Category: Business Day

For decades, Nigeria has flared billions of dollars’ worth of natural gas into the atmosphere, a symbol of misaligned incentives, underdeveloped infrastructure, and chronic underinvestment.

Now, as artificial intelligence rewires the global economy and sends power demand surging to levels that are straining grids from Virginia to Singapore, a debate is forming in boardrooms and government ministries alike on how Silicon Valley’s insatiable appetite for energy can finally be the catalyst that unlocks Nigeria’s stranded gas wealth.

Nigeria holds the largest proven natural gas reserves on the African continent, an estimated 209 trillion cubic feet, and yet has failed to convert that endowment into reliable electricity, industrial output, or export revenue at anything close to its potential.

Meanwhile, hyperscale data centres powering the AI models of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon now consume as much electricity as mid-sized nations, and their operators are scrambling for secure, affordable, long-term energy supply. The convergence of those two realities is beginning to draw serious attention.

‘No one questions Microsoft’s balance sheet. That changes the financing equation for Nigerian gas,’ said NJ Ayuk, executive chairman of the African Energy Chamber.

‘For the first time, African gas projects can potentially be underwritten by companies whose energy demand is as large and as strategic as entire industrial sectors,’ he added.

Historically, the financing of upstream gas development in Nigeria has been hobbled by a familiar set of obstacles, political risk premiums, currency volatility, and the lingering reputational damage from decades of oil spill litigation in the Niger Delta.

Read also: AI systems failing many global users have a data Problem, not technology – Analyst

International lenders have grown increasingly cautious, with many European development banks pulling back from fossil fuel financing under pressure from climate commitments. The entry of technology companies as potential off-takers, with investment-grade credit ratings, decade-long demand horizons, and strategic urgency, could rewrite those risk calculations entirely.

Africa currently accounts for only 0.6 percent of global data centre capacity despite housing nearly 20 percent of the world’s population.

Experts said that the gap is not merely an economic embarrassment but also represents a structural exclusion from the infrastructure layer on which the next generation of economic activity will be built: finance, logistics, healthcare, agriculture, all of it increasingly dependent on cloud computing and AI inference running through servers that, for most of Africa, sit on another continent.

Bukola Ajayi, general manager of architecture and enterprise IT at MTN Nigeria, said reliable electricity and connectivity are non-negotiable for AI readiness.

High-density racks and advanced cooling systems cannot operate consistently on unstable grids, she said.

Ayotunde Coker, chief executive of Open Access Data Centres, said even advanced economies are exploring small modular nuclear reactors to support hyperscale AI facilities, underscoring how central energy security has become to the global AI race.

Nigeria, however, is making moves to narrow the gap. Industry estimates show the country had 21 operational data centres by early 2026, with close to $1 billion worth of AI-ready facilities currently under development.

Many of the planned projects are being designed around dedicated gas-powered energy systems, a deliberate architectural choice that sidesteps Nigeria’s notoriously unreliable national grid and instead creates self-contained energy ecosystems where a gas supply agreement, a power plant, and a data centre are bundled into a single project structure.

In March 2026, Tetracore Energy Group announced plans to build a $400 million, 20-megawatt gas-powered data centre in Ogun State in partnership with Huawei and Inspirive Technologies.

The project is being positioned explicitly as AI infrastructure, designed not just for general cloud workloads but for the high-density GPU computing that large language models and inference engines require.

Ogun State, which borders Lagos and has become a preferred destination for industrial investment given its relative ease of land acquisition and proximity to port infrastructure, has emerged as an early frontrunner in Nigeria’s data centre geography.

The structure of deals like Tetracore’s reflects a broader rethinking of how energy and digital infrastructure can be co-developed in markets where grid reliability cannot be assumed.

Rather than connecting to a national system that loses an estimated 40 percent of power to transmission and distribution losses, developers are building generation assets, typically gas turbines or reciprocating engines, directly adjacent to the compute facilities they power. The model is more capital-intensive upfront, but it offers something Nigerian grid power rarely does: predictability.

Still, the obstacles are real and should not be minimised. Gas-to-power projects in Nigeria have a long history of announcement without delivery, stalled by delays in pipeline connections, gas supply agreements that collapse under price disputes, and an investment climate that can shift with the political winds.

The regulatory framework governing data infrastructure remains fragmented across multiple agencies, and local financing markets are too shallow to absorb the scale of investment the sector requires without significant foreign participation.

Experts said countries that build sovereign AI infrastructure- the servers, the connectivity, the power systems- tend to retain more of the economic value that AI generates. Those that do not become consumers of compute capacity controlled elsewhere, paying in hard currency for access to tools that shape their own economies.

