Nigeria News
Nigeria’s elite make country toast of champagne sellers
by M.J. Smith
The party was just getting started at a plush club in this teeming Nigerian city, hip-hop blaring, the bar bathed in blue light — and champagne bottles on ice already adorning tables.
“Too much oil money,” said a 40-year-old man at Rhapsody’s in the high-end Victoria Island district of Lagos, when asked about Nigerian spending on champagne.
Two bottles of Laurent-Perrier chilled in ice buckets on the table in front of him. His company was picking up the tab, like others here, he said, declining to give his name or say what he did for a living.
Recent data puts Nigeria among the fastest-growing countries in the world for champagne consumption, spending an estimated $ 59 million in 2012 on bubbly, according to Euromonitor International research firm.
That number is up from $ 49 million in 2011, and the firm forecasts that the country will spend some $ 105 million on fizz in 2017.
an ice bucket of Laurent-Perrier
Analysts say oil wealth, hip-hop, movie stars and an elite obsessed with status symbols have driven demand.
One Euromonitor analysis using data from about a year and a half ago forecast Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, as having the world’s second-highest growth in new champagne consumption from 2011-2016, trailing only France.
The study showed 849,000 litres in new consumption during that timeframe in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with a huge gap between its rich and poor.
Euromonitor senior analyst Spiros Malandrakis said the figures have since come down somewhat, with projections around 500,000 litres in new consumption from 2012-2017, which would still keep Nigeria in the upper tier.
“It’s among the top markets for the future of champagne,” Malandrakis told AFP.
Malandrakis said one aspect of Nigeria’s market seemed to set it apart from countries such as China, where champagne producers have banked on an emerging middle class to drive growth.
“In the case of Nigeria as far as I understand, we have a very divided society with big sections of the population in the working class,” he said, while the elite “have the money to spend on really extravagant consumption.”
Oil barons and Nigeria’s movie industry, known as Nollywood, have especially helped drive growth, he said, while hip-hop has also played a role.
US hip-hop stars with global appeal have long promoted their love of bubbly — and Nigeria’s homegrown music scene has toasted it as well.
A hit song from a couple years back — seemingly ubiquitous in Nigeria’s clubs and on the radio — featured the memorable hook: “Pop-pop-pop-pop … pop champagne.”
Prices at clubs can vary widely here, with a standard bottle of Moet & Chandon running around $ 120, while bottles of Cristal can come in at $ 900 or more. Store prices tend to be much lower.
Nigeria has long been considered one of the world’s most corrupt nations, with billions in oil revenue pocketed and misused over the years, while basic development has been neglected.
Such spending on champagne is particularly striking when considered against World Bank calculations from 2009-2010 showing some 63 percent of Nigerians live on less than $ 1 dollar per day.
Data from the same years, the latest available, shows 46 percent of the country’s population living in poverty, a slight decrease from 48 percent in 2003-2004.
However, the decrease is less than population growth, meaning more people live in poverty in Nigeria today than a decade ago.
The gap between the rich and poor has also been growing, with a scale measuring inequality moving from 0.39 in 2003-2004 to 0.42 in 2009-2010. Zero represents complete equality on the scale, while one is absolute inequality.
“By international comparisons, that’s fairly high, but not out of the range of other countries,” said John Litwack, the World Bank’s lead economist for Nigeria.
Some members of Nigeria’s class of super-rich would likely have not have participated in the survey, possibly distorting the figures to a certain degree, he said.
Those with money clearly have lots of it to spend. Martin Kapsdorfer, who runs the Cafe Vanessa lounge down the street from Rhapsody’s, said a recent group there ordered 80 bottles of champagne.
Back at Rhapsody’s, where the car park is full of BMWs and Land Rovers, a man at one table with a bottle of Moet was drinking a Guinness instead. He said the person buying the champagne was in the oil industry.
“It’s like a prestige kind of thing,” he said of champagne buying. “Personally, I hate it.”
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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.
The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.
Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.
Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.
Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.
Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.
In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.
Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.
Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.
However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.
Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria
By Ugochukwu Alaribe
Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The market women, said to be from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.
A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.
Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.
Sourced From: Vanguard News
Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole
The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.
Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.
He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid in January 2020.
‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.
She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.
He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.
The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.
Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.
He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’
He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.
Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.
Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend.
He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart.
Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.
The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”
The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad, saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”
When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose.
Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them.
Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter.
“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said.
Sourced From: Tribune
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