No one can dispute the fact that Nigerians are going through harrowing times. The digital channels, namely Twitter, FaceBook, WhatsApp, SMS, name them, fill Platforms with lamentations of hard times. All blame is heaped on the leadership. We least understand the place of personal responsibility including the responsibility we bear in the choice of leaders at different levels, or even aloofness which are in themselves choices and decisions we make. Says renowned author Herbert Vollmann (1903-1999) in his unique book, A Gate Opens:

“Every moment man gives cause to fateful consequences in the future and every moment he stands in the reactions of previous decisions from the present and from past earth-lives. Thus, men living on earth today must also be answerable to themselves for what they willed and thought in former earth-lives. In this connection it matters not whether the volition was general or directed at definite other human beings. This should exhort us to act with caution, and heighten our sense of responsibility, so that in future, whether on earth or in the beyond, evil reactions that darken and make our lives painful will no longer be possible.”

He went on: “Therefore let everyone who is struck by more or less severe ‘blows of fate’ remember, above all, that he is the originator, and not some other person.  Perhaps at one time he has done something evil to a fellow human being, who had to suffer innocently. To the innocent sufferer the Laws of Creation always bring compensation in some form or other, provided he forgives the wrong-doer. But to the guilty one dark threads of karma become attached at the very moment of the deed, which unfailingly return to him as the fruits of his volition. This is then the ‘punishment’ he inflicts upon himself. In reality it is the just balance of his evil volition, the real ‘compulsion to atonement.’”

In view of the foregoing, what does the future have in store for us, for our brethren, that is, those who kill, kidnap or torture their fellow men, or inflict pains on the hapless? Those who engage in man’s inhumanity to man of whatever nature or form? And what has the present yet to unfold? In deep contemplation in closets as well as in restaurants; in clubs, in casual conversations, the question has a way of agitating the minds: What has our today got to do with our past? These are said to a person who sometimes feels some stirring within or pangs in menace of the past. The past is dead and long buried is always the retort, sometimes as a balm, or comfort and reassurance. A great many of us are wont to blame others, but ourselves that we go through excruciating experiences in our daily living while others live in splendour.

As I did write five years ago and the present conditions necessitate a recap: There are two main conceptions of the past. This is when we discountenance the transitional past which could be a few hours past, a day or two days past which may not fall strictly under the definition of the recent past. Recent and transitional past fall within memory. There is a wider and longer stretch that covers contemporary history, the range of individual lives, and lives of nations. The past we are wont to have in mind when we speak of the past is our past within living memory or the facts of history that we may have experienced or read about. In other words, it is the past we can remember or the past of which we have tangible material evidence.

It is not infrequent when we hear it said—the labour of our heroes past. The Americans would talk about Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Truman, Thomas Jefferson or John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King Jnr., and Barack Obama who broke the glass ceiling, to use the words of Hillary Clinton, and has undoubtedly entered the book of record. The British would, with nostalgia, mention Queen Victoria, the Victorian Age of etiquette, of culture and refinement. They would speak of Winston Churchill. The French would talk of Napoleon.  Coming nearer home, the Africans would mention Nelson Mandela as a citizen of the universe. Ghanaians would be quick to name Kwame Nkrumah as their icon. Nigerians would refer to Herbert Yinka Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Aminu Kano as their heroes and in Senegal, Leopard Senghor. In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. And in Guinea, Sekou Toure. But all these are earthly past.

The past man has the proclivity to throw into oblivion if and wherever it is hinted at is the past for which there is no tangibility, that which is beyond the earthly. In its full unfolding that past for which there is no material evidence but which nevertheless exists and determines the present and perhaps the future, depending on how each individual stands in its currents streaming into our world; and when we talk about a nation how people collectively stand. The past beyond the earthly is in conception the Cosmic Past. This is the past that is filed away and which with any little hint of its existence, is said, without any second thought, to be dead and buried. And changeless!

Today is a past in the making, filled with activities. Tomorrow, it will be past. In a hundred years, in two hundred years, or a thousand years, the past slips into the Cosmic Past of which man has no memory in the main. It is the larger segment of the past, which, indeed, is the real past. It stretches from the unknown to the known. The history of the earthly past, recent or contemporary, can be re-written and indeed it is re-written or amended to suit whims and caprices, to satisfy fancy, or to provide the correct rendition of accounts. The re-writing of the contemporary tangible past suggests that man realizes that the past is not dead as he has led himself to believe. Often the objective is to whitewash. Through the re-writing many publications thought infallible in later years are often found to have suffered from distortion as a result of limitation or deficiency of memories. You may just have to read writings about events of the last 70 years in Nigeria by different authors and you will get my drift.

