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News_Naija

Equity Market Loses N207bn Amid Easter Holiday

The Nigerian equity market suffered a setback in a holiday-shortened trading week, shedding N207bn in market capitalisation as investor sentiment remained mixed amid ongoing earnings releases and dividend declarations. Trading on the Nigerian Exchange Limited was limited to four days as the Federal Government declared Friday, April 18, and Monday, April 21, 2025, as public holidays to mark the Easter celebration. As a result, the benchmark All-Share Index declined by 0.32 per cent to close at 104,233.81 points, while market capitalisation dropped from N65.706tn in the previous week to N65.499tn, representing a loss of N207bn. The weekly report released by the NGX showed that investors traded a total of 1.525 billion shares worth N43.006bn in 51,156 deals. This represented a decline from the previous week’s 2.094 billion shares valued at N52.967bn in 64,612 deals, reflecting a slowdown in market activity due to the shortened trading period. Sectoral performance showed the financial services industry maintained its dominance, leading the activity chart with 1.122 billion shares valued at N24.015bn traded in 28,818 deals. This accounted for 73.56 per cent and 55.84 per cent of the total equity turnover volume and value, respectively. The ICT sector followed with 101.252 million shares worth N4.819bn in 2,541 deals, while the services industry recorded a turnover of 99.776 million shares worth N1.230bn in 3,063 deals. Access Holdings Plc, Fidelity Bank Plc, and Universal Insurance Plc were the most traded equities during the week by volume, accounting for a combined 448.105 million shares valued at N6.730bn in 6,481 deals. Their contribution represented 29.39 per cent of the total volume and 15.65 per cent of the total market value. Market breadth was relatively positive, with 31 equities appreciating, higher than 27 recorded in the previous week. 44 equities recorded price declines, lower than the 56 that lost value the prior week, while 72 equities closed flat, compared to 64 in the previous week. In the Exchange Traded Products segment, investors traded a total of 19,814 units valued at N3.572m in 62 deals, a significant decline from 111,693 units valued at N6.115m in 83 deals recorded the previous week. In the fixed income segment, the bond market also witnessed a decline in turnover, with 81,759 units worth N84.283m traded in 27 deals, compared to 144,487 units valued at N151.615m transacted in 100 deals the previous week. Despite the broader market decline, some sectoral indices posted gains. The Premium Index rose by 0.57 per cent, Pension gained 0.42 per cent, MERI Growth advanced by 2.67 per cent, Consumer Goods increased by 2.33 per cent, Oil & Gas was up 0.20 per cent, Lotus II rose 0.16 per cent, Growth added 0.26 per cent, Sovereign Bond advanced 0.39 per cent, and Pension Broad appreciated by 0.55 per cent. Meanwhile, the ASeM and Commodity indices closed flat. Meanwhile, trading commenced on Wema Bank Plc’s rights issue of 14.29 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each at N10.45 per share. The offer, based on two new ordinary shares for every three held as at the close of business on Wednesday, 5 March 2025, opened on Monday, 14 April 2025. The PUNCH reported that the Nigerian equities market closed positively on Thursday, as investors gained N239bn in market capitalisation. This reversed the losses recorded in previous sessions following a four-day trading week caused by the Easter public holidays.

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Worldnews

LIVE: Israel Bombs Gaza School-turned-shelter, Sparking Fire And Killing 10

Israeli air strike hits El Dorra Pediatric Hospital in Gaza City as health officials raise alarm over the suspension of a UN-backed polio vaccination campaign. Israeli blockade on Gaza: Food and aid supplies running out across the strip Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Futbol

Sheff Wed Players Not Paid Due To Chansiri Cashflow Issues

Sheffield Wednesday have failed to pay their players' wages for March due to cashflow problems suffered by owner Dejphon Chansiri. The club said it was a "temporary issue" due to debts owed to the 56-year-old Thai businessman, whose family control the Thai Union Group, the world's largest producer of canned tuna. Wednesday are 12th in the Championship - five points outside the play-off places - and face Hull City at home on Saturday. "Sheffield Wednesday can confirm a temporary issue with the payment of player salaries for the month of March," said a club statement. "This has occurred as a result of significant sums of money owed to the chairman's businesses which has in turn impacted on the club's immediate cashflow. "The chairman is working hard to resolve this situation at the earliest possible opportunity and in the meantime thanks everyone for their patience and understanding." The Professional Footballers' Association are aware of the Owls' issues and are in touch with the club's players. Chansiri headed up a Thai consortium which bought Wednesday from Milan Mandaric in January 2015, but his time in charge of the club has seen a number of financial challenges. In July 2019, Wednesday sold their Hillsborough stadium to Chansiri for about £60m in ensure they did not breach spending rules. Then in October 2023, Chansiri asked fans to raise £2m to help the club pay an outstanding debt to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and cover wages. Last November, the Owls were placed under a registration embargo by the EFL over amounts owed to HMRC. Chansiri's stewardship of the club has been criticised by fans, who have protested at matches this season, while his relationship with manager Danny Rohl has become strained. A growing number of fans are angry and demanding answers after it emerged that, not for the first time during Chansiri's reign as Sheffield Wednesday owner, the Owls players have not been paid on time. Many are asking why the club sells season tickets in an early-bird window before Christmas yet by March, there isn't enough money to even pay wages? A statement claims it's down to "significant sums of money" being owed to Chansiri's other businesses, "impacting immediate cashflow". However, you get the sense patience for a lot of people has run out. The club was placed under a second registration embargo in 12 months by the EFL last November over amounts owed to HM Revenue and Customs. Now this. How financially sustainable is this club? What exactly is the future of Sheffield Wednesday? These are questions that need to be answered with more than just a statement. Fans are worried and some will feel embarrassed. They deserve answers. This latest admittance will lead to growing calls for Chansiri to sell the club. The Owls might be five points off the play-offs but they lack the solid base that typically accompanies teams challenging for the top flight. Fans dream of a Premier League return after 25 years but it's not realistic in this environment. The club is a long way off in terms of infrastructure and finances. It's the latest reason why a talented young manager in Danny Rohl, the club's greatest asset, may leave amid reported interest from elsewhere.

