₦airaland Forum

These people are noise makers. They backed Atiku and lost, not sure when last they delivered a single candidate in an election in Rivers State or nationally. The same Sim they now back was delivered 100% by Wike. I am glad that Sim did not listen to them when they were urging him to reject terms of the peace deal brokered by President Tinubu.

Wike is trusted by Tinubu because he delivers. You think the President is a fool to ditch someone like Wike for all these people that can't deliver their wards. As far as Wike is alive, these guys won't have one over him. Sim is advised to make peace with Wike, trust in President's Tinubu's political abilities and watch how he will so prosper with second term guaranteed. If he wants to trust in these toothless fellows, he should be my guest.

HE Gov Alex Otti was once in the APC where he sought a platform to become Abia State Governor. He eventually got it under the Labour Party platform. I urge LP to do all it can to make him their National Leader else I won't be surprised if he defects to the APC at some point.

I think the President should continue doing his bit to lift our country into prosperity. Many, for all sorts of reasons will not agree with him and will continue in their maligning ways. They will soon have little to hang on to when things turn around for the better and our lives become much more meaningful

These are not a lot to be honest. Bilateral loans owed to individual countries are less than 20% of our total external debt.

The bulk of our external debt is owed to multilateral institutions like the World Bank, IMF and locked in Eurobonds.

Our total external debt is less than $40bln. To put it in context, we were earning about $60bln per year from oil during GEJ's time while this fell to less than $30bln per year during PMB's regime. CBN also just cleared about $7bln worth of forward contracts in less than a year. Point is, our external debt is roughly about a year's oil revenue. If we apply ourselves as a nation and boost our oil and gas revenues and export more non-oil products, we will clear our external debt in less than 4 years.

seguntijan:
Not within my purview but the Chief of Staff is my Leader, Boss and Mentor and I owe it as duty to fumigate the atmosphere of lies/half-truths and to defend his personal integrity.

Budget of the office of the Chief of Staff in the last 5yrs

2020: ₦24.35 million
2021: ₦76.55 million
2022: ₦526.47 million
2023: ₦517.95 million
2024*: ₦21.22 billion

What they won't tell you is that major capital Renovation of National assets were captured in this allocation;

The Renovation of Dodan Barracks Presidential Lodge - ₦5 billion is captured.

--Renovation of Vice President Quarters in Lagos - ₦5 billion Is equally captured.

--Full Digitization of the entire State House and Lagos State Offices and Quarters - ₦10 billion

2024 Budget:
Overhead: ₦698.1m
Capital: ₦20.5bn
Femi Gbajabiamila's purse - Nil.

Even God as Commander in Chief of the Republic of Heaven, Satan and his camp still felt elections have consequences and revolted against the Almighty, how much more Asiwaju and his lieutenants. It is the President's job to ensure he delivers on his manifesto, but the job of making haters happy is solely theirs.

Good Evening Severally..

Good job, thanks for taking the time to explain. Too many people just run along without doing some due diligence.

Calitoscassius:
For the first time i am agreeing with you, Yes, you are correct!


But the government could also pay them better money, good holiday and retirement plans, treat them well, so they wouldn't leave in the first place.

Government should be enticing and encouraging them with better pay, better working condition to stay rather.

How much money can govt pay them? Truth is even if govt triples their current salary, it won't still be enough. We simply cannot compete with the developed countries on wages. India knew this and set up many IT training schools and universities to take advantage of that japa opportunity. Today, almost every top tech company has Indians as CEOs etc. They are now returning home to help the country of their birth. Japa may not always be bad, it depends on how you handle it. We can follow in India's footsteps.

What is Senator Ningi saying? What budget was passed without us knowing? The executive presented a 2024 budget of N27.5 trillion to the National Assembly (NASS). This was jacked up to N28.77 trillion by NASS and subsequently passed into law by the President.

All these happened in the open before all Nigerians. Where is Sen Ningi's N25 trillion coming from? People just sit somewhere and manufacture stories and those who should be more discerning are lapping it up and swallowing it hook, line and sinker.

EreluRoz:
Who takes hajiya Najaatu seriously 😒

No one does...i wonder why anyone listens to anything she has to say. She got played, lost out and should sulk in peace

ReubenE:
I don't think she is inferring she relies solely on her salary for survival. She's only using her official salary as a baseline to gauge how bad or expensive things has become which is the right thing to do.

