Nigeria and Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco are struggling to reach an agreement on a record $5 billion oil-backed loan after a recent decline in crude prices sparked concern among banks that were expected to back the deal, four sources told Reuters.

The facility would be Nigeria's largest oil-backed loan to date and Saudi Arabia's first participation of this scale in the country, although the decline in oil price could shrink the size of the deal, the sources said.

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu, two of the sources said, first broached the loan in November when he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh at the Saudi-African Summit. Details and progress on the loan talks have not been previously reported.

The slow progress in discussions reflects the strain of the recent oil price drop, caused largely by a shift in OPEC+ policy to regain market share rather than curtail supply.

Brent has fallen about 20% to around $65 per barrel from above $82 in January. A lower oil price means Nigeria could need more barrels to back the loan, but years of under-investment are complicating its ability to meet production goals.

Tinubu sought approval for $21.5 billion in foreign borrowing last month to bolster the budget, and the $5 billion oil-backed facility under discussion with Aramco would be part of that, sources said.

The banks involved in the talks that are expected to co-fund part of the loan with creditor Aramco have expressed concerns about oil delivery, which has slowed discussions, sources said.

Gulf banks and at least one African lender are involved, they added. Reuters could not establish the banks' identities.

"It's hard to find anyone to underwrite it," one source said, citing concerns over the availability of the cargoes.

Saudi Aramco declined to comment. Nigeria's state-owned oil company NNPC did not comment, and neither did the finance or petroleum ministries.

SCARCE OIL

Nigeria has years of experience taking out - and repaying - oil-backed loans - which the government uses for budget support, shoring up foreign reserves or to revamp state-owned refineries.

At $5 billion, the Aramco loan would be backed by at least 100,000 barrels per day of oil, the sources said.

However, it would almost double the roughly $7 billion of oil-backed loans taken in the last five years.

Nigeria is using at least 300,000 bpd to repay NNPC's other oil-backed loans, though one facility is expected to be paid off this month.

The amount of oil going towards repaying existing oil-backed loans is fixed, but when the crude price falls, it takes longer to repay them.

Additionally, lower prices mean the NNPC has to funnel more crude oil to joint-venture partners, from international majors like Shell to local producers like Oando or Seplat, for its portion of operation costs.

"You have to either find more oil, or find a way to renegotiate those deals," another source said.

Nigerian trading firm Oando is expected to manage the offtake of the physical cargoes, the sources said.

Oanda did not comment.

NNPC is trying to boost output, while Tinubu issued an executive order aimed at cutting production costs, which would free more money from each barrel.

Africa's largest oil exporter assumed a price of $75 per barrel in its budget, with production of 2 million bpd. But in April, it pumped just under 1.5 million bpd, according to the May OPEC market report.

Reuters

A UK appeal court dismissed an application by a director of Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) seeking permission to appeal a high court decision that overturned an award of $6.6 billion in damages against Nigeria in 2017 in favour of the British Virgin Islands-based company

Seamus Andrew, counsel to P&ID during the arbitration, became a director of the company in October 2017 after obtaining a stake in the firm through his company, Lismore Capital Limited, according to a copy of the Tuesday judgement.

Andrew is an additional appellant in the suit, with the Federal Republic of Nigeria as the claimant/respondent and P&ID as the defendant.

Justice Robin Knowles of High Court of Justice Business and Property Courts of England and Wales Commercial Court had on 21 December 2023 handed down his ruling, setting aside the award and refusing P&ID leave to appeal.

His order, however, contained a general liberty to apply to the judge.

Jia Wei Lee, a counsel to Andrew, sent an email to the judge’s clerk a day after, stating that Mr Andrew would not be making an application for permission to appeal to the judge.

He noted that, rather, Andrew would file an appellant notice seeking permission to appeal directly from the Court of Appeal.

“No disrespect is intended by seeking permission directly from the Court of Appeal. The reason for this choice is that, given that Andrew’s application was not considered and determined at the consequential hearing, and no extension of time was granted, the lower court is now functus officio and no longer has jurisdiction to determine an application for permission to appeal,” the court document stated.

In their verdict on Tuesday, Sir Julian Flaux, Lord Justice Phillips and Lord Justice Jeremy Baker remarked that “this court then analysed the relevant provisions of CPR 52.3 and the Practice Direction, concluding that the proper practice was to apply for permission to appeal to the first instance judge at the hand down of the judgment.”

The court document noted that Andrew’s appellant’s notice in the court had been issued on 21 December 2023, more than five weeks after the date for filing any appellant’s notice with the Court of Appeal which, under relevant law, was 21 days after the hand-down of the judgement, that is 13 November 2023.

