Business
FAAN Moves To Sanitise Airports Protocol Activities
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has directed that no individual or agency should be allowed to escort passengers or conduct any type of protocol activity after immigration process for departing passengers, and before immigration process for arriving passengers at all the nation’s international airports.
FAAN, in a statement made available to The Tide, yesterday, explained that the move was in line with provisions of the Federal Government’s directive on the Ease of Doing Business.
The statement further said that only the FAAN protocol services and the designated Ministry of Foreign Affairs officers would be exempted from the directive at international airports.
“Consequently, in the interest of our common safety and comfort, all passengers, agencies, and other stakeholders are requested to kindly align their airport activities accordingly.
“Similarly, passengers are also advised to please desist from coming to the airports with groups of friends and relatives. This is aimed at enhancing the safety, comfort and efficient felicitation of human and vehicular traffic at the airports”, FAAN said.
Also in the statement, the airports authority has given firm assurance that it would partner with the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) to ensure that airports premises do not become a safe haven for copyright criminals.
“As government agency, we are committed to protect public interest, even in copyright matters and we owe a duty to assist each other in executing our mandates.
“The legal and commercial teams of FAAN will be deployed to assist NCC to strengthen its enforcement actions at the airports across the country”, it stated.
While decrying the pervasive piracy in the copyright sector, FAAN also urged right owners and other stakeholders in the industry to address the challenges in the distribution networks, so as to make genuine copyright works more readily available in the market.
Corlins Walter
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.
