Business
CEAN AIR: DANGOTE CEMENT REACHING FOR THE BLUE SKIES By Francis Awowole-Browne
CEAN AIR: DANGOTE CEMENT REACHING FOR THE BLUE SKIES
By Francis Awowole-Browne
Air pollution has identified as one of the greatest environmental risk to human health with far-reaching impacts owing to its spread over long distances. In fact, it is estimated that no fewer than seven million people die prematurely every year worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO). The deaths occasioned by complications arising from respiratory problems, heart disease and cancer, all traced to polluted air.
Given the significance of casualties from air pollution, the United Nations earmarked every September 7 as International Day of Clean Air for the Blue Skies. Air Pollution is a major environmental problem that affects people all over the world, therefore it calls for the need for strong partnership to stem the tide of air pollution and its attendant effect on human, hence the theme for this year’s Day “Together for Clean Air”.
The transboundary nature of air pollution calls for concerted efforts and this was why this year’s theme focused on alliances, shared responsibilities and increased investments to protect the earth from fouled atmospheric condition and have healthy and clean air for all.
It is on this premise that leading Africa Cement manufacturer, Dangote Cement Plc joined the rest of the world to mark this year’s Clean Air Day through creation of awareness on the dangers of polluted air, the importance of clean air for health, productivity, the economy, the environment and the strategies for achieving clean air both as an individual and as an organization. This is because, air pollution manifests in dual fold of health and climate impacts. The Day was marked across the three plants of the Company in Nigeria and pan-African.
The health impact of air pollution consists in tiny, microscopic particles which penetrate deep into human lungs, bloodstream and bodies. These pollutants are responsible for about one-third of deaths from stroke, chronic respiratory disease, and lung cancer, as well as one quarter of deaths from heart attack.
On the other hand, the Climatic impact consists of pollutants with a high global warming potential and harm people, ecosystems, and agricultural productivity. They are also responsible for up to 45% of current much touted global warming.
With this view, Dangote Cement, a notable Champion of climate change segmented its Cean Air Day activities with each plant and its Corporate centre marking the Day in style. As part of the activities to mark the Day at the Global Headquarter of the Cement company in Lagos, the Occupational Health Safety & Environment (OHS&E) department led by Satya Prakash organized a webinar involving stakeholders from the renewable energy private sector, Arnergy and National Environmental Standard and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), a government agency, who spoke on the roles of Individuals, industry, and regulators in achieving clean air.
Omobola Omofaiye, the Chief Commercial Officer of Arnergy, analyzed the air quality index explaining that Air Quality connotes how clean and suitable the air is for humans and the environment and that good air quality indicates the air is free from pollution, while the Air Quality Index is a public measure of the dangers of air pollution.
According to her, Air Quality Index has six categories representing different levels of health concern ranging from good, moderate, unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, Unhealthy and Hazardous noting that Greenhouse gas emission constitute the major cause of air pollution of the ecosystem.
She said the Nigeria eco system is impacted negatively by the heavy reliance on fossil fuel for power generation and quoted the African Development Bank as estimating that Nigerians spend $14bn fuelling petrol or diesel-powered generators and over 40% of Nigerian households owning fuel generators and bear the associated costs according to Stears and Sterling report in June 2022
Omofaiye posited that fossil fuel have an outsized negative impact on the environment. “The consumption of one litre of diesel emits, on average, 2.7kg of CO2. In addition to carbon monoxide, fossil fuel creates air pollutants and hazardous exhaust fumes.”
She therefore canvassed for the use of easily accessible alternative fuel in Solar energy which is Clean energy source, highly reliable and accessible. “It can be offered as centralized or distributed systems with lithium battery energy storage system for commercial and residential use. It is built with embedded intelligence application for remote monitoring and energy management.
At the industrial level, renewable energy expert listed other sources of clean energy as comprising of Biomass, Wind and Hydropower. Benefits of these clean alternative energy she stated include “the reduction in fossil fuel consumption; Reduced Greenhouse Gas emissions: The reduction in CO2 emissions from solar power generation helps combat climate change, which can exacerbate air quality issues through factors such as increased heatwaves and the formation of ground-level ozone; Decreased Indoor Air Pollution and Energy efficiency and lower waste generation.
The concomitant effects of these alternatives, she pointed out are that they would aid the reduction in carbon emission and achievement of good air quality, leads to lower cost when compared with the cost of fossil-based generator and asides guaranteeing 24 hour stable business operations for productivity and reduction of operating expenses, they bring about compliance to regulatory emission standards and good corporate image.
