FG slashes business registration fees by 50%

"This is good news to the ears of every entrepreneur, cutting overhead at any level is always a welcome initiative. Hope the government can do more"

                                         Minister of Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga

The Federal Government has slashed the costs of registering businesses in Nigeria by half, in a bid to encourage investment in the country.

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, said this on Tuesday in Abuja during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between his ministry and Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade on the promotion of trade and investment.

A 19-man Brazilian delegation was led on the visit by the country’s Deputy Minister of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, Mr. Richardo Schaefer.

Aganga said the Corporate Affairs Commission had, since October 1, 2013, reduced capital registration costs by 50 per cent for equity registration of N500m or lower, and by 25 per cent for equity registration above N500m.

He explained that the initiative was in line with the ministry’s investment climate reform programme, which was aimed at strategically repositioning Nigeria as the preferred destination for both local and foreign investments.

He said, “Following the directive from the President, the CAC has since October 1, 2013, slashed fees for business registration by 50 per cent. Under the new regulations, capital registration fees for companies (under Part A) have been reduced across board.

“While capital registrations below N1m will retain a flat fee of N10,000; all registrations between N1m and N500m are reduced by 50 per cent; and all registrations above N500m are reduced by 25 per cent.”

The minister said by this action, Nigerian companies would save over N2bn per annum, which they could use to hire more workers and expand their businesses.

He said that the new regulation had been deliberately designed to ensure that the bulk of these savings went to smaller businesses, which needed the lower fees more.

Aganga expressed optimism about the likely impact of the MoU, which the Brazilian deputy minister led a 19-man delegation to sign in Abuja.

According to him, the MoU will make it possible for various agencies responsible for skills development, industry and development finance in both countries to work together and deliver better services for the citizens of their respective countries.

He said, “The aim of the MoU is to strengthen the economic cooperation between the two countries at the bilateral and multilateral levels; increase and promote the bilateral trade of strategic items of mutual interest, and support cooperation between institutions of both countries.”

BY OKECHUKWU NNODIM

Africa’s economy continues to grow strongly —World Bank

ECONOMIC growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains strong with growth forecasted to be 4.9 per cent in 2013, the World Bank said in its new publication, Africa’s Pulse.

But notwithstanding, the world financial institution, in its report published on Monday, suggests that most of the world’s poor people by 2030 will live in Africa.

World Bank said “ almost a third of countries in the region are growing at 6 per cent and more and African countries are now routinely among the fastest-growing countries in the world.”

The World Bank’s Africa’s Pulse, however, noted that as Africa’s growth rates continued to surge with the region increasingly a magnet for investment and tourism, poverty and inequality remain “unacceptably high and the pace of reduction unacceptably slow.

“Almost one out of every two Africans lives in extreme poverty today. Optimistically, that rate will fall to between 16 per cent and 30 per cent by 2030.”

In it new Africa’s Pulse, the World Bank said a twice-yearly analysis of the issues shaping Africa’s economic prospects, was buoyed by rising private investment in the region.

The report identifies the remittances now worth $33 billion a year supporting household incomes GDP growth in Africa as what will continue to rise and pick up to 5.3 per cent in 2014 and 5.5 per cent in 2015.

“Strong government investments and higher production in the mineral resources, agriculture and service sectors are supporting the bulk of the economic growth,” World Bank said.

“Sustaining Africa’s strong growth over the longer term, while significantly reducing poverty and strengthening people’s resilience to adversity may prove difficult, because of the many internal and external uncertainties African countries face.

“Within Africa, natural disasters, such as droughts and floods are occurring more frequently, while the threat of conflict continues, with recent events in the Central African Republic and Mali reinforcing the need for peace, security, and development to take place at the same time.

• by  Seyi Gesinde with Agency Report 

Man buys house for £1

Owner of first £1 home gets keys

The keys for the first £1 home have been given to their new owner in a scheme to get more people on the property ladder

Jayalal Madde, a self employed taxi driver, is the first of 20 people to receive a £1 home in Liverpool as part of a bid to revive disused buildings in the city.

Mr Madde, 48, will now start refurbishing the terraced house in Granby for him and his wife and their two daughters, aged 10 and 11.

