By Doris Esa
The Federal Government has declared Monday as Public Holiday to mark the 2019 Eid-ul-Mawlud in commemoration of the birthday of the Holy Prophet Muhammad.

Mr Mohammed Manga, Director Press and Public Relations of the Ministry of Interior, announced this in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.

He said the Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, congratulated the Muslim faithful on the occasion and enjoined them to live within the virtues and teachings of the Prophet.

He said imbibing the Prophets virtues of love, courage and perseverance would guarantee peace and security in the country.

Aregbesola expressed confidence that the challenges confronting Nigeria at the moment would soon be over; and therefore called on Nigerians to remain focused and determined.

He gave the assurance that with the immense potentials the country is endowed with; coupled with its human and natural resources, Nigeria will sooner than later join the league of developed nations.

With love, commitment, self-sacrifice, patience and patriotism, we will certainly, build a greater Nigeria, Aregbesola said.

The Minister restated Governments desire to ensure a peaceful and secure environment for all Nigerians.

Source: NAN

By Edith Ike-Eboh

Prof. Wunmi Iledare, former President Nigerian Association for Energy Economists (NAEE), says Nigeria will not recover its lost revenue with the signing into law the Amended Deep Offshore Act.

Iledare disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Abuja, on Tuesday

President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday in London, signed the amended act.

The Amended Deep Offshore Act, among other things, gives effect to certain fiscal incentives to the oil and gas companies operating in the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin areas under production.

They share contracts between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation or other companies holding oil prospecting licenses or oil mining lease, and various petroleum exploration and production companies.

The former NAEE president said that though signing into law the Act was symbolic, it was coming a little late as the country had lost so much in the past years.

Certainly, the signing of the Bill is symbolic; but there is not much you can do to recover the lost ground.

If the Act had been amended in 2004, the direct benefits accrued would have been more than just the symbolism, he added.

Iledare said that if the president had signed the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB), into law in 2018, the industry would have been better off now.

The immediate benefit to the nation if the president had signed the PIGB in 2018 would have been much more than the Act the president signed on Monday.

Nonetheless, you can look at it from the viewpoint that the Executive and National Assembly are in sync to do something together with respect to reforming the oil sector.

This symbolism though, you cannot take away from the President and his team he added.

Also commenting, Mr Bank-Anthony Okoroafor, Chairman of Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN), said that with the Act, all Product Sharing Contracts (PSC), would attract royalty based on combination of water depth and oil price.

Before this Act, we had zero royalties from Agbami, Akpo, Bonga and Erha, our biggest producers.

Now 10 per cent flat royalties on these prolific producers, based on water depth and 2.5 per cent royalties based on todays oil price at 58 dollars, will be paid.

Yes, the Government will get more money from the existing oil assets in the short term 2020/21.

Thereafter production decline without new investment will hit Nigeria. They need to understand that the impact is that, new investments are the negative consequences, he added. (NAN)

Source: NAN

By Yunus Yusuf

Marketers of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), under the aegis of Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers (NALPGAM), have raised alarm over indiscriminate hike in the price of the product by 75 per cent in the last two weeks.

Executive Secretary of the association, Mr Bassey Essien, raised the alarm on the arbitrary increase in a statement on Thursday in Lagos.

He said within a five-day period, the price of a 20 metric tonnes of LPG which sold for N3.15 million, suddenly increased to N3.5 million and N3.9 million.

A few hours thereafter, the price moved to N4.2 million despite the fact that same product has been in the storage of these terminals when price was even N3.5 million, so why the sudden upsurge, he said.

He said the price hike would ultimately dovetail into high prices to the consumers who unfortunately are also caught up in the web of price hikes.

At this time of the year in the past, price hikes used to be attributable to winter season, increased demand for heating energy and international price index.

This we have consistently questioned why a product in abundance in our country should become such a victim of any slightest issue occurring internationally.

Efforts to extract the cause of the sudden and hourly price increase from the terminals have not been met with any positive response.

At one of the terminals, there was an outright denial of any price increase; however, price of LPG has been moved from N3.9 million to N4.2 million. A representative of the company insisted rather that the company had no stock.

But when asked to explain the sudden price increase to N4.2 million when company had no stock, he was evasive, he said.

Essien said it became necessary to react to the current price hike of cooking gas in spite of the efforts of the government and stakeholders to deepen the usage of LPG in the country.

