₦airaland Forum

1 July, 2016. \\ Admin

Authorities in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos have shut down dozens of churches, mosques and hotels in a bid cut noise pollution, officials said on Thursday.

The sprawling city of some 20 million people is notorious for heavy traffic jams and the deafening noise of churches and mosques that use horns and loudspeakers to spread their message.

“It’s true that 70 churches, 20 mosques and 11 hotels, club houses and beer parlours have been shut down across the state,” an official of Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA), who did not want to be named, said.

She said LASEPA boss Rasheed Adebola Shabi ordered the closure after the churches and mosques refused to comply with a government order to reduce noise pollution.

“The affected churches and mosques were directed to remove the horns and loudspeakers placed outside so as not to disturb the public with their activities but they refused,” she said.

The official said the government was aiming at a zero-noise level in the next four years.

She added: “We want to ensure that Lagos is noise-free by the year 2020. With our status as a megacity, by year 2020 we will be free of noise”.

She said the agency would no longer allow makeshift buildings to be used as places of worship in the state.

The government has restricted blaring of horns and sirens by motorists to reduce noise and pollution in the highly crowded city.

http://blueink.com.ng/newsdetails.aspx?id=69

1 July, 2016. \\ Admin

The Edo State government has screened and registered no fewer than 50,000 farmers for the Central Bank of Nigeria loan in the 2016 cropping season.

Mr Abubakar Sule, Edo North Zonal Manager, Edo Agricultural Development Programme, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria Auchi on Friday.

Sule said out of the 50,000 farmers, 25,000 were from Edo South, 10,000, Edo Central, while 15,000 were from Edo North.

He said the CBN loan was being facilitated by the state government, adding that the individual farmers needed to belong to a cooperative society to be a beneficiary.

He said that farmers, who grow Maize, Rice, Cassava, Oil Palm and livestock such as poultry, piggery and fishery would benefit from the facility.

Sule said that the gesture was the state government’s way of assisting farmers to boost food production in the state.

He said the state government had trained its extension service workers on how to guide the farmers to reduce risk and enhance farm yields.

He said that EADP would ensure that farmers had access to variety of seeds and other high yielding inputs to enhance production.


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