Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) says it has reimbursed depositors of 179 microfinance banks (MFBs) and four primary mortgage banks (PMBs) that were recently shut down. Bello Hassan, managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of NDIC made this known at the ongoing 45th Kaduna International Trade Fair on Thursday. He said the corporation has significantly improved its processes to ensure swift payment of insured sums to depositors in case of bank failure. Hassan, who was represented at the occasion by Hauwa Jimeta, a senior official of the corporation, added that NDIC has continually strengthened its systems, processes, and…

Western officials indulging in escalatory rhetoric should realize that they are effectively invoking the specter of an all-out nuclear war, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in a speech to legislators in Moscow on Thursday. He also once again accused the West of instigating the Ukraine conflict. Putin addressed the topic in the opening minutes of his annual state-of-the-nation speech, a key event in which the president declares his plans and priorities in a televised address to both houses of the Federal Assembly of Russia, the national legislature. President Putin insisted that recent claims by Western officials, that Moscow is planning…

MTN Nigeria says multiple fibre cuts are responsible for the service outage experienced by its subscribers on Wednesday. Several users had complained about suffering network disruption. According to a post on its X page on Wednesday, MTN said the outage is affecting voice and data services. The telecommunications company also expressed regret at the downtime experienced by its customers. “You have been experiencing challenges connecting to the network due to a major service outage caused by multiple fibre cuts, affecting voice and data services,” MTN said. “Our engineers are working hard to resolve with services gradually being restored in some…

Two senior executives at Binance have been detained in Nigeria as the country cracks down on cryptocurrency exchanges, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The executives flew to Nigeria following the country's decision to ban several cryptocurrency trading websites last week but they were detained by the office of the country's national security adviser and their passports seized, the report said. Binance did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The crackdown follows a period after several cryptocurrency websites emerged as platforms of choice for trading the Nigerian currency, which has suffered…