Good morning and happy new week,
The boardrooms of various banks sit high above Lagos, and the view from the top is excellent. First HoldCo grew gross earnings to ₦3.44 trillion while profit before tax collapsed 70.5 per cent to ₦235 billion. Zenith’s profit before tax actually fell. Against that, the highest-paid director at First HoldCo saw remuneration double to ₦195 million. At Zenith, it jumped 110.9 per cent to ₦367 million. Meanwhile, a man who bought Fidelity Bank shares eighteen years ago received ₦5,332 in total dividends. That is ₦296 a year. Less than ₦1 a day. He wished he had bought land instead. He is not wrong. The recapitalisation fortified balance sheets and rewarded directors. It did not reward the small investor, and it did not fix the real economy.
Former First Lady Aisha Buhari was on a boat in Marbella, Spain, and Nigeria is angry. The video shows jewellery, sunshine, a yacht full of politicians. It is easy to be furious. It is harder to remember that she married a man three decades older when she was eighteen, spent her youth in the shadow of power, and has never really had a life of her own. That does not excuse the boat. But the outrage might spare a thought for the woman who never got to choose. Contrast that, however, with the Abuja woman whose garden was razed in Mpape. She backed the APC. She believed her loyalty would protect her. The bulldozer does not check party membership. Her crying video is the most honest thing to come out of the FCT this week.
The Falconets lost 1-0 to Colombia in the U-20 World Cup quarter-finals. They beat England 3-0 in the previous round and had high hopes. It ended in disappointment, not shame. But talent without investment is a recurring Nigerian story. Meanwhile, edible oil tanker drivers will strike from tomorrow unless the government resolves a jurisdiction dispute with petroleum tanker drivers, and food safety suffers when tankers that once carried petrol now carry cooking oil. There is better news: Nigeria performed its first tele-robotic surgery, removing a cancerous kidney with the surgeon operating remotely from Redeemer’s Health Village. Distance, for once, did not decide who got safe surgery.
Twenty NSCDC officers have been suspended after thirty-seven suspected illegal miners died in custody in Niger State. A survivor said sixty-five men were packed into one cell until they could not breathe. Suspension is not prosecution. The panel must deliver consequences. NIHSA has warned fifteen states of severe flooding. Nigeria’s 500 indigenous languages are dying at dinner tables, not in parliaments. And the government will mark the 66th Independence Day with a scaled-down ceremony focused on reflection. Reflection is honest. There is little to celebrate.
May the dead find rest. May the living find sense.
Warmly,
Lolade