A Court of Appeal sitting in Benin City, Edo State capital, has affirmed Julius Abure as the National Chairman of the Labour Party.

This was disclosed in a statement issued Monday evening by the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Obiora Ifoh.

The case with No: CA/B/93/2023, which was filed by Lucky Shaibu against Abure and five others, was dismissed after a unanimous decision by three Justices - Abadua, Fatima Akinbami and Sybil O. Nwaka-Gbagi.

The plaintiff, Shauibu who was a member of the Labour Party Executive in Ward 3 in Esan North East Local Government Area of Edo State, had allegedly suspended the chairman of the Labour Party.

However, in his lead judgment, Abadua affirmed the decision of the High Court of Edo State and held that one man cannot suspend the national chairman of LP in line with Articles 13 and 17 of the Constitution of the Party and the extant Electoral Act of 2022.

In a swift reaction to the judgment, an excited Abure eulogised the judgment and team of justices who he said refused to close their eyes to the justice of the case.

He said, “I thank the Obidient movement who tarried with me and Peter Obi while the impostor Lamidi Apapa and his adherents who tried to trade off the mandate freely given to the Labour Party with billions of Naira expended by his paymasters in the opposition parties”.

Also, Abure’s lead counsel, Prest Aigbokhan applauded the judgment describing it as a sound and courageous decision.

“It is a landmark judgment that will stand the test of time. Anybody still associating with impostors parading themselves as factional leaders of the party does so at their own peril. Political parties must remain watchdog of national conscience,” he stated.

Hours after the news of the appeal court judgment went viral, the Lamidi Apapa faction of the party kicked against the report, saying the Benin court only ruled on his suspension.

The statement signed by the spokesman of the LP faction, Abayomi Arabambi, insisted that the Abuja High Court Restraining order that recognised Apapa as acting national chairman remains in force.

Arabambi said, “Our party’s attention was drawn to misleading information that has been peddled around by some criminal elements loyal to the police-indicted former National Chairman of Labour Party Julius Abure. Labour Party wishes to state categorically that our complaint in the appeal filed before the court of appeal bothered on his suspension as a member in Article 19(2)A of our party constitution which the three justices of the court of appeal did not take cognisance of and refused to make findings on.

“We are aware of the capacity of Peter Obi and Abure Julius to tamper with court proceedings and documents as evidence in the forgery perpetrated in Abuja FCT high court where the signature and seal of judges were forged by Abure Julius and which he boasted yesterday in Lagos with Peter Obi that nobody in Nigeria can probe or arraigned him in court and three others indicted by the police.

“Surprisingly, the same Abure has a pending appeal in the Supreme Court against this same set of justice which has been filed and served on us to arrest today’s judgment. But since they know it may not fly in the face of the law, Abure resorted to his trademark by engaging the services of unscrupulous elements in the Edo state high court to tamper with the records transmitted. What we don’t know is if Abure has now become the Chief Judge of Edo state to be able to commit any crime and get away with it

“The said missing document is in the transmitted copy with our lawyer and duly paid for, but unfortunately this singular criminal act that aided Julius Abure today at the court of appeal was the reason the three justices base their judgment on the suspension of Julius Abure.”

Punch

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia strikes western Ukraine in large-scale air attack - officials

Russia launched a large-scale air attack on Ukraine's western region of Lviv and the northwestern region of Volyn, hitting a number of buildings, wounding people and forcing evacuations, officials said.

"Many missiles were shot down, but there were also hits in Lviv," city mayor Andriy Sadovyi said on the Telegram messaging app, adding that orders were given to evacuate at least one burning apartment building.

The scale of the attack and the full extent of the damage in Lviv were not immediately clear. Earlier, the Lviv region's governor, Maxim Kozitsky, said that "groups of Russian missiles" were headed towards the region.

Until July, the Lviv region which is far from the front lines and which borders NATO-member Poland to its west, had been spared most Russia's air attacks. But in July seven people were killed when a missile slammed into a residential building.

Ukrainian media reported that according to preliminary information, Tuesday's attack was the largest air assault on the Lviv region since the start of Russia's invasion in Ukraine in February 2022.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the reports and the attacks on the region.

A business enterprise was also hit, injuring at least two people, in Russia's air strike on the city of Lutsk, in the Volyn region, local authorities said on the Telegram.

The Volyn region, north of Lviv, also borders Poland.

Air raid alerts were issued for entire Ukraine for about two hours, staring at around 2 a.m. (2300 GMT).

At least one person was also wounded as a result of Russia's attack on Ukraine's southwestern region of Dnipropetrovsk, where an enterprise was hit and a fire broke out, Serhiy Lisak, the governor of the region said on the Telegram.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russian forces wipe out Ukrainian naval drone production sites in precision strike

Russian forces delivered a multiple strike by seaborne long-range precision weapons against Ukrainian naval drone production and storage sites, destroying all the designated targets over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Monday.

"Last night, the Russian Armed Forces delivered a multiple strike by seaborne long-range precision weapons against the sites for the production and storage of naval drones used by the Ukrainian military for terrorist attacks. The goal of the strike was achieved. All the designated sites were destroyed," the spokesman said.

