The Image of the week

SOME CHILDREN OF SUKUR VILLAGE IN ADAMAWA

Where you are is not the issue but your Decision to make it. Tell me what you think About this picture.

NAN

Nigeria: Baba Suwe - NDLEA Gets Order to Deposit N25 Million With Court's Registrar

An Ikeja High Court on Friday ordered the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) to deposit the N25 million judgment sum awarded in favour of Nollywood Star, Babatunde Omidina (a.k.a Baba Suwe) with the court's Chief Registrar.

Justice Yetunde Idowu ordered that the deposit should be made within the next 21 days.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the judge had on Nov. 24, 2011 ordered the NDLEA to pay Omidina the money as damages.

The money was to compensate Omidina for his arrest and detention by the agency for nine days without a valid court order.

The court also ordered the agency to publish a public apology to Omidina in two widely read national dailies.

The judge said :"The N25 million is to be deposited with the registrar in an interest-yielding account and in a bank agreed upon by the parties in the suit.

"This should be done pending hearing and determination of the appeal filed by the NDLEA against the court's judgment at the Appeal Court in Lagos.

Idowu, while granting the application of stay of execution of the court's judgment filed by the NDLEA, said the above conditions must be met by the agency.

According to her, leaving the judgment sum to the judgment debtor will "smack of an unfair advantage".

She said the NDLEA had failed to provide sufficient proof of its actual resources and expenditure before the court.

"An order for stay of execution should not be sought to serve as a substitute for the judgment the trial court denied the party," Idowu ruled.

NDLEA's lawyer, Mr Femi Oloruntoba, had on Dec. 6, 2011 filed an appeal against the judgment at the Appeal Court and on Feb. 8, he also approached the court for a stay of execution of the judgment.

He argued that the judgment of the appellate court would be rendered nugatory should the NDLEA succeed in its appeal if an order of stay was not granted by the lower court.

Oloruntoba said the apology could not be published because it would prejudice their case at the appellate court.

He said the NDLEA was "impecunious" and that paying Omidina the N25 million damages would deprive the agency of funds to perform other vital statutory functions.

Opposing the application, Omidina's lawyer, Mr Bamidele Aturu, had urged the court to refuse it, saying the court has jurisdiction to entertain the matter and also award the damages.

Aturu urged the court to order the agency to deposit the judgment sum with the Chief Registrar, who in turn, would deposit it in an interest-yielding account. (NAN)

Who is to be Blamed? Chelsea players or The Boss?

Chelsea’s problem revealed! The true story! by Tushar L.Kuzhi

People can debate all life long whether Ancelotti could had done a better job at Chelsea, would Hiddink have been a better option than AVB, whether Chelsea would had lifted the Champions League if Jose Mourinho was still the manager. But the real deal is, the managers aren’t the one’s who’s supposed to bear the full deal of blame. For me, the manager is worth of maybe just 40% of the blame. 40% lies with the players. 20% lies with Roman Abramovich himself. I’ll explain my views.

Take an instance of Barcelona and Manchester United (keep your hatred for the clubs aside for now). They both have a good manager. But do they always get things right? Barcelona has flirted with experiments ever since. I’ll give a combined list of where both teams have flirted. CM at CB, CB at RB, Winger at ST, CM at ST, youth player starting a big game, ST at CAM, CM at RB/LB. They have used the central midfielders almost everywhere. Chelsea, luckily were blessed because only maybe once or twice had to make such alterations in recent times. The difference? Barca and Man UTD won almost 75% of the games where they had made such alterations. And Chelsea lost or drew in all.

Debaters can debate all they want about the decisions AVB takes. If he leave Frank Lampard on the bench, they say the manager has problems with the seniors. If he plays Frank Lampard, they say he is afraid to replace the old guard and so starts the underperforming stars everytime (yes, that goes to all, all of our old guard has lacked consistency, maybe Ashley was the most inconsistent of them all).

