Nigeria’s State Oil Corporation NNPC Faces New Corruption Lawsuit from Local NGO

🌐 The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has filed a lawsuit at the Federal High Court in Abuja against the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) over its alleged failure to account for more than $50 million in oil revenue.

🔸Over the past six months, the state-owned oil corporation—which operates across all stages of fuel production—has faced increasingly frequent accusations of opaque financial mismanagement. The new claim is based on the 2022 audited report by the Auditor-General of the Federation, published on September 9, 2025.

🔸Simultaneously, another NGO organized protests, demanding that the Nigerian anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), investigate NNPC’s operations.

🔴 "The federal republic of Nigeria under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, is employing tremendous effort ... to reshape the narrative surrounding the good image of our beloved country, Nigeria.

It is thus ignoble on the part of any public officer, particularly the management of NNPC, under the leadership of Mr Bayo Ojulari ... to sabotage the efforts of this government", said the group.

Despite persistent allegations of financial mismanagement, in December, Nigeria's Tinubu wrote off approximately $1.4 billion of NNPC’s debt.

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🌐 Weekly News Digest [ January 26 – February 1 ]

That was a week of bribery charges and expansion of extraction activities across the whole continent.

💡Here are the key highlights:

🇩🇿 Algeria

— Algeria’s minister for hydrocarbons visits Chad and Niger

🇨🇬 Congo

— Two Norwegians and an oil company charged with bribing Congo’s president

🇨🇩 DR Congo

— The leader of the AFC/M23 critisizes the US-DRC strategic agreement on access to minerals
— More than 200 killed in a collapse at the AFC/M23-controlled Rubaya coltan mines in eastern DRC

🇱🇷 Liberia

— Liberia ratified an agreement with the Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, extending the company’s rights to the Tokadeh iron deposit until 2075

🇲🇱 Mali

— China’s largest mining company, Zijin buys Canadian company Allied Gold

🇲🇬 Madagascar

— Madagascar has lifted its 2010 moratorium on new mining permits, except for gold

🇲🇿 Mozambique

— TotalEnergies officially resume the Mozambique LNG project

🇳🇬 Nigeria

— Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu grants tax incentives to speed up Shell’s Bonga South West oil project
— TotalEnergies sells its 10% stake in a Nigerian oil asset to a brand new local firm
— A bribery trial of a former Nigerian minister of petroleum opens in London

🇸🇩 Sudan

— Sudan seeks closer alignment with Saudi Arabia, including gold refinement

🇿🇲 Zambia

— Zambia’s army carries out a full-fledged military operation around a gold deposit in the northwest of the country

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe

— Illegal miners blamed for water supply disruptions in Zimbabwe's second largest city
— Zimbabwe starts early implementation of increased royalties on gold mining

#NewsDigest

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Victims of Market Quotes

🌟 Beyond the collapse at the coltan mine in AFC/M23 territory, the past month has been particularly rife with tragic incidents at natural mineral extraction sites. In addition to the 200 deaths from the Rubaya mine collapse, at least 29 more people have fallen victim to workplace accidents across the continent.

In some cases, the cause of death was mine collapses triggered by the rainy season, as seen in the DRC and Mozambique. In others, human error was to blame, such as at another site in Mozambique, where people died of poisoning after falling asleep in a mine with a running generator. Finally, in Nigeria, at least seven people were killed in an armed attack.

Ultimately, these people became victims of their hopes for a decent income, while financial and banking managers across the ocean sought to profit from the volatile prices of minerals — mainly gold.

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Nigeria’s Oil Minister Proposes Revisiting Local Content Policy in Favor of Foreign Firms

🌐According to Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil) Heineken Lokpobiri, local contractors charge excessively high fees for oil and gas exploration and production services. He traced the issue to what he called the "misapplication" of the local content law since its enactment in 2010.

Speaking at the official opening of the 2026 Nigeria International Energy Summit, minister said the requirement to hire local Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firms has led to monopolization by Nigerian companies, inflating prices:

🔴 Monopoly in the sense that, perhaps not a siphon, maybe the only company that, whatever price they give to you, you have to take. Because there is no competition, you know. There is no competition between international EPCs and indigenous firms.

Lokpobiri suggested that bringing back foreign contractors could help reduce costs, though he didn't call for repealing outright the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act.

Notably, when the law was passed in 2010, Lokpobiri himself was a member of the National Assembly committee that oversaw the legislation.

