Google, Netflix, Facebook and other foreign companies operating in Nigeria have paid over N1.98tn in taxes to the account of the Federal Government in 15 months, according to findings by The PUNCH.

The figure includes both Company Income Tax and Value Added Tax, and is based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

According to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, CIT is a 30 per cent tax imposed on the profit of companies, and VAT is a 7.5 per cent consumption tax paid when goods are purchased, and services rendered and borne by the final consumer.

Earlier in 2020, it was reported that the Federal Government planned to tax foreign digital service providers offering services to Nigerians and earning revenue in naira.

Some of these service providers, which are video streaming sites, social media platforms, and companies that offer downloads of digital content are expected to pay digital tax to the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

Former Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, had issued the Companies Income Tax (Significant Economic Presence) Order, 2020 as an amendment of the Finance Act 2019.

The order aimed to impose a tax on a foreign entity with respect to certain services or digital transactions if it had a Significant Economic Presence in Nigeria.

It further stated that the finance minister might, by order, determine what constitutes SEP in Nigeria.

Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, among others, are some of these foreign companies that offer digital video and advertising services to Nigerians.

Others, like Alibaba and Amazon, generate revenue from Nigeria by processing and transmitting data collected about users in Nigeria, provision of goods or services directly or through a digital platform, or offering intermediate services that link suppliers and customers in Nigeria.

The new regulation would apply to companies with income of N25m or equivalent in other currencies from Nigeria in a year and those with a Nigerian domain name (.ng) or a website address in the country.

The SEP order mandated foreign companies with sustained interactions with persons in Nigeria and customising their digital platforms to target persons in Nigeria by stating the prices of their products or services in naira to pay taxes.

According to the Act, a foreign entity providing technical services such as training, advertising, supply of personnel, professional, management, or consultancy services shall have a SEP in Nigeria in any accounting year if it earns any income or receives any payment from a person resident in Nigeria or a fixed base or agent of a foreign entity in Nigeria.

However, payments made to employees of a foreign entity or for teaching in an educational institution are exempt.

Also, in January 2022, the Federal Government disclosed that it would charge offshore companies providing digital services to local customers in Nigeria a six per cent tax on turnover as provided in the 2021 Finance Act.

Speaking further on the tax on digital services, the former finance minister, Ahmed, explained that it includes apps, high-frequency trading, electronic data storage, and online advertising, adding that “this is introducing turnover tax on a fair and reasonable basis.”

The policy was contained in Section 30 of the Finance Act, which amended the provisions of Sections 10, 31, and 14 on VAT obligations for non-resident digital companies.

Ahmed said, “Section 30 of the Finance Act designed to amend sections 10, 31 and 14 of VAT is in relations to VAT obligations for non-resident digital companies and the mechanism that will be used is to restrict VAT obligations mainly to digital non-resident companies who supply individuals in Nigeria who can’t themselves self-account for VAT.

“So if you visit Amazon, we are expecting Amazon to add VAT charge to whatever transaction you are paying for. I am using Amazon as an example. We are going to be working with Amazon to be registered as a tax agent for FIRS.

“So Amazon will now collect this payment and remit to FIRS and this is in line with global best practices, we have been missing out on this stream of revenue.”

According to her, the new law applies to foreign companies that provide digital services such as apps, high-frequency trading, electronic data storage, online and advertising, among others.

She noted that in line with Section 4 of the Finance Act, non-resident companies are now expected to pay tax at six per cent on their turnover.

The minister, who stated that the government was desirous of modernising taxes for its digital economy and to improve compliance, noted that digital non-resident companies do not need to be registered locally but would have an arrangement with the FIRS to collect and remit taxes in a bid to reduce the compliance burden.

Analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers had said earlier that some of the affected foreign digital companies would be required to register for income taxes in Nigeria and file annual tax returns even if they did not have a physical presence in Nigeria.

They added that Nigerian resident businesses (as well as the fixed bases of non-resident companies) that have transactions with the affected non-resident companies would also be required to account for withholding tax on some of the payments made to these foreign companies.

PwC raised concerns as to how the FIRS would enforce compliance without international consensus, as a number of the companies affected might be outside the territorial reach of the agency.

According to the consulting firm, the problem will also be exacerbated where the companies sell their products and services directly to individual consumers in Nigeria.

However, findings by the PUNCH showed that these firms have paid over N1.98tn in taxes between the first quarter of 2022 and Q1 2023.

Within the period under review, the Federal Government earned N1.32tn through CIT and N661.93bn through VAT from foreign companies.

A breakdown on CIT showed that Nigeria earned N342.4bn in Q1 2022, N80.39bn in Q2 2022, N327.02bn in Q3 2022, N399.98bn in Q4 2022, and N168.23bn in Q1 2023.

