The Pacesetter Frontier Magazine

Tag: FG

  • Amnesty accuses FG of cover-up in lekki tollgate shootings

     

    Amnesty International (AI) on Thursday accused the Federal Government of cover-up in the shooting of #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki Tollgate and Alausa, Ikeja, in Lagos on October 20, 2020.

     

    The global human right watchdog stated this on the 100 days of the incident.

     

    But the Federal Government accused AI of disinformation and double standard in its reports on alleged rights abuses in the country.

     

    Since the assault by security forces, which killed at least 12 people, Nigerian authorities have targeted supporters of the protests against police brutality by the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), AI said.

    The organisation said some of the movement’s supporters have had their bank accounts frozen.

     

    Amnesty International Nigeria Director Osai Ojigho said: “The bloody events of October 20, 2020, when Nigerian security forces killed at least 12 people during the violent dispersal of peaceful #EndSARS protesters at Lekki and Alausa, have cast a shadow over Nigerian society that lingers to this day.

     

    “Instead of bringing suspected perpetrators to justice and prioritising genuine police reforms, Nigerian authorities have been abusing their powers by subjecting those who supported the protests to intimidation, harassment and smear campaigns,” he added.

     

    Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria Thursday in Abuja, Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed said: “If Amnesty International has any proof, it should come out with it or shut up.

     

    “After a lot of dillydallying, Amnesty International said 12 people were shot at the Lekki Tollgate.

     

    “They should take advantage of the Judicial Panel of Enquiry set up by Lagos State to tell the names and addresses of the 12 people they claim were shot at the toll gate,” he said.

     

     

     

    Source: www.punchng.com

  • CBN: FG records a deficit spending of N4.45 trillion in 10 Months

    The Federal Government has recorded a N4.45 trillion deficit spending in ten months.

     

    The deficit which climbed by 17 per cent, year-on-year (y/y), against N3.8 trillion recorded in the corresponding period of 2019.

     

    The sharp increase in deficit was driven by the decline in revenue which worsened in October, falling by 6.5 per cent, month-on-month (m/m) to N275 billion from N294 billion in September.

     

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) disclosed this in its monthly economic report for October 2020. Breakdown of the CBN economic reports from January to October last year showed 28 per cent, y/y, decline in FG’s retained revenue during the ten months period, to N2.88 trillion from N3.99 trillion recorded in the same period in 2019. In the same vein, the FG recorded 6.0 per cent y/y decline in expenditure to N7.33 trillion during the ten months period to October 2020, from N7.78 trillion in the same period of 2019. Narrating how the fiscal position of the FG worsened in October last year, especially the deteriorating trend in revenue, the CBN, in the report said: “The persisting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the fiscal profile and operations of the Federal Government led to a huge deficit in October 2020. The estimated deficit amounted to N451.22 billion compared to the budget benchmark of N414.63 billion, the N418.50 billion in September 2020 and the N323.84 billion in October 2019.

     

    “The estimated fiscal deficit rose by 8.8 per cent and 7.8 per cent above the 2020 budget benchmark and the level in September 2020, respectively. The development was attributed to the 6.6 per cent decline in retained revenue,and the 1.9 per cent increase in aggregate expenditure relative to the level in the preceding month “The revenue profile of the FGN revealed a lingering challenge due to declines in statutory receipts and persistent shortfalls in FGN Independent revenue. The total retained revenue of N274.48 billion recorded in October 2020, was significantly below the budget benchmark and the level recorded in October 2019 by 43.6 percent and 52.8 per cent, respectively. “Releases to MDAs in respect of personnel cost and capital expenditure, were the major drivers of government expenditure in October 2020.

     

    At N725.70 billion, provisionally estimated aggregate expenditure of the Federal Government, rose by 1.9 per cent above the N712.30 billion in September 2020, but declined by 19.8 per cent below the N904.77 billion in the corresponding period of 2019.

    “Overall, total expenditure fell below the budget benchmark of N900.88 billion by 19.4 per cent, indicative of government’s revenue constraint.”

     

     

     

    Source: www.sunnewsonline.com

  • FG to fund six railway projects connecting virtually all regions of the country with N71bn

    The Federal Government is to partly fund six rail projects connecting virtually all regions of the country with a counterpart funding of N71.15bn this year.

    Also, N15.1bn will be spent on the development of safety and security critical projects, airport certification, runway construction, terminal building, among others in the aviation sector in 2021.

    A report on selected projects in the 2021 budget obtained by our correspondent from the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning in Abuja showed that in the rail sector, the government had mapped out six projects that it would partly fund this year.

