Crypto will ‘come to life’ in Nigeria, central bank governor says

CC™ Financial News

By Helen Partz

Emefiele said the Nigerian government will do its best to prevent crypto from being used to finance illicit activities.

At a 279th meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee in Abuja, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele expressed confidence that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) will be legal in the country, Business Insider reported late last week..

Emefiele did not directly mention a decision to reverse the CBN’s February ban of institutions from buying and selling crypto but noted that the bank has been investigating the industry:

“We are committed in the CBN, and I can assure everybody that digital currency will come to life even in Nigeria [...] Under cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, Nigeria comes 2nd, while on the global side of the economy, Nigeria comes 27th. We are still conducting our investigation, and we will make our data available.”

Emefiele also said the Nigerian government will do its best to prevent crypto from being used to finance illicit activities. “We found out that a substantial percentage of our people are getting involved in cryptocurrency, which is not the best. Don’t get me wrong, some may be legitimate, but most are illegitimate,” he said.

The banker also expressed concerns over the crypto market crash in mid-May, which has been largely attributed to Tesla’s decision to suspend Bitcoin payments for its cars and Elon Musk’s further criticism of BTC:

“We saw the market collapse. Initially, when Elon Musk tweeted around the time when we said our banking and payment facilities are no longer available for cryptocurrency transactions, and he tweeted that he will invest $1.5 billion, and the price went up. He now tweeted and raised a few concerns, and the thing plunged.”

The CBN did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

As previously reported, Nigeria has emerged as the biggest source of Bitcoin trading volume in Africa as of August 2020, also becoming one of the fastest-growing crypto markets in the world. According to data from Bitcoin P2P marketplace Paxful, Nigeria ranked second only to the United States in trading volume as of December 2020.

Amid the growing adoption of Bitcoin, Nigeria’s national currency, the naira, has been falling. “Bitcoin has made our currency almost useless or valueless,” Senator Sani Musa of the Niger East Senatorial District said in February. Following Emefiele’s latest remarks, the naira dropped 1.2% to near a three-and-half year low on the black market at the close of the week.

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$700m Sugar investment will end Nigeria’s importation – Dangote

CC™ PersPective

By Gift Oba

The President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has said the company is committed to ensuring that Nigeria ends the importation of raw sugar by “actively intensifying its execution of the Sugar Backward Integration.”

Dangote said the group has committed over $700 million to land acquisition, machinery, infrastructure, manpower, and other impactful activities to boost local production.

He spoke on Wednesday in Abeokuta, Ogun State, during the ‘Dangote Special Day’ at the ongoing 14th Gateway International Trade Fair.

Represented by Tunde Mabogunje, Regional Director, Lagos/Ogun, Dangote Cement, the industrialist maintained that Dangote Sugar, as a leading brand, has made a remarkable impact on Nigeria’s sugar sector.

He said: “The company is committed to ensuring that Nigeria ends the importation of raw sugar by actively intensifying its execution of the Sugar Backward Integration. In this regard, it has committed over $700 million to land acquisition, machinery, infrastructure, manpower, community relations, corporate social responsibility, CSR, and other impactful activities.

“Similarly, to support the government in food security, we are also investing in the agricultural sector. These agricultural products will soon be in the market.”

Speaking on the trade fair, he said, “Our expectations, therefore, are that through this trade fair, we will be able to expand awareness of our innovative products, generate sales, attract prospective buyers, improve the image of our brands, and open new markets that will further translate to job creation and overall economic development.

“We are confident that this longstanding partnership with OGUNCCIMA will not only be beneficial to both of us but also to Nigeria and, indeed, the African economy as a whole.”

Meanwhile, the Speaker of the Ogun State House of Assembly, Oludaisi Elemide, applauded Dangote Group for its various interventions and urged the company to improve its environmental friendliness.

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Sharia proposition in Southwest politically and ill-motivated – Ahmadiyya leader

CC™ PersPective

By Sivowaku Abiodun

The Amir and National Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at of Nigeria, Alhaji Alatoye AbdulAzeez has expressed concerns that recent discussions surrounding Sharia law enforcement in the Southwest might be driven by political motivations rather than genuine religious intentions.

The Amir stated this at a press conference on “World Crisis and the Pathway to Peace”, where he received the managing director of Muslim Television Ahmadiyya (MTA) International, Sir Munir-ud-Din Shams, at Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at headquarters in Lagos.

Alhaji AbdulAzeez described the comments as overly sentimental, clarifying that Sharia courts have long been established in the Southwest region.