On a year-on-year analysis, there was a decline of 50.87 per cent (-N174.17bn) in CIT from foreign firms.

On a quarterly basis, the decline was a bit higher at 57.94 per cent (-N231.75bn).

A breakdown on VAT showed that Nigeria earned N117.99bn in Q1 2022, N11.13bn in Q2 2022, N121.85bn in Q3 2022, N159.83bn in Q4 2022, and N151.13bn in Q1 2023.

On a year-on-year analysis, there was an increase of 28.09 per cent (N33.14bn) in CIT from foreign firms.

However, on a quarterly basis, there was a decline of 5.44 per cent (-N8.7bn).

Punch

The five BRICS developing nations will admit Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates, they said on Thursday, a move aimed at growing the clout of the bloc as it pushes to rebalance the prevailing world order.

The expansion could also pave the way for dozens more countries to seek admission to the grouping, which has pledged to address their grievances over a world order many feel is rigged against them.

BRICS - whose acronym was originally coined by an economist at Goldman Sachs, currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Deepening geopolitical polarisation in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's declining relations with the United States are spurring efforts by Beijing and Moscow to forge BRICS into a viable counterweight to the West.

"BRICS has embarked on a new chapter in its effort to build a world that is fair, a world that is just, a world that is also inclusive and prosperous," said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is hosting a summit of BRICS leaders.

The six candidate countries will formally become members on Jan. 1, 2024. Ramaphosa and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva left the door open to the possibility of admitting other countries in future.

"We have consensus on the first phase of this expansion process and other phases will follow," Ramaphosa said at a media briefing.

Lula said globalisation's promises had failed, adding that it was time to revitalise cooperation with developing countries as "there is a risk of nuclear war", an apparent allusion to growing tensions between Russia and the West over the Ukraine conflict.

United Arab Emirates' President Mohammed bin Zayed, whose country is already a shareholder of the bloc's New Development Bank, said he appreciated the inclusion of his country in the expansion.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called the BRICS leaders' decision to invite Ethiopia to join "a great moment".

PLEDGE TO REBALANCE WORLD ORDER

In a reflection of the bloc's growing influence, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended Thursday's expansion announcement.

He echoed a recurring plea by BRICS for reforms of institutions like the U.N. Security Council, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, stating that global governance structures "reflect yesterday's world".

"For multilateral institutions to remain truly universal, they must reform to reflect today's power and economic realities. In the absence of such reform, fragmentation is inevitable," he said.

The debate over enlargement has topped the agenda at the three-day summit taking place in Johannesburg. And while all BRICS members publicly expressed support for growing the bloc, there were divisions among the leaders over how much and how quickly.

Though home to about 40% of the world's population and a quarter of global gross domestic product, BRICS members' failure to settle on a coherent vision for the bloc has long left it punching below its weight as a global political and economic player.

"This membership expansion is historic," China's President Xi Jinping said in remarks following the announcement on enlargement. "It shows the determination of BRICS countries for unity and cooperation with the broader developing countries."

More than 40 countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS, say South African officials, and 22 have formally asked to be admitted.

They represent a disparate pool of potential candidates motivated largely by a desire to level a global playing field and attracted by BRICS' promise to rebalance world bodies dominated by the United States and other wealthy Western states.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the bloc's expansion should be an example to other global institutions.

"The expansion and modernization of BRICS is a message that all institutions in the world need to mould themselves according to changing times," he said.

Reuters

Three people have been declared dead after a two storey building collapsed in the early hours of Thursday in Garki village, Federal Capital Territory, (FCT), Abuja.

According to government officials undertaking rescue operations at the venue, the building came crashing down on unsuspecting residents shortly after midnight while it was raining non-stop, killing two at venue while one later died in the hospital.

FCT Minister who arrived the venue to assess the situation, ordered the immediate arrest of owners of the property and an investigation into the remote and immediate causes of the building collapse.

Nyesom Wike who warned that enough is enough of indiduals building without approved building plan and use of substandard materials, said “We will identify and arrest owners of the building.”

The minister assured that government will take care of the hospital bill and treatment of those rescued and are receiving treatment for various degree of injuries in hospitals.

A resident of the collapsed building, gift Eze, who survived the accident, said they escaped the accident with only the clothes on their bodies. She called on the government to provide immediate relief and support for them.

“I escaped with only these clothes on me, the house, property, everything is gone, please we need immediate help. Where do we sleep tonight and where do we live?

Ireti Kingibe, senator representing the FCT, who arrived at the venue shortly after the departure of the FCT minister, decried the spate of building collapse in the FCT and the attendant loss of lives and property.

