Business
Defunct PHCN Staff Protest Non-Payment Of Housing Allowance
Former staff of the de
funct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) have staged a protest in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, over non payment of their housing allowance.
The protesters numbering over 2,000 stormed the secretariat of Oyo State Correspondent Chapel wielding placards with the inscriptions, “President Jonathan, please help us locate where our money is hanging”, “Hey! There is God ooo, why delay payment of our housing allowances since 2013,”.
The protesters said the total value of the housing allowance owed them is N400 million.
Spokesperson of the protesters, Mrs Edna Owesiri, decried a situation where their colleagues had since collected theirs while they were still owed and urged government to pay without further delay.
According to her, the money was paid to the former workers in batches and while batches 1-10 had been paid, 11 and 12 were not paid.
She lamented that some of their members had died waiting to be paid and appealed to President Goodluck Jonathan to come to their aid.
Owesiri said those affected spread across Ogun, Kwara, Kogi, Osun and Oyo States, being those under Ibadon zone of PHCN before its privatization.
The protesters further urged the National Electricity Liability Management Company, NELMCO, a body set up by the Federal Government to see to all liabilities which the government incurred during the privatization period to intervene.
“All we want the Federal Government to do for us is to ensure immediate payment of the outstanding allowance,” she said describing it as an unfair situation to pay some of their colleagues and single them out for non-payment.
“We have done all the necessary things we should do all to no avail”, she said, adding that as law abiding citizen they would not want to be seen taking laws into their hands, hence they decided to carry out the project to draw the attention of the government and members of the public to their plight.
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.
