NETFLIX IS LAUNCHING IN AFRICA, WILL DSTV FINALLY MEET ITS WATERLOO?

There must have been an emergency meeting called in South Africa, home of Multichoice, which owns pay television service DSTV, when Netflix announced it was entering Africa’s most advanced economy in 2016. By August, Multichoice’s parent firm Naspers had responded with the launch of its own online video on demand service to rival Netflix, the international provider of on-demand Internet streaming media with over 26 million subscribers worldwide. The battle will be among Netflix, ShowMax and other Video-on-Demand (VoDs) in South Africa. Several DSTV subscribers that are not on the service for sport are already moving over to on-demand TV service. More will do when Netflix launches. Apart from cost effectiveness of VoDs, Netflix is expected to pull its originals off DSTV.

Cost of Subscription

For years, Africans have been held to ransom by DSTV which is by far the best pay television service on the continent in terms of content. However, changing consumer behaviour over the past half-decade has increased demand for better subscription pricing. While some subscribers call for subscription prices to be slashed, others ask to pay only for what they use. People almost never watch television shows when they are broadcast anymore. The television consumer, like every other consumer, according to 5 African Consumer Trends for 2016, is tending towards on-demand service. But for lack of a better option, Africans have continued to subscribe to DSTV. Once Netflix launches in South Africa, a lot of DSTV subscribers who are on the pay TV service only for movies will move on.

Netflix launch

When the popular streaming service first announced plans to enter South Africa earlier this year, its projection was ‘within the next two years’, but the company moved earlier than expected, apparently due to the presence of a ready market itching to get on the service. Some Africans have even devised means of circumventing Netflix’s geographic restriction to access the service from the continent, meaning they are ready to pay the current subscription fees charged anywhere else by Netflix. Now, industry sources, according to Mybroadband, say the on-demand TV service will launch in South Africa next month.

A survey by Mybroadband shows early adopters in South Africa are willing to pay R124.54 for a monthly Netflix subscription. ShowMax charges R99 per month for its premium service.

Data challenge

One challenge that has hindered the growth of online streaming in Africa is cost and quality of data. But the issue of quality is being addressed already with the advent of LTE internet service providers offering speed of up to 32mps. Cost is also going down in some parts of the continent and this is expected to continue with increasing demand.

According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), broadband is now affordable in 111 countries of the world, with the cost of a basic (fixed or mobile) broadband plan corresponding to less than five per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, thus meeting the target set by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development.

Mobile broadband is the most dynamic market segment. In 2015, 69 percent of the global population will be covered by 3G mobile broadband, up from 45 percent in 2011. The network is also expanding into rural areas, and ITU estimates that 29 percent of the 3.4 billion people worldwide living in rural areas will be covered by 3G mobile broadband by the end of 2015.

ITU estimates that between 2000 and 2015, Internet penetration has increased to 43 percent of the global population, from 6.5 percent, with the proportion of households with Internet access at home advanced from 18 percent in 2005 to 46 per cent in 2015. Although ITU figures also indicate that four billion people in the developing world remain offline, significant success has been recorded.

The Future

With lower data cost and changing consumer behaviour driving up demand for on-demand TV, DSTV and other pay television service providers alike, will struggle. The saving grace for DSTV is its sports offering. With the South African pay TV service holding the rights to air English Premier League among other sports on the continent for years to come, the arrival of Netflix and increased adoption of other VoDs on the continent may not hit DSTV just yet. However, what could be a nail in the coffin of the pay TV service will be the arrival of a sports online streaming service that allows you pay only for what you watch. If such comes on, it will be the answer to the undying request of consumers in Africa; no one will be left behind in its adoption if data services improve on the continent. DSTV and other pay TV services will have to drop subscription cost and allow users pay less for more if they want to retain them. However, Naspers is not caught unawares as its ShowMax has given it a level playing field to compete with the biggest names in online streaming. The media group will be hoping whatever it loses in pay TV can be recovered online.

Source: The Nerve Africa

Goodluck, Jonathan! By Sonala Olumhense

The comma in the middle of my headline converts it from a name to a remark or a sentence. As in prison sentence. 

For I predict that by this time next year, the best-known bearer of that name, Nigeria’s former leader Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, will be serving one.

In the closing weeks of 2015, what was sometimes conveniently dismissed by his supporters as heavy criticism of Mr. Jonathan has proved to be fair. That tragedy is that he did not run a government; he ran a no-rules and no-responsibility bazaar to ennoble, and enable, the shameless privatization of Nigeria’s resources.

