The pledge by the Federal Government to continue skills acquisition programmes across Nigeria to deepen the economy estimated at $420bn is one of the trending stories in Nigerian newspapers on Monday.
The Punch newspaper reports that the Federal Government has pledged to continue skills acquisition programmes across Nigeria to deepen the economy estimated at $420bn.
Speaking at the ITF-NECA Technical Skills Development Project (TSDP) Stakeholders’ Dialogue Forum in Abuja, the Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Mariam Katagum, said nations confronted the challenges of poverty, soaring unemployment and related challenges with skills acquisition, noting that Nigeria must do the same.
“We must do the same, as we have one of the fastest-growing populations in the world. It is with this realization that the Federal Government initiated measures to encourage agencies vested with the mandate of equipping Nigerians with employable skills to escalate skills acquisition to all Nigerians,” she said.
Katagum said though agencies like the Industrial Trust Fund had taken advantage of relevant government policies to train hundreds of thousands of Nigerians through various skills intervention programmes, more still needed to be done for the rapid growth and development of the nation’s economy.
“The need for greater collaboration and synergy amongst various organisations in both the public and private sectors cannot be over emphasised. I, therefore, urge other agencies of Government to borrow a leaf from the example set by the ITF to enter into Public Private Partnership (PPP), to ensure the achievement of their mandates. I believe that with PPP, we can create decent jobs in sufficient quantities, to resolve the protracted problems of unemployment and reduce poverty, while also providing a foundation for more robust and inclusive economic growth,” she further said.
The Director-General, ITF, Joseph Ari, said the ITF-NECA Technical Skills Development Project was in response to the outcome of a joint survey that was carried out by the agency and NECA, which revealed, among other things, skills mismatches and drastic shortages in many sectors of the economy.
The newspaper says that the Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, has said annual foreign exchange outflow on study-related to the UK has hit to about $2.5bn as visa applications increased.
He also said the official foreign exchange receipt from crude oil sales into the official reserves of the country had dried up, but that the CBN had introduced measures to boost forex earnings through non-oil export which was already yeilding results.
Emefiele spoke at the 57th annual bankers dinner of the Charted Institute of Bankers of Nigeria in Lagos on Friday night.
He said, “As we all know, for example, the official foreign exchange receipt from crude oil sales into our official reserves has dried up steadily from above $3.0bn monthly in 2014 to an absolute zero dollars today.
“To put this drawback into perspective, it is equally no news that the number of student visa issued to Nigerians by the UK alone has increased from an annual average of about 8,000 visas as of 2020 to nearly 66,000 in 2022, which implies an eight-folds surge to about $2.5bn annually in study-related foreign exchange outflow to the UK alone.
“It is against the backdrop of the worsening mismatch between foreign exchange market demand and supply, and the need to boost foreign exchange earnings that the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee initiated the RT200 programme in February 2022.”
He said the programme was fundamentally devised to innovatively tackle the fundamental problem associated with the repatriation of non-oil export proceed.
So far, he said it had recorded and continue to record resounding success with the RT200 Programme.
Inflows through this programme in 2022 rose to about $1.6bn and could surpass $2.5bn by year-end, he said.
The Guardian reports that the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Izzi Local Council of Ebonyi State was set ablaze yesterday.
Some unidentified persons were said to have started the fire around 10.00 a.m. at the building located in Iboko area of the council.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman (Information and Voter Education Committee), Festus Okoye, in a statement, said although no casualties resulted from the attack, the main building and all movable and immovable items within were destroyed.
“These include 340 ballot boxes, 130 voting cubicles, 14 electric power generators, large water storage tanks, assorted office furniture and fixtures and yet to be determined quantities of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).”
Okoye said the attention of the Nigeria Police Force and other security agencies have been drawn to the incident and investigation has commenced.
He added: “Sadly, this is the third attack on our local government office in less than three weeks, following similar attacks on our offices in Ogun and Osun States on November 10, 2022.”
THIS came as Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Alkali Baba, ordered all Commissioners of Police in charge of state commands to fortify INEC offices and activate the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES).
The IGP noted that political violence, hate speech, intolerance, misinformation and extremism are all potential threats to democracy and national security.
He, therefore, urged the commissioners to synergise with members of the ICCES to reduce violence to the barest and prosecute violators of extant electoral laws.
The newspaper says that National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently released data about Nigeria’s inflation level and worsening poverty, confirming the warning from the Bretton Woods Institutions about the country’s inflation problem, citing it as a key driver for the rising number of poor people in the country.
In its editorial, the Guardian noted that while many have blamed the Russia-Ukraine crisis partially for the present inflation trigger, what has been equally ignored are the lingering structural and security challenges driving prices of food and basic services beyond the reach of the poor and the almost non-existent middle class.
The painful rise in prices of everything, including mainstays like food and oil, is both an economic and political problem.
The fact remains that the present administration has done a poor job at managing inflation and everyone is paying the price. As election nears, the inflation outlook is even grimmer, as prices outpace earnings, pushing more into poverty.
Nigeria’s inflation rate jumped to a 17-year high of 21.09 per cent in October 2022, representing 0.32 per cent increase from 20.77 per cent recorded in September, according to the NBS, raising concerns for Nigerians already battling with weak household incomes and import pass-through costs.
There are concerns that the country’s inflation trend may not have reached its peak considering that triggers like intermittent fuel scarcity witnessed during the review period, stubbornly high gas and energy prices, lingering currency pressures and build-up of higher naira liquidity as the campaign season starts, are yet to be addressed.
Painfully, many do not seem to agree with the position of NBS, which they said needed to do more to convince Nigerians, especially those who rely on their data for research and critical decision-making, that the figures are not doctored to achieve a predetermined objective. Contrary to the position of NBS, households across the country are trapped in a persistently rising cost of living. Prices of basic food items increase at a double-digit percentage every other week.
Already, manufacturers, banks, logistics and services industry, including hotels, apartments and estates, are feeling the pressure from rising energy costs as they have to spend more on diesel to power their generators.
While banks had staggered their operations in lieu of the present realities, real estate service providers are adjusting clauses relating to exclusivity on electricity provision. For the manufacturing sector, the burden of higher energy prices can only be passed onto consumers if they have to remain a going concern. Diesel costs should naturally not be a burden for many, except for those in the logistics sector.
However, the nation remains underserved by the unstable and low capacity national grid. With less than 4,000MW from the national grid, Nigerians are left to generate their own energy.
GIK/APA