Royal Dutch Shell has abandoned its argument that the oil pollution lawsuit filed against it by the Ogale and Bille communities in Rivers state, be heard in Nigeria rather than the UK. Bloomberg reports that Shell’s legal team refused to return to the High Court of England with the argument that the five-year-old case would be better heard in Nigeria, according to the parties in the case, conceding that the Nigerian subsidiary will now be joined to claims made in England against the parent company. In a landmark ruling on February 12, the UK Supreme Court allowed the communities to…
Author: Temitope Nlewemchi
The Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO) has raised alarm over increasing theft of transformer oil and cables in its franchise. A statement signed by KEDCO Head of Communications, Mr Ibrahim Shawai, on Monday in Kano, urged communities and individuals to assist in tracking the criminals. “The problem has almost become a yearly event when hoodlums take advantage of rainy season to steal the company’s equipment and installation. This needs to be stopped. “Economic sabotage of this act has always affected electricity supply. “Whenever transformer oil and cables are stolen from any transformer, the act will deny customers of their comfort…
Elon Musk took the stand on Monday to defend Tesla Inc’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity against a lawsuit by shareholders seeking to recoup the $2.6 billion the company paid for the ailing solar panel maker. Soon after taking the stand, Musk denied the deal was a bailout of SolarCity as Tesla shareholders have alleged. “Since it was a stock-for-stock transaction and I owned almost exactly the same percentage of both there was no financial gain,” he said, responding to questions from his attorney. Musk’s testimony kicks off a two-week trial in Wilmington, Delaware, before Vice Chancellor Joseph Slights, who will…
Royal Dutch Shell has given up its struggle to move a Niger Delta oil spill case, involving thousands of the region’s residents, from the UK to Nigeria, Bloomberg said Monday. The decision comes on the heels of two recently lost suits for Shell. In January a Dutch court directed the supermajor to pay compensation to residents of its operational base in the country’s far south for an oil spill action, a couple of decades ago. Members of Nigeria’s Ogle and Bile communities numbering around 40,000 said the energy giant and its local unit, SPDC, are both accountable for oil contamination…
The Nigerian government does not plan to privatise the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), has said. Yunana Malo, Director, Energy Department, of the BPE said at a media conference on Monday in Abuja, that the bureau would instead hand over the company to a private manager on a concession arrangement to get maximum value. He said transmission was the weak link in the power reform, as generation which was privatised had since attracted investments, making it more efficient. He said the generation capacity had improved, adding that 60 per cent of the distribution segment…
TikTok has said it will use automation to detect and remove many of the videos that violate its policies. According to engadget.com, for the past year, the service has been testing and tweaking systems to find and take down such content. It will roll out those systems in the US and Canada over the next few weeks. To start with, the algorithms will be on the lookout for posts that violate policies related to the safety of minors, violence, graphic content, nudity, sex, illegal activity and regulated goods. If the systems detect a violation, they’ll yank the video immediately and…
Restrictions on movement and reduction in the handling of physical cash because of the COVID-19 pandemic caused mobile money transaction volumes in sub-Saharan to reach $490bn in 2020, Visa has said. This was a 23 per cent increase from 2019, according to a report titled ‘Innovation, partnership, and co-creation key to driving digital payment growth in sub-Saharan Africa’ by Senior Vice President and Head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Visa, Aida Diarra. The company said in the last decade, digital technology, including payments, had witnessed tremendous growth. The report said, “Innovation and technological advances are bringing exciting opportunities for financial inclusion…
Experts have highlighted the need to boost Nigeria’s services exports and encourage business services outsourcing in order to spur job creation and economic development. A senior analyst at SBM Intelligence, Joachim MacEbong, said Nigeria must learn to be export-focused to achieve prosperity for its large population. He said, “There is a lot of potential for business process outsourcing. However, Nigeria is still not friendly to the foreign investment that could create jobs for youths who are struggling with unemployment. “We need to address our hostility to foreign capital. Having more French speakers could help Nigeria take advantage of the AfCFTA…
A new World Bank report estimates that the collapse of ecosystem services provided by nature including wild pollination, food from marine fisheries and timber from forests could result in Nigeria’s GDP declining by $139bn in 2030. The report titled ‘The economic case for nature’ underscored the strong reliance of economies on nature, particularly in low income countries. The report highlighted that Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia would suffer the most relative contraction of real GDP due to a collapse of ecosystem services by 2030, 9.7 per cent annually and 6.5 per cent respectively. Nigeria which is regarded as a lower-middle…
Stakeholders in the aviation sector have urged the Federal Government to learn from the experience of the defunct Nigeria Airways as it pushes ahead to establish a new national carrier. The Federal Government, in its updated roadmap status, disclosed its plan to establish a national carrier that would enable Nigeria to gain optimal benefits from Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreements. The status showed that the establishment of the carrier would enable Nigeria to take advantage of the Single African Air Transport Market and also introduce competition. Nigeria Airways, which was established in 1958, was dissolved in 2003 during the administration of…
