Daily Watch – CBN caves in on naira policy, Burkinabe attacks claim 28

The House of Representatives has approved President Muhammadu Buhari’s request to secure an additional ₦1 trillion loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to fund the 2022 supplementary budget. This followed a joint presentation recommending the approval of the restructuring of ₦1 trillion in additional Ways and Means advances by the House’s Committees on Finance, Banking and Currency, and Aids, Loans and Debts Management. The House, however, suspended the request to securitise the ₦22.7 trillion Ways and Means loans pending more details from the Executive. In other news from the House, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele told the House that commercial banks will still accept old naira notes after the 10 February deadline. Emefiele said this while appearing before the House ad hoc committee set up on the naira redesign policy, although he did not say how long the expired notes would be admitted by the banks. Lawmakers had insisted that the bank was in breach of Section 20 of the CBN Act which, according to him, mandates commercial banks to accept old notes even after the deadline, a position Emefiele on Tuesday said he agreed with. 

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has announced the termination of its production-sharing contract (PSC) with Addax Petroleum Development (Nigeria). According to the state oil firm, it has taken over Addax Petroleum’s production sharing contract (PSC) assets. Addax is owned by Sinopec, a state-owned Chinese firm. “@nnpclimited takes over #Addax Petroleum’s PSC Assets. After fulfilling closing obligations, @nnpclimited and Addax Petroleum Development (Nigeria) Ltd today amicably terminated their 24-Year Production Sharing Contract (PSC) relationship,” according to a tweet by the firm on Tuesday. NNPC Limited Group CEO Mele Kyari and outgoing Addax managing director Yonghong Chen signed the closing documents on behalf of both parties.

The Government of Ghana has extended the deadline for the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) to 7 February 2023. The Finance Ministry in a press release on Tuesday added that a new settlement date of Tuesday, 14 February 2023, will be confirmed via the new Exchange Memorandum. The original deadline for the programme expired at 4 pm on Tuesday, 31 January 2023. Amidst lots of disagreement following the announcement of DDEP, the Ministry said it “has made significant progress with all stakeholders, including financial sector industry associations and representative groups of individual bondholders, with respect to their participation in the Programme.”

28 people have died in new attacks by suspected jihadists in Burkina Faso, including 15 who had been abducted at the weekend, the authorities said on Tuesday. 15 bodies bearing bullet impacts were found on Monday near Linguekoro, a village in the western province of Comoe, regional governor Colonel Jean-Charles Some said in a statement. They were among 24 people who were aboard two minibuses travelling from Banfora that were stopped in Linguekoro by armed men on Sunday evening, he said. The two minibuses were then torched and the 15 other passengers were taken away. Separately, 10 military police officers, two members of an auxiliary force supporting the army, and a civilian died in northern Burkina Faso from a “terrorist attack on Monday” in the locality of Falangoutou, the army said. Since the start of the year, at least 77 people have died, according to an AFP toll from official statements and security sources.