She tasked regulatory bodies to conduct periodic checks on buildings across the FCT to avoid a repeat of the incident.

She said although the area is a local Gbagyi setting, it is important to follow standards when setting up any building structure to avoid building collapse.

“Everyone intending to build should get proper approval before doing so. This is an old building but the agencies should have a process where they go regularly to assess old buildings like this and while they do that, we the public should comply.”

Officials of the FCT Development Control, FCT, FERMA and the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), among others, all agreed that the about 30 years old building was already distressed and therefore no longer fit for people to live in.

District Head, Garki, Stephen Yakubu, explained that the owner of the building had already given the occupants quit notice for a while now because the building had already depreciated and is almost collapsing but some of occupants still stayed back for lack of where to immediately move to and were unfortunately caught up in the disaster.

He said “Based on the information we were told, the owner had already given them quit notice when he realised that the building was depreciating and it was almost collapsing but for over two months now, they have refused to leave perhaps the reason could be that they didn’t have accommodation anywhere.

“We are deeply saddened over the loss of lives there. Nobody is happy because losing a life, even if it is a baby, it is something that is quite worrisome. We are working with the authorities to prevent these from happening again,” he said.

The Guardian

Residents of a village near the site of a plane crash which is believed to have killed Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said they had heard a bang, then saw the jet plummet to the ground.

The plane, an Embraer Legacy 600private jet, crashed on Wednesday near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia's Tver region on its way from Moscow to St. Petersburg and killed all 10 people on board - seven passengers and three crew members.

There has been no official comment from the Kremlin or the Defence Ministry on the fate of Prigozhin but a Telegram channel linked to his Wagner mercenary group, Grey Zone, pronounced him dead.

A Reuters reporter at the crash site early on Thursday saw men taking away black body bags on stretchers.

Part of the plane's blue-and-white liveried tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area.

Forensic investigators had erected a tent and lighting gear. Parts of the wreckage lay near what appeared to be a half-built abandoned structure.

Kuzhenkino resident Vitaly Stepenok, 72, told Reuters: "I hear an explosion or a bang. Usually, if an explosion happens on the ground then you get an echo, but it was just a bang and I looked up and saw white smoke."

"One wing flew off in one direction and the fuselage went like that," he said, gesturing with his arms to show how the plane headed down towards the ground.

"And then it glided down on one wing. It didn't nose-dive, it was gliding."

Standing in a village street, Stepenok said he was afraid the plane would fall onto houses there.

"I was over there. I jumped on my bike and was there (at the site) in about 20 minutes. Everything was on fire. People were walking around. They dragged someone out, their remains... I couldn't make it out. I just saw the number on the plane, which I told them, and that was it."

Another villager, who gave his name as Anatoly, said: "In terms of what might have happened, I'll just say this: it wasn't thunder, it was a metallic bang - let's put it that way. I've heard things like that before."

"Over there by that mast. And it fell over there," he said pointing towards a farm.

The crash occurred two months to the day since Prigozhin led an abortive mutiny against the army top brass, accusing them of incompetence in their handling of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Russian investigators said they had opened a criminal investigation. Some unnamed sources told Russian media they believed the plane had been shot down by one or more surface-to-air missiles. Reuters could not confirm that.

** Putin breaks silence on Prigozhin plane crash as bodies taken to medical examiner's office

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his first comments Thursday on the mysterious plane crash that presumably killed Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin and the private military company's co-founder Dmitry Utkin along with eight others near Kuzhenkino, Russia, on Wednesday.

The comments were made hours after the bodies of the crash victims were moved to the Tver Regional Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination, ABC News learned.

"As for the aviation tragedy, first of all, I want to express my sincerest condolences to the families of all the victims," Putin said in an on-camera address, adding that Wagner Group made a "significant contribution to our common cause of fighting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine."

"I knew (Yevgeny) Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man with a complex destiny, and he made serious mistakes in life," Putin said. "He achieved the results he needed both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause, as in these last months."

He added on the investigation, "But what is absolutely clear - the head of the Investigative Committee reported to me this morning, they have already launched a preliminary investigation into this incident. And it will be carried out in full and to the end. There is no doubt about that here. Let's see what the investigators say in the near future. Tests -- technical and genetic tests -- are being carried out now. This takes some time."

Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg -- Prigozhin’s home town -- dozens of people have been arriving to light candles and drop flowers at a pop-up memorial.

Reuters/Yahoo News

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Pro-Kyiv Russians urge Wagner Group to revenge Prigozhin's death

A group of Russian militants who fight on the Ukrainian side called on the Wagner Group of mercenaries to switch sides and join their ranks to revenge the deaths of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and their commander Dmitry Utkin.

