The report of the approval by the ruling party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) of N100 million as cost of Presidential nomination forms dominates the headlines of Nigerian newspapers on Thursday.
The Guardian reports that President Muhammadu Buhari’s advice to All Progressives Congress (APC) National Working Committee (NWC) to ensure that the party’s tickets were not given to the highest bidders were ignored, yesterday, as the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) approved N100 million as cost of Presidential nomination forms.
According to the schedule of fees for expression of interest and nomination forms released by the NWC, governorship is N50 million, Senate N20 million, House of Representatives N10 million, while state House of Assembly aspirants would purchase theirs at N2 million.
The N100 million for Presidential nomination form is over 100 per cent increase from the amount it sold the form for the same office in 2018 at N45 million; and nearly 200 per cent hike from N27 million it sold forms in 2014. The N100 million fee is also more than double the fee of the major opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which fixed its Presidential nomination form at N40 million.
The NEC also revealed that it would begin selling the nomination and expression of interest forms for various electoral offices from April 23 until May 6, 2022.
The newspaper says that the Federal Government is looking at ending tariff shortfall, averaging N200 billion yearly, in the power sector by the end of the year.
Between 2015 and 2020, the shortfall reportedly stood at about N2.4 trillion, averaging N200 billion yearly. The shortfall accrued from suppressed charges for electricity consumption.
By implication, Nigerians may, from December this year, be compelled to pay the actual cost of energy consumed.
This comes as the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) said emerging challenges, especially insecurity, are already frustrating the sector.
The Secretariat of the Power Sector Recovery Programme (PSRP) disclosed that the government is considering that tariff shortfall comes to an end before the end of the year.
The Minister of Finance, Budgets and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, had earlier said that the Federal Government had quietly removed all subsidies in the power sector with a plan to gradually end subsidies on petrol.
“We are cleaning up our subsidies. We had a setback, we were to remove the fuel subsidy by July this year but there was a lot of pushback from the polity. We have elections coming and also because of the hardship that companies and citizens went through during the COVID-19 pandemic, we just felt that the time was not right, so we pulled back on that.
“But we have been able to quietly implement subsidy removal in the electricity sector and as it is, as we speak, we don’t have subsidies in the electricity sector. We did that overtime by carefully adjusting the prices at some levels, while holding the lower levels down,” Ahmed had said.
The Punch reports that the World Bank has disclosed that import restrictions and non-flexible exchange rate management of the Central Bank of Nigeria are the major driving forces for food inflation in Nigeria.
The Washington-based bank said this in a new biannual report by the World Bank known as Africa’s Pulse.
The report read in part, “Rising food prices are the underlying factor behind the surge of headline inflation in Nigeria. Food prices have increased due to import restrictions and a nonflexible exchange rate management.
“The current regime is keeping the official exchange rate of the naira artificially strong while the naira has weakened significantly on the parallel market. Additionally, the central bank has restricted importers’ access to foreign currency for 45 products and has reduced the supply to other importers.
“Inflation reached a four-year high at 18.2 per cent in March 2021, then eased to 16.0 per cent in October 2021 as food price inflation fell from a peak of 22.9 per cent in March to 18.3 per cent. Headline inflation rose to 15.7 per cent in February 2022, up by 0.1 percentage point from the two preceding months.”
The bank added that food and fuel shortages weighed on consumer prices despite fuel subsidies, adding that the war in Ukraine would likely worsen inflation rates.
The newspaper says that the President, Academic Staff Union of University, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, has accused the Federal Government of not giving priority to tertiary education.
According to him, the government had addressed the issue of fuel subsidy with a budget of N4trillion, whereas, it ignored issues concerning university education.
Speaking during a programme on Channels Television on Wednesday, Osodeke asked the government to take N200bn from the N4 trillion budgeted for subsidy to address the challenges of its members, thereby putting an end to the industrial action embarked upon by the union.
Osodeke said, “It is always funny that the government cannot raise N200bn to revamp all Nigeria’s universities annually, to world standards. The same government can raise N4trillion for fuel subsidy.
“You can raise a budget to make N4trillion for subsidy in a year, but you cannot raise N200bn to fund your education where you don’t have the infrastructure. You can spend N228bn to feed children in primary or secondary schools but you cannot raise this fund for your university; it is an issue of priority. That is the problem.
“If you remove N200bn from N4trillion to fund your universities, you still have N3.8trillion for fuel subsidy.
“We don’t believe there is a fuel subsidy. There is no country where you have the crude intelligentsia. You have been importing fuel for the past 20 years; something is ongoing. No country in the world will do that. In the 60s, we built four refineries, and between 1999 and now, we cannot build one or service the ones we had.”
The Sun reports that the National Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) and the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) have expressed worry over the state of insecurity in the country, calling on the federal and state governments to expedite actions to restore peace, law and order before the full-scale launch of political campaigns for the 2023 general elections.
Lamenting that the worsening insecurity profile in Nigeria was reaching a worrisome dimension with recent unfortunate incidents, the chambers noted that if nothing is done to commit to a new order and a more enabled and innovative security architecture, soon, security will suffer a heavier blow once politics takes centre stage in governance.
Its acting Director General, Mr. Opeyemi Alaran, who called for urgent and incisive policy implementation by government at all levels to tackle insecurity, promised that the association was on hand to partner government to implement innovative solutions based on existing platforms, such as the Police Community Relations Committee (PCRC).
He expressed the association’s sadness, saying it is further disturbed by increasing connotation that the country is unsafe to do business. He lamented that these incidents are of extreme concern to the association, given that current economic realities require inflows of foreign direct investment for sustained economic growth.
“Our sense of sadness is for the avoidable loss of lives, for which we commiserate with the family and loved ones of the deceased, as well as the humanitarian and economic damage that these attacks have caused.
The LCCI president, Dr. Michael Olawale-Cole, said on behalf of the business community, the chamber was concerned with the current insecurity crisis due its impact on businesses and the economy and also concerned because of the apparent threat to the forthcoming general elections in 2023 and by extension, a threat to our democracy.
“In the absence of peace and security, it would be challenging to hold credible, free and fair elections that would reflect the choices of the electorate.”
GIK/APA