Economy
Nigeria—No be Juju be this?
By Prince Charles Dickson PhD
This is not just primitive rural superstition; [juju] is practised by all kinds of people, from illiterate herd boys to multi-degreed university professors. If you don’t understand the power of this belief, you will never truly grasp the rich albeit often incomprehensible spirituality of Africa. Lawrence Anthony, The Elephant Whisperer.
Nobody respects the law of Nigeria. Judges don’t. Police don’t. Lawyers don’t. Politicians don’t. Citizens don’t. Why? Because there are no consequences. Those who fear the laws are the downtrodden who have no godfathers. That is why stealing a goat is more dangerous than stealing billions. Nigeria is a country of absurdities. J. S. Okutepa. (SAN)
No be juju be this…
So, wetin be or what is juju?
juju; plural noun: jujus.
A charm or fetish, especially of a type used by some West African peoples. Supernatural power attributed to a charm or fetish. “Juju and witchcraft”.
Juju, an object that has been deliberately infused with magical power or the magical power itself; it also can refer to the belief system involving the use of juju. Juju is practised in West African countries such as Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Ghana, although its assumptions are shared by most African people.
Juju comes from the traditional African religion popularly known as voodoo. Juju refers specifically to objects used in conjunction with spells or curses, and like any practice or belief, it can be manipulated to create power over people.
Witches and juju things are absolutely fascinating—they can fly on broomsticks, do magic spells with their wands and stir up incredible potions in their cauldrons. They can ask for and do the unimaginable. In Nigeria, it is just about the unthinkable things they can and cannot do or are held liable for doing or not allowing to happen.
The Harry Potter books for example have made witches (and wizards) really cool recently – who wouldn’t want to be as smart as Hermione Granger, as brave as Ginny Weasley or play Quidditch as well as Cho Chang? However, in Nigeria, it is about child rights abuse and killings.
This admonition is not about juju or witchcraft but it is about juju and the witchcraft ‘worrying’ Nigeria. Kindly follow me for the next few paragraphs and then we can share thoughts.
Almost eight years and the government could not get one refinery working at full capacity, providing employment and serving Nigerians in a land blessed with the resources. A nation of all typologies of expertise in the oil sector and still cannot simply have an agreement on whether there is subsidy or not and what to do with it—no be juju be that!
Police follow PHCN abi DisCo officials to disconnect electricity from another police station. Meanwhile, DisCo is indebted to the Water Board and the Water Board is indebted to local contractors that supply purifying chemicals and the contractors cannot pay local tax because they are indebted to the local electrician who repairs household electronics destroyed as a result of terrible electricity current supplied to homes. We have changed names, balkanized the utility company, privatized it, funded it yet the energy problem persists, it is one hellish vicious cycle—No be juju be that!
How many times have you seen policemen wear protective gloves, or collect forensic evidence? Do we have a data bank? A country of different data capture for NIN, another for driver’s licence, another for BVN, even another set of data for ‘unavailable’ Nigerian passports (printed in another country). Yet, there’s ‘no-go-to’ data bank, wait…have you seen a desktop in a local police station, not-to-talk of a laptop, apart from the ‘big boys’—No be juju be that!
We close factories to build places of worship and then pray for jobs, every national celebration has an interdenominational service and Juma’at prayers as accompaniment, yet we are a religiously wicked people. Every Christian with his personal juju-man, and every Muslim her own ‘boka-man’. We do interfaith prayers at official events, meetings and steal afterwards, and then do thanksgiving; saying ‘na God ooo’—No be juju be that!
A government official builds a hospital and calls it world-class, and yet he goes to another country for healthcare. They commission schools they describe as world-class and yet they are kids, are schooling in puppet colleges in other climes. They live in villages and build castles in the US, and beg these dudes for aid and loans—no be juju be that!
We are venting on power relations across balance of the geographical spread called Nigeria. In other words, we want power to go the South, the North has had its share, we are talking Muslim-Muslim ticket, and can’t say Christian-Christian ticket. No one is talking about the Ogboni-Krishna ticket.