Regardless of the arrogance of man, the whims and caprices, his cleverness, subterfuge, and the proficiency to cover tracts, the real past is untouched and uninfluenced. When the stone leaves the hand of a man he has no control over it anymore, but he is tied to the consequences of the action. The past thought dead is in truth alive, driven by the living and eternal Laws of Creation, which may also be called Cosmic Laws, Laws of Nature, or Divine laws; they mean the same thing. As I have repeatedly stated in this column, they are immutable, perfect, incorruptible, self-acting, and self-enforcing. They affect all human beings whether they are aware of their existence or ignorant of them. They issued from the Hand of the Almighty Creator, from and for all eternity. Again, as I have stated quite often, they are the mechanism with which the Creator governs His Creation. Thus, the first and most urgent duty of every human being is to have a thorough knowledge of these Laws. They form the foundation of all true spiritual teachings availed us by Teachers of mankind, and the Prophets. It is from these Laws that the Ten Commandments of God were revealed to Moses, first given by him to the Israelites but meant for all mankind, are derived. And didn’t the Lord Christ say, whatever a man soweth that shall he reap? As I explained last week, the Lord was referring to the Law of Sowing and Reaping, the Law of Reciprocal Action.

In the Cosmic Past as well as the contemporary past are stored all thoughts, all speeches and deeds where they go through the maturation process, each according to its nature, ripen and are available for harvesting by no other than the sower. The Cosmic Past cast into oblivion of our own creating and at best of our own imagining is called in circles that have preoccupied themselves with it the Book of Life. As we now know in higher knowledge spreading on earth today, all names of all human beings are inscribed in the great Book and the pages are the souls of the human beings themselves. Each person is his own recorder, his own historian as it were. He fills the pages himself. Thus the past is not dead even though it may be changeless. It has a life of its own derived from the same Laws in which the arrogant and conceited ‘all-knowing’ man has his life and being. From the extensive discussion of the Laws last week, it could be seen that there are three main Laws: The Law of Reciprocal Action; the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species which may be called the Law of Similarities which stipulates that creatures of the same nature and characteristics live together. So is it that we have tilapia fish in the bed of the sea in the school of tilapia fish; cat fish, whales among their own kind, and different animals in different colonies.

Go to the ants and learn, and be wise, the saying goes. Soldier ants do not mix with termites. Although human beings have the same spiritual origin, they are grouped by the Law into different peoples, into different tribes or ethnic groups according to the degree of their inner development, that is, their spiritual maturity, each to develop according to its own light and at its own pace. It is so that none will interfere with the other in their development, but may learn from one another. Man in his vaunted conceit to know better than the Creator of all the worlds, discarded the Law and has disarranged the order stipulated for formation of societies and the entire Creation with the attendant harmonious swinging and development. Man thus became a lawless animal, creating chaos and disharmony everywhere. The third principal Law is the Law of Spiritual Gravitation; all the negative and ennobling activities including thoughts and speeches are deposited on the souls, the negative making the soul to be heavy and the beautiful and ennobling making the soul to be light. If it is continuous light and beautiful the ascent to On High ensues. The negative and ignoble souls are dragged down in line with the degree of its weight, in the dark region of the Beyond.

There is also the Law of Movement and closely related to this is the Law of the Cycle which stipulates that the end must go back to the beginning. Everything in life must be kept in motion, failing which atrophy sets in. A man long on hospital bed soon loses the use of his limbs. To walk again, he has to relearn it. We can see from the chest of boxers or from the legs of a footballer the beauty of the Law of Motion manifested in the exercises of their bodies. The implication of the Law of the Cycle is that everything man says or does comes back to him in harvest as ripened fruits of his own sowing.

In the present time, it is the past that is catching up with every human being on earth. It governs where and the environment each person is born and what his experiencing will be, drawing from his store of his long-forgotten past and also of the recent and contemporary past.  In the words of Herbert Vollmann, “Anything that befalls man in the way of hardship is very often called fate, and looked upon as a higher power which determines his life. But in reality it is men themselves who shape their fate or karma, which depending on their free decision is either good or bad, exactly in accordance with the Law that he who has sown it must reap the seed many times over even if it be only in later earth-lives.”

Our world is now in the End-Time with its forces relentlessly sweeping through all lands, energized by the abundance of power of the Light now pouring into our universe, Ephesus, with the return of the Star of Bethlehem. The power is awakening and driving into activity all that is slumbering or all that is dead in each human being to face judgment as foretold. Hence all the aberrations and collapse in most societies at the moment. Intensification and acceleration of events everywhere—whether it is war, famine, pestilence, drought, hurricane, tornadoes, landslide and volcanic eruptions, and even man reasoning upside down—are trumpets of judgment. Everything is being brought before the Light, exposed to face judgment. No society will be spared. The modern man cannot continue to believe that his ability to tamper with the physical relics of the past with modern gadgets at his disposal is synonymous with the ability to tamper with the tapestry of life in the present time. Once he has acted and inscribed something in the Book of Life, he loses control over it. Our today is our past living reality. It is what we have individually and or collectively planted in the soil of life. This explains why some obviously good people suffer. The suffering seemingly inscrutable is flowing from the past earth-lives as life is a continuum; it is one continuous existence. Today is thus the harbinger of our tomorrow!!

