Fuel Scarcity: Buhari Apologies To Nigerians, Says Pump Price To Stay At N87

President Mohammadu Buhari on Tuesday apologised to Nigerians over the long queues being experienced at petrol stations across the country.

The president made the apology while presenting the 2016 budget to a joint session of the National Assembly in Abuja.

He said government was making efforts to bring an end to the shortages.

He added that the pump price of petrol will remain at N87 “for now”.

“ Government profoundly apologises to Nigerians for this prolonged hardship and misery.

“It is as a result of market speculators and resistance to change by somestakeholders.

“Government is working very hard to end these shortages and to bring fuel to the pumps all over the country,’’ he said.

He said the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had been directed to explore alternative funding models to enable government honour its obligations in Joint Ventures (JVs) and deep offshore fields.

The president expressed optimism that the measures could be achieved and would lower the burden that the traditional cash calls had imposed on the budget.

He further said it would reduce the burden on cash flows as well as contribute towards shoring up the country’s national reserves.

He said his administration would not lose focus on the need to restructure the oil and gas sector which had been marred by corruption and inefficiency.

According to him, he has directed the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) to adjust its pricing template to reflect competitive and market driven components.

“ We believe this can lower input costs and attain efficiency savings that will enable PPPRA to keep the selling price for all marketers of petrol at N87 per litre for now,’’ he said.

NAN reports that oil-related revenues are expected to contribute N820 billion in the just presented 2016 budget.

SOURCE: nigerianmonitor

Nigerian Banks Stop Use of ATM Cards Abroad

Deposit Money Banks have commenced a process to stop all customers from using their payment cards, popularly known as Automated Teller Machine cards, for dollar-denominated transactions when they travel abroad with effect from January 1, 2016.

SUNDAY PUNCH’s investigation also revealed the banks would not allow their customers to use naira-denominated ATM cards locally for transactions denominated in forex.

This means bank customers will not be able to use their cards to buy products from foreign e-commerce sites like e-bay and amazon.com in which payments are made in forex.

The development follows the lingering scarcity of foreign exchange, especially the dollar, to settle obligations arising from customers’ use of the ATM cards for forex-denominated transactions.

Already, Standard Chartered Bank has notified its customers that from January 1, 2016, they will not be able to use their naira-denominated ATM cards for transactions that are denominated in foreign currencies, either locally or when they travel abroad.

In a notice to its customers, Standard Chartered said, “This is to notify you that from January 1, 2016, your naira card will no longer be enabled for international use. This is as a result of the limited foreign exchange supply in the financial market.”

Asked how long the suspension of cards from international transactions would be, the spokesperson for Standard Chartered Nigeria, Mrs. Dayo Adurogbo, said, “We cannot give a definite date. It depends on how soon it is available. We will do everything to meet our customers’ demand once it is available.”

Further findings showed that a number of other banks had stopped customers from using their ATM cards abroad but had yet to officially communicate this to them.

Some customers told our correspondent that when they notified their banks of plans to travel and the need to enable their cards work overseas, they were simply informed that the cards could not be enabled for now due to issues relating to forex scarcity.

SUNDAY PUNCH findings showed others banks might issue notices similar to that of Standard Chartered Bank before the end of the year.

“We had some discussions recently and some top bank officials said they would stop customers from using their naira-denominated cards for international transactions due to the serious challenges in getting forex to settle their international partners,” a top bank official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, said on Friday.

The current situation means customers travelling abroad for Christmas and New Year may face severe payment challenges, a situation that may mar their shopping plans.

The fall in prices of crude oil, the main earner of foreign exchange for Nigeria, has made the nation’s forex income to reduce drastically, creating dollar scarcity crisis for the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The CBN has been rationing dollar to banks, importers and other forex users as the nation’s foreign exchange reserves continue to deplete, hitting $29.4bn on December 7, 2015.

The PUNCH had exclusively reported on Thursday that banks had cut the amount that their customers could spend using their debit and credit cards abroad by between 70 and 90 per cent. This took effect during the first week of December for the majority of the banks.

Specifically, banks cut customers’ card spending in foreign currencies from the annual $50,000 allowed by the CBN to between $5,000 and $15,000.

According to findings by our correspondent, Ecobank Nigeria Plc has reduced its limit from $50,000 to $5,000, with a maximum of $500 monthly and $100 daily expenditure.

Skye Bank Plc, in a notice to its customers via email, also slashed its international card spending limit from $50,000 to $12,000 annually, a maximum of $1,000 monthly and $100 daily.

Wema Bank Plc also slashed spending on its payment cards from $50,000 to $10,000 annually, $1,000 monthly and $100 daily.

Although other banks have yet to confirm their new international card spending limits, findings by our correspondent revealed that the new limits for most of them ranged from $5,000 to $15,000 annually, and $500 to $1,000 monthly.

SOURCE: porscheclassyng

Court 'Discharges' Nnamdi Kanu

A Magistrate Court sitting in Abuja on Wednesday, December 16, discharged the cases against the director of the Indigenous People Of Biafra Nnamdi Kanu.

