Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano Gas Pipeline Construction to Begin Soon – President Buhari
President Muhammadu Buhari Friday said that the Federal Government would soon commence the construction of the 600-kilometre Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano gas pipeline which would move gas from the Southern part of the country to the North. President Buhari, who disclosed this while addressing the 5th Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) Summit at the Sipopo International Conference Hall, Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, added that the viability of extending the gas pipeline to North Africa was also under consideration. Describing the theme of the Summit, “Natural Gas – Energy for Sustainable Development” as most appropriate, President Buhari noted that the one-day meeting was “taking place at a critical juncture as global energy supply is transitioning from hydrocarbons to renewables.”
According to him, “The Paris Accord of 2015 signalled the first major global commitment to a deliberate effort on this inevitable transition,” stressing that “Nigeria is proud to be one of the first signatories” to the historic Agreement.
Explaining why Nigeria and GECF members are focusing on gas development, President Muhammadu buhari said: “We‘re mindful of the energy deficit in the developing world especially,here in Africa where we have nearly 600 million people without access to modern energy. As responsible leaders, it is our duty to preserve the environment not only for the present but for future generations.”
“We can achieve this balance between our energy deficit and environmental preservation needs by developing and deploying new technologies. Although classified as fossil fuel, natural gas is a viable solution to both our energy and environmental challenges.” — President Muhammadu Buhari
President Buhari noted further that “natural gas has the added advantage of availability and affordability,” stressing that, “to fully leverage this potential, nations need to pool resources to put up trans-border and trans-regional energy infrastructure.”
According to him, “we in Nigeria have led the way by the construction of the West Africa Gas Pipeline which runs through 4 West African countries.” President Muhammadu buhari also commended the foresight of the founding fathers of the GECF “in promoting natural gas in the global energy mix.”
Declaring the Summit open, the host, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, called on members of the GECF to continue to work in harmony towards the realisation of the objectives of the multinational organisation.
Thu 28/11/19
President Buhari Attends 2019 E-Nigeria Conference.
President Mohammadu Buhari attended 2019 E-Nigeria International Conference, Award and Exhibition in Abuja.
President Buhari Receives in audience Mr Patrick Pouyanne.
President Muhammadu Buhari received in audience Mr Patrick Pouyanne, Chairman and CEO of Total Group Worldwide at the State House, Abuja.
President Buhari Presents a gift to the Outgoing Cuba Ambassador to Nigeria.
President Muhammadu Buhari presented a gift to the Outgoing Cuba Ambassador to Nigeria, H.E Carlos Trejo Sosa during a farewell audience at the State House, Abuja.
Wed 27/11/2019
President Buhari Presides Over FEC
President Muhammadu Buhari presided over the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting at the State House, Abuja.
President Buhari Decorates Newly Promoted Officer.
President Mohammadu Buhari decorates Newly Promoted Officer, Air Commodre Hassan Abubakar, PAF Commander at the State House, Abuja.
Osinbajo Advocates Increased State Govts’ Engagement to end Gender-Based Violence Against Women
In order to deepen advocacy against gender-based violence and strengthen official efforts to prevent it, there is a need to intensify the engagements of State governments across the country.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, stated this today while receiving Mrs. Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for non-violent struggle, safety and women’s rights.
According to him, “driving prosecution for sex offenders is best done at the state level, particularly strengthening the States to do so at the National Economic Council.”
The Vice President emphasized the need for States to exercise political will in order to get the desired results, as well as provide the necessary funding to implement, working together with the private sector.
With respect to the Sex Offenders Register, Prof Osinbajo said “it was something that needed a lot of attention, changing the orientation of men in particular, to understand it’s a campaign that must be championed by men”
Speaking earlier during the visit, Mrs. Gbowee noted the prevalence of rape in and out of conflict zones with impunity across Africa, stating that the successful launch of the sex offenders register in Nigeria is a huge milestone and Nigeria has set the precedence for other African countries to follow.
Mrs. Gbowee who is visiting Nigeria, gave the keynote address at the launch of the sex offenders register organized by the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), yesterday.