Russian forces repel six Ukrainian attacks in Kupyansk area over past day

Russian forces repelled six Ukrainian army attacks and counter-attacks in the Kupyansk area, destroying about 65 enemy troops over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"In the Kupyansk direction, six enemy attacks and counter-attacks were successfully repelled as a result of army aviation strikes, artillery fire and courageous actions by units of the western battlegroup," the spokesman said.

The enemy’s losses in the Kupyansk direction in the past 24 hours amounted to "as many as 65 personnel, three armored combat vehicles, two pickup trucks, a German-made Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled artillery system, two Polish-manufactured Krab self-propelled artillery guns, a Gvozdika motorized artillery system, a Msta-B howitzer and a D-30 howitzer," the general reported.

Russian forces eliminate 90 Ukrainian troops in Krasny Liman area over past day

Russian forces eliminated roughly 90 Ukrainian troops in the Krasny Liman area over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"The Ukrainian army’s losses totaled as many as 90 personnel, three armored combat vehicles and two pickup trucks," the spokesman said.

Russian forces also repulsed two Ukrainian army attacks as a result of professional operations by units of the battlegroup Center, the general reported.

Russian forces destroy 150 Ukrainian troops, two tanks in Donetsk area over past day

Russian forces destroyed roughly 150 Ukrainian troops and two tanks and repulsed six enemy attacks in the Donetsk area over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"In the Donetsk direction, six Ukrainian army attacks were successfully repulsed by active and well-coordinated actions of units from the southern battlegroup with the support of attack and army aircraft near the settlements of Belogorovka in the Lugansk People’s Republic, Vodyanoye, Krasnogorovka and Nevelskoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic," the spokesman said.

"The enemy’s losses amounted to 150 Ukrainian personnel, two tanks, three armored combat vehicles, five motor vehicles, a UK-made FH70 howitzer and a Msta-B howitzer," the general reported.

In addition, Russian forces destroyed an ammunition depot of the Ukrainian army’s 53rd mechanized brigade near the settlement of Avdeyevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the spokesman said.

Russian forces wipe out 240 Ukrainian troops in south Donetsk area over past day

Russian forces destroyed roughly 240 Ukrainian troops in the south Donetsk area over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"In the south Donetsk direction, units of the battlegroup East, operational/tactical aircraft, artillery and heavy flamethrower systems inflicted damage on enemy forces in areas near the settlements of Urozhainoye and Staromayorskoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic. As many as 240 Ukrainian personnel were destroyed in the battles," the spokesman said.

Russian forces also destroyed three armored combat vehicles, three motor vehicles, two US-made M777 artillery systems and a French-made Caesar self-propelled artillery gun of the Ukrainian army in the south Donetsk direction over the past 24 hours, the general reported.

Russian forces repulse two Ukrainian attacks in Zaporozhye area over past day

Russian forces repulsed two Ukrainian army attacks and neutralized an enemy reconnaissance group in the Zaporozhye area over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"Units of the Russian battlegroup supported by artillery repulsed two enemy attacks near the settlement of Rabotino in the Zaporozhye Region and neutralized a Ukrainian subversive and reconnaissance group in the Zaporozhye direction over the past 24 hours," the spokesman said.

Russian forces destroy over 50 Ukrainian troops in Zaporozhye area over past day

Russian forces destroyed over 50 Ukrainian troops, a tank and a US-made artillery system in the Zaporozhye area over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

The enemy’s losses in the Zaporozhye direction over the past 24 hours "amounted to over 50 Ukrainian personnel, a tank, two infantry fighting vehicles, three motor vehicles, a US-made M777 artillery system, a French-made Caesar self-propelled artillery gun and a Polish-manufactured Krab motorized artillery system," the spokesman said.

Russian forces cripple Spanish-made mortar in Kherson area over past day

Russian forces destroyed a Spanish-made Alakran self-propelled mortar in the Kherson area over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"In the Kherson direction, the enemy’s losses in the past 24 hours amounted to 30 Ukrainian personnel, three motor vehicles and a Spanish-made Alakran self-propelled mortar," the spokesman said.

Russian air defenses down 28 Ukrainian military drones over past day

Russian air defense forces intercepted two rockets of the US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system and shot down 28 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"Air defense capabilities intercepted two rockets of the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system," the spokesman said.

In addition, Russian air defense systems destroyed 28 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in areas near the settlements of Verkhnekamenka in the Lugansk People’s Republic, Donetsk, Gorlovka, Yegorovka, Komsomolsky and Volodino in the Donetsk People’s Republic, Tavolzhanka in the Kharkov Region, Peremozhnoye, Pologi, Kopani and Ocherevatoye in the Zaporozhye Region, the general reported.

Russian forces destroy Ukrainian S-300 air defense battery in Nikolayev Region

Russian forces struck a Ukrainian S-300 air defense battery in the Nikolayev Region over the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"Operational/tactical and army aircraft, missile troops and artillery of the Russian groupings of forces inflicted damage on enemy manpower and military hardware in 152 areas. In addition, a battery of S-300 surface-to-air missile systems was destroyed near the settlement of Zelyony Gai in the Nikolayev Region," the spokesman said.

