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Nigeria’s equities market delivered a stronger September performance, with selected stocks posting double-digit gains as investors repositioned across real estate, transport, energy, financial services and market infrastructure stocks.

The NGX All-Share Index gained 2.87 percent in September to close at 251,211.67 points, adding 7,012.28 points during the month. Equity market capitalisation also rose by N5.37 trillion, or 3.40 percent, to N163.10 trillion from N157.74 trillion at the end of August.

However, part of the increase reflected Dangote Cement Plc’s Capital Markets Day in London on September 21, with Nigeria’s return to the FTSE Russell Frontier Market universe putting renewed focus on the country’s effort to reconnect its equity market with international capital.

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery also commenced its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), boosting market capitalisation.

UPDC REIT’s half-year results show that rental income, its principal operating revenue stream, increased 88.35 percent year-on-year to N1.577 billion from N837.15 million in the corresponding period of 2025.

Total revenue consequently rose 42.96 percent to N2.197 billion from N1.537 billion. Interest income from bank deposits remained significant at N607.93 million, although it declined from N633.86 million a year earlier. Interest income on assets measured at fair value through profit or loss also fell sharply to N5.93 million from N63.07 million. In contrast, the N2.74 million gain on financial assets held for trading recorded in the prior-year period was absent in the latest results.

The trust declared an interim dividend distribution of N0.40 per unit for H1 2026.

Abc Transport Plc

Abc Transport Plc comes in 2nd with a 42.11 percent month-to-date gain, advancing from N4.75 to a closing price of N6.75 over the period.

The transport company recorded trading activity exceeding 8.6 million units, with notable acceleration in the final week as buying interest strengthened.

Year-to-date performance stands at 56.98 percent on the Nigerian Exchange, with much of the recent momentum likely linked to the company’s hospitality subsidiary City Transit Inn (CTI) expansion plans.

In the period, the company reported that revenue increased 7.0 percent year-on-year to N8.27 billion, from N7.73 billion. However, direct costs climbed 15.3 percent to N6.82 billion, more than twice the pace of revenue growth. The resulting compression was severe: gross profit fell 20.1 percent to N1.45 billion, while gross margin contracted from approximately 23.5 percent to 17.5 percent.

Zichis Agro Allied Industries Plc

Zichis Agro Allied Industries Plc ranked among the month’s major gainers, advancing 36.77 percent from N15.25 to N19.90. The stock was also among the leading gainers in late-September trading, rising 10 percent on September 25 to N17.60.

The strong performance by Zichis came as agricultural stocks attracted investor activity, with the company emerging as the top gainer in the September 25 session.

For the six months ended June 30, 2026, revenue surged 285% year-on-year to N910.5 million, from approximately N236.5 million in the corresponding period of 2025.

The remarkable growth was primarily driven by palm oil operations, where sales expanded by more than ten times, complemented by solid growth in the fish farming business, highlighting the increasing diversification of the company’s revenue base.

The trust declared an interim dividend distribution of N0.40 per unit for H1 2026.

Abc Transport Plc

Abc Transport Plc comes in 2nd with a 42.11 percent month-to-date gain, advancing from N4.75 to a closing price of N6.75 over the period.

The transport company recorded trading activity exceeding 8.6 million units, with notable acceleration in the final week as buying interest strengthened.

Year-to-date performance stands at 56.98 percent on the Nigerian Exchange, with much of the recent momentum likely linked to the company’s hospitality subsidiary City Transit Inn (CTI) expansion plans.

In the period, the company reported that revenue increased 7.0 percent year-on-year to N8.27 billion, from N7.73 billion. However, direct costs climbed 15.3 percent to N6.82 billion, more than twice the pace of revenue growth. The resulting compression was severe: gross profit fell 20.1 percent to N1.45 billion, while gross margin contracted from approximately 23.5 percent to 17.5 percent.

Zichis Agro Allied Industries Plc

Zichis Agro Allied Industries Plc ranked among the month’s major gainers, advancing 36.77 percent from N15.25 to N19.90. The stock was also among the leading gainers in late-September trading, rising 10 percent on September 25 to N17.60.

The strong performance by Zichis came as agricultural stocks attracted investor activity, with the company emerging as the top gainer in the September 25 session.

For the six months ended June 30, 2026, revenue surged 285% year-on-year to N910.5 million, from approximately N236.5 million in the corresponding period of 2025.