Speaking at Hyperscalers Convergence Africa 2025 in Lagos, Bill Kleyman, chief executive of Apolo.us and executive chair for Data Centre Programs at Informa, said data-centre power demand in Africa is rising by 20 percent to 25 percent annually and could reach 8,000 gigawatt-hours.

‘Success requires two things, which are power and bravery,’ Kleyman said, warning that rapid AI adoption is driving rack densities far beyond what many facilities were originally designed to handle.

Nigeria’s gas reserves, long a source of frustration and environmental damage, may now represent an unlikely entry point into that contest. Whether the country can move fast enough to seize it remains the defining question.

Nigeria posted its largest merchandise trade surplus on record in the first quarter of 2026, as the twin forces of the Middle East war and the long-awaited ramp-up of the Dangote refinery fundamentally reshaped the nation’s export basket and slashed its fuel import bill.

The surplus soared to N7.5 trillion in Q1 2026, surpassing the previous record of N7.42 trillion set in Q2 2025, according to BusinessDay’s analysis of the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Total exports in the first quarter were valued at N21.1 trillion, a 2.7 percent improvement from the same quarter in 2025 against imports of N13.6 trillion, a 18.1 percent decrease from the value recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2025 and lowest on record since Q2 2024.

March 2026 was an outlier even within a blockbuster quarter. Exports hit N8.8 trillion, the highest single-month value in Nigeria’s recent history.

Analysts attribute this directly to the outbreak of war in the Middle East in late February, which triggered a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a major maritime passage for roughly 25 percent of the world’s oil trade.

‘Because of the blockade, demand for Dangote products, even to the United States, increased,’ Ayo Teriba, an economist, told BusinessDay in a phone conversation. ‘Countries that weren’t importing from Dangote before now do so to compensate for the loss of supply from the Middle East.’

For the first time, refined petroleum products including Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), automotive gas oil (AGO), and kerosene-type jet fuel entered Nigeria’s top five exports, as per the NBS. Nigeria has famously been a net importer of these items.

‘You were not exporting those items at all last year. And now they dominate,’ Teriba said.

At the peak of the Middle East conflict in March, the Dangote Refinery quickly became a swing supplier.

As the war cut off cheap fuel imports from the Gulf and disrupted traditional energy routes, the 650,000-barrel-per-day Lagos facility doubled its domestic crude intake and increased exports across Africa and globally.

Taking advantage of war-related disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, the refinery shipped millions of barrels of aviation fuel to the United States and made similar massive export pushes to Saudi Arabia.

The Hormuz blockade also drove oil prices past the $100 per barrel threshold. Nigeria, a major oil producer, stared at a windfall as other countries scrambled for the resource.

Yet, analysts believe it helped little to push up Nigeria’s export revenue due to the country’s inability to ramp up output.

‘Even if the price is high, you may still get disappointment,’ Teriba said. ‘Crude oil is higher, price is higher, but your output is less. You shoot yourself in the leg.’

Nigeria’s total crude output has continuously hovered around 1.4 to 1.5 million barrels per day, falling consistently short of the national budget targets and frequently struggling to hit OPEC production quotas.

Total crude oil exports stood at N11.2 trillion in Q1, up just 15 percent from the previous quarter.

Non-crude oil exports surged to N9.9 trillion, accounting for 47 percent of total exports.

Within that, liquefied natural gas and refined petroleum products alone were valued at N6.7 trillion, a 51.5 percent jump from Q4 2025.

‘We are beginning to see a structural shift in our exports,’ said Muda Yusuf, CEO of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE). ‘Before now, non-oil exports were basically cocoa and sesame seed. Now we are seeing fertiliser, urea and non-traditional exports.’

The record surplus was also a function of collapsing imports, which fell 18.2 percent year-on-year to N13.6 trillion. The most dramatic decline was in ‘other oil product imports,’ which crashed 85 percent, a direct consequence of Dangote’s local supply displacing foreign refined products, analysts believe.

‘For most of that period, Dangote was dominant in terms of supplying petroleum products,’ Yusuf noted. ‘That’s a sharp drop in our import bill.’

The war added further pressure on the import side. Shipping costs, marine insurance, and freight rates spiked following the Hormuz blockade, making imports from the Middle East prohibitively expensive or impossible.

India emerged as Nigeria’s top export destination, absorbing 13 percent of total exports, followed by France with 9.3 percent and the Netherlands 9.2 percent. The five leading destinations, including Spain and the US, accounted for nearly 45 percent of all exports. China remained the largest source of imports at 37.4 percent, followed by the U.S. at 20.6 percent.

But not all sectors benefited. Agricultural exports fell 31.2 percent year-on-year to N1.17 trillion, despite strong global demand for cocoa and sesame seeds. Manufactured exports remained modest at N302.6 billion.

