Video - President bola Tinubu on a mission to change Nigeria

Less than a month into his tenure, President Bola Tinubu has begun implementing a raft of reforms long sought by bankers, economists and multilateral lenders in order to revive Africa's biggest economy. The radical changes include removing a fuel subsidy that cost the state 10 billion U.S. dollars annually.

CGTN

Nigerians languishing in prison for petty crimes

The Hope Behind Bars Africa has said that most awaiting trail inmates in Nigeria have been languishing in our Custodial facilities for petty crimes like loitering or hawking.

The human rights and criminal justice reform organisation said apart from such petty and misdemeanours cases, one would also find civil cases like disagreements between business partners that was given criminal correlations.

Executive Director Hope Behind Bars Africa, Mrs. Funke Adeoye revealed that 40 percent of the cases so far handled by the organisation are simple cases.

Adeoye said Nigeria’s prison population was 76,982 on the 30th of May 2023, the number which is spread across 240 custodial facilities, has about 69.3% awaiting trail inmates.

She said this yesterday in Abuja, during the organisation five years impact report/strategic plan launch and press conference.

She said, “40 percent of the cases we have handled are actually simple cases. Cases like people arrested for hawking, loitering and a lot of cases that the sanctions is less than three years. We also find very frequently people arrested by the Special Anti-Robbery squad for armed robbery but when we go into the nitty-gritty of the case we find their is no evidence, most of the cases are stalling for years on ending because their is really no evidence against the person on trail.


“We also find a lot of Civil cases that have been given criminal correlations, for instance, someone having a contract with another person and he gets the police to pick up the person, the person gets arrested and remanded.

“In the past five years, our organisation has dedicated major aspects of its work to providing free legal services to indigent pre-trial detainees, engaging in welfare, empowerment, reformation and reintegration interventions.

“Nigeria’s prison population was 76,982, on 30 May 2023. This number spreads across 240 custodial facilities. Inmates awaiting trial constitute about 69.3 percent of the prison population. This is the highest percentage of awaiting-trial prisoners in Africa,

“Hope Behind Bars Africa, having recognised this challenge, decided to leverage its legal network to foster access to justice. We started out directly representing inmates for free here in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and expanded to Kano and Edo states. Currently, we have a network of lawyers in Kaduna, Niger, Nasarawa, Edo, Kano and FCT. We have represented 420 indigent pre-trial detainees so far. About 40 percent of this number were charged with simple offences, 20 percent for misdemeanours, and the rest for felonies, capital crimes and fundamental human rights actions.”

By Matthew Ogune, The Guardian

Nigerians are feeling the brunt of President Tinubu's economic shakeup

Nigerians are feeling the strain as their new president pushes through a series of unpopular policies that have earned him praise from foreign investors.

Bola Tinubu, who was sworn in on 29 May, has surprised many observers by taking a running start to his tenure of Africa’s most populous country. In little over two weeks he has banished a longstanding petrol subsidy, ejected the country’s central bank governor and ended restrictions on the rate of the naira, Nigeria’s currency.

The steps have fired up markets, sending stocks in what is also Africa’s largest economy to their highest level in 15 years. But they have also increased living costs and drawn criticism from many Nigerians who have faced years of economic mismanagement.

Joseph Essien, 47, a taxi driver in Lagos, said he had stopped working altogether because he was no longer making any profit after the rise in petrol prices. He said he used to spend about 5,000 naira (£8.40) a day on fuel, which would last him for a day of eight hours and then into the next. Last week he was spending about 15,000 naira on fuel that barely lasted him a day.

“Over the weekend I just told myself it wasn’t worth it; I’m just working to pay Bolt [the ride-hailing company] their commission and I’m left with nothing,” he said.

Tinubu, 71, who won as the ruling party candidate in February’s election, last week suspended Godwin Emefiele, the controversial central bank governor, after criticising his botched replacement of naira notes in the lead-up to the election.

Inflation hit an 18-year high and Nigeria’s debt soared to more than $150bn (£118bn) under Emefiele’s watch.

On Saturday, the national domestic security agency arrested Emefiele “for some investigative reasons”, without giving further details.

Rid of its former governor, on Wednesday the central bank floated the naira to foreign exchange buyers, signalling the end of Nigeria’s control of its official rate, which soon dropped by about 40% – the biggest fall in its history.

Countries including the UK had lobbied for that move as essential to boosting foreign investment. A Whitehall source said it meant “short-term pain for long-term stability”.

Nigerians were already reeling from chaos triggered by Tinubu in the first minutes of his presidency when he declared in his inauguration speech, off-script, that Nigeria’s costly fuel subsidy was “gone”. The move sparked panic-buying before pump prices tripled, leaving travellers stranded. Two states have announced three-day office weeks for their civil servants in response, while one has reduced school teaching to three days a week.

Bolt increased its minimum fares earlier this month after the fuel subsidy was dropped but the union for drivers using ride-hailing apps said the increase goes nowhere near covering petrol prices that have roughly tripled.

Drivers went on strike last week in protest, and this week suspended the strike while negotiating with Uber and Bolt. Nigeria’s main workers’ union has also threatened to strike.

Dosunmu Oluwaseyi, 35, the floor manager of a restaurant in the Victoria Island commercial district of Lagos, said she like many had taken to “trekking” to work, choosing shorter, cheaper bush taxi routes and making up the difference on foot.

“Some people stay at work,” she said. “They will not be able to go home every day. By the grace of God they should reduce [the price].”