Russian air authorities have said Prigozhin, Utkin and eight other people were on a private plane that crashed with no survivors north of Moscow on Wednesday.

"You are facing a serious choice now - you can stand in a stall of Russia's defence ministry and serve as watchdogs for executors of your commanders or take revenge," commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) Denis Kapustin said in a video address published late on Thursday.

"To take revenge you need to switch to Ukraine's side," the commander said.

The crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries staged a mutiny against Russian military commanders in which they took control of a southern city, Rostov, and advanced towards Moscow before turning around 200 kilometers far from the capital.

Russia has opened an investigation into the crash, but its outcome is unlikely to shake a widespread belief that Prigozhin was killed as an act of vengeance for staging the mutiny.

Reuters had cited two U.S. officials earlier on Thursday saying a surface-to-air missile likely hit the plane. Pentagon later said it had no evidence to support that.

After 24 hours of silence, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid "sincere condolences" to the families of all 10 people on the plane, and praised Prigozhin as a "talented businessman".

RVC commander Kapustin, a far-right Russian national, founded the armed group a year ago. RVC fights on the Ukrainian side and has said it was behind several military attacks on Russian border regions.

"Let's end the bloody meat grinder of the special military operation," Kapustin said in his address to Wagner fighters using the Russian official name for the invasion of Ukraine.

"After that, we will march to Moscow and this time we will not stop 200 kilometers before the Moscow ring road but go to the end," he said.

** Top US general says Ukraine to get F16 jets soon

The United States' top general said on Thursday that Ukraine was likely to get F-16 fighter jets soon, and said its counter-offensive against the Russian invasion has been going slowly and had partial success.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said it was too early to say whether the counter-offensive had failed.

"F-16s. That is moving forward, actually. So there's a training program in place and they'll likely receive F-16s ... in the not-too-distant future," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said in an exclusive interview with Jordan's Al-Mamlaka public service TV news channel.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy recently said he had received pledges from Denmark and the Netherlands to deliver F-16s, saying they would strengthen Ukraine's air defences and help its counter-offensive against Russian forces.

Milley said the counter-offensive faced heavy Russian reinforcements with many months to prepare minefields, tank ditches and dragon's teeth tank obstacles "in a very complex set of defensive preparations that the Ukrainians are fighting through ...

"The Ukrainians have a significant amount of combat power remaining; this is not over yet," he said. "So I think it’s frankly too early to say whether it (has) succeeded or failed."

"Clearly it’s had partial success to date. Now the speed at which the offensive has been undertaking is slower than the planners had thought," Milley added in the interview in Amman.

Ukrainian forces were being trained intensively in various parts of Europe on "command and control of offensive formations and combined arms maneuver and to break complex obstacles that will bolster its capabilities," the four-star U.S. Army general said.

"Again, it's bloody, it's long and it's slow. And we had predicted that several months ago," he said.

Washington was still deliberating providing long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems known as ATACMS that Ukraine wants and which reach behind enemy lines, including Russia, Milley told Al-Mamlaka.

"They've gotten long-range artillery with the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) and the Brits have provided other types of capabilities that other countries have as well. So they've gotten a lot of artillery," he said. "But the ATACMS is a controversial topic.

"And for a lot of reasons, they haven't received those yet. They're still on the table. President Biden has not said no or yes at this time," Milley said.

Milley, who is slated to retire later this year, again cautioned against the likelihood of an outright Ukrainian military victory in the near term while highlighting the possibility of a political solution to end the fighting.

"It’s an offensive that is been going on for about, I guess, eight weeks or so. It’s very bloody, slow, high casualty- producing and its very difficult. So the idea of militarily kicking out two or three hundred thousand Russian troops is going to be very difficult and challenging.

"A different way of getting out of this is through negotiations and may be that will happen too."

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainian missile intercepted in western Russia – MOD

A Ukrainian S-200 missile has been intercepted and destroyed mid-air in Kaluga Region, southwest of Moscow, Russia’s Defense Ministry said in the early hours of Friday.

According to the MOD, the air defenses have “thwarted an attempt by the Kiev authorities to conduct terrorist attacks on civilian sites on the territory of the Russian Federation.”

The Soviet-era S-200 missiles were originally designed to strike airborne targets. However, Russian officials have warned that Ukraine has repurposed some of them for use against targets on the ground. 

According to reports on Telegram, loud explosions were heard in Obninsk, a city roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Moscow.

Two of Moscow’s three main airports – Domodedovo and Vnukovo – have been briefly shut down, news agency TASS reported, citing aviation services.

Hours later, the Defense Ministry said that 42 drones attacked Crimea overnight, nine of which were destroyed in the air, while the rest veered off course due to signal-jamming and crashed.