    The government stated that the N71.15bn would serve as counterpart funding for railway projects including the Lagos-Kano rail line (ongoing), Calabar-Lagos (ongoing), and Ajaokuta-Itakpe-Aladja (Warri), which was also described as an ongoing project.

    Others are the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri railway, the new Kano-Katsina-Jibiya-Maradi line in Niger Republic and the Abuja-Itakpe and Aladja-Warri Port and refinery/Warri new harbour.

    Construction work is currently ongoing on some of the rail projects, while others are new projects, as physical construction work had yet to start on them.

    Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, had explained that the Lagos-Kano line (ongoing), which would be connected from the Ibadan end of the Lagos-Ibadan railway, would cost about $5.3bn.

    On January 9, 2021, Amaechi declared that the construction of the Ibadan to Kano line would commence once the Chinese government approved its $5.3bn loan to Nigeria, as the Federal Government had given approval for the contract.

    “We are waiting for the Chinese government and bank to approve the $5.3bn to construct the Ibadan-Kano. What was approved a year ago was the contract,” the minister said.

    He added, “The moment I announced that the Federal Government had awarded a contract of $5.3bn to CCECC (China Civil Engineering and Construction Corporation) to construct Ibadan-Kano, people assumed the money had come in; no.

    “We have not got the money, which is a year after we applied for the loan. We have almost finished the one of Lagos-Ibadan. If we don’t get the loan now, we can’t commence.”

    Meanwhile, a few of the rail projects had come under criticism, as many Nigerians and groups had faulted the locations where the projects were sited.

    An example is the Kano-Katsina-Jibiya-Maradi in Niger Republic, which on January 11, 2021, the Federal Government announced that it signed a $1.96bn Memorandum of Understanding with Mota-Engil Group for the construction of the standard gauge rail project.

    Amaechi signed on behalf of the Federal Government, while the Managing Director, Mota-Engil, Antonio Gvoea, signed on behalf of the contracting firm.

    The $1.96bn rail line connects Nigeria and Niger Republic, as the new railway corridor, located in Northern Nigeria, would run through three states.

    The states include Kano, Jigawa and Katsina and the 283.75km rail line would go through the territory of Niger Republic as far as Maradi.

    This particular project had been greeted by widespread criticism. The Pan-Yoruba sociopolitical organisation, Afenifere, for instance, said many Nigerians were against the move by government to construct the rail line.

    Afenifere’s Publicity Secretary, Yinka Odumakin, told our correspondent that it was unfortunate that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), was more interested in constructing a project outside Nigeria than in developing bad roads within Nigeria.

    Odumakin said, “It is an unfortunate development. We know the state of Nigerian roads. We know that our roads are in a very bad shape; for instance, look at the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the roads to the East, to Port Harcourt and the rest of them.

    “They are not Buhari’s priority, rather his priority now is the line to Maradi in Niger Republic. They are more interested in their kings and kins who are Fulanis outside Nigeria than in Nigeria itself.”

    He added, “It is unfortunate. So the Afenifere and many other Nigerians out there are not in support of this initiative. In fact, how can we support it?”

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    Meanwhile, aside from rail infrastructure, the report on selected projects in the 2021 budget listed other projects to be developed in the aviation sector, among others.

    In the aviation sector, it stated that N3bn was for safety and security critical projects and airport certification nationwide.

    “N10bn is for the construction of a second runway at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja,” it stated.

    The report added, “N900m is for extension and asphalt overlay of MMIA (Murtala Muhammed International Airport) runway. N1bn for construction of new terminal building in Enugu.

    “N200m is for construction of Abeokuta airstrip.”

    Some selected projects in the power sector were also mentioned as infrastructure to be funded by the government this year.

    A total of N1.3bn was earmarked for rural electrification access programme in federal universities.

    Also, N160.83bn was for multilateral and bilateral funded projects such as the Zungeru power project, Abuja power feeding scheme, transmission access project, etc.

    A N200m counterpart fund was named as part of the money to be provided by government for the development of the Mambilla Hydro Power project.

    In the report, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, said the government was optimistic that there would be significant improvement in macroeconomic performance by the second quarter of 2021.

    This, according to her, was because the Federal Government was already implementing several measures to overcome the country’s fiscal constraints.

    Ahmed said, “In addition to the Strategic Revenue Growth Initiatives, we are leveraging technology and automation, plugging fiscal drainers and ensuring more effective independent revenue monitoring.”

