The lifting of the restrictions imposed in 2019 to curb the spread of coronavirus by the Nigerian Government is one of the trending stories in the Nigerian newspapers on Thursday.
The Guardian reports that the Federal Government has eased the nationwide midnight curfew and limitations on gatherings along with other restrictions imposed in 2019 to curb the spread of coronavirus.
This is after the country recorded 3,142 deaths from 255,468 cases since the start of the pandemic, according to data obtained from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) website.
The Presidential Steering Committee (PSC) on COVID-19 made this known in a statement, yesterday.
It said: “The removal of restrictions was decided in view of the declining number of cases, reduced risk of importation of new variants, as well as availability of vaccines.
“The nationwide curfew imposed from midnight to 4:00 a.m. has been lifted.”Federal Government also asked civil servants to go back to their offices with proof of vaccination or a “PCR test of not more than 48hrs”.
The newspaper says that leaders of Southern and Middle Belt groups, yesterday, were enraged over the decision of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to jettison zoning in the selection of the party’s presidential candidate for the 2023 elections, threatening to work against the party, if a Northerner is fielded.There were expectations that the PDP would zone the presidential ticket to the South, in line with the zoning arrangement that had been in place since Nigeria returned to civil rule in 1999, whereby the presidency rotates between the North and the South.
President Muhammadu Buhari, a northerner, will leave office after eight years by 2023, and Southern stakeholders, including the Southern Governors’ Forum, had insisted on power shift to the South.
But the 37-member zoning committee set up by the PDP and headed by Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom, recommended that the presidential ticket be thrown open to aspirants from all parts of the country.
Traditionally, in the PDP, the region that holds the office of the national chairman does not produce the party’s presidential flag-bearer. Reason PDP stakeholders from the South had pushed for the zoning of the position of national chairman to the North in the expectation that the development would pave the way for the emergence of a Southerner as presidential candidate in 2023.
Iyorchia Ayu, from Benue State, eventually emerged as PDP national chairman at the party’s October 2021 national convention.
The decision of the zoning committee yesterday drew the ire of leaders of thought across the regions of Southern Nigeria. Some of the groups in the vanguard of power shift include the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders’ Forum (SMBLF), Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo and Middle Belt Forum.The Punch reports that the Central Bank of Nigeria has imposed an N800m fine on three Deposit Money Banks in the country for violating regulations barring customers from transacting in cryptocurrencies.
According to a Bloomberg report released on Wednesday, the three banks are Access Bank Plc, Stanbic IBTC, and the United Bank for Africa Plc.
The report noted that the penalties were part of efforts by the apex bank to ensure that banks implement an order to block trading in cryptocurrencies due to the threat they pose to Nigeria’s financial system.
The directive was contained in a circular issued by the CBN in February 2021.
In addition, the CBN had in November directed banks to close the accounts of two individuals and a company for allegedly trading in cryptocurrencies.
Despite these regulations, Nigeria accounts for the largest volume of cryptocurrency transactions outside the United States., according to Paxful, a Bitcoin marketplace.
The country also has the largest proportion of retail users conducting crypto transactions under $10,000, Chainalysis says.
The newspaper says that a large number of telecommunication subscribers trying to link their National Identification Number and Subscriber Identity Module together were left frustrated on Wednesday as heavy traffic on telecom networks slowed down the process.
This is coming after the Federal Government through telecom companies barred Nigerians who had not linked their SIMs and NINs together from making calls
The PUNCH had reported on Monday that the Federal Government had directed telecom companies to block outgoing calls on all unlinked lines after the deadline for the SIM-NIN verification exercise expired on March 31.
The move was aimed at enforcing compliance with the Federal Government’s SIM-NIN policy.
On Wednesday, telecom service centres were jam-packed as subscribers rushed to link their SIMs and NINs.
However, because of the slow pace of the network, service centres couldn’t help many Nigerians that were stranded.
This came as telecom consumers under the aegis of the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers asked the Federal Government to extend the NIN-SIM policy deadline by three months.
The Nation reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has explained why dollar scarcity persists in emerging economies, especially sub-Saharan Africa.
In an emailed report, Tobias Adrian, the Financial Counsellor and Director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said the wide spreads between bid and ask prices for the dollar were responsible for limited liquidity in the markets in the region.
The naira exchanges at N586/$ at the parallel market and N416/$ at the official market creating N170/$ premium between the exchange rates.
Adrian in the report entitled: “How Africa can navigate growing monetary policy challenges said: “Shallow markets (i.e., markets with limited liquidity) can amplify exchange rate movements and yield excessive volatility. Foreign exchange markets tend to be shallow in many countries in the region, as evidenced by wide spreads between bid and ask prices.”
The bid price refers to the highest price a buyer will pay for the naira exchange rate against the dollar. The ask price refers to the lowest price a seller will accept for the naira against the dollar. The difference between these two prices is known as the spread; the smaller the spread, the greater the liquidity market.
Adrian added that high foreign-currency denominated liabilities are also a key vulnerability in several economies. In the presence of large currency mismatches on balance sheets, exchange rate depreciations can undermine the financial health of corporates and households.
GIK/APA