Ukraine has stepped up drone and missile attacks deep inside Russian territory in recent months, as its much-anticipated ground offensive has failed to yield significant results.

According to the Russian military, earlier this month Kiev’s forces fired an S-200 missile into the long bridge that connects Crimea with mainland Russia, but the projectile was shot down before reaching its target. The MOD said that a missile of this type was also used in the July 28 strike on the Russian southern city of Taganrog. More than 20 people were injured in that attack.

** Russian Armed Forces destroy Ukrainian ammunition depot — Defense Ministry

Battlegroup East units supported by aviation and artillery destroyed an ammunition depot, a stronghold and a vehicle with Ukrainian army fighters near Urozhainoe settlements in the Donetsk People’s Republic, Battlegroup spokesman Oleg Chekhov told TASS.

"Leading units of the Battlegroup East with the support of artillery and aviation delivered a fire strike against the enemy in the vicinity of Urozhainoe. Two temporary stationing points of the Ukrainian army were hit; an ammunition depot, a stronghold, and a vehicle with fighters were destroyed. Concentrated manpower was hit. A strike UAV destroyed an armored personnel carrier with Ukrainian army infantry," Chekhov said.

Servicemen of the Battlegroup are demonstrating courage and dedication when accomplishing combat missions, the spokesman added.

Reuters/RT/Tass

In the aftermath of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “march on Moscow” two months ago, CIA chief William Burns predicted that Russian president Vladimir Putin would take his time exacting his revenge.

“What we are seeing is a very complicated dance,” Burns suggested at the Aspen Security Forum in July. “Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback.”

And while details of exactly what occurred remain murky in the immediate aftermath of the mercenary boss’s reported death in a plane crash, what is clear is that Wagner – the mercenary organisation that Prigozhin built – has essentially been first quartered and then dramatically decapitated.

Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on crashed plane, Russian aviation authority confirms – video

With Wagner’s prominent role in Russia’s military operations in Ukraine already heavily curtailed in the aftermath of his march on Moscow, which embarrassed Putin and the Kremlin, it had seemed – if only for a moment – that Prigozhin was trying to claw back some of the influence he had acquired through his operation in Africa at the Kremlin’s behest.

Prigozhin had put out a statement backing the coup in Niger, seen by some analysts as a reminder of how Wagner had once served the Kremlin’s ends. This week he had posted a video from somewhere in Africa, in his trademark combats, suggesting that, perhaps, he had found a new role, and that his actions had been forgiven.

In that video, Prigozhin insisted he was recruiting for operations in Africa, while also inviting investors from Russia to put money in the Central African Republic through Russian House, a cultural centre in the African country’s capital.

He was flying over the Tver region near Moscow with other senior Wagner leaders when his private jet fell from the sky over Russia – according to some reports shot down by Russian air defences.

It was not only Prigozhin who perished in the incident. With him on the flight was Dmitry Utkin, one of his closest allies another key figure in Wagner. A former GRU officer and a mercenary who had been active in Syria guarding oilfields, he had been implicated in organising the Wagner convoy that tried to drive to Moscow.

Reports from Russian social media channels associated with Wagner suggest other members of Wagner’s leadership may also have been on the flight.

What is clear is that Wagner, as it was once constituted, is no more.

According to recent reports, hundreds of Wagner fighters who had been exiled to bases in Belarus had begun to leave that country, some dissatisfied with the lower levels of pay in that country, others relocating to work in west Africa. The force there reduced in numbers from over 5,000 by around a quarter.

In Russia itself, Wagner’s operations had been on something of a hiatus during the past two months as it appeared Prigozhin and his allies looked for a new role in the shadow of Putin’s displeasure.

And with Wagner out of Ukraine after deploying its fighters as cannon fodder in the battle for Bakhmut, perhaps the biggest question is whether it can continue in any viable form in the African states where it has been active.

Although names had been mentioned speculatively as possible replacements for Prigozhin who would meet with Kremlin approval, whether any of them will be capable of filling his shoes is far from certain.

Much of Wagner’s African empire, combining disinformation operations, murky commercial interests and mercenary work, relied on the unscrupulous connections that Prigozhin and his close associates had forged over the years. There were suggestions, for example, that Wagner came to the aid of the military junta in Mali, a move that contributed to France’s decision to end an almost decade-long military operation there.

And while the Kremlin recently has been more directly courting the military leaders of countries in the Sahel itself, Prigozhin assiduously developed personal relationships with warlords, military coup leaders and corrupt politicians and businessmen on the make.

As former air vice-marshal Sean Bell, now a military analyst, suggested presciently to Sky news in June in the aftermath of Wagner’s march on Moscow, without Prigozhin, Wagner is nothing.