The remarkable growth was primarily driven by palm oil operations, where sales expanded by more than ten times, complemented by solid growth in the fish farming business, highlighting the increasing diversification of the company’s revenue base.

Seplat’s performance was particularly significant given its position among the market’s largest stocks by value. The company was also the leading equity by turnover value during September, with N171.08 billion worth of its shares traded, according to Network Capital’s monthly market report.

The oil and gas firm reported that its th profit after tax soared by 498 percent year-on-year to $164 million, buoyed by stronger crude oil prices, improved production and robust operational performance.

Seplat also announced that it had reached an agreement to sell a 10 per cent interest in the NNPCL-SEPNU Joint Venture (JV) to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) in a transaction valued at $281.6 million.

According to the company, the NNPC deal, expected to close in the second half of the year, will significantly enhance shareholder returns, with total planned dividends for 2026 projected to rise to 68.3 cents per share, equivalent to about $410 million and representing a 173 per cent increase year-on-year.

Eterna Plc

Eterna Plc recorded a 22.91 percent gain, moving from N35.80 to N44.00.

The company’s unaudited consolidated financial results showed that revenue rose by 38 percent to N217.31 billion from N157.65 billion in the corresponding period of 2025.

Gross profit more than doubled to N15.99 billion, while operating profit increased to N8.78 billion from N2.34 billion. Profit before tax rose by 389 percent to N7.67 billion from N1.57 billion recorded in the corresponding period of 2025.

Royal Exchange Plc

Royal Exchange Plc in the month of September rose 15 percent from N1.00 to N1.15 per share.

During the second quarter, profit before tax fell to N100.88 million, down from N757.40 million in the second quarter of 2025 and below the first-quarter profit of approximately N13.16 million, resulting in a cumulative first-half profit before tax of N87.72 million.

Fidelity Bank

Fidelity Bank Plc gained 12.75 percent, rising from N20.00 to N21.65. The bank was also among the most actively traded equities during the month, recording 2.32 billion shares in volume, according to the September market report. The bank is yet to release its H1 results.

Nigerian Aviation Handling Company Plc

Rounding out the top 10 was Nigerian Aviation Handling Company Plc (NAHCO), whose shares rose 10.01 percent from N136.35 to N150.

According to the company, gross revenue rose to N35.36 billion in H1 2026 compared to N32.33 billion in H1 2025. Operating profit grew by 25.4 percent from N11.64 billion in H1 2025 to N14.59 billion in H1 2026.

Rising cardiovascular diseases have sparked renewed calls for heart-healthy habits to be introduced early in life rather than waiting until adulthood to address the risk factors.

According to the Nigerian Health Foundation (NHF), out of 63 million deaths per year globally, 19.8 million are caused by cardiovascular diseases and over 235,000 deaths are due to cardiovascular diseases in Nigeria, stressing that many of the risks can be managed through healthier diets, regular physical activity, and early lifestyle changes.

The foundation disclosed this recently at an event marking the 2026 World Heart Day with the theme, ‘Healthy Hearts: From the classroom to the families.’

Kingsley Akinroye, executive director of NHF, said this year’s theme focuses on schools as a way of taking heart-health education to the grassroots, helping children develop healthy habits from an early age.

‘Nigerian Heart Foundation has directed the focus of the theme to bring the focus back to the grassroot and to catch them young hereby instilling heart-healthy values in the students from a young age to help them resist peer-pressure and any other social vice that may be implemented to indulge them in habits that are detrimental to their heart and their health at large,’ Akinroye said.

He also said that 49 percent to 58 percent women of reproductive age in Nigeria are recorded to suffer from severe anemia, adding that 2026 has made the importance of healthy diets extensively obvious to Nigerians, with the rise in rate of consumption of junks, sedentary lifestyle, air pollution, alcohol and tobacco use.

‘Cardiovascular disease is the world’s most urgent health crisis but is often overlooked by leaders. Without national action plans and universal access to treatment, the number of CVD deaths will keep rising,’ Akinroye said.

Globally, the World Heart Federation (WHF) launched the 2026 ‘Don’t Miss a Beat’ campaign to draw attention to heart disease symptoms that can remain unnoticed until it is too late

The NHF stated that at least 80 percent of premature deaths from heart disease could be avoided if 5 (five) main risk factors including tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, harmful use of alcohol and air pollution are controlled.