Laolu Akande
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity
Office of the Vice President
26th November 2019
Nigeria, Netherlands Pledge Stronger Partnerships on Trade, Investments, Security.
President Muhammadu Buhari and Prime Minister Mark Rutte met on Tuesday in Abuja to discuss bilateral relations and agreed that Nigeria and the Netherlands would continue to work together to improve bilateral trade volumes as well as private sector investments.
A communiqué issued at the end of the meeting said the two leaders reviewed the progress that has been made with implementing the Memorandum of Understanding on deepening the bilateral relations between the two nations concluded and signed by the respective Foreign Ministers in The Hague in July 2018.
‘‘We welcome the steps that have been made to increase bilateral economic cooperation and are happy to see higher levels of bilateral trade volumes as well as private sector investments, ’’ the communiqué signed by Nigeria’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of Netherlands, Oji Ngofa and the Deputy Head of Mission, Netherlands Embassy in Abuja, Ewout-Jan de Wit said.
‘‘The contribution of Dutch private businesses, both global players and small, micro and medium enterprises, to the Nigerian economy is duly noted.
‘‘Investments by the Netherlands Investment Bank FMO and the Dutch Good Growth Fund are contributing to better access to finance and energy for the private sector.
‘‘Nigeria confirms its commitment to continuing reforms for a conducive business and investment environment while the Netherlands pledges to continue assisting Nigeria for an increase in agricultural productivity especially horticulture, seed, and sustainable palm oil production,’’ it added.
President Buhari and Prime Minister Rutte also reiterated their commitment to the fight against human trafficking, appreciating the close collaboration between both countries in supporting the victims.
Noting with concern the challenging security situation in the West-African sub-region and Nigeria, The Netherlands acknowledged the sustained efforts of Nigeria in the fight against insurgency and in countering violent extremism.
‘‘The Netherlands will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to those in need, in particular women and girls, in order to mitigate the impact of insecurity and displacement,’’ the communiqué said.
Prime Minister Rutte, who is on a two-day working visit to Nigeria is leading a trade delegation of 8 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Dutch multinationals currently operating in Nigeria with huge investment portfolios in the agriculture, finance, oil and gas sectors.
After the bilateral consultations between delegations of both countries, President Buhari and Prime Minister Rutte witnessed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on dairy chain development between Royal FrieslandCampina WAMCO and the Government of Niger State.
The MoU was signed by Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger State and Mr Ben Langat, Managing Director, FrieslandCampina WAMCO Plc.
The agreement on dairy chain development is expected to save Nigeria about 1.2 billion dollars from milk importation annually.
Tue 26/11/19
President Buhari Receives the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
President Muhammadu Buhari received the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, on an official visit at the State House, Abuja.
President Buhari Receives Deputy Secretary General Unite Nations
President Muhammadu Buhari received in audience Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary General Unite Nations (UN) at the State House, Abuja.
President Buhari Receives the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell Plc
President Muhammadu Buhari received the Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Mr Ben Van Beurden at the State House, Abuja.
Nigeria now Needs the Rigour and Discipline to Implement – Vice President
-Policy not the issue but implementation, VP submits
“One thing that we must bear in mind, which is my challenge to NIPSS; the problem of Nigeria has never been a shortage of ideas, there is no policy that has never been thought of, but the problem has always been implementation.
“In my respectful view, NIPSS must graduate from a “think-tank” to “do-tank”, and this is the case. We are at a point in our country where policy is not the issue, but the rigour and discipline that is required to implement is what is needed.
“I want to urge NIPSS, that our subsequent studies must be based on the need to attain some level of understanding of how to implement and get things done. Once we are able to do that, we are on our way.”
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo Speech at the Graduation Ceremony of the Senior Executive Course 41 of 2019 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS).
It is a special pleasure to be here at this graduation ceremony of the Senior Executive Course 41 of 2019 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies. I bring you the warm felicitations of President Muhammadu Buhari, President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. And on his behalf, I congratulate you all, participants of the Senior Executive Course, for your stellar performance and your elevation to the privilege of Member of the National Institute, MNI.
