New currency: Senate urges CBN to extend withdrawal date to June 31
The Senate has pleaded with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to urgently extend the withdrawal date of old currency notes from January 31, 2023, to June 31.
The resolution by the Senate was a response to a point of order raised by Senator Mohammed Ndume (APC-Borno) during Wednesday’s plenary.
Ndume stated that the request for a date extension should be considered a matter of urgent national importance in order to avoid impending hardship for Nigerians.
He said: “This Senate notes that many Nigerian banks on Thursday, Dec. 15, opened their vaults to customers and depositors to exchange their old currency notes for the newly redesigned currency notes, which have a stipulated deadline of Jan. 31.
“Some Nigerians are already envisioning long queues in the banking halls across the country as a result of people trying to get access to the new naira notes.
“The old notes are expected to be in circulation along with the new ones until Jan. 31, when the old ones are expected to be phased out.
“It is expected that many Nigerian businesses will start to get rid of the old notes as soon as banks start paying redesigned notes to customers.”
The lawmaker also said that access to the new notes would be complicated by a recent circular by the CBN that limited the amount of cash that corporate entities could withdraw within a certain period of time.
“The withdrawal of old notes from circulation, if not extended beyond January 31, will cause hardship for many Nigerians, and we must avoid a repeat of the 1984 experience with the withdrawal of old notes,” he said. This is according to NAN.
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2023: INEC poised to conduct freest, fairest election in Africa – Okoye
Festus Okoye, the National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, said the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is ready to conduct the freest and fairest election in Africa.
Okoye gave this reassuring message on Wednesday at the 2022 Calabar Carnival while providing valuable information about the upcoming 2023 general election to Nigerians.
He urged officials of the commission “to show Nigerians that they have the capacity to do so.”
He said that the commission decided to participate in the carnival to sensitise and encourage Nigerians to collect their permanent voter cards (PVCs) and vote in the elections.
Okoye said that Nigerians needed to know that their PVCs have power and the potential to change their situation by electing leaders who are accountable to them.
According to him, if it hadn’t, politicians would not be struggling to buy them from prospective voters.
“My message to Nigerians is that only the PVC can change their circumstances.
“Therefore, those who do not have their PVCs have no business in the electoral process.
“Our responsibility is to ensure that the PVCs are available for the people and to organise free, fair, and credible elections.
“It is also to ensure that Nigerians who say they will win the 2023 election actually do so.
“The time had come for us to organise the freest and fairest election on the continent of Africa,” he said.
Reps want NNPC to suspend sale of oil mining licence
The House of Representatives has mandated the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) to suspend its planned auction of the oil mining licence (OML) 11 asset.
This followed the adoption of a motion of urgent national importance by Rep. Victor Mela (APC-Gombe) at plenary in Abuja on Wednesday.
Moving the motion, Mela said that the oil field under oil mining license 11 was formerly operated by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) joint venture.
He said the field had been idle since the company was forced out of Ogoniland in 1993.
Mela said that a Court of Appeal judgement of August 16, 2021, indicated that the SPDC joint venture lost its right to renewal of the operating license.
He said there were unresolved issues between the government and the host communities of Ogoni, which were fueling resistance and restiveness among the people.
He expressed concern over the claim that the government was allegedly involved in a unity arrangement to auction the OML-11 asset to Sahara Energy Ltd. for a paltry sum of 250 million dollars, compared to the 1 billion dollars offered by the SPDC.
He said that there was a need to clarify and resolve issues associated with the planned auction, among other matters.
The House therefore mandated its committee on petroleum upstream to investigate the planned auction, among other matters, and report back within four weeks for further legislative action. This is according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Twitter down for thousands of users – Downdetector.com
Twitter Inc. was down for thousands of users on Wednesday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
Over 10,000 users reported issues accessing the social media website in the United States as of 7:40 p.m. ET. Some users also complained that their Twitter notifications were not working. This is according to Reuters.
Kremlin says any Ukraine peace plan must include annexed regions
The Kremlin on Wednesday rejected the peace overture presented by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, saying that his 10-point peace plan does not capture the four regions it captured some months ago.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “There can be no peace plan for Ukraine that does not take into account today’s realities regarding Russian territory, with the entry of four regions into Russia. Plans that do not take these realities into account cannot be peaceful.”
Putin had annexed Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions as part of its territory in September, after referendums condemned by Ukraine and Western countries. Russia does not have full control of any of the four regions.
Russia said that it is open to a peace talk but insists that any peace plan must include those four regions.