A case in point (and the only envelope to be opened so far): what some people now call Dasukigate: an arms-purchase scandal anchored by the National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki through which federal funds meant for arms for the military were distributed to the well-connected.

It is unclear when and how it became the business of the NSA to purchase military armament. Nigeria’s appropriation laws and practices do not reflect that. Scandalous, but Mr. Jonathan superintended it.

To worsen the scandal, the star of Jonathan’s cabinet, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, confirmed early in December that she had also transferred into the hands of Dasuki previously-undisclosed “new Abacha funds of about $322 million” for “urgent security operations.” It is unclear where those funds came from.

Remember: In June 2014, Liechtenstein returned $227m to Nigeria, to which Jonathan responded with a committee of cabinet to determine how it was to be used. Nothing was heard of the Liechtenstein funds thereafter, but Nigerians at least knew how much was involved, where it had come from, and when it arrived.

Three months earlier in March 2014, Switzerland repatriated $380 million, bringing that country’s total Abacha loot return to over $1billion.

The point here is that until circumstances this month compelled Okonjo-Iweala’s confession, nobody had ever declared the return of “about $322 million…with another $700 million still expected.”

In various commentaries over the years, I have argued that contrary to the tale being told by government officials—especially Okonjo-Iweala—Nigeria has recouped billions of Sani Abacha dollars, with no evidence they have been used for Nigeria. The casual, and illegal, transfer to NSA Dasuki of $322 million by the tag team of Jonathan and Okonjo-Iweala demonstrates the point.

With no legal authorization of any kind, in a democracy supposedly governed by specific structures and laws, the Finance Minister gave $322m to the NSA Minister. Read her statement closely and observe how she carefully tried to steer attention away from the quality of the crime with the promise of future riches: a forthcoming $700m that would presumably not be distributed among politicians, but “applied for development programmes as originally conceived.”

But these are not the things that Mr. Jonathan was saying in the United States a week or two earlier as he marketed his “Goodluck Jonathan Foundation” at the Presidential Precinct in Virginia.

The Precinct has the potential to do a lot of good work. Managing Director Neal Piper writes: “The Precinct offers an interactive and engaging learning experience that connects leaders – allowing them to share their expertise, collaborate, and build on ideas and lessons learned here and around the globe. Our goal is for participants to learn skills that they can apply in their home countries thereby helping them reach their goals and aspirations while transforming the economies and governance where they live. The Presidential Precinct allows them to make connections that will help build their personal futures.”

You read that convoluted construction carefully, and it is clear that the mission of the Precinct is muddled up between its obligations to former leaders such as Mr. Jonathan, from whom it obtains its limelight; and its nod to future leaders, for whom it seeks its political legitimacy.

Mr. Jonathan was the wrong client, and although The Precinct said it was helping him to hone the message of the GEJ Foundation, that plan is undermined by Mr. Jonathan’s political record.

The former Nigerian leader did not tell his audience about that first envelope: Dasukigate, let alone such forthcoming envelopes as the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the Transformation Agenda, Sure-P, THE BROAD DAYLIGHT RIGGING back into office in Ekiti State of Governor Ayo Fayose.

Instead, and here is the video of one of the public events, he told the curious story of how, when he was young, Africa was “considered the dark continent,” a misunderstood concept he wants to change through his foundation to make it “a light, a very bright continent.”

He tells the story of his economic triumphs and how he transformed Nigeria into the biggest economy in Africa within five years on account of his reforms. “We reformed the private sector.

So many sectors. We reformed our power sector. We reformed the agricultural sector. We reformed our oil and gas sector. Our industrial sector...Watch the video: “We involved young men and women in the private sector. We mentored them, encouraged them to set up small businesses, macro and small and medium scale enterprises in terms of light manufacturing, processing…food items, and also the service sector and it worked wonderfully well…”

“[Mentoring]…Our philosophy was that every young person that is keying to our programme in five years should be able to employ two to five others but when we started that programme under two years some of them could employ up to ten, even more…”

It is true that in April 2014, Nigeria’s economy became Africa’s largest when it was rebased to include in her GDP industries such as telecoms, airlines, film production, information technology, and online sales. None of them had anything to do with Jonathan or his policies.