“If the Wagner group is Yevgeny Prigozhin, then it’s difficult to see how it will survive. It’s the end of it as we know it.”

The Guardian, UK

The day before his private plane crashed near Moscow, Yevgeny Prigozhin released a recruitment video for the Wagner Group.

“The Wagner PMC makes Russia even greater on all continents and Africa more free,” he says, dressed in military fatigues, hoisting an assault rifle and standing in a barren landscape he suggests is on the continent. “Justice and happiness for the African people.”

Prigozhin apparently spent his last days in Africa. His death will reverberate across the continent where he built a business empire over the past five years, becoming an iconoclastic celebrity in places like Mali and the Central African Republic, whose presidents have lost an important ally.

But, as in the aftermath of Prigozhin’s mutiny in June, the Kremlin will likely seek to maintain Wagner’s lucrative security, gold mining, oil services and customs contracts — and its relationships with African governments.

“The idea of a Wagner-like entity, which is to say a private military company that allowed Russia to have unofficial but very impactful results on the continent is too valuable to just have it go away,” said Cameron Hudson, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Africa Program and a former CIA analyst.

Wagner allowed the Kremlin to rebuild some of the influence that it lost in Africa after the Cold War at little cost and with plausible deniability. It first entered Libya and CAR about five years ago and has since expanded to Sudan, Mali and — briefly — Mozambique, committing alleged human rights abuses while waging brutal campaigns on behalf of domestic governments and strongmen.

“Now there’s a lot of noise around the death of one person,” Martin Ziguele, a former CAR prime minister, said by phone. “I find this vulgar compared to the number of Central Africans who have lost their lives in Wagner operations in my country, atrocities that have been documented in numerous reports.”

Nowhere is Wagner’s influence greater than in CAR, where 2,000 fighters have propped up the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra since 2018. It now not only owns the country’s biggest gold mine — capable of producing $290 million worth of ore annually — but leads the army in battle and has a stake in both the forestry and beer markets.

“I think his death changes nothing because we have an agreement with Russia and Russia is going to fix this by putting a new head in Wagner,” said Fidele Gouandjika, an adviser to Touadéra, who posted a picture of himself on Facebook wearing an “I am Wagner” T-shirt in “homage” to Prigozhin.

The main question is whether Prigozhin’s lieutenants, who have forged close relationships with the CAR government, will be replaced, according to two senior Western diplomats.

Sahel Expansion

Wagner’s success in CAR was driven in part by growing frustration against ex-colonial power France’s continued influence. The group, and Prigozhin in particular, exploited that resentment and both came to be seen as emblems of anti-colonialism.

Wagner has taken advantage of military power grabs in West Africa’s Sahel region — where France led an unsuccessful fight against a decade-long jihadist insurgency — to grow its foothold. It’s sent 1,000 fighters to assist the junta in Mali, which has pushed out a French force and a UN peacekeeping mission.

Continuity in Wagner’s operations would be “the best-case scenario for West African leaders who rely on Wagner to either stay in power, or combat jihadist insurgents, or both,” said Ornella Moderan, an independent Sahel researcher.

The mercenaries, operating alongside the Malian army, have taken over empty UN and French army bases, but civilian deaths have surged since they arrived. The UN has accused the group and the army of massacring more than 500 people in the central Malian village of Moura.

In recent months, Mali’s military government has begun forging closer ties with the Kremlin itself. Junta leader Col Assimi Goita was among just 17 African heads of state who attended the Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg last month, where he heaped praise on President Vladimir Putin.

“Working directly with the state is always more solid than dealing with a private firm,” Salif Sidibe, a consultant who acted as a Russian arms procurement liaison for a previous government, said by phone from the capital, Bamako. “I don’t think Prigozhin’s death will change a lot. If anything, things will be easier going forward.”

A government spokesman didn’t respond to a call and a text message seeking comment.

Malian lawmakers recently passed a new mining code that could see the government acquire a 35% stake in industrial mining operations. Some miners fear this could be a point of entry for Wagner-linked entities.

Gold and Oil

Wagner is already involved in Sudan’s gold industry, where it’s been linked to a processing plant north of the capital, Khartoum, and plays a role in the smuggling economy involving both the army and paramilitary groups.

The US in May accused Wagner of delivering surface-to-air missiles to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, which since April have been waging a campaign to overthrow the military junta that seized power in 2021. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has supported the army.

Moscow may already be moving to consolidate control over Wagner’s operations in Libya, where the group has access to key oil facilities and an air base thanks to its support for Khalifa Haftar, the leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army who unsuccessfully fought to seize control of the capital with Wagner help.

Earlier this week, Moscow sent military officials to meet Haftar, who they had kept at arms length, said Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a think-tank based in Tripoli.

