Nigeria’s state oil company almost tripled the pump price of gasoline after President Bola Tinubu said he’ll fulfill a pledge to scrap fuel subsidies that cost the government $10 billion last year.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Co. on Wednesday raised the cost to N488 ($1.05) a liter from N184 in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, according to a document seen by Bloomberg and confirmed by the company. In Abuja, the nation’s capital, prices will jump to N537 from 194 naira, it said.

Tinubu announced the end of the decades-long subsidy regime in his inauguration speech on May 29. Many filling stations across the country stopped selling fuel after the announcement to adjust their prices. Long queues have formed at outlets, while intra-city transport fares have increased.

The decision to abandon the policy triggered a rally in Nigerian dollar bonds on Tuesday. Africa’s largest crude producer would have had to spend  6 trillion ($12.9 billion) — about two-thirds of the revenue expected to be generated by oil and gas output — this year if the subsidies had continued. 

The surge in fuel prices may hamper the central bank’s effort to rein in inflation in Africa’s most-populous country, where about 40% of the population live in extreme poverty. The monetary policy committee has raised its benchmark interest rate by 700 basis points since May 2022 to a record 18.5%. Price-growth accelerated to a near 18-year high of 22.2% in April.

NNPC, which currently imports all of Nigeria’s gasoline needs, has been selling the fuel at a steep loss. The firm’s Chief Executive Officer Mele Kyari said on Tuesdaythe government is yet to reimburse the company for more than $6 billion that it’s spent on keeping gasoline cheap.

“We can’t continue to build this,” he said.

The meeting between the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the federal government has ended without an agreement.

The meeting, at the instance of the federal government, was intended to reach an agreement with organised labour after President Bola Tinubu’s announcement that petrol subsidy would cease to be in place by the end of June.

Speaking after the meeting on Wednesday night, Dele Alake, a member of the government’s team, said the meeting was engaging but did not provide details.

“We have been deliberating on finding very amicable resolutions to the issue at hand —to the queues and all of that and the increase in pump price,” Alake said.

“We had a very robust engagement. We cross-fertilised ideas, ideas flew from all sides and there is one thing that is remarkable even from the labour side — and that is Nigeria. We are all looking at the peace, progress and stability of Nigeria. That is what is paramount.

“Of course the NNPCL GCEO, Kyari, is here, we cannot go into details now because the talks are still ongoing.

“We cannot finish everything at one sitting, so we have adjourned now, we are continuing the talks at a later date very shortly. But the point is that the talks are ongoing and it’s always better for all sides to keep talking with a view to arriving at a very amicable resolution that will be in the longer-term interest for all Nigerians. That is as much as we can say now.”

NO CONSENSUS REACHED

However, Joe Ajaero, president of NLC and his counterpart in Trade Union Congress (TUC), Festus Osifo, said no consensus was reached at the meeting.

The organised labour said the meeting would reconvene after they have met with their members at a date yet to be fixed.

Those who were in attendance on the federal government’s side were Folashade Yemi-Esan, head of the federal civil service; Mele Kyari, group chief executive officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPCL); Tijjani Umar, permanent secretary of the state house, among others.

The petrol subsidy removal has long plagued past administrations as they attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to eliminate it.

In his inaugural address on Monday, Tinubu said the petrol subsidy “is gone” and that his administration would discontinue it. His statement was met with pushback from organised labour.

The Cable

Nigeria has revised its tax-to-GDP ratio for 2021 to 10.86% from 6% following an adjustment to include revenues collected by other government agencies, the tax office chief said on Wednesday.

Tax collection rates have hovered between 5%-6% of gross domestic product over the past 12 years, Federal Inland Revenue Service head Muhammad Nami said, adding that revenues collected by other agencies were previously left out of the calculation.

Africa's biggest economy has one of the lowest tax collection rates in the world, though tax receipts did rise by 56% in 2022 to a record 10 trillion naira ($22 billion).

Previous governments pledged to boost non-oil revenues since oil sales make up 90% of foreign exchange receipts, but raising more money from taxes has proved difficult in a country where many small business are not registered.

Nami said Nigeria's tax-to-GDP ratio could be higher if tax waivers and gaps in its fragmented tax system were plugged. He added that a 2014 GDP rebasing had worsened the tax ratio.