On the contrary, his government’s “reform” initiatives were often betrayed by his government. Unemployment soared; power supply worsened. Stealing received Mr. Jonathan’s official stamp of approval; merit declined as a currency; his government shared out money meant for combating the insurgency in the North. His was Nigeria’s most incoherent government since 1960.

When did Mr. Jonathan implement the policies he speaks about in the video? Where are the figures to back up his claims? In what year or in what local council area did he encourage young graduates to go into farming—a programme he claims has been so successful that doctors, engineers and lawyers have switched into it?

In his mix of misinformation and disinformation, the former Nigerian leader probably imagined he was in Nollywood, where fiction has no consequences. But this is the same mindset that ruined his years in the presidency, and for which he was rejected at the polls last March.

The envelopes, please. And oh, Goodluck, Mr. Jonathan.

BY
• sonala.olumhense@gmail.com
• Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense

$2.1b arms cash: Ex-minister flees over Osun, Ekiti polls

EFCC traces N1.450b to four firms

Official says PDP got funds for election

How much of the $2.1 billion arms purchase cash went into the Ekiti and Osun states governorship elections?

What role did a former minister play in the alleged diversion of the funds?

These are some of the questions the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is battling to answer in its probe of the phoney arms deals that set the treasury back by millions of dollars.

The cash was wired into the former minister’s accounts, the anti-graft agency is believed to have discovered.

Governorship elections were held in Ekiti (June 2014) and in Osun (August 2014).

But the former minister, one of the leading lights of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Southwest, has sneaked out of the country.

It was learnt that he may relocate from his hideout  because it is considered as “unsafe” for him.

There are fears that if he remains in the hideout, his extradition for trial would be easier, a source told The Nation.

The source said: “The huge funds were paid into the accounts of the ex-Minister for elections in the two states.

“There are allegations that the funds were not disbursed as expected because the candidates had their own campaign funds.

“Although some military and security personnel were to benefit from the slush funds, they were also shortchanged.”

Some bankers who managed the accounts have already given some information to EFCC investigators.

“But we have discovered that the ex-Minister has sneaked out of the country. As soon as we establish his whereabouts, we know what to do,” the source said.

The Nation could not reach the former minister last night.

It was gathered that another N1.450billion fraud had been uncovered by the EFCC following revelations by one of the accused persons on trial.

The discovery is contained in the heap of evidence filed in the court by EFCC for the trial of 10 suspects.

The money was paid into some accounts which were submitted by a “former Accountant-General” whose identity the suspect in the Office of the National Security Adviser(ONSA) refused to disclose.

“I could remember the following companies and account numbers were submitted by the former Accountant -General which we paid monies into. Below are the companies and amounts so far paid: Stellavera Dev Company(N300m); First Aralac Global Limited(N300m); First Aralac Global Limited(N100m); Damaris Mode(N300m);  Stellavera Dev Company(N200m) and Whese Farms Ltd(N250m).

“I was directed to pay monies into the above accounts. I do not know what the monies were meant for, “ the accused person said.

Meanwhile, a Staff Officer, Account 1, Yazidu Ibrahim has disclosed that most payments from the ONSA were meant to pursue the PDP presidential election.

He claims to have payment vouchers of all funds remitted to PDP beneficiaries, companies and contractors.

He made the disclosures in a statement made to EFCC as a witness.

Ibrahim said: “My duties include recording financial transactions and to keep custody of all duplicate copies  of financial transactions. Also to prepare bank reconciliation statements and to collect statements from all banks.

“The year 2014-2015 transactions were mainly to support the presidential election of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

“Those payments to contractors or individuals by deposit into their accounts were based on instructions from the DFA. The tellers are attached to the payment vouchers.

“All payments to contractors are based on directive from DFA. Sometimes, there is accompanying  document; most times, there is  nothing except account details of contractors.”

Source: The NATION

Refineries ‘to produce 10m litres of PMS daily’

Nigerian refineries have been “repositioned” to produce 10 million litres of premium motor spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, daily, Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum resources, has said. 

It is estimated that Nigeria consumes 35 million litres daily, which means the country will now be importing only 25 million litres to meet local needs. 

Although he did not give the total figure of what the refineries are currently producing, Kachikwu said a lot of work has been done to put them back in shape. He was speaking on Sunday during his visit to Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC). 

According to him, the mission of the visit was to ascertain the state of the refinery and identify areas of challenges for the workers at the refinery. 

“A lot of work has been done and a lot manpower have been put in place. But a lot still needs to be done in order to put this refinery to work continuously and reliably,” he said. 