According to Justice Knowles’ decision of 23 October 2023, P&ID paid bribes to Grace Taiga, director of legal at Nigeria’s Ministry of Petroleum Resources, in connection with a gas contract signed in 2010 and failed to mention it when P&ID initiated the legal action over the botched deal. The judge also observed that P&ID had improperly retained and used internal documents of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that it had received during the arbitration.

Many of the documents were clearly subject to legal professional privilege and were confidential documents which P&ID was not eligible to see.

“The documents were transmitted to P&ID deliberately by the individuals in Nigeria who procured them. FRN did not authorise their release to and retention by P&ID. Among those acting for P&ID who received the FRN internal legal documents were Mr Cahill, Mr Andrew and Mr Trevor Burke,” the court paper said.

“P&ID has offered no sensible explanation for why these documents were leaked by [Nigeria’s] lawyers and has presented this Court with a conspiracy of silence. The obvious and correct inference is that they were obtained through corruption of [Nigeria’s] legal advisers carried out by P&ID and Mr Adebayo. … Mr Murray all but admitted in his oral evidence that [they] were procured by corruption, and no P&ID witness proffered an otherwise honest explanation”.

Background

In January 2010, Nigeria and P&ID entered into a gas supply and processing agreement, requiring the company to build and operate an accelerated gas development project at Adiabo in the Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State. The Nigerian Government was to source natural gas from oil mining leases (OMLs) 123 and 67 operated by Addax Petroleum and supply it to P&ID for processing into fuel suitable for power generation.

P&ID alleged that Nigeria breached the contract after negotiations were opened with the Cross River State government to allocate land for the project.

It claimed that efforts to settle the matter out of court with the Nigerian government failed, prompting the company to institute legal action.

An arbitral tribunal awarded $6.6 billion in damages against Nigeria and in favour of P&ID in January 2017. The sum later ballooned to more than $11 billion due to an accumulation of interest.

Nigeria challenged the award in December 2019, claiming that P&ID obtained the contract by bribing officials of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and corrupting the country’s lawyers to gain access to confidential documents while the arbitration was on.

In October 2023, Nigeria won the bid to set aside the arbitration award after its lawyers argued that the company intended to use litigation to make money out of the situation.

P&ID, founded by Irishmen Michael Quinn and Brendan Cahill, had been pursuing the claim since 2012.

In his ruling, Justice Knowles noted that P&ID and its lawyers were “driven by greed and prepared to use corruption; giving no thought to what their enrichment would mean in terms of harm for others.”

In July 2024, an English Court of Appeal rejected the bid by P&ID to set aside a previous judgement reversing the company’s $11 billion damages claim against Nigeria. The court noted that the decision of a London high court on 21 December 2023, throwing out the $11 billion award, stands.

PT

Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that shareholders may now recover unclaimed dividends dating back 12 years, marking a significant extension from previous limitations.

The financial regulator issued the directive on Tuesday, instructing publicly listed companies and share registrars to cease treating dividend payments older than 12 years as legally expired or unrecoverable.

According to SEC Director-General Emomotimi Agama, the new policy reinforces existing provisions in Section 60 of the Finance Act, which requires companies to transfer unclaimed dividends exceeding six years to the government’s Unclaimed Funds Trust Fund. These funds remain available for shareholder claims despite the transfer.

The clarification addresses widespread confusion among market participants, with Agama noting that numerous companies and registrars had incorrectly classified older dividends as statute-barred, despite legal protections established in the Finance Act 2020.

“The Commission is responding to persistent questions regarding the proper handling of these unclaimed funds,” Agama explained in the statement.

Under the updated guidance, companies and registrars must honor legitimate dividend claims stretching back to December 31, 2020, while the trust fund system undergoes final implementation phases.

The SEC has mandated immediate compliance with the new directive and requires regular reporting from affected entities in accordance with existing commission regulations.

Israel's Netanyahu says significant progress made in talks to release hostages

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that there had been "significant progress" in efforts to secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, but that it was "too soon" to raise hopes that a deal would be reached.

Despite efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to restore a ceasefire in Gaza, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, with each side blaming the other for the failure to reach a deal.

Netanyahu, who has come under pressure from within his right-wing coalition to continue the war and block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, said in a video statement shared by his office that there had been progress, without providing details.

A source familiar with the negotiations said that Washington had been giving Hamas more assurances, in the form of steps that would lead to an end to the war, but said it was U.S. officials who were optimistic, not Israeli ones. The source said there was pressure from Washington to have a deal done as soon as possible.

"There is a deal on the table. Hamas must stop acting recklessly and accept it," a State Department official said when asked whether the U.S. agreed with Netanyahu's statement on the progress in talks.

