Massive fire as Sudanese factions battle for control of arms factory

A massive fire broke out on Wednesday near a military complex containing an arms factory in southern Khartoum that Sudan's army has battled to defend in some of the fiercest fighting for weeks in its conflict with a rival faction, witnesses said.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in the eighth week of a power struggle with the army, attacked the heavily protected, sprawling Yarmouk complex on Tuesday, witnesses said. The group on Wednesday posted videos in which it claimed to have taken over a warehouse filled with weapons and ammunition as well as several entry points to the site.

The army used air strikes to try to repel the RSF advance, witnesses said.

Fighting across the three cities that make up Sudan's greater capital region - Khartoum, Bahri and Omdurman - has picked up since a 12-day ceasefire between the army and RSF formally expired on June 3 after repeated violations.

"Since yesterday there has been a violent battle with the use of planes and artillery and clashes on the ground and columns of smoke rising," Nader Youssef, a resident living near Yarmouk, told Reuters by phone.

Due to the proximity of fuel and gas depots, "any explosion could destroy residents and the whole area", he said.

A fire that began in the morning suddenly grew in size before sunset on Wednesday as explosions were heard, another resident living close to the depots said.

Local activists said the fires were caused by the bombing of the fuel and gas depots, and that houses in the area had been hit by shells and stray bullets.

Residents in Omdurman and Bahri, about 15 km (9 miles) away, reported that towering flames were visible after nightfall from Yarmouk.

The RSF quickly seized swathes of the capital after war erupted in Khartoum on April 15. Army air strikes and artillery fire have not dislodged them, but the RSF may face a challenge restocking with ammunition and fuel as the conflict drags on.

The violence has derailed the launch of a transition towards civilian rule four years after a popular uprising ousted strongman President Omar al-Bashir. The army and RSF, which together staged a coup in 2021, fell out over the chain of command and military restructuring plans under the transition.

WATER SHORTAGES

The conflict has wreaked havoc on the capital, reignited deadly violence in the long volatile western region of Darfur and displaced more than 1.9 million people.

Most health services and the banking system have collapsed, power and water is often cut and looting has spread. Food supplies have been dwindling.

UNICEF said on Wednesday that some 297 children were evacuated from Khartoum's Mygoma orphanage, which has been in the midst of heavy fighting. Reuters previously reported that dozens of babies had died there since the war began due to dehydration and malnutrition, and that the orphanage had housed about 400 children before the conflict started.

In Bahri, north of the Blue Nile from Khartoum, local activists said that more than 50 days of water cuts had driven many people from their homes and that they could be caught in the crossfire if they searched for water.

More than 1.4 million people have been displaced within Sudan and a further 476,800 have fled into neighbouring countries, most of which are already struggling with poverty and internal conflict, according to estimates from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Sudan's health ministry has recorded at least 780 civilian deaths as a direct result of the fighting. Hundreds more have been killed in the city of El Geneina in West Darfur. Medical officials say many bodies remain uncollected or unrecorded.

In Jeddah, a mediation source said negotiations were continuing in an effort to ensure safe passage for humanitarian assistance. Saudi Arabia and the United States brokered the ceasefire that ended on Saturday in talks there.

Consultations for a new truce deal, which had been reported by Saudi TV station Al Arabiya on Tuesday, were at an early stage and complicated by continued fighting, the source said.

"We urgently call on the warring parties to adhere to their commitments ... and to return to the Jeddah dialogue to resolve issues around violations and reach a ceasefire that is respected fully," countries including the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union said.

The United Nations says some 25 million - more than half Sudan's population - are in need of humanitarian assistance and that aid that could help about 2.2 million people had been delivered since late May.

Reuters

No matter how we pare it, the 2012 #OccupyNigeria protests will remain pivotal in our sociopolitical history. Its significance lies in how much the pushback against government insensitivity resounded nationwide and even among the Nigerians in the Diaspora. It started as protests against the fuel subsidies removal, but it soon culminated in other disquieting issues such as government profligacy. #OccupyNigeria was the crucial juncture where the “breath of fresh air” that supposedly ushered in the Goodluck Jonathan administration—elected less than a year then—was putrefied. Nothing else he did afterward could stop the doomsday clock of his administration that started ticking. He got stuck with the label of corruption, and it defined his image all through.

In light of the present administration of Bola Tinubu’s removal of the same fuel subsidies, but with far less dramatic effects, it is understandable that people would question why the public intellectuals, social advocates, labour unions, and other third-sector activists who turned the tables against Jonathan have been nearly mute this time. How did it happen that Jonathan was “wicked,” but Tinubu’s doing the same in the tardiest manner is an exhibition of “leadership”?