The project is part of the city council's commitment to bring 1,000 empty properties back into use.

Mr Madde is one of ten people who will be contacted this week to tell them they have been successful in getting a £1 property. He confirmed he now has the finance in place to start refurbishment works on the house and hopes he and his family will be able to move in within 12 months.

Joe Andersen, the Mayor of Liverpool, handed over the keys. He said: "We've had an amazing response to this scheme and have been absolutely inundated with applications, so to already be in a position to allocate the first 10 homes is fantastic.

"Everything we are doing is about building a sustainable future for our neighbourhoods - and we've placed that at the heart of the decisions we've made when looking at the applications.

"We are only looking for people who have a genuine commitment to bringing these properties back to life and turning them into a home they are proud to live in.

"We're confident that Mr Madde is one such individual."

More than 1,000 people applied for one of the houses in the Granby Four Streets, Arnside Road and Webster Triangle East areas of the city.

Mr Andersen said it should not be forgotten that bringing the homes up to standard would be a “real challenge.”

He added: "Properties in these areas have lain empty for too long - but in tough economic times, we need to be creative and look at doing things differently."

As part of the scheme applicants for the homes had to live or work in Liverpool and be a first time buyer. They also had to be employed and agree to live in the property for a minimum of five years and not sub-let it within that time.

-YahooFinance

Yellen pick bullish for naira, as Fed seen extending stimulus

Reports that Janet Yellen was picked by US President Barack Obama to lead the Federal Reserve is bullish for the naira as most analysts expect her to maintain monetary stimulus that has fueled appetite for emerging-market bonds and stocks.

Yellen, 67, would succeed Ben S. Bernanke, whose term expires on January 31, 2014 provided she is confirmed by the United States Senate.

Yellen supported the Fed’s bond buying programmes and was a driving force behind a strategy adopted in 2012 to commit the bank to goals on inflation and unemployment.

Emerging-market stocks plunged in May when chairman Ben. S. Bernanke signaled that record easing may be pared, then rebounded when the Fed maintained stimulus last month.

The Yellen pick may give the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) some breather on the naira, as fund flows to emerging markets resume on prospects of delayed tapering of stimulus.

Some emerging market currencies have gained on the news.

The rand gained 0.4 percent to 9.9537 per dollar as of 9 a.m. in Johannesburg, the best performance out of 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

The naira, which has outperformed the rand this year on a relative basis has lost 2.06 percent per dollar this year, and closed at N159.9/ dollar at the inter-bank market on Wednesday, according to data from the FMDA.

The lack of foreign capital inflows in recent months- after they picked up following the inclusion on Nigerian bonds in JPMorgan’s EM bond index last year- has led to sustained pressure on the naira.

The flows have been slowing as interest rates in developed markets rose.

Nigeria’s foreign reserves have fallen 6.6 percent since the end of May, as the CBN stepped up its defence of the naira on the back of slowing inflows.

Dollar reserves stood at $45.1 billion as at October 8, down from $48.4 billion on May 31.

The CBN liberalised retail forex market and reintroduced the Retail Dutch Auction System (RDAS), it also introduced a 50 percent cash reserve requirement (CRR) on public sector deposits, and kept its benchmark MPR at an elevated level of 12 percent in a bid to curb naira volatility.

The CBN actions are a back up for the naira although it may be “a prelude to naira depreciation,” according to Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Financial Derivatives Company (FDC).

The Yellen pick may also help to re-assure emerging markets and the global economy, which may ultimately put a firm bid underneath oil prices, helping to boost the Nigerian economy and naira.

Spot Brent crude, is down 6 percent since July, as Nigerian crude production fell to 1.8 mbpd in the period.

Nigerian equity market investors – apparently taking a cue from EM bullish sentiment on the Yellen pick – sent the NSE index up 0.96 percent on Wednesday with gains in heavyweight blue chip Dangote Cement. The NSE all share index is up 36.7 percent year to date and closed above the 37,000 mark on Wednesday.

Yields on 10-year FGN bonds due 2022, fell 5 basis points to 13.26 percent, according to FMDA data.