“Wagner’s operations in Libya and Africa depend on a web of alliances more than just its senior internal leadership killed last night,” he said. “The Kremlin need only insert new points of contact within this mercenary network.”

It was not meant to be this way. But like a good number of things Nigerian, the story is hardly complete without a twist in the tale. And so it has been for at least three years now with the story of the gas car that was supposed to lessen, if not end, Nigerians’ petrol misery.

Sometime in 2020, state oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (now NNPC Limited), launched what it advertised as the National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP). The major objective of the programme, according to NNPC Group CEO, Mele Kyari, was to harvest gas for car fuel. This was in addition to expanding its use for domestic cooking.

At the official launch of the programme on December 1, 2020, Kyari said given how important the project was for the government’s pursuit of cleaner, safer and cheaper energy, NNPC would provide the conversion free of charge to car owners and transporters.

“You bring your car to a location,” he said, “and then we fit in the things you need to call the gas and also to receive the gas into your car. All the one million cars that we promised will be done through a structure that the Ministry of Petroleum Resources will put in place to ensure that any Nigerian who has to convert his car will get it done for free.”

Kyari said at the time that outside Abuja, the retrofitting and service centres would be available in 12 other states, adding that the Ministry of Petroleum Resources would bear the burden “until the private sector can come in.”

To demonstrate how serious the government was about the programme, NNPC promised the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) 100 gas-powered buses, out of which I think 50 or so were delivered.

As surely as big money never fails to follow big talk in conspiracies that often end in heart-breaking scandals, the Central Bank offered N250 billion to “support” the NNPC’s gas car value chain. This “support” fund was announced at least four months before the programme was officially launched. 

A statement by the Bank in August 2020 said each beneficiary would get a maximum of N10 billion at between five and nine percent with a one-year/18-month moratorium for 10 years disbursable in the case of small and medium scale enterprises, through the NIRSAL Microfinance Bank.

All of this was nearly three years ago. As you read this piece, no one is sure how many of the estimated 12 million registered cars in Nigeria are gas-powered or how many of the estimated 6.7 million of registered commercial vehicles out of the 12m are on gas. The best guess is on the website of NIPCO, a private limited oil and gas company, with a strong Indian presence.

NIPCO claims that it has converted 5,600 cars to gas, but the data does not say whether this is the total number of cars converted in the last 19 years since NIPCO started LPG delivery. Or just what type of gas conversions took place – whether LPG-type (liquified petroleum gas, more commonly available); or CNG-type (compressed natural gas, with very few plants available in Nigeria). We also don’t know how many of the 13 service and retrofitting stations which Kyari announced three years ago are ready.

Was the CBN’s N250 billion gas value chain support fund disbursed? If so, how much and what is left of it? Who were the beneficiaries and what have they done with the money? I tried in vain to get the answers. Perhaps the bank or the Ministry of Petroleum Resources can help. 

Two years after the NGEP was announced, Businessday published a story entitled, “FG’s autogas policy falls short,” in which the newspaper reported that, “A combination of infrastructure, high cost of gas, lack of proper planning and prevailing harsh economic realities have affected the implementation of the autogas policy.”

It’s on top of this mess that Ajuri Ngelale, the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, announced last week the establishment of the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas Initiative (PCNGI) “to revolutionise the transportation landscape in the country, targeting over 11,500 new CNG-enabled vehicles and 55,000 CNG conversion kits for existing PMS-dependent vehicles.”

Ngelale sounded like a repurposed version of CBN’s August 2020 memo, with the warmed-over promises of NNPC. But I’ll come to that.

Again, just as it happened when Kyari promised that one million cars will run on gas and that, for a start, over one dozen service stations across the country will be available to provide support, NNPC has promised that in the short run the new gas project would be supported by NIPCO. Kyari did not say how NIPCO’s infrastructure would meet the demand. 

Information on NIPCO’s website as of today claims that Nipcogas – a JV project in which NNPC’s subsidiary Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) owns majority shares – has 15 CNG stations in Benin and is contemplating expansion both in Benin, Edo State; and in Ibafo, Ogun State. But insiders told me that there are only 12 stations in the country as of now, out of which Nipcogas owns 11. How the current infrastructure will convert 11,500 petrol cars to LPG and CNG, much less provide 55,000 conversion kits remains to be seen.

The demons are, however, in plain sight. The same demons that haunted Kyari’s grandiose plan to convert one million cars to autogas, and also turned the CBN’s N250 billion to pork barrel, will return to haunt the “PCNGI revolutionary initiative” enthusiastically announced by Ngelale.

