QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION AT THE 2025 MINISTERIAL PRESS BRIEFING | MINISTRY OF TRADE AND INVESTMENT (VIDEO)

 

The event took place at the Radio House, Abuja on 4 march 2025.

SEC begins campaign against ponzi schemes in markets, churches

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun campaign to sensitise citizens against investing in ponzi schemes.

Speaking during the exercise in Wuse Market, Abuja, Dr Emomotimi Agama, the Director-General of SEC, said the move was to educate people on the dangers of ponzi scheme.

Agama, who regretted that some traders had fallen victims to the schemes, said the sensitisation was to engage the people physically.

He said the commission would take the sensitisation to markets across the country, churches, mosques, hospital and barracks to reach all citizens.

The Ogun man who killed son during fight with wife

WITH neither party being perfect, it is normal, even expected, for couples to engage in arguments. However, given their reluctance to let go of the patriarchal outlook on life that seems to confine women to a lower rung of life, certain men in the Nigerian society seem to fly off the handle at the slightest prompting. They subject women to physical and emotional torture following the slightest perceived dissent. To such men, it is not just an affront for a woman to have a contrary opinion to her husband’s, it is something close to treachery. This warped outlook on life seems to have underlined the terrible case of a man who, in a fit of madness, clubbed his own baby to death in Abeokuta, Ogun State, recently. According to reports, a heated argument between a couple resident in the Elega area of Abeokuta turned tragic when the husband, identified as Olamide, mistakenly struck his one-year-old son with an iron rod intended for his wife, leading to the child’s death!

T.D. Jakes hands over leadership mantle to daughter, son-in-law

Bishop T.D. Jakes

Bishop T.D. Jakes, founder of The Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas, has declared he is stepping down from leading the megachurch, handing over the reins to his daughter, Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts, and her husband, Pastor Toure Roberts.

The declaration was made during a Sunday morning service on April 27, 2025, just weeks after Jakes suffered a massive heart attack while preaching.

Speaking to the congregation, Jakes said his recent health scare played a major role in his decision to transition leadership.

FIRS establish gender desk to boost equity, inclusive governance

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) on Tuesday established its Gender Desk and Women Network (WoN) to promote gender equity and inclusive governance.

Speaking at the inauguration in Abuja, the Chairman, FIRS, Dr Zacch Adedeji, according to NAN report described the establishement of the desk as a declaration of the service’s resolve to embed equity at the heart of its operations.

Adedeji, who was represented by Dr Dick Irri, the Coordinating Director, Medium and Government Taxpayers Group (M&GTG, FIRS) said the initiative would help to drive inclusive public service.

He said that it would place gender equality as a constitutional right, and as a strategic imperative in governance, especially within the Nigerian tax system. 

DR JUMOKE ODUWALE AT THE 2025 MINISTERIAL PRESS BRIEFING (VIDEO)

The event took place at the Radio House, Abuja on 4 March 2025

Taraba varsity lecturer writes Tinubu, calls for ban on open grazing - Punch reports

President Bola Tinubu

A lecturer at Taraba State University, Professor John Ajai, has called on President Bola Tinubu to urgently review Nigeria’s commitment to the ECOWAS Transhumance Protocol and fast-track the enactment of a national law banning open grazing across the country.

Punch reports that Ajai made the call in an open letter addressed to the President on Sunday, where he warned that the country was facing a “defining moment” that demands bold executive action to protect national sovereignty, security, and unity.

According to him, the ECOWAS Transhumance Protocol, which was originally intended to facilitate pastoral mobility across West Africa, has worsened insecurity, encouraged violent land occupation by armed groups, and undermined Nigeria’s territorial integrity.

Every bite of ultraprocessed food will increase your chance of an early death, major new study says

As you add more ultraprocessed foods to your diet, your risk of a premature death from any cause rises, according to a new meta-analysis of research involving more than 240,000 people.