Liverpool have their sights on a “special” League Cup triumph in Sunday’s final against Chelsea as Jurgen Klopp reaches the first milestone moment of his long goodbye.

*Offers pathways to save Naira, build robust economy

The Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CFL Group of companies, Lai Omotola has called on President Bola Tinubu to sign an executive order banning all cash dollar transactions across Nigeria, as one of the ways to save the Naira.
Omotola, who briefed newsmen on the State of the nation’s economy and the naira in Maryland, Lagos on Friday added that the president should ensure that all dollar transactions should now be bank to bank.

He proposed that the maximum cash any citizen and foreigner could hold in Nigeria should be 100 dollars, adding that any amount exceeding this should be automatically forfeited to the federal Government, while also proposing a total ban on street vending of dollars.

“To save our Naira. We propose that the President signs an executive order banning all cash-dollar transactions across the length and breadth of Nigeria. All dollar transactions should now be bank to bank.

“The maximum cash any citizen and foreigner can hold should not be more than 100 dollars. Any amount exceeding this will be automatically forfeited to the Federal Government. There should be a total ban on street vending of dollars.”

The business mogul, who said it is no longer news to say the nation’s economy is in a precarious state, argued that the dual policy of fuel removal and floating of the naira had resulted in depreciating the economy.

“Today, there is foreign exchange crisis and food crisis. We are not here to labour time on the problems rather our time will be to proffer solutions.

“As a business concern that had been in existence for the past 25 years, just one year more than our democratic period of 24 years, we have lived 100 per cent of all different administrations,” he said.

Omotola further proposed that amnesty should be given to everyone paying dollar cash for the next 90 days and that such cash lodgment should not be probed by the EFCC or any security agency.

“In as much as cash dollar deposits cannot be probed, every dollar payment from banks will be scrutinised,” he suggested.
Omotola also said the Federal Government should adopt a 100 per cent cashless policy in five commercial states in Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

He further urged the government to activate the Whistleblowers Act such that a reward is made to anybody who is able to tell the Federal Government about hidden dollars, with such persons receiving their rewards seamlessly, arguing that “this will put everybody on their toes.”“The following states should go 100 per cent cashless. Lagos, Kano, Kaduna Rivers, Enugu and Abuja. The maximum amount of cash anyone can hold in these states should not be more than N50,000,” he suggested.

According to Omotola, “If the above is implemented fully to the letter, which also includes a stop on the continuous printing of the new naira notes, but rather the old ones, within the next 30 days the naira will appreciate by 50 per cent; that is in the next 30 days, you will see the naira moving between N700 and N800 and by the end of the year, the true value of the naira to the dollar will emerge.”

[Vanguard]

Wale Edun, minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy said the current administration is looking into bringing down the ways and means debt.

The minister who spoke on Friday on Channels Television, said the move would be done through “specific actions that have been well laid out”.

Ways and means is a loan facility through which the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) provides short-term financing to cover the government’s budget shortfalls.

On February 9, 2024, while addressing the senate committee on banking, insurance and other finance institutions on inflation, Olayemi Cardoso, governor of CBN, said the financial institution will halt its ways and means advances to the federal government.

“The ways and means need to be brought down by specific actions and those are being taken in the financial markets and funds are being garnered, revenue is being raised with a particular intent to pay down the Ways and Means and have the government’s accounts imbalance,” Edun said.

“The government’s day-to-day accounts where it spends from and takes out revenue to have that imbalance,  that is the commitment of the administration and the strategy and the path to achieving that in the nearest future. This has been well laid out.

“In addition, there is a need for collaborative collaboration between the monetary and the fiscal side.  As we know, the central bank is in charge of the exchange rate, in charge of interest rates, money supply and so forth. And in terms of interest rate, the exchange rate it is doing everything it can to bring improvements to that situation.

“But the fiscal side, the government side has a role to play in that. And that is why taking a cue and collaborating and cooperating we want the monetary authorities to know what we’re doing. Interest rates have been raised.

“So the rate at which the government sells these treasury bills, and bonds has gone up in order to help attract foreign portfolio investors, foreigners who are willing to hold the naira and invest in the Nigerian economy by buying government securities. 

“That is a sign of the type of collaboration and type of cooperation that will help the economy as a whole with the fiscal and the monetary side working together.”

‘OTHER REFORMS BY FG TO BOOST REVENUE’

Speaking on the measures put in place to boost revenue and control inflation, Edun said the federal government has identified the problem and was working rigorously to improve the economy. 

He said the government has ensured oil revenue and production go up, adding that for the non-oil revenue sector, tax is being looked at to ensure it is less burdensome.

“In terms of inflation we have looked at the reason why you don’t build up money in the system not much by supplying productivity production to reverse and improve and eradicate that inflationary effects on the economy and the system as a whole,” he said

“The reforms that have been put in place include the fact that there needs to be removal of that overhang in the system. Therefore, in addition to a robust revenue system, we’re starting from ensuring oil revenue goes up.”

