For anyone who has seen the hit film District 9, it’s no surprise a Nigerian minister would be upset by it.

The science fiction film, set in South Africa, is an allegory on segregation and xenophobia, with alien life forms cooped up in a township of the type that grew up under apartheid and victimised and despised by humans of all descriptions.

No section of human society comes across particularly well, but the Nigerians are crudely caricatured as gangsters, cannibals, pimps, prostitutes and dealers in guns and addictive drugs (in this case cat food). The gang leader’s name sounds exactly like the surname of Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

It’s just a film of course and the slurs needn’t overly detract from the entertainment. (They didn’t for the Nigerian half of my family anyway).

But this does raise a question as to why Nigerians should be seen as fair targets and casually turned into comic book gangsters? Would the film makers have got away with showing other nations or groups in this way? Would they have feared the backlash?

It also raises the question as to what Nigeria can do about really changing its image – beyond rebranding and advertising campaigns.

It could be argued that the immense and undoubted talent of law-abiding Nigerians, the vast majority at home and abroad, does not get the recognition it deserves in the rest of the world despite the acclaim for the greatest Nigerian writers, musicians, footballers and athletes.  Nor may the sacrifice of Nigerians who have given their lives as peacekeepers in Africa and elsewhere.

But we can’t forget that there are still plenty of Nigeria’s 150 million people who have no qualms about giving their country a bad name.

What about the Nigerians imprisoned in Asia and Europe for smuggling drugs? The ‘419’ fraudsters with their email appeals? The kidnappers and oil thieves of the Niger delta? Those politicians who rig elections with fraud, intimidation and bribery? Those officials who see their positions merely as a chance to fill their boots and may be all too ready to subvert the courts or obstruct people struggling to do business fairly?

And how can Nigeria’s image improve while it cannot regularly light up the homes of its people - despite enormous energy resources and billions of dollars spent?

Does Nigeria suffer unfairly from an image problem or will it improve its image once it deals with its problems?

The list published by Nigeria’s central bank of those who owe money to the banks it has just bailed out makes clear that the situation has already gone well beyond just being a banking crisis.

The list cuts across the business elite and Nigeria’s regions and also includes many politically powerful figures. (And it doesn’t even appear that all those who could have been named as directors of the debtor companies have been identified).

It raises a question as to whether so many of the great and good are simply unable to pay their debts and if so what that means for business in Nigeria as a whole? If they could pay up, then why haven’t they?

It also raises a question as to how those ‘named and shamed’ will react, particularly those with major political sway, in a country where behind the scenes manipulation is a way of life.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has set a deadline for the debtors to start coming up with money or face arrest, but its efforts to prosecute former state governors in the past were sometimes stymied and its former boss Nuhu Ribadu driven from office.

What will be the fate of Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi (left), only recently picked for the post by President Umaru Yar’Adua?

How well do you think the crisis is being handled? Please take your chance to vote below. We welcome your comments too.

Pictures: Akintunde Akinleye (Reuters); Central Bank of Nigeria

Nigeria’s central bank sliced through the hubris of the business elite with its $2.6 billion bailout out of five banks and the sacking of their heads in what looks as though it could be a new era for corporate governance in Africa’s most populous country.

Recently appointed Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi said lax governance had allowed the banks to become so weakly capitalised that they posed a threat to the entire system, and described the move as the beginning of a “restoration of confidence” in sub-Saharan Africa’s second biggest economy.

The 1.14 trillion naira ($7.6 billion) in bad loans run up by the banks is roughly equivalent to the combined annual income of the poorest 20 million people in Africa’s most populous nation, each of whom live on around $1 a day.

Yet the “Friday massacre”, as one newspaper dubbed it, set Blackberries buzzing in Lagos champagne bars not because of the breathtaking scale of the money involved, but because of the might of the corporate aristocrats felled by Sanusi’s axe.

“Ordinarily in Nigeria there is a sacred cow culture,” said Reuben Abati, a respected leader writer and chairman of the editorial board of Nigeria’s Guardian newspapers.

“Once someone is prominent in a particular industry you assume those persons are untouchable. What Sanusi has done now is to say nobody is too big to be held accountable, whether they are an Ibru or an Akingbola.”

Cecilia Ibru and Erastus Akingbola — the former chief executives of Oceanic Bank and Intercontinental Bank — were arguably the highest-profile casualties of the cull, titans in a corporate elite dominated by egos and empire builders.

Ibru is from one of Nigeria’s most powerful business families, whose interests range from shipping and hotels to oil and media. Akingbola is president of Nigeria’s Chartered Institute of Bankers and brimming with honorary doctorates.

“Some are born great, others achieve greatness, while others still have greatness thrust upon them. But rarely do we have these three attributes combined so well in an individual as is the case in our Dr. Erastus Bankole Oladipo Akingbola,” blasts the biography on his website.

In his trademark bow-tie and frameless spectacles, Sanusi’s slight physique and measured rhetoric mark him out from some of the more flamboyant personalities it is his job to regulate.