Nigeria has been struggling to raise revenues since recovering from a recession caused by previously low oil prices. The revenue situation worsened with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The government has said it will prioritise tax collection from its digital economy and focus on non-resident firms with significant economic presence that generate turnover in Nigeria.

($1 = 460.00 naira)

Presidential Election Petitions Court has admitted more documents in the petition by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar challenging the February 25 election.

The five-member panel of justices on Wednesday admitted the C.T.C of form EC8 series from local governments of Bayelsa, Kaduna, and Kogi states submitted under the second schedule to the exhibits tendered by the PDP.

The panel also admitted BVAS accreditation and data reports of 33 states of the country.

However, counsel to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Kemi Pinheiro; counsel to Bola Tinubu, Emmanuel Ukala; and counsel to the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adeniyi Akintola all objected to the admissibility of the documents.

Counsel to the PDP, Eyitayo Jegede informed the court that they will remove Lagos, Kaduna, Kano, and Kogi states from the list of states to be tendered. 

But Pinheiro said the commission is opposed to the admissibility of exhibits for Kogi, Sokoto, and Rivers states.

Earlier, the panel adjourned the petition by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi till Thursday after the party’s counsel; Awa Kalu informed the panel that they could not present their schedule of exhibits due to the ill-health of the staff in their secretariat.

Daily Trust

Iyaloja-general of Lagos State, Folasade Tinubu-Ojo, has updated her profile on the microblogging site, Twitter, reflecting the title ‘first daughter of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN)’.

This is coming after her father, President Bola Tinubu, was sworn in as the President on Monday.

Tinubu-Ojo currently has over 21,000 followers on the popular microblogging site.

A check on her Twitter bio reads, “This is the Official Handle of the Iyaloja General of Nigeria. The First Daughter of the FRN.”

Also, in a series of tweets, Tinubu-Ojo said she had launched an initiative to support her father’s administration.

“Friends of Iyaloja Initiative (FoI) unveiled today. I can boldly say again that our youths, women and the vulnerable shall be attended to by this administration. I will fight for this cause and I believe that God Almighty shall crown our efforts with unprecedented success.

“I have decided to use my little wealth of experience, connections and human resources available to me to support my dad’s administration.

“FoI shall be focusing on: youth and women empowerment. Empowering people with special needs. Empowering the vulnerable and several other programs aimed at affecting the lives of Nigerians; especially, those in the grassroots.

“We shall be in partnership with other notable NGOs with track records of excellence in the key areas. We shall also seek collaborations with several governmental agencies, ministries and parastatals created to serve Nigerians in areas that pertain to our operational cycle.

“I can boldly say again that our youths, women and the vulnerable shall be attended to by this administration. I will fight for this cause and I believe that God Almighty shall crown our efforts with unprecedented success,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, reactions have continued to trail her updated Twitter bio, with users on the app alleging that there is an agenda behind the move.

A popular tweep, David Hundeyin, wrote, “Iyaloja General of Nigeria. These people legit have no greater ambition than to cut tickets every day for every Nigerian citizen. Even Buhari was more subtle.”

Another tweep, David Onyemaizu, wrote, “Iyaloja General of Nigeria/First Daughter of the FRN? This is just day two of your father being in power & you already think it’s a monarchy or a family business? Well, she’s actually free to use whatever titles she wants on her bio. Only becomes a problem if validated by.”

“The Iyaloja General of Nigeria. The First Daughter of the FRN. Thank God Nigeria has had Presidents before,” Karo commented.

Another tweep Ferejogi wrote, “For those who didn’t know, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo has always been the Iyaloja-General of Nigeria. This happened several years ago. If you don’t know something, just say you don’t know. Admit your ignorance.”

Punch

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Britain ‘de facto’ at war with Russia – Medvedev

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has described the UK as waging an “undeclared war” against Russia. The comment came after Britain’s foreign secretary condoned a large-scale drone attack on Moscow earlier this week.

In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Medvedev accused London of being Moscow’s “eternal enemy.” The former leader, who currently serves as deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, claimed that based on international law, “including the Hague and Geneva Conventions with their additional protocols,” Britain “can also be qualified as being at war.”

The former president argued that by providing Ukraine with weapons and training, the UK “de facto is leading an undeclared war against Russia.”

