Oil prices dropped $2 on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on trading partners, stoking concerns that a global trade war may dampen demand for crude.

Brent futures fell $1.97, or 2.63%, to $72.98 a barrel by 0033 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down $1.98, or 2.76%, to $69.73.

Trump touted April 2 as "Liberation Day," bringing new duties that could overturn the global trade system.

Both benchmarks settled higher in the previous session but turned negative over the course of Trump's press conference on Wednesday afternoon in which he announced a 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the United States and higher duties on dozens of the country's biggest trading partners.

"We know it will be negative for trade, economic growth and thus oil demand growth. But we don't know how bad it will be as the effects come a little bit down the road," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB.

Imports of oil, gas and refined products were exempted from U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, the White House said on Wednesday.

Trump's tariff policies could stoke inflation, slow economic growth and intensify trade disputes, possibilities that have weighed down oil prices.

Reinforcing bearish sentiment, Energy Information Administration data on Wednesday showed U.S. crude inventories rose by a surprisingly large 6.2 million barrels last week, against analysts' forecasts for a decline of 2.1 million barrels.

Reuters

The World Bank says a total of $1.13 billion loan request from Nigeria has been approved.

According to details from the bank’s website on Wednesday, three different financing requests were approved in March, for projects targeting quality education, household and community resilience, and improved nutrition.

The World Bank said $80 million was approved for the ‘Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria 2.0’ project, and $552 million for the ‘HOPE for Quality Basic Education for All programme’, on March 31.

Further checks by TheCable showed that on March 28, the lender also approved a $500 million loan for Nigeria’s ‘Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus Programme’.

On February 28, the federal government said it was expecting to receive new loans from the World Bank, totalling $2.2 billion in 2025.

According to the Washington-based financial institution’s project list, the $2.2 billion will cut across six different projects.

The multilateral lender gave Nigeria $1.5 billionin 2024 for a number of significant development initiatives meant to strengthen the country’s ability to mobilise resources and maintain economic stability.

Nigeria’s loan exposure from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) reportedly rose to $17.1 billion as at September 30, 2024.

According to the IDA’s financial statement for September 2024, Nigeria maintained the third spot in its top 10 borrowers’ list.

Although Nigeria’s exposure dropped to $16.8 billion as at December 31, 2024, the West African nation retained its position as the third-largest debtor to the World Bank’s IDA.

The Cable

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Putin conscripts 160K men as Russia eyes Ukraine offensive

Russia has initiated its largest military draft in 14 years as reports indicate Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing a spring assault on Ukraine despite ongoing peace negotiations to end the three-year war. 

Putin has called up 160,000 men as part of the country’s bi-annual conscription drive as Russia seeks to beef up its military ranks.

According to the legislation, citizens aged 18 to 30 will be called up for mandatory military service through June 15. The spring draft marks the largest conscription campaign since spring 2011, when 200,000 men were called up for service. Last year, 150,000 men were called, following 134,500 in 2022.

The Kremlin and Defense Ministry insist the latest conscripts are not being sent into combat and that the draft is unrelated to the war in Ukraine. Russian authorities say troops deployed to Ukraine only include volunteers who signed contracts with the military.

Some draftees, however, fought and were taken prisoners when the Ukrainian military launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August.

Putin said late last year that Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million.

It comes as a report suggests the Kremlin is preparing a six- to nine-month offensive across the Ukrainian front, potentially stretching over 1,000 kilometers, according to The New Voice of Ukraine. Potential targets include Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhya oblasts, as well as the Kursk Oblast, where they’ve seen recent success.

The offensive is also aimed at maximizing pressure on Ukraine and strengthening the Kremlin’s negotiating position in ceasefire talks, Ukrainian government and military analysts said.

Meanwhile, U.S.-led talks attempting to broker a ceasefire deal appear to have stalled. The U.S. has struggled in its efforts to secure an immediate 30-day ceasefire, despite Moscow saying it agreed with a truce "in principle." 

Rebekah Koffler, a former DIA intelligence officer who specializes in Russia’s war-fighting strategy and Putin’s thinking, told Fox News Digital that Putin’s goal with his conscription drive is to prolong the fighting.