If he plays Drogba, why is he not playing Torres, if he plays Torres, why is he not playing Drogba. Drogba is certainly not the player he once was. He once said he felt disgusted to come to Chelsea because he wanted to stay at Marseille, but gradually he became our heart and soul, but that heart and soul is now old, and less viscious. He decides to play a pass to a nearby player rather than shoot selfishly, he decides to come back to defend, he has lost his predator skills. That doesn’t mean he is bad but he is not the REAL DORGBA. Terry and controversies have become a habit now. the media hates him so much that they don’t fail to exaggerate any small stories. Actually they hate all of Chelsea, always looking for our downfall and failure and negatives.

When a manager sets a team into play, whatever formation, whoever plays, the players representing the club of Chelsea’s calibre must know what they are supposed to bring on stage. Against teams like West Brom, Swansea, Fulham, etc. we cannot be expected to have our full first team on the pitch, still we have 70% of the first team at least, still we lose ground, is it the problem of the manager? I don’t think so, it is surely the players. The current crop of players don’t know what is expected of them, they are clueless of what to do next, maybe the manager doesn’t motivate them enough, but experience is a thing Chelsea never lacked. Still we lose, draw.

When I said Roman is at blame too, I want to say, firstly I’m so proud to have him our owner. He cares for the club, he spends for the club, he desires success for the club and not just the profits. The real problem is that, whenever there is a problem in performance, instead of backing the manager with more firepower in form of classy players, he decides to stick with the players and fire the manager. Ancelotti once justified Roman by saying, “It is easier to change one manager, than a whole team.” But how long will the same team play? How can a manager create tricks from a pack of cards the whole world is well aware of. They know what we can do, what we will do, how we play, how we defend. Roman is like a rich dad with spoilt kids, the kids are not only the players, but the fans too. Roman listens to the fans desires to bring someone in, to sack the manager or something else.

But again, even if I like AVB, I’d want Roman to solve his differences with Jose Mourinho and bring him back, for a long long spell this time. It doesn’t relate to any problem I have with AVB, but to the relation of the club with Jose. Chelsea loves Jose and Jose loves Chelsea, what else does a fan need?

Andre Villas-Boas: The highs and lows at Stamford Bridge

Andre Villas-Boas has been sacked by Chelsea after less than a year in charge at Stamford Bridge.

Roman Abramovich's gamble on the 34-year-old has spectacularly backfired, with Villas-Boas paying the price for failing to deliver silverware.

Now Chelsea's Russian owner is looking for his eighth manager in nine years.

BBC Sport takes a look back at the highs and the lows of Villas-Boas's short reign. Here's what happened:

22 June 2011 : Four years after leaving Stamford Bridge, where he was a member of Jose Mourinho's backroom team, Andre Villas-Boas returns on a three-year contract after Chelsea agree to pay a £13.3m compensation fee to secure his services from Porto, where he has been in charge for 11 months.

29 June 2011 : Villas-Boas gives his first press conference as Chelsea manager. "I wouldn't be satisfied if we don't win the Premiership. The domestic title is always the priority," he said.

27 August 2011: Goals by Jose Bosingwa, Frank Lampard and Juan Mata earn Chelsea a 3-1 home win over Norwich and catapult Chelsea into second place in the table.

18 September 2011 : After a five-match unbeaten start to the season, Villas-Boas suffers his first setback, a 3-1 defeat at Manchester United. "As I said before, nothing that happened here would mean anything in the Premier League table," he said. "It is an unexpected league. All of the five contenders are there. Anything can happen. The most regular is United at the moment but we showed we are up to the level of the champions."

2 October 2011: Frank Lampard scores a hat-trick while Daniel Sturridge is on target twice as Villas-Boas enjoys his biggest win as Chelsea boss, a 5-1 victory at Bolton.

23 October 2011 : The rot begins. A 1-0 defeat by Queens Park Rangers sparks a run of five defeats in nine games in all competitions.