In all, the Russian Armed Forces have destroyed 458 Ukrainian combat aircraft, 246 helicopters, 5,736 unmanned aerial vehicles, 430 surface-to-air missile systems, 11,291 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,144 multiple rocket launchers, 5,877 field artillery guns and mortars and 12,225 special military motor vehicles since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, Konashenkov reported.

Reuters/Tass

This will reveal the leader's true intent.

Hundreds of books, articles, and podcasts are published each year offering the answer to the question: How do I lead well?

To really grasp the principles of effective leadership that will lead to results, one primary lesson that many of those books and podcasts won't teach comes down to one short sentence:

Leadership is a heart matter. If the heart is not right, your leadership isn't going to be right.

The heart of a leader has to be focused on serving others first. This will reveal the leader's true intent. It is not a heart motivated by self-interest, status, position, or power. It's a heart that is driven by service and the overarching life philosophy of "How many lives can I impact for the better?"

Time for a tune-up?

To that end, there are things to being a good leader that just cannot be ignored. If you are too busy to put these practices into daily motion, it may be time for a leadership tune-up. Here's what I would recommend getting you running on all cylinders.

1. Be open to feedback

Many autocratic managers view feedback as a threat to their power, self-worth, and position, which explains why they are opposed to it and often react fearfully and defensively to feedback. Great leaders, on the other hand, view feedback as a gift to improve upon their leadership so they can serve others and their mission better. They value truth and honesty and diverse perspectives for bettering themselves and their businesses. Even when feedback is negative, it prompts an exercise in curious exploration to find out where things went wrong so that it doesn't happen again. This is setting your heart right.

2. Develop self-awareness

So many high-level managers get caught up in situational dramas in which they're typically the main character. Since toxic fear or insecurity and false pride operate in tandem to protect their self-interest, it hijacks their thinking and potential for healthy relationships. Great leaders don't react to people or situations, they respond to them by being quick to listen and understand. They apply self-awareness and curiosity to get varied perspectives and won't get riled up or let their emotions sabotage their thought process. They take a step back, assess what happened, and get clarity before their next move. Whatever that next move is, their integrity steps in to end a conflict, help others, and make things better.

3. Pump the fear out of the atmosphere

When fear, uncertainty, and lack of direction permeates the workplace, you begin to see fewer risks being taken and fewer problems being solved. Team members need to feel psychologically safe to be at their best. To create a safe environment for your employees, managers need to do what great leaders do consistently well: pump the fear out of the work environment. First, honor your team's voice by allowing them the space to present ideas and express objections. Second, invest in their success and regularly communicate that their development is a top priority. Finally, set high expectations for team members by giving feedback that ensures they know how valued and valuable they are.

Inc

Oil marketers, on Sunday, indicated that the cost of Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, would rise to between N680/litre and N720/litre in the coming weeks should the dollar continue to trade from N910 to N950 at the parallel market.

They also hinted that dealers seeking to import PMS were being forced to put the plans on hold due to the scarcity of foreign exchange to import the commodity.

The warning came barely one week after the local currency crossed the N900/dollar ceiling, with the naira selling at over 945/dollar at the parallel market on Friday.

Oil dealers said the CBN Importers and Exporters official window for foreign exchange, which boast of a lower exchange rate of about $740/litre, had remained illiquid and unable to provide the $25m to $30m required for the importation of PMS by dealers.

This, they said, had led to the suspension petrol importation by dealers who were initially eager to import the commodity.

Operators said that the only marketer, Emadeb, who imported the commodity recently, was now finding it tough to recoup its investment due to the depreciation of the naira.

Senior officials of major oil dealers, who spoke to our correspondents in separate interviews on Sunday, said PMS price hike was imminent unless the local currency appreciates in the coming weeks.

Leaders of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria of Nigeria, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, and Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria said there was a need for the Federal Government to intervene to address the crisis.

The National Public Relations Officer, Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, Chinedu Ukadike, explained that the price of petrol was now driven by the fluctuations in forex, hence Nigerians should expect a hike soon.

Asked whether oil marketers were considering an increase in petrol price, he replied, “Once there is a slack in the naira against the dollar, there is going to be an effect. The demand and supply of forex is a key factor. We should also understand that it is not only petroleum products that use forex.

“Other manufacturers who import one thing or the other are also searching for dollars. So, the surge for dollars has continued to increase. So now that the dollar is hitting N910 to N940, and approaching N1,000, you should expect to buy PMS at the rate of N750/litre.

“It is simple mathematics, once the dollar is going up, have it in mind that the prices of petroleum products would definitely increase because the products are dollar-driven.”

Ukadike stated that oil marketers were still sourcing dollars from the parallel market, as the CBN’s Importers and Exporters official window was illiquid.

“Nigerians should brace for a price regime of between N680 to N720 if the exchange rate stays around N910 to N950/$, but the price is going to hit N750 once the dollar rises to N1,000.