He cited a Sharia court in Ojokoro as an example, noting recent disagreements on marital issues where individuals chose between customary and Sharia courts.

Alhaji AbdulAzeez affirmed that Nigeria remains a secular state, with Sharia courts serving only Muslims, adding that, “The Southwest is peaceful, with various religious groups living harmoniously. Sharia courts resolve issues between Muslims who opt to use them. No non-Muslim can be forced to adhere to Sharia law.”

He suggested that the recent discussions might be politically motivated, reiterating that Sharia has existed in Nigeria long before anyone began mobilising for crises and wars. According to him, this is a case of political Sharia rather than religious.

The Amir highlighted concerns over the wrongful application of Sharia such as stoning individuals to death for expressing themselves, which is a criminal offence under Nigerian law.

He stressed that Sharia courts in states like Lagos, Ogun and Kwara primarily handle marital and inheritance laws, not criminal offences.

Drawing from the recently published book by the worldwide head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, His Holiness Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Sir Munir-ud-Din Shams assessed the current world situation, describing it as a turbulent time marked by a continuing global economic crisis and alarming parallels to the period preceding the Second World War.

Leadership News

Flashback: Neo-Colonialism as the golden shackle: IMF declares 40% of African countries buried in debt..... Rich continent, poor masses

CC™ Global News

The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, says 40 per cent of African countries are in debt distress. 

She described Africa as a continent of opportunities and one with many troubles, noting that the focus was to help countries have sound macro-economic policies, improve the investment climate and show it to the rest of the world.

"Africa is a continent of opportunities and what we are looking for is for this opportunity to be harnessed to the maximum. It is also a continent with many troubles; so, we have to be mindful of these risks especially security risks," she said.

Commenting on the debt levels of countries, the newly appointed IMF MD said, "Are we worried about debt levels in Africa? Yes, because 40 per cent of the countries have gone into debt distress levels.

"In some cases, we are concerned about that but in other cases, we see that investment is going to pay off over time.

"Take the case of Kenya, we advise Kenya to be more cautious in building debt but we have seen good macroeconomic policy in Kenya.

"In cases where debt is dangerous like Zambia, we do say you need to get a handle on your debt. In Ethiopia, we say you need to renegotiate some of your debts because it is non-concessional for things that should be on a concessional basis.

"One has to remember that debt on its own is not bad. It is bad when it goes with the wrong things and when it goes with the speed that the economy cannot handle."

Georgieva said countries that were experiencing higher growth rate had done so by borrowing for investments that could generate growth and eliminating red tape for local and foreign investors.

She said the IMF would hold a 'concentrated' meeting with African leaders in December to discuss debt sustainability.

Source: The Cable

SUNDAY FLASHBACK: This is MAGA America - The White Privilege to terrorize

Armed White Michigan protesters of COVID-19 lockdown

CC™ Introspective - By John Pavlovitz 

As a white man watching the Michigan protests of Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders, all I could think was: Black people don’t get to do this. Muslims don’t get to do this. Latinos don’t get to do this. People who look different in any way don’t get to do this. 

They don’t get to swarm American capitol buildings in tactical gear with high-powered weapons, screaming in close proximity to police officers. 

They don’t get to dress up like Call of Duty cosplayers and attempt to physically intimidate politicians into bending to their wills. They don’t get to get to stop traffic in city streets decked out like they work at the Death Star and brazenly wield semi-automatic rifles. They don’t get to terrorize decent people and walk away. 

Only white people get to do this. This violence is a singular privilege afforded to caucasian men in America. 

People of color aren’t afforded this luxury. They can’t even get close to such ugliness. Heck, they barely get to breathe. 

No, they’re shot as 12-year olds walking through the park with toy guns. They’re choked out selling cigarettes on street corners. They’re assassinated while unarmed in their cars during routine traffic stops. They’re gunned down in their homes by uninvited police officers. They’re driven into the pavement by overzealous security guards. They’re demonized as mothers declaring that their murdered children’s lives mattered. They’re publicly vilified by white presidents for silently kneeling on NFL sidelines. 

Black people don’t get to to wear menacing masks or flash handguns on courthouse steps or accost strangers looking like dollar store stormtroopers, in an attempt to frighten people. They frighten people by simply existing in their blackness. 

They frighten people by lingering in coffee shops. They frighten people by eating lunch in their cars. They frighten people by standing in front of their own homes. 

In those places where they are simply and lawfully living, they are met with disapproving side-eye glances, greeted with clutched purses, and assailed by an army of terrified Karens, whose itchy text trigger fingers easily dial 911 when non-white young people congregate in a park or crowd their favorite Chick-Fil-A dining room. 

