The report of the unveiling and inauguration of the National Animal Identification and Traceability System for Nigeria to identify and track livestock nationwide is one of the trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Thursday.
The Punch reports that the government says that the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, under the National Livestock Transformation Plan, initiated the NAITS as a strategy to address the socio-economic and security challenges bedeviling the livestock sector and dearth of data for proper planning, among others.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mahmood Abubakar, who disclosed this in Abuja at the inauguration of the system, said technology was driven by digital transformation.
He said, “The ministry has been collaborating and will continue to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that the NAITS for Nigeria is internationally recognised, efficient and effective to address the livestock data needs of the country.
“As you are all aware, technology advancements have rapidly enhanced productivity across all sectors of our economy.
“The progress made so far to actualise animal identification and traceability in Nigeria as well as other innovations in agriculture have been largely driven by digital transformation which has produced exponential results.”
Abubakar added, “I am therefore particularly pleased that the inauguration of the National Animal Identification and Traceability System to enhance the activities of our domestic livestock sector is taking place at this time.”
He explained that the system was a comprehensive animal information management tool that would utilise forgery-proof ear tags and cattle passports combined with digital technology to identify and track livestock across Nigeria.
“This system complies with the global standards stipulated by the International Committee for Animal Recording,” the minister stated.
He added, “The successful implementation of NAITS will support livestock owners to identify their animals, curb livestock rustling, and facilitate interventions in the livestock sector.
“It will ensure the provision of credit and insurance, livestock movement control, animal recording for genetic improvement and research, ease of traceability, surveillance, animal disease control and enable trade among others.”
He said animal identification and traceability were necessary in enabling Nigeria compete favourably in the African Continental Free Trade Area and would take Nigeria livestock and its products into the international market.
Abubakar said, “NAITS as part of the NLTP will be implemented in all 36 states and the FCT (Federal Capital Territory).
The newspaper says that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, TotalEnergies Upstream Nigeria Limited, operator of OML 130, and partners have inaugurated a women development and skills acquisition centre in Omu-Aran, Kwara State.
The development and skills acquisition centre was designed to provide an enabling environment for women and young people to learn skills and create employment in Omu-Aran.
The self-sustaining skill acquisition centre is expected to reduce women and youth unemployment and restiveness in the communities around the state, as well as enable them to generate income.
The centre consists of four training halls for fashion designing and tailoring, catering and hotel management, computer training and mixed training facility.
It has a sick-bay, over 400 seater auditorium and lounge supported with a solar power generating unit.
The Chief Upstream Investment Officer, NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services, Bala Wunti, who was represented by Bunmi Lawson, said the project aligned with the sustainable development goals.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive, TotalEnergies Upstream Nigeria Limited, Mike Sangster, who was represented by the Executive Director, People and Country Service, George Oguachuba, pointed out that the project was among eight projects scheduled for inauguration in November 2022.
“I am not optimistic that raising such an amount will be easy. Then the commitment to the COP is also not too impressive and very weak. And if commitment is this low, how do you convince investors either in form of aid or whatever, to invest this kind of huge money. It’s going to be a tall order.”
The NUPRC said Nigeria’s cretaceous basins hold a promising future for the Nigerian oil and gas industry, and presents a pathway for Nigeria to decarbonise, while ensuring energy security.
It stated that further exploration of the other cretaceous basins would deepen and realise the potential for Nigeria to triple its gas reserves by 2050.
The Guardian reports that with less than 100 days to the 2023 general elections, claims of double registration and underage voters have trailed the preliminary voter register published by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), despite repeated assurances by the Commission and President Muhammadu Buhari to deliver free, fair and credible polls.
The preliminary register, containing 93,522,272 registrants, has the name, picture, date of birth and Voter Identification Number (VIN) of each registered voter. For data protection and security reasons, information such as biometric details, residential addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of voters were not made public.
The list was published after the Commission said it had carried out a rigorous clean-up of the data using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) and deleted 2.7 million cases of double registration during the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR).
A review of the register revealed that despite moves by INEC to sanitise the list using ABIS, there are still irregularities.
Though INEC has urged Nigerians to raise objections against the inclusion of any person not qualified to vote or names of dead persons on the register, prominent among the irregularities is the revelation that the list has some registrants with the same name, personal information and photographs but different Voter Identification Numbers (VIN).
Also, the contentious underage issue came up again with the released list. The 1999 Constitution and Electoral Act, of 2022, provide that a person must be 18 years and above to be registered as a voter and eligible to vote. Nigerians raised objections that photographs of some of the registrants do not match their age.
The newspaper says that the Federal Government, through the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), has stated that it has disbursed about $700 million from the repatriated Abacha looted funds to over 1.9 million poor and vulnerable households across the country in the last six years.
Acting National Coordinator of NASSCO, Kabir Abdullahi, disclosed this at the one-day dissemination meeting by the Centre for Health Education, Economic Rehabilitation and Social Security (CHEERS), which led nine other Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) for the Third-Party Monitoring (TPM) of the National Social Safety Net Programme (NASSP).
He noted that beneficiaries in about four states have not been paid for two years due to logistics reasons, whereby, the ICPC, on seeing a large volume of money, seized the fund, adding that the funds have now been retrieved and that payment in the affected states will commence in earnest.
Abdullahi explained that NASSP project entails conditional and basic cash transfers to poor and vulnerable households, stressing beneficiaries of the basic cash transfer receive N5,000 every month, while those under the conditional cash transfer receive an additional N5000, making it N10,000 every two months.
He stated that the current register of the beneficiaries of conditional cash transfer has 1,940,000 households and with the ongoing enrolment, it is hoped that the target beneficiaries may reach two million by the end of December 2022.
Meanwhile, the CHEERS and other partner CSOs have hailed the Federal Government on the implementation of the National Social Safety-net programme (NASSP).
Earlier, the Executive director, CHEERS, the national lead TPM CSO, Ajia Ogugua Agagbo, said that the major problem encountered during the implementation of the project was that some of the beneficiaries experienced delays in getting their payments and urged the Federal Government to expand the programme in order to reach more poor and vulnerable households.
She stated that the aim of the NASSP TPM is to objectively and independently access beneficiaries/community’s awareness, perception and satisfaction with the programme and as well as check the transparency and compliance level with the standard operating guidelines establishes for the programme.
Agagbo revealed that a total of 18 states and 191 new LGAs were added to the previous 19 states and 280 LGAs that were monitored in Year 1 monitoring cycle. The new states include Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Ebonyi, Enugu, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers, Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe, FCT, Imo, Abia, Akwa Ibom, and Borno.
GIK/APA