The Nigerian Senate on Monday passed the 2021 Appropriation Bill of N13.5 trillion.
This followed the adoption of the report of Senate Committee on Appropriations at plenary.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that President Muhammadu Buhari had on Oct. 8, presented the 2021 budget of N13.08 trillion to the joint session of the National Assembly for approval.
More details later…
The media and members of the press in Mali have cried out in fear over being stifled as a result of the state of emergency was announced on Friday 18th of December.
The announcement was made as part of the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.
Aside from having control over the media, Restoring The state of emergency allows the authorities to prohibit the movement of people, order the closure of public places or ban demonstrations and public meetings. currently, the government has placed a ban on schools, restaurants, entertainment centers.
The state of emergency, which has been in place since 2015, was lifted following the August 18 coup d’état and had remained so until today. This time around, till Jan 10th, 2021.
In a press statement, the Spokesperson for the government, Hamadoun Toureh announced the new measures were taken concerning the rising COVID-19 cases. Toureh said a state of emergency has been declared for 10 days. The educational institutions, restaurants, entertainment venues, and some marketplaces will remain closed till Jan. 10.
In the country of about 20 million people, at least 6,049 cases have been detected infected since the outbreak of the virus, with 211 deaths. There are about 150 daily cases in Mali as of December.
Ireland based Nigerian gospel singer Joy Moses aka Jees classy, has urged Nigerians to depend on Jesus to overcome any challenge they may be faced with.
She said, mans sinful nature is essentially “ the foundation of every earthly problem,” and that the birth of Jesus Christ is a gift God gave to the world for its redemption.
She talked about her new song titled “Rabi,” which to her means “Jesus My Master,” describing it as “a song of victory in all ramifications of life. “My latest release is a unique gospel style, and with it, I urge Christians to bubble in the Lord.
What makes the song in itself unique is announcing my rebirth through the help of Jesus Christ, who has led me through a very dark storm, and He can do same for you too,” she said.
The medical practitioner and philanthropist added that irrespective of the problems which may be facing individuals, especially the current coronavirus devastation and other personal problems “we can overcome them with provisions made by God.”
The singer, who said she went out of circulation after dropping her hit track, Zuma meaning “Move on,” and Lele, Eye opener – which she said paved the way for her in the industry, especially in the South-East- said she is now back to satisfy the expectation of her fans.
source – vanguard
The Federal Government has directed the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to remove the N20 USSD fee imposed on subscribers for retrieval of the National Identification Number (NIN).
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, who issued the directive, said it’s with immediate effect.
According to a statement by his spokesperson, Mrs Uwa Suleiman, on Friday, the minister’s directive is an intervention aimed at making the process easier and affordable.
“The Minister’s directive which takes immediate effect is an intervention aimed at making the process easier and affordable,” the statement said.
“In a letter conveying the implementation of the directive, the Executive Vice Chairman NCC and the Director-General of NIMC informed Dr Pantami that the relevant authorities had met with, and negotiated a waiver with the Mobile Network Operators in that regard.
“By this waiver, all Nigerians, subscribers and applicants can access the service using the *346# code for their NIN retrieval at no charge for the duration of the NIN/SIM Card integration exercise.”
Recall that the Federal Government had earlier directed that all NINs be integrated with Subscriber Identification Modules for security purposes.
It directed network operators to ask all their subscribers to provide valid NIN to update their records and suspend SIM registration. It gave December 31, 2020, as deadline for the exercise, after which operators are to block SIM cards with no NIN.
The move sparked outrage as Nigerians questioned the rationale behind the short notice, insisting the timeframe was too short.
The House of Representatives, on Wednesday, called on the NCC to extend the deadline.
The freed Kankara schoolboys have arrived in Katsina State.
Unknown gunmen had abducted over 300 schoolboys from Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina, last Friday.
Terror group, Boko Haram, claimed responsibility for the abductions but Governor Aminu Masari dismissed the claim, saying the government knows the bandits responsible for the act.
On Thursday night, the governor confirmed the release of the schoolboys.
Masari, who earlier claimed that 333 students were missing, disclosed that 344 students were released.
He added that the boys were at Tsafe, Zamfara State, and would be transported to Kankara on Friday.
On Friday morning, the boys were ferried into the state capital by security operatives.
Masari was present to receive them and he addressed them at the government house.
The Katsina governor promised that the schoolboys would receive proper medical attention before they are reunited with their families.
He also claimed that no ransom was paid to secure their release.
The Senate has passed the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP).
The upper chamber in the approved MTEF/ and FSP pegged oil benchmark at $40 and exchange rate at N379 per dollar.
The passage of the document on Thursday was sequel to the consideration of a harmonised conference report of the Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The Chairman of the Committee on Finance, Senator Solomon Adeola, in his presentation, said the conference report of the two chambers was their harmonised position upon examination of the differences contained in the 2021-2023 MTEF/FSP document.
