Nigeria’s footballers stand to gain more than $100 000 each, should the African champions win every game at the World Cup and win the tournament, according to figures submitted to Parliament.
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is requesting that lawmakers approve a 1.2-billion-naira ($7.2-million) war chest for the Super Eagles’ bid to become the competition’s first African winners.
Each player will pocket $10 000 for every group stage victory, according to the budget, which was submitted on Monday.
Wins in the round of 16 carry a $12 000 bonus, $15 000 in the quarter-final; $20 000 in the semi-final; and $30 000 in the final itself.
In addition, every one of the 23-man squad will get a daily allowance of $200, taking the potential total amount of win bonuses and allowances for the 32-day competition to $2.6-million.
The remaining cash will go towards the fees of coaches and backroom staff, the cost of accommodation, business class air travel and the team’s training camps in both the United States and Brazil.
Super Eagles midfielder Abdullahi Shehu (C), striker Ejike Uzuoenyi (L) and keeper Chigozie Agbim (R) pose with Nigeria’s new official jersey for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil in Abuja on February 27. (Pic: AFP)
Nigeria have previously been beset by financial problems, in particular over the size of win bonuses that have seen heated discussions between players and the NFF.
Coach Stephen Keshi and his assistants have even gone months without pay, forcing the government, which funds the NFF, to step in.
Dangote’s $1m pledge Nigeria captain Vincent Enyeama has called on Africa’s richest man, cement, sugar and flour magnate Aliko Dangote, to hold good to his pledge to pay the team $1 million.
Dangote, who has a net worth of $25-billion as of this month, according to Forbes magazine, was one of several wealthy Nigerians to promise cash if the team won the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations.
No one was immediately available for comment at Dangote’s office when contacted by AFP but the tycoon was reported as telling the BBC that he had been waiting for the NFF to get in touch.
“We will write to them, asking for the account numbers of the players then we’ll make the transfer immediately,” he was quoted as saying on the corporation’s sport website.
Last week, the government of the southern Cross River state made good on its promise of a plot of land in the city of Calabar to each player and official of the triumphant 2013 squad.
Above Addis Ababa’s concrete skyline, cranes tower high amid blasts from nearby drills and diggers. At the feet of buildings shrouded in bamboo scaffolding, excavators dig up dirt tracks, to be replaced by paved roads and a modern railway.
It is a scene common to most neighbourhoods in the Ethiopian capital, which has turned into a giant building zone and a city in transformation.
“It looks like a construction site when we compare from the previous time,” said Berhanu Kassa, manager of B.B. Construction in the Ethiopian capital.
“Especially in the past five years, it’s a really big change,” he added, speaking at the site of his latest project, a mixed-use commercial building on one of the city’s main thoroughfares where workers offload concrete slabs from a delivery truck.
Addis Ababa’s construction boom – funded both from private and public coffers – is being driven by the country’s recent rapid economic growth.
But the government hopes it will attract further investment and help industrialise the economy in order to reach middle income status by 2025.
A light railway under construction in Addis Ababa on January 15 2014. The Addis Ababa Light Railway system contracted by the China Railway Group Limited will have a total of 41 stations. (Pic: AFP)
The public works projects, worth billions of dollars, include new roads, railways and massive power generation schemes across the country.
Meanwhile the majority of new buildings are owned by private investors, who by law must be Ethiopian citizens.
The development promises to boost Ethiopia’s economic growth, officially 9.7% last year, though the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pegs it at closer to 7%.
“The basic engine blocks of economic transformation are the infrastructure,” said Zemedeneh Negatu, managing partner and Ernst & Young in Ethiopia.
“The Achilles heel of Africa is power, lack of power, lack of road networks, lack of the basic needs that you need to transform your economy.”
Few other opportunities But analysts point out that the boom in construction is also a symptom of the weakness of the financial system, which leaves the business community with few investment opportunities outside of the sector.
“This is the most attractive investment opportunity in the country for the time being since we do not have a financial market that is working properly,” said the head of the IMF mission in Ethiopia, Jan Mikkelsen.
“There’s no financial markets, no stock exchange, so real estate investments seem to be the most attractive from that point of view,” he added.
The majority of the new buildings are hotels, apartments and offices.
Most are being built by Ethiopian-owned construction firms, though foreign-owned contractors from China or Turkey are cashing in too.