Some Nigerian commentators have argued that the cull by Sanusi, a northerner, targeted southern bank executives and that it was a retaliation for consolidation four years ago which saw some northern banks absorbed by their southern peers.

But the forensic precision of Sanusi’s public statements left the numbers to speak for themselves.

The loans they racked up — including credit to speculators on a stock market which fell 60 percent over the past year and unsecured financing to fuel importers who have seen oil prices halve — meant the five were constant borrowers of public money.

They accounted for almost 90 percent of exposure to the central bank’s discount window, a facility which allows banks to meet short-term obligations by borrowing central bank funds.

The results of Sanusi’s audit have left many wondering how the five banks managed to survive for so long.

Intercontinental and Oceanic had both won national and international banking awards. Analysts from brokerage Renaissance Capital were shown Intercontinental Bank’s balance sheet in April and published a report saying it had enough capital to absorb its asset risks and there was no threat to its solvency.

Ibru was quoted in this month’s edition of McKinsey & Company’s business journal McKinsey Quarterly as saying: “In five to 10 years, we expect to be a well-known, established bank beyond this sub-region of Africa.”

One Nigerian analyst commented “When the dust settles, one of the most shocking aspects of this crisis is going to be the magnitude of the gap between the rot in the system and what its leaders wanted us to believe.”

Will this be a new era for Nigeria’s companies? For Nigeria itself?

The first “Nollywood” film, “Living in Bondage”, was a tale of witchcraft, money and betrayal produced by Okechukwu Ogunjiofor.

That was back in 1992. Today, Nigeria’s $450 million home video industry is the third biggest in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood.

“I actually set out to be a film maker, so I got my training, came to Lagos. But since I could not do a thing on celluloid … I said to myself that there must be a way around it, there must be a new way to do the old things and that new way was trying to invent, you know, to experiment with VHS cameras. That experiment was what we did with ‘Living with Bondage’ and today that experiment has culminated into what we find and people call Nollywood,” Ogunjiofor told Reuters Africa Journal.

Despite the successes, money and betrayal still play their part. Film piracy means millions of dollars a year leach out of the industry.

An average Nollywood film sells about 50,000 copies, yet in Lagos alone millions of bootleg copies go for just $1, undercutting Nollywood’s price of $2.

Fed up with the pirates, Ogunjiofor, who has pioneered an award scheme to reward production excellence in the film industry, has now turned to TV drama and soap operas and wants to see more government support, and legal backing, to help film-makers build a reputable industry.

“As long as you are doing a good movie, you are a candidate of piracy. From the moment you go on location, they start buying materials to wait for your job,” Ogunjiofor said.

“Piracy is so bad, so bad that almost every Friday here trailer loads of CDs made in Nigeria are crossing borders.”

(Photo: Filming for “Covenant of the Ancestors” takes place in the Niger Delta in August 2006.  Reuters/George Esiri)

So far the exact toll from the latest bout of religious rioting in northern Nigeria is not clear. At least 150 have died and the toll may well go higher.

The killings are bad enough, but the north has experienced much worse within living memory. One of the bloodiest outbreaks of religious rioting occurred in Kano in 1980, and northern cities saw a series of upheavals during the decade that followed.

The Kano riots, led by Muhammadu Marwa, a Muslim preacher otherwise known as “Maitatsine”, were  put down by the army.

Reporting nearly 30 years ago on the Kano disturbances, Lagos Radio quoted the then defence minister, Iya Abubakar, as saying: “The armed forces have successfully dislodged religious fanatics from areas occupied by them in Kano.

“Hostages captured by the fanatics have been set free and are being kept by the infantry brigade in Kano.”

At the time, the death toll from 10 days of rioting was put at 1,000. Nearly a year later the government-controlled Daily Times said it was in fact 4,177.

Direct and indirect foreign investors fled from Africa as the credit crisis sparked a flight to safety, or at least familiarity, but Ayo Salami, manager of the Duet Victoire Africa Index fund believes domestic demand can step in to underpin growth.

Polo has a large and growing following in Nigeria and every year fans get the chance to see some of the country’s best players at the Lagos International Polo tournament. This year more than 200 participants registered for the event.

It’s the biggest polo tournament in Africa. This time around 30 teams took part and more than 3,000 people came to watch.

Polo was introduced to Nigeria by British colonialists in the early 1900s. The sport isn’t as popular as soccer but local interest is growing fast.

Several companies sponsored this year’s event, which cost millions of dollars. Polo is an expensive sport. Each team fields 24 horses during a match and each horse costs about $40,000.

Most of Nigeria’s players are young successful businessmen. Bode Makanjuola trades in oil and gas. He’s been playing polo for three years now. Bode owns the Coverton Polo club, playing in white jerseys. He never misses a game.

“I like the competitive nature of polo and the ultimate aim is actually to build a very strong team so that in the future we can compete not just in Nigeria but in Africa. And who knows, Europe or round the world, that’s the ultimate sort of aim,” he told Reuters Africa Journal.