It’s not hard to see why. The things Businessday cited as impediments to the execution of NGEP after its launch have not changed – not the system or the people behind it. If anything, thanks to corruption, they have metastasized, with concerns that at least N90 billion of the N250 billion set aside by the CBN to “support” the gas value chain may have been diverted.  

It is also surprising that the government will prioritise CNG over LPG when the latter is not only more readily available, but is also relatively cheaper to convert and maintain. Can we even talk about conversion without data of car owners’ attitude and readiness?

And then there’s the supply problem. A viable gas car service without steady gas supply is a pipedream.  

Africaoilgasreport.com reported on August 18 that in spite of huge oil and gas assets owned 100 percent by NNPC, which could significantly improve its oil and gas production and evacuation potential, the company prefers to play “the politics of financial engineering.” NNPC has become the successor of the Central Bank in the business of everything.  

Also, while the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) said it was still producing in spite of declaring a force majeure in October last year as a result of flooding in the Niger Delta, the company has not vacated the force majeure, raising serious concerns about viable supply. 

And why, in any case, does CNG have to become a “presidential initiative?” Are we going to have a presidential initiative on LPG, a presidential initiative on LNG and perhaps a presidential initiative on presidential initiative? The system is broken not because of an absence of a presidential initiative, but because NNPC, its subsidiary NGC, and the refineries that should lead the gas pathway have failed. 

If in nearly 50 years of NNPC only about 10.5 percent or roughly four million Nigerian households use cooking gas, how can the government prioritise car gas over households through a presidential initiative salvation army, a purely ad hoc arrangement? 

Which serious investors will put down their money in an arrangement that completely ignores the history of past failures and present concerns about mind boggling corruption? And how, by the way, can key institutions such as the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) and the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) be left out in any sustainable plan for autogas?

Tinubu has enough problems on his plate. Hugging a special purpose initiative to nowhere will not do him much good. If the government is really keen on gas cars, then he must return to where the rain started beating us.

** Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

For all the risks, for all that was riding on a successful landing, the descent to the moon’s surface was remarkably uneventful, if not exactly stress-free. The Vikram lander, part of India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, dropped steadily on its thrusters to the rock below, slowed to a hover as it approached the ground, and finally came to a rest on the dusty terrain.

When confirmation came that the lander was down, anxiety in the control room gave way to cheers and applause. With the soft touchdown, Indiabecomes the first country to land a probe at the moon’s south pole, a rugged region where deep craters lie in permanent shadow and where ice could provide water, oxygen and fuel for future missions. The first will be on the moon itself, and in lunar orbit, but they could also supply trips to Mars, with the benefit that the materials do not need to be lifted off the Earth’s surface at great cost. It is a region of key scientific interest.

It may be half a century since the last Apollo mission, but landing on the moon remains a huge technical feat. India is only the fourth country to pull off a controlled landing on the surface, after the US, China and the former Soviet Union. That India chose one of the moon’s poles as its destination – a tougher prospect than landing near the equator – makes the success that much sweeter.

“Knowing that it can be done doesn’t make it easy,” said Prof Martin Barstow, director of strategic partnerships at Space Park Leicester. “Landing at the poles is much more difficult than landing at the equator. You’ve got to get into a polar orbit to release the lander and nobody has done that before. The US hasn’t landed anything at the poles on the moon.”

There is more to the achievement than the technical feat. The landing boosts the prestige of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) less than a week after a Russian probe spun out of control and crashed into the moon’s surface. The ill-fated Luna-25 mission was Russia’s first attempt to land on the moon in 47 years.

“This is an exciting moment for Indian space exploration,” said Prof Andrew Coates at UCL’s Mullard space science laboratory. “Following their earlier successful orbiters to the moon and Mars, this cements their position as one of the key spacefaring nations and is an impressive scientific and engineering achievement.”

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, followed the landing from the Brics summit in South Africa and appeared on the Indian space agency’s live stream with a message for the world. “India is on the moon,” he said, adding that all countries, including those from the global south, were capable of such missions. “The sky is not the limit.”

The landing raises India’s profile as a spacefaring nation at a crucial time. Like other countries, India has privatised its rocket launches. Through foreign investment, India plans to expand its share of the global launch market fivefold over the next decade. That ambition will be helped by India being seen as a low-cost provider of space launch services.

There will certainly be demand. The global space launch market is expected to grow from $9bn (£7bn) this year to more than $20bn in 2030. Beyond satellite launches, big space agencies including Nasa, the European Space Agency, Russia and China are gearing up for a return to the moon, a long-term commitment that involves building a moon-orbiting space station and lunar habitats for astronauts to live in. “There’s so much that needs to be done that no one country can do it all,” said Barstow. “There will be a place for many countries in going back to the moon.”

The Guardian, UK