25 October 2011: The manager gives his backing to John Terry over allegations he racially abused Anton Ferdinand in the defeat by QPR. Terry denies the claims.

25 November 2011 : A bullish Villas-Boas says Roman Abramovich is fully behind him after revealing he has had talks with the Russian owner following Chelsea's slump in form. "Everybody wants to get out of a situation like this. Self-confidence and self-belief is what we need now and everybody wants to get it," he said.

29 November 2011 : Chelsea crash out of the Carling Cup following a 2-0 home defeat by Liverpool.

31 December 2011: A 3-1 home defeat by Aston Villa means Chelsea start the new year 11 points adrift of Premier League leaders Manchester City.

11 February 2012: Villas-Boas describes the 2-0 defeat at Everton as one of Chelsea's worst performances of the season and says it was his fault. "I'll go back to my pre-planning and decision-making," he said.

20 February 2012: He asks the club's hierarchy to make it clear they back his vision for the Blues' long-term future - but nothing is forthcoming from owner Roman Abramovich.

21 February 2012 : Villas-Boas reveals captain John Terry will miss at least a month with a damaged knee which will require surgery. "Four weeks would be excellent, but normally it's six weeks. We'll have to wait and see how the operation goes. Four weeks? Hopefully the player can return in that time frame," he said.

Adeboye assures of peace

GENERAL Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, who turned 70 years, on Friday, has assured the president and the people of Nigeria that there would peace in every part of the country, stressing that forces militating against peace in Nigeria would soon be consumed by the fire of God.

Adeboye @ 70

Preaching a sermon entitled; “Let the fire fall” at a special Holy Ghost Service which coincided with his 70th birthday, Adeboye told the representative of the president at the occasion and Health Minister, Dr. Onyeabuchi Chukwu, that whether the enemies like it or not,  Jonathan would succeed.

Fear Not/: Mr. President

“Since you described the president’s letter as a personal one, I will also personally reply him, but I want you to let him know that there will be peace in the country when the fire of God falls from heaven,” he said.

“The beginning of the end of violence in this country is now. Whether the enemies like it or not, there will be peace in Nigeria and the enemies of this country will be put to shame. I didn’t want to say this before, but within one week God will expose them and this country will sing a new song and will prosper.

“Everybody in this world has a purpose and destiny, and when God releases his fire, cases of insecurity in the country will cease”. He urged Nigerians to pray and seek the face of God for His mercy to “release His fire on the country”.

Adeboye who had desired from God a rare birthday gift of 70,000 babies within the church this year and 700,000 new converts also used the occasion to announce the birth of 15 babies within two days of the special Holy Ghost service.

According to him, the babies who were delivered at the Redeemed Maternity Home within the Redemption City were made up of 12 boys and three girls. The children and their mothers were in perfect condition.

Several thousands of Nigerians who desired to attend the special Holy Ghost Service could not make it to the Redemption Camp venue of the spiritual fiesta as a result of the heavy traffic on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. All approaches on the road were completely and totally taken over and many who were able to make it, did so after spending over six hours for a journey of less than 42 kilometers.

Nigerian boxer, Afolabi Becomes WBO Champ

Nigerian born British boxer, Ola Afolabi has emerged the interim World Boxing Organisation, WBO cruiserweight champion.

The 31-year old Afolabi, (19-2-3, 9 KOs), took his Russian contender and former interim title holder, Valery Brudov (39-4, 28 KOs) to the cleaners in their bout held at the Esprit Arena, Düsseldorf in Germany early Sunday.

Referee Gino Rodriguez saved Brudov from his own bravery after the fifth round to stop further punishment in the hands of Afolabi.

Brudov, who accepted the fight two weeks ago, was rusty but willing to bring some heat to the WBO number one Afolabi, who was also ranked number four by the WBA and number seven by both the WBC and the IBF.

Brudov marched forward and threw looping shots but the British pugilist easily slipped them with his supreme defense. He kept Brudov at the end of his jab, while adding stinging right swings occasionally and left hooks to the body to make Brudov’s diet a bit more diverse.