- BusinessDay

Shell shuts Nigeria pipeline again, 150,000 bpd deferred

"Sometimes it looks like Shell is the only oil exploration company in Nigeria, they have shut down more times than ASUU"

Shell Nigeria said on Wednesday it had shut down its Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP) owing to reports of leaks, deferring 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil just 10 days after the pipeline was re-opened.

“The latest leaks were reported at B-Dere, Nonwa-Tai, and Bodo West, all in Ogoniland. (Shell Nigeria) shut the line as a precautionary measure … and has also mobilised a spill response team,” Shell Nigeria spokesman Precious Okolobo said in an email to Reuters.

He added the cause of the leak was under investigation.

The company blamed the previous shutdown of the TNP on pipeline vandalism by oil thieves. That one led Shell to declare force majeure on its Bonny Light crude and on gas supplied to the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) company on Sept 23.

The pipeline was re-opened again on September 30, which enabled the force majeure on crude to be lifted last Friday – and the one on gas on Monday.

Africa’s biggest oil exporter has been producing around 15 percent below its 2.5 million bpd (bpd) capacity this year due to widespread oil theft and leakages from ageing pipelines.

Shell blames oil thieves for almost all leakages, although environmental campaigners say a failure to replace its decrepit 50-year-old equipment are as much to blame as sabotage.

- BusinessDay

Prostitution: Sex doesn’t sell

"The credit crunch affects every industry"

Prostitution

Sex doesn’t sell

An old industry is in deep recession

TIMES are tough for Debbie, a prostitute in western England who runs a private flat with other “mature ladies”. She does two or three jobs a day. A year ago she was doing eight or nine. She has cut her prices: “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t still be open.” She says that she can now make more money doing up furniture and attending car-boot sales than she can turning tricks.

George McCoy, who runs a website reviewing over 5,000 massage parlours and individuals, says that many are struggling. Sex workers tell him they have been forced to hold down prices. Like other businesses, massage parlours and private flats are suffering from rising rents and energy costs. Even Mr McCoy’s website is under the cosh: visitor numbers are down by a third.

The days of being able to make a full-time living out of prostitution are long gone, reckons Vivienne, at least in larger towns and cities. “It’s stupidly competitive right now,” she laments. More people are entering prostitution, agrees Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of Prostitutes. Some working women in Westminster say they have halved their prices because the market has become so saturated. In London, and increasingly elsewhere, immigrants provide strong competition. But Sophie, an expensive escort in Edinburgh, says she is seeing an influx of newbies including students and the recently laid-off, many of them offering more for less.In part, this reflects the sluggish economy. Overall consumer spending at the end of 2012 was almost 4% lower than its 2007 peak. And Vivienne, an independent escort in the south who works part-time to supplement her income as a photographer, says paying for sex is a luxury: “Food is more important; the mortgage is more important; petrol is more important.” She is offering discounts out of desperation, reckoning it is better to reduce prices by £20 ($30) than to have no customers at all. Another woman says that some punters are just as anxious to talk about the difficult job market as they are to have sex.

Parts of the sex trade are comparatively hale. At the top end of the market, Marie, another escort in Scotland, says custom has not dried up. Girls increasingly report requests for discounts, she says. But those who lower their prices sometimes swiftly raise them again, deterred by the kind of customer who is attracted to bargains. The market for dominatrices is holding up well, too, according to Mr McCoy. Some of the cheapest massage parlours, such as Club 25 in Sheffield (the price is in the name), attractive to the skint, are busy. Some newcomers are offering cut-price services such as webcams and phone sex.

On the streets, where prices are lowest and life is harshest, things are more desperate. Georgina Perry, the service manager for Open Doors, an NHS centre in east London that offers health services to sex workers, says that in the past few years some former prostitutes who had found low-paid work, for example as cleaners, have returned to the sex trade as other jobs have become harder to find. The women are back on the streets, charging £20 at most.

Many of these changes reflect broader trends in Britain’s unstable, part-time economy. But the danger in sex work is greater than in other industries. Newcomers advertising on websites include photos of their faces, their e-mail addresses and offers of risky services in their profiles, says Sophie, the Edinburgh escort, aghast. Moving around in search of clients, prostitutes must deal with unfamiliar and potentially dangerous men. Since July 310 have contacted Ugly Mugs, a scheme that encourages sex workers to report violence, although only around a quarter went to the police. Sex workers are taking greater risks for smaller returns.

