Headline Stories

Fuel queues returned to Nigerian cities Monday as many motorists scrambled to get petroleum products hours after President Bola Tinubu announced that the government will put an end to the fuel subsidy regime.

Mr Tinubu on Monday in his inaugural address at Eagle Square, Abuja, declared that there would no longer be a petroleum subsidy regime as it was not sustainable.

As the Muhammadu Buhari eight-year reign ends on 29 May, Nigerians continue to reflect on the various challenges faced in the petroleum sector and how it affected their livelihood.

During the electioneering period in 2015, Mr Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), criticised the incumbent government of Goodluck Jonathan for failing to solve the country’s unending petroleum sector crises.

Mustapha Taofeek said he stopped using PoS – points of sale vendors that have significantly changed how Nigerians conduct daily financial transactions – two years ago.

In August 2020, a week after making cash withdrawal from a vendor, Mr Taofeek said he received a N10,000 debit notification he never authorised. While trying to confirm details of the transfer, he received another notification on his phone, then another, and some more. His bank reported total debit of N486,000 that day.

Nigeria on Tuesday lost its $1.7 billion claim against JP Morgan Chase Bank over the transfer of proceeds from the sale of OPL 245 in the controversial Malabu oil deal.

Judge Sara Cockerill ruled Tuesday that the Nigerian government couldn’t show that it had been defrauded in the case.

The Nigerian government’s ambition of urging informal sector workers to save for retirement when they could barely earn enough to survive today, amid growing poverty and rising cost of living, is delivering a predictable outcome. The government hopes to enroll 8 million people in five years but in three years it has only managed to register 77,689, less than one per cent of the projected figure.

Nigeria’s wobbly national electricity grid has collapsed yet again, throwing several cities including the federal capital Abuja into darkness.

Electricity companies announced late Sunday that the collapse occurred just before 7pm.

It is the sixth reported collapse in 2022, although it is believed the figure could be higher.

The government blames poor management and low gas supply as the major causes of the repeated breakdown.

After Silifatu Adefila concluded her weekend chores at 11 a.m. on February 26, she dashed to Oja Oba, a market newly created by the Olusin of Ijara-Isin, the traditional ruler of her small town in the southern part of Kwara State, North-central Nigeria.

Mrs Adefila’s mission was not to buy or sell at the market but to get vouchers usually shared by the king at the market every Saturday.

Funlola Abdulsamad’s first-hand knowledge of how women entrepreneurs could access financial support and other services came in the form of a humiliating episode at Odo Ori market in Iwo, Osun State, in 2017.

About 98 per cent of Nigerian women are left out of formal credit markets, unable to obtain loans from formal financial institutions like banks, a new report has said.

Only about 45 per cent of adult Nigerians borrow at all from the formal sector, said the report by the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisor’s Gender Centre of Excellence –a centre established to be a resource centre and knowledge hub on advancing women’s financial inclusion in Nigeria.

The payments unit of MTN Nigeria Communications Plc – MoMo Payment Service Bank (Momo PSB) began commercial operations on Thursday, the telecom said in a statement, the same day rival Airtel Africa announced similar move by its fintech arm SmartCash PSB.

“This is an important milestone for MTN Nigeria in our mission to support the government’s drive towards financial inclusion in Nigeria,” said MTN Nigeria’s CEO Karl Toriola.