The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has unveiled a fuel distribution programme that will deliver petrol and diesel across Nigeria with free transportation, starting August 15, 2025.

According to a company statement, the initiative targets marketers, petrol station dealers, manufacturers, telecom operators, aviation firms, and other large-scale users. As part of the plan, Dangote has acquired 4,000 CNG-powered tankers and will deploy over 100 tankers to support CNG “daughter” stations across the country.

The company described the initiative as a move to eliminate logistics costs, enhance energy efficiency, and contribute to economic development. It also includes a credit facility: buyers who purchase 500,000 litres of fuel can access an additional 500,000 litres on credit for two weeks, backed by a bank guarantee.

The refinery said the offer is expected to lower fuel costs, stimulate job creation, revive dormant filling stations, support SMEs, and improve energy access in underserved areas.

A 60-day registration and KYC process runs from June 16 to August 15. Dangote says the scheme reflects its “commitment to affordable energy and equitable distribution” across the country.

Critical Analysis

1. Beneath the Surface: Monopoly Ambitions?

While the gesture of offering free logistics might appear consumer-friendly, it also deepens Dangote’s strategic effort to dominate the downstream sector. By cutting distribution costs, the company undercuts its competitors — a classic price-leverage tactic used in monopoly formation. Once market dominance is secured, pricing power often shifts in favor of the monopolist, with negative long-term implications for competition and consumer welfare.

2. Context: A History of Market Tensions

This move cannot be divorced from the ongoing tensions between Dangote Refinery and existing downstream players, including private fuel importers and state-run NNPCL. There has been stiff resistance from these players to Dangote’s pressure on the federal government to halt fuel imports. The free logistics initiative might further weaken competitors’ positions by forcing them to absorb logistics costs — or lose market share.

3. Geography vs. Economics: The Lagos Advantage

Consumption nalysis shows that 43% of national fuel consumption occurs in the South‑West, particularly in Lagos and surrounding states — all located close to the Dangote Refinery. Since both Dangote and many competing depots operate from Lagos, transport costs are already minimal in this zone. Therefore, offering free distribution may not significantly impact fuel prices in this dominant consumption zone, where half of the market lies.

This suggests that Dangote’s free logistics offer may be more symbolic than substantive in its immediate effect on pricing — especially in areas already efficiently served by current players.

4. Competitive Pressure: Response from Rivals Likely

Facing the risk of rapid market erosion, NNPCL and other importers will likely respond with similar offers to protect their share. Price wars, logistics subsidies, and credit incentives may follow. While short-term benefits could accrue to consumers, this pressure could also strain smaller importers, pushing them out and narrowing the field, again raising concerns of market capture by a single player.

Conclusion

The Dangote Refinery’s new fuel distribution strategy is more than a logistics upgrade — it’s a calculated play for market control. With half the country’s fuel consumption concentrated within reach of its Lagos base, the company is leveraging location, scale, and capital to shape the downstream landscape. Policymakers and regulators must ensure that market access remains open and competitive to prevent the rise of a private monopoly in Nigeria’s critical energy sector.

MultiChoice Group is testing a weekly subscription model as the pay-TV giant grapples with the loss of 2.8 million subscribers across its African markets.

The company has been running a pilot program in Uganda for seven weeks, with plans to potentially roll out the flexible payment option to other markets within three to six months if results prove successful.

CEO Calvo Mawela explained the strategy during a recent interview with South Africa’s Sunday Times, emphasizing that the weekly model would better match customers’ income patterns in markets where many people earn money daily or weekly.

“This represents a significant shift in our approach,” Mawela said. “We believe that offering weekly passes will provide relief for customers facing financial pressure, similar to how prepaid services transformed the telecommunications sector.”

The company is also exploring modifications to its channel packaging, though Mawela ruled out complete à la carte selection. Instead, MultiChoice is considering a system where subscribers begin with a basic package and can add individual channels as desired.

These strategic changes come after MultiChoice reported substantial subscriber losses in its latest financial results for the year ending March 31, 2025. Nigeria bore the brunt of the exodus, losing approximately 1.4 million subscribers, largely attributed to repeated price increases. The most recent tariff hike of 21 percent has placed additional strain on customers already struggling with economic pressures.

The subscriber decline reflects broader challenges facing the pay-TV industry in Africa, where economic uncertainty and increased competition from streaming services have forced traditional broadcasters to reconsider their pricing and service models.

Trump vetoed Israeli plan to kill Iran's supreme leader, US officials say

President Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Sunday.

"Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we're not even talking about going after the political leadership," said one of the sources, a senior U.S. administration official.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said top U.S. officials have been in constant communications with Israeli officials in the days since Israel launched a massive attack on Iran in a bid to halt its nuclear program.

They said the Israelis reported that they had an opportunity to kill the top Iranian leader, but Trump waved them off of the plan.

The officials would not say whether Trump himself delivered the message. But Trump has been in frequent communications with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

When asked about Reuters report, Netanyahu, in an interview on Sunday with Fox News Channel's "Special Report With Bret Baier," said: "There's so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I'm not going to get into that."

"But I can tell you, I think that we do what we need to do, we'll do what we need to do. And I think the United States knows what is good for the United States," Netanyahu said.

Trump has been holding out hope for a resumption of U.S.-Iranian negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program. Talks that had been scheduled for Sunday in Oman were canceled as a result of the strikes.

Trump told Reuters on Friday that "we knew everything" about the Israeli strikes.

** Israel and Iran trade strikes for a third day and threaten more to come. Over 230 are reported dead

Israel and Iran traded more missile attacks Sunday despite calls for a halt to the fighting, with neither country backing down as their conflict raged for a third day.

Iran said Israel struck its oil refineries, killed the intelligence chief of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and hit population centers in intensive aerial attacks that raised the death toll in the country since Israel launched its major campaign Friday to 224 people. Health authorities also reported that 1,277 were wounded, without distinguishing between military officials and civilians.

Israel, which has aimed its missiles at Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program and military leadership, said Iran has fired over 270 missiles since Friday, 22 of which slipped through the country’s sophisticated multi-tiered air defenses and caused havoc in residential suburbs, killing 14 people and wounding 390 others.

Israel, the sole though undeclared nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, has said this attack — its most powerful ever against Iran — was to prevent the country from developing a nuclear weapon.

The latest round of talks between the U.S. and Iran on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program had been scheduled Sunday in Oman but were canceled after Israel’s attack.

Iran turns metro stations, mosques into bomb shelters

Claiming to operate almost freely in the skies over Iran, Israel said its attacks Sunday hit Iran’s Defense Ministry, missile launch sites and factories producing air defense components.

Iran also acknowledged Israel had killed three more of its top generals, including Gen. Mohammad Kazemi, the Revolutionary Guard intelligence chief.

But Israeli strikes have increasingly extended beyond Iranian military installations to hit government buildings including the Foreign Ministry and several energy facilities, Iranian authorities said, most recently sparking huge fires at the Shahran oil depot north of Tehran and a fuel tank south of the city.

Those new targets Sunday, coming after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field, raised the prospect of a broader assault on Iran’s heavily sanctioned energy industry that remains vital to the global economy and markets.

Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh and other Iranian diplomats shared photos of the Foreign Ministry’s offices and library laid to waste by flying shrapnel.

Iran’s state TV broadcast footage of a dust-covered man carrying a baby away from the ruins of a residential building and a woman covered in blood making panicked phone call from the site of an Israeli missile strike in downtown Tehran. The spokesperson for Iran’s Health Ministry, Hossein Kermanpour, said 90% of the 224 people killed were civilians.

The Washington-based rights advocacy group, called Human Rights Activists, reported a far higher death toll in Iran from Israeli strikes, saying the attacks have killed at least 406 people and wounded another 654. Iran routinely has undercounted casualties in recent crises, such as the 2022 mass demonstrations over mandatory hijab laws after the death of Mahsa Amini.

State TV reported that metro stations and mosques would be converted into bomb shelters beginning Sunday night. Tehran residents told of long lines at gas stations and cars backed up for hours as families fled the city.

Traffic police closed a number of roads outside the city to control congestion. Energy officials on state TV sought to reassure the jittery public there was no gasoline shortage despite the long lines.

Iranian state-linked media acknowledged explosions and fires stemming from an attack on an Iranian refueling aircraft in Mashhad deep in the country’s northeast. Israel described the attack on Mashhad as the farthest strike it has carried out in Iranian territory.

The death toll rises in Israel

Air raid sirens sounded across Jerusalem and major Israeli cities, sending Israelis scrambling to bomb shelters in the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv and the northern port city of Haifa.

The Israeli military reported that almost two dozen Iranian missiles had slipped through the vaunted Iron Dome aerial defense system and struck residential areas.

Early Sunday, Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service reported that at least six people, including a 10-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, were killed when a missile smashed into a high-rise apartment in Bat Yam, a coastal city south of Tel Aviv.