- The Economist

How to identify bank scam emails

"You will agree that spam emails is now the bane of everyone familiar with the internet, from the one telling you that you have inherited money from your long lost uncle to the ones informing you of revenue from an investment you made before you were even born"

If you haven't received one before this will help you identify it.

THE menace of scam emails is not new. Almost everyone who owns an email address has seen one. Since the advent of the Internet across the world, and in Nigeria in the 90s, email scams have been existent and not a few have fallen victim. Since then, scam alerts became a regular notice at cyber cafés. A number of experienced Internet users and those who heard victims’ tales of how they got hooked have wised up.

However, the nature of scam emails has evolved. It is no longer a tale of a friend stranded overseas needing financial aid, or that of a pathetic story of a young, female refugee in some African country seeking a compassionate, trusting  partner through whom she can transfer millions of dollars out of her home country.
There seems to be a resurgence of scam emails, especially with the push by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to promote cash-less in Nigeria, hence the use of alternate banking channels and methods of funds transfer which includes the use of Internet Banking. Therefore, scammers have begun to send out scam emails that centre on this subject.

The emails are framed to come from your bank requesting that you perform some form of account upgrade or forfeit the services or face some kind of consequence.
To avoid anyone pulling the wool over your eyes, here are a few pointers to identifying a scam email.

1. An email from a financial institution you do not deal with: Some of these scammers simply send out bulk emails from a popular bank hoping that the recipient would be one of the bank’s customers. If you are not a customer, ignore the message.

2. Get familiar with your bank’s website. These scammers open email addresses and put First Bank, United Bank for Africa, GT Bank or some other as the sender. Simply check the actual address of the sender by placing your mouse over the name. The full address will appear. If the name that comes after the “@” symbol is not the same as your bank’s website, ignore it.

3. Always find out from the physical branch of your bank if any upgrades are taking place online, and report any such email you receive.
Other ways of spotting scam emails are:

1. Watch for typos or spelling mistakes
Scam artists are street smart, but many flunked basic grammar (or barely speak English). Look for mistakes like inappropriate hyphens or confusing “your” and “you’re.” If the note has multiple typographical mistakes or grammatical errors, odds are it’s not legitimate

2. Requests for personal information
No legitimate organization will ask for your social security, bank account or PIN number via e-mail – and none will include a link, sending you to a form to enter it. No matter how authentic these emails may look, ignore them.

3. Clickable web links in e-mails
This is a very common feature of current scam mails. Don’t trust links to Web sites in e-mails. What might look like a legitimate address is often linked to a third-party site that looks official, but is actually run by thieves and scammers. These are the fast track to identity and financial theft.

4. Attachments in e-mails from persons you don’t know
It should be common sense, but just in case, we’ll remind you again: Don’t open an attachment from someone you don’t know – even if it appears to be your bank or credit card company. It’s almost always a virus or spyware meant to steal your personal information.

5. Warning phrases
If you see the phrases “verify your account,” “you have won the lottery” or “if you don’t respond within XX hours or days, your account will be closed,” it’s a scam – every time. Hit the delete button straight away.

6. Generic greetings
While you can’t trust every e-mail that knows your name, you can definitely ignore the ones that start “Dear member” or “Hello friend.” If your bank or credit card company is writing you, it knows who you are. So do your friends.

•  by  Paul Omorogbe & Seyi Sokoya 

Time is not money

Time is not money

Thinking about it makes you a better person, not a worse one

“THE love of money”, St Paul memorably wrote to his protégé Timothy, “is the root of all evil.” “All” may be putting it a bit strongly, but dozens of psychological studies have indeed shown that people primed to think about money before an experiment are more likely to lie, cheat and steal during the course of that experiment.

Another well-known aphorism, ascribed to Benjamin Franklin, is “time is money”. If true, that suggests a syllogism: that the love of time is a root of evil, too. But a paper just published in Psychological Science by Francesca Gino of Harvard and Cassie Mogilner of the University of Pennsylvania suggests precisely the opposite.