“We looked at the risk of a person dying from eating more ultraprocessed foods between the ages of 30 and 69, a time when it would be premature to die,” said study coauthor Carlos Augusto Monteiro, emeritus professor of nutrition and public health in the School of Public Health at Brazil’s University of São Paulo.

“We found that for each 10% increase in total calories from ultraprocessed foods, the risk of dying prematurely rose by nearly 3%,” said Monteiro, who coined the term “ultraprocessed” in 2009 when he developed NOVA, a system of classifying foods into four groups by their level of processing.

Trump took the US economy to the brink of a crisis in just 100 days

Donald Trump spent his first 100 days back in the Oval Office driving an economy that the world envied to the brink of crisis, risking America’s reputation as a financial safe haven and fostering fear among voters who’ve lost confidence in his leadership.

Americans were desperate for relief from high grocery prices and bought into Trump’s promise to make America affordable again in November 2024, partly out of nostalgia for the pre-pandemic economy of his first term.

But the president deliberately and singlehandedly adopted policies that are almost certain to spike prices even more; that could lead to shortages; and that have CEOs and small businesses dealing with chaos and the possibility of a recession.

Women’s toilets not for transgenders, UK watchdog says

Photo: Shutterstock/baona

Britain’s equality watchdog has advised that trans women should not be allowed to use women’s toilets following a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court on the legal definition of a woman. 

The Equality and Human Rights Commission issued interim guidance for organisations in response to five judges ruling earlier this month that a woman is legally defined based on their sex at birth.

The decision was hailed by gender-critical campaigners and has been welcomed by the government as providing “clarity”, but transgender people have expressed concern that they will be discriminated against.

Trans women “should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities” in workplaces or public buildings such as shops and hospitals, the EHRC said.

TOP SNIPPETS | 260425

Understanding violence is the first step towards changing attitudes. Riccardo Cuppini

LAST week, I observed that the insecurity situation in the country is very bad. And it will remain that way as far as we can see into the future. This is because those whose duty it is to solve the problem are hardly doing anything worth talking about, beyond meetings, photo-ops and the regular platitudes that we are fed with. I am not surprised.

This is because the architects of the problem may have no solutions to proffer. That is also why, whenever a political strategy is devised, those who formulated the strategy more often than not do not pause to ponder the variables that will spin out of control. The insecurity we are bedevilled with at present is the fallout of a political strategy with variables that have gone out of control, as they would.

Some men don’t know they have children somewhere

Chukwuneta Oby

One of the stories that struck me recently was about a young girl who gained admission the university last year but had to abandon her studies a few months later because she got pregnant. When asked who was responsible for the pregnancy, she claimed she couldn’t say for certain, as two young men were involved, and it all happened on the night of the famous party usually organised on university campuses to welcome freshers.

According to her, the first young man seduced her before the party and had sex with her, while the second sexual encounter happened after the party.

While we are busy pulling the ears of the girl-child on the need to close her legs more, may we also extend the same energy to the boy-child, who still feels that dipping his ‘something’ into every available hole is his birthright.

The CBEX SCAM

We have as a people experience what we would call historic bitterness with Ponzi schemes. “Once bitten, twice shy,” they say. But at this point, we at SEB think it should rather be a situation of “forever shy”.

Recall the following:

MMM (Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox): Originating in Russia, it collapsed in the 1990s and resurfaced in various countries, including Nigeria, before crashing again.

Bernie Madoff's Scheme: One of the largest in history, it defrauded investors of billions before unraveling in 2008.

Bitclub Network: A cryptocurrency-based Ponzi scheme that operated globally before its collapse.

Spitzedersche Privatbank: A 19th-century scheme in Germany, promising high returns but ending in fraud.

Well , we came by this article captioned "CBEX scam: Folly of Greed", courtesy, Punch Newspapers, and we thought it wise to bring you up to speed with its submissions to perhaps, disabuse the minds of many about the Ponzi scheme menace in our society.