Daniel Hadad, a local police commander, said 180 people were wounded and seven missing in Bat Yam. Residents appeared dazed, staggering through the rubble of their homes to retrieve personal belongings while rescuers sifted through twisted metal and shattered glass in their search for more bodies.

Another four people, including a 13-year-old, were killed and 24 wounded when a missile struck a building in the Arab town of Tamra in northern Israel, emergency authorities said, while a strike on the central city of Rehovot wounded 42 people.

The Weizmann Institute of Science, a center for military and other research also in Rehovot, reported “a number of hits to buildings on the campus” and said no one was harmed.

An oil refinery was damaged in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, the firm operating it said. Israel’s main international airport and airspace was closed for a third day.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said if Israeli strikes on Iran stop, then “our responses will also stop.”

Netanyahu says conflict could result in regime change in Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed off urgent calls by world leaders to de-escalate.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, he said regime change in Iran “could certainly be the result” of the conflict. He also claimed that Israeli intelligence indicated Iran intended to give nuclear weapons to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Iran has always said its nuclear program was peaceful, and the U.S. and others have assessed that it has not pursued a nuclear weapon since 2003.

But Iran has enriched ever-larger stockpiles of uranium to near weapons-grade levels in recent years and was believed to have the capacity to develop multiple weapons within months if it chose to do so.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive nuclear talks, said Washington remained committed to the negotiations and hoped the Iranians would return to the table.

The region is already on edge as Israel seeks to annihilate the Palestinian militant group Hamas, an Iranian ally, in the Gaza Strip, where war still ragesafter Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.

‘Many months’ to repair nuclear facilities

In Iran, satellite photos analyzed by AP show extensive damage at Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz. The images captured Saturday by Planet Labs PBC show multiple buildings damaged or destroyed. The structures hit include buildings identified by experts as supplying power to the facility.

U.N. nuclear chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that the above-ground section of the Natanz facility was destroyed. The main centrifuge facility underground did not appear to be hit, but the loss of power could have damaged infrastructure there, he said.

Israel also struck a nuclear research facility in Isfahan. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said four “critical buildings” were damaged, including an uranium-conversion facility. The IAEA said there was no sign of increased radiation at Natanz or Isfahan.

An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity Sunday in line with official procedures, said it would take “many months, maybe more” to restore the two sites.

Reuters/AP

When he opened the All Nigerian Judges Conference in February 2003, then Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammed Lawal Uwais, who died on June 6, 2025, six days short of his 89th birthday, lamentedthe fact that state chief judges in Nigeria “go begging for funds from their governors”; a practice pioneered by the military. It was part of a wider complaint about the historical legacies of judicial corrosion inherited from military rule. It also reflected the values of a man for whom judicial integrity was a way of life, and an independent judiciary was a constitutional mandate of the highest salience. 

In 1976, Mohammed Lawal Uwais secured a loan from the Nigerian Building Society to enable him build a modest home in Kaduna for his mother, Hajiya Hajara. At that point, Uwais had worked as a judge of the high court for over four years, including a stint as acting chief justice of the north-central (later Kaduna) state. Yet he had only one bank account with Union Bank.

Nearly thirty years later, entering his tenth year as Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Uwais’ office as CJN suffered what looked like a mysterious burglary. The chambers of the chief justice is a sanctuary inside the Supreme Court of Nigeria from where the CJN presides over the judicial shrine. It is one of the most protected spaces in the country. The idea of a burglary on that office is so ordinarily implausible as to make the provenance of such an act easily predicted. 

The burglary coincided rather conveniently with a period of intense judicialisation of the political antipathy between then vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, and his principal, Olusegun Obasanjo, over the latter’s attempt to succeed himself by lifting constitutional term limits that he had sworn to preserve and protect. That political conflict spawned a succession of high-profile cases which ended up at the supreme court, resulting in decisions that constrained the caprice of the president. Entirely characteristic of CJN Uwais, the court, in case after case, handed President Obasanjo a judicial shellacking with neither flash nor flourish.

It later turned out that the convenient burglar appeared to have been desperate to find non-existent material with which to dent the record of an uncompromising CJN and probably afflict him with indelible ignominy. Instead, all that they could find were records indicating that the man had maintained the same bank account for over four decades and with impeccable integrity.

