Category: General News

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has advised banks and other financial institutions in the country to be transparent in their dealings in order to build customers’ confidence.

Mr Kofo Salam-Alada, the Director, Consumer Protection Department of CBN gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

Salam-Alada said Nigerian banks  and other financial institutions rendering financial services must be transparent and ensure fair treatment to customers.

“For banks to keep their customers and ensure they remain in business, there is the need to build confidence of customers and ensure that they are happy with the services provided by the banks.

“What we are doing here is to help the business of the banks and our expectation is that at certain stage, the regulators will have less to do in terms of market conduct.

“A satisfied customer goes out to advertise the bank because to me, good  treatment of customers should be the best advertisement for banking business, capital market, and Insurance among others.

“If thousands or million of bank’s customers decide to withdraw their money from a particular bank, it will affect the health of such bank,” he said.

The director said that due to what happened in the past in the sector, had made  the apex bank to put measures in place to ensure that consumers of financial services were protected.

He said that investigations CBN had shown that the neglect of customers had contributed to the global financial crisis experienced worldwide in 2007 and 2008.

Salam-Alada assured all customers of financial institutions in the country that CBN would ensure that all their investments were protected.

He also advised the banks to stick to the rules and operate within the confines of set out financial regulations.

According to him, CBN will not leave any stone unturned to grow their businesses and will continue to put necessary regulations in place for them to thrive. (NAN)

A Financial Expert, Prof. Uche Uwaleke has advised the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to reduce the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) by 50 basis points.

Uwaleke gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday ahead of the MPC meeting scheduled to hold on Tuesday, July 23 in Abuja.

He said it was also pertinent for the committee to maintain 30 per cent Liquidity Ratio and 22.5 Cash Reserve Ratio.

According to him, the call for adjustment of MPR is due to declining inflation rate from 11.35 per cent in May to 11.20 per cent in June as well as the growing external reserves and stability in exchange rate.

Uwaleke said the reduction was also necessary because of persistent bearish performance of the stock market due to high interest rates.

The expert said a gradual reduction in the MPR which was the benchmark interest rate was consistent with the CBN Governor’s pro-growth five-year blueprint which he unveiled recently.

Uwaleke, also a professor of Capital Market at the Nasarawa State University Keffi, emphasised that further adjustment was also in line with global trend as the United States and many other economies were pursuing an expansionary monetary policy.

“Reducing the MPR from 13.5 per cent to 13 per cent will still leave real interest rate in the economy positive and it will also most likely result in increased lending to the real sector.

“This is the expectation, especially now that the CBN is encouraging this including through specifying for banks a minimum of 60 per cent of deposits which must be channelled to the real sector,” he said.

Uwaleke noted that relaxing the MPR would also increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth which was presently put at 2.01 per cent as at first quarter of 2019.

He said that besides, the risk to inflation arising from the new national minimum wage might not crystallise while threat to food production due to farmers and herders conflict was no more as rife as it was previously. (NAN)

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta are to be given Niger Delta Leadership Awards 2018 by Gbaramatu Voice Newspaper, a multi-media organisation.

The award ceremony will hold at Transcorp Hotel in Abuja on Aug. 8.

Mr Jacob Abai, the Publisher of the newspaper, said in Lagos on Sunday that the awards were to reward excellence in governance.

“GbaramatuVoice wishes to announce the name of the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, as winner of Niger Delta Peace Laureate of the year award for going out of his way in sustaining peace in Niger Delta through his lectures, townhall meetings, consultations and discourses.

“His Excellency, Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta, is Niger Delta Best Governor of the year on Grassroots and Rural Community Development,” he said.

Others to be awarded are the environmental rights activist and the Special Adviser to Former President Goodluck Jonathan on Niger Delta Affairs and the Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Hon. Kingsley Kuku, who is to receive Lifetime Achivement Award.

The Chairman of Niger Delta Bishops’ Forum, Archbishop Goddowell Avwomakpa, and Comrade Joseph Evah, the Coordinator of Ijaw Monitoring Group, are also to receive Lifetime Achivement Award.

“Mr Matthew Tonlagha will receive the Niger Delta Philantropist of the year award.

