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African press review 5 August 2015

Newspapers in Nigeria are selling like hot cake as they publish the identities of hundreds of individuals and companies named and shamed by banks as the country’s worse debtors.

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Punch actually carried the photographs of six CEOs listed by commercial lenders on the front page of Wednesday’s issue. The paper claims that the full-page adverts ordered by the Central Bank of Nigeria are aimed at avoiding a repeat of an industry bailout that cost the government 18.4 million euros six years ago.

Punch
says the move follows the expiration of a three-month time deadline set by the central bank in April for bad debtors to square up their accounts or be identified in Nigerian media, as well as barred from currency and government debt markets.

The central bank asked commercial lenders to publish bad loans of 50 million naira (230,000 euros) and more that were more than 365 days old, the time limit after which it considers money to be lost.

On its part, the Nigerian Tribune digs into the rot at the National Petroleum Corporation after President Muhammadu Buhari sacked the company’s long-serving group general manager, Joseph Dawha. According to the paper, the president acted after receiving a new report showing that the corporation failed to remit 25 trillion naira (1.2 billion euros) in 10 years.

Vanguard
slams the so-called “robber barons” in a stinging editorial about Nigeria’s economic and political scourge. According to the newspaper only money (no matter how it is acquired) qualifies one as elite in the country.

It appeals to Nigerians to stop celebrating people who amass wealth they haven’t honestly worked for, the same “vampiric” associates of government officials who, in private, Nigerians blame for many of their misfortunes in business.

For the publication Nigerians who spend their time defending the guilty due to ethnic sentiments must realise their own personal problems and poverty are the result of public wealth serving only a few.

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