Akinroye said that heart diseases start at a very early age and accumulate over the years. ‘So why should we wait until middle-age before initiating lifestyle modifications to curb or cure heart diseases?’

He urged teachers to promote healthy diets and physical activity among pupils, noting that heart disease begins at an early age and accumulates over the years.

‘NHF is urging teachers in schools to help improve cardiovascular health through healthy diets and physical activity habits in students to prevent CVD incidence rates or mortality in Nigeria,’ Akinroye said.

Amam Mbakwe, vice president of WHF, and consultant cardiologist, called for cardiovascular screening to be incorporated into the primary healthcare system, noting that cardiovascular disease remains a major cause of death globally.

‘The screening must start at the primary healthcare level. We are saying that we don’t need to develop another system. Let’s integrate it into the already existing primary healthcare system,’ Mbakwe said.

She further said that Nigeria could not rely solely on specialists and tertiary hospitals to tackle the growing burden of cardiovascular diseases.

Rasaaq Adebayo, president of the Nigerian Cardiac Society (NCS), said that although the government had made progress in improving healthcare facilities and services, more needed to be done.

‘Our association has been partnering with the government, and the government has been doing a lot in terms of enhancing facilities, providing facilities and providing services.

‘But the population keeps growing, and the needs of the people keep growing. We still continue to advocate more facilities. The ones that have been used, we need to replace them and so on,’ Adebayo said.

He said Nigerians had become more conscious of physical exercise compared with previous decades, but noted that more needed to be done to reduce sedentary lifestyles.

Ghana has cancelled the exclusive wholesale 5G concession previously awarded to Next Gen InfraCo (NGIC), a consortium linked to Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries through its Radisys unit and granted a full 5G license plus spectrum to Telecel Group for independent deployment.

The National Communications Authority ended NGIC’s monopoly rights, which were originally set to run until 2034, and shifted to a competitive licensing model. Telecel Group CEO Moh Damush confirmed the operator will launch commercial 5G services on its own network in December 2026. ‘We plan to launch the service in December this year on our own network,’ Damush affirmed.

The policy reversal reflects frustration with slow progress under the single wholesale-provider approach. NGIC had fallen well short of rollout targets, limiting the pace of ultra-fast broadband expansion. By opening spectrum to direct competition, the government aims to accelerate nationwide coverage, encourage greater investment and innovation, and better serve public interest in a faster digital economy.

Telecel’s independent license marks a clear break from reliance on a shared wholesale network. The move positions the operator, partly state-owned, to control its own infrastructure and compete more aggressively, while also clearing the path for other players such as MTN.

The change prioritizes speed and resilience over a centralized model that struggled to deliver results on schedule.

The Present House church in Lekki on Friday was graced with a rare, sacred spendour. A gathering of who is who in Nollywood, veterans, directors, producers, and screen icons; had filled the venue to pay their final, heartfelt respects to a titan of our screen, Uncle Olu Jacobs.

Stepping into the hall, one was immediately struck by the visual tribute: the entire auditorium was awash in all shades of green.

From emerald runners to olive floral arrangements and sage green ribbons draped across the pews, every corner radiated a vibrant, living tribute to celebrate a life profoundly well-lived and an enduring legacy that refuses to fade.

The service commenced with solemn hymns. The atmosphere shifted into deeply personal realms as Uncle Olu’s children stepped forward to read scriptures, followed by one of his sons delivering a moving recitation of his legendary biography, a testament not just to a great career, but to a devoted father and patriarch.

Officiating the service, Tony Rapu, Senior Pastor of House Of Freedom and founder of This Present House, mounted the pulpit. With characteristic warmth and spiritual depth, he anchored the congregation in reflection:

‘To succeed with people, you have to understand where they are coming from and align yourself with them. Same way, to succeed with God, we have to understand God’s perspective. This funeral service is such a precious moment before God.’

Reading from Philippians 1:24, Pastor Tony reminded the audience that being absent from the body is to be present with God, noting that dying is much like sleeping, an inevitable passage for the human race unless the Lord tarries.

‘Death reminds us of the journey of life and the meaning of our existence,’ he reflected, his voice carrying across the sea of green.

