Two months after Teleology Holdings received approval to take over the operations of 9mobile as the preferred bidder, the company has expressed its dissatisfaction over the business relationship with its local partner, and has decided to pull out of the 9mobile project. This puts the $50 million initial deposit paid for the acquisition of 9mobile by Teleology Holdings, in jeopardy. ThisDay quoted sources in 9mobile as saying that Teleology Holdings had been blocked from concluding a management services contract with the local joint venture, Teleology Nigeria Limited. The management services contract would have enabled Teleology Holdings and its team of experts oversee the implementation of the organisation’s elaborate business plans including funding proposals. CEO, Adrian Wood, who was the pioneer Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria, resigned from the boards of Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services (trading as 9mobile) as well as Teleology Nigeria, and has already communicated his current disenchantment with the 9Mobile project.
President Buhari, Monday, nominated Modibbo Hamman-Tukur as the director of Nigeria’s Financial Intelligence Unit. The nomination was contained in a letter dated January 7, to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, seeking the confirmation of the nominee by the Senate. Tukur, currently an Assistant Director in the NFIU is from Adamawa State.
Data released by the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System shows that ATMs are the most preferred form of electronic banking in Nigeria as out of the transactions worth ₦56.85 trillion carried out electronically between January and September 2018, a total of 650.06 million transactions worth ₦4.76 trillion were carried out on ATMs. This is compared to the ₦4.61 trillion from 560.86 million transactions in 2017, a ₦16.4 trillion increase from the ₦40.45 trillion recorded in 2017. Under the reviewed period, transactions through POS grew to 196.83 million, valued at ₦1.61 trillion from 98.73 million transactions worth ₦975 billion carried out in 2017. The report also shows that the volume of transactions carried out by Nigerians, using mobile money rose from ₦795.18 billion in 2017, to ₦1.22 trillion as at September 2018 while transactions through the web payment channel rose from ₦129.24 billion in 2017, to ₦183.07 billion in 2018. The e-bill payments, which allowed customers to pay utility bills such as power, cable and so on online, declined from ₦420.73 billion in 2017 to ₦370 billion in 2018.
The NLC will embark on countrywide protest today, to drive its demand for the upward review of the national minimum wage from ₦18,000 to ₦30,000. The union said that the action, which would be a “mass mobilisation” and protests simultaneously across all states in Nigeria, does not in anyway translate to a strike. It, however, advised members concerned to monitor SMS alerts for further information and travel guides for the action.