I also congratulate family and friends, and especially, spouses of participants on this joyful occasion. NIPSS is our Nation’s foremost think tank. It is here over the years that major policy issues have been originated, debated or proffered.
By bringing together some of the brightest and best Nigerian minds from the armed and non-armed services, business, labour, and the professions to think through policy ideas and options, NIPSS affirms the eminently correct notion that our country is strong because of its tremendous human capital and the richer by its diversity, which leads me to the seminal presentation that this course made yesterday to the President and members of the Federal Executive Council on the crucial subject of “Funding Universal Healthcare Delivery in Nigeria”.
Your in-depth assessment of the issues and insightful recommendations deserve every commendation. Just as the President said yesterday, they certainly will go into thinking through our financing policy, but more importantly, they will form the pillars of our health policies. NIPSS must remain the go-to institution for thinking ahead for our Nation’s development.
Permit me then to say a few words about a phenomenon that we all accept will fundamentally determine the future of our nation and indeed our world, that is the technology revolution, described, I think, accurately as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. To quote Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, “The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third; the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.”
The speed and scope of this Fourth Revolution clearly outstrips all previous revolutions put together, the frequency and speed of breakthroughs is mind boggling and the disruption to every aspect of human existence – from healthcare to education, business, agriculture, the professions, entertainment, the arts, security, warfare, sports – is as varied as it is profound. For example, take the smartphone that we all carry, it has 100 times more computing power than the Apollo aircraft that landed men on the moon in 1969. The average smartphone has the capacity to store and access more information than is available in most standard libraries. The phone, through various platforms, connects the user to millions of other phone users all over the world, creating enormous market possibilities. And these possibilities, observes Schwab, “will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”
There is no question that practically minute by minute every aspect of life is being transformed by technology. There is a need to constantly interrogate our current position in the technology story. There is a need to determine what we need to do to leverage on technology to leapfrog in the development journey.
So, let’s take data as an example. There is no doubt that data, big data, which is the aggregation of information from and by various sources and its use in predicting consumer behaviour, or the present and future needs of communities is crucial. Technology is crucial to the collection and the optimized use of data.
For us as government, we recognise the potential benefits to government from the capacity for better forecasting, to greater accuracy with budgetary planning, enhanced security by overcoming the challenges of anonymity and, especially for citizen empowerment through the ability to be able to bring more of the excluded populace into an inclusive economic participation through digital identification of each and every citizen.
This explains the Federal Government’s commitment to the digital registration of all citizens and legal residents, which, in turn, will be linked to the civil registration of birth and death.
In 2015, we began to harmonize existing databases of government bodies. So far, the harmonization process has increased the records of Nigerians in the central identity database from 7 million to more than 37 million. We are adopting an approach similar to the Indian Aadhaar model, aiming to provide all Nigerians with a unique identity by leveraging the existing enrolment facilities of Government Agencies such as the Immigration and the Federal Road Safety Commission, INEC, CBN (through BVN registration) and enforcing this enrolment of Nigerians for the National Identification Number (NIN) so that we have accurate and up-to-date information on our citizens.
With a reliable data base of all Nigerians we are positioned to attain our aspirations for financial inclusion, delivery of social programmes to the remotest parts of the country, and the creation of more effective e-commerce opportunities.
Our N-Power programme, the largest post-tertiary employment and skills development exercise in Africa, is a tribute to the effective use of locally built and deployed technology platform which enabled us to screen and test millions of applicants, and engage and train 500,000 young men and women.
These young men and women are assisting with the shortfall of teachers in primary schools across every Local Government Area in the country, as well as providing agriculture extension services and public health services. Their training and instructions have been largely technology-driven either through materials contained in their hand-held devices or materials available on the digital platform available for their use.
With the advancement of technology in the sphere of artificial intelligence, access to knowledge by humans will no longer be regarded as the focal point of human endeavour. This is important because in the past we used to think only in terms of access to knowledge, but today, artificial intelligence makes it such that rather than just access to knowledge, it is the application of imagination and innovation to knowledge, as well as envisioning the future, that will be the key priorities for individuals, corporations and nations.