At the ruling the chief magistrate, Shuaibu Usman struck out all criminal charges levelled against Kanu.

Usman said that since the State Security Services (SSS) through its lawyer Moses Idakwo had filed for a discontinuation of the case, the accused is thereby discharged.

Citing section 108 of the Administration of the Criminal Justice Act, he said the case is struck out due emerging facts by the prosecutor on the matter under investigation.

On Monday, November 23, the SSS had filed an application for the discontinuation of the case against Kanu.

Idakwo during his submissions said the facts emerging from ongoing investigation by his client – the SSS – show that the case against the Biafra agitator cannot be entertained by the magistrate court.

He said that the magistrate court lacked the jurisdiction to handle such case. Kanu was arrested on October 14 on arriving Lagos, Nigeria from the United Kingdom.

Following his arrest,  he was arraigned by the SSS before chief magistrate Usman.

But during the trial process,  the SSS obtained an order from the Federal High Court to keep Kanu in their custody for a period of 90 days.
This the SSS said will enable it conduct investigation on Kanu following allegations of terrorism and terrorism funding.

But in an objection, Kanu’s counsel, Egechukwu Obetta also applied to the same Federal High Court presided by Ademola Adeniyi to revoke the order it had given to the SSS.

He said the prosecutor had fraudulently obtained the order during an ongoing trial of the accused person at the magistrate court. Adeniyi is expected to rule on the matter on Thursday, December 17.

Kanu has also asked the court to strike out the criminal charge with reference number FHC/ABJ/ CS/873/2015 levelled against him by the SSS.

Recall that a statement published on the website of Radio Biafra on Saturday, October 17, disclosed the arrest of its director, Nnamdi Kanu, by the Department of State Services (DSS) as soon as he got to Nigeria from the United Kingdom.

SOURCE: Naij.com

A rare map of the most complex conflict on earth

The war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was one of the most complex conflicts on Earth, even before the defeat of the M23 rebel movement, perhaps the conflict's most powerful combatant, in late 2013. 

Although there are more than 1.6 million people displaced, along with frequent fighting between the Congolese government and the region's constellation of armed groups, the conflict often defies a label as straightforward as "war."

Even after M23's downfall, the region is home to scores of combatants whose motivations range from plunder, to ethnic self-defence, to overthrowing the Congolese government, to overthrowing the governments of neighbouring countries. 

Violence is occasionally aimed at the Congolese state, whose military is one of the region's major human rights abusers and a primary driver of displacement. But overall, the war in the Congo is a more like a web of mutually reinforcing social and political conditions, rather than a confrontation between easily definable ideological or political opponents.

As a result, mapping the conflict can be incredibly difficult. And the conceptual challenges aren't the only reason that territorial maps like the ones that have become familiar for followers of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq are so difficult and time-consuming to produce for the Congo.

Misinformation travels more easily than people in the DRC's mountainous and underdeveloped eastern edge. And mapping the region's armed groups requires meticulous ground-level fieldwork in a difficult and often dangerous environment.

The Congo Research Group, a project at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, has now produced a definitive map of one of the world's most severe yet least-covered and least-understood conflicts. The map, which was published in October, shows the areas of influence for 69 armed groups in the eastern Congo, displaying where these groups carry out attacks, impose taxation, or have a notable operational presence.

It's an invaluable piece of scholarship and reporting — and it shows just how complex the situation has gotten.

© Provided by Business Insider Eastern Congo MapEven with no prior knowledge of the conflict, which has endured in some form since 1996, the map conveys one of the biggest obstacles to normalcy in the region: There are too many active armed groups.

While most of them field fewer than 200 fighters each, their sheer number reflects the Congolese state's inability to exert its authority over the region, or to incentivize these groups to lay down their arms. It also reveals a lack of cohesion among combatants — and the ease with which local warlords or even political leaders can mobilize their own militias.

© Provided by Business Insider North Kivu mapThe groups are also constantly splintering and shifting. According to the Congo Research Group report that accompanied the group's map, there were 20 armed groups in the region in 2008, while the map shows the areas of influence of nearly 70 such groups.

As Christoph Vogel, a senior fellow at the Congo Research Group and one of hte creators of the CRG map, told Business Insider, the map is just a snapshot of a highly fluid ground-level situation.

"The half-life of such a mapping is extremely short as conflict in eastern Congo is constantly evolving," says Vogel, who adds that researchers learned of "two 'new' small militias just days after publishing this map."

"It is literally impossible — even for the UN mission and the government itself — to have absolutely correct and precise information on each armed group’s exact zone of control," Vogel told Business Insider.

Militias and the national military often operate in the same areas, and the offices of the central government sometimes remain open even in places where anti-government groups are strongest. "In many areas, influence is not monopolized," Vogel said.

Another built-in challenge of mapping the conflict is that the size of an armed group's area of influence also doesn't necessarily correlate with that group's actual strength.

