The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) has organized a one-day training programme for officers of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Command, aimed at strengthening compliance with Motor Third-Party Insurance and other compulsory insurance policies, as well as enhancing insurance policy verification processes. The training, held in Abuja, was themed “Building a Culture of Insurance Compliance: Police as Catalysts for Protecting Lives, Property and Enhancing Public Safety.” The programme was designed to equip police officers with the knowledge and skills required to promote compliance with compulsory insurance laws, verify the authenticity of insurance policies, and deepen public understanding…
Author: orientalnewsng
By Udo Ngele Artificial intelligence has become one of the defining conversations in boardrooms across Nigeria. Over the past year, I have participated in numerous conversations with business leaders about artificial intelligence. The enthusiasm is understandable. AI is changing how organizations operate, make decisions, engage customers, and deliver services. Hardly a boardroom meeting takes place today without some discussion around automation, machine learning, generative AI, or digital transformation. Recent workplace research also suggests that AI adoption is accelerating rapidly among Nigerian professionals, reinforcing that the conversation has moved beyond curiosity to practical business application. Yet I have noticed a…
Why Africa’s advantage in the AI economy may lie in governance rather than computing power By Oluwole Asalu For much of the past three years, the global conversation on artificial intelligence has centred on one question: who is winning the AI race? Every week brings another breakthrough. One country unveils a more powerful language model. Another announces billion-dollar infrastructure spending. Companies race to build faster systems and more capable autonomous agents. But that may be the wrong question. Every major technological shift eventually reaches a point where raw innovation stops being the deciding factor. When electricity became commonplace, the…
Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Joseph Olasunkanmi Tegbe, presided over the groundbreaking of three interconnected mini-grid projects in Adamawa State, covering the communities of Kofare, Saminaka and Mbamba. The projects have a combined capacity of 13.5 megawatts, 10MW at Kofare, 2.6MW at Saminaka, and 890kW at Mbamba, and were developed under the federal Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) Programme. The ceremony was attended by Adamawa State Governor Rt. Hon. Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, the state’s Deputy Governor, members of the State House of Assembly, Rural Electrification Agency (REA) Managing Director/CEO Abba Abubakar Aliyu and the REA management team, representatives…
Adamawa State has flagged off construction of 39 mini-grid projects, three interconnected mini-grids and 36 isolated mini-grids, expected to inject nearly 27 megawatts of electricity into communities across the state. The ceremony, attended by the state’s Executive Governor, Nigeria’s Minister of Power, and Rural Electrification Agency (REA) Managing Director/CEO Dr. Abba Aliyu, marks what organisers describe as one of the largest single-state distributed renewable energy rollouts under the federal Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) Programme. Speaking at the ceremony, Dr. Aliyu thanked the Minister of Power for his role in making rural electrification a national priority under…
L-R: Executive Director, Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), *Dr Aminu Muhtar Dan Amu*; the award recipient, and Managing Director/CEO, AMCON, *Mr Gbenga Alade*, and his wife, *Mrs Yetunde*; Head, Corporate Communications Department, *Mr Jude Nwauzor*; and a Non-Executive Director, and Board Member of AMCON, *Mr Charles Iyore*, at the just concluded 16th African Business Leadership Awards (ABLA) at House of Lords, United Kingdom. The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), Mr Gbenga Alade, at the 16th African Business Leadership Awards (ABLA), received the African Business Leadership Special Commendation Award in the United Kingdom (UK).…
L-R:* Hon. Ahmadu Usman Jaha, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Insurance and Actuarial Matters; Mrs. Ebelechukwu B. Nwachukwu, 27th Chairman, Nigerian Insurers Association; Mr. Olusegun Ayo Omosehin, Commissioner for Insurance/Chief Executive, National Insurance Commission; and Mr. Ekerete Ola Gam-Ikon, Deputy Commissioner for Insurance, Finance & Administration, National Insurance Commission Yemisi Izuora Take strong and bold initiative to build public trust in the Insurance industry, the Commissioner for Insurance, National Insurance Commission, NAICOM, Mr. Olusegun Ayo Omosehin, charges Mrs. Ebelechukwu B. Nwachukwu during her investiture ceremony as the 27th Chairman of the NIA today in Abuja. Omosehin, advised the Association,…
Uchenna Cecil izuora A single regulatory adjustment may be doing more to unlock Nigeria’s mini-grid sector than any funding announcement to date. Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency says a decision to raise the mini-grid capacity ceiling, from 1 megawatt to 5 megawatts for isolated systems, and up to 10 megawatts for interconnected ones, has removed a structural constraint that long kept mini-grid projects too small to attract serious institutional capital. REA Managing Director/CEO Dr. Abba Aliyu points to the change as one of three pillars behind the sector’s recent acceleration, alongside the $750 million DARES program and a construction pipeline…
Uche Cecil Izuora For decades, the story of Nigerian electricity has followed a familiar script: not enough megawatts, not enough transmission lines, not enough generators humming to life. But at this year’s Samuel Ibiyemi Memorial Lecture, honoring the late energy journalist who spent a career chronicling the sector’s struggles, Dr. Abba Aliyu, Managing Director/CEO of Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency, argued that the country has been asking the wrong question. It isn’t primarily an engineering problem. It’s a trust problem. “The challenge therefore is not simply producing more electricity,” Aliyu told the gathering. “It is producing a market that investors…
Uche Cecil Izuora The Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Dr Abba Aliyu, has said that mini-grids are no longer just household rural electrification projects, they now represent a highly viable commercial model for electricity delivery capable of de-risking Nigeria’s power sector and attracting massive private capital. Delivering a keynote on “From Subsidy to Solvency: Can Mini-Grids De-risk Nigeria’s Power Sector?”, at the inaugural Samuel Ibiyemi Memorial Lecture, Abba challenged the traditional perception of decentralized energy. He argued that the true transformation of Nigeria’s power sector lies in shifting public resources away from subsidizing systemic inefficiencies and…