further $7 million due to a rise in its share price. But due to an accounting error, this was an over payment representing 5.3 percent of Afren’s market cap.

The second agreement with Oriental saw Afren Resources Limited (ARL) paid $300 million, around 12 percent of its market cap, for tax allowances and increasing the Afren’s share of oil revenues from Ebok. Again, this was disguised as “ordinary” of Afren’s business, but the review concluded that due to its size and incidence, it should have been declared. From the two-tranche payment $180 million has been returned and $120 million of tax benefits were noted in its financial statements.

From the $100 million loaned in the first Oriental agreement, $90 million has been returned to Afren, with the remaining $10 million expected by the end of the year.

Source: BusinessDay

Ghana’s quest to wean itself from dependence on Nigeria’s Gas

In Ghana, homes and businesses have been facing irregular supply of electricity for several months. Independent Power Projects (IPPs) in Ghana, which rely on gas supply from the West Africa Gas Pipeline (WAGP), have suffered deficits in supply since the WAGP project commenced.

The pipeline is supplied by N-Gas, a consortium of companies including Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, and Chevron Nigeria Limited, along with local power companies.

The International Project Agreement (IPA) which was signed in 2003 by WAGPCo and the governments of Benin, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo provides that N-Gas has an allocation to supply up to 200million standard cubic feet of gas per day.

However this year, gas supply from the system which runs offshore from Nigeria to terminals in Benin, Togo and Ghana’s Volta River Authority (VRA) had fallen to 50 million standard cubic feet from around 80 million six months ago.