Hi there, been a moment! We trust you had a great week filled with love and lots of presents. After all, we were all gifted on Tuesday or not. We’ve decided to dedicate this week’s edition of the weekly round-up to the ones of us who weren’t gifted anything even as small as candy on Tuesday. You’re loved Jide. Keep your head up, next year will be different, we promise.

Back to reality, however, a lot of things have been happening and a lot has especially happened this week. Things that had us questioning logic and economics.

We’ve cooked up the hottest news for you this week on our round-up, sit back and have a good read!

First, on our news feature is the interesting naira swap policy situation lingering in the country. Earlier this week, three states of the federation (Zamfara, Kaduna & Kogi) in a suit against the Federal Government and the CBN, had their case heard by the Supreme Court after the court adjourned the case at the last time of the hearing. The apex court had initially adjourned the case till Wednesday, February 22 with an interim injunction placed on the Federal government & CBN naira implementation deadline. These three states were later joined by seven other states (Katsina, Cross River, Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo & Sokoto) in the suit against the FG& CBN.

The whole case, however, took an interesting twist when the FG & CBN were joined by Edo and Bayelsa against the ten states mentioned earlier. While we’re quite sure that these two states are definitely affected by the whole naira scarcity, we can’t seem to justify the reason given by the respondent states as ‘we’re in support of the cashless policy’. At the end of the day the old saying, ‘keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer’ comes to mind. Nice move, Edo & Bayelsa!

Next, and still as regards the current naira situation in the country, the executive President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, on Thursday ordered that the old N200naira notes remain in circulation till 10^th April, while the oldN500 and N1000 no longer serve as legal tender. This order was however inconsistent with the earlier ruling of the Supreme Court which placed an interim injunction on the new naira notes policy implementation deadline. The outcome of this inconsistency has been no less than economic loss, especially for business owners, vandalization of banks & attacks on bank officials, transportation difficulties, etc. Worthy of note also is the fact that Oyo state stated during the course of the week that any bank which refuses to receive the old notes will have its C of O revoked. We can all agree that Oyo state has chosen to be a town hall different from…

Still cooking, the United States of America has repatriated $950,000 looted by the former governor of Bayelsa State, the late Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, back to Nigeria.

Earlier this week, The Lagos State High court, sitting at the Tafawa Balewa Square, on Lagos Island ordered kidnap kingpin, Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, popularly known as Evans, to refund the sum of €233,000 ransom he coercively collected from one of his victims, Chief Donatus Dunu. The presiding Judge also ordered the convicted kidnapper to pay N50 million as general damages in favor of the Claimant.

The Benin- South-SouthZone of the Tax Appeal Tribunal has ordered Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to pay the Federal Inland Revenue Service the Sum of N20,338,795,939.00(Twenty Billion, Three Hundred & Thirty-Eight Million, Seven Hundred and Ninety-Five Thousand, Nine Hundred and Thirty-Nine Naira only) liquidated tax liability.

On Friday, the Nigeria Police Force warned that people caught attacking banks in protest against cash scarcity will be treated as armed robbers. This was after the Friday morning incident at the Ojota-Mile 12/Ketu area of Lagos state which was suppressed by security operatives.

That’ll be for now! We hope you had a nice read.

Have a blissful next week!!

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