Some commercial sex workers in the Federal Capital Territory have decried low patronage in their business due to the scarcity of naira notes. Some of them who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Sunday said the scarcity of the notes was a threat and had crippled their businesses. They said that although the currency swap policy was commendable, the current mode of implementation was a challenge to their business. Miss Alexandra Tricia (pseudonym), a commercial sex worker, said her customers had reduced drastically due to the current ‘no cash syndrome’.   She described the development as both frustrating and slow for the business. ”The business is no longer booming like before because there is no cash anywhere. ”Some of my customers will come and after negotiations, they will ask if I have an account so they can transfer the money to me. ”When I give them the account number, they will press their phones and tell me that they have transferred some money. ”The worst part of it is that you will see their own alert in their phones but most times you will not get your own alert. ”They will want you to start the service immediately without you getting an alert and when you refuse, some of them will start making trouble. “ In fact, there is one of my colleagues that a customer sent a transfer alert to but up till now, the money is still pending but she has serviced the man,” she said. Another sex worker, Miss Ifedi Ote (pseudonym), a university dropout, said many of her colleagues in the business had left temporarily due to the current cash crunch. She said the development had caused customers who had little cash at hand to pay ‘next to nothing’ for their services. ”Clients who have cash will price you as low as N1,500 to N3,000. ”When you refuse, they will tell you that the amount is the only cash they have on them and because I need cash, I will be forced to accept the price. ”Even the Point of Sale agent where we usually direct our customers to for money has suddenly run out of cash for the past two weeks. ”I think this policy is a good one because it is meant to curb crime but the banks are not implementing it well,” she said. Another commercial sex worker, Tracy Ehigbere, appealed to the authorities concerned to urgently address issues around the currency swap policy. NAN reports that some of the mammy markets and brothels visited along FCT satellite towns which usually witnessed beehives of activities were deserted. NAN

  Commercial banks have started collecting the old N500 and N1,000 naira notes from their customers. The development comes despite the rebuttal of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that it did not direct banks to collect the old naira notes from citizens. Meanwhile, in contradiction to the apex bank’s position, checks by TheCable showed that the cash redemption portal of the CBN directed customers with old notes totalling N500,000 and below to commercial banks to make the deposits. To ascertain the state of things, TheCable visited banks in different parts of Lagos on Saturday. Long queues were seen in front of banks as customers attempted to gain access into the banking halls. At Access Bank in Megida bus stop, Ayobo, a bank official was calling out the names of customers from a sheet of paper. Once a customer’s name is called, he/she is allowed to proceed into the bank. The bank official said they would stop attending to customers by 2pm. Meanwhile, some customers outside the bank lamented that they were unable to generate a reference number from the CBN portal. “I have been here since 10am. This is almost 2pm. The CBN portal is saying validation error. I can’t generate the reference code so I can’t go in,” a customer, simply identified as John, told TheCable. At branches of Access Bank and First Bank in Iyana Ipaja, customers were allowed to deposit their old notes. Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) branches in Ikorodu and Airport Road were also attending to customers. At a Sterling Bank branch in Ikorodu, TheCable observed that only those who have generated the CBN reference number were being allowed in. A security officer at a United Bank for Africa (UBA) branch in the area said the firm has stopped attending to people for the day. “We will open again on Monday,” he said. At the time of visit (2pm), a small group of customers at an Access Bank branch in Ikorodu were waiting to get attended to under a canopy outside the company. “They opened in the morning to collect the notes. But now they’ve closed,” a customer said. Another customer said they were waiting to see if the bank workers would allow them in or tell them when to come back. TheCable observed that most of the customers were trying to generate the CBN reference number on their phones — a prerequisite for entering the bank.