In the third round, Afolabi went after Brudov and landed two right shots to put him down on his knees.

Brudov, 35, refused to surrender and continued to fight. The fourth stanza also ended in Afolabi’s favor. He wasn’t very active but when he opened up he tagged the Russian once again.

The punishment continued to accumulate in the fifth, and midway into the round, Afolabi landed several left and right hand bombs, which knocked Brudov down for the second time.
He got up and went on, trying to harm Afolabi, but the Nigerian landed several huge right hand bombs at the bell.

Brudov didn’t go down but he was dazed and wobbly, forcing referee Rodriguez to stop the bout.
Afolabi may battle WBO full champion Marco Huck, if the interim champion decides to stay in the cruiserweight limit.

Chelsea Again! Sacks Coach today.

Andre Villas-Boas axed by Chelsea after only less than a season in charge

ANDRE Villas-Boas has been sacked by Chelsea after less than a season in charge at Stamford Bridge, the Premier League club announced in a statement on their website on Sunday.

Former Chelsea midfielder Roberto Di Matteo, who had been working as Villas-Boas's assistant, has been appointed interim manager until the end of the season.

Villas-Boas, who arrived from Porto in June 2011, paid the price for a dismal run of results that left Chelsea in fifth place and on the verge of elimination from this season's Champions League after a 3-1 defeat at Napoli in the last 16 first leg.

The 34-year-old also had strained relationships with several of Chelsea's senior stars, including England midfielder Frank Lampard.

What About This? When Last did you see something like this?

Snake in Action

Tell me.

I'm tied up with something for the moment.

Storyline: What would you say when you are very busy with something and can't just put it aside even though your wife is calling you?
	Priscilla:	Rich, can you come downstairs for a minute right now?
	Richard:	I'm sorry I can't.  I'm tied up with something urgent at the moment.
	Priscilla:	Oh, are you on the stupid net again?  When are you going to get off?
	Richard:	Just a minute, Dear!  I'm looking at a new jewelry site.  I wanna make sure I get the right gift for your birthday, don't I?
	Priscilla:	Oh?  In that case, I'm sorry to bother you.  Take as much time as you need.
	Richard:	No problem.

JTF and Boko Haram. 4 dies

Four Boko Haram men have been killed by the Joint Task Force (JTF) in Maiduguri, the troubled Borno State capital where the sect’s members have been burning schools in a new approach to their increasingly violent insurgency.  
Borno State Commissioner for Education Musa Inuwa Kubo, said seven schools - including two yesterday - have been burnt down in the last few days.

Thousands of children have been left without schools in the middle of their term. 
“The destruction of schools in Maiduguri is a great setback to the state,” Inuwa told Reuters. “It is really a sad development because the schools belong to the people and the poor are suffering as a result of the destruction,” he lamented.
The JTF said it gunned down four Boko Haram members in Maiduguri on Wednesday.

JTF spokesman, Lt Col Hassan Mohammed, spoke while parading the body of one of the sect members at Bayan-Quarters area, where he was killed while driving in a Volkswagen Golf taxi car at about 6:30pm on Wednesday. He said the sect members might have been out for a deadly operation, given the heavy arms in their possession. 

Lt. Col Mohammed described the day’s operation as “a bad day for the sect”.
Their refusal to stop at check points, Lt Col Mohammed said, prompted soldiers in the JTF to trail them; “and as they made attempt to escape, our men did not waste chance to bring them down”.

As a result of Boko Haram activities and the reaction of the security agencies, at least 10,000 people have fled northern Nigeria for neighbouring Niger and Chad to escape a military sweep targeting Bokon Haram members, officials said yesterday.
Niger’s government said at least 10,000 of its citizens had returned from northern Nigeria over the past six months, and the International Organisation for Migration said more than 800 Chadians had returned in recent days.

The influx of people into Niger, a landlocked desert state that is also dealing with tens of thousands of refugees from Libya’s war and a rebellion in northern Mali, could worsen an expected food shortage there this year.