Raw materials exports rose to N1.53 trillion, driven by urea shipments to Brazil and gold exports to Switzerland. Solid minerals exports jumped 74.6 percent to N102.8 billion. Total trade in the first quarter of 2026 was valued at N34.7 trillion, the lowest recorded in seven quarters, according to BusinessDay’s findings.

As the Customs and Excise Tariff (Amendment) Bill (CETA) 2025 advances to third reading in the Senate, Nigeria is approaching a critical economic decision. The bill is now on the verge of passage at a time when businesses are grappling with some of the most difficult operating conditions in decades.

This is not simply a debate about taxation or public health. It is a question of economic priorities. At a time when governments around the world are strengthening domestic industries, protecting jobs, and building economic resilience, Nigeria must decide whether it wants to support production or impose additional burdens on those already producing. The timing could hardly be more consequential.

Across the world, countries are increasingly acting in their own economic interests. Governments are subsidising manufacturing, securing supply chains, and taking deliberate steps to protect strategic sectors. Economic resilience and domestic production have become central pillars of national competitiveness. Nigeria should be moving in the same direction.

Instead, lawmakers are considering legislation that could increase costs for one of the country’s most structured and compliant manufacturing sectors at a time when producers are already under significant pressure.

Nigeria is not an economy with deep industrial buffers. High inflation, exchange-rate volatility, rising energy costs, and elevated interest rates continue to place enormous strain on businesses. Since mid-2023, the naira has lost substantial value, significantly increasing the cost of imported machinery, raw materials, packaging, and other production inputs. Consumers are spending less, while businesses are paying more to produce.

In such an environment, policy decisions that increase pressure on productive sectors can have lasting consequences. Once factories scale down, investments are postponed, or jobs are lost, rebuilding industrial capacity becomes far more difficult.

The manufacturing sector already faces unreliable power supply, logistics challenges, multiple taxation, regulatory uncertainty, and foreign exchange pressures. These are not industries operating under ideal conditions. They are businesses striving to remain competitive while sustaining millions of jobs directly and indirectly.

Any policy that further increases costs without addressing these structural challenges risks discouraging investment, slowing production, and accelerating the shift of economic activity into the informal sector.

Few sectors demonstrate what is at stake more clearly than the beverage industry.

The sector supports an extensive value chain that includes agriculture, packaging, transportation, distribution, retail, and thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises. When policies affect the beverage industry, the effects extend far beyond manufacturers and reach countless businesses and families across the country.

It is also one of the most heavily taxed sectors in Nigeria. Government tax receipts from the industry increased from N123 billion in 2022 to N127 billion in 2023, accounting for a significant share of corporate income tax and value-added tax collections. Few sectors illustrate more clearly the extent to which compliant manufacturers already contribute to government revenue.

Advancing additional excise taxes under current economic conditions risks imposing immediate economic costs while offering uncertain public health outcomes.

Supporters of CETA frequently cite alignment with international health recommendations and guidance from organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO). While the WHO plays an important role in global public health, Nigeria must be careful not to confuse global recommendations with local realities.

There is no conclusive evidence establishing sugar-sweetened beverages as the primary driver of non-communicable diseases, particularly in developing economies such as Nigeria. Obesity and related health conditions are influenced by a range of factors, including overall diet, physical activity, healthcare access, urbanisation, and socioeconomic conditions.

Treating a complex public health challenge as though it can be addressed primarily through higher taxes on a single product category risks oversimplifying the problem.

Nigeria’s own consumption data raises further questions about proportionality. Per capita sugar consumption remains below the WHO’s recommended annual threshold and significantly lower than levels recorded in several other African countries. This raises an important question: is the proposed response proportionate to the problem it seeks to address?

International experience offers little certainty. In several countries where sugar-sweetened beverage taxes have been introduced, consumption patterns have often shifted rather than disappeared, while evidence of sustained reductions in obesity or non-communicable diseases remains mixed.

Public health outcomes are rarely achieved through isolated fiscal measures alone. They typically require coordinated action involving education, healthcare, nutrition awareness, preventive care, and lifestyle interventions.

Health policy does not exist in isolation from economic policy.

Policies that are technically sound in theory can produce unintended economic consequences in practice. Increased production costs can lead to reduced investment, slower growth, and fewer employment opportunities. Ultimately, no international organisation bears responsibility for the Nigerian worker who loses a job or the local factory that scales back operations. That responsibility rests with Nigeria.

The Senate’s advancement of CETA also raises questions about policy alignment.

The bill appears difficult to reconcile with the president’s fiscal policy and tax reform agenda, which seeks to broaden the tax base rather than place additional pressure on a relatively small group of compliant taxpayers. Nigeria’s challenge is not low taxation. It is a tax system in which a limited number of formal businesses carry a disproportionate share of the burden while large segments of the economy remain outside the tax net.

