The call by Northern Elders Forum on President Muhammadu Buhari to resign for failing to provide security in the country dominates the headlines of Nigerian newspapers on Wednesday.
The Punch reports that Northern Elders Forum on Tuesday asked President Muhammadu Buhari to resign for failing to provide security in the country.
The forum made the demand in a statement by its spokesperson, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed.
It said it was disappointing that after nearly seven years of being in office, Buhari still has no answers to security challenges across the country.
The statement read, “The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari does not appear to have answers to the challenges of security to which we are exposed.“We cannot continue to live and die under the dictates of killers, kidnappers, rapists and sundry criminal groups that have deprived us of our rights to live in peace and security.
“Our constitution has provisions for leaders to voluntarily step down if they are challenged by personal reasons or they prove incapable of leading.
“It is now time for President Buhari to seriously consider that option, since his leadership has proved spectacularly incapable of providing security over Nigerians. Our forum is aware of the weight of this advice, and it is also aware that we cannot continue to live under these conditions until 2023 when President Buhari’s term ends.
The newspaper says that the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, on Tuesday, said the April 2023 completion date for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery was feasible and that the plant would refine 60,000 barrels of crude by early next year.
Speaking on the state of repairs of the facility, which was projected to gulp $1.5bn, the minister expressed satisfaction at the level of work.
Sylva stated this while answering questions from newsmen shortly after a tour of the Port Harcourt Refining Company’ in Eleme, Rivers State on Tuesday.
He said, “This project kicked off second quarter last year and where they are now is quite impressive. It is on schedule.
“The commitment is to deliver 60, 000 barrels per day from this refinery by first quarter of next year, and, of course, we are quite happy.
The minister also vowed that the Federal Government would put an end to all forms of illegal oil bunkering going on in the Niger Delta, saying such criminal activities must not be legalised.
Sylva said the modular refinery programme of the Federal Government was on course and urged people to take advantage of the programme.
He, however, said modular refinery should be separated from the illegal oil refining going on in the Niger Delta resulting in the soot pandemic in Port Harcourt and its environs.
The Guardian reports that the power and rail infrastructure are the most attacked assets in Nigeria in the last three years. This was disclosed in a report by a socioeconomic research firm, SBM intelligence, yesterday, titled: ‘Attacks on infrastructure in Nigeria.’
According to the report, an overwhelming majority of attacks on infrastructural installations since 2019 by non-state actors occurred in the North.
The report comes as the Federal Government blamed last weekend’s national grid collapse on an act of vandalism on a transmission tower on the Odukpani-Ikot Ekpene 330KV double circuit transmission.
The research firm identified 25 attacks on infrastructure in the country between May 2019 and March 2022 across the country, which listed 19 of the attacks in the North and six in the South.
The report revealed that from Q3, 2019 to Q1, 2022, power generation plants suffered six attacks in Borno State alone.
In the Northwest, Kaduna State has experienced five train attacks and two airport attacks within the same period. The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has also experienced a train attack at the Bwari area during the same period.
Other states that experienced an attack on its rail infrastructure within the same period are Niger and Ogun, while the data for the South-South region revealed attacks in a factory in Edo State and pipeline attacks in Bayelsa, Delta and Akwa Ibom states.
The newspaper says that with lingering concerns bordering on the rising cost of diesel, logistics, foreign exchange illiquidity, domestic inflationary pressure and weakening purchasing power of consumers, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has predicted tougher times for the nation’s manufacturing sector in the second quarter.
The chamber stated that the sector will suffer some shocks from the challenges that have been aggravated by the global energy crisis.
The president, LCCI, Dr. Michael Olawale-Cole, at a press briefing on the state of the nation, said other triggers for shock include, poor public infrastructure, and port-related challenges as these may continue to present headwinds to the sector’s performance.
“Additionally, with the war in Ukraine aggravating disruptions to supply chains of raw materials like wheat, barley, soybeans, sunflower, and corn, the rising cost of production may not abate soon,” he predicted.
Meanwhile, the president expressed concerns over the nation’s rising debt profile, projecting that Nigeria’s debt stock and debt-servicing to revenue ratio will remain elevated in 2022 to hit N45.86 trillion by December 2022 due to the Federal Government’s plans to borrow an additional N1.6 trillion, while the 2022 debt target for domestic borrowing is N2.57 trillion.
“There is also a plan to borrow N2.57 trillion from foreign creditors, while N1.16 trillion is expected from multilateral/bilateral drawdowns. In total, the Federal Government plans to add N6.3 trillion new debts to the current debt stock, which would push the country’s total debt stock to N45.86 trillion by December 2022,” he said.
The Vanguard reports that there are indications that the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, may cripple the economy for three days in solidarity with the striking four university-based unions.
The indication emerged yesterday after the NLC met with the four university unions at the Labour House, Abuja over the failure of the federal government to address the concerns raised by the unions.
The leadership of the NLC had explained that the meeting was scheduled to know the level of engagement between the unions and the federal government.
General Secretary of NLC, Comrade Emma Ugbaja told Vanguard on Monday that the meeting was aimed at seeing a way to resolve the face-off between the aggrieved unions and government in the interest of all stakeholders.
Comrade Ugbaja said that it was proper to hear from the unions first before taking any position, adding that the interest of labour was to ensure that the matter was sorted out.
Recall that public universities in the country have been closed down as a result of the strike embarked by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied Educational Institutions (NAAT), and the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT).
GIK/APA