“According to statistics, we’ve seen from the police, we have 10,000 Nigeriens that have returned on their own since the start of violence in Nigeria,” said Boube Yaye, Niger’s permanent secretary in charge of Nigeriens abroad.
He added that at least 13 Nigeriens living in northern Nigeria had been falsely arrested in the sweep, and appealed to Nigerian security forces to show restraint.

Qasim Sufi, of the International Organization for Migration, said returnees to Chad, including many children who had been enrolled in Koranic schools in Nigeria, were fleeing soldiers targeting Boko Haram members in their villages.
“They’re all saying the same thing, that it is getting very bad in their villages,” he said.
The United States yesterday issued a travel warning on Nigeria following violent crime committed by armed gangs and militants wearing police uniforms, the U.S. State Department said.

The State Department’s travel advisory warning said: “Violent crime committed by individuals and gangs, as well as by persons wearing police and military uniforms, remain a problem throughout the country.”

The advisory noted that Boko Haram took responsibility for a series of attacks in February that killed dozens of people and left many more injured. The State Department said kidnapping remains a security concern as well. Five U.S. citizens were kidnapped in Nigeria last year and another was abducted from his vehicle in January.

The advisory said foreigners shouldn’t travel to areas designated as conflict areas by the government as Abuja may likely consider such activity illegal.
“The state of emergency gives the government sweeping powers to search and arrest without warrants,” the State Department warned.

A rebel with a cause

The late Chukwumeka Ojukwu did not just call out his people for war. He was a rebel with a cause, writes Prof. Wole Soyinka in this tribute

"Having mandated me to proclaim on your behalf, and in your name, that Eastern Nigeria be a sovereign independent Republic, now, therefore I, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Oj4kwu, Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, by virtue of the authority, and pursuant to the principles recited above, do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria together with her continental shelf and territorial waters, shall, henceforth, be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of The Republic of Biafra.”

With these words, on May 30 of the year 1967, a young, bearded man, thirty-four years of age in a fledgling nation that was barely seven years old, plunged that nation into hitherto uncharted waters, and inserted a battalion of question marks into the presumptions of nation-being on more levels than one. That declaration was not merely historic, it re-wrote the more familiar trajectories of colonialism even as it implicitly served notice on the sacrosanct order of imperial givens. It moved the unarticulated question: “When is a nation?” away from simplistic political parameters - away from mere nomenclature and habitude - to the more critical arena of morality and internal obligations. It served notice on the conscience of the world, ripped apart the hollow claims of inheritance and replaced them with the hitherto subordinate, yet logical assertiveness of a ‘people’s will’. Young and old, the literate and the uneducated, urban sophisticates and rural dwellers, citizen and soldier - all were compelled to re-examine their own situating in a world of close inter-relations and distant ideological blocs, bringing many back to that basic question: Just when is a nation?
 Throughout world history, many have died for, but without an awareness of the existential centrality of that question. The Biafran act of secession was one that could claim that its people had direct and absolute intimacy with the negative corollary of that question. Their brutal, immediately antecedent circumstances ensured that they could provide one or more truthful and urgent answers to the obverse of the question, which would then read: When is a nation not?
 Chukuwemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, thrown by Destiny onto that critical moment of truth as a leader, became the voice, the actualising agent of their overwhelming recognition. He heard the answers given to an interrogatory that proceeded from gross human violation, and he responded as a leader. In so doing, he challenged the pietisms of former colonial masters and the sanctimoniousness of much of the world. He challenged an opportunist construct of nationhood, mostly externally imposed, and sought to replace it, under the most harrowing circumstances, with a vital proposition that answered the purpose of humanity ­which is not merely to survive, but to exist in dignity. The world might cavil, the ideologues of undialectical unity might shake their head in dubious appraisal and denounce it as reckless adventurism. This, however was his reading, and even the most implacable enemy would hardly deny that his position transcended individual judgment, that it rested firmly on the collective will of a people who only awaited, and demanded the decisiveness of responsive leadership. 