The government said the big push in the sector – which is bolstered by state-led incentives such as tax breaks and ready access to land – is driven by the need to create jobs for Ethiopia’s 91 million people, about one in four of whom are unemployed.
“We are struggling to eradicate poverty and create jobs,” said Desalegne Ambaw, state minister for urban development and construction.
Officials say four million jobs have been created in the last three years, including an increase in construction sector employment.
But Mikkelsen warns that resources should not be pooled too heavily into infrastructure projects, no matter how crucial for development.
“There is a need for construction, but of course there’s a limit to how much you can get out of that and these are potential resources that could have been used for other means and maybe more export-oriented businesses as well given that there is an urgent need for more foreign exchange,” he said.
Imports outweigh exports by a factor of four, according to IMF data, which starves the country of foreign exchange.
A city transformed The ambitious state-funded infrastructure projects also threaten to strain public finances in Ethiopia.
IMF forecasts see the public deficit possibly swelling to 44% of gross domestic product within several years, nearly double the current level that means the country is borrowing a fifth of what it spends.
As it is, the financing shortfall for public works projects is already ten percent of GDP.
But for now, Berhanu said he is grateful for the government’s focus on the construction sector, since his business is booming.
“From a business perspective we are busy, sometimes it is even beyond our capacity,” he said, adding that his company has grown from three people to over three hundred over the last 20 years.
Berhanu said Ethiopia’s economic growth is fuelling the expansion of his business by creating a demand for new infrastructure, and he in turn was contributing to this by creating employment and supporting local industries.
“I hire a lot of workers here, I use a lot of local materials, I use a lot of subcontractors and because of that all we grow together and the country benefits,” he said.
Zemedeneh is confident it will continue to attract investors from abroad who witness the country’s growth for themselves and said he only expects the city’s transformation to continue.
“The bottom line is you will not recognise Addis if you come 10 years from now, it will be a completely, completely different city,” he said.
A prominent director goes to Nigeria’s troubled oil-producing region and recruits 21 youngsters with absolutely no film experience.
He brings them to one of the country’s most expensive hotels for a 10-day filmmaking crash-course then flies them back home to make movies about positive, non-violent change.
Picking up the tab are US taxpayers – red carpet premieres included.
“This is pretty out there,” the US Consul General in Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos, Jeffrey Hawkins, said of a new TV programme which chronicles the search for new moviemakers.
Dubbed Dawn in the Creeks, it aims to showcase Niger Delta role models “who did not win (their) fame and respect with a gun”, said Hawkins.
The United States – as well as other countries and big oil firms – is concerned that conflict could return to the Niger Delta, which churns out some two million barrels of oil day – the highest crude output in Africa and Nigeria’s lifeline.
Decades of corruption have long denied Delta residents the benefits of oil revenue while oil-related pollution, including thousands of spills, has ravaged their environment.
Creeks and vegetations devastated as a result of spills from oil thieves and Shell operational failures in Niger Delta on March 22 2013. (Pic: AFP)
This volatile mix fuelled an insurgency that saw scores of oil workers kidnapped and infrastructure bombed – all tempered by a 2009 amnesty deal where, in effect, militant leaders got massive payouts to stand down.
Critics, however, say the payouts fostered the perception that wielding a weapon was the best way for the common man to get rich quick.
The amnesty’s expiration in 2015, when Nigeria also elects a new president and parliament, has fed fears about a return to the bad old days.
The poll, too, is expected to inflame tensions, notably in the Niger Delta whose native son President Goodluck Jonathan will likely face a tough re-election bid.
Despite billions of dollars worth of oil flowing out of Nigeria South East, life for the majority of Niger Delta’s inhabitants remains unchanged. (Pic: Reuters)
A prominent ex-militant has already threatened to take up arms if the presidency changes hands.
With this in mind – and the failure of earlier NGO peace-building campaigns after funding dried up – US diplomats “wanted to do something really glitzy,” Hawkins told AFP.
Nollywood So they turned to Nollywood, Nigeria’s hugely popular domestic film industry.
First will come the television reality show about the recruitment drive and the film academy. Once a student’s films are made, they will be shown during three days of US-sponsored premieres.
Running the artistic side is Jeta Amata, an accomplished director and Niger Delta native now based in Los Angeles.
In a 10-day stay in the region, he found his students at town hall meetings or stopping random people on the street.
Elina Emeseruome, a semi-employed interior decorator, said she was getting her hair done at a roadside stall in the town of Ozoro when Amata stopped to ask her thoughts on the Delta’s future.
