August 2020

31 August 2020
Nigeria Info Lagos
What are the big takeaways from the GDP report?
Nigeria’s GDP decreased by 6.1% in the second quarter of 2020 according to the National Bureau of Statistics. What are the big takeaways from the GDP report..?

30 August 2020
ThisDay
Will inflationary pressure abate?
No doubt, the economy has continued to groan under inflationary concerns which had thrown a spanner in the wheels of both monetary and fiscal policy. The impact of the rising headline index cannot be underestimated particularly in macroeconomic analysis…

28 August 2020
Premium Times
For Sadiya Farouq, a tenure dogged by controversies
When President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in for a second term last May, he hinted at plans to strengthen his administration’s response to surging poverty and various humanitarian crises afflicting the country…

27 August 2020
The Africa Report
Nigeria should brace for ‘its worst recession in four decades’
COVID-19 lockdowns and the drop in demand for oil are hurting the Nigerian economy, which second quarter (Q2) of 2020 GDP figures confirmed on Monday 24 August…

BusinessDay
Missing 10m labour force means Nigeria’s unemployment rate at 34%
Nigeria’s unemployment rate could be higher than the 27.1 percent earlier reported by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as at the second quarter of 2020. BusinessDay’s analysis puts number of unemployed Nigerians as a proportion of Nigeria total labour force – the share of people with employment in addition to those without work but actively seeking employment and currently available to start work, at approximately 34 percent…

NTA International
Akin Adesina reelected president of AfDB
SBM’s head of research, Ikemesit Effiong, expains the geopolitics behind the reelection of Akin Adesina as head of the African Development Bank…

25 August 2020
BusinessDay
Rising unemployment, inflation make Nigeria’s optimistic non-oil revenue projection worse
Rising unemployment and inflation in Nigeria are fresh hurdles the government, already faced with tepid economic growth, must scale through to meet an ambitious ₦4.83 trillion non-oil revenue projection for 2020…

Who takes the blame for Nigeria’s record contraction in Q2?
It’s 2020 and the Telecommunication companies that applied for Payment Service Bank (PSB) licenses two years ago are yet to get the nod of the regulator to officially start providing financial services to the millions of Nigerians cut out of their country’s formal financial framework…

Premium Times
Coronavirus: Hong Kong researcher finds first possible case of reinfection after treatment
Recent research by the University of Hong Kong has given more weight to the troubling news of patients, who were diagnosed with COVID-19 and seemingly recovered, testing positive for the virus again…

24 August 2020
Bloomberg
Nigeria economy falls by the most in a decade
Nigeria’s economy contracted the most in at least a decade in the second quarter as the crash in oil prices and the global fallout from Covid-19 hit output…

Nigeria Info Lagos
How can Nigeria solve its unemployment problems?
According to the NBS, Out of 116million working-age Nigerians: 35.5million are employed full-time (30%); 22.9million are UNDERemployed (19%); 21.76million are unemployed and looking for work (18%), And 36.5million are not in the labour force at all (31%)…

23 August 2020
Premium Times
Many states yet to set up teams for COVID-19 burials – Report
Despite the toll of almost a thousand deaths from COVID-19 complications, only 10 of the 36 states in Nigeria have teams of trained staff for handling COVID-19 burials, a report has found…

Punch
Inflation worsens under Buhari, 63% Nigerians exhaust income on food –Report
No fewer than 63 per cent of Nigerians spend their income on food as inflation rises under the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), hitting a record 12.82 per cent, according to a report by SB Morgen Intelligence…

19 August 2020
Guardian TV
Covid-19: Parents and virtual learning for kids
COVID-19 induced a sudden shift in the educational system, creating a move from the traditional classroom settings to the workable adaptation of online learning.⁣⁣ Though many parents and guardians are still skeptical about how the virtual learning system will affect the Nigerian education sector, especially as it will affect their wards, some are adapting to the new learning system.⁣⁣..

TechCabal
How do you convince Nigerians to travel again?
In the open office area split by glass panes into a conference room, a call centre for recovery, and a corner for finance and marketing, some staff don masks and appear to be socially-distanced. They are all peacefully busy, shielded from the noisy traffic surrounding this office building in Lagos, Nigeria…

17 August 2020
Daily Independent
34.9% youth unemployment grave danger, analysts warn
Nigeria’s 34.9% unemployment and 28.2% underemployment in the second quarter of this year, as presented by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), is the worst in recent times and portends grave danger when compared to other age groupings, analysts have warned, while noting that this is happening despite benefiting from government’s targeted employment programmes…

ICIR Nigeria
I have no time for nonsense, I will not appease criminals- El-Rufai fumes over Southern Kaduna killings
Nasir El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State says Southern Kaduna leaders are responsible for the killings in the state because his administration has refused to grease their palms, a practice he disclosed has been ongoing for 20 years…

Nairametrics
Nigeria may soon start shipping containers from Lagos to Onitsha
Nigerian maritime agencies are reportedly working out the modalities on how to begin the transportation of containers from Lagos to Onitsha through barges…

Premium Times
The pains, anguish of Niger State communities displaced by bandits
It was dusk and raining heavily in March 2019 in Madaka, a village in Rafi Local Government Area of Niger State, when familiar sounds of gunshots again seized the air. Dust and gun smoke rose over the village above the heavy downpour as everyone fled to the bush. Zulaiha Isah, 27, was pregnant but ran too, as hard as other villagers…