‘Olu worked with Christ. His strength and fortitude tell it all. Uncle Olu has gone home. Uncle Olu died in the Lord. Home is where we came from. When we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we make heaven our home. I look forward to seeing Uncle Olu again. They rest from their labour.’

A Kenyan court has issued a status quo order temporarily halting site activities on Dangote Industries CEO Aliko Dangote’s planned $16bn oil refinery in Lamu County. Malindi Environment and Land Court Judge Jane Onyango issued the directive following a lawsuit filed by 133 residents claiming rights over the ancestral land earmarked for the energy facility. The legal challenge threatens early operations for the 700,000 barrel-per-day plant designed to serve East African markets.

The dispute centres on compulsory acquisition processes and compensation for families occupying the project footprint. Petitioners allege the development lacks required environmental impact assessments and public participation mandates under Kenyan law. The court ordered all parties to maintain existing site conditions until a formal hearing scheduled for October 14.

Despite the court ruling, Dangote dismissed concerns regarding long-term delays, stating that legal challenges remain a routine aspect of large-scale infrastructure developments across Africa. The $16bn project forms a core component of Kenya’s plan to establish Lamu Port as a regional refining and logistics hub. East African nations, including Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, have been offered a combined 30% equity stake in the facility to secure regional energy integration.

Construction activity may face temporary restrictions at the site, though delivery of heavy refinery equipment to Lamu Port continues as scheduled. Dangote Group confirmed that while on-site civil works must comply with the judicial injunction, broader administrative preparations and partner equity discussions will proceed ahead of the October court date.

Africa does not have a shortage of trade agreements. Its bigger problem is that too few businesses are equipped to turn market access into repeatable cross-border commerce. At the Loveworld Trade and Investment Forum (LTIF) 2026, we will be discussing the realities of scale in intra-African trade and commerce, and how small businesses can tap into emerging opportunities. Show up on October 6 and 7, 2026, in Accra, Ghana. Attendance is free, but registration is mandatory.

For years, the African trade conversation has been framed around the size of the opportunity.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has created a framework for a continental market. Intra-African trade is growing. African governments are talking more seriously about regional value chains, industrialisation, and local production.

Nigeria’s trade with the rest of Africa rose about 21% in 2025, from $7.47 billion to $9.02 billion, according to Afreximbank’s African Trade Report 2026. Intra-African trade as a whole grew 5.5% to about $213.8 billion. Refined fuel helped drive Nigeria’s gain: the bank credits higher exports to Cameroon, Ghana, and Togo, with the Dangote refinery running near full capacity.

Small businesses are not obviously sharing in that gain. Nigeria’s roughly 40 million micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) accounted for 6.21% of exports in the last national survey by SMEDAN. West Africa left slightly more than $7 billion of roughly $13 billion in intra-African export potential unrealised in 2025, Afreximbank estimates.

The barriers that keep small business owners stuck are less about market access than about readiness. The question that stakeholders are trying to answer is becoming unavoidable: can African businesses actually use the market being built for them?

Important global institutions are already weighing in to collectively an issue that is becoming a continental problem. In its August 2026 report, Integrating Africa: From Threads to Hubs, the World Bank argued that Africa’s next gains will come from making the systems around businesses work across borders-customs, standards, transport, payments, finance, energy, and digital infrastructure.

The problem has expanded beyond whether an entrepreneur in Lagos, Nigeria can find a customer in Accra, Ghana. It is whether they can serve that customer profitably, repeatedly, and at a scale that makes the relationship worth maintaining.

The market is there but businesses need support to catch up

Market infrastructure is not fully there yet, but its availability is slowly becoming available. The problem with how the continent is building today is the top-down approach that is seemingly failing to catch up with on-the-ground realities of entrepreneurs and business owners.

Payments first. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) said on September 11 that transaction volumes across its network grew about 1,000% between comparable periods in 2025 and 2026, while values rose about 120%. The increase implies the average payment fell to roughly a fifth of its earlier size. That fits smaller, more frequent transactions, though the figures alone do not show who is paying.

Afreximbank said PAPSS transactions cost 92% to 95% less and cut foreign exchange (FX) requirements by up to 80%. The export-import bank has previously estimated that intra-African trade reached $220.3 billion in 2024, growing by 12.4% from the previous year. Yet, it represented only 14.4% of Africa’s total trade.