“This is because marketers still source dollars from the parallel market, and not only marketers but virtually all importers in Nigeria. There is no subsidy any more on petroleum products, so you expect the cost to fluctuate with the dollars,” he stated.

The IPMAN PRO also stated that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited was still the major importer of petrol into Nigeria, though another importer, Emadeb, imported the commodity recently.

“NNPC is still the major importer for now. One other company, Emadeb, imported products recently, but because this product is being sold in naira, getting back their funds is another issue since the naira keeps depreciating, while PMS imports is in dollars.

“This is why it is often difficult to go back and buy again as an independent importer. That is the problem we are facing,” Ukadike stated.

On when Nigerians would start seeing the price increase, he said, “NNPC is like the sole distributor of petroleum products now, so once you see a change in the price of petrol at their outlets, then other marketers will implement it.”

Marketers not importing

Executive Secretary, Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, Clement Isong, alluded to the fact the dealers were not importing petrol despite the fact that the government recently issued licences to about six marketers to bring in products.

Asked to speak on the import of PMS by other marketers and whether they were sourcing forex from the I&E window or the parallel market, Isong replied, “The I&E window is illiquid. There’s no money there.

“To buy products, it costs you between $25m to $30m. You can’t find it in the I&E window. So it doesn’t work and that is why people are not importing.

“We can’t find dollar again, you can’t find it right now. Nigeria has to sort out the security issues in the Niger Delta so that we can increase our daily crude oil output. If we increase it to 1.8 or two million barrels per day, then there’ll be dollar in the market. So we need to stop oil theft.”

FG should intervene

On the apprehension of a possible hike in petrol price, Isong stated that this was inevitable if the dollar continued to rise against the naira, but noted that the government might have to intervene.

“Well, the President himself said in his speech that if they find petrol prices moving too high, they would intervene. We don’t want prices to move too high, nobody wants that.

“So if the dollar continues to climb, we are expecting some sort of intervention from the government based on what the President said,” the MOMAN official stated.

He further explained that PMS was different from diesel in terms of pricing because petrol was newly deregulated.

“The dealer that has bulk of the stock is the NNPC. So it influences the price in the market. Diesel, on the other hand, is different, because it has been deregulated for a very long time. So people will sell petrol depending on their cost structure, loans they took from the banks, forex, etc.

“Many things are put into consideration by dealers before coming up with their selling prices. There’s no one person who sets or controls the price. Nobody is controlling the price of PMS. Right now, NNPC, however, will continue to control the flow of the price. But after a while, that will stop,” Isong explained.

Earlier, the President, PETROAN, Billy Gillis-Harry, while speaking on the matter, had said, “So long as the naira is losing against the dollar, the price of petrol in our retail outlets will continue to increase. To address this, he called on Tinubu to make sure that Nigeria’s refineries were put back to use.

“We have requested that the President should declare a state of emergency on our refineries in order to speed up their repairs.

“That is the one sure way to go, in order to be able to predict the price of petroleum products, because for now, every PMS you buy in any retail outlet is dollarised,” Gillis-Harry stated.

Meanwhile, CBN last week attributed the continued fall of the naira against the dollar to the diversion of Diaspora remittances to the parallel market.

CBN Acting Governor, Folashodun Shonubi, spoke while delivering a lecture titled ‘Diaspora Remittances and Nigeria Economic Development’ at the National Institute for Security Studies in Abuja.

Shonubi said a lot of Diaspora remittances arrived in Nigeria in dollars and end up in the parallel market without being officially documented.

It is still unclear at what point the Tinubu administration plans to intervene in the market to arrest the unfolding crisis.

Punch

Serving Overseer of the Citadel Global Community Church (formerly Latter Rain Assembly), Tunde Bakare, on Sunday came hard on President Bola Tinubu over the fuel subsidy removal, describing it as “impulsive”.

He said poor people were being made to suffer for the corruption of a few powerful people benefiting from the subsidy regime, noting the President should have gone after those individuals, and not “punish” Nigerians.

In his state of the nation address titled, “Vice, Virtue and Time: The Three Things That Never Stand Still”, Bakare stated that the removal of subsidy is tantamount to killing Nigerians.

In 2012, Bakare convened the Save Nigeria Group (SNG)which protested against the removal of fuel subsidy by the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

In his address, the preacher said the President should rather kill corruption and not Nigerians, whom he noted, are now bearing the “brunt of the capricious policies of political actors and the greed of a colluding elite.”

He said, “From a wrongly implemented naira redesign policy to an impulsive fuel subsidy removal announcement, and from a drowning of purchasing power in an attempt to float the naira, to an unbearable increase in the cost of basic amenities, the past and recent months have been particularly excruciating for the Nigerian citizen.

“I am talking about employees who have been forced to trek owing to the unaffordable spike in transportation costs; parents struggling to bridge the gap between their life savings and the cost of living; graduates whose chances of getting a job have become slimmer due to the impact of the economy on the labour market; I am talking about that trader whose meagre daily income has further diminished in value due to the dwindling value of the naira; that farmer who looks on in agony as his produce rots on the farm due to transportation challenges, inflation and insecurity; those children who will invariably be sent home in September due to outstanding fees.”