While the difference in the responses then and now can be easily chalked down to factors such as tribalism, a sheer dislike for Jonathan, or even the benefit of hindsight, the critics make a strong case by raising the issue of the moral contents of public advocacy. Do the class of opinion entrepreneurs—from the public intellectuals, social advocates, social commentators, and even the so-called influencers—even have a moral anchor, or do they merely speak just so they too can be heard? Given that Tinubu himself was one of the several opportunists who hijacked the mood of dissatisfaction driving that protest to flaunt his own populist credentials, what does it say about his character that he would be the one to eventually remove the fuel subsidies without as much as creating a cushioning effect for the people who would expectedly be diminished by the multiplier effects of higher fuel prices? Tinubu, by writing that infamous letter to Jonathan to criticise him on the fuel subsidies, created a document that now testifies to his moral unscrupulousness.

But it has become typical that when the history of that moment is told in recent times, people redact the larger context and allege that the whole #OccupyNigeriaaffair was sponsored by politicians like Tinubu. That misattribution is unsurprising because our society does not put enough premium on memory, whether personal, collective, or even institutional. The #OccupyNigeria protests were far more spontaneous. They were instigated by reports of parliamentary investigations that revealed startling corruption in the payments between 2009 and 2011 (about $6.8bn). It was also the era of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Protests where protesters in different regions of the world were taking on their governments.

For us in Nigeria, it also seemed like the right time to question our government on its profligacy. The fuel subsidy issue under Jonathan could not have evaded the unrest that was roiling the rest of the world (just like the former President Muhammadu Buhari administration that succeeded him also took a hit from the #BlackLivesMatter protests that became #EndSARS in Nigeria). Each time someone points out to me that nobody has tried to organise another fuel subsidy protest like #OccupyNigeria since then, the question I ask them is if they would join such a gathering. If we were asked to go to Ojota now and protest, would you go? So much water has passed under the bridge of Nigerian sociopolitics since 2012; even the bridge has been carried away. What will be the point of investing energies into protests when the best the last one achieved was to catapult the same politicians who routinely suck Nigeria dry into Aso Rock?

Merely writing off the chicanery of the 2012 players as part of the game of politics will not do. The seeds of discontent that those dissemblers sow eventually grow into distrust and disquiet. The manner some elements in the South-West and the northern regions of the country were quick to opt out of any planned protests of the fuel subsidy removal itself was also disturbing. I should also recall that in 2012, those who opted out of the #OccupyNigeria protests were groups from the South-East and the South-South. That people could persuade themselves to suppress any dissent that threatens their kinsman’s political legitimacy shows how much Nigerians overly invested in the symbolism of the presidency. People will give up on advocating their own interests just so their tribesman in Aso Rock can survive. Getting Nigerians to form a multi-ethnic and multi-religious coalition and insist on the government working for us will require another level of political savviness.

That said, whatever is wrong with the implementation of the fuel subsidies removal is no argument for their retention. Whatever hypocrisy Tinubu and his minions in the so-called civil society might have manifested on this issue does not justify the payments. Outing these people as charlatans does not vindicate escalating the error of retaining the fuel subsidies. It is not worth matching hypocrisy for hypocrisy simply to point out the crookedness of our social commentators.

For one, it does not take much to see that every description of dystopia that will be occasioned if the fuel subsidies were ever removed happened even when it was sustained. We were told that the costs of goods and services would shoot up if they ever removed fuel subsidies, and the prices of everything did so immensely even without the removal. They said many people will fall into poverty if fuel subsidies were to be removed, but Nigerians fell into multi-dimensional poverty even though the costs of fuel subsidies rose astronomically. So what else can possibly go wrong that has not, many times and over?

Those who argue that even the USA gives fuel subsidies tend to overlook that what that country subsidises is production, not mere consumption. Besides, one cannot glibly compare an economy that is diversified, productive, and coherent with Nigeria’s voodoo capitalism that produces nothing yet consumes everything! As for those who argue that Tinubu should fight corruption in the sector instead of ending the subsidies, I hope they know how ridiculous that proposal sounds? If Buhari, who got into power by pretending to be the very embodiment of incorruptibility could not fight corruption, how do you expect Tinubu to fare better? How?

Tinubu himself knows he does not have the moral legitimacy to challenge anyone on corruption. The few times he opened his mouth to talk about corruption, he induced serious laughter. I am sure he is smart enough to not overreach himself by pursuing his fellow politicians on corruption. Doing so quickly opens him up to many vulnerabilities. He will promptly face another battle from those who have his dossier. They will not hesitate to tank whatever moral legitimacy he still has by producing the sordid revelations of his untoward affairs. He cannot fight the corruption in the fuel subsidies. The best he can afford is to seize the opening between two government transitions and cut off that umbilical cord forever.

