Category: Business Day

Cheap petrol abroad is not proof of policy failure at home. But subsidy removal will remain politically fragile until Nigerians can see, audit and feel the reform dividend. The seduction of a pump-price league table A viral comparison that converts petrol in Iran, Libya or Saudi Arabia into naira offers the comfort of a simple verdict: their governments care; Nigeria’s does not. It is emotionally potent because Nigerians are living through a punishing squeeze. The N70,000 national minimum wage buys far less than its headline suggests once food, transport, rent, electricity and school costs are paid. Yet the comparison is still bad economics. A pump price is not a free-standing market fact; it is the visible end of a fiscal

Members of the Edo State House of Assembly have unanimously voted in support of the State Police constitutional alteration bill as passed by the National Assembly.

The House approved and voted in support of the bill on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, during plenary. This came a day after the Osun State House of Assembly passed State Police Bill, allowing for establishment of State Policing System.

At plenary sitting, Yekini Idaiye, the Speaker of the House informed members that the alteration bill was transmitted to the House on September 16, 2026 by the National Assembly.

According to him, the National Assembly transmitted a bill seeking to alter the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, to provide for the establishment of State Police Services and related matters.

‘The bill for the State Police constitutional alteration bill was transmitted to the Houses of Assembly of the 36 states on September 16th for consideration and approval’, he said.

Speaking on the bill, Sunny Ojiezele, the Majority Leader of the House and member representing Esan South East constituency opined that bill would help in addressing insecurity in the country as well in the state.

Ojiezele said the National Assembly had asked state legislatures to consider the proposal according to their respective legislative procedures and communicate their resolutions.

He, however, stressed that the 30-day period mentioned for communicating decisions was an administrative timeline, rather than a constitutional deadline.

Other members who spoke in support of the bill included Addeh Isibor, representing Esan North East; Donald Okogbe, Akoko-Edo II; and Richard Edosa, Oredo West.

They all described the bill as laudable and in the right direction.

At the end of the deliberations, the Speaker of the House directed that clean copies of the bill be sent to the Clerk of the National Assembly, Abuja.

There is something unusual about Nigeria’s economy in 2026: some of the numbers are getting better faster than people’s lives.

Growth is holding. Inflation has fallen sharply from its 2024 peak. Foreign reserves have strengthened. Fiscal and external positions are improving. The IMF projects real GDP growth of 4.1% this year, while the World Bank says macroeconomic stability has meaningfully improved.

Yet the World Bank estimates that 63% of Nigerians were living below the national poverty line in 2025, up from 61% in 2024. It also says household incomes have yet to recover fully and productive jobs remain scarce.

That contradiction deserves more attention. It tells us something fundamental about economic transformation: stabilising an economy and improving an economy are not the same thing.

Nigeria has become better at repairing the dashboard. The harder task is getting the engine to deliver power to the people sitting inside the car. That is the missing layer.

The first phase of reform was necessarily about correcting major distortions-exchange rates, fuel pricing, monetary conditions, fiscal discipline and revenue mobilisation. And some of it is working.

The IMF expects Nigeria’s average inflation to fall from 23% in 2025 to 16% in 2026. Gross international reserves are projected to rise from $45.8 billion to $58.1 billion. Private investment is projected at 14.6% of GDP, while total investment rises to 20.3%.

These are not trivial achievements. Macroeconomic stability matters because businesses cannot plan, invest, or hire confidently when prices, exchange rates, and financing conditions are constantly moving against them. But stability is a foundation, not a destination. An economy does not become prosperous because its reserves rise or inflation falls.

It becomes prosperous when income rises faster than the cost of living, businesses become more productive, and economic growth creates jobs capable of supporting families. This is where Nigeria’s numbers become uncomfortable.

The World Bank says Nigeria needs to absorb about 3.5 million people entering the labour force every year. It also identifies weak job creation and limited entrepreneurial opportunities as major challenges. Nigeria therefore cannot afford a recovery that stops at GDP.

A 4% economy growing without enough productive employment can still leave millions feeling poorer. If the economy expands but the additional output does not translate into better-paying work, stronger businesses and higher household incomes, the statistical recovery will remain disconnected from everyday economic reality. And this is not merely a jobs problem. It is a productivity problem.

The World Bank’s February 2026 human-capital assessment found that Nigeria’s deficits in nutrition, learning and on-the-job skills are costing children born today an estimated 111% of their future earnings. Think about the contradiction. Nigeria is trying to accelerate economic growth while carrying a human-capital deficit that can severely reduce the earning power of the very people expected to drive that growth.