Bakare noted that the announcement by Tinubu in his May 29 inaugural address that “subsidy is gone” despite not being in his inauguration speech, had “unwittingly plunged” Nigeria into chaos by a very poor change management process.

“Whatever the president’s true motivations were, it is clear that he put the cart before the horse. What is also clear is that the president was economical with the truth by giving Nigerians the impression that he was taking a courageous move to remove the fuel subsidy when the previous government had already taken that step.

“As Nigerians would later learn, subsidy payment had already been ended by the Buhari administration, and no subsidy was paid in 2023 even though there was provision for it on paper up to June 2023.”

According to Bakare, the President “in line with change management principles” should have handled more circumspectly the announcement of such an issue that borders on the livelihood of the Nigerian citizen.

He observed that, that would have spared Nigerians “the reactionary scarcity and price hikes that immediately followed his announcement.”

“Furthermore, what is even clearer is that the president had been handed a month of grace by the previous administration; a month that should have been used to put in place cushioning effects before the official expiration of the subsidised economy.

“What is further clear concerning our domestic challenges is that, by imposing hardship on Nigerians without going after those corrupt individuals, corporations and government officials who have plundered Nigeria over the years in the name of subsidy, the president has picked the wrong fight,” he added.

He recalled that the 2012 protest against subsidy removal, saying the fight then was against the corruption in the system, adding, “This was our fight when, amid the threats to my life and family, right there at Ojota and live on national and international television, I called out by name those individual and corporate entities who had allegedly ravaged our nation.

“Mr President, given the complexity of the Nigerian economy, we are not thoroughly convinced that your palliatives will be sufficient to cushion the effect of your policies on the Nigerian citizen.”

He said the demand 11 years ago was for the current occupant of the Office of the President, to “Kill Corruption, Not Nigerians.”

“Some might say that you, Mr President, are too tainted to fight corruption because you were escorted into the presidency by a retinue of corruption allegations. Some might even describe you as transparently opaquely corrupt because, despite the indicators of state capture allegedly linked to you, no one has proved these allegations against you in any Nigerian court of competent jurisdiction.

“Some might argue that even the road you took to the presidency was itself paved with filth from the cesspool of corruption and that you are, therefore, incapable of mounting any genuine fight against corruption. Mr President, while we admit that, as of today, our nation has transitioned from an administration that came to power on the supposed wings of integrity and anti-corruption to one that cannot be described as such, the fact remains that you are today the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with enormous powers to fight against corruption in its hydra-headed forms.”

The Cable

Coup leaders in Niger are open to diplomacy to resolve a standoff with West Africa's regional bloc, a group of senior Nigerian Islamic scholars said on Sunday after meeting the junta in Niamey.

Their visit comes as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) explores its options to restore civilian rule in Niger, including potential military intervention, following the July 26 ouster of President Mohamed Bazoum - the seventh coup in West and Central Africa in three years.

In a sign the bloc is still pushing for a peaceful resolution, ECOWAS chairman and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu approved Saturday's mission to Niamey by the delegation of Islamic scholars, who had vowed to promote dialogue.

The group's meeting with junta leader Abdourahamane Tiani lasted several hours, said Abdullahi Bala Lau, who led the delegation.

"He said their doors were open to explore diplomacy and peace in resolving the matter," Lau said in a statement on Sunday.

Tiani reportedly emphasised the historic ties between Niger and Nigeria, saying the countries "were not only neighbours but brothers and sisters who should resolve issues amicably".

There was no immediate comment from the junta on the meeting, but Tiani's reported comments are one of few recent signs he is open to negotiation.

The coup leaders' previous rebuffs of diplomatic efforts by ECOWAS, the United States and others had raised the spectre of further conflict in the impoverished Sahel region of West Africa, which is already dealing with a deadly Islamist insurgency.

With diplomacy faltering last week, ECOWAS activated a standby military force it said would be deployed as a last resort if talks failed.

For now, the bloc is pursuing efforts for further negotiations. On Saturday, the bloc's parliament said it would ask Tinubu, who holds the bloc's revolving chairmanship, to get his permission to go to Niger, its spokesperson said.

SHORING UP SUPPORT

Any military intervention by the bloc could further strain regional ties as juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea have voiced support for Niger's new military authorities.

On Saturday, Tiani sent a delegation, led by his defence chief General Moussa Salaou Barmou, to the Guinean capital Conakry to thank leaders there for their support - a sign of the junta's desire to affirm alliances as it stands up to regional and other powers.

"We are pan-African. When our people have problems, we are always present, and we will always be there," Guinea's interim president, Mamady Doumbouya, said at the meeting, according to a video shared late on Saturday night by the presidency.

In the footage, Doumbouya - who led a coup in Guinea in September 2021 - did not say whether Conakry's support for the Niger junta would include military backing if ECOWAS decided to use military force. Mali and Burkina Faso have already said they would help defend Niger.

At stake is not just the fate of Niger - a major uranium producer and Western ally in the fight against the Islamists - but also the influence of rival global powers with strategic interests in the region.

