Business
Electricity Generation, Picking Up After N’Delta Attack – FG
President Muhammadu Buhari (right), with Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo (left), Minister of Budget and National Planing, Senetor Udoma Udo Udoma (2nd left), Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara (3rd left) and Senate President Bukola Saraki, at the signing of the 2016 Appropriation Bill into Law by President Buhari in Abuja, recently.
Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola says that power generation is picking up after last week’s vandalism of power stations in the Niger Delta.
He announced this while addressing newsmen after inspecting facilities at Shiroro Hydro Power Station (SHPS) in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State, yesterday.
Fashola said there was a slight increase of three megawatts from the previous week drop to 2005 megawatts in the country.
The minister, however, said that measures were being taken to ensure stability in the supply, adding that generating companies should live up to expectations.
“I don’t want us to focus on mega watt; for me they are just bus stops; we will only announce them as milestone that we have reached the bus stops, but we know our journey is much more longer.
“I have spoken on our incremental power, to steady power, to uninterrupted power and that is the journey.
“We are edging up to 2008; we lost power due to the explosion that took place last week. We were down to about 2005; presently we are up to 2008.
“We are working hard to get the incremental power to that level and beyond that to where we have been in February of 5,704 and beyond that to where we have never being,” he said.
Fashola urged the generating companies to continue to keep to the concession agreement by improving on the condition of their asset.
“For me it is good news that somebody is focusing on maintenance. The Shiroro station has four generating plants and three of them have been refurbished.
“So for the next eight years, nothing will go wrong in the time of turbines. When it was being managed by Federal Government, this capacity we have now was not there.
“Power generation companies need regular and periodic maintenance. During my visit to Jebba dam, I learned no maintenance has been done for over 30 years.
“The Public Private Partnership (PPP) is a step forward. If this was done in the last 10 years instead of keeping money under the bed, we will not be faced with this insufficient power supply,” he said.
Fashola commended the SHPS for its effort to increase energy generation by 300MW through the use of solar plant.
The minister urged the distribution companies and consumers to keep to their obligations, adding that government would continue to give it support for effective service delivery.
“Government also have obligation to ensure that all it ministries and departments owing must pay their dues. We are working hard to pay what we owe just as consumers must pay.
“The transmission company must pay the generation company and the generation must also pay the gas company so that we can have stability in the system”, he added.
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.
