The National Executive Council (NEC) of the National Association of Microfinance Banks (NAMB) has set in motion plans to revamp the microfinance sector.

Finally, on Wednesday, May 5th at about 9.pm, late President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua gave up the ghost after a brave, five-month battle against acute pericarditis. This brought to a close a long history of poor health which the 58 year-old president had suffered but was strong enough to bear throughout his eleven years of service as the Chief Executive of his native Katsina State and the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Despite challenges in the global and local economic landscape, Oando Plc has assured its shareholders of improved returns on their investments in the years ahead.

Construction work is set to commence in the Eko Atlantic City project in the first quarter of next year, with about one million square metres of land already reclaimed at the site, with the reclamation job still ongoing.

Sir Dayo Alabi is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, The Books Company Limited. His organisation has interest in publishing, book selling and distribution, library set up and supplies.

Entrepreneurship generally refers to the practice of instituting new business enterprises or revitalizing already established ventures. Most entrepreneurs are driven by existence of an opportunity that once ventured into will result in profits. Entrepreneurship is over and over again an obscure enterprise, as numerous novel ventures end up failing.

Mallam Sallau Hamman, Managing Director /Chief Executive Office of Fin Insurance in this interview with Patience Saghana articulates insurance industry’s oil and gas business, the constraints and the opportunities.. He gives his candid view on the sector’s capacity to underwrite the big risks whilst he forecasts Fin Insurance’s position in the next five years.

Government officials, operators and proponents of the controversial Cargo Tracking Note (CTN), were shocked to their marrows last week upon the discovery that the equally controversial toxic container on board MV Maersk Nashville actually came with the much-touted CTN number.

Investors have expressed doubts over the ability of registrars to cope with the expected growth and increased patronage in the Nigerian capital market in the next couple of years.According to the investors who spoke with Financial Vanguard, this is as a result of the failure of most registrars to adopt and fully deploy electronic products and information technology infrastructure in their operations.

BEFORE we move on with our lives, we owe the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua this final footnote: A review of his legacy while in office. Did you notice the absence from his burial of two of his most important political partners when the journey to the presidency started in December 2006: former President Olusegun Obasanjo and new President Goodluck Jonathan, his former deputy?

The Dream Economy envisioned in government’s “‘Vision 20:2020’ seeks to position Nigeria as one of the top 20 economies in the world by the year 2020. In economic terms, this translates to having a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of at least US$900 billion by that date compared to about US$212 billion as at 2008”…. (Source: Nigeria Vision 2020 Economic Transformation Blueprint – pg. 26, work-in-progress as at 5/10/2009.

LAGOS State Government has honoured 538 public servants who have served the state for more than thirty years with Long Service Merit Award as Nigerian workers last week joined their counterpart in the rest of the world to mark May Day.

Nigeria is losing about N13.5 billion ($90 million) annually to its neihgbouring states through the movement of its vessels dry docking to meet the International Maritime Organisations (IMO) requirement, Director General of the nation’s apex maritime regulatory agency, Mr. Temisan Omatseye, has said. Disclosing this in a chat with Financial Vanguard in Lagos recently, Omatseye explained that there is a huge investment opportunity for ship repair and ship building in the country presently that is not being exploited.

For the past two weeks, my phone has been the recipient of a lot of calls from abroad. The most guilty are the journalists from Sweden in search of up dates on their country man who has been given an opportunity to coach a World Cup team.

He had spent a lot of money planning for the naming ceremony of his son, while his relations in Akure had assured him of their readiness to grace the occasion. But the ceremony later turned to a mourning session when six of his relations became victims of an outbreak of violence.