The lawmaker said the joint committee of the two chambers, after due deliberations, put the Gross Domestic Growth rate at three percent; inflation growth rate at 11.95 percent; and FGN-retained revenue at N7.99tn.
N145m PIB Media Consultancy Fee Uncovered By Senate
He added that the total Federal Government proposed expenditure was pegged at N13.58tn; and Fiscal deficit at N5.60tn.
Adeola said new borrowing was N4.28tn (foreign and domestic); statutory transfers, N484.4bn; and debt servicing is N3.12tn.
He put sinking fund at N220bn; Pension, Gratuities and Retirees Benefits N520.6bn; total FGN expenditure N13.58 trn; while total recurrent (non-debt) at N5.66tn.
Personnel costs for Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government (MDAs) were put at N3.05 trillion; capital expenditure (exclusive of transfers) at N3.58 trillion; special intervention (recurrent) N350 billion and special intervention (capital) N20 billion.
The manner of Tottenham’s late defeat at Liverpool on Wednesday was painful for Jose Mourinho.
However, while losing – and losing the leadership of the Premier League – was an undoubted blow, in another sense the whole match was a triumph for the Portuguese.
First versus second, everything on the line, a chance to execute a gameplan which came so close to working perfectly, and the opportunity to dominate the pre and post-match debate. It was what Mourinho meant when he talked about the dugout being his natural habitat when he took the Tottenham job in November last year.
And it was everything that seemed to be missing when he was sacked by Manchester United exactly two years ago.
For, when United issued the brief 65-word statement that signalled the end of Mourinho’s tenure as manager at 09:44 GMT on Tuesday, 18 December 2019, it seemed to be the death knell for the Premier League career of one of the most charismatic figures in the game.
Sacked by Chelsea and then United, Mourinho had been rejected as yesterday’s man, a busted flush, wedded to outdated tactics, who had not kept pace with the times.
Those assessments, evidently, were wrong.
Speaking to someone who knows Mourinho well about the major difference between the misery of the end of his time at United and the joy at what is happening at Spurs now, the explanation came back “Pogba”.
The image of Paul Pogba, sitting on the United bench, unused, hood up, protecting himself from the rain as his team-mates lost 3-1 at Liverpool in what turned out to be Mourinho’s last match in charge, encapsulated the miserable position the Portuguese found himself in.
He had been fighting at United all season; for the players he wanted to sign, the ones he wanted to sell and, in his view, some recognition from the board. Both sides had grown weary of the battle.
In the end, the Old Trafford hierarchy had to choose between Mourinho and Pogba. Mourinho lost.
At Tottenham, there is no Pogba circus to deal with.
In addition, rather than work to a boss who largely operates 200 miles away in another city as United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward did, he works to a chairman who spends half his time at the training ground, where he has an adjoining office.
Mourinho gets on well with Daniel Levy and enjoys the personal relationship they are developing.
In the Amazon documentary that gave such a fascinating insight into Mourinho’s arrival, Levy called getting rid of Mauricio Pochettino “the most emotional decision I ever had to make”, but then, discussing the Argentine’s likely replacement: “There are two top coaches in the world. One is at another Premier League club and the other is Jose.”
Levy’s statement may have been accurate in 2016, when Mourinho was joining Pep Guardiola in the cauldron that is top-flight football in Manchester. But in November 2019, he had been out of work for 11 months, having left United sixth in the Premier League, 19 points adrift of then leaders Liverpool after only 17 games.
Numerous sources have said the idea Mourinho had lost his mojo is plain wrong.
From their very first conversation, Levy had no doubts. The energy the incoming manager had and his enthusiasm for the players he was set to inherit – better as a collective than the ones he had at Old Trafford he feels – convinced the Tottenham hierarchy they were getting a coach who still had the drive and desire to achieve success.
Mourinho’s reputation goes before him but it is a measure of his true personality that plenty of his former colleagues at Manchester United contacted him to offer good luck when he got the Tottenham job. Those who have seen him at close quarters at Spurs describe him as “chilled, relaxed, approachable”, which are not words you tend to associate with the 57-year-old.
The in-house cricket games shown on social media, it has been stressed, are an example of the positive spirit that exists among the players as they go about their work. The atmosphere in the dressing room, it is said, is better than anything that existed in the past few years of Pochettino’s time in charge, apart from the three week build-up to the Champions League final in 2019.
For a club such as Tottenham, there is another attraction. Mourinho is a magnet for attention. He is impossible to ignore. It used to be said Sir Alex Ferguson created a story every time he opened his mouth. The same is true of Mourinho.
“I have never seen so much coverage before, it’s everywhere,” whispered Harry Winks in the canteen as news of Mourinho’s appointment began to sink in.
