Category: West Africa

The chairman of Etisalat Nigeria, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, has resigned from the telecoms company after talks to renegotiate a $1.2 billion loan collapsed, prompting a major foreign shareholder to exit the business, two company sources told Reuters. Abu Dhabi state investment fund Mubadala said on June 23 it had pulled out of Etisalat Nigeria after the…

Nigeria’s Excess Crude Account tied for the world’s most poorly governed sovereign wealth fund, according to a report by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) released on Wednesday. The $2.4 billion account was ranked alongside the Qatar Investment Authority as the worst in terms of oversight and transparency in NRGI’s index of resource management. NRGI…

Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama has expressed Nigeria’s desire to further strengthen and expand cooperation with Tunisia especially in the area of trade and investment. This is contained in a statement released by the minister’s media aide, Sarah Sanda on Sunday in Abuja. The minister made this known when he visited Tunisian President, Béji…

The Federal Government has expressed readiness to expand economic cooperation with Tunisia, Foreign Affairs minister, Geoffrey Onyeama has said. The minister, who led top government officials to the Federal Republic of Tunisia, stated this weekend at the Carthage Palace, where they were received by the country’s President Béji Caied Essebsi. Onyeama, in a statement by…

The International Monetary Fund’s executive board on Monday approved a $666 million, three-year extended credit facility for Cameroon to support economic and financial reforms, an IMF statement said. The nations of central Africa’s CEMAC currency union have struggled in the face of low oil prices, which have slashed state revenues. Cameroon has also been forced…

Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has said only 14 million out of the 69.9 million economically active Nigerians pay tax, reflecting a low compliance of 20.03 per cent. Adeosun, who disclosed this at the NSE-Bloomberg CEO Roundtable at the weekend, lamented that, even among the tax payers, there was widespread malpractice that resulted in only…

Managing Director of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC), Engr. Fidet Okhiria, has explained that the Federal Government has not spent up to $12bn contrary to what he called misinformation to the public. He said the 186-kilometre Abuja-Kaduna standard gauge which was opened last year had not hit $1bn, further disclosing that the project cost around…