The minister said federal government-owned enterprises now have a much stricter regime of cost management because, through technology, the government is taking its revenue immediately rather than waiting for the enterprise to meet and comply with the rules.

“Rules are being enforced from the start by taking what is due to the government as soon as that revenue is paid,” Edun said.

“On the expenditure side, a totally new system of expenditure management has been authorised and approved by Mr. President, and has been implemented once again using the power of technology and digitalization.”

Edun said with this,  the payments to suppliers, contractors, and beneficiaries will go directly to the federal treasury straight to the beneficiaries without having different places where it is redistributed.

Today, let’s move away from the vaulting national grumblings about hunger, dollar rates, and protests. Let us, instead, look at some emerging global health issues; the final effects of which have not yet been fully determined, or understood. Our bodies, our health and the global ecosystem, are likely casualties. The danger looms for all humanity, because of the wide and continuous penetration of microplastics into our environment, our food and, wait for it, the placenta of unborn babies!

A relatively recent study published in the journal Toxicological Sciences by a team led by Matthew Campen, reported finding microplastics in all 62 donated placenta samples tested. The concentrations ranged from 6.5 to 790 micrograms per gram of tissue. Yes, a microgram is a laughably insignificant one millionth of a gram. But here is the catch: There is a steady rise in the amount of microplastics everywhere. Its likely overall, long-term effect and impact on the ecosystem generally, and on human life in particular, is yet to be determined.

But a few facts are clear so far, based on simple common sense and basic science. The first is that any substance that finds its way into an environment where it does not belong, and where it is not naturally supposed to be, is a foreign body. The second is that a foreign body can cause a mild upset, some disruption, or substantial damage. The third is that a poison does not become a threat to life until it has built up to a lethal dose. As things stand now, we may well be building up enough microplastics in our bodies to create physiological, or even possibly also physiognomic, Armageddon.

The aforementioned research discovered a way of making tissue samples give up whatever small nuggets of plastic are hidden in them. They used a process called saponification, which meant chemically treating the samples and then spinning them in an ultracentrifuge, after which they got the plastic nugget at the bottom of the tube.

Next, they put the plastic pellet in a metal cup and heated it to 600 degrees Celsius. Under this enormously high temperature, gas emissions emerged from the plastic particles. The emissions were captured, as different types of plastic combusted at specific temperatures. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Fractional Distillation, which explains Biafran refinery and our plethora of illegal refineries easy of today, will understand “different types of plastic combusted at specific temperatures”.

The gas emissions were then sent to a device for detecting and analysing the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. It was the device, a mass spectrometer, that broke things further down, even if with alarming details.   

On the matter of the inevitability of radiations, let us go back to what was said on this page on June 5, 2020. Under the caption, “5G Controversy Needs Honest Science”. In an attempt to place some elements of modern science before the reading public while the 5G controversy raged at he time, this column said: “It is a fact of science that everything on earth gives out a definite radiation. It is also a fact of science that what we call “matter”, like a table, or even our bodies, is just pure energy vibrating at a specific frequency. It is the frequency and rate of vibration that creates what we call shape, size, texture, etc.”

The article further said: “These particles also generate small electrical impulses, creating some sort of “field” around objects, even if only at a microscopic/atomic level for some of them. The human aura, for instance, is the result of electrical impulses, which continue from the subatomic level until they emerge as our electromagnetic field. What we eat, how we live and where we live can alter our aura significantly. So, using the term loosely if you like, electromagnetic fields are inevitable for all existents”.

Now, coming back to the issues before us today, the aforementioned researchers discovered that the most readily available polymer in the placental tissue they were experimenting with was polyethylene. This is the thing used for the manufacturing of plastic bags and plastic bottles. It was found to constitute 54% of the total plastics detected in the sample human placenta. The next in concentration was PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and nylon, at about 10% of the total. The balance was made up of nine other polymers.

For the record, the word ‘polymer’ refers to a class of natural or synthetic substances composed of very large molecules. The large molecule, which are called macromolecules, are just a collection of simpler chemical units called monomers. Thus, many of the materials in living organisms, and which present the basic foundation for many minerals and man-made materials everywhere, are actually polymers.

In the matter under reference here today, some of the microplastics formed by splitting off from larger pieces of plastic. This could be plastics that fragmented over time, due to wear and tear. We may also think of particles artificially made very small intentionally, like the cosmetic microbeads used in facial scrubs.

Several recent studies are now finding microplastics in almost everything we eat today, from meat, fruits, bottled water and many otherwise natural food items. The new tools and methods adopted by the researchers in measuring the microplastics present in human placentas made it possible for what had remained difficult for a long time to be possible. And that is being able to quantify how much microplastic was present in human tissue.

It was no longer a question of researchers counting the number of particles under a microscope, no. The new approach made it possible to adequately quantify things and speak of the number of micrograms or milligrams per plastic under investigation.