Paperwork is moving too. Patience Okala, who leads Nigeria’s AfCFTA Coordination Office, said in September that Certificates of Origin, which let goods claim reduced tariffs, are now processed in 24 hours.

There’s both opportunity and warning: African businesses are trading with one another, but regional commerce remains a relatively small part of the continent’s total trade. The World Bank’s latest analysis adds another important point: intra-African trade, while limited in scale, is more diversified and manufacturing-intensive than Africa’s trade with the rest of the world. Regional markets can do more than create customers. They can create the scale at which businesses learn, specialise, add value, and invest.

But scale requires businesses that are ready for it. For a small manufacturer, export readiness means reliable production, proper costing, documented financials, quality standards, working capital, logistics knowledge, and the ability to withstand the delay between fulfilling an order and getting paid.

In 2025, Afreximbank estimated Africa’s annual trade-finance gap at about $100 billion and says only 18% of African banks’ trade-finance portfolios support intra-African trade. That means the next phase of African trade cannot be built only by lowering tariffs. It has to be built by making small businesses more bankable, productive, and easier to connect to regional supply chains.

Where businesses stall

Use is the problem. Two years after Nigeria began preferential trading under the AfCFTA, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) said in September that the country cannot credibly quantify the benefits. About 10 exporters took part in the 2024 launch, it said, and no public register shows how many certificates have been issued or tariff preferences claimed.

Ghana, a destination for Nigerian refined fuel, shows the same shape. Its Statistical Service counted 1.87 million business establishments in 2024. About 92.3% operate informally, and about 70% earn less than GHS10,000 ($850) annually.

Financing is the harder block. The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimated Africa’s unmet trade finance demand at no less than $74 billion in 2024 and warned it could reach $86.6 billion by 2027. Banks approved 63% of SME trade finance applications on average, against 80% overall. Weak creditworthiness (cited by 48% of banks) and insufficient collateral (39%) were the main reasons for rejection, as they have been since the AfDB’s first report in 2014.

Neither reason concerns the product. Creditworthiness is a records problem, and records are the part a business controls.

What businesses need to do now

For a strategic small business owner, the next level is about taking advantage of the advancements in regional trade opportunities as they come.

First, formalise the numbers. A business that cannot produce credible accounts, understand its margins, or separate business cash from personal cash will struggle to convince a lender, investor, or serious buyer that it can fulfill a large order.

Second, build for standards, not just sales. Regional markets are not one market in practice. Product requirements, certifications, packaging, labelling, and documentation can determine whether a shipment moves or stalls.

Third, design the business around regional value chains. The opportunity is not always to export a finished product. A Nigerian business may be better positioned to supply an input to a Ghanaian manufacturer, source packaging from another African market, or become part of a larger regional production network.

Fourth, treat technology as infrastructure. Digital payments, e-commerce, supply-chain systems, and trade documentation are becoming part of the infrastructure for cross-border commerce, not optional additions.

And finally, understand the cost of the border. The World Bank estimated that around 60% of trade costs can arise behind countries’ own borders, making domestic reforms to customs, logistics, regulation, and services as important as continental agreements. Africa’s integration agenda cannot succeed if governments negotiate access while businesses remain too informal, undercapitalised, or operationally weak to use it.

Absa Group has become the first African bank to offer digital asset custody as it moves into a market that has grown rapidly in South Africa, with crypto assets held by the country’s three largest licensed providers reaching about $1.5 billion.

The Johannesburg based lender will provide institutional clients in South Africa, including asset managers, non bank financial institutions and corporates, with services for the secure storage, administration and transfer of digital assets.

Rob Downes, head of digital assets at Absa’s corporate and investment banking unit, said the bank plans to extend the service to more clients and other African markets, subject to regulatory approval.

‘We expect to extend this to other client segments in South Africa in due course, and are actively working on bringing the solution to some of our other African presence countries in line with regulatory approvals required,’ Downes said.

The move comes as institutional interest in digital assets expands and financial institutions seek regulated ways to hold and transfer cryptocurrencies. The South African Reserve Bank estimates that crypto assets held by the country’s three largest licensed service providers, Luno, VALR and Ovex, more than doubled to 25.3 billion rand, or about $1.5 billion, by the end of 2024 from less than 10 billion rand at the start of 2023.