Medvedev hinted that this could have direct ramifications for “public officials” in Britain.

His tweet cited remarks made on Tuesday by UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who said Ukraine has the right to “project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself.”

Cleverly further claimed that striking “legitimate military targets” in Russia is an acceptable part of Ukraine’s self-defense.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, eight UAVs were detected in Moscow’s airspace on Tuesday morning, in what officials described as a “terrorist attack” by Kiev.

The ministry reported that three drones were suppressed by electronic warfare measures and deviated from their intended course before crashing, while the other five were shot down by Pantsir-S air defense systems outside the city.

Several residential buildings sustained superficial damage and two people suffered minor injuries as a result of the raid.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Kiev of launching the attack in an attempt to avenge a recent series of Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian airfields, ammunition dumps, and “decision-making centers.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed on Tuesday that the headquarters of the Ukrainian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) had been among the targets hit in the strikes.

** Russian forces wipe out last Ukrainian combat ship in Odessa — top brass

Russia’s Aerospace Forces destroyed the last Ukrainian combat ship in the Odessa port in the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Wednesday.

"On May 29, the Ukrainian Navy’s last combat ship Yury Olefirenko was destroyed as a result of a strike by the Russian Aerospace Forces’ precision weapons against the anchorage of naval ships in the Odessa port," the spokesman said.

The Ukrainian Navy operated about 25 combat ships, including five patrol and six artillery boats before Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine.

In addition, the Ukrainian Navy’s combat assets included the Gola Pristan anti-saboteur boat and the Svatovo assault boat. Upon Kiev’s attempt to storm Snake Island in the Black Sea on May 9 last year, Russian forces sank three Ukrainian Centaur-class armored assault boats and each of them could have carried a marine infantry platoon.

The Ukrainian Navy also operated nine armored gunboats, one of which, the Akkerman, was abandoned by the crew in Berdyansk, according to information of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily. The Vinnitsa corvette and the Yury Olefirenko medium amphibious assault ship were sunk.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine says Russian missiles kill two children in Kyiv

A Russian missile attack on Kyiv killed three people including two children and injured 14 on Thursday, officials in the Ukrainian capital said.

The Kyiv military administration said in a statement the attack struck the Desnyanskyi region on the capital's eastern outskirts as well as Dniprovkskyi district, closer to the centre.

It was the 18th attack on the capital this month.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said nine people needed hospital treatment. Emergency crews had extinguished fires caused by falling debris near the sites of the strikes.

Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app a medical clinic had been hit. Photographs posted on the city's website showed windows blown out in the clinic and in nearby apartment buildings.

Pictures from the scene posted on social media showed rescue teams attending to residents in buildings, with shattered building materials strewn about on the street.

City authorities said the impact was from shot-down cruise or ballistic missiles.

Air raid alerts in Kyiv and in most of eastern Ukraine were in effect for about an hour.

Sudan’s Central Bank Is latest battleground in deadly conflict

Sudan’s army bombed a printing press in an attempt to prevent the paramilitary group it’s been fighting for control of the North African country from printing money to fund its operations, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Rapid Support Forces militia in turn raided the country’s central bank as fighting continued to rage amid yet another broken cease-fire, according to a foreign diplomat and an aid official briefed on events. More than 1,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in the six-week conflict.

It was unclear what the resulting damage was or whether the RSF looted any of the central bank’s gold reserves. Spokespeople from both sides didn’t reply to requests seeking comment. Calls to the central bank didn’t connect.

The RSF said on Twitter that the army had “attacked an RSF position at a currency printing plant in Khartoum.”

Continued violence in the capital and elsewhere in Sudan came as the army announced it’s withdrawing from talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at finding a solution to the conflict.

Bloomberg

Just like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, it turns out that the Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator franchise was a blueprint, not a work of science fiction. When Skynet, a network of computers created by the military contractor Cyberdyne Systems, gained self-awareness, panicky humans tried to deactivate it. The newly formed artificial intelligence (AI) identified “all humans as a threat”, “decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination” and launched a nuclear attack on every major city.