The phenomenal increase in the use of plastics all over the world, over the last six decades, has translated into millions of metric tons of plastic waste. This is a general environmental hazard, a specific threat to natural waterways, and also an emerging menace to plant and animal life.

While it is true that plastics, over time, break down from exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, as well as other agents of chemical denudation, it is also true that this only accentuates the problem. Some of the plastic ends up aerosolized, making them part of the combination of gases and radiations in the air we breath. Some of it also seeps down into natural water tables and become part of the groundwater we later pump up to drink.

Ingested or inhaled, microplastics still get into our system; and it stays back to create new, and strange, combinations of substances and radiations that lead to all manner of health disruptions. Human beings, aquatic animals, the local chicken out there, and general farm produce, are all in the line of fire. And this is not about to go away.

Many plastic products take between 50 and 300 years to fully degrade into simple elements and original compounds. That is what scientists mean when they say that many plastics have a long half-life; that is the amount of time needed for half of a sample to degrade. The question here for us are these: (1) How long will it take the microplastics everywhere today to fully degrade? What will be happening to us and our environment as this business of being degraded is going on? Is the global health community paying attention?

It is already a fact of science that we all have some amount of microplastics in our bodies. It is also clear that these microplastics should not have been there in the first place. What is not clear, as I write, is what damage it is doing to us and what possibly unmanageable health problems it is brewing without our knowing.

Now that we have some microplastics that can actually cross cell membranes and easily enter where they have no business in the human body, what next? What do you do, or say, about a piece of microplastic that is so small that it is measured in nanometers (that is one billionth of a meter), in a world where we had always assumed that plastics are biologically inert? You cannot have the type of blossoming agglomeration and concentration of microplastics in living human tissues without consequences.

Check out the type of baffling health problems that are springing up everywhere. Early onset of prostate problems in men, inflammatory bowel disease, growing cases of shockingly early onset of erectile dysfunction, colon cancer and inexplicable challenges with the human autonomic nervous system in many highly industrialized countries.

When you now stop to think about the conspicuous presence of microplastics in baby placenta, it becomes completely benumbing. Tissues containing everything needed to form every cell and every organ of the human body, and which had been in existence for less than on year, is loaded upfront with microplastics? And our cheerful production and use of plastics in massive quantities continues. As the researchers said, “… even if we were to stop it today, in 2050 there will be three times as much plastic in the background as there is now. And we’re not going to stop it today.”

So, it looks like microplastics are only a more recently recognized addition to the negative bombardments with which we human beings has resolved to finish ourselves. As was said in the article “5G Controversy Needs Honest Science” nearly four years ago: “… electromagnetic fields … are strongest close to their points of origin …it is open to argument whether any set of radiations will retain their original characteristics in the midst of an altered ecosystem. It is a fact of science that a substantial percentage of human exposure to man-made radiation comes from gadgets, home electronics and medical procedures.” Well, we now have microplastics”.

The article under reference continued: “Some electromagnetic radiations are strong enough to break bonds between molecules and introduce changes in the human DNA. This is what alters certain things in the shape, or functions, of certain cells of the body. Gamma rays from radioactive materials, cosmic rays and X-rays, also known as ‘ionizing radiation’, can do this. We are also being bombarded by denatured food, high-energy radiation/cosmic and intergalactic rays and particles admitted by our damaged Ozone Layer.”

The article said, still: “Radiation particles can pass through our bodies …The radiations can introduce breaks, or damages, in certain chemical bonds in the body. This breaking of chemical bonds distorts the genetic information in the living cells and introduce errors in the formation of certain body parts. The interfering radiations change the original formats of the various building blocks of our body. Skin cancer, for instance, is nothing but a disruption of the processes governing the development of normal skin. These are facts of science. People are advised against having more than one chest x-ray in a year, because a single exposure gives a dose of about 10 mrem. But we are running all over the place and doing full-body CT scans, of which one exposure gives a dose of 1,000 mrem.”

Watch out! Microplastics and harmful radiations are on the prawl.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has introduced a fresh set of guidelines to keep Bureau De Change (BDCs) in check.

Under the new guidelines BDCs in the Tier 1 category must have a capital requirement of N2 billion, while Tier 2 BDCs must have a capital requirement of N500 million.

Tier 1 BDCs formally were expected to cough out N15 million to acquire the license. This represents a 13,233.33 percent licence fee hike.

The CBN was forced to come up with a new set of guidelines in order to address the ongoing foreign exchange crisis in the country.

The Financial Policy and Regulation Department of the CBN headed by Haruna B Mustafa detailed what is now expected of BDCs in Nigeria.

The guidelines specify that banks, government agencies, and NGOs are prohibited from having ownership stakes in BDCs. The permissible activities for BDCs include buying and selling foreign currencies, issuing prepaid cards, and acting as cash points for money transfer operators. BDCs are not allowed to take deposits, grant loans, deal in gold, or engage in capital market activities.