Our administration had to envision the future with a dose of imagination and innovation. We know that to thrive, our country needs the fusion of creative minds and creative enterprises on a scale that would make significant national and global impression. And that’s why N-Power Creative was conceived.
President Buhari’s vision for Nigeria’s youth population is clear and simple, that all young Nigerians can access a range of opportunities to improve their skills and meaningfully participate in productive and gainful existence, either in employment or through entrepreneurship. Our aspiration was to place Nigeria as a major player in the production of various digital media assets for various reasons, job creation for young people, a thriving productive economy, and a bigger cultural influence globally. We had to think creatively, fast and big.
The Animation Industry and the Creative Sector offered us a creative and big option and we plunged. Globally, animation & VFX are used widely in many areas like TV, films, games, adverts, medicine, training, education, e-learning, legal and insurance, 3D visualization, architecture, and the list goes on. Animation is labour intensive and requires very high skill levels and is also lucrative for the businesses and the work force.
We envisioned the N-Power Creative training to stimulate the development of creative and technological skills in young Nigerians in a studio environment with 2D and 3D animation, storyboarding, illustration, scriptwriting, voice acting and post-production skills.
In its first year, the programme has trained a total of 3,000 young Nigerians. 1,500 young Nigerians from the South-West, South-South and South-East were in Benin just about four weeks ago, learning these creative skills.
Another 1,500 from the North-East, North-West and North-Central have undertaken a similar exercise. This training also encompasses a practical phase where each of the trainees across the various streams are organized into a studio and get to work together as a typical studio would. Scriptwriters, storyboard artists, voice actors, animators and post-production artists will collaborate as studio teams and go on to produce educational and entertainment content.
The idea is that some will end up as entrepreneurs from the next phase, while others will be absorbed by the industry. The opportunities are huge. The global animation industry is witnessing major structural changes. Importantly, companies are outsourcing computer animation jobs in a big way. Any animation-related production in the United States or Canada is not exclusively produced in that country alone. Work is outsourced to many Asian countries like the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore and India. These Asian countries are not only cost competitive, but are also high on quality and availability of skills.
India, much like Nigeria can be, has honed attractiveness as an animation hub because it has an English-speaking workforce that come at low costs. From industry reports, the average monthly salary of an animation professional in India is US$600 compared to about US$6,000 in North America. It is this arbitrage that we intend to leverage on.
But, as important in making creativity central to our government’s Next Level agenda, so is the fact that it also affords us the opportunity to tell our unique Nigerian stories through digital media and films. Our fast-growing and high exporting creative industries, particularly Nollywood, and music, make a significant contribution already to our economy – they drive employment and help us to share our unique perspective with the world.
Nigeria’s Animation Industry can add more sheen in terms of special effects to Nollywood and our musical performances and extend its aesthetic reach. These are indeed exciting times for that industry.
But how do we deliver Africa’s largest social investment programme, especially through technology on an even larger scale? So far, again, using locally built and deployed digital platforms, we have been able to give loans to two million petty traders and hundreds of cooperatives in our TraderMoni and MarketMoni programmes.
In partnership with the Bank of Industry, which handles the whole process of on boarding of beneficiaries to payment and collection of repayments, not only have we gathered the most reliable data of informal traders across the country, but we have direct access to them for all purposes.
Similarly, working with the World Bank and local technology companies, we have identified and continue to identify the poorest of the poor in every community, as defined by those communities themselves. The identified households benefit from N5,000 monthly allowance under our Conditional Cash Transfer programme. In addition, life skills training is given to a nominated member of each household to enable them make a living for themselves.
But the private sector is thriving even more. Financial inclusion has deepened as a result of the inroads made by the FinTech companies who have leveraged the widespread availability of mobile phones and the associated usage patterns of the people.
As such, using artificial intelligence (AI) technology, they are able offer loans to those many financially excluded by the formal banks based on their digital footprints.