Punch
Border closure should be reviewed
ONE year after Nigeria’s land borders were closed to its West African neighbours, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), ought to undertake a critical review of the policy. Citing economic losses and illegal arms/drugs trade, Nigeria abruptly shut its borders with Benin Republic in August 2019. Not satisfied with the outcome, it extended the ban to the land trade with all its neighbours in October, a tactic that has reverberated around the sub-region…

16 August 2020
Guardian Nigeria
Nigerian ports: Where there’s no ease of doing business
In spite of Federal Government’s mantra of ‘promoting ease of doing business,’ the high cost of doing business, inefficient processes and procedures, and a litany of extortions at Nigeria’s seaports have made the nation’s gateway uncompetitive. The result is immense frustrations for business operators and huge revenue losses for all stakeholders…

Punch
Ajoku’s wish: Sanwo-Olu should end Lagos containers of death
Perhaps the saddest narrative about Nigeria’s rapid descent into utter disorder and lawlessness is its loss of value for human life. It is a tragedy shared by all states, including Lagos, the so-called centre of excellence…

14 August 2020
Reuters
Nigeria’s unemployment rate 27.1% in Q2 -NBS
More than a quarter of Nigeria’s workers were out of a job in the second quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday, in the country’s first unemployment data published since 2018….

12 August 2020
ICIR Nigeria
About 98 percent of Nigerians say they did not receive Govt’s palliatives
A survey report by SB Morgen intelligence in conjunction with the Open Societies Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), has revealed that about 98.8 percent of Nigerians said they did not receive any form of palliatives from the government or anyone during the lockdown imposed as a result of COVID-19 pandemic…

Punch
Buhari on security architecture reforms
Sending a ray of hope that the citizen’s life matters, the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) might be gradually coming to terms with the harsh reality that Nigeria’s security structure is fast collapsing…

World Economic Forum
Why COVID-19 could mean a new dawn for Nigeria’s manufacturing sector
Some early reports in the media on the COVID-19 pandemic were a cause for alarm. China, a leading manufacturing nation, was running out of personal protective equipment (PPE) following the unprecedented outbreak, including medical aprons, gowns and coveralls as well as gloves, masks, respirators and goggles….

11 August 2020
ICIR Nigeria
We want a complete stop to the killing of innocent people in Southern Kaduna- Catholic Bishops
Members of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) have called on the Nigerian government to end the ongoing genocide in Southern Kaduna, demanding that killings of citizen must not be politicised…

10 August 2020
The Nation
Insecurity and security
It is unclear how and when President Muhammadu Buhari would redesign the country’s problematic security architecture, but his publicised intention to do so draws attention to his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces…

8 August 2020
BusinessDay
Osun flirts with insolvency, spends 91% of FAAC servicing debt in Q1
For every ₦100 shared to the Osun State government as revenue allocation from the federation account (FAAC), ₦91 has deducted to service its debt, a pointer to how the state’s fiscal crisis has moved from bad to worse…

6 August 2020
BusinessDay
Only 1.2% Nigerians enjoyed government’s COVID-19 palliatives
The Federal Government’s effort to cushion the impact of economic and health crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic through provision of palliatives may have been a far shot as just a tiny fraction of the citizenry benefitted from those relief measures, according to a recent survey conducted by Lagos-based research firm, SBM Intelligence…

ICIR Nigeria
Fresh attacks in Southern Kaduna claim at least 20 lives in three communities
At least 20 people have died from fresh attacks by unknown gunmen in Zangon Kataf Local Government Area of Kaduna State. The attack, which occurred on Thursday affected three communities; Kurmin Masara, Apyia Shyim, and Takmawai, Channels Television reports…

Premium Times
Dear Governor Zulum, a soldier is only as bad as his commander
The recent spike in killings in the southern parts of Kaduna State, North-West Nigeria and the ambush laid on the convoy of the Borno State governor by terrorists, on his way to the town of Baga, have once again revealed Nigeria as a country at war with itself…

5 August 2020
BusinessDay
Covid-19 could leave bitter aftertaste in education as students opt for apprenticeship
The number of out-of-school children in Nigeria, which already accounts for a fifth of the world’s out-of-school children, could worsen due to the coronavirus pandemic that has disrupted learning and forced parents in the lower-income bracket to enrol their children in apprenticeship programmes…

4 August 2020
The Africa Report
CBN’s Emefiele: ‘The Nigerian situation is a challenging one’ says analyst
In the second part of our series on the governors running the Central Banks of West Africa, we take a look at Nigeria’s Godwin Emefiele…

3 August 2020
Bloomberg
Shoprite, once Africa’s expansion champion, plans to exit Nigeria
Shoprite Holdings Ltd., once heralded for leading the expansion trail into Africa, plans to exit Nigeria after the continent’s largest food retailer struggled with supply-chain disruptions and faced challenges in getting money out of the country…

Financial Times
ShopRite plans to quit Nigeria
South Africa’s ShopRite, Africa’s biggest grocer, has said it plans to exit Nigeria, the continent’s largest economy, which has been hit by falling oil prices in the pandemic…