"Some stronger groups who traditionally maintain rather tight control in small areas  appear ‘weaker’ on the map than smaller but very mobile groups covering intermittently a much larger area," Vogel said.

Even with these inherent drawbacks, the map is gives a vivid sense of how the conflict in the eastern Congo has persisted for so long — and of why even a seemingly major development like the defeat of a leading rebel movement wasn't enough to solve the region's problems.

SOURCE: msn news

EFCC docks Dasuki, Yuguda, Bafarawa others, on fresh corruption charges

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Tuesday arraigned a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki; a former Minister of State for Finance, Bashir Yuguda; a former Sokoto State Governor, Attahiru Bafarawa; Mr. Bafarawa’s son, Sagir; and others on fresh charges bordering on money laundering and criminal breach of trust.

The charges against all the accused persons are currently being read to them at Court 24 of the FCT High court, Abuja.

We will serve details on the charges and proceedings in court in subsequent updates.

The EFCC had on Monday charged Mr. Dasuki, a former Director of Finance at the Office of National Security Adviser, Shuaibu Salisu; a former General Manager at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Aminu Babakusa; Waripamowei Dudafa (now at large), a former Senior Special Assistant, Domestic Affairs to former President Goodluck Jonathan; and two firms, Acacia Holdings and Reliance Hospitals.

They were docked at the Federal High Court Abuja on a 19-count charge bordering on money laundering and criminal breach of trust.

SOURCE: Premiumtimesng

UN: Women can contribute $12 trillion to global growth

Women can contribute an additional $12 trillion to global growth by 2025, the Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Mukhisa Kituyi told Anadolu Agency on Monday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the International Forum on Women in Business held in Nairobi on Monday, Kituyi said that many economies are driven by women.

“It is the women that are always on the farms, it’s they that you find at the market, Kituyi said.

“The majority of the poor in the developing world are women, and economic opportunities, financial empowerment, access to technological capabilities is critical if women are going to realize the agenda of inclusive prosperity,” Kituyi said.

“It is the aim of this conference to bring more than 1 million women to the market by the year 2020,” he added.

Also present at the conference was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, who called on African States to empower women in business.

“Today the challenge is to move women into business, to move them from the farm and the marketplace so they can get the benefit of participation in the everyday life of the economy, and this is why this conference is vital today.”

The International Forum on Women in Business was hosted by the government of Kenya and the International Trade Centre, in conjunction with the 10th WTO Ministerial Conference in Nairobi. Policymakers, the business community and representatives of Women Business Organizations will convene to discuss actions to increase the participation of women in the economy.

SOURCE: http: msnnews

NIGERIA ARMS DEAL PROBE: ...More Revelations As The Sharing Goes On

Ex-VP, Sambo Received N20m From Dasuki Monthly- Ibrahim Idris Wambai, former Accounts 

Officer II, Office of NSA.

“In December 2014, I took cash of N4million to Col. Madaki(rtd) in his residence in Wuse II Abuja. I had made many cash payments to Doyin Okupe, Ahmad Idris (PA to ex-NSA), ADC to former First Lady Patience Jonathan as payments for monthly operation allowances.

“The documents showing evidence of the payments are in the office of Yazidu Ibrahim in cash payment files. The exact amounts paid and date of payments I cannot remember but are available in the files.

“The venue for the collection of the money was my office and the money was given to me from the cash in the strong room “So many cash payments were made on a monthly basis to the following beneficiaries: Office of the former Vice President, Arc. Namadi Sambo (N20,000,000). The money was being collected by former Deputy Chief of Staff; ADC to former President (amount not known but in cash payment files; Chief Personal physician to former President Goodluck Jonathan; former coordinator on anti-terrorism, Gen. Sarkin Yaki; former Director PC4, Gen. Terba Waya (rtd); Personal Assistant, Domestic Affairs to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.

“The amounts and frequency of payments to the beneficiaries as well as the list of other beneficiaries are in the cash payment files

“I also witnessed several payments in cash to various people. Prominent was about payment of N300million to former Chairman on Security and Intelligence, Dr. Bello Matawalle from the cash in the strong room.

“To get details of cash payments in Naira and individuals and organizations summary and vouchers from January 2011 to July 2015, the documents are kept in Yazidu Ibrahim’s former office. These should be collected from the Director of Finance and Administration, Col. Jafaru Mohammed. I and Yazidu Ibrahim can supply the files and the summary.

"(Five firms were used to transfer money from the ONSA). The amounts of the five companies are ACACIA Holdings Limited (N600,000,000) via account no. 1017330319 with UBA and N650million via account no. 0122012650 with ECOBANK Nigeria Limited; Reliance Referral Hospital Limited (N750m) via account no.2022394057 with First Bank Nigeria Plc; Jabbama Global Nigeria Limited(N400m) via account no. 1013898095 with Zenith Bank; Continental Development etc.”

SOURCE: PM News