Agriculture tells the same story from another direction. Low productivity, weak market connections, insecurity and poor post-harvest handling continue to constrain the sector’s ability to generate better jobs and affordable food. In March 2026, the World Bank approved a $500 million programme specifically to strengthen agricultural value chains, reach up to one million smallholder farmers and mobilise private investment.

The lesson is bigger than agriculture. Nigeria repeatedly produces economic activity without always converting that activity into enough higher productivity, higher incomes and higher-value jobs. That is why the missing layer is not another reform. It is the transmission from reform to productivity and from productivity to household income.

That transmission determines whether lower inflation becomes cheaper living; whether investment becomes a factory; whether a trained young person becomes a productive worker; whether a farmer becomes a commercial supplier; and whether economic growth becomes a better-paying job.

It also determines whether today’s macroeconomic gains become tomorrow’s economic strength-or simply another period of temporary relief. This is why Nigeria should be careful about celebrating recovery too early. The country has made the difficult move from instability toward greater macroeconomic discipline.

Now comes the harder part: Making the recovery earn its way into Nigerian households. The next measure of success should therefore not be GDP growth alone. It should be whether Nigerians can produce more, earn more, and retain more of what they earn because an economy is not transformed when its statistics improve.

It is transformed when the improvement becomes visible in the economic life of ordinary people.

Emmanuel C. Macaulay is a development thinker and writer who examines the unseen logic behind everyday realities – where leadership, systems, and design shape collective progress.

The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) is processing about N8.3 billion in National Housing Fund (NHF) mortgage applications for staff of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), as the government steps up efforts to expand access to homeownership for workers.

The applications form part of a housing arrangement under the Federal Government’s ‘Renewed Hope Cities and Estates Programme’, which has allocated housing units to NMDPRA staff in Abuja, Kano and Lagos.

Shehu Usman Osidi, managing director and chief executive of FMBN, disclosed this in Abuja during the presentation of allocation letters to beneficiaries.

According to Osidi, NMDPRA staff have subscribed to 359 housing units at Karsana, Abuja, and 14 units at Janguza, Kano, while 197 NHF mortgage applications worth approximately N8.3 billion are being packaged for submission to FMBN.

CityCode Mortgage Bank is working with the beneficiaries to process the applications, while FMBN will provide financing for applicants who meet the eligibility requirements.

The development highlights the role of institutional and employer-backed housing schemes in creating a pipeline of mortgage borrowers in a country where access to long-term housing finance remains a major constraint to homeownership.

FMBN’s involvement also extends beyond individual mortgages. Osidi said the bank provided a N100 billion off-taker guarantee for the Karsana project, alongside N19.9 billion in direct funding.

The financing structure is designed to provide developers with greater certainty over demand, support construction financing and allow eligible workers to acquire completed homes through mortgages.

‘FMBN is proud to be part of the journey that gave birth to this event today and we remain committed to supporting the Renewed Hope Cities and Estates programme in Karsana and across the country,’ Osidi said.

The Karsana project is therefore being supported through a combination of project-level funding, an off-take guarantee and individual mortgage financing, linking housing construction with the eventual ability of workers to purchase the units.

At the NMDPRA event, 430 staff received allocation letters for housing units across the participating locations.

The initiative brings together the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, FMBN, Family Homes Funds Limited, NMDPRA Staff Cooperative Society, CityCode Mortgage Bank and private developers.

Muttaqha Rabe Darma, minister of Housing and Urban Development, said the administration was committed to expanding the supply of decent and affordable housing.

Darma also announced plans for a social housing scheme targeting 100 housing units in every Local Government Area across the country.

The proposed scheme would broaden the government’s housing intervention beyond organised workers and institutional beneficiaries to a wider segment of the population.

The minister called for stronger collaboration among government agencies, financial institutions, developers and other stakeholders, saying the pooling of resources and expertise would help expand affordable housing delivery.

For FMBN, the NMDPRA arrangement is part of a broader effort to develop different financing channels around changing housing needs.

Osidi said the bank was working with developers, primary mortgage banks, cooperative societies and employers to increase the supply of affordable housing and improve access to mortgage finance.

He also pointed to FMBN’s recently launched Diaspora Mortgage Loan and its planned Rent Assistance Product as additional measures aimed at addressing different housing needs.