"President Trump has made clear the consequences Hamas will face if it continues to hold the hostages, including the bodies of two Americans," the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Two Hamas sources told Reuters they had no knowledge of any new ceasefire offers.

Israel's leadership has said that it would wage war until the remaining 55 hostages held in Gaza are freed and when Hamas, whose October 2023 attack sparked the war, has been dismantled.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, has said it would no longer govern after the war if a Palestinian, non-partisan technocratic committee took over, but it has refused to disarm.

The U.S. has proposed a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Israel said it would abide by the terms but Hamas has sought amendments. The militants have said that they would release all hostages in exchange for a permanent end to the war.

The war in Gaza has raged since Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel in the October 2023 attack and took 251 hostages back to the enclave, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel responded with a military campaign that has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Intense Russian drone attack on Kharkiv kills 2, injures 54, Ukraine says

A nine-minute-long Russian drone attack on Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv in the middle of the night killed at least two people and injured 54, including five children, regional officials said on Wednesday.

The intense strikes with 17 drones sparked fires in 15 units of a five-storey apartment building and caused other damage in the city close to the Russian border, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

"There are direct hits on multi-storey buildings, private homes, playgrounds, enterprises and public transport," Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app.

"Apartments are burning, roofs are destroyed, cars are burnt, windows are broken."

A Reuters witness saw emergency rescuers helping to carry people out of damaged buildings, administering care and firefighters battling blazes in the dark.

Nine of the injured, including a 2-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, have been hospitalised, Oleh Sinehubov, the governor of the broader Kharkiv region, said on Telegram.

He added that the strikes hit also a city trolley bus depot and several residential buildings.

There was no immediate comment from Russia. Kharkiv, in Ukraine's northeast, withstood Russian full-scale advance in the early days of the warand has since been a frequent target of drone, missile, and guided aerial bomb assaults.

The attack followed Russia's two biggest assaults of the war on Ukraine this week, a part of intensified bombardments that Moscow said were retaliatory measures for Kyiv's recent attacks in Russia.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched on its smaller neighbour in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.

"We are holding on. We are helping each other. And we will definitely survive," Terekhov said. "Kharkiv is Ukraine. And it cannot be broken."

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

US to cut Ukraine aid – defense secretary

The White House will be slashing military funding for Ukraine as the administration of US President Donald Trump seeks a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said.

The Pentagon chief made the statement before the House Appropriations Committee in Congress on Tuesday.

“It is a reduction in this budget,” Hegseth said when asked about upcoming military aid funding for Ukraine.

“This administration takes a very different view of that conflict,” he added.

Trump has worked towards negotiating an end to the Ukraine conflict and has diplomatically re-engaged with Russia. Since he took office in January, Moscow and Kiev have restarted direct talks for the first time since 2022, when Ukraine unilaterally left the first Istanbul negotiations.

“A negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interest of both parties and our nation's interests especially with all the competing interests around the globe,” Hegseth said.

The Trump administration has also touted an “America First” pivot and significantly cut foreign assistance, including aid to Ukraine, promising to channel funds towards domestic issues.

Last week, US Vice President J.D. Vance echoed Trump’s criticism of his predecessor Joe Biden, accusing his administration of spending “crazy”amounts of money on supporting Kiev. “They sent $300 billion to Ukraine,” without “trying to force a diplomatic settlement,” he said.

In April, Trump signed a major deal with Kiev allowing the US priority access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth, in what he described would be a way for Washington to “get back” the hundreds of billions it spent on Ukraine under Biden.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has often complained of a constant shortage of US-supplied air defenses, and waning assistance from Washington in recent months. Additionally, the Trump administration rerouted some 20,000 anti-drone missiles – initially earmarked for Kiev under Biden – to the Middle East, the Ukrainian leader claimed on Sunday.

Reuters/RT

As a health and wellness reporter, I'm constantly learning about practices experts swear by for a long and healthy life — and trying to incorporate them into my own habits. But some, like walking 10,000 steps a day and cutting back on sugar, are harder to implement. That’s why it was such a relief when Avinish Reddy told me that some highly effective habits can be really simple.

Reddy has been studying longevity and teaching his patients how to structure their lives to improve their health outcomes since 2022. He worked with world-renowned physician and researcher Dr. Peter Attia for over a year, and now has his own medical practice, Elevated Medical.

“Longevity doesn’t have to be that complicated,” he says.  

Here’s how Reddy incorporates the habits he suggests to his patients in his own life.

• Exercises six days a week, with a 50/50 split of cardio and strength training
• Talks to his parents nearly every day and stays in touch with his college friends
• Adds more vegetables to his meals
• Prioritizes making memories to avoid regrets in old age

“I try not to be too obsessive about any one thing,” Reddy says.