He noted that a lot of progress has been made in terms of availability of fuel in the various cities and towns as the long queues are fast disappearing from the filling stations. 

While commending the management of KRPC for keeping the refinery working for more than a week now, he however said there was room for improvement so as to move the current production level from 1.5 million litres to 2 or 3 million litres per day. 

He expressed confidence that with more refineries coming on stream the fuel supply situation will continue to improve in the country. 

While fielding questions later from the media, the minister said the federal government was doing all it could do to ensure the subsidy on fuel is resolved without inflicting more pains on ordinary Nigerians. 

“Everybody is on the same page that we need to get out of it; should we sale product at a certain price or should we let free market rolling so that we can sky rocket prices,” he said. 

According to him, the President says that product should go for N87 per litre for now and that he has given an approval to look at market trends and make adjustment if need be. 

He assured that the administration was committed to ensuring adequate supply of petroleum products across the country. 

Kachikwu said on Friday the petrol will start selling for N85 per litre from January 1. Read: 

Read more at: https://www.thecable.ng/refineries-to-produce-10m-litres-of-petrol-daily



Source: TheCable NG

Nigerian Government To Reduce Price Of Petrol To N85 Per Litre From Jan 1, 2016

Government would on January 1 next year reduce the pump price of the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to N85 per litre.
 
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu broke the news to journalists in the Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC), where he spent Christmas inspecting the plant.
 
Asked when would the Federal Government release the new price temperate of the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulation Agency (PPPRA), he said that he approved the new price for the agency on Thursday.
Pressed to reveal when the new price will become effective, Kachikwu, who is also the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said "like I said, we have done a modulation calculation and it is showing us below N87. I imagine that if PPPRA publishes it today, it will become effective immediately. But the 1st of January that is when we are looking at."
 
According to him, the new price is below the current N87 per litre and it would now convince Nigerians that the pricing  modulation that the Federal Government promised to embark on a few days ago was not a trick.
He noted that following government's analysis and research, it has been realized that the country can fluctuate the fuel market in accordance with the crude oil market fundamentals.
 
Justifying government's reasons for scrapping the Petroleum Support Fund otherwise known as oil subsidy, Kachikwu explained that  government can no longer afford to subsidize the product following the fraud that has attended its operation.
 
He added that it has become clear that government earnings are dipping on daily basis.
 
His words: "It is out I signed off on it yesterday (Thursday). I imagined that in the next couple of days the marketers would get advice on that. The nice thing about the PPPRA, where I signed up on it yesterday is that the price will be far below N87.
 
So for the first time people will understand that the pricing modulation I was talking about is not a gimmick. It is for real. We have gone to find out how we will be able fluctuate this market to reflect what the reality of  crude market is. The objective is that one, we cannot afford to continue to subsidize .
 
We can't even understand where those subsidies were going to. There is a lot of fraud elements in it so we need to cut that of.
 
The second is  the earning capacity of the Federal Government is deteriorating by the day  with lower prices of crude and come out more."
He submitted that from the application market realities for the pricing modulation, government has discoverd that petrol would sell for either N85 or N86 per litre.
 
The minister recalled that it was from this axiom that President Muhammadu Buhari announced that the price of petrol remains N87 at the moment.
 
Kachikwu said: "But in applying that where we landed when we did the analysis for the very first time was about N85 or N86 so it is below N87.
And maybe the first price that will come will reflect it. That was why Mr. President said that prices will be N87 for now. And that is what we have in mind."
 
On the security of the pipelines, he said that government had tried stopping the menace with military intervention  to no avail before it engaged some private  contractors who had worked with the majors for the crude pipeline management.
 
According to him, the private contractors have taken over Atlas Cove, Mosimi  and they would  be extending the surveillance to Ilorin between yesterday and today.
 
They will also look at the Port Harcourt and Aba axis, he stressed.
The minister said that government is now beginning to have a clue of how to tackle pipeline insecurity, adding that it is far more expensive to convey petroleum and products through pipelines than trucking them by road.
He said from the briefing he got from the inspection of the refineries , they are close to re-opening.
 
"In the next one week, we are ready to see products out of here", he disclosed.
 
Kachikwu said that a lot of the rehabilitation of the refinery was being done with intensive manual labour of the staff since paucity of fund affected the holistic change that is required in the factory.
 
He said that the refinery is now aging so one fault comes up after the other even after repair but that would stop when government repairs the plant holistically early next year.
 