We all use minimum wage of 30k as baseline when talking about commodities, it does not mean everyone that use that survive on only 30k

Apart from the basic salary she and others like to quote, our academicians earn varying other allowances that bump up their pay. That said, overall pay is still low in comparison. Tuition paid cannot properly fund University education including paying decent wages to University lecturers. I will say liberslise and commercialise University education, support exceptional indigent students with scholarships and other poor students with student loans so no one is denied access to quality education. That way, everyone benefits

Eriokanmi:
Why didn't you go by road earlier and enjoy your money in hotel ahead of the tournament?

Don't mind the Prof. It is law of demand and supply. Many Nigerians will want to go and watch the match hence demand that far outstrips supply. The consequence is increased airfares. Same during peak and rush periods. I thought the Prof will know this and stop trying to do notice-me.

The options like you said are either go by road (much more cheaper) or watch at home with 1 month dstv premium subscription.

You will be shocked how much these Profs make from their side hustles enabled by the same academic environment they frequently like to abuse. Imagine Prof still hoping to get salaries paid for the 8 months they were on strike? Who does that? What of the students who lost one year due to that strike or those whose life journeys were altered? Who fights for them?

Where will Atiku have found $10bln for SMSEs Talk is cheap.

nairalanda1:
It has been decaying from independence.

The problem with our economy in my opinion (corruption aside, which is a serious issue mind you)..is that our economy is based on the price of whatever we are selling. IN the 1960's it was agric and solid minerals...then from the 1970's oil took over and remained our main source of income.

Problem is, we do not set the prices. ANd the solutuion is that we use what we have to make things the world can use.

Tinubu has really not done much. WHat he has done is had his hand forced by the fact that at the start of his regime, debt service was eating up most of the avaialble revenue, once subsides for petrol and the dollar had been paid. He had to cut subsides (he has not removed subsides) to get more money. Yes, nice...like IMF even suggested.

But lipstick on a pig does not make it a beautiful woman. (It may improve the pig's looks a bit, but it is still a pig).

At the end, we still are not earning enough money, and cutting subsides can only go so far. APC , Tinubu's party promised that diversification would happen when they took over in 2015. At the end, they did not diversify, and TInubu has not yet outlined how he would diversify the economy. Then there is the low revenue from tax. Improving both things means harsh economic polices for the next decade...and APC wants to win elections...so at the end, they won't take the hard decisions needed.

We have to earn more money, and we can do that by being a exporter of manufactured goods and servicies, having a decent tax income and also having a proper anti-corruption effort, and cutting government costs.

Your piece is nice and factual but can do with more realism. Things have been pretty bad. The first step when you are in a hole is to stop digging. A big ship takes energy and effort to change course. There are different phases along the recovery path. Questions need to be asked about what targets and what timelines are we working towards to double or triple our tax to GDP ratio, double or triple our oil and gas production, take our power generation and consumption to 50GW, reduce our import dependence by 50% etc etc. We will crawl, walk then run...it takes a disciplined process

Coming from someone who is resident in Dubai. If SW Govs can float Amotekun without FG support to largely successfully fight insecurity, why can't AA as a towering figure in the NE galvanise NE Govs to do same? His state leaves so much to be desired.

Peter Obi recognises that reforms take time to yield sustainable impact such as how Obiano reaped years later from the foundation he as Obi laid years earlier. My question then is - why does he think that all Tinubu is doing should yield impact NOW just after 8 months else he is failing?

I commend Gov Sanwo Olu on this. I worry that financing is not yet sorted. I thought Afrexim Bank or some financial institution committed to providing part funding. Why not start with that and be more creative in finding the balance?

That said, there are lots of existing roads that are either potholes filled or very rough and undulating. Can there be a plan over a 4-yr period to resurface those roads and beautify them? The sort of upgrade/resurfacing that FG is doing with the third mainland bridge. Collaboration with FG is crucial as some of these roads are federal roads. Lagos should massively benefit with BAT as President. If not, no one else will do it for Lagos in a generation. Some of these roads include;

1. Eko bridge
2. Carter bridge
3. Ikorodu road
4. Ozumba Mbadiwe road
5. Kofo Abayomi street
6. Lekki expressway
7. Lekki regional road
8. Lekki coastal road
9. Oba Akran avenue
10. Mobolaji Bank Anthony way
11. Kingsway (Alfred Rewane) road
12. Falomo road
13. Billingsway road
14. Domestic to International airport road

...just to mention a few

Retracted.

firearcher:
Its simple. They had no incentive to own such ships before. But now they do. Time for the companies to shore up their capital base and capacity.

Nigeria will be great.