"If you’re trying to live perfectly, you’re not going to be able to have all the experiences that you want. So I think the goal is to balance both and just be very consistent with sleep, exercise, diet and stuff when you’re at home.”

Hearing that creating lifelong memories can be as important as making healthy choices reminds me that a life well lived is all about balance. To practice that duality, I’ll eat a nutritious meal — and go to the fun concert.

CNBC

At least 13 people have been killed in separate violent incidents in Sokoto and Plateau states, underscoring the growing threat of insurgency and communal violence in parts of northern Nigeria.

In Sokoto State, seven people lost their lives on Sunday when a motorcycle triggered an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) allegedly planted by suspected Lakurawa insurgents in Tangaza Local Government Area. The victims, all residents of Zurmuku village, were returning from a Sallah celebration in nearby Gwabro village when they stopped to rest under a tree commonly used by military personnel. The IED exploded when one of their motorcycles passed over it.

Six men died instantly, while one of two injured girls succumbed to her injuries the following day. Ghazzali Rakah, Special Assistant to the Chairman of Tangaza LGA, confirmed the incident, stating, “It is likely that the Lakurawa insurgents planted the device in anticipation of military presence.” A bomb disposal unit has since been deployed to the area to investigate the possible presence of additional explosive devices. This is not the first such attack in Tangaza, where a similar IED blast killed several soldiers in recent months.

Meanwhile, in Plateau State, six people were killed in a fresh wave of violence across Bassa and Mangu local government areas. According to local sources, the attacks occurred in Ancha community in Bassa and Gyenbwas Rinji in Langai district of Mangu. Twelve others sustained injuries and are receiving treatment in various hospitals.

In the Bassa incident, Fulani herders were reportedly ambushed around 3 a.m. while grazing cattle. Their bodies were later discovered in Ancha. Garba Abdullahi, Chairman of the Gan Allah Fulani Development Association (GAFDAN), confirmed the attack and said the matter had been reported to security agencies.

In Gyenbwas Rinji, two people—including a woman—were killed and several houses set ablaze. Eyewitnesses said gunmen stormed the community around 7 a.m., shooting sporadically. Aliyu Adamu, whose brother was among the victims, blamed the attack on suspected members of the Mwaghavul ethnic group.

However, Mangs Fwangkat Isa, acting Chairman of the Mwaghavul Youth Development Association in Mangu, gave a different account. He said the violence erupted after their members were ambushed the previous evening. “While trying to calm tensions, Fulani men suddenly began shooting. Our youth responded with sticks and cutlasses. Two people were killed, but we believe the soldiers, not Fulani, may have been responsible based on eyewitness accounts,” he stated.

Both incidents highlight the deteriorating security situation in the region, where insurgency, ethnic tensions, and reprisals continue to claim lives despite ongoing military and police interventions. Local authorities in both states have renewed calls for intensified security operations to protect civilians and restore peace.

Reports from Daily Trust

UN says most flour delivered in Gaza looted or taken by starving people

The United Nations said on Monday that it has only been able to bring minimal flour into Gaza since Israel lifted an aid blockade three weeks ago and that has mostly been looted by armed gangs or taken by starving Palestinians.

The organization has transported 4,600 metric tonnes of wheat flour into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing, the only entry point Israel allows it to use, Deputy U.N. spokesperson Fahan Haq told reporters.

Haq said aid groups in Gaza estimate that between 8,000 and 10,000 metric tonnes of wheat flour were needed to give each family in Gaza a bag of flour and "ease the pressure on markets and reduce desperation."

"Most of it was taken by desperate, starving people before the supplies reached their destinations. In some cases, the supplies were looted by armed gangs," Haq said.

According to World Food Programme guidelines, 4,600 metric tonnes of flour would provide roughly eight days’ worth of bread for Gaza’s 2 million residents, based on a standard daily ration of 300 grams per person.

Haq called for Israel to let in far more aid via multiple crossings and routes.

The U.N. has mostly delivered flour along with limited medical and nutrition items since Israel lifted the 11-week blockade in mid-May. Experts warn Gaza is at risk of famine, with the rate of young children suffering acute malnutritionnearly tripling.

Israel and the United States want the U.N. to work through the controversial new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but the U.N. has refused, questioning its neutrality and accusing the distribution model of militarizing aid and forcing displacement.

Israel and the United States have accused Hamas of stealing aid from the U.N.-led operations, which the militants deny.

The GHF uses private U.S. security and logistics firms to operate. It began operations in Gaza on May 26 and said on Monday so far it has given out 11.4 million meals.

Israel makes the U.N. offload aid on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, where it then has to be picked by the U.N. and aid groups already in Gaza. The U.N. has accused Israel of regularly denying access requests.

Reuters