The NMDPRA housing arrangement comes as the government seeks to use institutional partnerships to overcome some of the financing constraints that have slowed housing delivery.

Rabiu Abdullahi Umar, chief executive of NMDPRA, described the initiative as an important milestone for the Authority and its employees, commending the housing ministry, FMBN and other partners for their collaboration.

Beneficiaries are expected to work with the NMDPRA Staff Cooperative Society, CityCode Mortgage Bank, FMBN and the developers to complete mortgage documentation and other requirements before financing is concluded.

The immediate focus is therefore on converting the N8.3 billion mortgage pipeline into completed transactions, while the wider programme seeks to connect housing construction, institutional demand and long-term mortgage finance.

capital market has rarely seen anything like the opening days of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals (DPRP) IPO.

The offer drew enough subscriptions within its first six hours to crash two popular retail investment platforms. That is a legitimate verdict on demand. However, it is not a verdict on price, and most commentary conflates the two to settle into a narrow debate: is N525 overpriced, underpriced, or fair?

Industry and Company: real advantages, several still pending

Global refining margins compressed through 2024-2025 as Chinese and Middle Eastern capacity absorbed the exceptional crack spreads of the post-pandemic 2022-2023. Africa remains the exception: under 5 percent of global refined product consumption against 19 percent of world population, with West Africa importing most of its fuel through an 11-14- day European shipping route.

Our four legacy state refineries, with a combined nameplate capacity of 445,000 bpd, have historically run at negligible utilisation. This demand gap is real. However, it guarantees volume, not margin.

DPRP’s case for capturing margin rests on genuine pillars: a Nelson Complexity Index of 11.5, ahead of US (9.5) and European (6.5) benchmarks; near-total capture of domestic PMS supply; and a free-zone cost structure with duty-free imports. But one of the most consequential potential advantages isn’t in the disclosure documents at all; it’s in litigation.

Dangote has sued the Federal Government (Suit No. FHC/L/CS/857/2026) to void import licences granted to NNPC and six marketers, arguing the licences violate the Petroleum Industry Act’s backward-integration provisions given the refinery’s own claimed capacity to meet national demand. NNPC has countered that Dangote is seeking an outright monopoly.

The court is scheduled to hear the matter on October 7, inside the IPO’s subscription window, which closes October 13. If Dangote prevails, pricing power strengthens materially. If NNPC prevails, the ‘structural undersupply’ story remains contested by policy, not settled by it. This is a live catalyst being priced today as though its outcome were already known.

Nigeria’s cloud infrastructure has enough capacity to support banks’ migration of payment data under the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) localisation deadline, but shortages of specialised talent and weaknesses in fibre security could complicate the transition.

The development puts about N200 billion that Nigeria’s 10 largest banks reportedly spend quarterly on cloud and information technology services under fresh scrutiny, as financial institutions assess the cost and reliability of moving more workloads to local infrastructure.

Industry leaders made the assessment at a three-hour roundtable themed ‘Making Data Localization Work: Infrastructure, Cost, Compliance and the Future of Nigeria’s Digital Payments Ecosystem,’ hosted by SPARK, organisers of the African Technology Expo, in partnership with B4B Partners in Lagos.

Nigeria’s electronic payment transactions reached N284.99tn in the first quarter of 2025, representing a 17.7 percent increase from a year earlier, highlighting the growing volume of financial data that local infrastructure must support.

Ayobami Olajide, head of research at Kickoff Africa and moderator of the session, said the scale of digital transactions means reliability will be critical as banks migrate workloads. ‘One percent failure rate is not acceptable,’ he added.

Fola Olatunji-David, technical adviser to the chief executive officer at the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), said the localisation policy had not outpaced Nigeria’s infrastructure development.

‘It is not a policy that has come from nowhere,’ he posited.

Olatunji-David said he did not believe any cloud provider in Nigeria was operating at 100 percent capacity, suggesting that existing providers could accommodate additional workloads from banks and other financial institutions.

He pointed to NIMC’s national identity database, which he said contains more than 140 million records, including about 100 million biometric records, as an example of large-scale data being managed locally.

According to him, service quality improved as more services connecting to the database were localised.

However, he identified specialised migration expertise as a major requirement, urging the CBN to ensure that professionals handling migration projects are certified.

‘That is one area that we don’t want to skimp on,’ he said.

Ifeanyi Otudor, head of cloud solutions at MTN Nigeria, said local providers already operate under international standards including PCI DSS, ISO and SOC 2.