The contradiction becomes even more apparent when viewed alongside the Nigerian Industrialisation Policy 2025, which seeks to increase manufacturing’s contribution to GDP through competitive production, value-chain development, import substitution, and enterprise growth.

Policies that increase costs and uncertainty for manufacturers risk undermining these objectives before they have the opportunity to deliver results.

As CETA reaches third reading, the window for reflection is rapidly narrowing. Yet this is precisely the moment when lawmakers must ask a fundamental question: what kind of economy does Nigeria want to build?

The issue is not whether public health matters or whether industries should be regulated. Both are important. The issue is whether Nigeria should impose additional burdens on productive sectors at a time when the country’s most urgent economic priorities are job creation, industrial growth, investment attraction, and economic recovery.

The Senate still has an opportunity to pause, reassess, and ensure that CETA aligns with Nigeria’s economic realities and long-term development goals.

History rarely remembers legislation by its intentions. It remembers the consequences.

As lawmakers consider the final stages of this bill, they face a choice that extends beyond taxation. It is a choice about jobs, investment, industrial growth, and the future competitiveness of the Nigerian economy.

At a time when countries around the world are fighting to strengthen domestic production, Nigeria cannot afford to weaken its own.

The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says it has recovered N521.765 million in unremitted Value Added Tax (VAT) from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), as part of its ongoing investigation into revenue leakages and outstanding funds due to the Federal Government.

The recovery, it explained, is one of the outcomes of a comprehensive investigation initiated following a House of Representatives resolution on a motion titled ‘Investigation of Revenue Leakages

Through the Remita Platform and Non-Compliance Substantively with Standard Operating Procedure and Other Allied Service Level Agreement and subsequently mandated the Public Accounts Committee to investigate the matter.The Committee said it undertook an extensive examination of transactions and remittances connected to the Remita platform, with a view to identifying revenue leakages, enforcing compliance, and recovering all outstanding funds due to the Federal Government.

The Committee said it found that the CBN had failed to remit VAT amounting to N521,765,134.17, representing the tax component on fees earned from Remita transactions.

The Committee subsequently directed the apex bank to remit the outstanding amount into the Federal Government Treasury and submit evidence of compliance.

According to the PAC’s findings, the unremitted VAT accrued between November 2018 and April 2024.

In a letter dated May 7, 2026, the Central Bank of Nigeria informed the Committee that it had complied with the directive and provided evidence showing that the sum of N521,765,134.17 had been remitted to the Federal Government.

Speaking on the development, Bamidele Salam, chairman of the committee, noted that the recovery demonstrates the effectiveness of legislative oversight in safeguarding public resources and ensuring accountability in the management of government revenue.

He reiterated the Committee’s commitment to recovering all funds due to the Federal Government and plugging avenues of revenue leakage across public institutions.

The Committee disclosed that its engagement with the CBN is ongoing, particularly on the reconciliation and recovery of other outstanding liabilities.

These include unrefunded charges amounting to N954.3 million and accrued interest of N2.3m bringing the total recoverable sum under that category to N3.38m for the period between March 1, 2015 and October 31, 2015.

The committee said it is also pursuing the recovery of unrefunded Treasury Single Account (TSA) collections amounting to N8,993,551,555.94, with accrued interest of N20,727,241,152.04, bringing the total outstanding liability under that category to N29,720,792,707.98 and other amounts yet to be recovered on behalf of the Federal Government.

The Public Accounts Committee is scheduled to continue its hearing on the matter on Monday, June 8, 2026, at the National Assembly Complex, Abuja.

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has attributed the delays that marred the conduct of the 2026 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in several centres across the country to a fatal road accident that claimed the lives of three of its personnel and a combination of logistical, operational and security challenges.

The examination body disclosed this in a statement issued on Monday by Moyosola F. Adesinaits, Head of Public Affairs, following widespread complaints over the late commencement of some examination papers in parts of the country.

The explanation comes after days of public outcry over the conduct of the examination, which saw thousands of candidates stranded for hours before sitting for their papers, with some writing late into the night under poor lighting conditions.

The 2026 WASSCE got off to a troubled start last week as candidates in several centres experienced significant delays in the arrival of examination materials.

On Monday, many candidates reportedly waited several hours before writing the Physics Essay and Objective papers, originally scheduled for 2:00 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. respectively.

The situation worsened on Wednesday when the General Mathematics Objective paper, scheduled for the afternoon, reportedly commenced as late as 6:30 p.m. in some centres and 8:30 p.m. in others, forcing students to remain in examination halls until after 10:00 p.m.

