The report that the Nigerian Government is seeking a $500m loan from the World Bank to enhance rural road infrastructure and agricultural marketing across the federation dominates the headlines of Nigerian newspapers on Friday.
The Punch reports that the Nigerian F Government is seeking a $500m loan from the World Bank to enhance rural road infrastructure and agricultural marketing across the federation.
The international lender said the fund was expected to address the dire need for better connectivity in rural Nigeria, where 92 million people currently lack access to good roads.
This request was contained in the final draft of the Resettlement Policy Framework for the Nigeria Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project Scale-UP implemented by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The RAAMP-SU project aims to improve rural access and climate resilience, thereby boosting agricultural potential and marketing prospects for agrarian communities. This, in turn, will contribute to better livelihoods for the rural populace.
The project’s objectives include improving rural access and climate resilience of communities in served rural areas, strengthening institutional capacity for rural road network management, and fortifying the financial and institutional foundations for sustainable management of both rural and state road networks.
The RAAMP-SU initiative is an extension of the earlier Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project, supported by the World Bank and the French Development Agency. The project is led by the Federal Department of Rural Development within the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, with oversight by the Federal Project Management Unit.
The newspaper says that the President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, says it is expanding the storage capacity of his refinery by 600 million litres.
This, according to him, will enable the refinery to have a storage capacity of 5.3 billion litres.
The Dangote Petrochemical Refinery refinery currently has 4.78 billion litres of storage capacity for refined petroleum products.
Dangote spoke at the Afreximbank Annual Meetings and AfriCaribbean Trade & Investment Forum in Nassau, The Bahamas on Wednesday.
The billionaire alleged that international oil companies refused to sell crude oil to his refinery because they did not want him to succeed.
Asked to speak on whether or not his refinery would crash the pump price of petrol, which currently sells at around N700 per litre, Dangote gave no affirmative answer, but he quickly recounted how the price of diesel fell from 1,700 to N1,200 when his diesel flooded the market.
“The issue of gasoline is certainly a different issue. That one is being dealt with by the government. But let me give you an example. In the diesel, which the industries, transporters and everybody consume; when we first started, it was N1,700, and the dollar conversion was about N1,200 then. Immediately when we started, within two weeks we brought down the price to N1,000. We took it from N1,700 to N1,200 and from N1,200 to N1,700, we have given more than 60 per cent drop in price.
“With the currency now back up to about N1,500 per dollar, the price is still below N1,200. That’s a big improvement, from N1,700 to N1,200. And the diesel is available, we are not living from hand to mouth anymore,” Dangote replied when asked about a possible petrol price cut.
The business mogul said the refinery would be a strategic reserve for refined products.
The Vanguard newspaper reports that eight months after the Federal Government commenced payment of N35,000, a wage award in addition to N30,000 minimum wage to workers, and urged state governments to replicate it, 15 states are yet to do so while seven paid briefly and stopped.
The wage award was to lessen the burden of economic hardship on the citizenry pending the implementation of a new minimum wage.
The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, described the refusal of some states to pay the wage award to their workers as the height of insensitivity, lamenting the suffering workers were going through as a result of the anti-poor policies of the government.
Meanwhile, 15 states are paying sums ranging from N10,000 to N40,000 to their workers as wage awards or salary increments.
States that are not paying include one in the South-East, four in the South-South, three in the North-East, two in the North-Central and five in the North-West.
Meanwhile, states that paid wage awards for one to four months and stopped include Delta, Niger, Plateau, Kaduna, Bauchi and Nasarawa.
On the other hand, states that are paying are Lagos, Edo, Bayelsa, Imo, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi, Ondo, Osun, Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti, Kano, Kwara, Cross River and Taraba.
President Bola Tinubu, in March, during a working visit to Minna, Niger State, urged the 36 state governors to begin payment of wage awards to workers in their states, saying the move will alleviate hardship in the country.
The newspaper says that the Executive Secretary/CEO of the Nigerian Shippers Council, NSC, Pius Akutah, has said that about 90 per cent of port processes in Nigeria have now been automated.
Disclosing this while playing host to a team from the World Bank and the Nigerian Trade Facilitation Committee who were on courtesy visit in Lagos, Akutah said that the Council will continue to advocate automation of port operations and processes.
“The Council advocates automation of port operations and processes and I can confidently confirm that over 90 per cent of our port operations and processes are automated by now. This is consistent with the mandate of the Nigerian Shippers Council of ensuring port efficiency, safety and security of cargoes, cost reduction and ease of doing business,” he stated.
Speaking earlier, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Doris Nkiruka Uzoka, who was represented by Assistant Director, office of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Brenda Max-Nduaguibe, said that the aim of the visit was to enable the World Bank team to fully understand the daily operations, inspections processes, trade bottlenecks, to identify policies options, and to make trade seamless for the Nigerian government.
GIK/APA