Business
A’Ibom Microfinance Bank Sacks 40 Employees
The Akwa Savings and Loans Limited, owned by the Akwa Ibom Government, said it had disengaged about 40 employees.
The bank’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr Ebong Bassey, disclosed this at an interactive session with newsmen in Uyo on Monday.
“We have disengaged 40 of our staff and very soon more than 50 others will also be disengaged. This is in a move to aggressively restructure the bank and reposition it for global competitiveness,” he said.
Bassey said that the move would also strengthen the capital base of the bank.
He also said that some branches of the bank would be shut to enhance productivity and quality control.
According to him, some of the employees of the bank who have been indicted by a special panel on various cases of fraudulent practices, are being interrogated by the police and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
He, however, said that the previous management of the bank had deviated from the core mandate and vision of the founding fathers of the struggling bank.
Bassey blamed the previous management for running the bank as a charitable organisation, adding that his management team inherited N1.8 billion debt and within five months of his assumption of office, recovered N1.4 million
“ We are doing everything within our power to ensure that we recover all the money,” Bassey said.
The managing director promised to publish names of the bank’s debtors as soon as the external auditors submitted their report in March.
He said that many debtors had written and submitted post-dated cheques to the bank to prevent their names from being published.
The managing director assured esteemed customers that the new management was resolute to reposition the bank to meet modern banking standards.
Council Calls For More Deep Seaports
The Chairman, Nigerian Ports Consultative Council (NPCC), Chief Kunle Folarin, has said that more deep seaports with natural deep draught are critical to the development of the Nigerian maritime industry.
Folarin said this in a paper titled: “Overview of the Nigerian Maritime Sector’’, presented at a two-day retreat organised by the House Committee on Ports, Harbour and Waterways, the Federal Ministry of Transportation and its agencies.
According to him, with the continued increase in the volume of global trade, most shipping lines and main line operators seek to achieve economies of scale.
“This is why the deployment of large capacity deep sea and mother vessels to serve their trunk trade routes,’’ he said.
“Presently, Panama vessels can load up to between 8,000 to 15,000 TEUS (containers) with draught of between 13 to 15.5 metres.
“Consequently, this has precipitated the demand for deep seaports to accommodate these vessels for the purpose of transhipment,’’ The Tide source quotes Folarin as saying.
He suggested that a deep seaport should be strategically located in an area where security and safety would not be compromised.
Folarin said major ports with the right depth and facilities were being favoured as transhipment hub due to the enormous amount of money generated from the plethora of cargo handled.
He said, “There is a compelling need for strong and durable strategic alliances between the Federal Ministry of Transportation and key Federal Government Ministries, some of whose functions inter-phase with those of the ministry.’’
Folarin said that there were critical issues in the maritime domain like: piracy and armed robbery; effects of macro-economic policies; free trade zones restrictions; and excessive port charges.
“Other issues are: multiple intervention in clearing processes; difficulties in export documentation and contracts; prohibition of imported items; and parallel tariffs and duplication of charges,” Folarin said.
Folarin mentioned commercial industrial and oil and gas cargo operations; limitations and barriers in claims administration; and unfavourable commercial trade terms option.
He said other issues included: foreign exchange inaccessibility by shippers; ratification and domestication of international conventions and compliance with World Trade Organisation (WTO) and EU protocols.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