Videos that later went viral on social media showed candidates writing examinations with torchlights, mobile phone flashlights and solar-powered lamps due to the fading daylight and inadequate lighting facilities at some centres.

Responding to the controversy, WAEC said preliminary investigations revealed that one of the major causes of the delays was a devastating motor accident that occurred on June 3, 2026, involving officials transporting sensitive examination materials across states.

According to the Council, the crash claimed the lives of three dedicated personnel and significantly disrupted the distribution schedule for examination materials.

‘The delay was the direct result of a devastating motor accident on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, which tragically claimed the lives of three of our dedicated personnel who were transporting sensitive examination materials interstate,’ the statement said.

‘This heartbreaking loss, coupled with prevailing regional security challenges, severely compromised our distribution schedule, which inadvertently led to the delayed start times.’

WAEC said that despite the tragedy, its staff worked tirelessly to implement emergency contingency measures to ensure that the affected examinations were eventually conducted.

The Council also identified other contributing factors, including challenges associated with finalising the mode of examination and the late registration of candidates, which affected the timely preparation and distribution of examination materials.

In addition, it cited security concerns in some areas, including disruptions caused by protests over the abduction of schoolchildren, which hindered the movement of examination materials despite efforts by the Council to meet its schedule.

‘Other factors include the issues of finalizing the mode of conduct of the examination and the subsequent late registration of candidates, which affected the timely preparation of examination materials.

‘Security challenges which led to mass protests against the abduction of school children also affected the timely distribution of examination materials in spite of the Council’s best efforts.

‘While expressing regret over the inconveniences experienced by candidates, parents and schools, WAEC assured stakeholders that measures had been put in place to prevent a recurrence of the delays for the remainder of the examination period.

‘The Council hereby assures the general public that it has put modalities in place to ensure that the rest of the examination is conducted hitch-free, as observed from the conduct of the examination on Friday, June 5, 2026,’ the statement added.

WAEC also acknowledged the support of key stakeholders, including the Federal and State Ministries of Education, the Nigeria Police Force and other security agencies, which it described as critical partners in the successful administration of its examinations.

The examination body reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining the credibility, integrity and standards of the WASSCE, while mourning the loss of its three personnel who died in the line of duty.

Anambra State traders say the sharp increase in tomato prices across major markets in the State resulted from a decline in supply caused by persistent rainfall and flooding in key tomato-producing areas of the country.

A BusinessDay survey conducted at Eke-Awka Market, Ose Main Market, Onitsha and Nkpor Main Markets showed that the price of a basket of tomatoes had increased from between N65,000 and N70,000 to between N100,000 and N150,000, depending on size and quality.

Ngozi Ekeh, a tomato wholesaler at Eke-Awka Market, said that persistent rainfall in Jos and Makurdi, major tomato-producing areas of the country, had negatively impacted farming activities and reduced output.

She stressed that flooding along key transportation corridors had further disrupted the distribution of tomatoes to markets across the country, worsening the supply shortage.

Ifeanyi Okafor, another tomato wholesaler, said traders were struggling to maintain supplies due to irregular deliveries from the North.

‘Before now, trucks arrived almost every week with large quantities of tomatoes. These days, we receive fewer supplies and sometimes wait longer for deliveries.

‘The scarcity has pushed up prices significantly. What we sold for N70,000 a few months ago now sells for over N140,000,’ he said.

Chidi Nduka, who also deals in tomatoes, said transportation costs had also increased because many roads linking producing areas to the South-East had been affected by flooding.

‘The cost of moving goods has gone up and this ultimately affects market prices. Traders are not making excessive profits; we are simply adjusting to the realities of supply and transportation challenges,’ he said.

At Ose Main Market, Mma Akuchukwu described the situation as one of the most severe supply shortages experienced this year.

She said, ‘Customers complain every day about the prices, but we explain that the problem started from the farms.

‘The rains damaged many farms and reduced harvests.

‘Some customers who usually buy in baskets now purchase half baskets or smaller quantities because of the high cost.’

Also speaking, Sunday Iwuh, a retailer at the market, said consumers had become more cautious in their spending.

‘People now buy only what they need for immediate cooking. Many families are substituting tomatoes with tatashe and pepper to reduce costs,’ he said.

At Nkpor Main Market in Idemili South Local Government Area of the State, traders said the situation had affected both sales volume and consumer purchasing power.

Betty Ekeka, popularly known as Mama Chidera, said the scarcity had compelled many households to seek alternatives.

‘The good thing is that pepper, onions and tatashe are still available. These items have helped many families prepare meals despite the high cost of tomatoes,’ she said.

She advised residents to supplement fresh tomatoes with pepper, tatashe and tomato paste pending the restoration of normal supply levels.

