NIMASA Reduces Cargo Manifest Processing Time

By Adedapo Adesanya The Supreme Court has ordered that the old N200, N500, and N1,000 notes should continue to co-exist with the new banknotes beyond the earlier December 31, 2023, deadline. The apex court ruled on Wednesday that both old and new notes should continue to remain legal tender until the federal government puts a process in place for its replacement or redesign after due consultation with relevant stakeholders. The seven-man panel led by Justice Inyang Okoro gave the ruling following an application by the central government asking the court to grant an extension of time for old naira notes

By Adedapo Adesanya The prices of oil benchmarks jumped by 2 per cent on Tuesday on the fresh possibility that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) will extend or deepen supply cuts. Data showed that Brent crude futures gained $1.70 or 2.1 per cent to close at $81.68 a barrel and the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude increased by $1.55 or 2.1 per cent to $76.41 per barrel after a drop in Kazakh oil output and a weaker US Dollar. OPEC+ is due to hold an online ministerial meeting on Thursday to discuss 2024

By Modupe Gbadeyanka The chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr Zacch Adedeji, has asked his counterpart in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr Ola Olukoyede, to support his agency to achieve the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu, who appointed both of them. Speaking during a courtesy visit to the headquarters of the anti-money laundering firm, Mr Adedeji said the EFCC has a role in ensuring that taxpayers’ funds are “judiciously utilised in line with the social contract with the people.” He assured that the FIRS would continue to strive to raise the revenue

By Modupe Gbadeyanka A popular online news platform in Nigeria, Sahara Reporters, has leaked details of the ailments President Muhammadu Buhari have been hiding from Nigerians since he assumed office in 2015. According to the report, Mr Buhari is allegedly suffering from prostrate cancer, dementia, Crohn’s disease and sickle cell anaemia. In the confidential study on the President’s health made available to SaharaReporters, it was revealed that the prostate cancer afflicting him “may have become incurable”. To reach its conclusions, the report examined a string of issues, including the timeline of the President’s international travels alongside medical assessment, the travel

By Adedapo Adesanya The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and other telecoms regulators under the auspices of West African Telecoms Regulators Assembly (WATRA) are set to develop technical and regulatory modalities to combat the rising wave of cyber-related frauds in the African sub-region. This is as the regulators seek to achieve the standardisation of roaming tariffs among member-states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). This followed a two-day meeting organised by WATRA in collaboration with the bloc which was attended by representatives of telecoms regulators from countries across West Africa. According to a statement signed by NCC’s  Director

By Dipo Olowookere It was a woeful year for the independent manufacturer and distributor of the well-known and widely consumed brands of soft drinks, 7up Bottling Company Plc, as the economic situation took its toll on the firm. In its financial year ended March 31, 2017, the company suffered a loss of N10.7 billion, making the firm not to pay dividend to its shareholders this year against N1.60 per share paid to them last year. This is the first time in five years the firm was not paying dividend to its shareholders. Business Post observed that 7up Bottling Company Plc

By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh On January 30, Belarusian President, Alexander Lukashenko, paid a working visit to hand over in a special ceremony Belarusian agricultural vehicles, tractors and equipment to President Emmerson Mnangagwa in Harare, Zimbabwe. “First of all, I want to thank the Americans and the entire Western world for having imposed sanctions against us. Otherwise, American and German tractors would have come instead of Belarusian ones to this huge field,” Lukashenko said. The Belarusian leader noted that in Zimbabwe, there are the friends of Belarus, with whom Minsk is building cooperation for the sake of achieving the common good.

By Dipo Olowookere Former Premier League winner, Claudio Ranieri, has been relieved of his managerial job at London-based football outfit, Fulham. Ranieri, who won the league with Leicester City in 2016, was shown the way out after just 16 games in charge of Fulham, which was among the three clubs promoted to the senior division this season. On Wednesday night, the Italian led the club to a 2-0 defeat by Southampton, which left the Cottagers 19th in the Premier League, 10 points from safety with 10 games left. “Claudio walked into a difficult situation, inheriting a side that gained only

By Comrade Ogaga Darlington Ossai According to the UN Charter, the concept of gender equality has been established within the core guiding principles of the United Nations and unequivocally reflects a commitment to the equality of men and women in all aspects of human endeavour. More specifically, the Charter of the United Nations (Articles 8 and 101) stipulates that there shall be no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in every capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs. Again, according to the Beijing Declaration for Action in the section on Women

By Ahmed Rahma The United States of America President-elect, Mr Joe Biden, has appointed a 26-year-old Nigerian-American, Mrs Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo, as a White House counsel. This was announced in a statement on Biden-Harris transition website. According to the statement, Mrs Badejo, a lawyer and an alumna of Berkeley Law College in the US, had served as a counsel for policy to the assistant attorney general in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Ethics Counsel at the White House Counsel’s Office and Attorney Advisor at the Administrative Conference of the United States during the Obama-Biden administration. She

By Adedapo Adesanya The Supreme Court has affirmed the six years of imprisonment imposed on a former Federal Director of Pensions (FDP), Mr John Yakubu Yusuf, and also ordered him to refund the sum of N22.9 billion to the federal government. The N22.9 billion was part of the police pension fund he admitted before a high court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja to have been misappropriated. Justice Tijjani Abubakar in a judgment on Wednesday, following an appeal filed by Mr Yusuf, upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal which in 2018 sent him to six years imprisonment