“Comrade Sammy George, Chairman, Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, Rivers State will receive Niger Delta Most Active Youth Leader Award of the year for Peace, while Environmental Justice (CEPEJ), a Niger Delta based NGO, will receive Niger Delta Most Outstanding NGO of the Year award.

“Ijaw Women of America Inc, based in the U.S., will receive the Niger Delta International Most Outstanding Women Organisation Award for building solar power borehole in five Niger Delta communities.

“Comrade Daniel Ezekiel, a Niger Delta Human rights activist, will receive the Niger Delta Humanitarian Service of the year award for advocating for the rights of the common man.

“Comrade Esimaje Awani, a fomer President of Itsekiri National Youth Council, will receive Niger Delta Most Outstanding Youth Leader award, while Chief Barriater Smooth, Niger Delta Music Icon award.”

He said Chief Timipre Sylva, a former Governor of Bayelsa, would be the chairman of the occasion, while Deacon KIngsley Otuaro, the Deputy Governor of Delta would be the Chief Host.

“Prof. Yakubu Aboki Ochefu, the Chairman of Aboki Publsihers and Investment Limited will be the keynote speaker, while Prof. Tosam Harriman, Director, Centre for the Development of Social Research in Nigeria, Kano, will be the speaker.

“Royal Fathers of the Day are His Majesties, Oboro-Gbaraun II, Aketekpe, Agadagba, Pere of Gbaramati Kingdom, His Majesty, Elder (Capt.) Joseph Timiyan, Ebenanawei of Ogulagha kingdom and others.”

Abai said that the awards were created in 2015 to recognize individuals and collective contributions to the Niger Delta, “especially those undervalued and unrecognized people who are making a difference in various areas”.

“All across the Niger Delta, the nominees have demonstrated exceptional works through their philanthropism, environmental awareness, love for the Niger Delta, community service, rule of law and sundry issues,” he said.

He said that the nominees were named after a thorough scrutiny by independent evaluators.

“Categories of awards for which nominees have been shortlisted include Niger Delta Governor, philanthropist, woman, musician, Showbiz impresario, business personality, cooporate organisation, legislator and sports personality of the year.” NAN)

Four Turkish nationals were Saturday night abducted at a local drinking joint at Gbale village,  Edu Local Government Area of Kwara State.

This is coming barely one week after attacked a cargo ship off the coast of Nigeria and kidnapped 10 Turkish sailors.

The captives, identified as Yasin Colak, 33; Senerapal, 40; Ergun Yurdakul, 35 and Seyit Keklik, 25, were said to be working with Instabul concrete limited, Gbale.

The spokesman of the state police command, Ajayi Okasanmi, said the Commissioner of Police had dispatched men of Operation Puff Adder to rescue the captives and arrest the captors.

Meanwhile, Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, in a statement by his spokesman, Rafiu Ajakaye, said he was working with the security agencies to ensure rescue of the abductees.

The governor urged for calm.

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Amnesty and the power of the new WordPress editor

In the short video below, you’ll see a quick overview of what it’s like to build new sites quickly and publish and manage content in Amnesty’s new platform launching in September.

Agency partner Big Bite has built an entirely new site platform for Nobel Peace Prize Winner Amnesty International, with the new WordPress editor as its foundation, via the Gutenberg plugin. They focused on developing custom blocks and a core theme that serves as the heart of Amnesty’s digital efforts moving forward. More than a new site, this is a framework for applying consistent brand identity, design, and user experience standards to many new sites and for allowing creators to spin up new, powerful sites quickly and with ease. And as a part of Big Bite’s and Amnesty’s shared commitment to giving back to the community, large parts of the project will be released as open source components for anyone to use.

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We knew you’d ask that and we have you covered! We developed a series of educational videos for both users and developers that are working with Gutenberg. These address questions such as converting ACF and CMB2 to Gutenberg and how to control access to blocks.

Go to vipgutenberg.com and register with your work email to access them. Not a VIP client, that’s okay too. We developed a separate set of videos available to anyone in the community.

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“This looks awesome, but I’m not ready to use this everywhere.”

By Theme Author

It's like we read your mind. We developed the Gutenberg Ramp plugin for just this reason. On your VIP Go sites, you can now load Gutenberg everywhere, or selectively by post ID (load only for specific posts) and post type (load only for specific post types). Find complete instructions at this helpful page.