According to him, about 5.5million litres daily of PMS is expected from the refinery in the next few days. Other products to come from the plants, said Kachikwu "are AGO, Kero and others. Where we love to be is to have half of the consumption of this country at the refineries at the minimum, which is about 20million litres. But where we are with the sleepless night I have had in the last few weeks any molecule is significant.
 
Kaduna will still be doing 2.3million. Let's start from there. And that is doing 60 per cent performance. This is still an assumption. I will like to see them getting closer to 80 or 90. By the time they time they do that we will be getting 11 to 12million litres out of this place."



 
By PRNigeria

Lola Omotayo-Okoye recounts how she was molested by priest, beaten daily by ex-lover

Lola Omotayo-Okoye, wife to one of the P-square duo, has revealed how she was molested while in high school by a priest, noting that for a really long time, she has continued to blame herself, even as she could not tell anyone, not even her family, about it.

Lola shared her story at the just concluded Kinabuti Dare2Dream project, encouraging and motivating young ladies to pursue their dreams.

According to her, “You shouldn’t let your past determine what your destiny will be, we all have our past whether good or bad or makes us unhappy, we all had a life that we lived that we are not happy about, you shouldn’t let it bother you from succeeding.

“When I was a young girl in my early teens in high school, I was molested by a catholic priest, I blamed myself, I didn’t tell anyone because I was ashamed, couldn’t tell anyone cos I felt everyone would blame me, so I carried on the guilt and bitterness with me for years. I was filled with hate and I became a angry person, I was rebellious, I didn’t want to listen to anybody and because I wanted to be expelled from school to avoid seeing this person, I would do so many terrible things, everything around me was just so negative, I felt I wasn’t good enough.

”Speaking further, Lola disclosed how she was physically abused by an ex-boyfriend in the University.

She continued: “Anyway I moved on to the university, met the love of my life and i’m like, okay this guy is cool, he loves me and then he started to abuse me. I was beaten black and blue all the time, in front of friends, in public and at a point I felt, you know what I am not worthy enough, there is nothing about me that is nice, nobody loves me but I hid this from my family.

“I felt like a loser, so it was hard for me to focus. One day I woke up and said I am going to change my story and I dumped that person, focus on my education and decided to be serious and be something. I decided to get a job and go to school full time in America.

"I worked hard. My parents were sending me money cos I didn’t tell them I was working but I was working because I wanted to be independent. I didn’t want to depend on any man or on my parents even though they would have done anything for me, so I did all sorts of job; I was a make up artiste, I worked in a cafe, school library, I did so many things and I didn’t realise that these jobs were building me up as a person, building my resume, my confidence.


“People began to like me because I was adding value to their lives. At work I was excellent and so was I in school and that built me as a strong woman and at some point, I sought counseling to get over my molestation issues where I was made to see reasons why I wasn’t at fault cos I was a child then. Today I am accomplished.

“You can be whatever woman you want to be but you have to believe in yourself, if they reject you today, it doesn’t mean you should let your dreams die, you have something unique about you.

“Look at my husband,” she continued, “when I met him peeps were like what are you doing with him, he has nothing but I stood my ground and choose to stick with him cos he had a dream. He and his twin brother did not let their dream die, they worked hard; look at them today! I stuck by him cos he had focus and drive and today I am happy, I have a good life, we are happy and we have got a beautiful family. No one can make you a loser,” Lola added.



Source: Daily Post NG

Benue South rerun: 10 Idoma groups reject David Mark, ask him to step down!

As preparations hot up ahead of the rerun in Benue South Senatorial district, ten groups, under the umbrella of Conference of Idoma Pressure Groups, have called on former Senate President, David Mark to step down.

The group said it would do more harm than good to the people of Zone C if Mark was reelected into the senate.

According to them, since the resumption of the 8th assembly and Mark’s exit as the Senate President, he had decided to remain mute.

A statement issued by the group’s coordinator, Dan Ochoyo called on the people of the Zone to support the candidacy of Onjeh, whom they described as a liberator.

Ochoyo said, “Idoma community has gone past the ages where someone thinks he’s the Lord of Lords. The people have spoken with one voice and we are calling on Senator Mark to return home. He should back out of the race.

“We can no longer tolerate an expired politician to continue to lead us. Dan (Onjeh) has come to liberate us and we are calling on all Zone C natives both home and abroad to join this train of change,” part of the statement read.

Source: DAILY POST NGR.