Another trader, Peter Anyika, expressed optimism that the situation would improve in the coming months.

‘We expect supply to improve when rainfall reduces and farmers begin harvesting from irrigated farms.

‘Once more tomatoes enter the market, prices should gradually come down,’ he said.

The House of Representatives is pushing to reform Nigeria’s statistical system with a new bill aimed at replacing the existing Statistics Act of 2007, which lawmakers argued can no longer cope with the demands of a fast-changing digital economy.

Speaking on Monday at a public hearing on the Statistics Bill, 2025 held in Abuja, Adegboyega Isiaka, Chairman of the House Committee on National Planning and Economic Development, said the review became necessary because the 2007 law can no longer serve the realities of the 21st century digital environment.

He noted that modern data systems now rely on tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, geospatial technologies and real-time data platforms, which were not fully captured in the old legal framework.

Isiaka said the bill has already passed first and second reading in the House and is now at the public hearing stage to gather stakeholder input. He urged participants to contribute openly and objectively to strengthen the proposed law.

Alao speaking Tajudeen Abbas, speaker of the House said the bill aims establish a stronger, more modern statistical system that can respond to the demands of today’s digital economy. According to him, the current law was made in a very different era, before the rise of big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technologies now shaping how information is produced and used.

He explained that the new bill is not a minor adjustment but a full reform of Nigeria’s statistical architecture, adding that it is designed to improve how the National Bureau of Statistics and the wider National Statistical System operate, especially in terms of coordination, funding and data production.

The Speaker said reliable statistics remain the foundation of planning, policy making and development. Without credible data, he warned, governance becomes guesswork rather than evidence-based decision making.

He added that as Nigeria pushes towards economic transformation, industrial growth and a $1 trillion economy ambition, the demand for accurate and timely data has become even more urgent. He said every major government decision, from budgeting to infrastructure planning, depends on strong statistical systems.

The bill, he said, also seeks to introduce improved funding for the National Bureau of Statistics, strengthen data quality, reduce duplication of data collection across government agencies and support the production of more detailed and real-time information. He added that it also aims to improve digital systems for data collection and sharing.

Abbas stressed that the National Assembly remains committed to transparency and public participation in lawmaking, saying the public hearing was an opportunity for stakeholders to make inputs that will strengthen the final law.

Also speaking at the hearing, Adeyemi Adeniran, Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics, also backed the bill, saying it will help modernise Nigeria’s statistical system and improve the production of credible data for national development.

He said the current Statistics Act of 2007 has served its purpose but can no longer fully support today’s data environment, which is driven by digital technology and new sources of information.

Adeniran said the proposed law will strengthen coordination within the National Statistical System, improve professional standards, enhance institutional capacity and support better decision-making across government.

He added that the bill is structured into eight parts and 42 clauses, covering governance, data management, funding, confidentiality and coordination among statistical agencies.

He assured stakeholders that the National Bureau of Statistics remains committed to working with all partners to ensure the successful implementation of the new law once passed.

The federal government said the Nigerian government may sanction South Africa over the ongoing unjustified attacks against Nigerians living in that country

Bianca Odunmegu-Ojukwu, Minister of Foreign Affairs disclosed this, while fielding questions from State House Journalists at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Monday

Ojukwu who was at the presidential Villa, when President Bola Tinubu received in audience Madagascar President, Colonel Michael Randrianirina during the his visit to Nigeria at the Presidential Villa Abuja on Monday, disclosed that Nigeria has completed the documentation of Nigerians who are now ready to return to their country.

Responding to question on whether Nigeria is considering retaliation against the South African government, the Minister said ‘ It is a situation that we are considering’

She however added that ‘ it is up to the legislature, as it is a decision that has to be taken at the highest level of government, but it is not off the table’

‘Our citizens are being harassed, illegal actions are being perpetrated against Nigerians and the South African government has done nothing about it.

She stated that ‘Nigeria is not happy with South Africa because, Nigerians sacrificed so much for them during the South Africa’s struggle for independence.

‘ We sacrifed our resources for South Africa. in Nigeria Schools, seats were reserved for south Africa students. sometimes we even got arrested, while we were protesting against the obnoxious Apartheid regime. We are a serious Front Line State.’

This is however coming against the backdrop of the federal government’s plans to carry out the first flight from South Africa on Wednesday.

The Minister who noted that there are several processes to be under taken to assess the actual number of persons to be repatriated, added that the Nigeria Consulate in Pretoria has already made arrangements for temporary accommodation, especially for those coming from other provinces

BusinessDay gathered that over 500 people have ‘been screened and cleared’ for the first flights,

The Minister stated that President Tinubu has approved that the aircraft must go to South Africa to bring Nigerians who are imperiled in that country back home.