I was in Nasarawa State a couple of weeks ago to see a farm run by an ex-Niger Delta militant, who now has a 3,000-hectare farm in Nasarawa. He couldn’t get a loan from the regular banks but two major FinTech companies came together to give him loans without any collateral. The size of his farm today shows very clearly that the way by which people will receive credit, the ways businesses will be funded, will be driven largely by technology. A lot of the banks have a lot of catching up to do.
Yet another largely untapped mine of well-paying jobs for young people is in the area of Business Process Outsourcing. BPO, to use an acronym, is the farming out of certain non-core functions of a company to third party companies who can render such services cheaper and more efficiently. The type of services include payroll, accounting, telemarketing, customer support such as trouble shooting for consumer technology devices, data recording, social media marketing etc. Technology is opening up those opportunities today.
There is a lady, Amal Hassan, in Kaduna State, who provides knowledge and business process outsourcing (BPO) for organizations within various sectors that want to outsource their customer care. Her company, Outsource Global, has emerged as the leading Nigerian and, indeed, African contact centre provider servicing the international market, turning the company into a global BPO giant, creating over 1,500 jobs.
Her success is an example of how technology can provide job opportunities for thousands of Nigerians. India, for example, is estimated to have provided more than 2.8 million jobs in the business process outsourcing industry. It is very clear that Nigeria is a major rival to India in being able to provide BPO. We speak English without tonal accent and that is much better than any of the Asian countries, so that is a major advantage.
Healthcare is one of the areas where technology is revolutionizing value chains. We are already in discussions with Nigerian medical experts in diaspora about the use of telemedicine, deployment of teaching aids via by WiFi enabled or USSD means, to train paramedics in far flung rural communities. There are so many examples of how technology is moving the pace of healthcare in Nigeria.
There is a company called LifeBank, run by Temi Giwa, that delivers blood from labs to hospitals across Africa, and which recently began using drone technology to make these life-saving deliveries even quicker. The founder, Temi, just won technology entrepreneur Jack Ma’s Africa Business Hero Award last week, going home with $250,000, to help keep LifeBank going. LifeBank is an example of how technology can impact the healthcare industry and save millions of lives.
For example, the World Health Organisation estimates that about 93% of all malaria deaths in 2017 occurred in Africa. Also, 61% (about 266,000) of all malaria deaths worldwide were children under the age of five. In theory, with drone technology like that of LifeBank, vaccines, prophylactics and thousands of blood samples could be obtained from patients, transported to labs with the drones, and necessary medication returned to patients in record time.
This alone can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in rural areas in Nigeria. With what is available with technology today, the opportunities are great and we can leapfrog because there is so much room for leapfrogging. We don’t have to evolve through the decades again, we are already positioned to take advantage of technology to move development further.
Agriculture is another sector that is being transformed by digital technology. The report of the NIPSS 39th Course titled “Science, Technology and Innovation for the Development of Agriculture & Agro-Allied Industries in Nigeria” notes how the use of technology and innovation has led to improved crop yields about 530 varieties of 37 crops developed as at 2017. Cassava yields have increased by 60 per cent in the past three decades, and maize yields have increased at an average of 5.5 per cent per year between 2000 and present day. Rice yields increased by 30 per cent from 2007 to present day with the use of Faro 1-44, NEWRICA improved drought tolerant varieties (Haggai 2017.) It is clear that agriculture does not have to remain at the subsistent level it is in many parts of the country. There is great improvement going on with the quality of inputs and so the yields are getting better.
Genotyping or the development of pest and disease resistant crops/livestock such as Maruca resulted in 80 per cent increase in yield of cowpea alone.
Nigeria’s lead in the world production of crops such as cassava, yam and cocoyam have been assured by the research and a lot of what we have seen coming out of the agricultural industry. The prospects are huge for maximizing agricultural production, but also for significantly improving the logistics of storage, and the farm to market value chains.
