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All you need to know about sack of Mozambique airline board

Not a common scene to find the president of a country stranded at the airport. But this played out in Mozambique, and has now cost the Air Mozambique Board their jobs

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Not a common scene to find the president of a country stranded at the airport. But this played out in Mozambique, and has now cost the Air Mozambique Board their jobs.

The board of Mozambique’s Lam Airlines was sacked after the country’s prime minister and other passengers were left stranded when a plane ran out of fuel.

Reports say Carlos Agostinho do Rosário ended up using an air force plane for his official trip from the capital, Maputo, to the northern Niassa province.

The state-owned airline has been experiencing a cash crunch.

Local media report the “chaos” has been going on for three days.

Sources familiar with the incident said that fuel suppliers had asked for payment to be made before delivery.

Read Also: Procter & Gamble (P&G) shuts Nigerian plant

The airline called the incident “embarrassing” but said it was working to ensure flights resumed on Friday after the government’s intervention, the BBC’s Jose Tembe in Maputo reports.

It apologised to its customers and urged travellers to telephone to get information about their flights.

A six-year ban on the airline operating in the European Union was lifted last year. It had been imposed because of what the EU said was a lack of oversight by aviation authorities.

Mozambique has been facing a financial crisis since 2015 and has been largely cut off from multilateral and foreign donors after the government admitted to $1.4bn (£1bn) of undisclosed borrowing in 2016.

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Binance vs Nigeria: Court adjourns hearing on right abuses 

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The office of Nigeria’s National Security Adviser and an anti-graft agency— the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC)— have been sued by two executives of Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, for allegedly violating their fundamental rights following their recent arrest.

Following Nigeria’s decision to outlaw several cryptocurrency trading websites, United States citizen Tigran Gambaryan, who oversees financial crime compliance for Binance, and British-Kenyan Nadeem Anjarwalla, regional manager for Binance in Africa, took a plane to Nigeria on February 26 and were arrested upon arrival.

Anjarwalla may now be subject to an international arrest warrant after reportedly escaping Nigerian custody last week.

Last month, Nigeria’s central bank governor revealed that Binance is under investigation in Nigeria due to “suspicious flows” of cash through Binance Nigeria in 2023. Government organizations such as the Securities and Trade Commission of the nation are already wary of the cryptocurrency trade.

In a court appearance on Thursday, Gambaryan asked Judge Iyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court in the country’s capital, Abuja to rule that the National Security Adviser and the Economic and EFCC detention and seizure of his passport “amounts to a violation of his fundamental right to personal liberty” as stipulated by the Nigerian constitution.

The Binance chiefs also demanded a public apology, a restraining order to prevent them from being detained any longer, and an order to be released and return their passports. They said they had not been told of any offences.

Due to the absence of attorneys from the EFCC and the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), the judge adjourned the hearing till April 8 without rendering a decision. Nigeria is currently struggling with ongoing dollar shortages, a situation that has made several cryptocurrency websites become the go-to venues for trading Nigerian currency.

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Kenya, Uganda settle oil import dispute

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In an effort to patch things up between the two neighbours, Kenya will permit Uganda’s landlocked state oil company to import petroleum products through its port of Mombasa, the country’s energy ministry said on Thursday.

After decades of receiving their cargo through affiliated firms in Kenya, Uganda has been looking for alternative ways to import petroleum products, including through a port in Tanzania. According to Solomon Muyita, a spokesman for Uganda’s ministry of minerals and energy, the first shipment under the new arrangement is scheduled for May.

“Kenya has agreed to give us a licence, UNOC (Uganda National Oil Company) is now free to import through Mombasa,” he said.

According to reports, UNOC would use the Kenya Pipeline Company to transport the goods, so Kenya would still profit from the agreement, according to Kenyan Energy Minister Davis Chirchir.

In 2022, Uganda imported petroleum products valued at $1.6 billion, the majority of which came from the Gulf. Kenya serves as the import gateway for about 90% of the goods.

It declared in November that it would transfer all exclusive petroleum product supply rights to a division of the international energy trader Vitol, which would subsequently supply UNOC.

According to what the government said at the time, using Kenyan companies to import oil had “exposed Uganda to occasional supply vulnerabilities” whereby Ugandan retail companies were viewed as secondary whenever there were supply disruptions changing retail prices.

The two African nations that make up the Great Lakes are partners in a variety of fields, including trade, infrastructure, energy, education, agriculture, and military security.

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