Nutrition experts have said that requesting vegetable sellers to slice it at the point of purchase is unhygienic, warning that the practice can cause food poisoning. They also noted that slicing vegetables at the point of purchase could lead to loss of vital nutrients. The experts, a Registered Dietician-Nutritionist at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Nwabumma Asouzu; and a Lagos-based Registered Dietician-Nutritionist, Cynthia Onyekwere, said there are serious hygiene issues with slicing vegetables before washing. According to them, all vegetables should be treated with the utmost care, from the point of harvest to the consumer’s…
A Consultant Dermatologist, Dr. Toyosi Ilesanmi, says there is hope for people with skin damaged by bleaching cream. Ilesanmi who works with the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital said that it is always difficult to repair skin damaged by bleaching cream, there is always hope of helping people with the problem. Speaking In an interview, the dermatologist, said, however, that repairing damaged skin, is dependent on how long the skin has been bleached and with what item. “There are some people that just started bleaching their skin may be less than six months, such people’s skin can be saved. “The…
The Chief Medical Director, Federal Teaching Hospital Gombe, Dr. Yusuf Abdullah, has bemoaned the huge cost of power supply to the health facility. The hospital, he said, is burdened by over 13 million naira monthly power bills. He urged the federal government to provide the health facility with an alternative power supply, adding that the bulk of the hospital’s revenue goes to servicing power. The CMD disclosed this during the virtual unveiling of vital medical equipment donated to the hospital by the Federal Government. Also present at the virtual launch were the Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Government Affairs, Dr.…
Following the pronouncement of the Federal Government that airline operators must refund the full cost of travel tickets to passengers after a two-hour delay, commercial airlines have listed the conditions for such reimbursement. The airline operators made this known in separate interviews with newsmen. The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, had, on Thursday at the weekly State House briefing in Aso Villa, Abuja, read out some of the rights of air passengers as enshrined in Part 19 of the Consumer Protection Regulations of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations (2015) and charged them to demand their rights whenever they were…
Innoson Nigeria Ltd has asked a federal high court in Lagos to set aside an order granting Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) permission to restructure to a holding company. In a statement on Sunday, Cornel Osigwe, head of corporate communications and affairs at Innoson Group, said the company is asking the court to stay the order granted to the bank on June 16, 2021, “until it pays its total outstanding judgment debt of N32,875,204,984.38 to Innoson Nigeria Ltd.” Innoson and GTB have had a long business dispute leading to legal battle. Innoson had secured judgment debt against the bank in suit…
Ikeja Electric Plc. says it has installed prepaid meters in the premises of 98,000 customers under the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP) of the Federal Government. Mr Felix Ofulue, its Head, Corporate Communications, made the declaration when he spoke with newsmen on Wednesday in Ikeja. He said that the figure showed that the company had covered more than 90 per cent of the 106,701 customers on its list scheduled for metering under the Phase Zero of the NMMP. “After the initial challenges we had with the metering scheme, we have now installed about 98,000 free meters for our unmetered customers…
Clover Biopharmaceuticals has signed an agreement with Gavi – the vaccine alliance, to make over 400 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccines available to the COVAX portfolio. Clover through the agreement signed with COVAX co-lead, Gavi, will make over 400 million doses of its vaccine candidate available for procurement in 2021 and 2022, pending Emergency Use Listing from the World Health Organisation. Clover became the ninth COVID-19 vaccine developer to partner with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations in Spring, 2020, after submitting a proposal to CEPI’s COVID-19 vaccine call launched earlier in the year. Disclosing this on its website,…
No fewer than 17 persons have died in Ebonyi and Plateau states following the outbreak of cholera. In Ebonyi, the state government said three persons had died, while 12 other infected persons were currently responding to treatment in hospital. The situation is worse in Plateau State, where 14 persons have been confirmed dead. The acting Commissioner for Health in Ebonyi State, Dr. Richard Nnabu, gave the casualty figure after a visit to Amachi-Igwebuike village in the Agba community, Ishielu Local Government Area of the state. According to him, through the efforts of the state government, the situation has been brought…
Scientists at Oxford University, United Kingdom, have commenced a clinical trial for a novel HIV vaccine. The trial known as HIV-CORE 0052 began on Monday. The goal of the trial, according to Oxford, is to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of the HIVconsvX vaccine – a mosaic vaccine targeting a broad range of HIV-1 variants, making it potentially applicable for HIV strains in any geographical region. For this clinical trial, 13 healthy adults aged between 18–65 who were considered not to be at high risk of infection received one dose of the vaccine which will be followed by a…
The Coalition of Nasarawa State Health Professional Associations has suspended its one-month-old strike. The spokesperson of CNSHPA, Mr. Kyari Caleb, disclosed this while briefing newsmen on Friday in Lafia. Caleb, who is also the state Chairman, Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria, explained that the suspension of the strike followed interventions by major stakeholders in the state. He added that the agreement to suspend the strike was reached on Friday (today) at the congress of the coalition, following appeals by the Traditional Council of Chiefs in the state, led by its Chairman and Emir of Lafia, Sidi Bage. Caleb,…