In all spheres of socio-economic development of Nigeria, there have been traces of failure which have given rise for calls for drastic measures to be taken in order to improve on the country’s present status of a failing economy, especially in food security. Nigeria is today at the bottom of other African countries in terms of socio-economic development. Among the 105 countries presently assessed by the Global Food Security Index, GFSI, of the Economist Intelligence Unit, Nigeria became the 80th with 34.8 based on the indices of Affordability, Availability and Quality and Safety. Areas in which the country was rated…
Author: Editor
The Southern Senators Forum has called on Nigerians to strengthen the unity of the nation irrespective of their ethnic and religious affiliation. The forum made the call in a statement in Ado-Ekiti on Friday by its Chairman, Sen. Opeyemi Bamidele, while congratulating Nigerians on the celebration of the 2021 Democracy Day. “Time has come for all Nigerians to strengthen the nexus of unity among ethnic nationalities and religious boundaries in the country. “This will serve as the remedy to possible truncation of the democratic rule in our dear country,’’ Bamidele said. The forum congratulated all Nigerians on the heart-warming feat, saying…
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday directed Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to discard 60 million doses of its single-shot COVID-19 vaccination made at Baltimore plant, Maryland, U.S. J&J is an American multinational corporation founded in 1886 that develops medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and consumer packaged goods. In April 2020, it entered a partnership with Catalent Pharmaceutical Company to provide large-scale manufacturing of the J & J vaccine for COVID at Catalent’s Bloomington, Indiana facility. The U.S. agency said the shots made at the troubled Baltimore plant had to be thrown away due to potential contamination. The plant,…
More people have died from the coronavirus (COVID-19) in 2021 than in 2020, in spite of the progress of vaccination in the world, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The report, while quoting Johns Hopkins University data, said that it took less than six months for the globe to record more than 1.88 million COVID-19 deaths in 2021. According to the journal “the university’s count for 2021 edged just ahead of the 2020 death toll as of Thursday. “These numbers reveal the pandemic has hit different parts of the world unevenly, with poorer nations being affected later, and suffering,…
U.S. President Joe Biden, on Friday joined leaders of the G7 and guest countries to make a commitment of providing more than one billion additional COVID-19 vaccine doses for the world at G7 summit. Biden, in a statement from the White House in Washington, DC said of the one billion vaccine doses, 500 million would come from the United States. The U.S. president said that the commitment formed the basis of a comprehensive set of G7+ actions towards ending this global pandemic in 2022. The G7 countries are a group of the world’s seven largest advanced economies namely: the United…
The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has said that the National Assembly, NASS, would consider President Muhammadu’s Buhari’s loan request for construction and rehabilitation of rail lines across the country. Lawan who stated this on Friday while fielding questions from newsmen in Abuja said approving such loans would help fund critical infrastructure across the country. While noting that Nigeria’s borrowing plan “is a necessary burden”, Lawan added that for the country to be adequately developed, the National Assembly was considering two loan requests of the federal government. “Before us in the Senate are two requests from the executive arm…
Connected Development (CODE) a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) says it tracked N193 billion spent on government projects across the country in 2020, towards ensuring accountability. Mr Hamzat Lawal, Chief Executive, CODE and founder, Follow The Money, said this at the launch of the group’s annual report: Empowering Communities in a Pandemic in Abuja on Friday. Lawal said CODE also tracked about N96billion of COVID-19 funds at states and federal levels in Nigeria, using its social accountability tool ‘Follow The Money’. “When CODE set out in 2012, it had the sole purpose of bridging information gap between marginalised communities and their government,…
The federal government on Friday in Ado Ekiti distributed 50,000 certified yam seeds to farmers to boost food security in the country. Karima Babangida, the Director, Federal Department of Agriculture in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, while distributing the seedlings, said that the aim was to boost high yield for export. Babangida reaffirmed its commitment towards ensuring that smallholder farmers across the country have access to quality seeds. The director, who was represented by Mr Deola-Tayo Lordbanjou, the Programme Manager of Root and Tuber Expansion Programme, said the seedlings were of high quality with export value. ‘It is…
The federal government has listed several actions said to have been committed by Twitter, and capable of destabilizing the country. The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed gave the details on Friday when he featured on a live programme of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), ‘Good Morning Nigeria’. The minister said that Twitter had become a platform of choice for separatists to carry out their agenda, including being a platform to consistently promote activities that would lead to the collapse of the country. According to him, the leader of Independent People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu who stays comfortably…
The Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege has said June 12 has crystallized into a beacon of hope and rallying point for the development of democracy under a progressive agenda. In a message to mark this year’s Democracy Day, Senator Omo-Agege who chairs the Senate Committee on Constitutuon Review, assured that the exercise would deepen our democracy. Describing the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola and his wife, Kudirat Abiola, as icons of democracy, the Delta Central lawmaker called on those championing the drumbeats of war to have a rethink and explore peaceful…