But the more exciting news is the use of technology for more effective private sector financing of agriculture. For example, Farmcrowdy and Thrive Agric are digital agriculture portals that crowdsource funding for farms across Nigeria. So, they pool together money from multiple investors to establish farms and hire smallholder farmers. They then pay the investors dividends from the harvests from these farms.
It is evident that our rapidly increasing population and the advent of the fourth industrial revolution has posed several different challenges, but it is clear also that those challenges can be resolved, and we can do all manner of things using technology.
The educational challenge before us is one. It is obvious from the new curriculum we are developing, the STEAM education in Nigeria – Science, Technology, Engineering Arts and Maths, technology is going to enable us to benefit maximally from technology and have now identified early stage investment in primary and secondary schools all the way to tertiary education as key to achieving Nigeria’s economic aspiration of becoming a knowledge-driven economy. We are poised to do some incredible things.
One thing that we must bear in mind, which is my challenge to NIPSS; the problem of Nigeria has never been a shortage of ideas, there is no policy that has never been thought of, but the problem has always been implementation.
In my respectful view, NIPSS must graduate from a “think-tank” to “do-tank”, and this is the case. We are at a point in our country where policy is not the issue, but the rigour and discipline that is required to implement is what is needed.
I want to urge NIPSS, that our subsequent studies must be based on the need to attain some level of understanding of how to implement and get things done. Once we are able to do that, we are on our way.
Let me congratulate all our participants for the very excellent performance, and also congratulate the new Director-General of the Institute, who has already shown that a lot more is going to happen here in NIPSS, as well as the directing staff for the excellent work they are doing.
I say to the family and friends, congratulations, well done and God bless you.
Laolu Akande
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity
Office of the Vice President
24th November, 2019
National Economic Council Approves Additional $250M Investment for NSIA
Having received a presentation of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) business update, and outlook, the National Economic Council on Thursday resolved to invest an additional $250 million into the NSIA, the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
The resolution was among other decisions taken at the 99th meeting of the council chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, in Abuja.
NEC is composed of the 36 State Governors, CBN Governor, the FCT Minister and other Federal Government representatives.
In his presentation to NEC, the NSIA Managing Director, Mr Uche Orji said the agency made a profit before tax of N42,036,469 while NSIA and its subsidiaries made a profit before tax of N46,185,074.
According to him, “the total comprehensive income by the year ending 31st December, 2018 made by the NSIA Group amount to N44,337,108, while the amount made by the NSIA stood at N41,827,853.
“…irrespective of volatility in the market due to the US/China trade disputes and Brexit, the Group made a total of N24 billion in total comprehensive income in the first 6 months of the year.”
The NSIA had earlier told council that it intends to “deploy Capital into the three road projects under the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund – to complete the Second Niger Bridge, Abuja – Kano highway and Lagos – Ibadan Express way as well as the Mambilla Power Project.
“That the NSIA intends to create a number of co-investment funds, in the area of Healthcare, Agriculture and Gas Projects.
“These projects worth N2.5 trillion, will be implemented under a business model, that includes the payment of reasonable service charges (e.g. tolling of roads, electricity tariffs etc) after the projects have been fully developed.”
Besides the additional $250 million, NEC also resolved that the “Governor of Kaduna State should chair a NEC Committee to consider how a portion of Pension Funds can also be leveraged into investment for the NSIA with possible involvement of PENCOM.
“The Committee will include the Finance Minister, CBN Governor and the NSIA MD.”
On the presentation by the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Mr Olamilekan Adegbite on the development of the solid minerals sector, the Council resolved that “there should be collaboration between the Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development and the State Governments on environmental issues and concerns in the States.”
Regarding community relationship with the miners, it was agreed that there should be a full time engagement of the communities to avoid the mistakes made in the oil and gas sector.
Council also resolved that the Governor of Ekiti State and Chairman, Nigeria Governor’s Forum (NGF) should constitute an Ad-hoc Committee involving Governors to engage with the Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development to find ways of addressing all the issues involved towards a beneficial development of the solid mineral sector.