U.S., French, German and Italian troops are stationed in Niger, in a region where local affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State have killed thousands and displaced millions.

Meanwhile, Russian influence has grown as insecurity increases, democracy erodes, and leaders seek new partners to restore order.

Western powers fear Russia's clout could increase if the junta in Niger follows Mali and Burkina Faso, which ejected the troops of former colonial power France after coups in those countries.

Reuters

Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the last elections, says diplomacy remains the most viable option in a bid to restore democracy to Niger Republic. 

In a series of tweets on Sunday, Obi said the situation in Niger should be treated with urgency. 

He said Niger needs all the external assistance it can get to return to constitutional democracy.

“Recent developments in the neighbouring Niger Republic have become the subject of international attention,” Obi said.

“For Nigeria, this development is a matter of dire and urgent national interest and security.

“Inevitably, Niger is a hot-button issue for ECOWAS, as well as various international interlocutors.

“Regardless of the positions taken by various parties that have direct or tangential interests in Niger, primacy must be given to dialogue and diplomacy towards a resolution with minimal disruptive impact on Nigeria and the West African sub-region. 

“A total diplomatic resolution must take into consideration the realpolitik of the West African sub-region. 

“All national, regional and international assistance should be extended to the people of Niger to return their country to normalcy.”

Obi added that Nigeria’s role in resolving the Niger crisis remains critical.

“While ECOWAS must seek to discourage the spread of military dictatorships in West Africa, the recourse to armed deterrence must be restrained by multilateral diplomatic mechanisms,” he said. 

“What the situation in Niger urgently calls for is a concerted multilateral coalition of Nigeria, ECOWAS, the AU and the UN towards a programmed return to a democratic constitutional order.

“In this process, Nigeria’s leadership role must not be in any doubt.”

Punch

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says only a government with no priority for its citizens’ security would go to war.

In July, Amadou Abdramane, a colonel-major, in the Niger Republic announced the removal of President Mohamed Bazoum from office in a coup.

On Thursday, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), during its second extraordinary meeting, directed the deployment of standby military troops to restore constitutional order in the Niger Republic.

Reacting to the development in a statement on Sunday, Debo Ologunagba, national publicity secretary of the PDP, claimed President Bola Tinubu is desperate to plunge Nigeria into war by dragging the country’s military into conflict with Niger Republic.

“The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) strongly condemns the desperation by @officialABAT and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to plunge Nigeria into a state of war by dragging our military into a needless conflict with Niger Republic,” he said.

“While the PDP frowns at unconstitutional change of government in any part of the world, our party holds that the situation in Niger Republic does not warrant any external peace-keeping effort and does not constitute any threat whatsoever to our national interest to justify committing our already overstretched military to harm’s way in a needless war.

“The insistence of the APC government to go to war in Niger Republic is already heightening tension in Nigeria.

“The PDP holds that nothing else can explain why the APC administration is eager to go to war in Niger Republic while it has practically turned a blind eye to the insecurity situation in our country, even with the mindless killing of over 500 innocent Nigerians in Plateau, Benue, Niger, Kaduna and other states of the federation since May 2023.

“Also distressing is that the APC is ready to deploy billions of naira to prosecute a needless war despite our ailing national economy, crippled production sector, energy crisis, massive unemployment, frightening fall in the value of the naira and excruciating hardship in the country occasioned by its ill-informed, hasty and ill-implemented policies.

“Such can only come from an anti-people administration that has no iota of interest in the security and wellbeing of the nation and its citizens.”

The Cable

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Berlin calls for more diplomatic efforts to end Ukraine conflict

The recent summit on Ukraine in Jeddah was a “very special” event, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said, calling for a greater diplomatic effort to end the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

Scholz made the remarks in his major annual summer interview with German broadcaster ZDF, which aired on Sunday. The chancellor urged further diplomatic effort, stating it was actually useful to “press” Russia.

“It makes sense for us to continue these talks because they increase the pressure on Russia to realize that it has taken the wrong path and that it must withdraw its troops and make peace possible,” Scholz stated.

The chancellor also noted a similar diplomatic event hosted by Denmark in June, stating that these talks and the summit hosted by Saudi Arabia were both “very special” events.

“They are very important and they are really only the beginning,” Scholz stated.

The Jeddah meeting, which brought together security advisers and senior diplomats from the participating nations, failed to yield any meaningful results. Effectively, the participants have only agreed that the UN Charter as well as Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be respected.

Moscow has dismissed the Saudi-hosted negotiations, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stating that “without Russia’s participation and without taking into account its interests, no meeting on the Ukraine crisis has any added value.”

Asked about the prospects of further military support to Ukraine and in particular the reportedly imminent delivery of Taurus long-range cruise missiles, the German chancellor failed to provide a direct answer.

“As in the past, we will always review every single decision very carefully, what is possible, what makes sense, what can be our contribution,” Scholz said.

Unlike many Western countries, Germany has long resisted Ukrainian demands to supply increasingly sophisticated military hardware. The situation changed early this year, when Berlin gave in to mounting pressure and agreed to deliver Leopard 2 main battle tanks, as well as enabling third parties to re-export German-made military vehicles to Ukraine.