Few would have predicted this turn of events in the relationship between Uwais and the man who preferred him to the supreme court as a sprightly 43-year-old in August 1979. On 11 August 1979, the country had voted in a contentious presidential ballot in preparation for return to civil rule after 13 years and nine months of bloody military rule. Five days later, on 16 August, the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) announced Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) the winner.

The previous day, on 15 August, army general and departing military ruler, Olusegun Obasanjo, appointed two new Justices of the Supreme Court. One was a pharmacist-turned-lawyer and Attorney-General of the Federation, Augustine Nnamani. The other was something of a judicial prodigy, Mohammed Uwais. The following week, Obasanjo also appointed a new CJN in Atanda Fatayi Williams was to oversee the adjudication of the dispute over the 1979 election. 

As attorney-general of the federation, Nnamani had authored the Electoral Act at the centre of the presidential election dispute. That precluded him from sitting on the dispute and catapulted Uwais onto the bench that would ultimately decide the destination of the presidency in 1979.

For Uwais, this guaranteed that his supreme court career would begin at the very deep end. It was a new high in a career that was destined for the very top. He had the good fortune of being born in Zaria, home to some of the most elite schools in the country.

The son of a railway worker from Zaria, Abdullahi Uwaisu and his wife, Hajara, Mohammed Lawal Uwais, was bereaved of his biological father at the age of six in December 1942. When his mother remarried two years later to a headteacher, Mohammed Jumare, Mohammed Uwais acquired a stepfather who inspired his educational pursuits under the watchful eyes of a doting mother. His high school education was at the elite Barewa College, where he was junior to Yakubu Gowon and in the same class and good friends with Gowon’s nemesis, Murtala Mohammed.

A graduate of the Institute of Administration at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Uwais did his vocational legal training at the Inns of Court in London before becoming part of the pioneer set of lawyers graduated by the Nigerian Law School in 1963. 

After his admission to the Nigerian Bar, Uwais returned to his civil service career, this time in the Ministry of Justice, first of the Northern Region, and then of the North Central (later Kaduna) State. Mohammed Bello, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) under whom he worked as State Counsel, became his colleague at the Supreme Court and immediate predecessor in the office of CJN. In the Ministry of Justice of the North Central State, he became Solicitor General and Permanent Secretary in 1971. 

The following year, under the government of his high school senior, Yakubu Gowon, Uwais was appointed Acting Judge of the High Court of the North Eastern State. He was only 36.

In 1975, when his high school mate, Murtala Mohammed, emerged as military ruler after overthrowing Gowon, Uwais was offered the office of Chief Justice of the North Central State but turned it down in favour of a more senior serving expatriate judge, A.W.E. Wheeler. When the military established the Court of Appeal the following year, Wheeler preferred him from Kaduna State to the bench of the new court at 40. When he got to the supreme court three years later, Uwais was only 43. He went on to serve as Justice of the Supreme Court for 27 years, setting a record of apex court durability that is unlikely to be threatened.

When Nigeria returned to civil rule in 1999 after another 15 unbroken years of military rule, Uwais had already been in office as the eighth indigenous CJN for four years. He was well-placed to stabilize the judiciary through the teething years of institutional adaptation. 

Uwais spent 11 of his 27 Supreme Court years as CJN, making him the second longest in that office after Adetokunbo Ademola, the first indigenous Chief Justice, who logged a record 14 years in that office until 1972. He instituted and oversaw rigorous standards of judicial discipline and performance. A mere four years into civil rule, by the beginning of 2004, over 20 judicial officers had been relieved of their positions for judicial malfeasance. Under him, the Nigerian judiciary was voted “Man of the Year” in 2005.

Two years after his retirement as CJN, Uwais came out of retirement to head a blue-ribbon panel on electoral reform in Nigeria. His characteristically thoughtful report continues to suffer neglect to the detriment of democratic sustainability in the country. 

Uwais was quietly uncompromising on judicial integrity. In a profound set of interviews with Princeton University in 2009, CJN Uwais underscored the need to eliminate bribery, corruption, nepotism and political interference within the judicial systems. A committed institutionalist with a peerless recall on the evolution of Nigeria’s judiciary, Uwais declined to write any memoirs.

The father of a very senior lawyer and husband to a wife both capable and experienced as a lawyer, Uwais did not nominate any members of his family to the bench. Many of his successors in the office of CJN, who served for less than a fraction of his tenure, were compulsive nepotists in favour of family members with less than marginal qualification or ability.

Current CJN, Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, paid tribute at his death to the capacity of Mohammed Uwais to “lead without pretence, and to mentor without fanfare.” He made his earthly exit on Friday, 6 June 2025, entirely in keeping with how he lived his life – without fanfare.