Dr Gino and Dr Mogilner asked a group of volunteers to do a series of what appeared to be aptitude tests. As is often the case in such experiments, though, what the volunteers were told, and what the truth was, were rather different things.

In the first test they were asked to make, within three minutes, as many coherent sentences as they could out of a set of words they had been presented with. What they were not told was that each of them had been assigned to one of three groups. Some volunteers’ word sets were seeded with ones associated with money, such as “dollars”, “financing” and “spend”. Some were seeded with words associated with time (eg, “clock”, “hours”, “moment”). And some were seeded with neither. Thus unknowingly primed, the volunteers were ready for the second test.

This was mathematical. They were given a sheet of paper with 20 matrices which each contained 12 numbers, two of which added up to ten (for example, 3.81 and 6.19). They had to write down, on a separate answer sheet, how many of these pairs they could manage to find in five minutes. They were also given a packet of money and told they could reward themselves with a dollar for each pair they discovered.

Crucially, they were not asked to show their workings on the answer sheets—and the matrix sheets, on which those workings might have appeared, carried no identifier and were ostentatiously discarded once the test was done. Nevertheless, by hiding an identification code in a sample matrix on the answer sheet, Dr Gino and Dr Mogilner knew which matrix sheet each candidate had been given and thus who had cheated and who had not. They found that 88% of those who had been primed with money-related words in the first test cheated, as did 67% of those given neutral words. Of those primed with time-related words, though, only 42% cheated.

Nor, despite St Paul’s aphorism, was the lure of lucre during the experiment (as opposed to the effect of thinking about it as a result of being primed) necessary as a corrupting influence. A similar trial on different participants showed that presenting the matrix as a test of intelligence also caused those primed with the idea of money to cheat more than those primed with the idea of time—though, intriguingly, that did not apply if the matrix was presented as a test of personality.

This led Dr Gino and Dr Mogilner to suspect that self-reflection played a part in controlling unethical behaviour during the test. They therefore conducted a third test in which, for half the volunteers, there was a mirror in the cubicle they were sitting in when doing the experiment.

Volunteers primed to think about money cheated 39% of the time when a mirror was present but 67% when it was not. Those primed to think about time cheated 32% of the time in the presence of the mirror and 36% in its absence—results that are statistically indistinguishable.

Finally, a fourth experiment asked primed volunteers to fill in a questionnaire before tackling the matrix. In among “filler” questions intended to disguise what was happening this asked them to rate how they felt about self-reflective statements like, “Right now, I am thinking about who I am as a person.”

As in the previous tests, those primed with money words cheated more often than those primed with neutral words and far more often than those primed with time words. But whether someone cheated was also related to how strongly he felt about the self-reflective statements presented to him in the questionnaire.

It seems, then, that thinking about time has the opposite effect on people from thinking about money. It makes them more honest than normal, rather than less so. Moreover, the more reflective they are, the more honest they become. There must be an aphorism in that.

- Economist

Increasing your wife’s sexual desire

"I was scrolling through different articles online and this one caught my attention, not because of the heading but because of the number of hits. All other articles have an average of 1500 hits but this particular one had almost 7000 hits. Is it because we love our wives or really want to know the way to her pants?

I’m not surprised that the article was written by a woman though."

“Increasing your wife’s sexual desire

It has been said over and over that most women don’t desire sex as frequently as men do. This is largely due to the physiological makeup of the female being. While a man is aroused by the mere sight of the nakedness or writhing of a female body, a woman will have to be tuned up through sweet talks, body touches, or appreciative comments about her looks for her to feel like having sex. This difference is what has made sexual intimacy among couples a mirage for most married men.

This is also a source of concern for most women since their husbands look impossible with reference to sexual demands on their wives. Thus, most women feel that their husbands are just inconsiderate human beings who behave selfishly in their sexual demands. To them, all that a man thinks of is sex all of the time.