This privilege has always existed, but it’s been decades since it’s been afforded this wide a birth, this long a leash, and such kid gloves from leaders. The threatening displays of white rage around the country lately, are happening with such frequency and ferocity, because participants know that they have in this president, a dedicated advocate, a willing partner, a powerful accomplice. 

It’s no coincidence that in the middle of the fight to oppose stay-at-home protections by Blue governors choosing humanity over commerce, Trump tweeted out seeming non sequitur invocations to LIBERATE several cities and warned of second amendment encroachment. Though on their surface the subjects seemed unrelated to stopping the spread of the virus, these tweets were clear dog whistles for his snarling white base to suit up, strap on weapons, and provide the free muscle in his reckless push to reopen American in the throes of a pandemic, knowing they’d never be held accountable. 

This is MAGA America in its dawning renaissance of outward racism, showing us what is at stake as we approach another election. We aren’t just choosing a president or party to steward us through the coming years, we’re making a statement on what we will and will not tolerate as a people. 

What we witnessed in Michigan was an act of terrorism, by the very definition of the word. We have seen many such acts this week, and if November allows this malevolence another four years, they will seem tame. The self-appointed soldiers in the army of the lord will grow more brazen and become more violent in their holy war to make America whiter—so decent white people need to resist them in the streets, on social media, and at the polls. 

I fully suspect people of color will oppose this presidency in large numbers, because they see the disparity. 

What I hope and pray, is that more white people, especially those who claim to be Christian, will also stand to reject the supremacy and racism that yields such willful homegrown terrorism; that we will use the unearned currency of our privilege to declare this violence un-American and inhuman and unacceptable. 

White terrorists can no longer have a friend in the White House — not if we really want to make America great. 

Source/Credits: Jеff Kоwаlsky and Senator Dаynа Pоlеhаnki; Milwaukee Independent and johnpaplovitz.com

The toxic legacy of the Confederacy and why the monuments remain a painful vestige of its sordid past

Caroline Randall Williams

By Caroline Randall Williams

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South. 

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument. 

Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. 

But there are still those — like President Trump and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective. 

I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow. 

According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help. 

It is an extraordinary truth of my life that I am biologically more than half white, and yet I have no white people in my genealogy in living memory. No. Voluntary. Whiteness. I am more than half white, and none of it was consensual. White Southern men — my ancestors — took what they wanted from women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power, and then failed to claim their children. 

What is a monument but a standing memory? An artifact to make tangible the truth of the past. My body and blood are a tangible truth of the South and its past. The black people I come from were owned by the white people I come from. The white people I come from fought and died for their Lost Cause. And I ask you now, who dares to tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals? 

You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter. 

And here I’m called to say that there is much about the South that is precious to me. I do my best teaching and writing here. There is, however, a peculiar model of Southern pride that must now, at long last, be reckoned with. 

This is not an ignorant pride but a defiant one. It is a pride that says, “Our history is rich, our causes are justified, our ancestors lie beyond reproach.” It is a pining for greatness, if you will, a wish again for a certain kind of American memory. A monument-worthy memory. 

But here’s the thing: Our ancestors don’t deserve your unconditional pride. Yes, I am proud of every one of my black ancestors who survived slavery. They earned that pride, by any decent person’s reckoning. But I am not proud of the white ancestors whom I know, by virtue of my very existence, to be bad actors. 

Among the apologists for the Southern cause and for its monuments, there are those who dismiss the hardships of the past. They imagine a world of benevolent masters, and speak with misty eyes of gentility and honor and the land. They deny plantation rape, or explain it away, or question the degree of frequency with which it occurred. 

To those people it is my privilege to say, I am proof. I am proof that whatever else the South might have been, or might believe itself to be, it was and is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life. 

The dream version of the Old South never existed. Any manufactured monument to that time in that place tells half a truth at best. The ideas and ideals it purports to honor are not real. To those who have embraced these delusions: Now is the time to re-examine your position. 

Either you have been blind to a truth that my body’s story forces you to see, or you really do mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed, and you must at last acknowledge your emotional investment in a legacy of hate. 

Either way, I say the monuments of stone and metal, the monuments of cloth and wood, all the man-made monuments, must come down. I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels. 

Caroline Randall Williams(@caroranwill) is the author of “Lucy Negro, Redux” and “Soul Food Love,” and a writer in residence at Vanderbilt University. Ms. Williams' oped piece was originally published in the New York Times.