If there is an important lesson to take away from the moral clarity that defined the fuel subsidy protests in 2012 and which is now hazy in post-Jonathan Nigeria, it is how much even the enterprise of truth-telling through social commentary is tainted with ethnic and religious sentiments. Going forward, some people will rightly be more cynical while others will show more circumspection in listening to the class of public intellectuals, activists, and the so-called social advocates, especially those whose ideas of right and wrong are dictated by how closer their opinions can get them to Aso Rock.

Punch

The rugged, chilly coast of northern Norway, beyond the Arctic Circle, is not usually thought of as prime agricultural land. But far down a dead-end road on the shores of Skjerstad Fjord sits Salten Smolt, one of the most advanced farms in the world. Rather than crops or cows, though, the firm produces fish. Inside its 7,000 square metre main building are tanks capable of producing 8m smolt—juvenile Atlantic salmon—every year.

Fish farming is the fastest-growing form of food production in the world. Seafood accounts for around 17% of the world’s protein intake (in some parts of Asia and Africa, the number is nearer 50%). The OECD, a rich-country club, reckons that, thanks to population growth and rising incomes, global consumption of fish will reach 180m tonnes by the end of the decade, up from 158m tonnes in 2020.

But the ocean has only so much to give. The World Bank reckons that 90% of the world’s fisheries are being fished either at or over their capacity. Aquaculture has therefore accounted for nearly all the growth in fish consumption since 1990 (see chart). It will have to account for almost all the growth to come, too.

As with farming on land though, aquaculture can cause environmental damage. Many farmed fish are grown in net pens, either in rivers or the open ocean. Uneaten food and fish waste can pollute the surrounding waters. When net pens break, escaped farmed fish can damage the local ecosystem. Inland “flow-through” farms require continuous streams of freshwater from rivers or wells, competing with those who might wish to drink it instead. Rearing lots of fish in close proximity risks outbreaks of diseases and parasites, which sweep in from the open water. That requires antibiotics and other drugs to keep the fish healthy.

It is these sorts of problems that newer fish farms, like Salten Smolt, hope to solve. It makes use of a technology called “recirculating aquaculture systems”, or RAS for short (pronounced “Rass”). Rather than relying on a constant flow of natural water to keep fish healthy, a RAS system grows fish on land in tanks whose water is continuously cleaned and recycled. That offers three big advantages. Compared with standard aquaculture systems, RAS farms use far less water, can take better care of their fish, and can allow picky species to be raised anywhere in the world.

RAS farms are, in essence, much bigger versions of home aquariums. Each consists of a tank in which the fish swim, and a set of water-cleaning components to dispose of the waste that they produce. Much of the technology is recycled from the sewage-treatment industry.

Reduce, re-use and recycle

Unwanted solids—fish faeces and uneaten feed, mostly—are removed first. This is done mechanically, using a conical tank, gravity and a series of increasingly fine mesh filters. Most of the remaining waste is ammonia. Fish secrete the stuff through their gills, as a byproduct of their metabolisms, and too much is toxic. The ammonia-laden water is therefore pumped through colonies of bacteria which, given enough oxygen, will convert the ammonia into nitrite and nitrate. Further steps can remove other contaminants such as phosphorus and heavy metals.

The cleaner the water, the more can be recirculated, and the less is needed from outside. A completely closed loop is impractical, at least for now. But state-of-the-art systems, such as Salten Smolt’s, can reduce water usage by more than 99%. Standard salmon-farming consumes about 50,000 litres of water for each kilogram of salmon produced. A RAS system might need just 150. The upshot, says Steve Sutton, the founder of TransparentSea, a RAS shrimp farm near Los Angeles, is that RAS farms “leave the wild environment alone so that [farmed fish] don’t spread pathogens or pollute the waterways”.

Concentrating the waste in one place offers advantages of its own. One of the biggest missed opportunities with standard aquaculture, says Kari Attramadal, head of research at Nofitech, another Norwegian aquaculture firm, is that the waste released into the environment from standard fish farms contains plenty of valuable nutrients. Nitrates can be used as food for hydroponically grown crops. John Sällebrant, Salten Smolt’s production manager, says that the firm recovers and dries fish faeces, as well as uneaten feed, for conversion into agricultural fertiliser.

Keeping fish alive in artificial tanks relies on keeping tight control of the entire system. Errors can be costly. If the oxygenation system fails, says Attramadal, fish can start to die within eight minutes. But that need for careful monitoring also offers the ability to fine-tune the environment in which the fish are being raised. That allows ras systems to perform an aquatic version of what, on land, is called precision agriculture.