Even today, many will admit that, in this very nation, that question remains unresolved, that more and more voices are probing that question, that all over the world, certainly within our own continent, multitudes are braving impossible odds, conceding immense sacrifices to contest the facile and complacent answer which proposes that whatever is, is divinely ordered, thus conferring the mantle of divinity on those whose spatial contrivances, called nations, continue to creak at the seams and consume human lives in their millions. Their mission is to preserve a sacrosanct order that was never accorded human legitimacy, as if it is not the very humanity that grants authority to the cohesion of any inert piece of real estate and thus, only such humanity contains, and can exercise a moral will, in designating it a habitable and productive entity that truly deserves the designation of - nation-being.

 Humanity must be allowed to make its errors. Indeed, errors are the unregistered provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are however degrees and qualities of errors, and the most lamentable of these are those that proceed from the lack of courage to interrogate whatever humanity has merely happened upon, or has been imposed upon us as thinking humans, failure to accept the resultant clamour, and the antecedents, of this clamour for change. This is what constitutes a primal error, a deficiency in responsive capabilities, a condition of mental enslavement. 

Change is not an absolute however, but is acknowledged to be the product of human curiosity, observation, creativity and transformative intelligence. Nor should change imply, of necessity, the destruction of what is viable, what amplifies the virtues that already make us human, or bind us together in a common pursuit of the amelioration of existence. Where stagnation, retrogression, or diminution of those very virtues, those very progressive qualities that make even self-fulfillment possible, stare a people in the face however, then, surely, the imperative of Change becomes irresistible, and its horizons exert the pressure of inevitability. That immense call fell upon the shoulders of our comrade Chukwuemeka, and he responded in the manner we all know, for better or ill, but he was not found wanting in the hour of decision.

The errors of Biafra are what we hear plenty of. Only rarely, with dismissive condescension, are rightly attributed those achievements against overwhelming odds that gave rise to that ancient adage: Necessity is the mother of invention, or even - Sweet are the uses of adversity. There were indeed cruelties here also, on. Biafran soil, as on her opposing side, and there was needless prolongation of human suffering. Biafra became a byword for paranoia. There were policies that pushed Biafra deeper and deeper into a self-dug bunker, from where the world became a blank surrounding, closing in, despite apertures that were clearly visible to many, even from within. A leader must accept responsibility for all such failings, with perhaps the meager consolation that, throughout the history of conflicts, and especially of conflicts based on a righteous perception of wrongs, such has been the fate of the beleaguered. But it would be a greater injustice from us if we fail in the apportionment of the positive, such as a rare inspirational leadership that held a people together and aroused an unprecedented level of creative adjustments, of practical inventiveness, the like of which has yet to be recorded on our continent. What a pity that policy and suspicion have led to the squandering of such bequests!

The regrets, individual and collective, the triumph of the dominance of human spirit, no longer matter to the man whose passage among us we are gathered here to commemorate, any more than the very questioning of structures of human co­-habitation. He who lived to embrace, to share bread implacable enemies, is no longer with us, yet he remains among us. We celebrate the fact that, in his lifetime, bitterness did turn several pages towards the chapter of reconciliation but - has it truly brought mutual understanding? Let us reflect on that question carefully today yes, a full half-century later - as we bid goodbye to one who did not flinch from the burden of choice, but boldly answered the summons of history. As the saying goes, the rest is also - history.

Finally, CBN Forex Policies Are Yielding Fruits As Naira Strengthens

Last year, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) churned out many policies geared at stabilising the naira, which, even up till this year looked untameable.

But judging from the increasing strengthening of the local currency, the central bank appears to have more than succeeded in its job of ensuring a stable currency investors can plan with.

The apex bank first showed signs that it was disturbed when it became clear that the old corridor of plus or minus three per cent of N150 to the dollar was no longer attainable. It was however moved to a maximum of N160 to give investors an encouraging band to plan with.