“Get strapped in. This is big time now,” said another staff member.
However Mourinho’s time at Tottenham works out – the club’s profile will be far bigger than it was when he arrived.
In January 2019, when Mourinho was out of work and filling time, he did some work as a pundit for Qatar-based TV channel Bein Sports.
During a long chat, he gave a fascinating insight into what he was likely to be looking for when he decided it was time to work again.
“The time when the manager was the highest point of the club and all-powerful is over,” he said. “Now you need a structure.
“The first thing I want to speak about with a club is not the players I want to buy or the budget, it is what you have to give me in terms of structure. Then we can move.”
After leaving United, Mourinho turned down a significant number of opportunities because they were not the right fit.
He still believed the Premier League would be the place he felt most at home. Tottenham ticked all the boxes, with its fantastic new stadium, a state-of-the-art training ground, a strong chairman in Levy, a well-respected technical performance director in Steve Hitchen, a squad that reached the Champions League final less than six months earlier and a supporter base desperate for the club to start winning silverware.
Not only that, there would be no need to spend the majority of his life in a hotel, which became such a major talking point in Manchester.
He does have an apartment close to the Tottenham training ground in Enfield but home is only 17 miles away in central London.
Yet this is not the same Mourinho from Chelsea or United. This is a different one. His backroom staff has changed for a start. Only head of first-team performance Carlos Lalin and technological analyst Giovanni Cerra survive from his time at Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford. His assistant, Joao Sacramento, was still at school when Mourinho went on his famous touchline charge as Porto knocked United out of the Champions League on their way to winning the trophy in 2004.
This evolution, it is felt, exposes Mourinho to new ideas, new challenges and new motivations.
Looking back, he views his time at United as a positive experience. He was more aware of the changing dynamic of a dressing room, where old-school mentalities are disappearing. And, three times including the Community Shield, he won trophies.
As recently as Tuesday, Mourinho provided evidence his brilliant pettiness had not disappeared, that ability to come out with a soundbite or one-liner that has been evident since his first Chelsea press conference when he declared himself a “special one”.
Jurgen Klopp had been in charge of Liverpool for 1,894 days – or thereabouts – whereas he had had only 390 to work with his Tottenham squad. Which other manager would have gone in to that media room armed with that information, having either counted the days himself or asked someone to do it for him?
His recent manager of the month award will have been particularly satisfying as it was a source of irritation that he was nominated for it on a number of occasions at United – but never won it.
This microscopic attention to detail is a huge part of his success. If something is wrong at training, it is not missed. If the opposition has a weakness, he can spot it.
However, beyond anything, Mourinho retains the same ceaseless drive he had when he first came to England in 2004.
The difficulties England duo Dele Alli and Harry Winks are experiencing at the moment prove Mourinho can still be the “ruthless guy”, as he says he is perceived in the Amazon documentary.
“Without filter” is how he describes his preferred method of feedback.
“I push people to their limits,” he adds.
At Tottenham, he is pushing and pushing. Despite Wednesday’s defeat, they are genuine title contenders. They remain in all four competitions and hopeful of a first trophy since 2008.
With Mourinho at the helm, you would not bet against it.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ibrahim has directed the Nigerian Communications Commission and the National Identity Management Commission to remove the N20 USSD fee imposed on subscribers for National Identification Number retrieval requests.
The NCC had recently asked telecommunication service providers to block SIM cards not registered with NIN after two weeks.
The government also listed 173 centres and 30 state government institutions approved for NIN enrolment across Nigeria.
Subscribers who had enrolled for NIN in the past but don’t remember their identification numbers are required to pay a fee for the retrieval.
But in a statement on Friday by the spokesperson for the minister, Uwa Suleiman, the government ordered telcos to stop the deduction for NIN retrieval.
The statement titled, ‘Pantami Orders Cancellation Of NIN Retrieval Charge Across All Networks’, partly read, “The Minister’s directive which takes immediate effect, is an intervention aimed at making the process easier and affordable.
“In a letter conveying the implementation of the directive, the Executive Vice Chairman NCC and the Director-General of NIMC informed Dr Pantami that the relevant authorities had met with, and negotiated a waiver with the Mobile Network Operators in that regard.
“By this waiver, all Nigerians, subscribers and applicants can access the service using the *346# code for their NIN retrieval at no charge for the duration of the NIN/SIM Card integration exercise.”
The debts owed by energy firms to Nigerian banks rose by N200bn to N5.85tn in the third quarter of this year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The N5.85tn represents 29.44 per cent of the N19.87tn loans advanced to the private sector as of the end of September.
Oil and gas firms, which received the biggest share of the credit from the banks, increased their debt by N180bn to N5.12tn in Q3 from N4.94tn in Q2.
The total debt owed by power and energy firms to the banks rose to N732.68bn in Q3 from N712.93bn in the previous quarter, the NBS data showed.
