UBA Group Appoints Tony O. Elumelu as Chairman

United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) is one of the largest financial services institutions in Africa

The Board of United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) yesterday announced the appointment of Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, C.O.N. as Chairman, succeeding Ambassador Joe Keshi.

Mr Elumelu is Chairman/CEO of Heirs Holdings (http://www.heirsholdings.com), the pan-African proprietary investment company, which he founded in 2010 and which holds stakes in a number of leading African businesses, including Nigeria's largest conglomerate by market capitalisation, Transcorp, and UBA.  Elumelu retired as Group Managing Director and CEO of UBA in 2010, following the introduction by the Central Bank of Nigeria of 10 year tenure limits for bank CEOs. 

He had served as CEO of the UBA Group for 13 years, where he was responsible for the creation of today's UBA - a financial services institution that built a reputation for innovation and the democratisation of banking services and now spans Africa, providing services to more than 10 million customers across the continent and in London, Paris and New York.

UKOMU IGALA Appeals for the Creation of Okura State

Map of the Proposed Okura State

AN APPEAL FOR THE INCLUSION OF THE PROPOSED OKURA STATE (TO BE CREATED OUT OF THE PRESENT KOGI STATE) AS ONE OF THE THREE STATES RECOMMENDED FOR CREATION BY THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE IN THE NORTH CENTRAL GEO-POLITICAL ZONE.

We hereby congratulate Your Excellency for the successful completion of the historic National Conference, which you convened, as a significant land mark in your effort to strengthen national unity and consolidate democratic governance in our beloved country. The peaceful completion of this noble assignment by the members of the National Conference is a testimony of Your Excellency’s imagination, resourcefulness and determination to positively place Nigeria as one of the most economically, politically and socially vibrant and powerful nations of the world.

There is no doubt, that the cynicisms, which greeted the initial efforts toward the convocation of the National Conference have given way to enthusiastic disposition of Nigerians, as reflected in their call  to subject the conclusions of the National Conference to outright referendum. This is a wonderful and unprecedented breakthrough in successive governments’ attempts to create conducive environment for an egalitarian society, full of unbridled and equal opportunities.

Your Excellency emphasized in your inauguration address to the members of the National Conference on 17^th March, 2014 thus, “The National Conference is therefore being convened to engage in intense introspection about the political and socio-economic challenges confronting our nation and to chart the best and most acceptable way for the

Giving Women Land Rights, Giving Them Solid Economic Footing

A woman Farming in Ndop-Cameroon.

Elizabeth Maimo, a 52-year-old farmer barely ekes out a living from a tiny parcel of land she rents in Santa village in the North West Region of Cameroon.  The mother of five finds it hard to put food on the table for herself and her children, talk less of sending them to school. But some ten years ago, she and her husband were considered well-off.

 Farming on over 10 hectares of land, Maimo and her husband could comfortably feed their family and sell the surplus to raise family income. In a country where 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, her family was counted among the wealthy.

But things changed when her husband died three years ago. The land was taken away from her and her children.

“Just after my husband was buried, my in-laws confiscated the 10 hectares of land on which we have been cultivating for the past twenty years” she lamented.

 “Today I am managing on a rented, smaller piece of land and this has reduced my yields and income by more than 50 percent,” Maimo said. Traditional practices in the area just like in many African cultures give the right to inherit land exclusively to men.

“Things have become so difficult that I have had to take some of my kids out of school,” she said. 

 Another female tomatoes farmer in Bambili in the Northwest Region of Cameroon, Julie Ngeh, says she surrendered to the dictates of the custom of her area, losing her three hectares of farm on a family land in 2013 to her younger brother, a herder, who wanted more space to breed cows.