It happened in one of the Abuja branches of one of Nigeria’stop five banks. That Saturday morning, a male staff had entered the ATM room to load money into the machine and locked himself as required by standard operational procedure. But when minutes rolled into hours, and the staff refused to emerge from the room, colleagues began to suspect something was wrong.

Domestic petrol production deficit has always been balanced with importation. However, the proportion of the imports has risen in the past few years to a high of about 80 percent or more of national domestic consumption, and this trend may continue considering the claim by energy officials that “there is no alternative to fuel importation”. Besides petrol, some other finished petroleum products particularly jet fuels, domestic kerosene and diesel are also imported. For many years, enormous foreign exchange has been spent perhaps unnecessarily in the name of finished white hydrocarbon importation thus putting avoidable pressure on the Naira.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to dissolve the Board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has been applauded as a major step towards sanitising the Nigerian oil and gas industry and the NNPC in particular. Many see the Corporation as lacking in transparency, amid allegations of corruption which the Board and management made no effort to check.

The Federal Government has been urged to exercise caution in thecall for the removal of petroleum subsidy, and instead focus onaddressing all the economic bottlenecks sabotagingNigeria’s common wealth. An economist,Mr. Henry Boyo, argued that the direct removal of subsidy will serve as a great disincentive to the economic wellbeing of all Nigerians.

The management of Eko Electricity Distribution Company, EKEDC,has urged consumers within its franchise network to prepare for adjustment in electricity tariffs. The Chief Executive Officer, EKEDC, Mr Oladele Amoda, stated this at a stakeholders’ meeting with electricity consumers from the 11 Business Units under its jurisdiction in Lagos.