Biggest Bank in Nigeria Raises $228 Million in Rights Offer

Access Bank Plc, Nigeria biggest lender by assets, raised 351 billion naira ($228 million) in a rights offer to boost its capital above a new regulatory threshold as it embarks on an expansion plan.

The lender’s share capital — at 600 billion naira — is now 20% above the minimum required for international banks operating in the West African country, Access Bank said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. The fresh capital inflow has received regulatory approvals from both the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Securities Exchange Commission, it said.

The fund raising will help Access Bank, controlled by Access Holdings Plc, accelerate its expansion into new markets including Morocco, Egypt and the US and double the share of assets outside its home market by 2027. The rights offer is part of Access Bank’s plan to raise $1.5 billion to help meet regulatory norms after the central bank ordered large commercial lenders to shore up their capital 10-fold to 500 billion naira by March 2026.

The lender has operations in 23 countries after an aggressive growth into new markets.

Access Bank’s shares have risen 6.7% in Lagos this year after more than doubling in 2023. Earlier this month, the bank agreed to acquire Bidvest Bank Holdings Ltd. for about 2.8 billion rand ($159 million) to help the Nigerian lender expand in South Africa.

Bloomberg

Data Blackout in Nigeria, Weeks After Statistics Website Hacked - Bloomberg

Key data on the Nigerian economy remains inaccessible, nearly three weeks after the nation’s statistics agency shut down its website after it had been hacked.

The National Bureau of Statistics website provides a convenient online portal to key economic gauges for Africa’s top oil producer. The agency closed the site on Dec. 18, while warning against using any information posted on it until it was fully restored.

The lack of access to the website is raising concern ahead of the scheduled publication of December inflation data, due in mid January. The release is an important input for the Central Bank of Nigeria’s first policy meeting for 2025 on Jan. 27-28.

The statistics agency has already failed to publish its report online on capital flows into the Nigerian economy in the third quarter of 2024, as well as an update on outstanding local and foreign debt for the same period.

The NBS website also houses decades of economic data, all of which are currently unavailable, and its X account that also served as an additional information channel, has not posted since it announced the hack.


A day before the website was taken down, the statistics agency published its 2024 Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey, which showed that Nigerians paid an estimated 2.3 trillion ($1.5 billion) as ransom in 12 months, and that 65% of households had been affected by kidnapping incidents.

A spokesman for the agency did not respond to requests for comment.

While details of the attack were not revealed, and there has been no halt in the agency’s operations, economists warn that the website blackout risks derailing access to critical data.

“The delay is giving us a lot of concern, a lot of researchers rely on data from the agency as that one source that is authentic and considered genuine,” said Uchenna Uwaleke, professor of capital markets at Nasarawa State University, Keffi. “There’s a limit to data you can disseminate via press releases.”

Bloomberg

Nigerian army pushes back armed 'bandits' in the northwest, restoring calm & rebuilding local trust

The Nigerian Military says it's killed thousands of armed fighters who it accused of killing and kidnapping people for ransom. Locals call them 'bandits'. Commanders say that in the past year, they've freed 7,000 kidnapping victims. Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris has been given special access to the military's operations. He reports from Mayanchi in Zamfara state.

Al Jazeera

Related story: Video - Defence chief of Nigeria on human rights abuse reports and security

Suspected bomb explosion kills two at Nigerian school

A suspected bomb explosion killed at least two people and injured two others at a school near Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on Monday, police said.

Josephine Adeh, police spokesperson for the Territory of Abuja, said the incident happened at Tsangagyar Sani Uthman Islamiyya School, in a village near Abuja.

According to investigations, three men from the northern state of Katsina who visited the school were suspected to have brought an improvised explosive device.

"Tragically, two of the men died in the explosion while tampering with the improvised explosive device (IED), on the school veranda, while the third man and a female trader sustained severe injuries and are currently receiving treatment under police guard," Adeh said.

"The FCT Bomb Squad has confirmed that it was an IED explosion, as remnants of the device have been recovered."

It was not immediately clear if there were students at the school. Schools in Abuja were expected to reopen for a new term on Jan. 13 although Islamic schools sometimes use different calendars.

Adeh said police had taken into custody the owner of the school for questioning.

By Camillus Eboh, Reuters

Video - Nigeria launches program to accelerate agricultural export

The government-led initiative dubbed the "Earn from the Soil" program focuses on improving processing facilities, strengthening export infrastructure, and empowering smallholder farmers to shift the focus from subsistence farming to a profitable export-driven sector. So far, it has scaled up several small-scale subsistence businesses and increased interest in high-value crops like cocoa, sesame seeds, cashews, and ginger.

CGTN