Salmon, for instance, prefer cold water. A climate-controlled tank is able to provide the ideal temperature at all times, without worrying about currents, tides or weather, boosting the speed with which the fish grow. ReelData, a startup based in Nova Scotia, uses data from cameras and sensors in RAS tanks to estimate how hungry fish are, how much they weigh and even to assess how stressed they are. The firm says its technology can raise a farm’s productivity by up to 20%.

And because they do not rely on the natural environment, RAS systems can, in principle, be built anywhere. Atlantic Sapphire, another Norwegian firm, has built an Atlantic salmon farm near Miami, a thousand miles south of the fish’s natural range. Being close to big cities reduces the distance that fish have to travel before arriving on a dinner plate. Pure Salmon Technology, a Norwegian ras provider, is building a farm in Japan. It reckons that lower transport costs will more than halve the carbon footprint of each kilogram of salmon, despite the extra energy costs involved in running a RAS system.

As with any new technology, there have been teething troubles. Half a million fish, or about 5% of the total, died at Atlantic Sapphire’s plant in Florida in 2021, for instance, after problems with its filtration systems. (The firm describes the incident as a piece of “expensive learning” to be “seen in the context of RAS having been in the early stages of its rapid development”.)

Small fry

The biggest downside is cost. All those pipes, pumps and monitoring systems mean that capital costs are significantly higher for ras farms than for standard ones. (That is one reason why many existing systems focus on salmon, a comparatively pricey fish.) Even in Norway, where about half the country’s salmon farms use RAS, it is limited to the first stage of the fish’s life. Juvenile fish are still grown into adults in standard open-water pens.

Tax changes in Norway may change that, says Matt Craze of Spheric Research, a firm of aquaculture market analysts. And there are other ways to keep costs down. Some firms are experimenting with hybrid systems. These dispense with the more expensive bits of waste-management kit, but can still cut overall water usage significantly. Economies of scale will help, too. Craze reckons that, while smaller RAS farms might produce fish at twice the price of standard aquaculture, bigger ones should, if they can iron out the gremlins, eventually be able to match them.

For now, though, RAS remains a tiddler. Kathrin Steinberg, head of research at the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, a Dutch non-profit organisation, says that less than 5% of the farms certified by her organisation make use of it. But with the world’s demand for fish rising inexorably, that share, she says, is growing.

The Economist

When asked, a Harris poll found that six out of ten people say they would like to be billionaires. (Four out of ten say they despise billionaires; no gray area here.)

Interestingly, 44 percent of respondents said they "have the available tools" to become billionaires.

Even though, as Ryan Holiday writes:

Clearly Holiday has figured out how to write great -- and bestselling, which don't always go hand in hand -- books. How to produce an extremely popular podcast. How to launch and run an independent bookstore.

And he's figured out more than a few things about money, as described in his recent article 31 Lessons I've Learned About Money.

Here are some of my favorites, and how you can apply them.

You'll never reach your number

Ask, and just about everyone has a number: the "if I had $X, then I would be set" number. 

But no one ever seems to reach their number, if only because, as Holiday writes, they constantly move the goal posts.

Take the guy I know who splashed a cool $450 grand on a Lexus LFA with the Nürburgring package. His everyday car is a Porsche 911 Turbo S. I was sure he was rich.

Then he told me what he wants most in life is a Bugatti Veyron, but he'll need to spend well over $1 million to snag one of those. "I have money," he told me, "but not that kind of money." It bums him out. He thinks about it all the time.

Even though, by any objective standard, he's rich... he doesn't feel rich.

The better approach? Stop thinking about the number you want to hit -- a number that, as you get close, you'll inevitably increase -- and start thinking about the life you want to live. How you want to spend your time. Who you want to spend your time with. The impact you want to make, especially on the people you care about.

And work on hitting that.

Always pick the low-hanging fruit.

One example: Holiday has had to remind employees to sign up for the 401k match his company offers. That's low-hanging fruit; anyone who doesn't max out on the match leaves free money on the table. 

If you set up a normal 401(k) plan, roughly speaking you must offer the same plan benefits to your employees as you receive. So you may not want to establish a plan with a huge match.

But if you are your only employee, then you can feel free to match to your heart's -- and business's resources' -- content.

That's what I do. My plan is set up to match 100 percent of employee contributions, which means I match 100 percent of my contributions. Since I'm over 50 and can make "catch up" contributions, this year I can contribute up to $30,000 a year as an employee (if you're under 50, the annual limit is $22,500), and my employer (me) can match that amount. And since the total allowable amount is $66,000, my employer (me) can toss in an additional $6,000 in profit sharing.

