The warning by the Federal Government to civil servants to get vaccinated before the December 1 deadline for the COVID-19 vaccine mandate if they want to keep their jobs is one of trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Tuesday.
The Guardian reports that ahead of the December 1 deadline for the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal civil servants, the Federal Government has warned employees who love their jobs to go and get vaccinated.
Despite criticisms that have trailed the directive, which was first announced in September, the Federal Government, yesterday, insisted that its decision was in the best interest of Nigerians.
Recall that the chairman of the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, had announced that effective December 1, 2021, unvaccinated Federal Government workers won’t be allowed access into any public offices, as part of measures to contain the spread of the pandemic.
Speaking during the COVID-19 vaccination update yesterday, the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, observed that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate has become a global phenomenon and Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind in the fight against the pandemic.
He said: “There’s a deadline already set and we are hoping that it will encourage those civil servants who love their jobs and are yet to take the COVID-19 vaccine to take the jab for their own good. The reason is that there’s evidence that supports the fact that if you are fully vaccinated, the effect of COVID-19 won’t be much on you. But that is not the same with unvaccinated people. There are higher chances of survival if a fully vaccinated person comes down with COVID-19.”
The newspaper says that Africa’s trailblazing Nobel laureate in literature, Prof. Wole Soyinka, yesterday, said Nigeria has reached a stage “where a series of town hall meetings should be organised to ask ourselves retrospective questions about what has happened to us.”
Speaking during the presentation and discussion of his book, ‘Chronicles From the Land of The Happiest People on Earth,’ inside the British Library Knowledge Centre on Monday night, he said the country has degenerated into a situation where human dignity has been devalued by vices such as the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls and the recent alleged ritual killing of Timothy Adegoke Oludare at Osogbo in Osun State.
Fielding questions during the event tagged ‘An Evening with Professor Wole Soyinka,’ he said the failure of leadership across Africa has made “some of us sell ourselves into slavery.”
He noted: “The worst part for me is that we have allowed the slave trade to continue for so long. Who could have thought we would reach the state where people will trick one another to be used for rituals? We need a series of introspective sessions to ask questions about what has happened to us as a people.”
He described Britain as “a shameless country for continuing to charge me for visa.”
Asked by the moderator what message he has for the future, he quipped: “All l will say is let us restore the loss of humanity.”
Yesterday’s reading was the second book Soyinka presented to a London audience in over a decade. In 2007, The Guardian was at the Southbank Centre when he launched and read from his autobiography, ‘You Must Set Forth at Dawn.’
Writers, like most people, tend to slow down with age. Not Soyinka. After focusing for nearly 50 years on plays, poetry and activism, at 87 he has returned to fiction, which he last published in 1972.
ThisDay reports that the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) yesterday pledged to support the Nigerian Gas Expansion programme (NGEP) of the federal government to improve domestic utilisation of gas for power, industrialisation in order to deepen Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) penetration in the country.
A statement by a senior official of the organisation, Mr. Paul Osu, quoted the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Gbenga Komolafe, as restating the commitment when the NGEP Chairman, Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim visited him in his office in Abuja.
The federal government had said that the programme was envisioned to lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty through the establishment of gas-related outlets that would serve the public when fully realised.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Timipre Sylva, recently disclosed that the NGEP was designed to expand gas supply as well as to stimulate demand in Nigeria, adding that the programme had already taken off in some states of the federation.
With a proven gas reserves of over 206 trillion cubic feet (tcf) and prospects of an additional 600tcf, the minister explained that natural gas presents an opportunity for the nation to use gas as a catalyst for its socio-economic renaissance.
The newspaper says that Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Lagos State have expressed their commitment towards the development of the nation’s agribusiness value chain.
Indeed, they urged the federal government to prioritise investment decisions into the country’s agribusiness value-chain, noting that it would bring about better improvement in food security, technology and stimulate youth participation in agricultural production to promote sufficiency in food supply.
Speaking at the 2021 LCCI Secondary School essay competition themed, “The role of agribusiness in food security and national development,” the Commissioner for Agriculture Lagos State, Mrs. Abisola Olusanya charged youths to participate and involve in agribusiness value-chain, adding that this would create wealth and enhance better living standards of the economy.
She averred that the world is currently facing multiple problems of food scarcity, global warming, low pricing of crude oil and volatility of the exchange rate while stressing that Nigeria is not left out of this global crisis considering her position in crude oil exportation.
The Punch reports that capital inflow to Nigeria has crashed by 80 per cent in two years, the Central Bank of Nigeria reports have indicated.
Specifically, capital inflow to Nigeria fell from $17.1bn in July 2019 to $3.4bn in July 2021.
The central bank reports showed that Nigeria recorded $17.1bn capital inflow between January and July, 2019.
However, between January and July, 2021, the country recorded only $3.4bn as capital inflow, indicating a fall of 80 per cent. Furthermore, capital inflow fell from $8.6bn in 2020 to $3.4bn in 2021.
The figures were obtained from the CBN’s monthly economic report. The CBN attributed the crash to the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but economic and financial experts listed rising security challenges, exchange rate fluctuation, and difficulty in repatriation of profit by foreign companies among other factors that may have contributed to the fall.
According to the CBN, $380m, $870m, $660m and $110m were recorded as capital inflows in January, February, March and April, while $290m, $480m and $620m were recorded in May, June and July, 2021 respectively. This showed a total of $3.4bn in the first seven months of 2021.
The newspaper says that the Federal Government, through the National Action Committee on African Continental Free Trade Agreement, said on Monday that the first of its strategic goals under the AfCFTA implementation plan is to grow the export capacity of every state to the tune of $1.2bn with a focus on products that have a competitive advantage.
The Secretary of NAC-AfCFTA, Francis Anatogu, who disclosed this in Abuja at a press briefing, said over the past year, the committee had embarked on sensitisation efforts around the country to educate stakeholders on the objectives and benefits of the AfCFTA agenda.
He said the efforts had also enabled the government to gain valuable insight that had guided it in the development of the AfCFTA implementation plan.
According to him, the plan has been completed and is currently undergoing adoption by the relevant public sector stakeholders.
Anatogu said the activities had also led to the realisation that for the AfCFTA to be truly successful in Nigeria, there was a great need for the national strategy to be cascaded down to the sub-national level with state governments playing a major role.
GIK/APA