** Ukrainian counteroffensive falling short of NATO expectations – The Times

NATO was overly optimistic about the Ukrainian military’s ability to regain ground before its summer counteroffensive, The Times reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed US officer. The British newspaper noted that officials in Kiev had begun blaming their Western backers for their supposed lack of resolve.

In its article penned by Mark Galeotti, the author of more than 20 books on Russia, The Times quoted an anonymous US army officer involved in the training of Ukrainian service members. “Nato expected miracles, and the Ukrainians promised them,” he said, adding that “you can’t run a war on optimism.”

Another US official told the media outlet that “we haven’t quite closed the book on 2023, but we are ramping up our thinking about 2024.”

The report claimed that neither Russia nor Ukraine can make any decisive advances at present, with the latter now touting the capture of individual villages as a sign of success.

The author estimates that Kiev has two months at most to turn the tide before autumn rains start making the ground impassable for military hardware in November.

Strong defense fortifications and extensive minefields set up by Russian forces in southern Ukraine were among the reasons for the apparent underperformance of Kiev’s counteroffensive, the report claimed.

Against this backdrop, officials in Kiev have recently begun criticizing NATO for not doing enough, with one describing the US-led military bloc as “gutless,” according to the newspaper.

With neither side willing to compromise, the conflict is likely to continue for the long haul, the report concluded.

Speaking to the Washington Post earlier this week, Polish President Andrzej Duda, one of Kiev’s staunchest Western supporters, acknowledged that the Ukrainian military was “not currently able to carry out a very decisive counteroffensive against the Russian military.”

Also this week, CNN quoted unnamed US and other Western officials as predicting that it was “highly unlikely” that Kiev forces would be able to “make progress that would change the balance of this conflict.”

Ukraine launched its long-awaited counteroffensive in early June, concentrating its efforts at multiple points along the frontline from Zaporozhye to Donetsk Regions.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the operation has turned out to be a failure that has so far cost Ukraine 43,000 personnel and 4,900 units of military hardware.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russian warship fires warning shots at cargo ship in Black Sea

A Russian warship on Sunday fired warning shots at a cargo ship in the southwestern Black Sea as it made its way northwards, the first time Russia has fired on merchant shipping beyond Ukraine since exiting a landmark UN-brokered grain deal last month.

In July, Russia halted participation in the Black Sea grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export agricultural produce via the Black Sea. Moscow said that it deemed all ships heading to Ukrainian waters to be potentially carrying weapons.

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On Sunday, Russia said in a statement that its Vasily Bykov patrol ship had fired automatic weapons on the Palau-flagged Sukru Okan vessel after the ship's captain failed to respond to a request to halt for an inspection.

Russia said the vessel was making its way toward the Ukrainian port of Izmail. Refinitiv shipping data showed the ship was currently near the coast of Bulgaria and heading toward the Romanian port of Sulina.

"To forcibly stop the vessel, warning fire was opened from automatic weapons," the Russian defence ministry said.

The Russian military boarded the vessel with the help of a Ka-29 helicopter, the ministry said.

"After the inspection group completed its work on board, the Sukru Okan continued on its way to the port of Izmail," the defence ministry said.

A Turkish defence ministry official said he had heard an incident had taken place involving a ship heading for Romania, and that Ankara was looking into it.

Reuters could not immediately reach the vessel or its owners for comment.

A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the incident was a "clear violation of international law of the sea, an act of piracy and a crime against civilian vessels of a third country in the waters of other states."

The adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, added on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that "Ukraine will draw all the necessary conclusions and choose the best possible response."

Zelenskiy did not mention the incident in his nightly video address.

Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for the southern military command, stressed that the Russian statement had not been confirmed by other official sources. "I believe that attention should be drawn to this and the peculiarities of hybrid warfare should be kept in mind," she said in televised remarks.

"This statement could be a signal to all civilian vessels in the Black Sea," she said, and called for all transportation and navigation there to be conducted under international guarantees. Russia, she added, was trying to assert its right to stop a ship or deploy aircraft in the Black Sea and "face no consequences."

BLACK SEA AT WAR?

Firing on a merchant vessel will ratchet up already acute concerns among shipowners, insurers and commodity traders about the potential dangers of getting ensnared in the Black Sea - the main route that both Ukraine and Russia use to get their agricultural produce to market.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world's top agricultural producers, and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets. Russia is also dominant in the fertiliser market.

Since Russia left the Black Sea grain deal, both Moscow and Kyiv have issued warnings and carried out attacks that have sent jitters through global commodity, oil and shipping markets.

Russia has said it will treat any ships approaching Ukrainian ports as potential military vessels, and their flag countries as combatants on the Ukrainian side. Russia also struck Ukrainian grain facilities on the Danube.

Ukraine responded with a similar threat to ships approaching Russian or Russian-held Ukrainian ports. Ukraine also attacked a Russian oil tanker and a warship at its Novorossiysk naval base, next door to a major grain and oil port.

Ukraine and the West say Russia's steps amount to a de-facto blockade of Ukrainian ports that threatens to cut off the flow of wheat and sunflower seeds from Ukraine to world markets.