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Worldnews

Away From The Global Spotlight, Eritreans Are Trapped In A Garrison State

The world must act to end Isaias Afwerki’s reign of perpetual war. American writer and security analyst Paul B Henze, who served in the Carter administration as a deputy to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, once made a very astute observation about Eritrea’s current president, Isaias Afwerki. In his 2007 book, Ethiopia in Mengistu’s Final Years: Until the Last Bullet, he noted “Isaias impressed me as remarkably similar in temperament and attitudes to Mengistu [Haile Mariam, Eritrea’s former dictator who has overseen the killings of tens of thousands of opposition figures and civilians]. He has many of the same mannerisms, a rather bulldoggish seriousness, a defensiveness behind a facade of feigned reasonableness that is not really convincing. One senses a stubborn, fundamentally authoritarian personality.” The similarities Henze saw between Mengistu and Isaias have proven correct and highly consequential over the last three decades. After declaring victory against the Mengsitu regime in 1991, Isaias was able to oversee the emergence of an independent, sovereign Eritrea. For a brief moment, Eritreans were full of hope. They assumed independence would bring more freedom and better economic prospects. There was talk of turning Eritrea into Africa’s Singapore. However, the euphoria of independence was short-lived. The dream of transforming Eritrea into a prosperous liberal democracy did not appeal to Isaias. He wanted his country to resemble not Singapore, but Sparta. He rejected the democratic constitution drafted by the pre-eminent Eritrean jurist Bereket Habte Selassie and ruled Eritrea with an iron fist. In no time, he turned Eritrea into a garrison state. He transformed Eritrean institutions and society at large into tools to fulfil his geo-political fantasies. Eritreans became unwilling pawns in the president’s many military schemes, with no space left for their personal dreams and aspirations. Isaias ruthlessly dealt with even his closest colleagues and allies who dared to suggest that Eritreans enjoy some basic liberties that people elsewhere in the world often take for granted. In May 2001, 15 senior Eritrean officials, many of whom had been on the president’s side throughout the independence war, issued an open letter urging him to reconsider his autocratic mode of governance and hold free and fair elections. At the time, three of the 15 officials were living abroad, and one eventually changed his position and rejoined the Isaias government. The remaining 11, however, were swiftly arrested on unspecified charges. More than 20 years later, the fates of these 11 men are still unknown. No one knows for sure if they are alive or dead. No legal or religious counsel or family member has been granted access to them. There have been no charges, no trials, no conviction and no sentence. Though these senior officials are among the most prominent in Eritrea to be meted such treatment, their fate is hardly unique. Anyone in Eritrea who dares to question the great wisdom of the infallible President Isaias meets the same fate. In the nightmarish gulag state that President Isaias created, no one is free to study, work, worship, run a business or engage in any other normal activities. There is a mandatory and indefinite military service which keeps every Eritrean citizen in servitude to the supreme leader for their entire lives. While everyone in Eritrea suffers from Isaias’s institutionalised tyranny, religious and ethnic minorities suffer the most. Religious persecution in the country is so extreme that in 2004 the US Department of State designated Eritrea as a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. There is also significant ethnic persecution in Isaias’s Eritrea. In a May 2023 report, for example, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, underlined the harsh conditions faced by the Afar community who inhabit the Dankalia area of the country. Babiker wrote: “The Afar are one of the most disenfranchised communities in Eritrea. For several decades, they have been subjected to discrimination, harassment, arbitrary arrests, disappearance, violence, and widespread persecution.” In the end, Paul Henze’s insight about the fundamentally autocratic personality of Isaias proved not only right, but also an understatement. The oppression and violence of Isaias’s rule in the past three decades matched and at times surpassed that of Mengitsu. Regrettably, the world rarely acknowledges the plight of Eritreans, who are forced to live their lives as unwilling servants and soldiers of their authoritarian president. The toll of Isais’s endless war schemes on Eritreans is still rarely mentioned in discussions about the region. Eritrea under Isaias is a country always on a war footing. Right now, it is not only agitating against Ethiopia, but also actively involved in the civil war in Sudan. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find a period in Eritrea’s post-independence history that it was not at war with one of its neighbours, or involved in some regional conflict or civil war. War is the modus vivendi of President Isaias. The world is now paying some attention to Eritrea, because of the looming risk of conflict with Ethiopia. But even if conflict between the two neighbours is somehow prevented, the misery of Eritreans stuck in Isaias’s garrison state will continue. Forgotten and left to their own devices, Eritreans will continue to suffer in a brutal dictatorship where the individual is seen just as fodder for the mighty Eritrean Defence Forces. This must not be allowed to continue. The world must not avert its gaze and forget about the plight of Eritreans once their country is no longer mentioned in the news. The world needs to act before more Eritreans lose their lives and dreams fighting in Isaias’s forever wars. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Follow Al Jazeera English:...