The broader global digital asset custody market is also expanding. It is estimated at about $953.5 billion in 2026 and could reach $4.38 trillion by 2033, according to the figures provided.

For Absa, the custody service creates a new channel into a growing digital asset market while allowing institutional clients to access crypto services through a regulated banking platform.

The bank’s planned expansion into other African markets will depend on regulatory approvals in each jurisdiction.

Workplace confidence is recovering globally as workers increasingly turn to Artificial Intelligence (AI), technology, and skills development to navigate persistent uncertainty, according to the latest Work Relationship Index.

The 2026 fourth annual study found that 29 percent of knowledge workers now report a healthy relationship with work, up eight percentage points from 2025. However, 35 percent remain in the Critical Zone, showing that workplace pressures remain significant.

The recovery is taking place amid continued disruption, with 86 percent of knowledge workers reporting organisational change in the past year and 67 percent saying it feels too risky to leave their current jobs.

The study surveyed 19,506 desk-based workers across 15 countries, including knowledge workers, IT decision-makers and business leaders, providing a global benchmark for organisations in Nigeria and South Africa as they navigate workplace change and AI adoption.

Rather than waiting for stability to return, workers are increasingly using AI, transferable skills and side ventures to build resilience.

HP said the findings underscore a need to ‘help people feel equipped for change rather than overwhelmed by it’, while ensuring technology investments improve employees’ day-to-day experience of work.

The report found that 36 percent of workers globally run an income-generating side hustle or venture, rising to 48 percent among Gen Z and 47 percent among workers in emerging markets. It described these ventures as a form of career insurance as employees become more cautious about major career changes.

AI becomes a resilience tool

AI is increasingly moving from a source of disruption to a tool for workplace resilience.

The report found that 47 percent of all workers now use AI agents, while 59 percent of knowledge workers use work-provided AI tools daily or weekly, up from 46 percent in 2025.

‘AI has shifted from a source of disruption to a source of resilience,’ HP said.

AI adoption is also associated with healthier workplace relationships. Fifty-two percent of workers in the Healthy WRI Zone use AI agents, compared with 38 percent of those in the Critical Zone. Meanwhile, 15 percent of workers in the Critical Zone reported no AI use, more than twice the seven percent recorded in the Healthy Zone.

Greater AI proficiency is also linked to higher confidence. Only 52 percent of basic or novice users were confident they understood where AI ends and their own judgement begins, compared with 78 percent among proficient or expert users.

However, AI adoption has created a communication gap. While 63 percent of IT decision-makers and 64 percent of business leaders said their organisations clearly communicate how AI and new technologies may affect roles, only 44 percent of knowledge workers agreed.

Leadership remains critical

Despite the rise of AI, leadership confidence was the strongest driver of workplace health, accounting for 32 percent of the WRI. Technology enablement followed at 20 percent, workforce development at 19 percent, skills and future readiness at 16 percent, and AI confidence at 12 percent.

Fifty-four percent of knowledge workers said they trusted senior leaders to make the right decisions for employees, while 57 percent trusted them to make the right decisions for the business.

The report also found a strong relationship between workplace health and business performance. Workers at companies that performed extremely well were about six times more likely to have a healthy relationship with work than those at poorly performing companies-55 percent versus eight percent.

As AI reshapes jobs, adaptability is becoming increasingly important. Seventy-four percent of workers identified adaptability as an important workplace skill, followed by creative problem-solving and collaboration, trust and empathy at 72 percent each.

HP said ‘technology enablement is no longer a back-office issue’, but central to how organisations help employees adapt, perform and build healthier relationships with work.

For employers in Nigeria and South Africa, the findings suggest that navigating the future of work will depend not only on adopting AI, but also on building employee trust, investing in skills and ensuring workers have the technology needed to adapt to continuing change.

The controversy surrounding the proposed concession of King’s College, Lagos, has taken a fresh turn, as the Joint Workers’ Committee (JWC) has submitted a 23-page document to the seven-member committee reviewing the plan.

The seven-member committee was set up by the federal government to review the proposed concession of King’s College, Lagos, and the committee held its inaugural meeting on Thursday.

The meeting brought together representatives of the Federal Ministry of Education, organised labour and the King’s College Old Boys Association (KCOBA), as the parties resumed negotiations over the future of the 117-year-old institution.