Sadly, we are stuck with if the President is from here the Vice must be from there in the only nation with the aberrations such as South-South, North East, North West, South East and too many juju-like political expediency laced necessities such as federal character, catchment area, indigene and non-indigene, educationally disadvantaged; still no way, In fact, historically, we have no history so we cannot agree on who is at fault or what the solution is—No be juju be that!
Who remembers in 2015, the Witches and Wizards Association of Nigeria (WITZAN) announced that it had endorsed Goodluck Jonathan as its candidate for the 2015 presidential election.
“We just held a meeting of witches in Kogi State where it was revealed to me that Jonathan would win the presidential election. He has the support of all witches to continue in office,” said a certain Dr Iboi, the President of the association.
Well, we can see that WITZAN’s pick ended up not winning the race. The following year, WITZAN made a cry for help, as the association released a statement for Nigerians to stop persecuting them, we are waiting for them towards 2023—no be juju be that!
Last week in the news, brother and mother colluded to murder a sibling. Another son attempted to kill his mother. Young lads ate their ‘poo’ in public and in the same week, three lads, the oldest being 20, beheaded the girlfriend of one of them, all for money ritual. A trend that has seen a scary rise in the last two years, and being the pretentious people that we are, acting like it’s new, only a few years back it was ‘panties stealing’ and till date, nobody has been arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and jailed—no be juju be that!
Our Federal Road Safety Corps Officers only work during the day and close by 5:00 pm and the roads can be left unsafe at night. Nigerians cannot be ‘de-jujulized’ by praying, by big grammar, by protests, the juju has to be engaged, the gatekeepers of power and resources in Nigeria are not up to 5000 but their juju is strong and is holding the nation down.
It is a sad reality that 2023 really does not offer much if we refuse to address the witchcraft that has beset the motherland if we refuse to see that all is not well and keep behaving like a bewitched people, a big storm is not far away, and if we don’t act, the disaster that looms—Only time will tell.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The domestic supply of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, from the Dangote Refinery increased by 64.4 percent in December 2025, contributing to an enhancement in Nigeria’s overall petrol availability.
This is according to the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) in its December 2025 Factsheet Report released on Thursday.
The downstream regulatory agency revealed that the private refinery raised its domestic petrol supply from 19.47 million litres per day in November 2025 to an average of 32.012 million litres per day in December, as it quelled any probable fuel scarcity associated with the festive month.
The report attributed the improvement to more substantial capacity utilisation at the Lagos-based oil facility, which reached a peak of 71 per cent in December.
The increased output from Dangote Refinery contributed to a rise in Nigeria’s total daily domestic PMS supply to 74.2 million litres in December, up from 71.5 million litres per day recorded in November.
The authority also reported a sharp increase in petrol consumption, rising to 63.7 million litres per day in December 2025, up from 52.9 million litres per day in the previous month.
In contrast, the domestic supply of Automotive Gas Oil (AGO) known as diesel declined to 17.9 million litres per day in December from 20.4 million litres per day in November, even as daily diesel consumption increased to 16.4 million litres per day from 15.4 million litres per day.
Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) supply recorded modest growth during the period, rising to 5.2 metric tonnes per day in December from 5.0 metric tonnes per day in November.
Despite the gains recorded by Dangote Refinery and modular refineries, the NMDPRA disclosed that Nigeria’s four state-owned refineries recorded zero production in December.
It said the Port Harcourt Refinery remained shut down, though evacuation of diesel produced before May 24, 2025, averaged 0.247 million litres per day. The Warri and Kaduna refineries also remained shut down throughout the period.
On modular refineries, the report said Waltersmith Refinery (Train 2 with 5,000 barrels per day) completed pre-commissioning in December, with hydrocarbon introduction expected in January 2026. The refinery recorded an average capacity utilisation of 63.24 per cent and an average AGO supply of 0.051 million litres per day
Edo Refinery posted an average capacity utilisation of 85.43 per cent with AGO supply of 0.052 million litres per day, while Aradel recorded 53.89 per cent utilisation and supplied an average of 0.289 million litres per day of AGO.