In his presentation, The Asst. Director & Head Environmental Quality Management of NESREA, Mr. Usman Musa appreciated Dangote Cement for the initiative which supports the regulation of air quality in Nigeria as cement production process worldwide contains primary air pollutant sources.
From the regulatory point, Musa highlighted some regulatory measures which he said are targeted at preventing and minimizing pollution from all operations and ancillary activities of the industrial sector players.
Part of the measures are the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for new projects or modification including expansion of existing ones before commencement while existing industries are required to Submit Environmental Audit Reports (EAR) conducted by external consultants accredited by the Agency for existing industries every 3 years and Permit for Waste generation and Air Quality to be obtained every year.
The Dangote Cement Plc, Group Head of OHS&E, Prakash in his own remark while stating Dangote Cement’s commitment to clean air gave insights into eco-friendly activities the Cement Company had undertaken and still working on and which everyone can switch to in order to achieve less emissions of dust and GHGs to the air.
At the ibese, Ogun State plant of the Company, talks were held on achieving clean ambient air quality, air pollution crises, types of pollutants, and how to ensure cleaner air and blue skies. The awareness engagements on particulate and gaseous emission management (measurement, calculation, and control) involved staff across production, instrumentation, mechanical, electrical, OHS&E departments.
At the Gboko, Benue state plant, the Clean Air Day was commemorated with presentation to the Plant Director (PD), Heads of Departments, Unit Heads, Staff and Drivers on the types of emissions present in the plant processes, the hazards to human health and abatement measures with emphasis on the proper use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) and adherence to Dangote Health, Safety, Social and Environment golden rules.
The Clean Air Day at Obajana, Kogi State held with discussions with personnels across production lines on their roles in controlling particulate matter and gaseous emissions whilst ensuring effective cement operations. The plant maintenance team was enlightened on the two-abatement technology that had been adopted – the electrostatic precipitator (ESP) and Bag Filter for the improvement of equipment maintenance for efficiency.
Similar activities were held Okpella Cement plant in Edo state, with the sensitization of staff on poor air quality and the impact of the business on the environment during a safety gate meeting.
The sensitization of management and frontline supervisors dwelled on the Importance of maintaining clean and healthy air which can be impacted by the different plant activities from clinker, and cement production to bagging and finally proper housekeeping. Management of plant then took a walk to the emission-prone areas and location of emission control systems.
The Dangote Cement’s pan-Africa operations in Zambia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Cameroun and South Africa among others, the Clean Air Day activities were centered on prevention and reduction of air pollution to improve air quality. The operations staff had sessions on the high cost of air pollution to the society due to the negative impacts on the economy, work productivity, healthcare costs and tourism, among others.
Business
BUA Foods Records 91% Surge in Profit After Tax, Hits ₦508bn in 2025
BUA Foods Records 91% Surge in Profit After Tax, Hits ₦508bn in 2025
By femi Oyewale
Business
Adron Homes Unveils “Love for Love” Valentine Promo with Exciting Discounts, Luxury Gifts, and Travel Rewards
Adron Homes Unveils “Love for Love” Valentine Promo with Exciting Discounts, Luxury Gifts, and Travel Rewards
In celebration of the season of love, Adron Homes and Properties has announced the launch of its special Valentine campaign, “Love for Love” Promo, a customer-centric initiative designed to reward Nigerians who choose to express love through smart, lasting real estate investments.
The Love for Love Promo offers clients attractive discounts, flexible payment options, and an array of exclusive gift items, reinforcing Adron Homes’ commitment to making property ownership both rewarding and accessible. The campaign runs throughout the Valentine season and applies to the company’s wide portfolio of estates and housing projects strategically located across Nigeria.
Speaking on the promo, the company’s Managing Director, Mrs Adenike Ajobo, stated that the initiative is aimed at encouraging individuals and families to move beyond conventional Valentine gifts by investing in assets that secure their future. According to the company, love is best demonstrated through stability, legacy, and long-term value—principles that real estate ownership represents.
Under the promo structure, clients who make a payment of ₦100,000 receive cake, chocolates, and a bottle of wine, while those who pay ₦200,000 are rewarded with a Love Hamper. Payments of ₦500,000 attract a Love Hamper plus cake, and clients who pay ₦1,000,000 enjoy a choice of a Samsung phone or a Love Hamper with cake.