This is the closest reasonable reason i have read here. Though not excusable by Nigeria and Nigerians because we are a major oil producer and should have been actively involved in marketing crude oil across the globe using crude tankers. There is so much money in the global oil trading and shipping business that we can't afford not to partake in.

As you say, there is now an incentive to get involved. To be fair, we do have LNG trading tankers and an LNG trading business via the NLNG trading arm. Much more can be done.

Surprising that discos do not have audited accounts dating back to at least 3 years including the supposedly well run ones. Red flag!

40% ownership of discos controlled by Wale Edun through MOFI is the end game of this move. Why not leave it under BPE afterall its DG was just removed and a new one installed. How many ventures and enterprises does MOFI want to oversee? You can begin to see a clear pattern in the way MOFI is getting involved in many strategic areas of the economy.

If it leads to improvement in the economy and massive gains, why not. However, is it sustainable over a longer period of time? Time will tell

Doyin Okupe's description of LP as a Special Purpose Vehicle was highly provocative and uncalled for. I think he deserved what came at him from.LP.

These 2 gentlemen are arguably amongst the top 10 competent persons holding public jobs in this country. What have they done to deserve sack? Irukera as federal consumer protection boss recently saw to British American Tobacco paying that huge fine. Okoh on the other hand has been doing some good privatisation work. What on earth are their crimes??

I would have thought Commissioner Omotosho should have done a comprehensive listing of ongoing projects to be completed. The 2 or 3 he mentioned did not do justice to the Lagos State Govt's efforts. For me, the following should be minimum infrastructure delivery targets. I am not including social and other human development projects.

1. Commence and push Lekki airport to 50% completion

2. Commence and push Fourth Mainland bridge to 30% completion

3. Complete the Lekki- Epe expressway rehabilitation. Complete Lekki regional road and push Lekki coastal road completion to 50%

4. Complete and start operating Red Line rail. Open up all the overpasses

5. Commence and push 2nd phase Blue Line rail to 50% completion

6. Complete feasibility and flag off 2 more rail lines as per masterplan

7. Complete the LASG part of the Lagos-Badagry expressway and collaborate with AfDB and FG to complete that entire stretch of road

8. Complete the Opebi-Mende-Ojota bypass road

9. Think through the rehabilitation of many major trunk roads that need facelift in Lagos - Oba Akran Avenue, Billingsway, MMA2-MMIA link road and so many others like them across the metropolis

10. Work with LGAs and LCDAs to deliver at least 500 internal roads

11. Start implementing Power strategy to generate, transmit and distribute power to Lagos as enabled by recent legislation

These are the minimum deliveries i expect. There are a lot more but prioritisation in the face of funding challenges is important.

Can't believe this report. Gombe State is about 4 million in population. How many are women? How many women are of child bearing age? How many had kids in 2023? Completely suspicious numbers.

A good man from one who saw him from afar particularly in his Church of the Assumption Falomo Parish. Served his God and others selflessly. May his soul and those of all the faithfully departed rest in peace, Amen. Adieu

DeLaRue:
There is absolutely no controversy here. The press, including Arise TV, has been reporting it for several months that there are 2 refineries within the same area in Port Harcourt and only one would be refurbished this year.

One, which is about 60 years old and has 60 thousand bpd capacity (which is the one every one who follows the news know is being refurbished - just completed).

The other one is, I believe, about 40 years old and has 150 thousand bpd capacity. Refurbishment of this one will start now that the much older one has been completed.

Many people simply do not follow the news keenly. They see things on social media and jump into it with no understanding.

The old refinery that has just been completed has not produced a single litre of oil for about 30 years despite OBJ, Yaradua, and Jonathan spending hundreds of billions on it. Yet, the last govt has achieved a full refurbishment in just a few years. Yet, you people are cursing.

So, what is wrong with finishing one refinery before moving to the other. Do you not know that the project can only proceed at pace of the Italian contractor's capacity?

Do you also know how difficult it is to completely refurbish a refinery that is based on technology that is no longer in use. Infact the original company that built the refineries refused to bid for the refurbishment work because they could not cope with the ardouos work that would be involved. Most foreign companies were not interested.

The Italian company who agreed to do the work is having to re-engineer most of the parts needed for the refinery and they have imaginatively redone a 60 yr old derelict refinery in a short time under immense pressure from the govt, and yet all many of you can do is still condemn their ingenious work on the old refinery

The government has already paid all the contract fee upfront but the Italian company could not work on 2 completely different refineries at the same time, and that is perfectly understandable.

Now they hope to finish the 2nd refinery in a years time, yet you people's histrionics is palpable.