The association is hereby disassociating itself and members from the antics of the current price hike and therefore maintaining that the price increase is not the handiwork of marketers, but rather that of the terminal owners, importers and the NLNG.

Marketers are equally bemoaning the situation as the development has adversely affected business planning.

If the trend is not halted immediately, the price of a 12.5kg cylinder of cooking gas may soon sell for over N6,000 and well out of the purchasing power of the average consumer.

This brings to questioning when the issue of product availability will ever be holistically addressed. We cannot deepen the use of LPG if availability of the product is not guaranteed, he said.

Essien said there was urgent need to reverse the price hike.

He, however, called on the NLNG to flood the market with cooking gas since they had the capacity to do so and increase the frequency with which the vessels deliver LPG from Bonny to the terminals, particularly in the Lagos axis.

He said NLNG should supply LPG to other coastal terminals outside Lagos to reduce the inherent pressure on the terminals in the Southwest.

Essien also said vessels of smaller capacities should be deployed to access the coastal terminals if product availability must be achieved.

He urged LPG importers to free the PPMC depot in Lagos for the delivery of NLNG product allocation.

He said NALPGAM had embarked on the campaign of creating awareness and education of the populace particularly in the rural communities on the safe handling of LPG as the most efficient cooking energy.

According to him, this is in the quest to achieve further deepening of LPG usage in the country.

In the campaign, the association had given out over 7,000 cylinders with burners to lucky beneficiaries in Lagos, Edo, Oyo and Akwa Ibom states, while still mapping out to do same in other states.

We thus urge the government and NLNG to urgently increase the quantity of LPG earmarked for domestic consumption as the present allocation cannot sustain demand.

NLNG should also work out a more robust delivery logistics so that there will be no supply lacuna. Many terminals are now operational aside those in Lagos and to reduce the pressure on Lagos, the wear and tear of the roads and traffic gridlock in Apapa.

NLNG should extend their supply logistics to reach terminals in Rivers, Delta, Edo and Cross River states consistently and timely with LPG if the supply situation must improve.

We cannot suffer in the face of abundance of a product we are blessed with in Nigeria. If the situation does not abet, we will soon face imminent LPG scarcity, Essien said.

Essien said some marketers who had paid down for LPG when the price was N3.45 million in a particular terminal but were awaiting loading, were being intimidated with refund of their money.

Except they agree to pay the difference in the new price despite having tied down their funds without loading their trucks, he said.

One of the LPG terminal operators, who preferred anoymity, told NAN that the increase was as a result of Federal Government circular to commence VAT on imported LPG.

The source said that importing LPG is more expensive because NLNG only supply domestic market with 350,000 metric tonnes as against one million metric tonnes market demand.

According to him, NLNG cannot meet domestic demand and there is need to import LPG to cushion the gap, adding that the governments taxing of import has led to the increase in price.

Domestic gas is not taxed and it can meet domestic demand. We hope that government will find way to address the issues before it goes out of hand. (NAN)

Source: NAN

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country has captured one of the four wives of the slain leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, just days after it captured the elder sister, Rasmiya Awad.

Erdogan made the announcement while delivering a speech in the capital of Ankara, in which he also criticised the United States for making a fuss over the killing of Baghdadi.

The United States said Baghdadi killed himself in a tunnel. They started a communication campaign about this, Erdogan said Wednesday. But, I am announcing it here for the first time: We captured his wife and didnt make a fuss like them. Similarly, we also captured his sister and brother-in-law in Syria.

Erdogan gave no other details. He did not say when or how the woman was captured or identify her by name.

The IS leader blew himself up during an Oct. 26 raid by U.S. special forces on his heavily fortified safe house in the Syrian province of Idlib.

Erdogans announcement comes just days after Turkish forces captured al-Baghdadis elder sister, identified as Rasmiya Awad, in the town of Azaz, in Aleppo province in northwestern Syria.

The area is part of the region administered by Turkey after it carried out military incursions to chase away IS militants and Kurdish fighters, starting in 2016. Allied Syrian groups manage the area known as the Euphrates Shield zone.

Awad was with her husband, daughter-in-law and five children when she was detained. A Turkish official said the 65-year-old sister is suspected of being affiliated with the extremist group and called her capture an intelligence gold mine. Authorities had posted a picture of the sister.

It was not immediately clear if Awads capture led to intelligence that allowed for the detention of the wife.

