Nigeria: Press spotlights Tinubu’s insistence that killers of slain soldiers must be arrested, others

The insistence of President Bola Tinubu that the killers of 17 officers and men of the Nigerian Army in Delta State on March 14, 2024, must be arrested is one of the leading stories in Nigerian newspapers on Thursday.
The Punch reports that President Bola Tinubu has insisted that the killers of 17 officers and men of the Nigerian Army in Delta State on March 14, 2024, must be arrested, as families demanded justice during the burial of the slain military personnel at the National Cemetery in Abuja on Wednesday.
In his address at the event, Tinubu declared that leaders in Delta State must fish out killers of the soldiers who were ambushed while on a peace mission in the Okuama community in Delta State.
This came as the President vowed that the killers would not go unpunished, as he conferred posthumous national honours on the slain officers.
The late soldiers were honoured in three categories, including Member of the Order of Niger, Federal Republic Medal I, and Federal Republic Medal II.
The Federal Government gave the families of the slain soldiers houses, and their children got scholarships. At the same time, the President ordered the military to pay the slain soldiers’ benefits to their family members within 90 days.
Also at the event, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, stated that the death of military personnel in Delta was highly demoralising, as the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Musa, vowed to hunt down the killers.
Tinubu, who attended the burial ceremony himself, announced the provision of housing facilities for the surviving family members and scholarships for all their children to the university level and also directed the payment of death benefits to the family members within 90 days.
The newspaper says that the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue, Zacch Adedeji, has restated the agency’s commitment not to introduce additional taxes in the country.
Adedeji stated this on Wednesday, when the Chief Executive Officer of Guinness Nigeria Plc, Adebayo Alli, led the management team of the company on a visit to the Revenue House in Abuja.
The FIRS boss, in a statement signed by the Special Adviser on Media to the FIRS chairman, Dare Adekanmbi, was quoted as saying, “The President gave a directive that he wants a single digit tax in the country, meaning that the maximum number of taxes we will have after the work of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms will be nine taxes.
“For us at FIRS, we have responded to that directive. We want to grow the pie such that even if we are taking the same percentage of the bigger pie, the result will be huge.
“By God’s grace, we will not introduce additional taxes nor increase any form of tax. We are only determined to increase the pie. We have restructured our operations at FIRS in such a way that we are now effectively carrying out our duty of assessing, collecting and accounting for taxes. We used to have functional types of taxes, but we have identified that the only customers we have are the taxpayers.”
He noted that FIRS had improved the way it relates with customers by rearranging “our operations based on our customers, using their turnover as the basis to categorise them into large, medium and small”.
He added that President Bola Tinubu, through the consumer credit scheme recently introduced, aimed at increasing the purchasing power of Nigerians to boost the productive capacity of companies and stimulate growth.
The Vanguard newspaper reports that there are fears that the coming on stream of $20 billion Dangote oil refinery could diminish decades-long gasoline shipments from Europe to Africa worth $17 billion annually.
Traders and analysts said the operations of the refinery would put pressure on European refineries already at risk of closure from heightened competition.
According to Reuters, the refinery can refine up to 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) and will be the largest in Africa and Europe when it reaches full capacity this year or next.
The agency said it has long been touted as the turning point for Nigeria’s quest for energy independence, adding that Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and its top oil producer, yet it imports almost all its fuel due to lack of refining capacity.
About a third of Europe’s 1.33 million bpd average gasoline exports in 2023 went to West Africa, a bigger chunk than any other region, with the majority of those exports ending up in Nigeria, Kpler data shows.
“The loss of the West African market will be problematic for a small set of refineries that do not have the kit to upgrade their gasoline to European and U.S. specification,” consultancy FGE’s head of refined products Eugene Lindell said, referring to more stringent environmental standards for other markets.
As much as 300-400,000 bpd of refining capacity in Europe is at risk of closure because of rising global gasoline production, according to Kpler’s analyst Andon Pavlov.
A European refinery executive who declined to be identified said coastal refineries that are geared for exports will be more exposed while inland refineries are less vulnerable because they rely on local demand.
The newspaper says that Naira appreciated against the dollar by 5.97 per cent at the official market by the close of Wednesday’s trading session, according to data from the FMDQ trading platform.
It appreciated by N82.52 to reach N1,300 per dollar, compared to N1,383 recorded on Tuesday.
Total turnover also rose to $416.10 million from $245.58 million the previous day.
In the Investor’s and Exporters’ (I&E) window, the Naira fluctuated between N1,460 and N1,200 against the dollar.
This comes after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced a 200 basis points increase in the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) during its 294th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on Tuesday, raising it from 22.75 percent to 24.75 percent.
The CBN Governor, Mr Yemi Cardoso, cited the move as a measure to address the country’s escalating inflation.
GIK/APA