"There’s no ceasefire and no peace plan between Russia and Ukraine to be had," said Koffler, the author of a best-selling book "Putin’s Playbook." "What President Trump seeks is regretfully, unachievable. Putin's goal is to keep fighting, in order to compel Ukraine to capitulate."

Trump is trying to secure a peace and rare earth minerals deal, while on Sunday the president said he did not think Putin was going to go back on his word for a partial ceasefire.

Koffler, meanwhile, said the latest conscription numbers are intended to ensure that the correlation of forces on the battlefield and in reserves, continues to favor Russia. 

"Now that Germany and France are considering to deploy reassurance forces into Ukraine, Putin is factoring in those numbers, so he is increasing his force's posture, to deter such a deployment or failing to prevent it by force."

"Putin has prepared Russia for a long, protracted conflict, in which he wants the Russian forces to be ready to fight till the last Ukrainian and the last missile in the NATO arsenal," Koffler said.

She said Putin is also considering the possibility of having a direct kinetic war with NATO, in the event that NATO decides to deploy forces into the theater in Ukraine. 

"So, he intends for these mobilization numbers as a deterrence value and battlefield utility, if it comes to that."

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine continuing attacks on Russian energy facilities – MOD

The Ukrainian military has launched new attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, despite claiming it complies with a US-brokered truce on such strikes, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

Two incidents have been registered in Russia’s Kursk Region, where Ukrainian drones targeted a substation and damaged a power line in the area, the military said. The attacks inflicted material damage and cut some 1,500 customers off the grid, it added.

“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are systematically launching strikes with drones and artillery systems on Russian energy infrastructure against the backdrop of statements by various representatives of the Kiev regime, starting with [Vladimir] Zelensky, about compliance with restrictions on strikes on Russian energy facilities,” the ministry said.

Later in the day, Luganskgaz, an energy company operating in Russia’s Lugansk People's Republic, reported a Ukrainian drone attack on one of its facilities. The attack hit a gas distribution station, sparked a fire and disrupted supply to more than 11,000 customers, the company said in a statement. Gas supply has already been partially restored after the attack, it added.

Ukraine violates the US-brokered energy truce on a daily basis, the ministry claimed.

The partial ceasefire was proposed by US President Donald Trump during a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in March. The Russian leader accepted the proposal, immediately ordering the country’s troops to halt such attacks. At the time, the Russian military said it had to shoot down seven of its own kamikaze drones that were en route to Ukraine’s energy facilities when the order was issued.

Last week, Moscow revealed a comprehensive list of energy facilities subject to the 30-day truce. The agreement could be prolonged, Russia has noted, adding that if either party violates the deal, the other can consider itself free from any obligations.

Zelensky publicly backed the idea of the truce shortly after it was first announced, appearing to reiterate his commitment to the deal last week. However, the Ukrainian leader never publicly mentioned any specific orders to the country’s military despite hailing the truce as a purported “victory”for Kiev.

Reuters/RT

Years ago, I had an unforgettable experience of nearly witnessing a lynching at Iwo Road in Ibadan. It was a typical day, and while standing at a bus stop, a woman two paces away suddenly shouted that her purse had been snatched. She held the clothes of the man standing beside her. Before you knew it, the place had transformed. A crowd quickly gathered around, many of them young men who seemed to have magically sprouted from thin air. From ordinary guys going about their lives, they instantly transmuted into the judiciary and were ready to execute a self-designated mandate. They stripped the accused, kicked him, beat him, and demanded he return the purse.

Perhaps the most amazing transformation for me was a man who had stood beside me at the bus stop. While I was still puzzled at the events unfolding around me, this guy had found a huge stone and was yelling at the crowd to clear a path for him—he was going to smash the skull of the accused! Fortunately, the accused man managed to escape while those who had arrested him were still deciding on how to lynch him. I do not know if he was guilty of stealing the purse or not, but I am thankful that he did not die that day.

Every time I have told this story to friends, I have also wondered how and when that man transmuted from just another person at the bus stop to a potential killer. Was that even a real human man or a gnarled monster walking around at noonday like some mythological fables report? Imagine a man ready to commit murder, maybe just an hour after leaving his home in the morning. If he had managed to participate in killing that man, would he still have proceeded through the rest of his day like nothing had happened? Would he have gone back home to his family at night (if he had one) and continued life like he had not just killed a man?