Suwaiba Ahmad, the Minister of State for Education, presided over the meeting where the union delegation, led by Innocent Bola-Audu, presented their holistic position on the concession agreement to the minister, the permanent secretary of the ministry and representatives of KCOBA.

The JWC, in a statement issued after the meeting, said its 23-page position document had been formally submitted to the ministry for review and consideration.

The statement was signed by Abraham Onuche, the chairman of JWC at the Federal Ministry of Education headquarters; Chigozie Ngadi, chairman of Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN); Ojelabi Ademola, chairman of Nigeria Civil Service Union (NCSU); and George Stainless, chairman of Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service Technical and Recreational Services Employees (AUPCTRE).

The workers also clarified that no Federal Unity College had been concessioned, stressing that the process remained under consideration and that ‘no concession has been concluded or implemented.’

The JWC said it had presented six alternative options in its position paper for the ministry’s consideration, aimed at achieving improvements in the quality, standard, administration and overall development of the Federal Unity Colleges without compromising the interests of the schools and their stakeholders.

‘The Union is not opposed to improvement,’ the workers said, insisting that they were not against ‘any genuine initiative capable of improving the quality, standard, administration and overall development of the Federal Unity Colleges.

The council further stated that ‘normal school activities are to continue,’ with all Federal Unity Colleges expected to maintain their normal academic and administrative activities while the matter is being resolved.

It also stressed that ‘no date has been fixed for the next meeting,’ adding that further engagements would be scheduled after the ministry had reviewed the union’s position paper.

The JWC, however, maintained that the position and agreement of critical stakeholders must be clearly established and reflected in any final arrangement concerning the schools.

‘The position and agreement of critical stakeholders, particularly the Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) and the Unions, must be clearly spelt out and properly reflected in any arrangement concerning the schools,’ it said.

The development followed the two-week suspension of the unions’ industrial action after the Federal Ministry of Education suspended implementation of the proposed King’s College concession to allow for further consultations.

The JWC said the suspension was predicated on an agreement reached between the management of the Federal Ministry of Education, the ASCSN national leadership and the Joint Workers Council of unions in the ministry’s headquarters.

The council said it remained committed to constructive engagement with the Ministry and all relevant stakeholders in the interest of the Federal Unity Colleges, their students, staff and the Nigerian education system.

A rise in the share prices of Seplat Energy Plc and Aradel Holdings Plc boosted the portfolio of Samuel Dossou-Aworet, a billionaire from the Republic of Benin, by $430 million in the third quarter, bringing the total value of his combined holdings in both companies to $1.59 billion.

According to data by Billionaires Africa, the total market value of Dossou-Aworet’s shares in both companies rose from $1.16 billion on July 1 to $1.59 billion by the end of September.

Seplat drives most of the gain

Most of the growth came from Seplat Energy Plc, where Dossou-Aworet holds 81,015,319 shares (about 13.5 percent) through his company, Petrolin Group. Seplat’s stock price increased by 40.8 percent during the quarter, rising from N11,363.90 on July 1 to a record N16,000.10 on September 30.

The stock experienced sharp single-day increases during the period, rising 10 percent on September 3, 10 percent on September 10, and 7.3 percent on September 24. These gains raised the value of his Seplat stake from $667.1 million to $976.1 million, an increase of $309 million.

Higher crude oil prices and strong financial results supported the stock’s performance. Crude prices crossed $100 per barrel in September following shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, Seplat reported a 74.1 percent increase in its first-half pre-tax profit, which reached N790.4 billion.

Seplat ended the quarter with a market value of about N9.6 trillion, making it the sixth most valuable company on the Nigerian Exchange.

Aradel provides steady growth

Aradel Holdings Plc also contributed to the overall gain. Dossou-Aworet owns 532,693,719 shares in the company, representing a 12.3 percent stake.

Aradel’s stock price rose by 19.9 percent over the quarter, moving from N1,275.80 to N1,530.00. This increase added $121.3 million to his holdings, raising the total value of his Aradel shares from $492.4 million to $613.7 million. Aradel ended the quarter with a total market capitalisation of approximately N6.65 trillion.

Currency movement supports value

A slight strengthening of the Naira also helped increase the dollar value of both investments. The exchange rate moved from N1,380.17 per dollar on July 1 to N1,328.02 on September 30, adding about 4 percent to the dollar value of his holdings.