Newscast - Africa

The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit says that its ban on cash withdrawals for all federal and state accounts is to help governors and not to fight them.
The NGF also set up a six-member committee to engage the Central Bank of Nigeria in addressing anomalies in the country’s monetary management and financial system”.
The NFIU says that the entire financial system suffered excess liquidity and liquidity ratio infringements which put hedging pressure on demand for foreign currency and gradually destroyed the value of the Naira and above all created wide room for money laundering and terrorism affecting significantly the rural populace on top of general inflation in the open market place.

Microsoft says it will cut 10,000 jobs in the latest round of staff redundancies to hit the tech industry which will affect up to 5% of its global workforce and cost the business $1.2bn in severance and reorganization costs.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella says that while customer spending had grown during Covid, more people were now choosing to exercise caution
He says the firm would continue to hire in key areas.
Mr. Nadella says many parts of the world were in a recession or anticipating one, while at the same time, the next major wave of computing is being born, with advances in AI.

Ukraine’s interior minister and other officials were among more than a dozen people killed in a helicopter crash near a kindergarten outside Kyiv, in a blow to the war-battered nation’s government.
Ukraine did not claim direct Russian involvement, but President Volodymyr Zelensky said the tragedy was a consequence of the war.
Officials initially said that 18 people died but revised the toll down to 14 — including Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, other ministry officials and a child — after search operations ended.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, a global figurehead of progressive politics, announced that she would resign from office in a matter of weeks.
She says she no longer had enough in the tank.
Ardern says she would step down no later than February 7, less than three years after winning a landslide election to secure her second term in office.
Ardern’s government has struggled – its popularity hampered by soaring inflation, a looming recession, and a resurgent conservative opposition.

UN peacekeepers in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have found dozens of bodies in mass graves.
The discovery comes after a series of attacks by armed groups in the region of Ituri.
A UN spokesman, Farhan Haq, says the bodies of 42 people including women and children had been discovered in the village of Nyamamba, and a further seven men in the village of Mbogi.
The peacekeepers had launched patrols in the area after reports of attacks by Codeco militias.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front has refuted remarks by African Union mediator Olusegun Obasanjo that Eritrean forces have withdrawn from Ethiopia's northern Tigray region following a truce to end two years of civil war.
Mr. Obasanjo says that all Eritrean forces who had been fighting alongside Ethiopian federal troops in the Tigray war that broke out in November 2020 had pulled back to the Eritrean border.
Mr. Obasanjo's comments were refuted by TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda who says AU officials should do their job first before such remarks are made.

South Africa's military has announced it will next month hold joint military drills with Russia and China off its coast.
The drills will run for 10 days from 17 February to 27 February in the port city of Durban and Richards Bay.
The South African National Defence Force says the aim is sharing operational skills and knowledge, South Africa was among African countries that abstained from taking sides in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The country assumed the chairmanship of the BRICS group of nations - which brings together Brazil, Russia, India, and China - last month.

The Lagos State Government has declared a four-day work-free day for public servants to enable them to collect their Permanent Voter Cards at their respective local government/local council development areas in the state.
The Head of Service, Hakeem Muri-Okunola, explained that the work-free day would commence on Tuesday, January 24, and end on Friday, January 27, 2023, for different grade levels of workers in the public service.
The dates include Tuesday, January 24, 2023, for grade levels 01, 03, 07, and 15; Wednesday, January 25, 2023, for grade levels 02, 04, 08, and 13; Thursday, January 26, 2023, for grade levels 05, 09, 12, and 17; and Friday, January 27, 2023, for grade levels 06, 10, 14 and 16.

The Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission to ensure Nigerians’ votes count during the forthcoming polls.
He added that the electoral umpire must ensure that votes counted and announced results reflect the true decision of Nigerians.
He says the election season is an opportunity to also tell the electoral umpire, INEC, to allow people’s votes to count.

The Director of the Legal Services Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Kofo Salam-Alada, says the agency will go tough on banks that continue to fill their ATM machines with old naira notes as the deadline to phase out the notes nears.
He says the CBN was already monitoring banks that were still dispensing old naira notes from their ATMs.
The director says anyone caught selling the new notes or any denomination of the naira would be jailed.