Since the news emerged about how a vigilante group in Uromi, Edo State, lynched 16 hunters after tagging them kidnappers, I have returned to that incident to once again ask how men become the monsters who set up bonfires to burn their fellow humans. What (and when) is the moment of their transfiguration? It is when a situation like the Uromi incident occurs that we realise that there are many subhuman mongrels among us, some of them able to transfigure into monsters who can lynch a person in an instant. They lynched not one, not two, not three, not even four humans!

One must wonder about the kind of people who would keep throwing one person after the other into the fire (while some equally depraved people thought it was worth recording the pain and agony of the victims on their camera for later distribution). If there was no moment at which any internally controlling ethical code restrained them, then it is also probably not the first time they have lynched people. Those vigilantes must have played at being the law for so long that they started imagining themselves to be truly one. This unfortunate incident is one of the many fallouts of the state recession in the public sphere. When you have a country where security can no longer be guaranteed by the state, all sorts of maniacs will step in to fill the void.

This distressing incident has also thrown up the fault lines of ethnicity and religion between the northern and southern regions of the country. One only needs to read Nigerians from the two divided halves of the country as they bicker over the deaths to see how they are gauging their respective regional civilisation from the responses to the distressing event. It seems to me that northerners see the Uromi incident as an opportunity to take down the smug superiority of snobbish southerners who have typically imagined themselves to be socially superior. Now that the so-called civilised South has displayed a similar primitive behaviour that, if it had happened in the North, would have been filed as one more example of their cultural backwardness, they are practically celebrating their vindication along with mourning the demise of the victims.

For the southern commenters, the incident is not only distressing but also embarrassing as they must justify themselves before people who never apologise for the lynching that happened in their territory. And they are right because the Uromi incident is similar to that of Deborah Samuel, the Christian student who was lynched in 2023 by some religious fundamentalists who admitted their crime on video. Unlike this ongoing case, where the southerners are condemning the lynching and calling for justice, I do not remember the northerners doing the same. Many northerners, including their prominent clerics, justified the killing of Samuel. A presidential candidate who dared to condemn the murder had to withdraw his statement when they threatened his presidential ambition! The Edo State Governor, Monday Okpebholo, is running all over the place and promising the family of the victims compensation, something that is unlikely to happen if the situation were reversed.

The court freed Samuel’s killers, and that woman did not get justice. Nobody in the government dared to touch them because of politics. In the wake of the Uromi incident, some of them are still doubling down on their justification for lynching that woman. If they cannot see her humanity, then on what moral grounds do they stand to demand justice for the Uromi victims? Yet, not wanting to be outdone, they bring up the case of Adamawa woman Harira Jubril, the pregnant woman who was killed along with her children in Anambra State by some unidentified gunmen. It is bad enough that she, too, never got justice; it is also horrible that her story is cheaply weaponised by those who merely want to score political points against a rival group.

Still convinced they are the bigger victims, the southerners start to reel out the many cases of Fulani herdsmen attacks on villages, farmlands, and their communities. They list the deaths and the destruction caused by Fulani herdsmen who have been rampaging through communities in Nigeria, mostly unchecked. This self-justification by matching northern stories of injustice with southern stories of injustice eventually spirals into an endless loop of barbarism, bloodletting, and unleashed monstrosity.

In trading stories of injustice for injustice, these people also catalogue the injustice the nation has committed against our collective humanity. Notwithstanding their motivations, their exchanges are an indictment of a nation that cheaply discounts our lives, and—by failing to pursue the outstanding debts owed to our murdered compatriots—serially indicates that we are simply not worth the trouble of the pursuit of justice. In fact, one can say the reason the Federal Government swooped into action in the case of Uromi is the fear of reprisals by irate northerners, and not because they deemed the lives of those 16 hunters worthy enough to merit justice.

What is saddest about these fiery exchanges is that the compiled evidence is being misdirected and misused by people wanting to balance out tribal wrongs rather than indict the real culprit: Nigeria, a country that has failed to establish a standard of righteousness, of justice, of truth, of integrity, and the ascriptions of full value to our lives. Consequently, we have too many among us who have been driven over the edge, deeply traumatised by the harassments of our Nigerian lives, but have not yet found the mouth with which to tell the story. They think they are normal because they can still type coherent sentences on social media, but the truth is that they are bleeding internally from the wounds of our national existence.

