Hi learned friends, it’s another week and we’re back with a round-up of the important and interesting events that went down this week. As always, the Nigerian scene did not fail to deliver in terms of its news quality - top tier!

Fresh off the oven and earlier today, the Central Bank of Nigeria issued a directive to banks to open for operations on Saturdays and Sundays. This came with a confirmation from the apex bank that all old banknotes have been evacuated from its vault in a bid to ease the circulation of banknotes. The directive comes with a clause, however, which is for banks to attend to only the cash needs of customers. Well done Emefiele! Love & light to the bank workers who will have to show up on weekends. You’re the real heroes.

On the litigation front, the appeal court upheld Gov. Ademola Adeleke’s election as Osun’s state governor. The court set aside the judgment of the Osun state petition tribunal that annulled Gov. Adeleke’s victory at the polls. In order not to drag the story, there were gbasgbos between the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressive Congress (APC) political party. Appeals were made, and cross-appeals were crossed before a judgment was given. Truly, the judiciary is the last hope of the common man.

Up next, the Presidential Election Petition Council (PEPC), during the course of the week, granted the request by Atiku Abubakar (PDP) and Peter Obi(LP) and the Allied People’s Movement (APM) to serve their petitions on the president-elect, Bola Tinubu and his vice, Kashim Shettima (APC). In a layman’s words, this means both Atiku and Obi have the full permission of the court to serve Tinubu with a petition and other accompanying legal processes as deem fit by the petitioners.

Still on the elections, Abia state governor-elect, Dr. Alex Otti, has promised to clear all salaries and pensions owed by the current administration of the state by 2023. While this seems to be a herculean task for a man with a not-so-Greek-god statute, we can’t wait to see how much the governor-elect is able to achieve by the end of the year and at the end of his tenure also. For context, the state’s debt profile was well over N190 billion as of December 2021.

Ever wondered why UTME (Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination) was always so rigid and somewhat difficult to pass in the 2010s? One could actually term the examinations at the time to be an ‘act of God’. The Joint Admissions Matriculation Board literally ‘jammed’ a lot of ambitious students back in the day. Well, we’re as clueless as you are and were definitely not prepared for what comes next.

The former registrar of the board, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde has been arraigned alongside his four children by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) on a seven-count charge bordering on money laundering at a Federal High Court in Abuja. He is accused to have diverted public funds worth up to N5 billion while he served as the registrar of the board.

On today’s episode of Nigeria being a skit, the Nigerian Correctional Service stated that it destroyed some seized & confiscated items from various custodial centers across the country. The contrabands seized from the inmates were calculated to be around a hundred and fifty million naira. Wow! Perhaps we should beckon on Rexxie.

Lastly, the national cake! Earlier this week on Wednesday, the Federation Allocation Account Committee said it has shared N722.677 billion among the three tiers of government in February 2023. The existing data, however, reveals that the earlier allocation of January 2023 had a N27.493billion increase compared to that of February. Fingers crossed; we’ll get to eat this cake someday!

We hope you had a nice read.

Bye for now!

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