On updates involving the Excess Crude Account (ECA), Stabilization Account and the Natural Resources Development Fund Account, the Accountant General of the Federation told Council that “the Excess Crude Account (ECA) balance as at 20th November, 2019 stood at 324,539,031.51, while the Stabilization Account balance as at 20th November, 2019 was N29, 480, 483, 393.33, and Natural Resources Development Fund Account balance as at 20th November, 2019 stood at N 79, 751, 649,521.54.
Laolu Akande
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity
Office of the Vice President
21st November, 2019
We can no Longer Ignore Poor Sanitation Practices- Osinbajo
*VP adds: the costs are too huge
*Ending open defecation in 2025 realisable
*States urged to adopt common sense policy measures
The loss of lives and billions of naira to preventable water and sanitation related diseases as a result of inadequate basic water supply and sanitation services is huge and should be brought to an end by an active collaboration between States and the Federal Government, according to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN.
Prof. Osinbajo stated this in Abuja on Tuesday at the official roll out of the ‘Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet’ Campaign under the National programme to End Open Defecation in Nigeria.
At the event attended by several governors and their representatives, ministers and market women, amongst others, the Vice President said, “…we all must redouble our efforts and work together in order to meet the nation’s Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene needs.”
“As a Nation we simply cannot afford the huge costs including fatalities caused by preventable water and sanitation related diseases as a result of inadequate WASH services. In contributing to the government’s efforts, citizens must take action to avoid open defecation.
“There is no need to debate the point that sanitation is a major public health issue and that poor sanitation adversely impacts us all. The World Bank report on the economic impact of poor sanitation due to use of unsanitary or shared toilets and open defecation, estimates that Nigeria loses N455 billion annually, with open defecation accounting for a third of this amount. These costs include health care, loss of productivity, premature deaths, poor educational outcomes, among others.”But perhaps some of the more dire costs of open defecation are those that cannot be quantified in monetary terms, the social costs, loss of dignity, lack of privacy and increased vulnerability to physical attacks and violence especially for women and girls,” the Vice President added.
Speaking further about the commitment of the Federal Government in addressing the menace the Vice President said the goal of putting an end to open defecation in Nigeria is a shared responsibility.
According to him, “Although we all know that the primary responsibility for provision of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Services lie with the States and Local Government Areas, the Federal Government remains committed to supporting the States initiatives aimed at improving access to these services for the populace.
“To this end, States and the Federal Capital Territory should consider common sense policy measures such as ensuring that construction sites are equipped with toilet facilities.
“Property development control regulators can also make it mandatory for buildings to include external toilet facilities for staff such as security guards. These and other such measures will reduce the incidence of public defecation.
“As the President said during the launch of the National Action Plan last year, Federal Government’s support to States will be based on their commitment to implement the National WASH Action Plan in their respective states and to end open defecation by 2025. It is our expectation that this national launch will trigger State and LGA level launches leading to mass mobilization of all Nigerians.”
Speaking further, the Vice President said the Federal Government’s support to States will however be dependent on the efforts and shown by States in implementing their action plans for the WASH sector.
On the measures initiated to by the Federal Government to boost Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) across the country, the Vice President said, “this administration has consistently affirmed its commitment to the development of the WASH sector in Nigeria.”
According to him, “the launch of the National Action Plan for the revitalization of the WASH sector and the declaration of a State of Emergency by the President last year was among the many initiatives of Government in addressing the challenges confronting the sector.
“The National Action Plan is phased into Emergency, Recovery and Revitalization stages”.
The first and current phase, he said, “is the emergency phase of the Action Plan. In the emergency stage, it is our desire to aggressively mobilize the entire country towards ending the practice of open defecation”.
Earlier in his remark, the Minister of Water Resources, Alhaji Suleiman Adamu commended the collaboration with State governors and development partners in Nigeria’s quest to end open defecation by 2025.
He reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to actualize the target of ending open defecation across the country by 2025.
Laolu Akande
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity
Office of the Vice President
19th November, 2019
Wed 6/11/19
Vice President Osinbajo Presides over FEC.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo presided over the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, at the State House, Abuja.