However, over the years, it has been discovered that the frequency of sexual desire of women can be increased with the support from, or deliberate effort of their husbands. How this is achieved is the subject of this discuss.  If a man desires his wife to frequent the bedroom with him, he may need to do more to help his wife become sex hungry. In most cases, most married women’s attitude towards sex is a reflection of their husbands’ treatment. So, every husband who wants to increase his wife’s sexual desire must learn to do the following:

Stay close to her
Move closer to your wife by spending more time with her and sharing your deep thoughts with her. Closeness to her demands carrying her along in your dealings, daily schedules, fears, aspirations, and concerns. The frequency of such time spent together will also enhance the chances of sexual intercourse between the couple, since one thing may lead to another. Such time spent together should not just be only to discuss your feelings with her, it should also be to listen to her own stories or things she wants to discuss with you. By nature, a woman wants to be listened to. So, you should allow her to pour out her mind. When you do this, it is a major signal of your love for her. Many husbands do not realise that such time spent with their wives is actually an opportunity to secure sex from her.

Show more care and concern
Be more caring by showing great and active interest in things that interest her in the areas of her career, hobbies, health, and parental issues. It soars your credentials with her when you concern yourself with such affairs of her life. It makes her feel great about you and prepares her emotionally to be with you in bed.

Adore her 
Make her feel she is the most important person in your life. In fact, do everything to make her feel that you can’t live without her. Husbands need to learn the art of adoring their wives. This will secure great sex from any woman. To adore her means holding her in high esteem and verbalising it to her; be all over her wherever you are as a sign that you enjoy being with her. Without being boring or monitoring her, keep in touch with her regularly through the phone especially when you are away from each other due to work schedule, and social functions. This should not be difficult since most men do that while wooing their wives for marriage.

Learn the art of lovemaking 
Learn the art of lovemaking with reference to foreplay, coitus, afterglow treatment and so forth. In my counselling experience, I have discovered that most couples, especially the religious ones, do not have good knowledge of sexual relationship. No thanks to the many religious houses, who do not prepare them ahead for sex in marriage. Many of us thus enter into marriage to learn by trial and error, and in an attempt not to be seen as being promiscuous, we shy away from discussing our sexual satisfaction or dissatisfaction with our spouse, preferring to suffer in silence. Unfortunately, it is the wife that suffers the most since she is the one who is left sexually unfulfilled most of the time by the inexperienced husband. No wonder she feigns tiredness, headaches and stomach upset most of the time for her to avoid miserable times spent in bed with her husband.

It beats my imagination why a wife will feign all manner of ailments to avoid the beauty of sex, if she has discovered its sweetness. Or do you think ants can smell honey, and not be drawn to it? That is what sex is if properly handled by couples; you cannot run away from such a wonderful experience called sex in marriage.

A man must therefore learn the art of lovemaking if he will secure frequent great sex acts from his wife. He must spend time and money on literatures and seminars to discover how to make his wife desire sex regularly from him. There is nothing you need to know that somebody has not known already. I bet it with you, it will be worth the effort at the end of the day. When your wife is sexually satisfied, she will be ever ready to do it with you over and over as you learn to treat her the right ways in your marriage.

Be sensitive to her moods and sexual advances 
You just have to learn to play along with her games for sexual enjoyment. Be ready to be there for her when she needs you sexually. Don’t make her feel used during sexual acts. Rather, you should help her attain high level of sexual intercourse by yielding to her requests with reference to how you hold, touch, and enter into her during sexual acts. This will go a long way to making her look forward to another sexual moment with you.

Understand and use her love key
Understand her love key and use it to the fullest to get her sexual attention. This has been extensively discussed in previous write-ups in this column, and you will do well to go over them and apply the principles of the love keys. On request, I can also mail it to your e-mail address. But let me chip it in here by defining love keys as the things that make your wife feel most loved, and which, if absent in your relationship with her, makes her feel bad and make her non responsive to your frequent sexual demands. Of course, the same goes for you as a person; every one of us has what makes us feel loved and turns us on sexually when we are treated to those things.

Give her full attention during sexual intercourse 
This makes a woman to want to be with a man over and over. You are not just enjoying yourself; you are also making her to enjoy herself as well. Thus, being with her spirit, soul and body at the moment of sexual acts matters to her. You should avoid picking your calls in the middle of sexual acts. To avoid minimal distractions during sexual intercourse, couples should learn to put their phone in silence or switch it off completely. Also, couples should not rush into sexual intercourse, except when you are doing a ‘quickee’, and it is better enjoyed and more pleasurable, when it is at the instance of the wife. At that moment, she is ready and emotionally prepared for the husband and I can assure you that it will be a grea pleasurable experience for you, since you are ever ready as a man. My husband does not allow such opportunities to be wasted.