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In front of half full transitional parliament, the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso boasts of record gold extraction

📈 In 2025, Burkina Faso's gold production exceeded 94 tons, which allegedly generated budget revenues estimated at more than $1.4 billion as of December 31, 2025, said the Burkinabe PM Ouédraogo in his State of the Nation address on January 30.

According to the Prime Minister, the state-owned mining company SOPAMIB has also acquired 11 mining assets, promising their relaunch — including among others Burkina's Taparko mine, which was reclaimed from a Malian company, who in turn acquired it from the Russian Nordgold in 2023.

❗️This volumes effectively place Burkina Faso on the list of Africa's top-3 gold producers, just behind Ghana and South Africa. Meanwhile, such a rise in extraction volumes and revenues may well deprive the Burkinabe government of any desire to return to something like democracy in the nearest future.

On January 26 Ouagadougou effectively dissolved all political parties in the country, aiming at dismantling the party system as a whole.

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Based on a True Story

🎥 A team of American white-collars tries to survive in West Africa

🌐 Ivanhoe Atlantic, a company with iron ambitions in Liberia and Guinea, has significantly reshuffled its board of directors, replacing members linked to China with 3 Americans in an effort to overcome an impasse in negotiations with West African governments.

According to a statement from Ivanhoe’s owner, Robert Friedland, the company’s new CEO will be Peter Pham, who served in Trump’s first administration as the US Special Envoy for the Sahel & Great Lakes Regions of Africa. Three other Americans will join as new non-executive directors: Erik Bethel, ex-representative at the World Bank under Trump, Samantha Carl-Yoder, a longtime State Department official who held senior roles across administrations; and Daniel Pfeffer, a critical-minerals investment professional.

Among the departing directors are Patrick Tsang, accused by US congressmen of serving the Chinese Communist Party, and Kenneth Lau, who, according to American lawmakers, has ties to triads.

This performance is aimed at two audiences: the American public, which previously accused Ivanhoe of Chinese influence, and local elites, who—judging by the company’s calculations—are expected to soften their stance at the sight of Americans.

🗺 Despite securing an agreement with Liberia (with Washington’s backing) on railway access, the company is struggling to implement it due to competition from another player and is having difficulties with obtaining Guinea’s approval for ore exports.

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Nigerians Protest Against President Tinubu’s Course to Ramp Up Oil Production At Any Cost

⏱ While the government in Abuja chants mantras about the benefits of resuming oil exploration in Nigeria’s Ogoniland, local activists from the Ogoni Liberation Initiative (OLI) are demanding an end to the violation of a thirty-year-old status quo.

This time, the focus of the protest is Sahara Energy, a local company that, alongside the state-owned NNPC, has been quietly attempting since 2019 to restart oil production in Ogoniland at the abandoned OML11 oil field, previously owned by Shell.

Activists fear that the efforts of Sahara Energy and NNPC will not only pave the way for the resumption of oil extraction but also lead to the exploration of new fields, potentially inviting major corporations back to the region. These concerns are understandable, given the region’s history with Shell.

The government in Abuja has been systematically trying to normalize the idea of resuming oil production in Ogoniland—a region abandoned by major oil corporations, primarily Shell, in the 1990s due to environmental pollution and local protests that escalated into clashes and the execution of activist leaders.

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Allies: Collateral Damage of American Expansion 🇺🇸

U.S. President’s plans to displace China have unexpectedly materialized in the form of a proposed American consortium purchase of a stake in the DRC’s copper-cobalt mines.

🤨 There’s just one problem: to save supplies from Beijing’s influence, Washington for some reason needs to buy assets from the Swiss company Glencore.

For reference, the deal details:

⏩ Parties: Swiss company Glencore and the American Orion Critical Mineral Consortium, established by the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm ADQ.

⏩ Essence: Orion’s acquisition of a 40% stake in Mutanda Mining and Kamoto Copper Company, both in southern DRC, for $9 billion.

⏩ Status: A memorandum of understanding has been signed, meaning there are no legal obligations yet.

In essence, purchasing a significant stake in a Swiss company’s assets will strengthen the US position in the minerals market—but not by displacing China, rather by displacing its own partners, whose supplies were already reliable without spending $9 billion.