We recommend that you load it up in a VIP Go development environment first. If you don’t have a development environment on which to test, now’s a great time to get one set up. Just open up a ticket with our Support team and we can get a development site set up for you. Unless otherwise requested, we’ll sync the content from your live site so you can get a true sense of how Gutenberg will work for you. If you already have a development environment and would prefer not to disturb that, we can create an additional Gutenberg testing environment instead. Not to worry, in either case content changes here will not affect the content on your live site.

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“I’m totally ready to use this but uh, my friend isn’t. My friend wants to know what happens when WordPress 5.0 is released.”

As exciting as it is, we know very well that many of you have extensive integrations with the current WordPress editor and will want a gradual transition. We are here to help you evaluate the impacts ahead of the WordPress.com 5.0 rollout, test out the new components in their current state, plan a smooth transition, and make decisions about the best way to update your roadmaps.

We will manage the release of WordPress 5.0 to make the process smooth and opt-in for VIP clients. However, it’s a good idea to start experimenting and creating content in Gutenberg right away.

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“It sounds like VIP thought of everything, now what?”

Posts by themeinwp

That was our goal, but this is still very much a fluid situation. We will be communicating Gutenberg rollout updates in the VIP Lobby and showcasing the power of Gutenberg in our VIP News site as the project continues. This page will continue to be your guide to our latest documentation and news. Most importantly, as you test the plugin and begin to assess plans for the rollout, please reach out to your VIP support team. We’re here to help!

Popular afro pop singer, Akintoye Balogun a.k.a Ajebutter and Joseph Donus, a.k.a Joeboy, thrilled Abuja music fans at a Food Expo event on Sunday in Abuja.

News Agency of Nigeria reports that the show, tagged’:’Summer Fiesta’  took place at the River Plate Park in Wuse II.

Joeboy performed his popular song “Baby” alongside some of his other popular hit music and caused a wild stir among the crowd.

As he performed a medley of his hit songs, the fun seekers were heard screaming the songs’ lyrics and dancing excitedly.

Ajebutter22 who surprised the crowd with his appearance as he was not expected to perform by fun seekers, sang several of his hit songs.

He had Abuja music fans  roar towards him as they chorused the lyrics to one of his major hit songs “Ghana bounce”.

Th event featured musical performances by upcoming Abuja artists, face painting, display of foods, drinks, dance performances, food challenges and clothes sales.

It also provided space for vendors and food enthusiasts, who tasted a unique mix of meals and delicacies from several notable brands in Nigeria.

The management of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), says it has issued suspension and disconnection orders to Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO) from the electricity market.

The suspension order  was posted on  TCN’s twitter handle @TCN_Nigeria on Sunday.

According to the twitter handle,  the suspension order was as result of KEDCO’s default in the Market Conditions/Market Participation Agreements. (NAN)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy using the new publishing tools at their disposal. Not convinced that the new WordPress editor is powerful enough for enterprise clients? Think again! 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

This is just one of many different gallery layouts you can use!

We encourage all VIP clients across WordPress roles to get hands-on experience testing the new editor as soon as possible. You can even use this site to try out and work with the latest version of Gutenberg in a safe front-end experience. There are helpful reference links in the left sidebar of that site, and a survey link to share your experiences with the team.

---

Amnesty and the power of the new WordPress editor

In the short video below, you’ll see a quick overview of what it’s like to build new sites quickly and publish and manage content in Amnesty’s new platform launching in September.

Agency partner Big Bite has built an entirely new site platform for Nobel Peace Prize Winner Amnesty International, with the new WordPress editor as its foundation, via the Gutenberg plugin. They focused on developing custom blocks and a core theme that serves as the heart of Amnesty’s digital efforts moving forward. More than a new site, this is a framework for applying consistent brand identity, design, and user experience standards to many new sites and for allowing creators to spin up new, powerful sites quickly and with ease. And as a part of Big Bite’s and Amnesty’s shared commitment to giving back to the community, large parts of the project will be released as open source components for anyone to use.

---

“Whoa, how do I do that?”