While that's not free money -- my company clearly has to earn at least that much -- it is tax-deferred money. And it's low-hanging fruit.

Make sure you pluck some of your own low-hanging fruit. Call your cable company, tell them you're thinking about cutting the cord, and see what discounts they offer. Tell your insurance agent you're thinking about shopping around. Look for things you spend money from out of habit, not necessity. 

As Holiday says, always do the easy things first.

Favor investments that are dependable

As Holiday writes:

My wife and I have a similar approach. As I recall from a conversation we had, Holiday favors making real estate loans that generate monthly payments. (He'll tell me if I'm wrong.) In our case, we own rental properties that generate monthly income.

We couldn't quit working tomorrow -- shoot, we don't want to quit working tomorrow -- but if we did, the real estate spigot wouldn't get turned off. 

Which is a good thing, if only because...

If you have a problem that can be solved by money, you don't have a problem

Relieving stress is often a simple matter of perspective. If your car breaks down and you have the money to fix it, the solution may be painful... but it's not a problem.

Having no way to get to work for the foreseeable future? That's a problem.

The same is true for business; if sales are down this month but you have a solid reserve to fall back on, the problem shifts from worrying about making payroll -- which is super-stressful -- to finding new ways to increase sales.

Money can do a lot of things, but arguably the most important thing is to create choices.

Which is especialy true when you...

If it makes you a worse person (parent, neighbor, writer, whatever), it's not success

Why? Here's Ryan:

As you plan a business or embark on a new career path, take the time to decide what "success" really means to you. If your goal is to become wealthy, the economics of the industry might mean a level of effort and commitment that could leave you feeling unhappy and unfulfilled.

Make sure that what you really want reflects what you design your business -- and your life -- to deliver. 

To you.

Inc

At a ceremony in November, the Nigerian government celebrated the discovery of as many as 1 billion barrels of oil in the country’s arid northeast, almost 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away from the crude-rich Niger Delta.

The state’s partners in the multi-billion dollar project in the impoverished, landlocked corner of the country is a company founded by two brothers from India. The siblings have built the largest independent oil company in Africa’s biggest crude producing nation even as India pursues them as criminals — accusing them of perpetrating “one of the largest economic scams in the country.”  

Now, as newly elected President Bola Tinubu sets ambitious targets for Nigeria’s hydrocarbons sector, companies created by the brothers, Nitin and Chetan Sandesara, seem poised for an increasingly prominent role — especially as international oil giants such Shell Plc and ExxonMobil Corp. retreat from the West African country.

“This discovery will provide a multiplicity of opportunity and great prosperity for Nigeria,” Tinubu said at the November event. Sworn in on May 29, he was the ruling party’s presidential candidate at the time. 

The selection of a firm owned by the family of the duo branded as fugitives by India to drill wells for the project is just the latest sign of how Nigeria has provided the brothers a haven, effectively insulating them from troubles back home. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has accused the tycoons of absconding after defrauding public banks of more than $1.7 billion. Nigeria has refused India’s request to extradite them.

The Sandesara brothers, Gujarati businessmen who left India in 2017, deny cheating their lenders and say they are victims of political persecution. Having ventured into the Nigerian oil industry almost 20 years ago when they won two onshore licenses in the delta, the brothers — faced with problems in India — have shifted their focus to Lagos. They even applied for Nigerian citizenship, according to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, the country’s top investigating agency.  It’s not clear if they succeeded. The brothers’ lawyer and Nigerian authorities didn’t respond to queries on the matter.

While the brothers fight fraud charges and non-bailable warrants from India, the Sandesara businesses are flourishing in Nigeria. The African nation refused to arrest them four years ago saying the Indian allegations “appeared to be political in nature,” according to a letter published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

In India, the brothers’ private jet, swanky cars and star-studded parties at a 60,000-square-foot farmhouse in Ampad village in Gujarat routinely provided fodder for tabloids and social media sites, according to news outlet The Print. From a sanctuary on Lagos’ upscale Victoria Island, one of their Nigerian companies has continued that glitzy tradition, sponsoring annual Diwali celebrations that are the talk of the city’s small Indian community, even flying in Bollywood singers like Shreya Ghoshal to perform.

The family’s Nigerian oil and gas business — with the slogan “Success is Natural” — is thriving. The group’s subsidiaries — Sterling Oil Exploration & Production Co. and Sterling Global Oil Resources Ltd. — pump about 50,000 barrels of crude a day in the delta via contracts with the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Co. Another unit expects to bring a third block into production this year that will eventually raise total daily output to above 100,000 barrels. 