One of al-Baghdadis wives is an Iraqi known by the name of Nour, the daughter of one of his aides, Abu Abdullah al-Zubaie. She was identified by name by al-Baghdadis brother-in-law in a recent interview with al-Arabiya TV. The brother-in-law, Mohamad Ali Sajit, who is in Iraqi custody, said al-Baghdadi had four wives when he last met him, sometime last summer.

Also, one of al-Baghdadis ex-wives was arrested in Lebanon in 2014, and was freed a year later in a prisoner swap with al-Qaida. The Iraqi ex-wife, Saja al-Dulaimi, had fled from al-Baghdadi in 2009 while pregnant with his daughter. At one point, al-Baghdadi was also believed to have married to a German teenager in 2015 but she was reported to have fled a year later.

The raid that killed al-Baghdadi was a major blow to his extremist group, which has lost territories it held in Syria and Iraq in a series of military defeats by the U.S-led coalition and Syrian and Iraqi allies.

Al-Baghdadis aide, a Saudi, was killed hours after the raid, also in northwestern Syria, in a U.S. strike. The group named a successor to al-Baghdadi days later, but little is known about him or how the groups structure has been affected by the successive blows.

Up and until his death, al-Baghdadi had moved from place to place in eastern Syria amid a tightening U.S.-led campaign against his group as IS-held territory fell bit by bit.

He ended up in Idlib, in northwestern Syria, an area controlled by a rival, al-Qaida-linked militant group. It was not clear if any of his wives were with him at the time of the raid, during which two of his children were killed.

Source: NAN

By Kingsley Okoye

The Senate on Thursday mandated its Committee on Water Resources to investigate delay in non completion of Kagara Dam and one million gallon water treatment plant in Niger state.

The mandate, followed adoption of a motion at plenary on the urgent need for the Federal Government to complete Kagara dam and one million gallon water treatment plant in Niger State.

The motion has Sen. Mohammed Sani (APC Niger) as sponsor and 19 senators as co-sponsors.
Presenting the motion, Sani revealed that Kagara dam was first conceived and awarded by Niger Government to Kano-based Company, WRECA in 1992.

He said the sole purpose of the project was to provide portable water and irrigation needs to Kagara people and its environs to cover approximately 1,000 hectares of land.

He said because of its importance, the project was taken over by the Federal Government and awarded to Biwater Shellaber Nigeria Limited in December 1992 at the cost of N199 million .

Sani said the contract had suffered so many neglects and abandonments because of lack of substantial fund which necessitated its renegotiation in 2001.

He said the project was renegotiated at the cost N2.219 billion.

He said that in spite of the completion of work at 68 per cent, in 2006, the contractor had to stop work again because of non release of substantial fund.

He said, given the delay and eventual inflationary cost of materials, the Upper Niger River Basin Development Authority, the supervising Agency, issued a revised estimated cost of N5.5billion to complete the project in 2010.

Disturbed that if the projects continue to be operated in a stop and go manner the dream of our people for portable water and economic empowerment through irrigation farming will remain a mirage, he said.

He said if urgent action was not taken the purpose of taking over the project by the Federal Government in December 1992, subsequent budgetary allocation and work done would have been a waste.

Contributing to the motion, Sen. Sabi Abdullahi (APC-Niger), who seconded the motion said provision of water was synonymous to life.

He said there was the need to complete the project given its importance to the growth and development of the people.

However, Sen. Uche Ekwunife (PDP-Anambra) in her contribution decried the high level of abandoned projects in the country.

We are talking about another abandoned project; this project was awarded in 1992 and was taken over by the Federal Government because of its importance.

After 27 years we are still talking of how to complete the project.

Mr President, this is a policy summersault, it is about successive governments not attending to the projects started by their predecessors, she said.

According to her, she will propose a bill for establishment of a Project Monitoring Agency, which will be an independent agency in charge of all the ongoing projects.

She said it would be the duty of the agency to hand over and ensure that successive governments complete laudable projects started by their predecessors.

Also contributing, Sen. Ibrahim Hadejia, (APC-Jigawa) said the motion designed to provide 1,000 hectares of land would impact the economy of the region.

He said the motion was timely, especially when the Ministry of Water Resource had completed some projects in the last four years.

He said dams were very expensive to construct, noting that the issue of non completion of Kagara dam was not different from so many uncompleted dams.

According to him, a certain dam had been under construction for 40 years.