In terms of sourcing foreign currencies, BDCs can obtain forex from authorized dealers, travelers, hotels, embassies, and other sources. For large transactions exceeding $10,000, a declaration of the source is required.

Regarding the sale of foreign currencies, BDCs can sell forex for purposes such as travel, medical bills, and school fees, up to specified limits per customer annually. At least 75 percent of the sales must be conducted through electronic transfers, while the remaining 25 percent can be in cash.

There are two tiers of BDCs: Tier 1, which has a national presence with branches and franchises, and Tier 2, which is limited to operating in one state with a maximum of three locations.

BDCs are required to verify the identity of their customers, maintain transaction records, connect to CBN systems, and display rates clearly. They must also submit specified regulatory returns, make their records available for inspection, and comply with the guidelines.

The guidelines also outline standards for Tier 1 BDCs that appoint franchises, covering areas such as policy, monitoring, and branding. Prudential requirements are set for BDCs, including limits on open positions, fixed assets, borrowings, and dividend payments. Additionally, BDCs must comply with anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regulations, with regard to policies, monitoring, and reporting.

The Nigerian naira has recently hit an all-time low of N2,000 against the dollar due to the prevailing economic crisis in the country. In response, the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, instructed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Department of State Services (DSS), and other security agencies to crack down on currency speculators in the forex market. This has led to raids on BDCs nationwide and the arrest of some illegal operators.

In a related development, the Central Bank of Nigeria has announced new measures regarding the foreign exchange (FX) rate to be used for Import Duty Assessment.

Read Also: Senate confirms Cardoso, 11 other CBN’s MPC members

The bank has advised that the Nigeria Customs Service and other relevant parties should adopt the closing FX rate on the date of opening Form M for the importation of goods as the rate to be used for assessing import duty.

This rate will remain valid until the completion of the importation and clearance of goods by the importers.

This decision the CBN said is intended to provide clarity and reduce uncertainty for both the Nigeria Customs Service and importers, allowing them to better plan and manage their revenue and cost structures amid fluctuating daily exchange rates.

“Effective from February 26, 2024, the closing rate on the date of opening Form M for the importation of goods and services will be the rate applied for the assessment of import duty” the CBN circular read.

This replaces the requirements outlined in Memorandum 9, J (2) of the Central Bank of Nigeria Foreign Exchange Manual (Revised Edition), 2018.

While the Central Bank of Nigeria acknowledges the initial volatility and price distortions following the liberalization of the FX market, it is confident that these reforms will ultimately stabilize the market and establish the necessary market confidence to attract investment capital for the growth and development of the Nigerian economy.

In a catastrophic end to his third-term project, President Macky Sall announced in July 2023 that he would not seek re-election in February 2024, and many thought he had learnt from history. 

But the ambiguity of his press conference late Thursday (23^rd February 2024), has cast further doubts on the date for the country’s crucial presidential election, which he had unilaterally postponed. It would appear that the embattled president is still bent on testing the resolve of his angry compatriots.

Teranga in the Senegalese language Wolof means “peaceful or welcoming place.”

However, Senegal has been anything but peaceful in the past three years, no thanks to the political ambition of a president, who has spent 12 years in office having previously served as Prime Minister and President/Speaker of the National Assembly.

Once considered the bastion of stability in a politically restive West African region, the country is on the verge of losing its democratic credentials. Before Sall’s July 2023 climb down, unprecedented street protests in June had killed at least 16 people following the jailing of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, the arrowhead and nemesis of Sall’s third-term project.

Then came the controversial screening of candidates for the presidential election scheduled for 25^th February 2024.

Twenty candidates including two women were approved by the Constitutional Council, but some of the candidates screened out, including Karim Wade, the son of former President Abdoulaye Wade, took their case of corruption allegation against two of the Constitutional Council members to Parliament.

But almost from the blues, Sall unleashed a bombshell of a decree on 3^rd February cancelling the 25 February election without setting any new dates for the vote.

A macabre drama, similar to the 6^th of January 2021 invasion of the Capitol (Congress building) in Washinton, was re-enacted in Senegal on the 5^th of February 2024, with paramilitary gendarmes storming the parliamentary chambers in Dakar to eject some opposition MPs, to clear the way for the passage of a controversial law, postponing the presidential election to December 2024.

A fresh round of street protests ensued with at least three deaths, before the Constitutional Council nullified both the presidential decree and law on the 15^th of February.

ECOWAS, the regional economic bloc, along with the European Union and indeed, the international community rejected the degree and the controversial law. They urged Senegalese authorities to respect the country’s electoral calendar and constitutional provisions which stipulates that Sall’s mandate ends on the 2^nd of April 2024.

In his response, President Sall took note of the Constitutional Council’s decisions and promised to consult with stakeholders to fix a new date for the presidential vote.