‘We are localising. That doesn’t mean that we are local champions. We are local but global players,’ he said.

Otudor said MTN has offered some migrating customers about three months of free service to refactor applications, with commercial charges beginning after successful migration.

The company is also expanding its cloud marketplace with services developed by partners and startups.

For banks, however, the economics of localisation could determine how quickly workloads move.

Daniel Babatunde, chief technology officer of Patrick Gold Microfinance Bank, said the bank moved away from Microsoft Azure around 2019 or 2020 partly because of foreign exchange exposure.

Hosting locally in naira reduced the need to price infrastructure against the dollar, while leased-line connections to NIBSS, Interswitch and Unified Payments improved connectivity compared with IPsec tunnels over the public internet.

The trade-off was greater engineering effort, he said, with local infrastructure not necessarily providing all the one-click installation options available on major global cloud platforms.

Babatunde said banks should examine encryption at rest and in transit, firewall provisioning, VPN and leased-line connections to payment processors, IP re-addressing and security-by-design architecture before migration.

Fibre security also emerged as a key risk to Nigeria’s localisation ambitions.

Babatunde called for stronger protection of fibre and data-centre infrastructure against vandalism, warning that disruption to connectivity could affect the reliability of financial services hosted locally.

‘Data now is the new oil. We must protect it the way we protect our pipeline,’ he said.

Olatunji-David said telecom infrastructure had been designated as critical national infrastructure under a presidential directive and that its vandalisation had been criminalised.

She also cited right-of-way coordination through Lagos State’s infrastructure agency, the Federal Government’s Project BRIDGE fibre rollout and satellite connectivity from NigComSat and Starlink as measures that could improve infrastructure resilience.

Nigeria is betting that its vast mineral deposits can become a new source of investment, exports and industrial growth. But beneath that ambition lies a risk that could prove harder to solve than geology or processing capacity: security. As the government attracts capital into lithium, gold, tin, zinc, iron ore and other minerals, some deposits sit in areas where insecurity, contested land and weak state presence are disrupting economic activity. Across parts of the North Central, violence is displacing farmers, disrupting transport and weakening control over rural land. In some areas, artisanal mining operates alongside this insecurity, creating a more difficult environment for companies seeking to formalise extraction and build processing capacity. A September security assessment by SBM Intelligence highlights

Improved security across Edo State has enabled farmers to return to their farms, raising prospects for increased food production and stronger food security across the state, the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) has said.

Bako Dogwo, President of the Integrated Farmers Association of Nigeria (IFAN) and Chairman of AFAN in Edo, disclosed this on Tuesday in Benin, saying farmers who previously stayed away from their farms due to insecurity were now regaining confidence to resume cultivation.

Dogwo spoke when farmers under IFAN, AFAN and the State Federated FADAMA Farmers installed the Edo State Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Jarrett Tenebe, as Patron of Edo farmers.

He commended Governor Monday Okpebholo’s administration for its security efforts, which he said had improved farmers’ access to their farms across the state’s 18 Local Government Areas (LGAs).

‘We want to commend Gov. Monday Okpebholo for improving security across the state. Farmers who could not go to their farms before are now happy because they can access their farms and continue their farming activities,’ Dogwo said.

He said the return of farmers to their farms would contribute to increased agricultural output and help strengthen food security in Edo.

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Dogwo urged Tenebe to use his new position to bridge the gap between farmers and the state government, particularly in addressing challenges affecting agricultural production.

Also speaking, Hon. Prince Henry Ebole, representing the State Federated FADAMA Farmers, pledged farmers’ support for the Okpebholo administration and commended its SHINE agenda.

Ebole said agriculture remained critical to food supply and youth employment, adding that about 2,000 FADAMA farmers were currently captured in the association’s existing register.

He said the association would commence ward-to-ward registration and sensitisation of farmers to expand its database and bring more farmers into organised agricultural programmes.

‘As of today, our records show that registered FADAMA farmers under the Federated Farmers Community Association are about 2,000 members. We will move from ward to ward to register and sensitise farmers and increase our numbers,’ he said.

