Index to Nigerian Newspapers

The dollar has crashed to between N805 to N790 at the parallel exchange market on Tuesday Daily Trust can authoritatively report. It started a steady decline from N925 to N930 that it was exchanged in the morning till around 4:00 pm when news about a possible Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) intervention filtered through to the Bureau De Change (BDC) operators. Recall that the CBN announced plans to take critical decisions to reverse the slide of the naira in the next few days, thereby resulting in significant losses to the speculators. The acting CBN governor, Folashodun Shonubi, dropped the hint on Monday while briefing State House reporters after a meeting with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Amnesty International and some activists have challenged the Lagos State government to disclose the identities of the 103 #ENDSARS victims billed for mass burial. Daily Trust, on Monday, reported that in a letter dated July 19 by the Lagos State Government Public Procurement Agency titled: Letter of No Objection – Mass Burial for the 103, the Year 2020 ENDSARS victims, the state government engaged the service of a private firm, Messrs Tos Funeral Ltd, at the cost of N61,285,000 to bury 103 victims of the protest. 

“Following review of your request and based on the information provided therein, the agency has “No Objection” to the award of contract to MESSRS TOS FUNERALS LIMITED at a total cost of N61,285,000 (Sixty-one million, two hundred and eighty-five thousand Naira only) for the mass burial for the 103, the year 2020 Endsars victims,” noted the Director- General of the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency, Mr Onafowote Idowu in the letter addressed to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health.

Responding to the leaked document, the Director of Amnesty International Nigeria, Isa Sanusi, said the Nigerian authorities must urgently halt the plans to carry out a secret mass burial of the victims. It demanded a thorough and independent investigation into the killings and ensure that those suspected to be responsible were brought to justice in fair trials.

 

 

 

Families in Nigeria are passing through difficult times as the cost of staple food is increasingly becoming unbearable, Daily Trust reports. Findings at various markets across the country show that prices of rice, beans, garri, flour and sugar, among others, are rising almost on a weekly basis. While breadwinners are seeking government’s help; traders are lamenting that the inflation rate is fast eroding their capital base. The latest inflation figure was 24.08 per cent in July 2023, the highest since September 2005. A March report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) showed that nearly 25 million Nigerians were at risk of hunger between June and August unless urgent actions are taken. FAO identified continued conflict, climate change, inflation and rising food prices as key drivers of the trend. It said, “Of the 17 million people who are currently food insecure, 3 million are in the north-east Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. “Without immediate action, this figure is expected to increase to 4.4 million in the lean season. This includes highly vulnerable displaced populations and returnees who are already struggling to survive a large-scale humanitarian crisis in which 8.3 million people need assistance.”  Available records showed that by mid-February to the end of July, prices of maize, beans and rice from three-grain markets of Dawanau, Dandume and Kumo in Kano, Katsina and Gombe states as well as Abuja had on average doubled, especially maize; while beans and rice added N10,000 and N20,000 respectively. 

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) has backed the decision of the federal government to stop funding of professional bodies and councils. The federal government recently said that budgetary allocations would no longer be made for professional bodies and councils with effect from January, 2024. The President of ICAN, Innocent Okwuosa, yesterday in a statement, said the institute was a self-financed organisation that did not depend on allocation from the government, stressing that all professional bodies should be self-financing organisations. He said that on no account should budgetary allocation be extended to any professional body as it would assist in bringing down the high cost of public governance. He, however, noted that the institute did not support the discontinuance of budgetary allocations to some regulatory councils that functioned as parastatals such as the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRC) and the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC).

American multinational financial services firm, JP Morgan has estimated Nigeria’s FX reserve to be around $3.7 billion as of the end of 2022.The bank disclosed this in its latest report on Nigeria titled “Nigeria: Reform pause rather than fatigue”.  The report also predicted headline inflation to reach 28% by the end of the year on the back of rising food prices and other impacts of President Bola Tinubu’s reforms.Daily Trust recalled that Nigeria’s external reserves as of December 29, 2022 was put at $37.09bn, a drop of $3.43bn from $40.52bn as of the end of December 31, 2021, according to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.However, JP Morgan noted that the lower-than-reported FX reserve is the result of larger currency swaps and borrowings against the FX reserve.The bank, which made a few assumptions in arriving at the estimates, noted that, “Based on partial information from the audited financial accounts, we estimate that CBN’s net FX reserves were around US$3.7bn at the end of last year, from US$14.0bn at the end-2021.”The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited recently secured a $3 billion in crude-for-cash funding from the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to shore up the nation’s FX reserve

The Director-General of the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association Mr. Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde has expressed concerns over the rising cost of living in the country. According to him, this situation is already having a negative impact on Nigeria’s poverty and production index. Speaking in Lagos, Mr. Oyerinde said “in the last one year we have witnessed perpetual rising inflation, commodity price instability, reduced industry capacity utilization and a gradual dwindling of the purchasing power of Nigerians, all of which have further dragged many enterprises out of existence and Nigerians below the poverty lines”.