If something has not worked for more than 20 years, and we have only 1 year to wait for it to work, what is the bid deal. And we now have one that can produce 60 thousand bpd in the interim.

Doing anything for Nigeria is a thankless job.

You nailed this one. I wonder where all the negativity is coming from. For those that understand this thing from the very beginning, nothing has changed from the plan.

60,000 barrels old refinery was to be completed by end of 2023 (though initial promise by the Buhari govt was months earlier). The 150,000 barrels newer refinery was to be completed in phase 2, to be delivered 6 months to 2 years later. If the argument was about why the newer, modern, higher capacity refinery was not rehabilated first, i would perfectly understand.

These refineries have defied all sorts of solutions thrown at them for close to 30 years. Now that there is light at the end of the tunnel, i am grateful for the prospect of seeing them work again. Simultaneously as PHC refinery phase 2 is being rehabilitated, Warri and Kaduna refineries will be rehabilated but completion may be much later in 2025. Nonetheless a good thing.

My only advice is for govt to consider privatising by selling off these refineries as NNPC cannot profitably manage them. Once the borrowed funds from these rehabilitations have been recovered via current operations management model, they should be sold.

I thought this same Dodan Barracks and VP Lagos house renovations were captured in the 2023 Supplementary budget recently passed? Was it carried over to 2024 budget proposal or this is an additional vote?

Buccal verbal diarrhea

I thought PBAT's manifesto mentioned a radically different view on budgeting, departing from the traditional budgeting process to a zero based, clean sheet budgeting. It is time to show working. N18trn revenue projection is a huge target considering that we hardly generate more than N8trn in revenues in the past few years. How will it be done?

Is APC or the Courts stopping the opposition parties from merging and forming a strong common front? They missed several chances to do this before the elections and still bickering and singing discordant tunes after the elections when it is clear that individual egos that got in the way of them working together before the elections are still troubling them. They are not yet serious, when they get serious, people will pay attention.

By the way, Nassarawa is APC and the Court ruled against the Governor who won reelection. Zamfara and Bayelsa cases in 2019 are also there. Always convenient to hang the Judiciary as soon as verdicts don't go their way.

The Lagos- Abidjan highway is sponsored and funded by the African Development Bank under Akinwunmi Adesina. Not sure if counterpart funding is obtained from individual countries that the road passes through. Possibly not, but AfDB may have the right to toll or monetize the road assets to recover their investment. In any case, it is a very good idea to promote regional trade.

Pity that we only get 78km of this over 1000km road with Ghana getting over 500km. Lucky them. The Nigerian stretch is likely from Seme border up to Mile2. Will it be upgrading of the existing Lagos- Badagry expressway or the construction of a separate new road?

The basis for this report needs to be interrogated. That CBN cannot pay backlog of $6bln? And yet they have paid about $1bln in a little over a month of coming on board. That they have no experience to guide the economy to stability through float management? Based on what was this assertion made? Surely they should know a new CBN management team is in place.

Three things will change our forex situation in the short to medium term as follows - increase in crude oil production to bring in more forex, refineries coming on stream to reduce pressure on the forex demand side and investigation of some persons who abused forex allocations in the past. Some form of negotiation will happen for them to release their illegally acquired forex into the market and avoid prosecution.

I can't see any other outcome than a Naira recovery against the USD.

I think the bigger picture is a possible Wike vs Tinubu fallout. Wike still nurses a Presidential ambition and knows PDP offers him a better platform than APC to actualise it. Only time to actualise it is in 2027 as if he misses that window, it will take another 12 years before it comes back South, a long time to wait. Tinubu will surely seek a second term in 2027. So something will give.

I suspect Tinubu will push for Wike to join APC so he can better relegate his ambition within the party which is easier to accomplish. Wike will see through the bait and keep his options open. Things will become clearer in 2 years' time when 2027 noise gains momentum.

Tinubu can yet push for PDP to expel Wike so he becomes an orphan. Tinubu will also keep Fubara close so he can use him to pull the rug of Rivers State political control off Wike's feet. With Wike effectively orphaned, he can be isolated and his ambition checkmated. High stakes politics yet to come

The Labour Unions should thread carefully. How on earth can you declare an indefinite national strike for an issue many consider to be partisan? What was done to the NLC President can never be justified but is a national strike the remedy? As demanded, the Imo State Police CP has been temporarily removed from supervising the elections. That step in itself is unprecedented. So what now justifies the strike? Ego, partisanship and opposition should be put aside and some logical reasonong take centre stage!