The African Finance Summit being hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday that seeks to provide Africa with critical financing swept away by the Covid-19 pandemic is one of the leading stories in Nigerian newspapers on Tuesday.
The Guardian reports that French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday hosts African leaders and chiefs of global financial institutions for a summit meeting that will seek to provide Africa with critical financing swept away by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Africa has so far been less badly hit by the pandemic than other global regions — with a total of 130,000 dead across the continent.
But the economic cost is only too apparent, with the International Monetary Fund warning in late 2020 that Africa faces a shortfall in the funds needed for future development a financial gap of $290 billion up to 2023.
A moratorium on the service of public debt agreed in April last year by the G20 and the Paris Club, a group of creditor countries that tries to find sustainable solutions for debtor nations, was welcomed but will not be enough on its own.
Many want a moratorium on the service of all external debt until the end of the pandemic.
The newspaper says that exactly a week after the ‘Asaba Accord’ of Southern Governors, which among other things, proclaimed a ban on open grazing, governors on the platform of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) platform, yesterday, assembled in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, for a one-day consultative meeting on state of the nation.
The forum of PDP governors at the end of their meeting, held at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, which was chaired by Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, issued a six-point communiqué, where it insisted that ranching be adopted as permanent solution to the herders/farmers clashes in the country.
The governors also reiterated the call for restructuring and called on President Muhammadu Buhari to summon meeting of the Nigerian Police Council and devolve more powers to states to douse the tension in the country and curb insecurity besetting it.
The meeting presided over by the PDP governors’ forum chairman and attended by 10 of his colleagues as well as the Zamfara State deputy governor, Mahdi Gusau, equally charged the National Assembly to immediately amend the Constitution to give effect to devolution of powers and state policing.
Having reviewed the state of the nation, the PDP governors called on President Buhari to send an Executive Bill to the National Assembly to amend the 1999 Constitution to devolve powers to states with respect to security architecture that will give birth to state police.
The Vanguard reports that the Nigerian Government says it has uncovered about 476 online publication sites dedicated to daily churning out of fake news to fight the government.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja when he received officials of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations on a courtesy visit
Mohammed said the latest of the hatchet jobs by the traducers was the fake publication on President Muhammadu Buhari’s mental status.
“It will amaze you that recently we unveiled almost 476 online publication sites that are dedicated to daily engaging in churning out fake news to fight the government.
“The latest which I found ridiculous is the one that said days ago, that they had information that when Mr President was in the UK the last time, he was advised to step down because he could not even recognise members of his immediate family. “I begin to wonder how they can go this far, simply because they know that people are gullible and they will make the fake news to go viral,’’ he said.
The newspaper says that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that the inflation rate reduced by 0.05 percent in April compared to what obtained in March.’
It said while the inflation rate stood at 18.17 percent in March, it reduced to 18.12 per cent in April. The rate is contained in the NBS’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for April 2021 released on Monday in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that CPI measures the average change over time in prices of goods and services for day-to-day living.
The report also said increases were recorded in all Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) divisions that yielded the headline index.
“On a month-on-month basis, the headline index increased by 0.97 percent in April. This is 0.59 percentage points higher than the rate recorded in March (1.56 percent),” the report said.
The Punch says that the Federal Government on Monday declared that insecurity was a major crisis in the maritime sector, describing it as more complex than the world knows.
It also announced that the President Muhammadu Buhari, would inaugurate Nigeria’s maritime security project in June.
The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, announced this in Abuja and stated that the security project would be inaugurated in Lagos, as it would involve the Navy, police, army and State Security Service.
The minister spoke when the Belgium Ambassador to Nigeria, Daniel Bertrand, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja. Amaechi was quoted in a statement issued by his ministry’s Assistant Director, Press and Public Relations, Anastasia Ogbonna, as saying, “The crisis in the maritime sector is insecurity and it is more complex than the world knows.”
The minister, however, told his guests that the Federal Government had come up with a solution that was ready for take-off.
The Sun says that the Federal Government yesterday disclosed that 70 percent of corruption cases are perpetrated by persons who use anonymous companies and that over $1 billion has been recovered by governments using beneficial ownership data.
The Minister of Trade and Investment, Chief Adeniyi Adebayo, made this disclosure in Abuja at the media presentation of Nigeria’s Road to Beneficial Ownership Transparency of the 2021 Open Government Partnership (OGP) Week.
Adebayo, who was represented by his permanent secretary, Dr Nasir Sani Gwarzo, also said that when the register of companies is completed it will help government in decision-making especially around awards of contract permit and licences.
“It will help decision makers to quickly determine who benefits from the operations and profits of the company so as to avoid conflict of interest or manipulation,” he said.
According to him, the journey to establish a public register of beneficial owners commenced in 2016 at the London Summit on Anti-Corruption where President Muhammadu Buhari joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP).
GIK/APA