Daily Watch – MMIA traffic goes up, Malami insists on illegality of Amotekun
24th January 2020
The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, said the U-turn made by legal icon, Mr Femi Falana, justified FG’s stance that the establishment of the operation of “Amotekun” was illegal. A statement issued on Thursday by his office reiterated that Nigeria’s constitution does not accommodate the formation of regional security architecture. Falana, a human rights lawyer, who earlier asked the governors to ignore Malami, had asked South-West governors to enact laws on Amotekun. “By asking state governments of Southwestern Nigeria to ‘proceed to enact the necessary laws’, in justifying the legality of the establishment and operation of Amotekun, Falana is reaffirming the FG’s stance that the establishment of the operation currently is illegal,” the statement said.
The value of transactions done across Point of Sale (PoS) channel in Nigeria hit ₦3.20 trillion in 2019. This is disclosed in the latest data released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS). According to NIBSS, the total value transactions increased from ₦2.32 trillion in 2018 to ₦3.204 trillion by the end of 2019. This implies that the value of transactions from PoS machines rose by ₦882.03 billion (37.9%) in one year. A Nairametrics analysis of the NIBSS data showed that February showed the lowest recorded value of PoS transactions (₦193.4 billion) while the highest value of PoS transactions was recorded in December (₦372.68 billion). Similarly, the volume of PoS transactions jumped in the year. In 2019, the volume of PoS transactions rose to 438.6 million, up from 285.8 million in 2018. This means PoS transactions in terms of volume rose by 53.4%. The use of interbank instant payments on USSD platforms by bank customers received a significant boost in 2019, as transactions through NIBSS Instant Payment (NIP) hit ₦105.2 trillion, up 30.8% from 80.4 trillion in 2018.
Muhammad Babandede, comptroller general of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), says the visa-on-arrival policy will not apply to all visa classes. The immigration boss said the difference between the old method of issuing tourist visas and the present model is that short-visit visas are now being issued on arrival. “The difference now is that we will give you that visa at the point of entry. People made a lot of unnecessary propaganda saying Mr President said visa-free. There was nothing like that,” he said in an interview that aired on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). Babandede said the visa-issuance process has been upgraded such that visitors who overstay their visas can be detected. In December, President Muhammadu Buhari had announced that Africans would get visas-on-arrival to enter the country from January 2020 to encourage free movement of people.
The Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos recorded 96,621 aircraft movements last year, figures obtained from the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria have shown. It also handled 187.49 million cargo and 7.319 million passengers within the one-year review period. 2019 aircraft movement was 5.46 per cent higher than the 91,621 movements recorded in 2018. The Manager, South-West Airports, FAAN, Victoria Shina-Aba, who gave the figures, said the MMIA witnessed increased growth in passenger, cargo and aircraft movement in 2019. Cargo performance by the airport in 2019 was 18.95 per cent higher than the 157.62 million recorded in 2018. Shina-Aba said the airport continues to record tremendous improvement with the ongoing renovation work. She said the security issues witnessed last year were also being addressed by the Federal Government.