Punch

Can anyone actually afford to live in the UK anymore? That’s the burning question posed by social media influencer Prudishfish in a now-viral video that has set off a storm of discussions about the country's economic future. Her blunt advice to young people—"If you're under 40, leave the UK"—has struck a chord with thousands, igniting debates on social media about rising costs, declining quality of life, and an exodus of the wealthy.

Millionaires Are Leaving—Should You?

In the video, Prudishfish highlights a troubling trend: a staggering 10,800 millionaires left the UK in 2024 alone, making it the second-highest wealth outflow in the world, just behind China. That’s more than double the previous year’s numbers—roughly one millionaire packing their bags every 45 minutes.

This isn’t just a niche issue affecting the ultra-rich. The exodus translates to a significant loss of taxpayers, with one millionaire’s tax contribution reportedly equal to that of 49 average taxpayers. The departure of the wealthy has sparked concerns about economic stability, public funding, and the government's ability to sustain social services.

According to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024, Britain is on track to lose 17% of its millionaires by 2028, marking the largest decline among 36 countries analyzed. With real estate included in the equation, the UK could see more than half a million high-net-worth individuals relocating in just five years.

Social Media Backs the Bold Statement

While Prudishfish’s advice may sound extreme, social media users seem to agree. The video has racked up nearly a million views, with commenters sharing their own experiences of feeling financially squeezed in the UK.

"Blame this government and the previous one; they destroyed the UK," one frustrated user wrote.

"I left in 2016. Switzerland is awesome, and I'm on track to be a millionaire in a year or so," boasted another.

A third user, who had spent 17 years in the UK, explained why they were packing up for Australia: "Everything now costs more for nothing amazing. We stopped eating out because pub food is overpriced and terrible. Train travel? A joke—nearly £300 for a return ticket from Oxford to Cornwall. In Australia, you can travel four hours by train for around £5."

A Symptom of a Bigger Problem?

The UK’s economic challenges have been making headlines for years, from skyrocketing rent and home prices to rising taxes and stagnant wages. But the mass exodus of the wealthy, combined with a growing number of disillusioned young professionals considering a move abroad, signals a deeper crisis.

The government’s recent move to end the resident non-domicile taxsystem, which allowed foreign-born residents to avoid paying UK taxes on overseas income, has been cited as a major factor behind the millionaire migration. However, many argue that it's not just the ultra-rich who are feeling the squeeze—middle-class professionals and young workers are also struggling to see a viable future in Britain.

Prudishfish’s video may have started as a thought-provoking take on the numbers, but it has turned into something much bigger—a wake-up call for those who feel trapped in an economy that no longer works for them.

For some, leaving may be the best option. But for others, the real question remains: Is the UK doing enough to keep its talent and wealth from slipping away?

Economic Times

Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has finally declared war on Ponzi schemes, with a new law empowering it to jail fraudsters for up to 10 years and slam them with a N40 million fine—a move that could have saved millions of Nigerians from infamous scams like MMM, MBA Forex, and Loom Money Nigeria if enacted earlier.

SEC Director-General Emomotimi Agama announced the crackdown during an interview on Arise TV, revealing that the newly signed Investment and Securities Act (ISA) 2025 now gives the Commission the legal teeth to pursue and punish Ponzi operators, something it previously struggled with.

"With the new law, they now face a 10-year jail term and beyond," Agama declared, adding that the N40 million penalty is just the starting point.

"We will ensure every illegal profit is disgorged—fraudsters will not only be jailed but also forced to return their victims' money."

A Lesson from Nigeria’s Ponzi Graveyard

The timing couldn’t be more critical. Nigeria has long been a hunting ground for Ponzi schemes, with infamous collapses like:

- MMM Nigeria (2016): The Russian-originated scam collapsed, wiping out billions from hopeful investors.    

- Loom Money Nigeria (2017): A pyramid scheme that lured Nigerians with a "pay-to-join" model before crashing.

- MBA Forex (2020): Promised unrealistic forex returns before vanishing with depositors’ funds.

Many of these fraudsters operated with impunity, exploiting weak regulations and desperate investors. Now, the SEC says the new law will ensure that future Ponzi kingpins face harsh penalties and asset seizures.