The memes came first. Across X, TikTok and Instagram, Nigerians joked about becoming ‘co-owners’ of Dangote Petroleum Refinery after subscribing to its initial public offering. Some posted screenshots of their applications, while others joked about calling Aliko Dangote for updates on ‘their’ refinery. The humour has achieved what years of conventional investor education struggled to do: make share ownership part of popular culture. But beneath the memes is a more consequential experiment for Nigeria’s capital market. The Dangote Petroleum Refinery IPO has brought potentially millions of first-time investors into equities, with investors able to buy as few as 10 shares for N5,250. The offer opened on September 14 and closes on October 13, with Dangote seeking about N2.15 trillion from

Affected subscribers began receiving SMS notifications on Wednesday informing them that their accounts had been credited with airtime. The amounts seen so far range from less than N50 to as much as N1,500, depending on the customer’s usage and the network conditions in the affected location.

‘In line with NCC Directive, your account has been credited with Nxxxx airtime for network failure(s) in Feb to Apr 2026. Thank you,’ the message from Airtel states.

The latest payment makes Airtel the first operator to publicly emerge with a second round of credits under the NCC’s compensation framework, after the operator paid customers affected by network failures between November 2025 and January 2026.

The development marks a shift in how poor telecom service is being regulated in Nigeria. Rather than relying solely on sanctions against operators, the NCC’s framework requires qualifying subscribers to receive direct compensation when operators fail to meet prescribed quality-of-service standards.

Under the framework, compensation is automatic. Subscribers do not have to lodge individual complaints because operators are required to identify affected users through network-performance records and billing data. The NCC says the amount is determined by the subscriber’s billed usage during the relevant period, the operator’s quality-of-service performance in the affected Local Government Area and whether the subscriber made at least one billed outgoing activity.

The credit can be used for voice, SMS, data and USSD services and, according to the NCC, has no utilisation restrictions or expiry attached to it.

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Second payout raises questions

While the payments provide a direct form of redress for subscribers, the latest rollout also raises questions about the transparency of the compensation system.

A key issue is how the individual amounts are calculated. Airtel’s credits vary significantly, but neither the operator nor the NCC has publicly broken down the formula behind specific payments to individual subscribers.

The NCC says the calculation incorporates billed usage and the severity of network performance in the affected LGA. However, the framework does not translate those variables into a simple public formula that allows a subscriber to independently estimate how much compensation they should receive.

That leaves subscribers dependent largely on the operator’s calculation and the regulator’s underlying network-performance assessment.

The commission has published lists of eligible LGAs and operators where its assessments found that prescribed quality-of-service standards were not met. The published list shows that eligibility is location-specific, meaning a subscriber’s experience of poor service alone does not automatically qualify them for payment.

This is important because network failures can affect individual users differently even within the same geographic area. Under the framework, however, compensation is tied to technical performance thresholds at the LGA level and the subscriber’s qualifying activity during the relevant period.

The system therefore represents a move towards data-driven automatic compensation rather than a complaint-by-complaint process.

From fines to direct payments

The compensation regime took effect in April 2026 and applies when an MNO fails to meet specified quality-of-service KPIs in an affected LGA. It covers voice, data and SMS failures and applies to both individual and corporate subscribers.

The NCC introduced the framework against a backdrop of persistent complaints about dropped calls, poor connectivity and service interruptions across Nigeria’s telecom networks.

The first round of payments, covering November 2025 to January 2026, brought the new mechanism into public view. Airtel notified customers in May that compensation had been applied, with amounts reported at the time ranging from relatively small credits to several hundred naira.

The second payout suggests that the mechanism is becoming a recurring part of telecom regulation rather than a one-off intervention.

For consumers, the significance extends beyond the value of the airtime. The framework establishes a principle that customers can receive automatic financial redress when operators fail to deliver services at regulatory standards.

For operators, it creates a recurring financial consequence tied directly to network performance.

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Industry-wide test

Airtel’s latest action also puts pressure on the rest of the mobile industry to demonstrate compliance.

The NCC framework applies to licensed mobile network operators that fail to meet the prescribed quality-of-service KPIs. That includes MTN, Globacom and T2mobile, alongside Airtel.

The timing and scale of payments from the other operators will therefore provide another test of how consistently the framework is being implemented across the industry.

The regulator has also said compensation is triggered only after it confirms that an operator has failed to meet the relevant network-performance KPIs. This means the process involves both operator-level network monitoring and regulatory confirmation before credits are applied.

The bigger challenge is transparency. As compensation becomes a recurring obligation, subscribers may increasingly want to know not only whether they have been credited, but why they received a particular amount, which service failure triggered the payment and how the regulator verified the operator’s calculation.

Airtel’s second payout therefore represents more than another batch of free airtime. It is an early test of whether Nigeria’s new consumer-redress framework can turn network-quality rules into a transparent and measurable financial consequence for poor service.