But as it were, the central bank has apparently surpassed its goal of ensuring price stability to the extent of narrowing the gap between the inter-bank or parallel markets and the official market. This has consequently reduced the lure for speculators.

During the last CBN Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, it expressed worry that the foreign exchange reserves had amounted to $32.64 billion as at the end of  December 2011, more or less flat relative to the $32.34 billion as at the end of December 2010, despite the higher oil price in 2011.

Notwithstanding the high prices of Nigeria’s reference crude oil (Bonny Light) which averaged $106.32 per barrel for the year, there has been little or no accretion to external reserves which was due to the high demand for foreign exchange in the market.

The committee noted that pressure on the exchange rate emanating from the high demand reflected the import-dependent nature of the economy, probably compounded by the activities of speculators.

But then, lately, the reduction in arbitrage opportunities in the oil marketing sectors combined with stronger controls in foreign exchange practices led to a mild moderation in foreign exchange net demand.

The official Wholesale Dutch Auction System (WDAS) rate (inclusive of one per cent commission) moved up from N151.62 per dollar in January 2011 to N154.45/$ in June and further to N158.21/US$1 in December 2011. The volatility in the official rates, however, was limited by the coefficient of variation being 1.28 per cent for the year as a whole compared to 0.32 per cent in 2010.

The committee had urged the CBN to strive to eliminate speculative demand for foreign exchange. The Committee also noted that as at January 24, 2012, the exchange rate was N158.57/$, while the foreign exchange reserves amounted to $34.18 billion on January 27, 2012, which could finance over six months of imports of goods and services. The outlook for oil prices in the short-term as well as the forecast demand/supply balance, suggested that the current exchange rate band should be retained while still achieving moderate continuous accretion to reserves.

Since then, the nation’s foreign reserves have continued to rise, though hesitantly. For instance, Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves rose to $34.93 billion as at February 16 this year from $34.67 billion on February 1, the highest level in more than four and a half months, raising hopes of a more stable exchange rate of the naira.

The figure had risen from $32.98 billion at the start of January, which was also higher than the $33.16 billion a year ago.

The reserves, at their current level, could finance more than six months of imports of goods and services, CBN said.

In a bid to boost reserves, CBN, had in the past called on businesses in the country to ensure that their activities and operations were geared towards generating foreign exchange, which they will in turn, use for their import needs.

According to it, the rising demand for foreign exchange would be curtailed if businesses were concerned about generating foreign exchange for the country and for their own use.

The CBN promised to continually ensure that it churns out policies that would lead to increased foreign exchange.

Thus, the naira has continuously firmed, a confirmation that central bank policies and advice to businesses are beginning to impact on the foreign exchange market.

At the inception of this week, the naira firmed marginally against the U.S dollar on the interbank on Monday, spurred by dollar sales by a unit of Royal Dutch Shell and declining demand for foreign exchange at the official window.

Somehow, the oil firms have decided to be part of the local foreign exchange (forex) market by selling dollars to the banks directly, thus reducing the pressure on the official market, thus the foreign exchange reserves.

The naira on Monday closed at N157.60 to the dollar on the interbank market, stronger than the N157.65 it closed on Friday.

Traders said the market reacted to the dollar inflows from Shell petroleum and signs of declining demand at the official window where the central bank sold fewer dollars than it initially offered for the third consecutive time in a row.

The central bank sold $138.70 million at N155.90 to the dollar, compared with $113.53 million sold at N155.90 to the dollar at the last auction on Wednesday. The regulator had initially offered $150 million at the bi-weekly forex auction.

Traders said more importers now buy dollars at the interbank because of the improved liquidity in the market and short turn-around time for transactions.

"We hope to see the naira appreciating further after the confirmation of the winning bids for the Shell petroleum dollar," one dealer said.

Dealers also said more oil multinationals were expected to sell dollars in the coming days as part of the monthly cyclical sales to obtain naira for their local obligations.