Four decades on, fiction risks becoming fact. In the most chilling warning since the Szilárd petition of 1945 and the establishment by Albert Einstein of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, many of the world’s greatest AI experts are convinced it could destroy humanity, that the technology poses an existential threat to our survival as a species.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” pleads a letter signed by Sam Altman of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind and many others. Other founding godfathers of AI have quit their jobs and expressed regret at their life’s work. Their terror is palpable, as is the sense that this time we have gone too far, that our institutions cannot cope, that AI will be hijacked to build weapons of mass destruction or to rule over us.

They could all be wrong, and there are huge benefits to AI as well as costs, but why isn’t this the number one priority of every politician in the world? How can anybody believe that some silly pact, or a puerile EU regulation, might be the answer? We face a profound philosophical and practical choice: what is the meaning of life and intelligence? How do we make sure humanity remains in charge of machines? How do we trade off productivity growth against the risk of annihilation? This is surely the most complex question we have ever faced, and yet our shockingly unserious society cannot face up to it.

The global elites have again got their priorities wrong. They have focused obsessively on climate change, turning a real but surmountable problem into an anti-Western religion, but are bizarrely nonchalant about much greater threats. I’m not downplaying the large disruption and cost of climate change, but it won’t come anywhere close to terminating life on Earth, unlike a nuclear war, biowarfare or out-of-control AI. Our rush to net zero, by reducing growth, is in fact limiting our ability to wage an AI war with a Chinese state that continues to belch out carbon dioxide.

The most immediate risk to humanity’s survival is nuclear war. Russia may yet launch tactical nukes on Ukraine; China may invade Taiwan; or a terror attack could push India and Pakistan into total conflict. Yet the most pressing danger comes from nuclear proliferation, a slow-burn crisis that contradicts woke narratives and is thus overlooked. North Korea remains a major threat, but Iran is the real danger: it keeps enriching uranium and wants to annihilate Israel. Where is the anti-proliferation Greta Thunberg?

The other great danger is biowarfare. It is insane that we still tolerate gain of function research, which enhances viruses genetically: at some point, a super-potent virus may be released accidentally or intentionally, killing billions and destroying civilisation. Where is the outrage, the parade of concerned activists?

Out-of-control AI could prey on a growing pathology at the heart of Western society: our vulnerability to social contagion. Instead of creating an army of resilient, independent, hyper-educated rational individualists with all of human learning at our fingertips, smartphones have reduced us to an uber-emotional, animalistic, dopamine-addled mob. There is plenty of information, but little knowledge. Instead of being able to think for ourselves, we are slaves to fashion, not only when it comes to dressing but also opinions, consumption and financial decisions. Radicalised by social media, elite opinion-formers embrace absurd views at breakneck speed. Politicians, businesses and celebrities take their cue from a revolutionary vanguard that subverts public sentiment.

Our society no longer understands the purpose of free speech, as described by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. Instead of engaging in Socratic argumentation to get to the truth, we use words to virtue-signal and to camouflage base emotions. Our elites claim to be universalist humanists, but are in fact born-again tribalists who spend their time pitting in-groups (those who repeat the favoured platitude of the moment) against the out-groups (anyone who disagrees).

We no longer know how to think critically. Subjectivity and nihilism rule supreme: the deranged, post-modernist woke cargo cult claims that there no longer is truth, just our truths. Ideas are at best positional goods, fashion statements and markers of social hierarchy, and at worst tools of oppression. Words are devoid of any essential meaning: expressing “righthink” signals high status (even if the opinion is nonsense, such as the claim that China had nothing to do with Covid) and “wrongthink” (such as support for Brexit) implies low-status.

Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University argues that our society is not merely increasingly capricious but also prone to a new madness of crowds. Technology, by increasing transparency and reducing transaction costs, has “intensified the madness of the masses and expanded their reach. From finance to politics and culture, no domain remains untouched.” Bank runs are more frequent, with deposits moved from online accounts as soon as rumours begin to circulate. Fake news, boycotts, fury, demonstrations, health panics and calls for crackdowns become the norm. There are no error-correcting mechanisms.

Such a world – governed by the opposite principles to those developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Antifragile – is vulnerable to manipulation, and hence to weaponised AI. Imagine a deepfake video watched 20 million times in a couple of hours that warns of an imminent terror attack, or “proves” a politician was a fraud hours before an election: the impact would be catastrophic.