  The death toll on Saturday rose to more than 44,000 from the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria with the body of former Ghana international footballer Christian Atsu also found beneath a collapsed building in Antakya. The number of people found alive under the rubble have dropped to only a handful in recent days and the head of Turkey’s disaster agency, Yunus Sezer, said rescue operations would be “largely completed” by Sunday night. State news agency Anadolu initially reported on Saturday three people were found alive nearly two weeks after the the 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit on February 6. But the agency later reported that one of them, a 12-year-old, had died. Anadolu images showed rescuers placing a man and a woman on stretchers after the married couple and a child spent 296 hours under the rubble in the southeastern Turkish city of Antakya.   The agency later reported three of their children had died including the 12-year-old. Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca shared a video of the 40-year-old mother in a field hospital receiving treatment. “She is conscious,” he tweeted. AFP correspondents said rescuers from Kyrgyzstan continued working in Antakya with the hope of finding more people pulled out alive after thermal tests showed signs of life. Teams on Friday pulled four people alive from the rubble, including a 45-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy, in the surrounding Hatay province.   Lax building standards Rescues that were initially met with applause and relief, have in recent days been greeted more soberly. Officials and medics said that 40,642 people had died in Turkey and 3,688 in Syria from the quake, bringing the confirmed total to 44,330. The toll from Syria has remained unchanged for days. The quake — in one of the world’s most active seismic zones — hit populated areas as many slept, in homes that had not been built to resist such powerful tremors. The disaster has put pressure on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the slow response to the quake and why his government allowed such poor-quality buildings to be erected. Turkish officials had promised after a quake in 1999 killed more than 17,000 people in northwestern Turkey that building regulations would be strengthened. Footballer Atsu’s manager confirmed on Saturday his body had been found beneath a collapsed building in Antakya. The building where he died, a 12-storey luxury block of flats, was built in 2013 when Turkey had tougher rules on construction. Atsu’s block toppled over, causing outrage in Turkey over how a relatively new building was unable to withstand a quake. Turkish police have since arrested the building’s contractor after he tried to flee the country. ‘Not right to leave’ Officers have arrested dozens of contractors as the government promises to crack down on lax building standards. More than 84,000 buildings either collapsed, need urgent demolition or were severely damaged in the quake, officials said. One of the areas severely hit was Antakya, an ancient crossroads of civilisations. The city has suffered several earthquakes — almost one every 100 years — and is no stranger to rebuilding. “We will clean up and continue living here,” said optician Cuneyt Eroglu, 45, sifting through the wreckage of his shop, surrounded by twisted glasses and paraphernalia. Unlike other parts of the old town, the street in front of his shop has not yet been cleared of the rubble and twisted metal that engulfed much of the city. Eroglu, whose family escaped the quake uninjured, is now staying in a tent in a village outside Antakya. “It wouldn’t be right to leave Antakya,” he said.

  The Court of Appeal in Abuja has dismissed a suit by a group linked with a former Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, seeking to nullify the nomination of Bola Tinubu as the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC). In a judgement, a three-man panel of the court, held that the appeal by the Incorporated trustees of Rights for All International (RAI) was incompetent. The group had jointly filed the suit with Nwajiuba before the Federal High Court in Abuja, which the court, in a judgment dismissed and outlawed the group. But on appeal, the group excluded Nwajiuba from the case, a decision the Court of Appeal found to be unlawful. The Court of Appeal, in its upheld the objection by the APC and other respondents, that the suit by the appellant, filed at the trial court – the Federal High Court, Abuja – was not a pre-election matter because the plaintiffs could not be said to be a person covered by Section 285(14) a, b. c of the 1999 Constitution being an NGO. The appellate court held that the removal of Nwajiuba who was a party in the case at the lower court meant the judgment of the lower court was not appealed. The court noted that the appeal was an attempt by the group, to revive itself having earlier been dissolved by the judgment of the trial court. At the trial court, RAI and Nwajiuba had in their suit sought among others, to void the primaries that produced Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar as candidates of the APC and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the next presidential election. They claimed that both parties’ primaries were marked by corrupt practices and prayed the court to replace Tinubu with the ex-Minister, who said he participated in APC’s primary and scored one vote.

  Helicopter-borne United States troops working with Syrian Kurdish-led forces on Saturday captured an Islamic State provincial official in Syria, the US military said. The IS official, identified as Batar, was “involved in planning attacks on… detention centers and manufacturing improvised explosive devices,” the US military’s Central Command said. Neither civilians nor US forces were killed or injured in the operation carried out with the help of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), it added. The raid came a day after four US troops were wounded as they conducted another raid to kill a senior IS group leader in northeastern Syria, CENTCOM said. That raid led to the death of an IS leader identified as Hamza al-Homsi, who CENTCOM said “oversaw the group’s deadly terrorist network in eastern Syria.” Washington leads an international coalition battling IS and conducts periodic raids and strikes targeting the group. After the jihadists lost their last territory to local Kurdish-led forces backed by the coalition in 2019, IS remnants in Syria mostly retreated into desert hideouts in the country’s east. AFP

  Sunday 19 February 2023 Seven days to election, G-5 yet to adopt presidential candidate Campaign: INEC vows to tackle candidates waging verbal wars US troops capture Islamic State leader in Syria raid Six Days To Polls: Inside Atiku, Tinubu, Obi policy documents — Report Vote-Buying: Politicians plot new strategies to bypass cash crunch Naira: Row over APC NWC meeting with govs 10 States Ask Supreme Court To Set Aside Buhari’s Ban On Old N500, N1,000 Notes Appeal Court Dismisses Nwajiuba’s Suit Against Tinubu’s Candidacy Akeredolu Knocks Emefiele, Asks Buhari To End ‘Needless Drift Into Chaos’ Five Parties Collapse Structures For Atiku Gunmen Bomb Police Facility In Anambra, Kill Three Officers Death Toll Rises To Above 44,000 In Turkey-Syria Quake IGP Sets Up Panel, Orders Investigation Into Alleged Anambra Killings Why I’m Proud Of Peter Obi — Anyim 2023: How Insecurity May Affect S/East’s 10.90m Votes Visit a newspaper stand this morning, buy and read a copy for yourself…