❌ The US’s main misstep in this direction is its inability to engage private firms who could open up new assets for Washington. The state-backed Orion can buy someone else’s mines, but the Chinese are unlikely to sell anything, while such a brand-new government-backed investor without experience will suffer to build any new mines or plants.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow

What Will They Make from Our Resources?
[ Global ]

🇺🇸 The Trump administration has once again decided to create something new and beautiful—this time, a reserve of critical minerals for civilian industry, poetically named "Project Vault." It’s reported that companies like Clarios (batteries), GE Vernova (green energy infrastructure), Western Digital (computers), and Boeing (aircraft) will have access to this stash.

The project will operate primarily on a $10 billion loan from the government’s Export-Import Bank. The scheme is as follows: these funds will be used to purchase mineral raw materials abroad and bring them to the U.S., where domestic consumers will buy them.

The trader Mercuria has already announced its participation in Project Vault. Recently, authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo promised to sell it 100,000 tons of copper in 2026. So now we know that the Congolese copper won’t be taken away into the unknown—it will end up at very specific Boeing factories.

💰By creating this transit reserve, the US is once again attempting to address China’s dominance in mining and processing. However, it remains unclear whether it may really help make the US competitive compared to China.

At first glance, it looks more like an attempt to profit from trade intermediation.

#Global

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🇬🇭 Ghana's Minister for Finance Ato Forson and GoldBod CEO Sammy Gyamfi attended the ceremony marking the first gold bar production at Gold Coast Refinery Ltd, which bills itself as "West Africa’s largest refinery."

Built all the way back in 2016, the refinery spent the last nine years sitting idle—gold refining isn’t profitable on its own unless there are massive volumes, which is why such plants are often state-owned in many countries.

In Ghana’s case, unfortunately, 85% of the now-operational facility is owned by a private Egyptian company. Still, its state-sponsored launch creates a handful of jobs and, more importantly, gives authorities physical control over the flow of pure gold across the border.

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What Is Finnish Minister Doing in Zambia? 🇫🇮

🗺Finland is known for its harsh climate, skis to escape it, and saunas to hide from it. None of which Zambia needs. So why is the Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs currently visiting Zambia—7,500 kilometers from home?

While the Finns themselves don’t build anything major, companies from the Nordic country are happy to bandwagon, latching onto projects led by bigger players: Finnish equipment suppliers already work with Western gold miners like Barrick, and Finnish railway firms are aggressively lobbying their services, trying to hitch a ride on the US-European Lobito Corridor project.

The choice of Zambia as a key target for expansion is simple—there’s no choice. Finnish companies are prohibited from working with their immediate neighbor — Russia — and seek new, promising markets. Meanwhile, Zambia is far more open and stable than most other African nations, giving minor Finnish tractor suppliers the breathing room they need to grow.

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Nigeria's Fuel Regulator Chief Praises Tinubu’s Success in Cutting Fuel Imports

🇳🇬 According to Saidu Mohammed, head of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Nigeria has saved around 6 trillion naira ($4.4 billion) by reducing fuel imports in the first nine months of 2025 alone.

The official attributes this success to President Tinubu’s reforms, particularly the full deregulation of the sector, foreign exchange harmonization, and the shift to trading oil in the national currency instead of dollars. Clearly, the "savings" refer to reducing the outflow of dollars abroad.

✅ While the reduction in imports is undeniably a success, it’s worth recalling that one of the steps in deregulating the fuel sector was the dismissal of the previous NMDPRA head in December last year — at the behest of Nigerian oil refining magnate Aliko Dangote.

Looking ahead, Saidu Mohammed envisions a future where Nigeria eliminates fuel imports entirely:

🔴The supply chain landscape of the sector has depended significantly on importation, and that is the story we want to change, from 100 per cent importation to zero importation, and then we start climbing towards exportation.

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👀 Trust, But Verify

🔥 While some wage war and others dig the earth with their hands, the most privileged class in the Congo—mining companies—face their own calamity: over the past year, insurance costs for them have skyrocketed tenfold due to the ongoing conflict.

According to Reuters, after the AFC/M23 offensive intensified in early 2025, premiums for political violence insurance paid by mining companies surged 5 to 10 times, even though most of them operate far from the conflict zone and have never faced the threat of a direct attack.

📊 The same sources report that the insurance market stabilized after a year, with prices returning to pre-crisis levels by January 2026.

This spike in insurance costs reveals what no one will admit publicly: a huge crisis of confidence in Kinshasa’s ability to keep the situation in the country under control, which swept over foreign companies in 2025.

➡️ Stay informed - @devilsbelow