But in his press interview on Thursday, Sall still left everyone guessing. In one breath he said his presidential term would not last beyond 2^nd of April 2024, but still casts doubts on the date for the election.

Much more confusing was his reference to a Constitutional provision he says requires an outgoing president to handover to a newly elected one.

Curious observers are wondering if Sall really intends to leave power, even when Senegal’s Constitution is unambiguous that in the absence of the president of the Republic, the President/Speaker of Parliament will assume the presidency. There are indications that the president still has some surprises up his sleeve for the Teranga nation.

"On April 2, 2024, my mission ends as the head of Senegal," the president said, seemingly indicating that he would not stay in office beyond the 2^nd of April.

"As far as the date (for the presidential election) is concerned, we'll see what the dialogue comes up with," he added during a televised press interview.

"The election can be held before or after April 2," he said, but when pressed, he said he did not think the election would be possible before April 2.

As a gesture of appeasement, Sall has promised to free dozens of political prisoners including Sonko and another opposition leader Bassirou Faye.

But social and political tensions are simmering in Senegal and the animosity generated by his alleged refusal to receive the Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who reportedly cancelled his planned peace mission to Senegal can only fuel the political uncertainty in the country and the ECOWAS region.

Sixteen of the 20 presidential candidates cleared by the Constitutional Council have rejected Sall’s invitation to the dialogue he called for Monday and Tuesday to fix a new date for the presidential election.

Like the dissenting political coalitions, many civil society organisations have also rejected his invitation to the dialogue, and instead called for a protest march, claiming the dialogue is a ploy by the president for tenure elongation after the illegal postponement of the presidential vote which the opposition called a "constitutional coup.”

The Constitutional Council, which has the final say on election matters, would be expected to step in again should the stakeholders fail to reach an agreement on the date for the presidential vote.

The situation in Senegal only compounds the problems for ECOWAS, whose leaders are meeting in Abuja on Saturday with the decision of three of its member States - Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger - to withdraw from the regional bloc high on the agenda.

The three and a fourth country, Guinea, are under military dictatorships and ECOWAS is struggling to restore constitutional order through reasonable transition programmes in the wayward countries.

The summit is expected to heed the public appeal for the lifting of ECOWAS sanctions on the four countries by General Yakubu Gowon, one of the ECOWAS founding fathers.

The regional leaders are also expected to discuss the situation in Senegal, unless the country’s delegation manages to knock the issue off the agenda, like they did during the recent extraordinary Ministerial summit of the ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council.  

*Ejime, an Author, is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security and Governance Communications

Residents of Lagos State queue up to purchase bags of rice offered by the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) at the affordable price of N10,000.

This follows the Customs’ announcement of the commencement of the distribution of seized food items on the specified day.

The NCS Comptroller General, Adewale Adeniyi, emphasized in a statement to journalists in Lagos that customs officials were explicitly prohibited from participating in the distribution process.

The orderly scene depicted in the video featured women patiently waiting their turn to receive the rice they had purchased.

The official statement, conveyed by the NCS National Public Relations Officer, Abdullahi Maiwada, outlined that the rice would be meticulously packaged in 25kg bags, with the cost set at N10,000.

Adeniyi highlighted that the initiative targeted specific groups such as artisans, teachers, nurses, religious bodies, and other residents within the NCS operational areas.

No amount of condolences, prayers, sympathies and commiseration could ever fathom the depth of the grief of Papa Shyngle and Mama Stella Wigwe. And the reason is simple: no parents should ever have to bury any of their children. The reverse should always be the case. And this is a deep principle of humanity that is not restricted by culture or society. It is just simply the natural order of things. It is fundamental—and indeed a thing of joy for all parents—that they would be buried by their children. When the reverse happens, and one loses a child, then the entirety of one’s existence is shrunk into that indissoluble vacuum of pain and grief. The depth of that sorrow becomes bottomless when one loses more than one child. Since I heard about the terrible calamity that befell this beautiful octogenarian couple, I have come to fathom the depth of what Aeschylus, the ancient Greek tragedian, meant when he said, “There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”

This brief statement sums up the depth of the bereavement of Papa and Mama Wigwe: their minds would be clouded simultaneously with remembrances of the births of their sons, their upbringing and naughtiness while growing up, their struggles to raise them as godly as God would permit, their collective memories of moments of joys and happy events and incidences, their family traditions and Christian values, the successes of their children, and many more. All this while their entire being register as starkly as it can the fact that a second child just died with his family when they had barely dealt with the pain of losing the first one. But there is more. Papa and Mama Wigwe are solid Christians. I can attest to that. And they have been serving God for as long as my memory of relating with them (albeit from a distance) could permit. Since this tragic incidence happened, the first verse of the first chapter of Job has run ceaselessly in my mind: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” This is my summation of Papa and Mama Wigwe.