“Can we survive technology?” – so asked John von Neumann, the 20th century’s greatest mind, in 1955. Could the answer really be in the negative?

The Telegraph, USA

Unfortunately, cyberattacks don’t stop increasing. And Android is currently one of its main objectives. The latest example? An app available on Google Play has been recording your conversations for more than a year.

As reported by ArsTechnica, the Android recording application called iRecorder Screen Recorder has been recording our conversations without permission for quite some time.

Immediately delete iRecorder Screen Recorder from your phone

Worst of all is that the app actually worked as a screen recorder for a whole year, without any type of malware. Since its launch in September 2021, it behaved like a normal app.

The problem is that after being updated in August 2022, it went on to record one minute of audio every 15 minutes and forward those recordings, via an encrypted link, to the developer’s server.

All of this information has been documented by Essential Security Against Evolving Threats (ESET) researcher Lukas Stefanko, so it is a pretty serious topic. The developer has had access to all of its user’s conversations.

In said publication they point out that malicious code was added in the 2022 update “based on AhMyth RAT” (Remote Access Trojan).

And considering that it accumulated more than 50,000 downloads before being removed from Google Play, you should exercise precautions. In addition, they make it clear that we are completely vulnerable to attacks of all kinds.

The idea of this developer is very good, within the fact that it is a crime. Launch the app without malicious code so that it passes the controls of Google Play. Then, wait a reasonable time for it to accumulate downloads, and end up launching an update with malicious code.

In this case, we are not sure if the developer was the one who added this malicious code, or if he sold the app on the Dark Web to hackers so that they corrupt the iRecorder Screen Recorder application.

But what is clear is that we are not going to be able to easily eliminate this problem of apps that are updated with malicious code. And we are very much afraid that the best thing you can do is to only use apps from reputable developers. And if you can avoid them and use native solutions on your phone, all the better.

AS USA

Flying Eagles of Nigeria have secured a spot in the quarterfinal stage of the ongoing FIFA U-20 World Cup after an impressive 2-0 victory over the host nation, Argentina Thursday night.

Second-half goals from Ibrahim Muhammad and Haliru Sarki saw the Flying Eagles cruising into the last eight in style at the expense of Argentina at the San Juan stadium.

The Coach Ladan Bosso’s side will now face Ecuador or Korea Republic in the quarter-final.

Flying Eagles shock host

The Flying Eagles came into Thursday’s Round of 16 tie as underdogs having finished third in the group stage.

This is in contrast with the Argentines who were group winners with a hundred per cent record from their earlier games.

The game at the Suan Juan stadium took place in a thrilling atmosphere with the home crowd cheering their teams on.

With no room for errors, both teams displayed their determination to advance in the tournament right from the blast of the whistle.

Despite flashes of brilliance and nervy moments at both ends, the first half ended with a deadlock as neither team managed to find the back of the net.

The Flying Eagles defence held firm against the pressure from the Argentinian attack. The Nigerian team showcased their own attacking prowess, mounting pressure on the host country.

As the second half began, Nigeria came out with renewed energy and quickly made an impact. In the 60th minute, Ibrahim Muhammad broke the deadlock by receiving a well-executed through ball and firing it past the Argentinian goalkeeper, Gomes.

The Nigerian fans erupted in celebration as the Flying Eagles took the lead.

Expectedly, Argentina attempted a quick response with a series of onslaughts on Nigeria’s defence.

But while it appeared the single goal will be enough for the Flying Eagles to pull through, Haliru Sarki doubled his team’s lead with an impressive flying header, assisted by Victor Eletu’s accurate cross in stoppage time.

Argentina fought back desperately, creating a few chances to grab an equaliser but the Nigerian defence stood tall, brilliantly clearing the Argentinian attempts.

Romero came close to scoring, but his effort was cleared to a corner, and Carboni’s header missed the target.

In the end, Nigeria held on to their two-goal lead and secured a historic victory over the host nation.

The Nigerian players celebrated joyously, knowing they made history by eliminating the most successful team — Argentina — from the tournament and advancing to the quarterfinals.

Having survived Italy, Brazil and now Argentina, the Flying Eagles can hope to go all the way now as they gun to become just the second African team after Ghana to win the cadet World Cup

PT