She also dismissed claims that Nigeria being repatriated are living in South Africa illegally.

Nigerians who are doing their legitimate businesses are being attacked and their businesses are being looted, children are also harassed and intimidated in their schools in South Africa, yet the South African police and the government are not doing anything

‘We want ensure that we screen our citizens who wants to return, as things are, we have people in different provinces who are imperiled and who want to return home

The evacuation which is being conducted by multiple federal government agencies, will also involve the National Emergency Management Agency NEMA, who are expected to make adequate arrangements for temporary accommodation for the returnees, in Nigeria

Nigeria will begin repatriating its citizens from South Africa this week, after anti-immigrant attacks and protests in the continent’s biggest economy.

About 60 people were reported to have died and 50,000 displaced in a spate of attacks directed against migrants in 2008, and fears are mounting of renewed and intensified violence.

Nigerian carrier Air Peace will manage the repatriation flights, with the first one transporting 270 passengers.

It is estimated that at least 1,094 Nigerians have indicated their interest in leaving South Africa, even though the figures have not been confirmed in Nigeria.

ARM-Harith Infrastructure Investments Ltd. has secured a first close of about $76 million for a climate transition fund aimed at channeling African institutional capital into infrastructure projects, marking a key step in efforts to bridge the continent’s infrastructure financing gap and accelerate investment in energy transition assets.

The fund manager said Monday that the vehicle, targeting a final close of $200 million, is structured as Africa’s first integrated multi-currency blended-finance infrastructure equity fund, allowing investors to participate in both U.S. dollar and local-currency denominations within a single platform.

The structure is designed to address a longstanding challenge in African infrastructure financing, where projects generate revenues largely in local currencies while funding is often raised in hard currencies, exposing developers and investors to foreign-exchange risks.

By combining local and dollar-denominated capital, ARM-Harith said the fund would help reduce currency mismatches at the asset level while creating a framework that better suits the needs of domestic institutional investors, particularly pension funds, whose liabilities are largely denominated in local currencies.

The first close was anchored by $20 million in catalytic capital provided jointly by the African Development Bank’s Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) and FSD Africa Investments, according to the company.

The funding is intended to de-risk participation by pension funds and other domestic institutional investors across the continent.

The fund will invest in climate-resilient infrastructure and energy transition projects across Sub-Saharan Africa, targeting assets capable of generating long-term cash flows while supporting economic development and decarbonisation goals.

‘This first close is both an achievement and an inflection point for ARM-Harith,’ Rachel More-Oshodi, chief executive officer of ARM-Harith, said in a statement.

‘With this successor fund, we are bringing local and hard-currency capital together within a single platform, better aligning the structure of capital with the realities of African infrastructure assets.’

Joao Duarte Cunha, manager of the African Development Bank’s Renewable Energy Funds Division, said the transaction demonstrates how blended finance can help mobilise long-term institutional capital into sustainable infrastructure investments across the region.

Anne-Marie Chidzero, chief investment officer at FSD Africa Investments, said many African pension funds have historically been unable to participate meaningfully in infrastructure equity because investment vehicles often failed to match their risk, tenure and currency requirements.

The new fund builds on ARM-Harith’s earlier infrastructure investment platform, which financed transport projects and more than 700 megawatts of installed power capacity across Africa.

According to the firm, those investments supported about 22,500 jobs and helped avoid roughly 2.6 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

ARM-Harith, which focuses on investments in energy, transport and logistics, digital infrastructure, water and waste management projects, said the successor fund will seek commercially viable investments that deliver measurable climate and development outcomes while promoting regional integration across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Lisa Udechukwu, a data quality analyst whose work focuses on AI annotation, data integrity, and trustworthy AI evaluation, says the AI Systems failing many global users have a data problem and not a technology problem

Udechukwu, also an executive member of Africa Privacy Roundup, an African-led organization focused on data protection and AI governance, told BusinessDay that when the data used to train AI ignores most of the world, the failures aren’t bugs. They’re built in.

‘In 2015, Google Photos automatically tagged photos of two Black people as ‘gorillas.’ The company’s fix, years later, was to remove the categories ‘gorilla,’ chimp,’ and monkey’ from its image classifier entirely, not to fix the underlying data. The problem wasn’t a glitch. It was a symptom.

‘I’ve spent years working inside annotation pipelines at companies like Pinterest and Meta – the unglamorous infrastructure layer where human judgment gets converted into training signals for machine learning models.

‘And what I’ve seen, consistently, is that the data problem in AI is not a resource problem. It’s a representation problem. And it’s more systematic than most people building these systems want to admit,’ she explained.

She stressed that most major AI datasets are heavily concentrated in Western, English-language contexts.

