Electron Native

DO YOU KNOW THAT.... 1. The River Niger Bridge at Onitsha was constructed between 1964 and 1965 by Dumez, a French construction company, and cost £5 million. Nigeria Source: AfDB 2. Patience Jonathan is one of Nigeria’s most-educated First Ladies, with an NCE, a B.Ed, and Msc from University of Port-Harcourt. 3. The highest peak in Nigeria is located in Taraba and is called Chappal Waddi which means “The Mountain of Death”. 4. There are 196 countries in the world and at least one Igbo person from Nigeria lives in every one of them. 5. The Pidgin word ‘Sabi’ came from ‘Saber’, Portuguese and Spanish for ‘to know’. Both country’s ships traded slaves from the Bight of Benin. 6. Katsina College (now Barewa College in Zaria) has produced 5 Nigerian Presidents/Heads of State since it was founded in 1921 in Katsina. 7. Ojukwu taught Murtala Mohammed and Ben Adekunle at Regular Officers Special Training School, Ghana. Both ‘fought’ their teacher during the civil war 8. At...

South Africa has gotten a thumbs up. This is because of the timeline for   the execution of her plan to overhaul its power sector by breaking up state utility Eskom. This will happen over the next three years and has been rated “somewhat optimistic,” by Standard & Poor's Global Ratings.   Eskom SA Source: The South African President Cyril Ramaphosa promised in February that he would split Eskimo into units for generation, transmission and distribution, to make the utility more efficient. A government paper released in October set out a vision for a restructured electricity supply industry, where Eskom could relinquish its near-monopoly and compete with independent power producers to generate electricity at least cost. The government plans to set up a transmission unit within Eskom by the end of March 2020 and complete the legal separation of all three units in 2022. S&P said it saw “the reform timeline as somewhat optimistic”, alt...

Algeria’s natural gas pipeline exports to Europe are getting squeezed by cheaper Russian supplies and a global abundance of the liquefied form of the fuel. European clients of Sonatrach have “greatly reduced their demand” for conventional gas from Algeria. This resulted in a 25% drop in the level of sales expected this year, says Ahmed El-Hachemi Mazighi, who is the vice-president of marketing at the state-owned energy company. Gas Pipeline Source : Student Energy Algeria is the third-biggest gas supplier to Europe. Its lower pipeline exports are evidence of how new LNG supplies from the U.S. to Australia and Russia are overwhelming the market and driving prices lower. That’s reduced the competitiveness of the north African country’s pipeline gas contracts, which are mostly tied to oil prices, according to the energy consultant Wood Mackenzie To compensate, Sonatrach turned more of its gas into LNG. It’s selling those supplies on t...

The Namibian police arrested the former Minister of Fisheries Bernhardt Esau and a former senior manager of investment firm Investec on charges of corruption. Police Inspector-General Sebastian Ndeitunga says Esau and the former client manager of Investec Asset Management in Namibia, Ricardo Gustavo, have been formally charged and are expected to appear in court within 48 hours. Esau and Gustavo were arrested following allegations they were involved in a fishing scheme that generated kickbacks of at least 150 million Namibian dollars ($10.20 million). Esau has denied any wrongdoing and Gustavo could not be reached for comment. Esau and Justice Minister Sakeus Shanghala quit earlier this month over the bribery claims made in media reports. The two former ministers are alleged to have awarded horse mackerel quotas to Iceland’s biggest fishing firm Samherji in exchange for bribes. Samherji says it has hired a law firm to investigate the a...