** A professor of law, Odinkalu can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Renee Onque

An 87-year-long Harvard study found that social fitness — maintaining your personal relationships and keeping them in good shape — was the No. 1 thing the happiest, longest-living people have in common.

"Invest in relationships, invest in connections and invest in the things you find meaningful," Dr. Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, said during an interview at the New York Times Well Festival.

"If you're doing more of that, you're more likely to be happy more of the time. You won't be happy all the time. But happiness is likely to find you more often."

To prove that pouring into your connections doesn't have to be a heavy lift, Waldinger offered up a simple way that the audience at the festival could receive a "dopamine hit" and connect with someone in their lives immediately.

"When I talk about investing in relationships, most people think, 'You know, I am so busy. I have so much going on in my life. How do I make time for this?'"

Here's how you can improve a relationship that you value in just three steps:

1. Take out your phone.
2. Think of somebody who you haven't seen in some time or that you'd like to connect with more.
3. Send that person a text or email, saying, "Hi, I was just thinking about you, and I wanted to connect."

"One of the things we found about people who were what we call socially fit is that they did these small things over and over again. You know, daily, multiple times a day," Waldinger said.

During their commute, they'd call someone, or they'd schedule their workouts at the gym with a friend, he explained. They found ways to intertwine the repetitive tasks in their daily life with social connection.

"When people did that, they stayed more current with more people in their lives. And that built this bedrock of social wellbeing."

CNBC

At least 100 people have been killed in a brutal overnight attack on Yelewata, a village in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria. The massacre, which began late Friday and continued into the early hours of Saturday, was carried out by suspected armed herders, according to eyewitnesses, local officials, and rights group Amnesty International.

The assault marks the third attack on Yelewata within one week, raising alarm over the deteriorating security situation in the region. The attackers reportedly stormed the village just before midnight, overwhelming the community with sophisticated weapons and facing little to no resistance from security forces.

Eyewitness accounts and local sources paint a horrifying picture of the rampage. “They came in large numbers and took over the village for over two hours. This was not just an attack—it was an annihilation,” a Guma local government staff member said anonymously. “They locked families inside their homes and set them ablaze. Many were hacked to death with cutlasses.”

Amnesty International Nigeria, in a statement on X, confirmed the scale of the atrocity, noting that “many people are still missing, dozens injured and left without adequate medical care. Many families were locked up and burnt inside their bedrooms.”

Dennis Denen Gbongbon, President of the Association of United Farmers Benue Valley (AUFBV), who visited the scene, reported that more than 85% of the victims were internally displaced persons (IDPs), many of whom had fled previous violence in surrounding communities like Antsa, Dooka, Kadarko, and Giza. These victims were sheltering in makeshift stalls and shops around Yelewata market when the attackers struck.

“This is a targeted attack on vulnerable people,” Gbongbon said. “These IDPs, mostly Tiv farmers, thought they had found safety—but terror continues to pursue them even in displacement. Entire families were wiped out in ways that defy imagination.”

In a separate but related incident on the same night, two soldiers were reportedly killed in Daudu, another community within Guma LGA, while responding to an attempted invasion. Witnesses said five soldiers may have been ambushed, though military officials have yet to confirm the full extent of the losses.

The Special Adviser to the Benue State Governor on Security and Internal Affairs, Joseph Har, confirmed the attacks in both Yelewata and Daudu but said he was still awaiting detailed reports. “I’m aware that this ugly thing happened, but I can’t confirm numbers yet,” he told journalists in Makurdi.

The Benue State Police Command also acknowledged the Yelewata attack. Public Relations Officer Udeme Edet said that tactical units responded swiftly and engaged the assailants in a gun battle, killing some of them. However, he did not provide an official casualty figure. “It’s with great sadness that we report that some individuals lost their lives and others sustained injuries,” he added.

Benue State, located in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, has long been plagued by deadly clashes between farming communities and herders over land use. These tensions are often fueled by deeper ethnic and religious divisions between the mostly Christian Tiv population and predominantly Muslim Fulani herders. In a similar incident last month, suspected herders killed at least 42 people across Gwer West LGA.

As search and rescue operations continue, fears grow that the death toll from the Yelewata massacre may rise above 200, given the number of missing persons and those critically injured. Community leaders and humanitarian workers are calling for urgent intervention to prevent further bloodshed.

Reports by Reuters and Daily Trust contributed to this story.