The rewards become increasingly premium as commitment grows. Clients who pay ₦5,000,000 receive either an iPad or an all-expenses-paid romantic getaway for a couple at one of Nigeria’s finest hotels, which includes two nights’ accommodation, special treats, and a Love Hamper. A payment of ₦10,000,000 comes with a choice of a Samsung Z Fold 7, three nights at a top-tier resort in Nigeria, or a full solar power installation.
For high-value investors, the Love for Love Promo delivers exceptional lifestyle experiences. Clients who pay ₦30,000,000 on land are rewarded with a three-night couple’s trip to Doha, Qatar, or South Africa, while purchasers of any Adron Homes house valued at ₦50,000,000 receive a double-door refrigerator.
The promo covers Adron Homes’ estates located in Lagos, Shimawa, Sagamu, Atan–Ota, Papalanto, Abeokuta, Ibadan, Osun, Ekiti, Abuja, Nasarawa, and Niger States, offering clients the opportunity to invest in fast-growing, strategically positioned communities nationwide.
Adron Homes reiterated that beyond the incentives, the campaign underscores the company’s strong reputation for secure land titles, affordable pricing, strategic locations, and a proven legacy in real estate development.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, Adron Homes encourages Nigerians at home and in the diaspora to take advantage of the Love for Love Promo to enjoy exceptional value, exclusive rewards, and the opportunity to build a future rooted in love, security, and prosperity.
Business
Why Nigeria’s Banks Still on Shaky Ground with Big Profits, Weak Capital
*Why Nigeria’s Banks Still on Shaky Ground with Big Profits, Weak Capital*
*BY BLAISE UDUNZE*
Despite the fragile 2024 economy grappling with inflation, currency volatility, and weak growth, Nigeria’s banking industry was widely portrayed as successful and strong amid triumphal headlines. The figures appeared to signal strength, resilience, and superior management as the Tier-1 banks such as Access Bank, Zenith Bank, GTBank, UBA, and First Bank of Nigeria, collectively reported profits approaching, and in some cases exceeding, N1 trillion. Surprisingly, a year later, these same banks touted as sound and solid are locked in a frenetic race to the capital markets, issuing rights offers and public placements back-to-back to meet the Central Bank of Nigeria’s N500 billion recapitalisation thresholds.
The contradiction is glaring. If Nigeria’s biggest banks are so profitable, why are they unable to internally fund their new capital requirements? Why have no fewer than 27 banks tapped the capital market in quick succession despite repeated assurances of balance-sheet robustness? And more fundamentally, what do these record profits actually say about the real health of the banking system?
The recapitalisation directive announced by the CBN in 2024 was ambitious by design. Banks with international licences were required to raise minimum capital to N500 billion by March 2026, while national and regional banks faced lower but still substantial thresholds ranging from N200 billion to N50 billion, respectively. Looking at the policy, it was sold as a modern reform meant to make banks stronger, more resilient in tough times, and better able to support major long-term economic development. In theory, strong banks should welcome such reforms. In practice, the scramble that followed has exposed uncomfortable truths about the structure of bank profitability in Nigeria.
At the heart of the inconsistency is a fundamental misunderstanding often encouraged by the banks themselves between profits and capital. Unknown to many, profitability, no matter how impressive, does not automatically translate into regulatory capital. Primarily, the CBN’s recapitalisation framework actually focuses on money paid in by shareholders when buying shares, fresh equity injected by investors over retained earnings or profits that exist mainly on paper.
This distinction matters because much of the profit surge recorded in 2024 and early 2025 was neither cash-generative nor sustainably repeatable. A significant portion of those headline banks’ profits reported actually came from foreign exchange revaluation gains following the sharp fall of the naira after exchange-rate unification. The industry witnessed that banks’ holding dollar-denominated assets their books showed bigger numbers as their balance sheets swell in naira terms, creating enormous paper profits without a corresponding improvement in underlying operational strength. These gains inflated income statements but did little to strengthen core capital, especially after the CBN barred banks from using FX revaluation gains for dividends or routine operations. In effect, banks looked richer without becoming stronger.
Beyond FX effects, Nigerian banks have increasingly relied on non-interest income fees, charges, and transaction levies to drive profitability. While this model is lucrative, it does not necessarily deepen financial intermediation or expand productive lending. High profits built on customer charges rather than loan growth offer limited support for long-term balance-sheet expansion. They also leave banks vulnerable when macroeconomic conditions shift, as is now happening.