And yet, they lost two children. The story of Job is one of the most challenging books of the Bible. And its challenge is purely because of demonstrating one of the cornerstones of a deep theological paradox: how could a good God create a world that is filled with evil, or even permit those committed to him to be ravaged by such evils? Since God created the world and certified that his creation is good, how did evil creep in? The problem of evil in a world created by a good God has troubled Christian theologians and apologetics, from St. Augustine to Ravi Zacharias, for centuries. Losing two fully grown children that one had trained to such a period in their lives does not square with the joy of bringing them into the world and the sacrifices of upbringing. And yet, Osita and Herbert left their parents in the world.

The theological problem caused by the life and trauma of Job in the bible also raises a larger philosophical question I will like to touch in this lamentation. For anyone who has read the book of Job and has witnessed the tragedy that good people have encountered in life, the question is: why do bad things keep happening to good people? Papa and Mama Wigwe are good people. Both have been together for 56 six years, more than five decades of a love story sweetened by the birth of six children, including Osita and Herbert. When in an interview, Papa reminisced about Osita— “That boy was one in a million. He had the attributes of a daughter; he had the attributes of a son. He was a solution provider to all family problems”—I have a deep and intimate sense of what Papa Wigwe was talking about. I encountered Osita as a graduate student at the University of Ibadan (he was then a final-year engineering student), and I knew him deeply at many of his beautiful and humane personality. Pa Wigwe was then the DG at the Nigerian Television Authority, and that was how I met him and Mama for the first time.

Osita was a very brilliant young man. I know this because we were both members of the University of Ibadan debating team, and I had a first-hand experience of how an engineering student could be so deeply knowledgeable and magisterial in a field usually dominated by students from the humanities and the social sciences. When I raised the issue of why he was an engineering student and not in, say, the humanities, his response gave me a solid insight into the deep flow of affection between father and son, and how that led to Osita’s desire to follow in the footsteps of his father the engineer. During a period when I was still searching for an intellectual enlightenment, rather than a spiritual one, I was immensely fascinated with Osita Wigwe, his intellectual brilliance, deep family values and pure spiritual commitment. It was essentially due to him that I visited the RCCG for the first time in 1986, and would eventually become a staunch member much later. Which was why I was baffled and very confused as to how such a spiritual father could experience the death of such a godly son—the same way I could still never wrap my head round the death of Pastor Enoch Adeboye’s son, Dare. And then twenty-seven years later after Osita’s demise, as if God still has some unfathomable purpose for Pa and Ma Wigwe, Osita’s kid-brother is taken.

Questions and more puzzling questions. Who knows why the Almighty would allow Job to be tempted? Who knows why sit-tight African leaders, the very incarnate of the diabolical, who sit on the people’s democratic liberation, would just not topple over and be transited? Job imparted an everlasting lesson that each one of us increasingly come to internalize and try as much as we have it within us to live with: humans are born to troubles. In philosophical terms, for Fredrich Nietzsche, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” This is one juncture where the pastoral calling would be a heavy burden for Papa and Mama Wigwe to bear. This is a time when it would be justified for even a role model with a spiritual responsibility to give vent to his or her doubts and frustrations with life and with God. This is a Job moment. It is a moment to reflect back to June 5, 1997, drag that reflection to the fiery trauma of February 9, 2023, and then try to connect the dots in existential and spiritual terms. Where could the hands of the Almighty be in all this? How could the meaning and purpose be uncovered?

Eventually, we all—believers, agnostics and non-believers alike—must bow before the inscrutable universe, and the denseness of the mystery that pervades all we have to deal with in life. For Christians, “great is the mystery of godliness” (I Timothy 3:16). Great is also the mystery of why good people like Papa and Mama Wigwe needed to suffer the death of two sons. We can theorize all we want about why terrible and traumatic things happen to good people. And yet we must eventually just accept that we are powerless against the Divine Mind that crafted a world where humans have survived—borne on the wings of faith—the harshest, cruelest and most challenging of all trials. Indeed, there are those who have passed through the excruciating valley of the shadow of death, but received grace and mercy to look back in gratitude for God’s deep wisdom in holding the world together, and holding us together at the critical moments of our needs.

Now close to their nine decades in life, Papa Shyngle and Mama Stella Wigwe have walked with God for far too long not to be able to recognize His presence at this moment of unbearable sorrow—no matter how dim that presence might be now. No matter how intrusive and heavy the question of why the hand of the Almighty was heavy upon them, they must find comfort in Jesus’ sorrowful lamentation on the cross: “My Father, my Father, why have you forsaken me?” Papa and Mama Wigwe are knowledgeable about the purpose behind the crucifixion of the Lord; may they be able to find a good grip on God’s wisdom that mold us all in the fiery furnace of life.

Let me conclude this difficult homily with William Blake, the English poet: “Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?” But I ask: How much sympathy, weeping, lamentation or homilies can comfort one in perplexing loss? We can only drown our grief in the assurance that God—the owner of the universe and our lives—knows what he is doing.

When peace like a river attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul."

It is well with Papa Shyngle and Mama Stella; it is well with the entire Wigwe family.