Make sex a free discussion between you 
Finally, do not shy away or make your wife shy away from discussing your sex life together. It is during such moment of openness that you can both share what turns you on or off with reference to sex. I have discovered that when sex issues are openly discussed, it draws couples together and also allows for deliberate efforts to improve on their sexual performance for maximum sexual satisfaction for both of them on a regular basis.

• by  Bosede Ola-Samuel 

Nigeria records N6.85tn e-transfers

"Seems like Nigerians have warmed up to the idea of electronic payments, this is a good development as transaction will be faster and more reliable. This will also lead to a boost for online businesses"

he country has recorded N6.849tn worth of electronic fund transfers between January and September this year.

A document obtained by our correspondent on Wednesday from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System showed that NIBBS Instant Pay recorded an average volume of 1.13 million transactions so far, with a monthly transaction value of N761bn.

A N761bn monthly transaction value would have generated about N6.849tn for the first, second and third quarters of this year, all things being equal.

The document read in part, “The NIBSS Instant Pay has grown steadily since inception. NIP recorded an average volume of 1.13 million and transaction value of N761bn on a monthly basis during this period.

“This can be attributed to the reliability of the electronic funds transfer product, which has also increased product patronage.”

The document showed a steady growth in the volume of cheques processed in the second quarter of the year with June recording 19 per cent growth rate over the previous month.

“This can be attributed to the adoption of cheque truncation nation-wide. There was also a noticeable increase in the value of cheque transactions during the same period,” it added.

The document described the cash-less story in Lagos State as a successful one with a steady growth rate.

In the period under review, Point of Sale terminals recorded an average volume of 591,000 transactions on a monthly basis while the value of transactions also increased as the confidence level of customers in the payment device increased, it explained.

“This trend would likely continue once Value Added Services are deployed on PoS terminals and merchants earn incentives from accepting payments on the terminals,” the document stated.

The second phase of the cash-less policy started in July this year, with the Federal Capital Territory, Abia, Rivers, Anambra, Kano and Ogun states coming on board.

The Central Bank of Nigeria began the full implementation of its cash-less policy in these areas on Wednesday last week.

This followed the end of a three-month moratorium on the charges given to customers, who withdraw or deposit higher than the amount stipulated in the cash-less policy document.

The policy allows the CBN to peg the daily cumulative cash withdrawal or deposit limit for individual accounts at N500,000, while that of corporate accounts is fixed at N3m per day.

Commenting on the development, the Chief Executive Officer, Electronic Payment Providers Association of Nigeria, Mrs. Onajite Regha, said aside the six new locations coming on board, other states could apply for the implementation of the cash-less policy if they were convinced of their preparedness.

She said in the next one year, the CBN should be able to make the cash-less policy a nationwide thing given the current performance of the policy in Lagos.

According to her, to facilitate penetration, stakeholders in the process are looking at leveraging the potential of the Nigerian Postal Service to build a wider and reliable agency network.

Regha said training was ongoing even as EPPAN and other stakeholders were looking at enrolling more agents that would spread the cash-less agenda and also help more people to come on board.

The EPPAN CEO noted that the cash-less initiative was recording success and had continued to impact positively on Nigerians.

She said the policy had helped to reduce corruption in many quarters including government and businesses.

She said for any organisation to maximise revenue generation and collection, the cash-less idea must be brought to bear, as it was a strong anti-leakage agent.

BY STANLEY OPARA

Living in UK to get tougher for illegal immigrants

"British govt are making every effort to make sure that illegal immigrants don't find it easy living in the UK, with the new laws even a landlord will have to check your status before you can rent a place"

Read about it below

Illegal immigrants will find it harder to set up home in the UK under planned laws, says Home Secretary Theresa May.

The Immigration Bill would force private landlords to quiz tenants about their immigration status and restrict access to bank accounts for people in the country without permission.

It also aims to streamline the appeals process in immigration cases.

Labour said the bill did nothing about bigger problems like the "shambolic" state of UK border controls.

