Aso Villa Reads for 23/5/2019
Every day, we bring you the best stories that the Media is reporting about the Government of Nigeria
According to Punch “the National Emergency Management Agency has received another batch of 195 stranded Nigerians from Libya. Alhaji Idris Muhammad, Coordinator, Lagos Territorial Office, NEMA, who confirmed the development to newsmen on Thursday in Ikeja, said this was the largest batch of voluntary returnees since the exercise began in April 2017. Muhammed said the Nigerians arrived at the Cargo Wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja at 8.20p.m. on Wednesday aboard a chartered Al Buraq Air aircraft with registration number 5A-DMG SEB. He disclosed that they were the 69th batch of returnees brought back by the International Organisation for Migration and the European Union under the Assisted Voluntary Returnees Programme. According to him, after profiling, the breakdown of the new returnees shows that they comprise of 71 female adults, 25 female children and 17 female infants. “They also include 60 male adults, 12 male children and 10 male infants. “Among them were three male returnees with minor medical issues and seven pregnant women,”Muhammed said.”
“Social media influencers and other purveyors of unregulated advertising contents in Nigeria may soon begin to face sanctions as federal government is set to put up a regulatory framework to regulate the emerging digital industry. Speaking on Tuesday in Ghana, at the third Africa Leadership Conference, organised by the International Advertising Association (IAA), Acting Registrar, Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), Mrs. Ijedi Philomena Iyoha, admitted that digital revolution has become a huge bottleneck for advertising regulation, adding that government, through APCON and other stakeholders have started making move to put a framework in place to address the abnormal situation. “There is code of advertising in Nigeria but it was dated back to many years before digital revolution. Of course this is a global phenomenon but like other countries, Nigeria is set to put framework in place to check the abuse of digital platform.” This Day reported this.
“Udoma Udo Udoma, minister of budget and national planning, has announced that the focus of the federal government second tenure will be on job creation as more work need to be done in ensuring a more stabilized economy. The minister giving account of his stewardship of the ministry at the End-of-Tenure Press Conference in Abuja on Tuesday, said that a lot has been done in the last three and half years but more need to be done especially in ensuring job creation for youths. “We have done a lot in this tenure to achieve the key mandates of this Ministry which include preparing the annual budgets as well as the medium-term expenditure frameworks, rendering policy advice to the Federal Government on all aspects of national development, amongst others, however, the focus of the next level will be on job creation, we will concentrate more on the part of the economy that will create jobs”. Business Day reported that “the minister said that efforts were put in place to ensure that the Budget Office was properly integrated as part of the Ministry by adopting the zero-based approach for budget preparation, which required justification of every budget item for funds allocation. He explained that the online budget preparation was introduced to ensure that the identity of any person inputting any budget item can be ascertained adding that it has improved the integrity of the budget.”
Business Day reports that “Minister of state for aviation, Hadi Sirika says out of 157 projects the ministry targeted in the past four years, it has successfully delivered 134. Some of these projects include the completion of some of the Chinese terminals, the repair of the Abuja runway, the certification of Lagos and Abuja airports, completion of the training centre, among many others. The minister assured that the new Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport (MAKIA) Kano was 90 percent complete and soon to be commissioned and put to use. This is also as he inaugurated the new General Aviation Terminal at Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport executed by FAAN during a tour across airports in the country to inaugurate projects inherited, initiated and executed by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration between 2015 and 2019. MAKIA is one of the four airports terminals being built from the Chinese EXIM Bank’s investment of $500 million with $100 million counterpart funding from the Federal Government of Nigeria. Already, the Port Harcourt International Airport (PHIA), Omagwa, and Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport have been delivered as world-class terminals and put to use, and soon the other two, Lagos and Kano would be delivered. The minister disclosed this while inaugurating some projects executed by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), and other agencies on Tuesday in Kano, expressing joy that the Federal Government had completed 134 of 157 projects initiated and executed.”
“The Honourable Minister of Communication, Dr. Adebayo Shittu has assured that Nigeria will join the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the Bridging the Standardization Gap (BSG) programmes by facilitating the efficient participation of Nigeria in ITU’s standard-making processes and hands-on sessions during the year. The Minister of Communications who was represented at the World Telecommunications and Information Society Day 2019 by Director (Radio Monitoring & Survey) Engr. Kilyobas N. Binga which was held at SGF Hall, Federal Secretariat, Abuja said the BSG is a fundamental part of ITU’s mission to connect the world. He stated that it is also one of the strategic objectives of ITU’s standardization sector (ITU-T), to address the disparities in the ability of the developing countries, relative to developed ones, to access, implement and influence ITU’s international standards In his words “the overarching goal of the Bridging the Standardization Gap (BSG) programme is to facilitate increased participation of developing countries in standardization, to ensure that developing countries experience the economic benefits of associated technological development, and to better reflect the requirements and interests of developing countries in the standards-development process.” According to Business Day (Thursday 23 May 2019, page 34), “Dr. Shittu added that ITU standards are consistently being pursued to ensure interoperability, open up global markets and spur innovation and growth noting that the standards are good for both the developed and developing countries as well as to help accelerate ICTs for all Sustainable Development Goals.”
“The Minister of State for Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika, on Wednesday night reached an agreement with members of the Aviation unions protesting over the organogram of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). It was learnt that the parties reached the agreement after a meeting held in Abuja. Four unions including ANAP, ATSSSAN, NAAPE and NUATE were represented. A statement quoted the Minister as saying, “It is true that they have come on our invitation to discuss on the contentious issues that caused the commencement of the industrial action. One of the issues is the non-conformity with the act of appointment of boards. “Regarding the organogram, which is really the meat of the matter and not degrading the other two; this one is more pressing and we going to set up a committee within one week and rectify the grey areas and come to something that is mutually accepted by all. The unions will be part of the committee.” This is according to Daily Trust.
Daily Trust reports that “the Federal Government has released N4.33 trillion for capital projects between 2016 and 2018, a top official has said. The Minister of Budget and National planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma who disclosed this during a press conference held at the ministry in Abuja to disclose the achievements of the administration in the last three and half years said the government increased the capital budget to reflate and stimulate the economy after suffering recession in 2016. Giving the breakdown of the releases, the minister said the Ministry of Finance released N1.2 trn under the 2016 budget, N1.58trillion under the 2017 budget and as at the May 8 the sum of N1.55 trn was released for capital spending under the 2018 budget. “An important strategy we embarked on in order to exit recession was to seek to reflate the economy. This was why we increased the capital budget. We increased budgetary allocations to capital expenditure- from 16.1% in 2015 to 30.2% in 2016, 31.7% in 2017, 31.5 % in 2018 and 26% in 2019 with priority given to the key execution priorities of the ERGP. We were also able to increase our capital our capital releases,” he said. He also noted that the implementation of the ERGP resulted in the economy exiting recession in the second quarter of 2017 adding that the just released GDP numbers by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows the a first quarter growth of 2.01 percent.”