Days later, the director (39) called and told her she’d be going to Lagos to learn scriptwriting.
Her girlfriends were sceptical. “They were like, ‘same old story, he’s trafficking ladies’,” said the 27-year-old.
But her doubts were eased when the film academy began on the manicured lawns of the plush Eko Hotel in Lagos.
Amata himself feels the Delta’s future is “dicey” and said he heard multiple reports of militants mobilising to renew fighting.
“I am concerned about the region but I’m hopeful about what I see in these guys,” he said of his students
Like Hawkins, Amata acknowledged that a few feel-good movies cannot undo decades of resentment and conflict. But he voiced faith that powerful stories told through film can help steer people away from militancy.
Joel Jumbo On day six at the academy, Amata’s students were divided into groups of seven and tasked with producing a five-minute film by 5pm.
Playing the male lead in a piece about a jaded wife competing for her husband’s affections with a younger woman was Joel Jumbo, a 32-year-old who said he had served in both the army and been part of a militant group.
Jumbo said he got nothing from the amnesty, not even a place in job training programmes Nigeria insists are ongoing but many say have achieved little.
He was unemployed, “feeling aggressive and angry and ready to do anything”. Only days before meeting Amata, he said, he was “about to go.. and meet some [of] my bad boys… militants”.
Though still tense at the film school, his frustration was more about his director who showed no signs of getting the shoot done before the deadline.
It contrasted to the quiet, understated performance by Jumbo, who said he was just enjoying being around a “different kind of people”.
Lupita Nyong’o, winner of the best supporting actress Oscar on Sunday, stunned Hollywood in her big-screen debut with her searing turn as an abused servant in 12 Years A Slave.
The Kenyan actress and Yale School of Drama graduate, who turned 31 on Saturday, has risen in a year from relative obscurity to Hollywood’s A list, winning plaudits for both her efforts on screen and her impeccable fashion sense.
Nyong’o has already picked up the Screen Actors Guild and Critics’ Choice awards for best supporting actress for her turn as Patsey, a slave brutalised by her sadistic owner, played by Michael Fassbender.
Lupita Nyong’o accepts her Oscar. (Pic: AFP)
“It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s,” a tearful Nyong’o said Sunday upon accepting her award, after receiving a standing ovation from the audience.
“When I look down at this golden statue, may it remind me and every little child that no matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid.”
12 Years a Slave, by British director Steve McQueen – won the coveted best picture Oscar, beating eight fellow nominees – American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Unusual career choice Born in Mexico – the source of her Spanish name, and where her father was teaching political science at university – Nyong’o grew up in Kenya as the second of six children.
Acting is hardly a common career in Kenya for the child of a powerful politician, but her father, one-time health minister Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, said the family had always supported her dreams.
“She started acting very young, right from kindergarten, and even at home with just the family, she would come up with make-believe stories and perform them for us,” he told Kenya’s East African newspaper.
“She was always imaginative and creative.”
The career of Nyong’o – who now lives in the United States after studying at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and later at Yale – has been avidly followed by the media in her home nation, who remember her first major role on a television show.
She was inspired to follow an acting career after working as a production assistant on the 2005 drama “The Constant Gardener.” Actor Ralph Fiennes then told her only to get into acting if she couldn’t live without it.
“It’s not what I wanted to hear, but it’s what I needed to hear,” she told Arise Entertainment in a recent interview.
First time lucky She struck gold with her first major role in 12 Years a Slave – a role she says she almost did not get because director Steve McQueen thought she “might be too pretty.”
Critics have hailed her turn in Patsey, which included some very difficult scenes, including one in which she is viciously whipped while tied to a pole.
“Acting is an exercise of deep trust in yourself and an exercise in letting go: Do [all of your preparation] and then trust that when the [filming] day comes, and you’re in the room with Michael Fassbender, what you need will come through,” she told Entertainment Weekly.
Nyong’o – who is now appearing in the thriller Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson – faced many challenges at the start of her career.
“She told me there were already actors and actresses in the US, and the odds were against her. Her dark skin tone, her short hair, her Kenyan accent, her name,” recalls Kenyan actor Antony Mwangi, who worked with her in Nairobi.
Ahead of her triumph on Sunday night, Nyong’o said she hoped to inspire a new generation of black actresses.
