Business
SON Trains 60 Staff To Improve Service Delivery
No fewer than 60 staff of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) are undergoing Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) training to improve their service delivery.
The Director-General of SON Mr Osita Aboloma, declared the training open in Enugu yesterday for its staff in the 17 states of the Southern part of the country.
Aboloma, represented by Mallam Usman Abdullahi, Director of Human Resources Management of SON said that the training was meant for SON officials to relate well with Nigerians in the discharge of the agency’s mandates.
He noted that the training would make staff to be professional and live above rudimentary mistakes in discharge of their daily duties.
“The essence of this training is to improve the capacity of staff to deliver quality services and improve their relationship skills as they discharge their daily duty.
“The training aims at exploring other avenues to solve issues that concerns enforcement of standards without necessaryly going to the formal law courts.
“The SON Act as amended had given SON the mandate to prosecute those that goes against its mandate.
“However, we feel that there should be other avenues apart from the courts that SON can easily achieve the agency’s mandate.
“So, on this premise, SON is partnering with the Institute of Chartered Mediators and Conciliators (ICMC) to train some of its staff on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) ,’’ he said.
According to him, the training will be very beneficial both to the enforcement and office staff of the agency.
Also speaking, Ambassador Victor Ojaide, a facilitator of the training, noted that the training would equip SON staff on the skills for effective and objective ADR practice.
Ojaide, who is also the Vice President (Training) of ICMC, said that the training would provide tools to understand how to bring parties closer to settle issues in a harmonious manner.
“The ADR lessons will equip them on how to deal with issues and win trust and public confidence even as they discharge their duties.
“The training will teach better ways of approaching issues and people even as they carry out their official mandates,’’ he said.
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.