Other than the international majors such as Shell and Chevron Corp., the Sandesara family is the top exporter of oil from Nigeria. Its firms’ taxes contributed 2% of the Nigerian government’s revenue, Nitin said in 2019. An export system of transporting crude on barges to a floating storage vessel in the Atlantic Ocean — rather than relying on pipelines that are vulnerable to thieves — has enabled the family’s companies to maintain a consistent performance as other producers have floundered.

The brothers have hired the plugged-in former head of the Nigerian government’s oil regulator to head their energy operations, and concluded major contracts with the state. Two years ago, Sterling Oil sealed a separate deal with the NNPC for the commercialization of the gas within one of its oil blocks in a project designed to boost the anemic power supply in Africa’s biggest economy.

“You are a very reliable partner because when you say things, you get them done,” NNPC Chief Executive Mele Kyari said of Sterling Oil, announcing the deal.

Indian authorities take a less rosy view of the Sandesaras’ practices. 

Beginning in the 1980s, the brothers transformed a family tea-trading business into a Mumbai-headquartered conglomerate spanning oil and gas, health care, construction and engineering and owning one of the world’s largest manufacturers of pharmaceutical grade gelatin. By the early 2010s, the group said it was valued at almost $7 billion. 

Some of that expansion was bankrolled by a “well calculated economic fraud” that left the group owing more than 140 billion rupees ($1.71 billion) to public lenders including State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Union Bank of India, the CBI told the country’s Supreme Court a year ago. 

Among accusations leveled against them include the use of “false and fabricated documents” to secure bank loans and the diversion of funds overseas. The same lenders also provided credit lines to the entity that owned the Nigerian oil business, the CBI said in a December 2019 charge sheet. 

State-backed lenders, including Bank of India, won two judgments from UK courts — in 2018 and 2021 — ordering Sandesara companies providing services to Sterling Oil to pay almost $60 million after they defaulted on loans.

India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED), which investigates money laundering and forex violation cases, said in 2019 that it wanted to seize the brothers’ overseas assets, including a Nigerian oil field, four drilling rigs and a Gulfstream aircraft. The group’s flagship business Sterling Biotech Ltd was sold to California-based alt-dairy firm Perfect Day Inc. in November for about $78 million in a transaction approved by India’s bankruptcy court.  

Following a petition by the Sandesaras to quash the CBI and ED cases against them, India’s Supreme Court paused proceedings last year. The brothers said they wanted to reach a financial resolution with creditors. But the investigating agencies have said any settlement “cannot absolve the criminal liability of the accused.” 

The brothers, who told the court their Indian companies have repaid more than was disbursed to them in loans, say the agencies’ “sole aim is to browbeat, harass, harangue and humiliate” them, and claimed they were declared fugitives in “a grossly illegal manner.” They say the Modi government has a vendetta against the Sandesaras because of their ties to opposition and Muslim politicians, according to media reports that cite their filings in other court cases.

An Indian lawyer for the Sandesaras didn’t respond to multiple emails requesting comment. The group chairman and two directors of the Nigerian oil companies didn’t reply to questions sent by Bloomberg. The CBI, ED and the Sandesaras’ main creditors also didn’t address 

queries on the status of the proceedings against the brothers.

Ironically, even as the Indian government was building its case against the pair, their Nigerian companies supplied cargoes of crude worth almost $1.5 billion to India’s state-owned refineries in the seven years to January 2020, the brothers said in court filings.

With their troubles in India showing no signs of abating, the brothers’ ties in Nigeria are deepening.

In Indian court filings in September 2022, the brothers claim ownership of Sterling Oil, the subsidiary responsible for most of the group’s crude production, touting it as a “very prominent company of Nigeria.” An online registry for Nigerian natural resources companies lists another family member — Devak Patel, the 31-year-old son of Chetan Sandesara’s brother-in-law — as the owner. Patel didn’t respond to queries seeking clarity on the company’s ownership.

Where the brothers currently spend their time is unclear. The ED accused them in 2020 of “shifting their base from one country to another to escape the clutches of law” and said they were presumed to be in Nigeria, the UK, the US or the UAE. They have also obtained Albanian passports, according to The Wire and other Indian media outlets. The brothers have neither confirmed nor denied the reports. Chetan signed an affidavit for the Indian court from Lagos in August.

Meanwhile, the Sandesaras’ participation in the new development in Nigeria’s north — a pet project of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who stepped down last month — may be yet another sign that their future lies in the West African country. 

Sterling Oil will carry out the venture with the NNPC and another public company controlled by Nigeria’s 19 northern states to bring oil production to the upper part of the country for the first time. Almost all of Nigeria’s crude currently comes from the Niger Delta and off its shores.