Russia dismisses that interpretation and says the West failed to implement a parallel agreement easing rules for its own food and fertiliser exports.

RT/Reuters

As policymakers around the world embrace industrial policy in pursuit of a wide variety of objectives – supply-chain resilience, green technologies, geopolitical advantage, good jobs – the debate over its effectiveness is reaching fever pitch. Typically, this debate is portrayed as one where sound economics is squarely on the skeptics’ side. “There is a strong case against industrial policy in economics,” intoned one recent commentary, and embracing it “just wastes money and distorts the economy.”

But this is an increasingly outmoded view. While it is generally true that mainstream economists have responded to industrial policy with knee-jerk hostility since at least the 1970s, things have been changing fast, owing to new academic research that is less driven by ideological hostility to government intervention and better grounded in rigorous empirical methods.

This recent crop of research provides more authoritative evidence on how industrial policy really works, improving the quality of debates that in the past shed more heat than light on the issue. And researchers’ more nuanced and contextual understanding of such policies yields a generally more positive assessment.

Industrial policies are complex, and quantifying them for the purposes of analysis can be difficult. Consider, for example, China’s recent push in the shipbuilding industry. Seeking to become the largest shipbuilding country within a decade, China deployed a multitude of policies, including production subsidies, investment subsidies, and entry subsidies. There were many changes along the way, as in 2009, when policymakers turned away from promoting entry and instead focused on industry consolidation.

In the past, economists too often focused on simple indicators such as import tariffs, capturing only limited dimensions of industrial policy and conflating its objectives with others (such as raising government revenue or playing special-interest politics). A number of recent research efforts have taken a more productive approach.

For example, a comparative project at the OECD quantifies industrial policies through deep accounting of government activity, focusing on government expenditures allocated specifically for industrial-policy objectives. A team of economists led by two of us (Réka Juhász and Nathan Lane) apply natural language processing to publicly available policy inventories to generate a detailed classification of industrial policies.

The latter work is yielding important new insights. For starters, industrial policy has been ubiquitous, and its prevalence predates the recent rise in its use and prominence in public discussions. Moreover, it is no longer appropriate, if it ever was, to identify industrial policy with inward-looking, protectionist trade policies; contemporary industrial policies typically target export promotion. And the prevalence of industrial policies tends to increase with income: advanced economies use it more often and intensively than developing countries do.

Improved methods of causal inference are also leading economists to revise their views. Traditionally, economists assessed the effects of industrial policy by examining whether industries receiving more government help performed better – generally reaching a negative conclusion. It is now recognized that such correlational work is uninformative, because it cannot distinguish between cases where industrial policy is useful and not.

The more recent research uses modern statistical techniques to avoid misleading inferences. Such techniques have been applied to a wide variety of cases, including historical episodes of promotion of infant industries (such as textiles, shipbuilding, and heavy industries); large-scale public research and development efforts (as in the “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union); and selective place-based policies targeting specific firms or industries (as in the US manufacturing drive during World War II and contemporary regional European subsidies).

The results of this research are much more favorable to industrial policy, tending to find that such policies – or historical accidents that mimic their effects – have often led to large, seemingly beneficial long-term effects in the structure of economic activity. For example, the disruption to French imports during the Napoleonic blockade stimulated French industrialization in mechanized cotton spinning long after the end of the Napoleonic wars. These results are consistent with what proponents of nurturing infant industries would argue.

Studies of recent public programs to subsidize investment in lagging regions of Britain and Italy have similarly found strong positive effects on employment creation. While these studies cannot provide a definitive answer to whether industrial policy works in general, they are informative about the prevalence of the market failures targeted by the policy and about the policy’s long-term effects.

Newer studies also shed light on the long-standing controversy over the contribution of industrial policy to East Asia’s economic miracle. The early economic literature on East Asia’s rise had argued that industrial policies were at best ineffective. Newer analyses paying closer attention to the structure of upstream and downstream linkages in these economies reach considerably more sanguine conclusions.

To cite one example, studies of South Korea’s Heavy-Chemical Industry Drive (HCI), a landmark – and controversial – industrial policy pursued by President Park Chung-hee in the 1970s, found that the policy promoted the growth of targeted industries, both in the short and long run. HCI’s effects on productivity and export performance were both positive.

Critics of East Asian policies thought governments could never pick the right sectors because they lacked information on where market failures were more prominent. Princeton economist Ernest Liu has recently provided a useful guide for policymakers confronting an economy where market imperfections occur across multiple, linked sectors. In such settings, subsidizing upstream sectors generally minimizes policy mistakes. Liu shows that the actual policies used in China and during South Korea’s HCI were in line with this guidance.

Some commentators have recently criticized US President Joe Biden’s industrial policy because it “lacks a rigorous economic foundation.” The reality is that there is already plenty of good economic research on industrial policy. While more research is always beneficial, the new literature is already providing us with better assessments of industrial policies in all their diversity, evaluating the consequences of historical and contemporary examples, and illuminating how such policies work or fail depending on their instruments and objectives, and on prevailing economic structures.

Project Syndicate