“A lot of people are getting into it, people find that it’s not as snobbish or as you say, it’s not as out of reach as a lot of people sort of think.”

But somebody has to pay for the horses, the trucks, the mallets and other equipment, even if players insist that those who don’t have much money can still play.

And while it obviously helps to be young and fit, the veterans still like to saddle up. It’s an easy game, says Ali Abubakar, 74, who has been playing for 30 years.

“We are still in the game,” he said, shortly before falling off his horse.

Not many Nigerians will be trading in their love for popular sports like football to take
up polo, but players at the Lagos club hope that those who are interested know that there’s an
opportunity for them to try.

President Barack Obama’s choice of Ghana for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office has stirred debate in his father’s homeland Kenya.

Some Kenyans believe Obama ought to have come “home” first. Others, especially among critics of President Mwai Kibaki’s government, say he has deliberately shunned the country to show U.S. disapproval of rampant corruption and nepotism in political circles here.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who comes from the Luo ethnic group like Obama’s father, said it was wrong to read too much into Obama’s itinerary, given that neither was he visiting other influential nations in the region like South Africa and Nigeria.

“Ghana is symbolic. It was the first African country to gain independence from Britain in 1957. Ghana is very advanced in its transition to democratic form of governance. So it is perfectly logical,” he told Reuters.

“If Obama were to come to Kenya as the first country in Africa, it would send some very wrong signals that he is coming here merely because of some organic relationship that he has with this country. So in fact it is good.”

Obama has been to Kenya several times, most recently as a senator in mid-2006. In a speech then, he took a strong line against corruption, which has plagued East Africa’s largest economy for decades. “If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and promote their common welfare - then all else is lost. That is why the struggle of corruption is one of the great struggles of our time,” he said.

That speech drew a sharp response from the government. Spokesman Alfred Mutua called Obama a young man who was “very poorly informed” and chided him for “lecturing” Kenyans. When Obama took power, however, the Kibaki government was so happy it announced a national holiday in his honour. The U.S. leader is wildly popular among all sectors of Kenyan society.

So should Obama have included Kenya on his Africa tour? Is he snubbing his ancestral homeland?

Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua has laid out the details of a 60-day amnesty programme for militants and criminals in the Niger Delta. Under the deal, all gunmen who lay down their weapons during a 60-day period ending in October will be immune from prosecution. The offer extends to those currently being prosecuted for militant-related activities, meaning Henry Okah – the suspected leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) – could also walk free if he agrees to renounce the notion of armed struggle.

Several factional leaders – including Ateke Tom, Farah Dagogo, Soboma George and Boyloaf – have said they accept the idea of amnesty in principle but want talks with President Yar’Adua to hammer out the details.

Advocates say such an amnesty would meet one of the key demands of militant groups and is the only way to bring an end to instability which costs Nigeria billions of dollars in lost oil revenues each year, prevents the development of the very communities the militants claim to represent and causes world energy prices to rise further, which ultimately falls back on the Nigerian consumer.

Critics say amnesty simply provides a get-out-of-jail free card to those responsible for kidnappings, acts of sabotage and banditry and that the promises to re-educate and reintegrate them into civilian society would require years of investment. The government has said it will not offer a “buy back” programme – money for surrendered weapons – but does the scheme reward those who have taken up the armed struggle while leaving peaceful protesters with nothing?

It is not the first time amnesty has been offered to armed gangs in the Niger Delta. Yar’Adua’s predecessor Olusegun Obasanjo struck such an agreement in 2004 with militants including Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, whose Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force turned over thousands of weapons in return for amnesty. But the deal later broke down when some factions accused others of profiting from disarmament at their expense, and Asari was later arrested and charged with treason.

Is Yar’Adua’s amnesty offer a serious attempt at resolving the crisis in the Niger Delta or will it suffer the same fate as the previous amnesty deal? Is it simply an attempt to win political currency for the ruling party in the Niger Delta ahead of elections in 2011? What happens after the amnesty? What hope is there that the resources and political will are there to ensure the longer-term development of the Niger Delta and prevent a resurgence of the cycle of the frustration, unemployment and violence that has characterised the region for so long?

Few investors dispute the view that Nigeria’s banks look
cheap at the moment, with most of the major players trading at a
discount to book value and with earnings multiples way below
consumer stocks such as Guinness Nigeria.
 
Nor is anybody arguing against the long-term logic of the
financial sector’s potential growth in an oil-rich country of
140 million people but only 23 million bank accounts.
 
A new central bank head with a background in risk management
is also making all the right noises about improving the sector’s
notoriously murky financial disclosure - part of the reason the
shares crashed so spectacularly in the latter half of 2008.
 
Furthermore, Lamido Sanusi’s stated desire to relax limits
on foreign ownership has breathed new life into the view that
another wave of consolidation, this time involving major global
players, sits around the corner.
 
Does all this sound - like so many other Nigerian promises of easy money - too good to be true,
or are its banks set on a long-term trajectory that will ultimately see them realise the dream of making Lagos a financial hub to rival Johannesburg?