“In many ways, me being on the scene is doing for little girls everywhere what Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg did for me,” she told Entertainment Weekly.
“My world exploded by them being on screen. Hopefully I will inspire and be meaningful to other people. But I can’t take on other people’s dreams for me. I can only dream for myself.”
Ochuko Oghuvwu is surprisingly chirpy for a man who spends upwards of 30 hours a week in his car, commuting to and from his office in Nigeria’s financial hub, Lagos.
Then again, he has just started the working week after two whole days without having to battle giant pot-holes, monster traffic jams, roadworks, irate drivers and police checkpoints.
Oghuvwu’s stockbroking firm in the Ikoyi area of Lagos is only about 32 kilometres from his home in Ojo, due west towards the border with neighbouring Benin.
The drive to the office should only take 45 minutes to one hour.
But those days are as rare in Lagos as 24 hours of uninterrupted electricity from the national grid.
Instead, the trip normally takes him three hours – even longer in the June to September rainy season – despite him being behind the wheel from 5:30 am.
“I wake up early to beat the major traffic,” he told AFP.
“Those that wake up later end up spending more time. On a day like a Monday, if you leave the house at 6:30 am, you spend more than four hours in the car.”
Oghuvwu, a marketing executive in his early 40s, is far from a rare breed in Nigeria’s biggest city.
Hundreds of thousands of people like him also spend nearly as much time commuting as the statutory working week in countries such as France.
He could even be considered a late riser. Others who live nearby set off a full hour earlier to beat the infamous “go-slows”, as local call traffic jams.
“We get exhausted. We’re always tired. For somebody in my position, I just lock the door of the office and have a little nap for 20 to 30 minutes,” he said.
The time spent crawling bumper to bumper with other cars, motorbikes and battered yellow taxis, packed buses and overloaded trucks has taken its toll on his Volvo S90.
The constant stop-start means brake pads need checking every other month and the services of panel beaters to smooth out the inevitable dents and scrapes from the quest to keep moving.
But the gruelling commute has also affected his social life and the amount of time he spends with his family.
Ughuvwu’s children, aged between six and 14, are usually asleep when he leaves the house and when he returns.
“At the weekend I don’t go out,” he added. “I mainly stay at home. I don’t want to face the traffic. It’s ruined my social life.”
Traffic on Agege Motor Road in Lagos. (Pic: AFP)
Officially, Lagos is said to be home to some 12 million people.
But many estimates put the figure at about 21 million, in a city spread over 910 square kilometres.
New arrivals hunting a slice of Nigeria’s economic growth heap pressure on the already creaking infrastructure. Land shortages and a lack of housing has pushed up real estate and rental prices.
Fuel subsidies and cheap, second-hand cars often imported from Europe have put more vehicles on the road.
As a result, a long commute is a necessary evil for all but the wealthiest.
The managing director of the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (Lamata), Dayo Mobereola, admits they need to act now to prevent total gridlock.
“This problem has been going on for almost 40 years,” he said.
“We’ve started addressing it over the last five years and we have a roadmap now to address the issues as they are today and also to plan for the future as well.
“If we don’t do anything then in the next five years there’s almost going to be a stand-still.”
Master plan Lamata’s $20 billion, 30-year master plan is based around integrated public transport.
Its proposals for nine designated bus lanes and seven suburban train lines, built with Chinese money, are designed to get people out of their cars.
Slum clearance is essential, although campaign groups claim that residents are given little or no warning that their homes are earmarked for demolition and no compensation afterwards.
Work has slowed because of legal disputes, while some slum dwellers move on and set up home elsewhere, to be cleared another day.
More affordable accommodation within Lagos would help cut commuting times, suggested Oghuvwu, as prices where he lives are nearly two-thirds cheaper than in the city.
Water taxis along Nigeria’s southern, Atlantic coast and the lagoons that stretch around the city could also help tackle the gridlock.
Failing that, businesses could relocate from the traditional trading hubs of Lagos Island, Ikoyi and Victoria Island to the suburbs, he added.
For now, though, his life – and everyone else’s – is dictated by traffic.
In the afternoons, many workers are out of the office door and on their way home as soon as the clock chimes four, car radios tuned to Lagos Traffic Radio 96.1 FM to hear about tailbacks and accidents.
Oghuvwu himself usually leaves about 4:30 pm – and he’s all too aware of the consequences.
“That extra 30 minutes costs me an additional one hour on the road,” he said.