Total AGO supply from the three modular refineries averaged 0.392 million litres per day, with other products including naphtha, heavy hydrocarbon kerosene (HHK), fuel oil, and marine diesel oil (MDO).
The report listed Nigeria’s 2025 daily consumption benchmarks as 50 million litres per day for petrol, 14 million litres per day for diesel, 3 million litres per day for aviation fuel (ATK), and 3,900 metric tonnes per day for cooking gas.
Actual daily truck-out consumption in December stood at 63.7 million litres per day for petrol, 16.4 million litres per day for diesel, 2.7 million litres per day for ATK and 4,380 metric tonnes per day for cooking gas.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has introduced a comprehensive revision of minimum capital requirements for nearly all capital market operators, marking the most significant overhaul since 2015.
The changes, outlined in a circular issued on January 16, 2026, obtained from its website on Friday, replace the previous regime. Operators have been given until June 30, 2027, to comply.
The SEC stated that the reforms aim to strengthen market resilience, enhance investor protection, discourage undercapitalised operators, and align capital adequacy with the evolving risk profile of market activities.
According to the circular, “The revised framework applies to brokers, dealers, fund managers, issuing houses, fintech firms, digital asset operators, and market infrastructure providers.”
Some of the key highlights of the new reforms include increment of minimum capital for brokers from N200 million to N600 million while for dealers, it was raised to N1 billion from N100 million.
For broker-dealers, they are to get N2 billion instead of the previous N300 million, reflecting multi-role exposure across trading, execution, and margin lending.
The agency said fund and portfolio managers with assets above N20 billion must hold N5 billion, while mid-tier managers must maintain N2 billion with private equity and venture capital firms to have N500 million and N200 million, respectively.
There was also dynamic rule as firms managing assets above N100 billion must hold at least 10 per cent of assets under management as capital.
“Digital asset firms, previously in a regulatory grey area, are now fully covered: digital exchanges and custodians must maintain N2 billion each, while tokenisation platforms and intermediaries face thresholds of N500 million to N1 billion. Robo-advisers must hold N100 million.
“Other segments are also affected: issuing houses offering full underwriting services must hold N7 billion, advisory-only firms N2 billion, registrars N2.5 billion, trustees N2 billion, underwriters N5 billion, and individual investment advisers N10 million. Market infrastructure providers carry some of the highest obligations, with composite exchanges and central counterparties required to maintain N10 billion each, and clearinghouses N5 billion,” the SEC added.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The founder and chief executive of Austin Laz and Company Plc, Mr Asimonye Austin Lazarus Azubuike, has sold off about 52.24 million shares of the organisation.
The stocks were offloaded in 11 tranches at an average price of N4.36 per unit, amounting to about N227.8 million.
The transactions occurred between December 2025 and January 2026, according to a notice filed by the company to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Friday.
Business Post reports that Austin Laz is known for producing ice block machines, aluminium roofing, thermoplastics coolers, PVC windows and doors, ice cream machines, and disposable plates.
The firm evolved from refrigeration sales to diverse manufacturing since its incorporation in 1982 in Benin City, Edo State, though facing recent operational halts.
According to the statement signed by company secretary, Ifeanyi Offor & Associates, Mr Azubuike first sold 1.5 million units of the equities at N2.42, and then offloaded 2.4 million units at N2.65, and 2.0 million units at N2.65.
In another tranche, he sold another 2.0 million units at a unit price of N2.91, and then 5.0 million units at N3.52, as well as about 4.5 million at N3.87 per share.
It was further disclosed that the owner of the company also sold 9.0 million shares at N4.25, and offloaded another 368,411 units at N4.66, then in another transaction sold about 6.9 million units at N4.67.
In the last two transactions he carried out, Mr Azubuike first traded 10.0 million units equities at N5.13, with the last being 8.5 million stocks sold at N5.64 per unit.
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