The retreat and workshop that kicked off in Lagos yesterday as part of efforts to end coups in West Africa by the Economic Community of West Africa States Council of Wise (ECOWAS COW) is one of the trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Tuesday.
The Guardian reports that as part of efforts to end coups in West Africa, the Economic Community of West Africa States Council of Wise (ECOWAS COW), yesterday, commenced a two-day retreat and workshop in Lagos.
The workshop aims, among other things, to develop modalities for operationalisation of the council and for members and the ECOWAS Commission to jointly develop and validate a one-year plan of action.
The Chairman of ECOWAS COW and former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, in his welcome speech, said the meeting would debrief and brainstorm on strategies for the COW to swiftly respond to and mitigate growing peace and security challenges in the region.
“We will spend the next two days on this task of hammering out effective strategy and agenda for promoting peace, security and stability in our sub-region,” he said.
Jonathan noted that the sub-region has faced unsavoury developments that have continued to pose a challenge to peace, security and sustainable development.
He noted: “Within the last two years, we have witnessed three military coups in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso, as well as coup attempts in Niger and Guinea-Bissau.”
The newspaper says that the Super Eagles’ Coaches, Augustine Eguavoen and Emmanuel Amuneke, are expected back in the country this weekend to continue preparation for next month’s Qatar 2022 World Cup qualifier against Ghana.
Yesterday, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced new dates for the home and away matches, which ultimate winner will bag the ticket to play at the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
According to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), CAF has pushed the FIFA World Cup play-off round to new dates, with Ghana hosting the opening leg in Cape Coast on March 25, starting from 7.30 p.m. Ghana time, which will be 8.30 p.m. in Nigeria. It was earlier scheduled to be played on March 24.
The Nigeria leg, earlier billed for March 27, will now hold on March 29 at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, Abuja.
As part of preparations for the matches, Super Eagles coaches, Augustine Eguavoen and Emmanuel Amuneke, have been on a tour of Europe to discuss with some of the players expected to make the country’s team for the games.
The Guardian learnt that after meeting with the players in England, Italy, Spain and Germany last week, the team has moved to Belgium from where they will return to Nigeria at the weekend.
The Sun reports that the House of Representatives has said that Nigeria is losing about 8.810 billion dollars annually from the non-implementation of e-Customs modernisation project of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).
The project is projected to generate about 176.2 billion dollars within the 20 years concession period. Mr Leke Abejide, Chairman, House Committee on Customs and Excise, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja during a public hearing of the Joint Committees on Customs and Excise, Finance and Banking and Currency.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, who was represented at the hearing by the Director, Home Finance, Stephen Okon, said that there were pending court cases which had delayed the implementation of the project.
She said that there are three suits and as such the project could not continue, adding that the pending cases were impeding the commencement of the e-Customs Project.
She stated that in order to pave the way for the take-off of the project, the ministry was liaising with the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation to ensure that the arbitration was speedily concluded.
The newspaper says that Nigeria and other African nations are missing in the list of countries with superlative performance in global Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export and demand markets.
The country’s poor global LNG performance rating is contained in Shell annual LNG outlook released in London, yesterday.
Despite Nigeria’s topping African LNG exporters in 2021 with 17.9 million metric tons (MMt), followed by Algeria with 12.3MMt and Egypt with 6.9MMt, according to leading information provider, IHS Markit, Nigeria and other African countries failed to record a spot in global LNG rating.
The outlook disclosed that the US-led 2021 export growth with a year-on-year increase of 24 million tonnes and is expected to become the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2022, adding that LNG exports grew in 2021 despite a number of unexpected outages that dented LNG available for delivery.
On the demand side, China and South Korea led the growth in LNG demand in 2021 with China increasing its LNG imports by 12 million tonnes to 79 million tonnes, surpassing Japan to become the world’s largest LNG importer. Overall, global LNG demand is expected to cross 700 million tonnes a year by 2040, a 90 per cent increase on 2021 demand.
The Punch reports that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has introduced a N500,000 Ship-to-Ship Coordination Charge for each transshipment operation for Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, involving the NNPC Marine Logistics.
It was gathered on Monday that this charge on any transshipment operation was part of moves by the NNPC to fully recover its operational cost since the recently passed Petroleum Industry Act had made the national oil firm a limited liability company.
The NNPC’s cost recovery drive through the new transshipment charge, it was learnt, made depot owners to raise the ex-depot price of petrol, a development that has forced marketers to increase the PMS price above the approved cost of N142-N145/litre.
The Punch exclusively reported on Monday that the cost of petrol might hit or exceed N180/litre in most filling stations in coming weeks if nothing was done about the hike in its ex-depot price by depot owners.
The approved pump price of petrol currently is N162-N165/litre. Most private depot owners recently raised the ex-depot price of petrol from the approved N142-N145/litre price to between N162 and N170/litre.
The newspaper says that the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, says the Federal Government will deploy atomic materials to boost energy supply across the country.
The minister said this at the validation workshop of the draft revised national energy policy and its related master plan in Abuja, according to a press statement issued by the ministry on Monday.
The statement read in part, “The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu has said that Nigeria will join other countries of the world to exploit atomic materials for more energy supply.
“Dr. Onu said Nigeria is watching with keen interest the research ongoing in many countries on nuclear fusion technology for energy use.” The minister said that a national energy policy and master plan are imperative to guide energy development in the country.
He was quoted as saying, “While the National Energy Policy provided policies for long-term coordinated energy development for our energy security in an environmentally sustainable manner and with active participation of the private sector, the energy master plan provides the roadmap for achieving the policy objectives through activities and programmes with timelines.”
GIK/APA