We knew you’d ask that and we have you covered! We developed a series of educational videos for both users and developers that are working with Gutenberg. These address questions such as converting ACF and CMB2 to Gutenberg and how to control access to blocks.

Go to vipgutenberg.com and register with your work email to access them. Not a VIP client, that’s okay too. We developed a separate set of videos available to anyone in the community.

---

“This looks awesome, but I’m not ready to use this everywhere.”

By Theme Author

It's like we read your mind. We developed the Gutenberg Ramp plugin for just this reason. On your VIP Go sites, you can now load Gutenberg everywhere, or selectively by post ID (load only for specific posts) and post type (load only for specific post types). Find complete instructions at this helpful page.

We recommend that you load it up in a VIP Go development environment first. If you don’t have a development environment on which to test, now’s a great time to get one set up. Just open up a ticket with our Support team and we can get a development site set up for you. Unless otherwise requested, we’ll sync the content from your live site so you can get a true sense of how Gutenberg will work for you. If you already have a development environment and would prefer not to disturb that, we can create an additional Gutenberg testing environment instead. Not to worry, in either case content changes here will not affect the content on your live site.

---

“I’m totally ready to use this but uh, my friend isn’t. My friend wants to know what happens when WordPress 5.0 is released.”

As exciting as it is, we know very well that many of you have extensive integrations with the current WordPress editor and will want a gradual transition. We are here to help you evaluate the impacts ahead of the WordPress.com 5.0 rollout, test out the new components in their current state, plan a smooth transition, and make decisions about the best way to update your roadmaps.

We will manage the release of WordPress 5.0 to make the process smooth and opt-in for VIP clients. However, it’s a good idea to start experimenting and creating content in Gutenberg right away.

---

“It sounds like VIP thought of everything, now what?”

Posts by themeinwp

That was our goal, but this is still very much a fluid situation. We will be communicating Gutenberg rollout updates in the VIP Lobby and showcasing the power of Gutenberg in our VIP News site as the project continues. This page will continue to be your guide to our latest documentation and news. Most importantly, as you test the plugin and begin to assess plans for the rollout, please reach out to your VIP support team. We’re here to help!

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said it recorded a trade surplus of N6.33 billon for the month of May, 13 per cent higher than the N5.60 billion surplus made  in April .

The corporation disclosed this in its Monthly and Operations report (MFOR) released on Sunday in Abuja

It attributed the rise to the increase in gas and power output and surplus recorded by the corporation’s downstream entities like NNPC Retail, Petroleum Products Marketing Company(PPMC) , Nigerian Pipelines Security Company(NPSC) and Duke Oil.

The report further indicated that within the period, the NNPC recorded a total of 580.32 million dollars in export sale of crude oil and gas which is 23.39 per cent higher than the previous month’s figure.

” Out of this number, crude oil export sales contributed 458.59 million dollars which translates to 79.02 per cent of the entire dollar transactions compared with 342.11 million dollars contributed in the month of May,” it said

It also showed that between May 2018 and May 2019, crude oil and gas worth 5.97 billion dollars was exported.

On the downstream, the report noted that for the corporation to ensure uninterrupted supply and effective distribution of petrol across the country, a total of 2.06 billion litres of petrol translating to 66.49mn liters/day were supplied for the month of May.

It noted that beyond supply, the corporation continued to monitor the daily stock of petrol to achieve smooth distribution of petroleum products and zero fuel queue across the nation.

“Within the period, a total of 60 pipeline points were vandalized which represents 52 per cent decrease from the 125 points vandalized in April.

“The Atlas Cove-Mosimi and Ibadan-Ilorin pipelines accounted for 38 per cent and 23 per cent respectively and other locations accounted for the remaining 39 percent of the total breaks,” the report said.

The report attributed the improvement to the spirited efforts by NNPC in collaboration with the local communities and other stakeholders to continuously strive to reduce and eventually eliminate this menace.

The May 2019 NNPC MFOR is the 46th in the series, designed to provide greater transparency and remove the perception of opacity associated with the operations of the national oil company.

It will be recalled that the new NNPC Group of managing Director Malam Mele Kyari and his team had pledged to enhance the current approach to encourage increased citizenship participation and greater accountability to the public.(NAN)