The NECA boss noted that “while the current administration has lined out policy plans to improve the living standards of the masses, such plans must be backed by deliberate and quick responses. As it is obvious to all, there is rising agitation owing to the rising cost of living, compounded by the increasing cost of PMS and threat of increment in electricity tariff amongst others.”

For the second day in a row, the equity market, yesterday, recorded gains as investors reacted to the recent unified exchange rate policy. The NGX All Share Index (ASI) and Market Capitalisation both closed in the positive by 3.13% respectively as investors made N992 billion gain.

In 11,947 deals, investors exchanged 1,296,655,522 shares worth N21bn. The NGX ASI year-to-date return was at 17.04% while market activities measured by volume traded increased by 9.28%.

Prince Adewole Adebayo was the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party in the 2023 general elections. In this interview, he speaks on the effects of fuel subsidy removal and unification of the exchange rate on Nigerians. Given the biting effects of the increase in fuel pump price due to the removal of subsidy, would you still label those criticising the removal of subsidy hypocrites?

There are two types of people who criticise the subsidy removal. Some of them are hypocrites and some are consistent. Those who criticise subsidy removal like me and other people, have grounds. But those who supported anyone, any platform that said they would remove subsidies from day one are hypocritical. Once you agreed to throw a five-year-old child from 10 floors of a building, you cannot say I am surprised the child broke his limbs. There is no way you will implement the policy they are implementing now that you are not going to have the same consequences. Economics does not admit cheating. You can cheat in politics, you can inflate your numbers in politics, but when it comes to economics, you can’t. You have to take the right policies. If you don’t take the right policies, the consequences of the wrong policies will follow.

What steps do you recommend as the government is also taking steps about palliatives? First, we should stop misusing the word palliative. Policy watchers shouldn’t behave as if they didn’t know what was in the offing. It appears the government is not aware of what we call monetary neutrality. When you have no food, you have no means of transportation, when you have no medicare, throwing money at you is not going to increase the number of service providers, is not going to increase the value of real goods in the market. What it is going to do is that there would be wastage; the money will not be well used. When the money gets to the end user, it is useless to them in real terms because it does not have goods to chase with the money. In the end, it may cause a little bit of inflation.

Are you saying the policy by the Tinubu administration of unification of the foreign exchange market and removal of the fuel subsidy is to help the friends of the government? I am not saying it pejoratively. In economics, everything is about choice. There are many alternative routes to development. Nigeria is a resource-rich country. I am not saying that because of the number, I am saying it because of the quality of people we have. Nigeria is rich in manpower. I think it is not too late for the government, starting with President Tinubu and co, to rethink and have a backup plan because I have a feeling and I am saying it with every sense of responsibility that if they go the way they are going, they will fail woefully. Not because they hate the people but because they are adopting models that never worked. It will surprise even President Tinubu that in the past two months, more people have entered into poverty and are yet to succeed in lifting five people out of poverty. The measures they are taking now will not help the economy. Subsidy is one out of about 2000 government programmes that require spending government money.

Zenith Bank Plc's shareholders unanimously approved the proposed final dividend payment of NGN2.80 per share at the bank's 31st Annual General Meeting (AGM), which was held yesterday in Lagos. This brings the total dividend for the 2021 financial year to N3.10 per share with a total value of NGN97.33 billion. Sir Sunny Nwosu, Chairman Emeritus of the Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria (ISAN), commented on the dividend payout and expressed the delight of shareholders over Zenith Bank's consistent dividend payments, noting that the bank's shares continue to be the talk of investors because the bank has never missed a dividend payment.

Zenith Bank Plc's shareholders unanimously approved the proposed final dividend payment of NGN2.80 per share at the bank's 31st Annual General Meeting (AGM), which was held yesterday in Lagos. This brings the total dividend for the 2021 financial year to N3.10 per share with a total value of NGN97.33 billion. Sir Sunny Nwosu, Chairman Emeritus of the Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria (ISAN), commented on the dividend payout and expressed the delight of shareholders over Zenith Bank's consistent dividend payments, noting that the bank's shares continue to be the talk of investors because the bank has never missed a dividend payment.