Indeed, the recapitalisation exercise coincides with a turning point in the monetary cycle. The extraordinary conditions that supported bank earnings in 2024 and 2025 are beginning to unwind. Analysts now warn that Nigerian banks are approaching earnings reset, as net interest margins the backbone of traditional banking profitability, come under sustained pressure.
Renaissance Capital, in a January note, projects that major banks including Zenith, GTCO, Access Holdings, and UBA will struggle to deliver earnings growth in 2026 comparable to recent performance.
In a real sense, the CBN is expected to lower interest rates by 400 to 500 basis points because inflation is slowing down, and this means that banks will earn less on loans and government bonds, but they may not be able to quickly lower the interest they pay on deposits or other debts. The cash reserve requirements are still elevated, which does not earn interest; banks can’t easily increase or expand lending investments to make up for lower returns. The implications are significant. Net interest margin, the difference between what banks earn on loans and investments and what they pay on deposits, is poised to contract. Deposit competition is intensifying as lenders fight to shore up liquidity ahead of recapitalisation deadlines, pushing up funding costs. At the same time, yields on treasury bills and bonds, long a safe and lucrative haven for banks are expected to soften in a lower-rate environment. The result is a narrowing profit cushion just as banks are being asked to carry far larger equity bases.
Compounding this challenge is the fading of FX revaluation windfalls. With the naira relatively more stable in early 2026, the non-cash gains that once flattered bank earnings have largely evaporated. What remains is the less glamorous reality of core banking operations: credit risk management, cost efficiency, and genuine loan growth in a sluggish economy. In this new environment, maintaining headline profits will be far harder, even before accounting for the dilutive impact of recapitalisation.
That dilution is another underappreciated consequence of the capital rush. Massive share issuances mean that even if banks manage to sustain absolute profit levels, earnings per share and return on equity are likely to decline. Zenith, Access, UBA, and others are dramatically increasing their share counts. The same earnings pie is now being divided among many more shareholders, making individual returns leaner than during the pre-recapitalisation boom. For investors, the optics of strong profits may soon give way to the reality of weaker per-share performance.
Yet banks have pressed ahead, not only out of regulatory necessity but also strategic calculation.
During this period of recapitalization, investors are interested in the stock market with optimism, especially about bank shares, as banks are raising fresh capital, and this makes it easier to attract investments. This has become a season for the management teams to seize the moment to raise funds at relatively attractive valuations, strengthen ownership positions, and position themselves for post-recapitalisation dominance. In several cases, major shareholders and insiders have increased their stakes, as projected in the media, signalling confidence in long-term prospects even as near-term returns face pressure.
There is also a broader structural ambition at play. Well-capitalised banks can take on larger single obligor exposures, finance infrastructure projects, expand regionally, and compete more credibly with pan-African and global peers. From this perspective, recapitalisation is not merely about compliance but about reshaping the competitive hierarchy of Nigerian banking. What will be witnessed in the industry is that those who succeed will emerge larger, fewer, and more powerful. Those that fail will be forced into consolidation, retreat, or irrelevance.
For the wider economy, the outcome is ambiguous. Stronger banks with deeper capital buffers could improve systemic stability and enhance Nigeria’s ability to fund long-term development. The point is that while merging or consolidating banks may make them safer, it can also harm the market and the economy because it will reduce competition, let a few banks dominate, and encourage them to earn easy money from bonds and fees instead of funding real businesses. The truth be told, injecting more capital into the banks without complementary reforms in credit infrastructure, risk-sharing mechanisms, and fiscal discipline, isn’t enough as the aforementioned reforms are also needed.
The rush as exposed in this period, is that the moment Nigerian banks started raising new capital, the glaring reality behind their reported profits became clearer, that profits weren’t purely from good management, while the financial industry is not as sound and strong as its headline figures. The fact that trillion-naira profit banks must return repeatedly to shareholders for fresh capital is not a sign of excess strength, but of structural imbalance.
With the deadline for banks to raise new capital coming soon, by 31 March 2026, the focus has shifted from just raising N500 billion. N200 billion or N50 billion to think about the future shape and quality of Nigeria’s financial industry, or what it will actually look like afterward. Will recapitalisation mark a turning point toward deeper intermediation, lower dependence on speculative gains, and stronger support for economic growth? Or will it simply reset the numbers while leaving underlying incentives unchanged?
The answer will define the next chapter of Nigerian banking long after the capital market roadshows have ended and the profit headlines have faded.
Blaise, a journalist and PR professional, writes from Lagos and can be reached via: [email protected]
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