The ImageNet dataset – foundational to a decade of computer vision – drew over 40% of its images from the United States alone. African countries, which account for 17% of the global population, collectively contributed less than 1%.

Language model benchmarks follow the same pattern: English dominates, followed by a handful of European languages, with vast multilingual regions effectively absent.This matters in ways that go far beyond misclassified photos.

She posted that when AI systems trained on unrepresentative data are deployed into global markets, which they routinely are, they carry their blind spots with them. Hiring algorithms that misread non-Western names, medical AI that underperforms on skin tones that weren’t in the training set.

Search and recommendation systems that misinterpret user intent because cultural context wasn’t part of the label design.

These issues are often treated as edge cases, but many are actually predictable outcomes of incomplete and unrepresentative training data. And yet they rarely appear in model performance reports, because the benchmarks used to evaluate ‘accuracy’ are

themselves built on the same skewed data foundations.

‘In my work managing annotation pipelines – overseeing quality across thousands of human-labeled data points – I’ve seen how cultural blind spots enter training data not through malice, but through the quiet assumptions embedded in labeling guidelines.

‘When an annotation task asks workers to judge whether a search result is ‘relevant,’ the definition of relevance is written by someone. That someone is almost always located in a high-income, English-speaking country.

‘The resulting guidelines can work reasonably well for users who look, speak, and search like the guideline-writer. For everyone else, the signal degrades – and that degradation rarely surfaces until a model fails loudly in a market the company cares about.

‘Three patterns repeat across nearly every pipeline I’ve worked in: inconsistent labeling when cultural context is ambiguous and guidelines don’t account for it; systematic misclassification in product categories or content types that are common outside the West but were never included in taxonomy design; and relevance scoring that quietly penalizes regional expression, local idiom, and non-standard syntax,’ she added.

Individually, these look like quality issues. Collectively, they are a structural gap in how AI is built.The Culturally Contextual Datasheet: A Framework for What’s missing in my published research in AI and Ethics (Springer), I introduced the Culturally Contextual Datasheet (CCD) – a framework designed to document not just what data a dataset contains, but what cultural assumptions are embedded in how it was collected, labeled, and defined.

According to her, standard data documentation – model cards, datasheets for datasets – asks questions like: Where was this data collected? How many examples are there? What are the known limitations?

These are necessary. But they don’t ask: Whose definition of ‘correct’ was used in labeling? Whose dialect was treated as standard? Whose concept of relevance, safety, or appropriateness shaped the annotation guidelines?

The CCD framework treats those questions as first-class documentation requirements. Because until organisations are required to disclose the cultural assumptions baked into their data, there’s no accountability for the outcomes those assumptions produce.

Udechukwu, whose research on the Culturally Contextual Datasheet (CCD) framework, which explores cultural context and accountability in AI datasets, is published in AI and Ethics (Springer), said the people most harmed by culturally incomplete AI data are rarely the people building the systems.

A facial recognition system that misidentifies black individuals isn’t used by its engineers in their daily lives. A medical AI that underperforms on darker skin tones doesn’t affect the dermatologists who deployed it.

A content moderation system that over-removes posts in Arabic, Yoruba, or Tagalog doesn’t silence the moderators writing the policy.

‘As an executive member of Africa Privacy Roundup – an African-led organization focused on data protection and AI governance across the continent – I see this unevenness clearly. African users and communities are increasingly the subjects of AI systems they had no role in training, no voice in designing, and no recourse when those systems fail them.

‘That is not just a technical problem. It is a governance problem and an ethical one. The EU AI Act, now in enforcement, requires transparency and risk assessment for high-stakes AI systems. But it was written largely for a European context, with European data realities in mind.

‘The Global South needs equivalent frameworks – and the organizations deploying AI in those regions need to be held to equivalent standards, not exempted because the markets are considered ’emerging.’

Fixing culturally incomplete AI data doesn’t require tearing systems down. It requires changing what we measure and who we involve. Organizations building AI need to audit their annotation guidelines for cultural assumptions – not just their datasets for demographic balance.

They need to invest in annotator communities that reflect the populations their models serve, not just the populations that are easy to source at scale. And they need to treat cultural documentation as a core deliverable of model development, not an afterthought.

For the companies deploying AI in globalu markets, the business case is clear: models trained on unrepresentative data fail more frequently, in more expensive ways, in the markets that represent the most growth. Inclusive data is not a values exercise. It is a quality imperative.

‘The future of AI will not be determined by who builds the most models. It will be determined by who builds the most reliable ones – and reliability, at scale, requires data that reflects the full complexity of the world those models are asked to serve,’ Udechukwu who is also exploring initiatives centered on culturally aware AI evaluation and governance systems,’ highlighted.