Business
Association Tasks Youths On Skills Acqusition
The Association of Building Artisans of Nigeria (ASBAN) has advised Nigerian youths to acquire vocational skills to enable them to be self employed.
The National President of ASBAN, Mr Jimmy Oshunbi, gave the advice in an interview with newsmen in Lagos.
Oshunbi said that acquisition of technical skills, especially in the construction sector, would go a long way in solving the high rate of unemployment in the country.
According to him, the construction sector in developing country like Nigeria is the highest provider of job opportunities.
He said Nigerian youths could learn a skill in the sector.
He stressed that people should start looking for ways to be independent, instead of going from one place to another looking for white-collar jobs.
Oshunbi advised Nigerian youths to acquire vocational skills after obtaining certificates from schools because a time would come when paper certificates would no longer be relevant.
“Everybody wants to go to the university to obtain paper certificates and at the end the day there is no job; white-collar jobs are not there.
“It is high time Nigerian youths started thinking of how to be self-employed and the only way to do that is to learn a trade and become employers instead of being employees.
“Records showed that we have about 70 billion unemployed youths in Nigeria and that is what gave birth to Boko Harram because an idle man is the devil’s workshop,” Jimmy said.
The ASBAN boss said the association had embarked on “train the trainers programs’’ at Federal Polytechnic in Ilaro and at Lagos State Polytechnic.
According to him, the three-month programme is for the retraining of Nigerian building artisans to meet the required standards in construction.
He said the programme was also aimed at changing the orientation of Nigerians artisans in the construction industry.
“Most Nigerians artisans go to work with torn dresses and bathroom slippers; such attitude undermines the reputation of artisans.
“But whenever you see foreign artisans, they look very neat, wearing helmets and aprons. Security is their watchword.
“We want to inculcate such attitude in indigenous artisans.
“I believe that with this training, such negative attitude of Nigerian artisans will change,” he said.
ASBAN boss said that there was no age limit for a person who wanted to learn a trade, stressing that a retired man could still learn a trade
He said: “As long as you are still alive and healthy, you can learn a trade.’’
According to him, the associate does not just end at training these artisans, but also searched and got jobs for them.
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.