Ikemesit Effiong, head of research at analyst company SBM Intelligence, said Nigeria was in “national sacrifice mode”. The devaluation of the naira combined with the dropping of the fuel subsidy was already causing inflation, he said.

He added: “The hope is that the end of the subsidy regime frees up enough resources, political trust and transparency permitting, to be channelled towards desperately needed infrastructural and social investment.”

Some have urged Tinubu, an archetypal “big man” with a reputation for lavish spending, to tighten his own belt in these times of need. They suggest shortening his convoys of blackout-windowed 4x4s, which can stretch to more than 60 cars, or getting rid of some of the seven aeroplanes in his presidential fleet.

Charlie Robertson of the emerging markets investment firm FIM Partners praised Tinubu’s policies, saying they had prevented Nigeria defaulting on its debts, which would have led to rampant inflation. “We were heading to [the situation of] Venezuela,” he said. “Millions of refugees pouring across the border desperate for jobs and stability.”

He said the fuel subsidy was “simply unaffordable”, and freeing up the naira would encourage investment in the country and could boost a stagnant private sector, potentially creating jobs. But he added: “This is the easy stuff to do. The hard stuff is to make the country ready for industrialisation and a boom.”

For now Essien, the taxi driver, sits at home with his family, desperately learning the coding language Python. “By the end of this month I hope to be able to get a grasp of an aspect of it, and look for remote jobs,” he said.

By Richard Assheton, Reuters

Related story: President Tinubu stuns wary investors with quick reforms

President Tinubu stuns wary investors with quick reforms

Nigeria's new president, in office for less than a month, is pushing to put Africa's largest economy on a reform track that investors have eyed for decades, fuelling excitement that money could flow to a nation that many had deemed uninvestible.

President Bola Tinubu's bold actions, including removing restrictions on the naira currency that allowed it to hit a record 790 to the dollar and subsidy removals that tripled petrol prices, could take stress off the battered finances of Africa's largest economy.

But investors, burned by previous reforms that ultimately proved hollow, say it will take time to build trust and listed myriad questions over the final shape of the economy.

"The reaction is one of, 'finally'," said Tunde Ajileye, a partner at Lagos-based SBM Intelligence. "If this stays, then it would mean that (Tinubu) had been able to remove the two subsidies that have crippled Nigeria fiscally and monetarily for the last decade."

Tinubu is from the same party as predecessor Muhammadu Buhari, dubbed "Baba Go-slow" for his pottering pace - taking six months to appoint cabinet members.

By contrast, Tinubu lifted fuel price caps days after taking office on May 29, suspended controversial Central Bank chief Godwin Emefiele some 10 days later and on Wednesday removed FX restrictions.

The tangle of multiple exchange rates for everything from international school fees to food imports created foreign currency shortages and hobbled investment due to issues getting money out.

"Just the fact that you have seen quite a bit of movement in a relatively short space of time has gotten a lot of people in the market excited," said Goldman Sachs economist Andrew Matheny.

Nigeria's international dollar bonds and the country's stock market have been boosted by the speedy reforms.
BACKLOG, AND BURNED BEFORE

Investors, though, remained wary, citing years of damaging currency controls; Goldman Sachs pegged the backlog of FX demand at a staggering $12 billion.

"We are still to see whether this will allow the FX backlog to clear, where the new market rate will stabilise, whether this will catalyse inflows into the country and ... that there will be no issues pulling money out of the country," said John Mumo, a partner at Blakeney, an Africa-focused equities fund management firm.

Joe Delvaux, a portfolio manager at Europe's largest asset manager Amundi, said it could take months or more to lure longer-term cash.

"Ultimately, you also have to keep in mind that the biggest provider of FX will still be the CBN," Delvaux said.

"We need to see that the system works."

Tinubu will also have to tackle the perennial corruption that has hobbled the country for decades. Nigeria is ranked 150 out of 180 in Transparency International's 2022 corruption perceptions index - and has been on a downward trend since 2016.

Investors also worry about low tax receipts and falling oil output - structural reforms that will take far longer to sort.

Some are also hoping to see a more orthodox interest rate policy. Inflation hit a near 20-year high of 22.41% in May and a weakening naira will amplify price pressures. Meanwhile interest rates, which Tinubu has said he would like to see fall, were hiked by 50 bps last month to 18.5%.

"Investors will need to see positive real rates and evidence that they will be able to repatriate their earnings before local currency debt is back in play," said Patrick Curran, senior economist at Tellimer.

Investors also worry about low tax receipts and falling oil output - structural reforms that will take far longer to sort.

Some are also hoping to see a more orthodox interest rate policy. Inflation hit a near 20-year high of 22.41% in May and a weakening naira will amplify price pressures. Meanwhile interest rates, which Tinubu has said he would like to see fall, were hiked by 50 bps last month to 18.5%.

"Investors will need to see positive real rates and evidence that they will be able to repatriate their earnings before local currency debt is back in play," said Patrick Curran, senior economist at Tellimer.

By Rachel Savage, Reuters

Video - Search ends, recovery efforts intensify after tragic boat accident in Nigeria

Emergency crews in north-central Nigeria are searching for the bodies of dozens of people still missing after a boat capsized on the Niger River on Monday night. Around 140 people were rescued and more than a hundred are still missing. The accident happened on the Niger River - between the Niger and Kwara states. Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris joins us live on a boat close to the village of Egboti in Nigeria for the latest updates.

Al Jazeera