The bill, which is expected to become law in spring 2014, subject to approval by MPs, will include measures to allow the UK to "deport foreign criminals first and hear their appeal later" when there is "no risk of serious irreversible harm".

BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani says this could lead to an increase in air fare costs for the Home Office, if it has to fly back migrants who are successful in their appeal.

A requirement is also included for temporary migrants, such as overseas students, to make a contribution to the National Health Service to prevent so-called "health tourism".

Other new measures in the bill include:

• New powers to check driving licence applicants' immigration status
• Cut the number of deportation decisions that can be appealed against from 17 to four
• Restrict the ability of immigration detainees to apply repeatedly for bail if they have previously been refused it
• Make it easier for the Home Office to recover unpaid civil penalties
• Clamp down on people who try to gain an immigration advantage by entering into a "sham" marriage or civil partnership
• Require banks to check against a database of known immigration offenders before opening bank accounts

Immigration minister Mark Harper said: "The Immigration Bill will stop migrants using public services to which they are not entitled, reduce the pull factors which encourage people to come to the UK and make it easier to remove people who should not be here.

"We will continue to welcome the brightest and best migrants who want to contribute to our economy and society and play by the rules. But the law must be on the side of people who respect it, not those who break it."

Mrs May said the measures were about "making it harder for people who are here illegally to stay here".

She said it was a "point of principle" that people who used public services should be expected to contribute to them, but she would not comment on the cost to the country of "health tourism".

She denied claims that forcing private landlords to check the immigration status of prospective tenants would be unworkable, saying they would just be "required to ask some simple questions" in the same way that employers have to do when interviewing workers.

But an organisation representing private and public sector landlords said the measures would "make it much harder for non-British people to access housing even when they have a legal right to live in the UK".

Gavin Smart, director of policy and practice at the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: "Checking immigration status is complicated so landlords may shy away from letting to anyone who appears not to be British."

Don Flynn, director of Migrants' Rights Network, criticised moves to restrict access to the NHS, saying: "There are very small numbers of migrants who come here with pre-existing health conditions and find themselves registering with the health service.

"I simply do not believe there is any significant evidence that something like the NHS is a pull factor."

'Increasingly shambolic'

The British Medical Association (BMA) is also critical of the plans.

Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the BMA's GPs committee, told BBC Radio 5live there is already a system in place for hospitals to recover the cost of treating patients who are ineligible for NHS care.

"Clearly that could be improved, but introducing a system for general practice could be a bureaucratic nightmare," he said.

"The reality is people don't come to the UK to use the NHS, they're more likely to come to work in the NHS."

Labour said there was nothing in the bill to tackle problems at the UK's "increasingly shambolic" border controls or to deal with "long delays in getting electronic checks in place, or the UKBA (UK Border Agency) bureaucratic failings that have prevented foreign criminals being deported".

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told BBC Radio 4's The World at One: "It doesn't seem to address some of the serious issues around border control and some of the problems about exploitation of immigration in the labour market, particularly low-skill immigration, which has caused concerns about jobs and wages."

Campaign group the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants welcomed what it claimed was a "climb down" by the Home Office, which had not included in the bill proposals to introduce immigration checks by GPs.

It said the new proposals would deter students from wanting to study in the UK but would have "no impact whatsoever on 'illegal' immigration - the declared intention of this bill".

UKIP said "pressganging landlords, doctors and private citizens under the threat of sanctions to carry out the work of border agencies is simply wrong" and the government needed to treat the cause of immigration problems rather than the symptoms.

And Simon Walker, of the Institute of Directors, warned that some of the government's rhetoric was starting to make the UK "look unwelcoming and hostile to the people on whom our export markets depend".

The Conservatives say they want to reduce net migration from non-EU countries - the difference between the number of people emigrating and arriving in the UK - to less than 100,000 a year.

But the latest Office for National Statistics figures show net migration rose to 176,000 in the year ending December 2012 - up from 153,000 people in the year to September 2012 - appearing to buck the recent downward trend.

There are no official estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the UK. A 2009 study by the London School of Economics produced an estimate of 618,000 but the Migration Watch pressure group said this under-estimated the number of people who had overstayed their visas and the true figure was more like 1.1 million.