“It is to the credit of this administration that at a time when there is near-zero appetite for investment in fossil fuel energy, coupled with the location challenges, we are able to attract investment of over $3 billion to this project,” Buhari said at the November ceremony.

His successor Tinubu has promised to increase daily oil output by more than 60% to 2.6 million barrels by 2027 and to 4 million barrels by 2030 – an aspiration many analysts believe to be implausible. If the new government intends to achieve these goals, it will have to lean on independent producers such as Seplat Energy Plc and Sterling Oil since the likes of Shell and Exxon are trying to sell their onshore and shallow water assets. 

At the ceremony last year, Sterling Oil Chief Operating Officer Mohit Barot told Buhari that the company had secured funding to drill the wells and build a complex to produce fuel, fertilizer and electricity.

“We assure you, Mr. President, that we will deliver on our commitments and your expectations...,” Barot said. “Today is just the start of our long journey together.” 

Bloomberg

Nigeria spent more than $10 billion in a decade on three oil refineries that produced hardly any fuel, a parliamentary report said.

It cost the state-owned Nigeria National Petroleum Co. N4.8 trillion ($10.3 billion) to run the facilities from 2010 to 2020, even though they were operating far below their combined capacity of 445,000 barrels of crude per day, according to a report by a committee in the House of Representatives. The company is currently rehabilitating the plants.

By the time they were put into rehabilitation, they had almost ceased to function and output had not exceeded 30% since 2010, according to the report. That left Nigeria entirely reliant on gasoline imports, whose price was kept artificially low by fuel subsidies.

The decades-long subsidy regime was scrapped by newly sworn-in President Bola Tinubu last week and the government has been working to address the refining challenges to temper fuel prices.

A giant 650,000-barrels-per-day facility built by Africa’s richest person, Aliko Dangote, opened last month, but it’s unclear when it will be able to supply a significant quantity of refined fuel to the domestic market.

NNPC is also rehabilitating its 210,000-barrel-per-day complex  in Port Harcourt and a smaller plant in Warri through contracts worth more than $2 billion with Italy’s Maire Tecnimont SpA and South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. respectively. Both sites are expected to resume operations before the end of 2023, according to the report which Nigeria’s lower chamber of parliament approved on Tuesday.

The report advised the NNPC to consider outsourcing the management of the repaired refineries to “reputable” international firms. A spokesman for the NNPC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bloomberg

Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), says removal of the petrol subsidy by the present administration was a “forceful” attempt despite his support for it. 

Obi spoke to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday while attending the hearing of the election petition tribunal. 

The removal of the petrol subsidy followed the pronouncement of President Bola Tinubu when he said the petrol subsidy regime was over.

Afterwards, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, announced the adjusted price of petrol across its retail outlets — an action that has led to several agitations. 

Reacting to this development, Obi said while he supported the removal of the subsidy, it must be with a condition that is empirical to the people.

“If you have followed me very well right from the time I was a member of Jonathan’s economic management team, I consistently maintained that subsidy should be removed because I see it as organized crime,” the LP candidate said.

“People were just stealing the resources of the country and I showed empirically in my statistical analysis that we are not consuming the amount of fuel they claim we consume.

“If you approach a dentist to remove a painful tooth, he will apply a local anaesthetic to numb the area around the tooth so you do not feel pain. It’s not the same thing as pulling the tooth forcefully, the pain you feel will be different.

“For me, I will go with the approach of the dentist while supporting the removal of the tooth because I wouldn’t want to go through the pain of forceful removal.

“If you read my manifesto you will see clearly how I planned to remove the subsidy. I will govern with the people and show them statistically and empirically what we are getting and how we are deploying it.

“The problem in Nigeria is that when people say let’s go and suffer, let’s go and sacrifice, they don’t see the results of their suffering and their sacrifice.”

The Cable

Edo State Government on Tuesday empathized with the citizens over the removal of fuel subsidy which has led to an increase in the price of goods and services.

The state governor, Godwin Obaseki, announced that civil and public servants would work three days a week as against five days due to the rise in transportation.

He said, “In the wake of fuel subsidy removal by the Federal Government, fuel prices have increased astronomically leading to a rise in prices of goods and services and overall cost of living.

“Edo State Government shares the pains of our people and wants to assure everyone that we are standing with them in these very challenging times.

“We want to reassure our people that we will do all within our powers as a sub-national government to reduce the pains and ameliorate the sufferings our people are currently facing in the wake of the current realities.

“As a proactive government, we have since taken the step to increase the minimum wage paid to workers in Edo State from the approved N30,000 to N40,000, the highest in the country today.

“We want to assure you that we will continue to pay this amount, while we hope to increase it even further if more allocation accrues to our State from the Federal Government in view of the expected savings occasioned by the removal of the fuel subsidy.