    She, however, noted that the Federal Government remained mindful of the need to provide safety nets to cushion the impact of reform measures on the vulnerable segments of the population.

    The minister explained that the goal of fiscal interventions would be to keep the economy active through carefully calibrated regulatory/policy measures designed to boost domestic value-addition.

    Ahmed said this would de-risk the enterprise environment, attract external investment and sources of funding, among others.

     

     

    Source: www.punchng.com

  • Finance: FG owes CBN N9.8tn debt

    Part of the report read, “Sustained use of direct monetary financing could raise risks to macroeconomic stability – given the current weak institutional safeguards – but we expect the FGN to reduce its use of the facility in 2021.

     

    “The FGN directly borrowed 1.9 per cent of GDP from the CBN to fund its fiscal deficit in 2020, estimated by Fitch at 3.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.

     

    “A number of emerging markets resorted to central bank deficit financing in 2020 against a background of urgent spending needs and temporary market dislocations associated with the coronavirus pandemic.

     

    “However, the use of central bank financing in Nigeria predates the pandemic shock.”

     

    The report added, “We estimate that the balance of the government’s WMF with the CBN was around N9.8tn (6.7 per cent of GDP) at end-2019, up from N5.4tn (4.2 per cent of GDP) at end-2018.

     

    “Unlike the government, we include this balance in our metrics for Nigeria’s government debt. Borrowing from the facility accounted for 30 per cent of the FGN’s debt at end-2019, on our estimates.”

     

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    Fitch Rating stated that repeated central bank financing of government budgets could raise risks to macro-stability in the context of weak institutional safeguards that preserve the credibility of policymaking and the ability of the central bank to control inflation.

     

    The CBN’s guidelines limit the amount available to the government under its WMF to five per cent of the previous year’s fiscal revenues.

     

    However, it added, the FGN’s new borrowing from the CBN had repeatedly exceeded that limit in recent years, and reached around 80 per cent of the FGN’s 2019  revenues in 2020.

     

     

    Source: wwwpunchng.com

  • Federal Government disburses N123.3bn to states

    The Federal Government on Wednesday announced the disbursement of another N123.348 billion under its States Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) programme.

    The money is a performance-based grant to the states.

    The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, who disclosed this in a statement by Mr. Hassan Dodo, the Ministry’s Director of Press and Public Relations, explained that the disbursement followed the achievement of results by the states in the just-concluded 2019 Annual Performance Assessment (APA).

     

    The disbursement came after the recent one in November, 2020, by the Federal Government where N66.5billion was granted to 35 states which achieved results under another new COVID-19 response Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs): the passing of an Amended COVID-19 Responsive 2020 budget by July 31 2020.

     

    The minister observed that since the first disbursement in April 2020, the Federal Government has so far disbursed a total of N233 billion to the states under the $750 million World Bank-Assisted States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) Programme-for-Results.

     

    The assessment, Dodo noted, was carried out by the Office of the Auditor General for the Federation (OAuGF) as the Independent Verification Agent (IVA) and approved by the Programme Coordination Unit (PCU) of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning.

     

    According to Ahmed, the disbursement included N91.048 billion of performance-based grants for the 2019 APA results achieved by 32 eligible states across various Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) covering fiscal transparency, accountability, expenditure efficiency, revenue mobilization and debt sustainability. States received the grants in accordance to the number of results achieved, with Sokoto State receiving the highest amount of N6.612billion while Kano State got the lowest amount of N1.710 billion.

     

    “Bayelsa, Imo, Rivers and Zamfara states got zero allocation due to their inability to meet the 2019 eligibility criteria which required states to publish online the approved annual budgets and audited financial statements within a specific timeframe,” she said.

     

    She further noted that the 2019 APA results were a significant improvement on the 2018 APA results where the total performance-based grants of N43.416 billion were received by 24 eligible states, demonstrating the substantive progress which states have made on fiscal reforms.

     

    She disclosed that the second part of the disbursement involved a new COVID-19 response DLI: The implementation of a tax compliance relief programme for individual taxpayers and businesses by states by September 30,  2020 where 34 out of 36 states (only Anambra and Zamfara states missed out) were able to achieve the results for this new DLI for the total of N32.3 billion of grants.    Ahmed reiterated that the World Bank-assisted SFTAS Programme is principally meant to strengthen fiscal management at the state level so as to ensure effective mobilisation and utilisation of financial resources to the benefit of their citizens in a transparent, accountable and sustainable manner, thereby reducing fiscal risks and encouraging a common set of fiscally responsible behaviours.

     

     

    Source: www.sunnewsonline.com