The amount of non-performing loans in the oil and gas sector declined by N30.53bn to N238.26bn in Q3 from N268.79bn in Q2.
The bad loans recorded by banks in the power sector rose by 6.17 per cent to N32.71bn from N30.81bn.
A global credit rating agency, Fitch Ratings noted in a December 8 report that Nigerian bank asset quality had historically fallen with oil prices, with the oil sector representing 28 per cent of loans at the end of the first half of 2020.
It said the upstream and midstream segments (nearly seven per cent of gross loans) had been particularly affected by low oil prices and production cuts.
“However, the sector has performed better than expected since the start of the crisis, limiting the rise in credit losses this year due to a combination of debt relief afforded to customers, a stabilisation in oil prices, the hedging of financial exposures and the widespread restructuring of loans to the sector following the 2015 crisis,” it said.
The rating agency predicted that Nigerian bank asset quality would weaken over the next 12 to 18 months.
It said debt relief measures had prevented a material rise in impaired loans in 2020.
Fitch, however, forecasted that the average impaired loan ratio would range between 10 per cent and 12 per cent by the end of 2021 as these measures come to an end.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, in its latest quarterly report, said the financial viability and commercial performance of the Nigerian electricity supply industry continued to be a major challenge.
Paris Saint-Germain are hoping to have Neymar back in time for their top-of-the-table clash at Lille on Sunday, as the Brazil superstar looks to have recovered quicker than expected from what looked like a bad ankle injury.
Coach Thomas Tuchel said “for Neymar we will do everything” after Wednesday’s 2-0 win over struggling Lorient, which put the champions second and keeps them just a point behind Ligue 1 leaders Lille.
Neymar had already revealed the injury, which came after a rough Thiago Mendes tackle during last weekend’s 1-0 home loss to Lyon, was not as bad as initially thought.
However, such a speedy return still seemed unlikely until Tuchel revealed he could yet feature at the Stade Pierre Mauroy.
“I can’t say ‘No, he’s not playing against Lille’. It is possible. We can try, we will try everything,” Tuchel said.
His return would be a huge boost to PSG’s morale after a strife-ridden opening few months of the season which has led to speculation over Tuchel’s future.
A win on Sunday would put the capital city side back on top of the pile after they moved above Lyon in the midweek round of fixtures, with a five-match winning-streak for Rudi Garcia’s side coming to an end with a dramatic 2-2 draw with Brest.
PSG’s other major title rivals Marseille host Reims on Saturday as they lurk five points back but with a game in hand.
Fourth-placed Marseille go into the weekend having lost ground in the title race following a 2-1 defeat at Rennes, who have won two on the bounce after a miserable run in which they lost seven of their previous eight in all competitions.
There appears to be some tension in the Marseille camp after coach Andre Villas-Boas launched an attack on a journalist at French newspaper La Provence.
According to witnesses the Portuguese boss targeted the reporter with threats of “I’ll get you” and criticised their work during the post-match press conference.
The row, apparently over an article which slammed Villas-Boas’ career record in the Champions League following their dismal effort in this year’s competition, then carried on outside Rennes’ Roazhon Park as the reporter and coach faced each other down.
Lille, meanwhile, seem confident they can maintain their slight hold on the summit and make this a true title race in a league now used to PSG dominance.
The northern outfit seem to be unworried by a potential change in ownership, with president Gerard Lopez saying he would “completely withdraw” from the club if a bid from a Luxembourg investment fund is accepted.
“Both teams are tired, Paris might have more quality but in one game everything is there to play for,” said coach Christophe Galtier.
Player to watch: Yusuf Yazici
Turkey’s Yazici continued his impressive recent form on Wednesday when he scored the opening goal in Lille’s 2-0 win at Dijon.
The 23-year-old showed the composure that has seen him score five times in just three Ligue 1 starts, and six in as many Europa League appearances, when he slotted home Zeki Celik’s cutback in the 19th minute.
Yazici signed for Lille in the summer of 2019 but this has become the attacker’s breakout season, his two hat-tricks at Sparta Prague and AC Milan helping his side reach the Europa League last 32, where they will face four-time European champions Ajax.
Key stats
5 – goals that Yusuf Yazici has scored this Ligue 1 season
12 – the number of games Lyon have played since last losing
4 – PSG have already lost to Lens, Marseille, Monaco and Lyon so far this season
Fixtures (all times GMT)
Saturday
Metz v Lens (1600), Marseille v Reims (1800), Nice v Lyon (2000)
Sunday
Brest v Montpellier (1200), Dijon v Monaco, Strasbourg v Bordeaux, Nantes v Angers, Saint-Etienne v Nimes (all 1400), Lorient v Rennes (1600), Lille v Paris Saint-Germain (2000)
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