He continued, “We know the hardship that has been caused by this policy which has radically increased the cost of transportation, eating deep into the wages of workers in the State. Therefore, Edo State Government is hereby reducing the number of work days that civil and public servants will have to commute to their workplaces from five days a week to three days a week.

“Similarly, for teachers and parents, their commuting to school will be reduced as the government is working on deepening the EdoBEST@Home initiative to create more virtual classes, thereby reducing the cost of commuting on parents, teachers and pupils. The Edo SUBEB will provide details on this initiative in the coming days.

“To lower the rising cost of energy on our people, we will continue to work with the electricity companies in the State to improve power supply to homes and businesses.

“Similarly, fibre optic connections are being made available to help our people work remotely, thereby reducing their cost of transportation.

“While government intensifies these efforts to alleviate the burden of the fuel price increase on the people during this very challenging period, we want to call on everyone to remain calm and go about their daily businesses lawfully,” the governor added.

Punch

Acting Managing Director of Nigeria Air, Dapo Olumide, has revealed that the aircraft that flew in with the logo of the airline was chartered from Ethiopian Airlines for the purpose of unveiling the logo.

Many media outlets had reported Ethiopian Airlines’ ownership of the Boeing 737-800 series aircraft flown into Abuja from Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, on May 26.

The aircraft took off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at 9:55am on May 26 and landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, at 12:43 p.m.

Shortly after the aircraft landed, Hadi Sirika, Minister of Aviation, expressed delight that after “a very long, tedious, daunting and difficult path”, the project had taken off.

He later unveiled the aircraft with registration ET-APL at the General Aviation Terminal of the Abuja airport.

Investigations showed that the aircraft flew for its original airline up till four days before it was brought to Nigeria.

It embarked on a trip from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv in Israel, according to the flight history.

Flightradar, the popular flight tracking website, said the aircraft operated between Tel Aviv and Mogadishu, Somalia, still on May 21, 2023.

On 20th May, it operated both Mogadishu in Somalia and Beirut on 20th May while the previous day it also serviced Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.

But when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Aviation on Tuesday, Olumide said Nigeria Air had yet to secure an operating licence for full flight operations, saying that the processes were still at the early stages.

Olumide said the aircraft was used pending the completion of the processes required for the operation of the airline.

He said his mandate was to secure an air operating certificate for the airline not necessarily to operate it but to secure a licence to fly.

“The aircraft that came in and left was a legitimate charter flight. Anyone of us here if we have a destination wedding in Senegal, we can charter an aircraft.”

“You don’t need to have a licence to do that, you just charter an aircraft, an aircraft you paid for it, it will be brought here, take your passengers and off you go.

“And that is what we did. But in this case, it was to unveil the logo of Nigeria Air. Ever since 2018, all you had ever seen about Nigeria Air were pictures, drawings not the real aircraft, and we thought it was time to show what the real aircraft will look like also to let shareholders see. We have institutional investors, they are not in aviation but they are putting their money for 10 to 15 years, so they need to see what the actual aircraft will look like.

“So we brought it in here to show them what the aircraft will look like, then the social media dimension came into it.

“For us to get that licence which is my mandate, we must, among other things, have three aircraft before the NCAA will give us a licence and those three aircraft must be Nigerian registered aircraft.

“So when this aircraft came on a chartered flight, everybody said we have launched Nigeria Air, there are learned people in the aviation industry who could have countered that when social media came out, but they chose not to.”

Earlier, Chairman of the Committee, Biodun Olujimi said it was unfortunate that the former Minister of Aviation failed to involve the committee and other stakeholders in the Air Nigeria project.

“To state the obvious, he failed to carry members of the Committee along in virtually all ramifications despite the degree of respect members accorded him any time he was invited for meetings.”

Daily Trust

BUA Cement has received $500 million in financing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and other lenders to boost production, the organisations said on Tuesday.

The IFC and BUA said in a joint statement that the funding would help the company part-finance and develop two new, energy-efficient cement production lines at its plant in Sokoto state, in northwest Nigeria.

The funding includes $160.5 million from IFC, $245 million in syndicated loans from African Development Bank, Africa Finance Corporation and the German Investment Corporation, as well as $94.5 million from institutional investors.

"The plants will run partly on alternative fuels derived from waste and solar power. Each will produce about three million tons of cement annually when complete, serving markets in Nigeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso," IFC and BUA said.

BUA has a production capacity of 11 million tonnes and the new investment will add another 6 million tonnes.

The new financing package will also allow BUA to replace some of its diesel trucks with vehicles that run partly on natural gas in a push to cut emissions, the statement said.

Reuters