Other senators who lent support to the motion included, Sen. Ibrahim Oloriebe (APC-Kwara), and Sen. Christopher Ekpenyong (PDP-Akwa Ibom)

The senate in its resolution also urged the Federal Government to consider the socio-economic importance of the project to the life of the people.

It said there was the need for the government to consider the extent of work done on the dam and see to the completion of the project without further delay.

In his remark President of the Senate, Dr Ahmad Lawan, said it was important for the legislature to always keep under scrutiny projects of this kind.

He said the senate, via its committee, would follow up its resolution and urge the committee to keep the senate informed on the project.

The senate also considered the second reading of a bill for the establishment of a Federal Polytechnic, Orgun, Delta, to provide full time courses in technology, applied sciences, management and other fields.

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Ovie Omo-Agege.
It also considered the presentation and first reading of 11 bills.

The bills included Older Persons Rights and Privileges Bill 2019, sponsored by Sen. Ezenwa Francis (APC-Imo); Corporate Social Responsibility Bill 2019, sponsored by Sen. Kwari Abdul (APC-Kaduna).

Also included was Power and Petroleum Safety Institute Oraifite Establishment Bill 2019, sponsored by Sen. Ifeanyi Ubah (YPP-Anambra) among others. (NAN)

Source: NAN

By Solomon Asowata

The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Thursday said the temporary closure of Nigerias land borders by the Federal Government was both good and bad for the economy.

Mr Gabriel Idahosa, Vice President and Chairman, Trade Promotion Board, LCCI, made the assertion in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

Idahosa said that the closure had, however, not affected the participation of West African countries in the ongoing 2019 Lagos International Trade Fair at the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS), Lagos.

NAN reports that no fewer than 2, 000 exhibitors from Nigeria, China, Japan, Ghana, India, European Union, Indonesia, Taiwan, Bangladesh, India, Cameroon, Benin Republic and Ethiopia are participating in the fair.

Idahosa said: The view of LCCI is that the border closure is good and bad.
Good in the sense that it has forced us to address certain fundamental issues in our economy.

We spend a lot of foreign currency to import petroleum products which are taken across the border, while we keep draining our foreign exchange to import the petroleum products.

It has shown clearly from the volume of products we have now that this has been going on.

On the other hand, it has also shown that our capacities to produce some of our products like rice and fishes are actually there, and if we continue to grow these capacities then, we can become truly self-sufficient.

According to him, in the ongoing trade fair, there is Benue Rice selling at 16, 500 for 50kg, while another rice from some other states are selling for between 16, 000 and 18,000.

Lots of people coming in for the trade fair have been buying rice here for that amounts and more states are bringing rice.

So, what the closure has done is to encourage our local producers to invest on increasing their production, he said.

The LCCI vice president said that with time, the rice farmers would get it right through acquiring equipment that would improve the quality of their products.

We have to put up with the poor quality for some time, but it is clear from our own members who are rice farmers that they are now energised by this opportunity, he said.

Idahosa said that the closure had also compelled a lot of small and medium scale businesses to formalise and be properly documented by governments from all the affected countries, including Nigeria.

He noted that on the flip side, the border closure had brought temporary suffering and loss of millions of dollars by some businesses within and outside Nigeria.

People are paying higher for the local products at the moment.

Also, some distributors of the foreign products are suffering loss of business because they had invested in becoming distributors from those countries.

Their warehouses are currently empty because they have not got local suppliers to replace their foreign partners.

The temporary hardship in terms of volume of trade is felt by both sides.

Some companies in Ghana claimed they have lost up to two million dollars during the short period before the processes were put in place to resume exportation between both countries.

Similarly, some Nigerian companies exporting to these countries have lost some monies, but gradually, those losses are being mitigated, Idahosa said.

On the trade fair, he said that LCCI was able to secure special waivers from the Federal Government for exhibitors from Ghana and Benin Republic.

Idahosa said the exhibitors provided documents to show that they were coming for the fair and were allowed to bring their goods in through the land border. (NAN)

Source: NAN

A kung fu style wedding photoshoot of Kenyan couple that got people talking, goes viral.

These has causes stir online with of controversies, below are fans reactions to the couple in their photoshoots.

A cult clash has claimed the life of one Nigerian man at Bangalore, Karnataka State.

The deceased, identified as Monday Omorode, from #EdoState, was stabbed to death in the early hours of today and the police have been called in to his corpse to the morgue.

Singer Wizkid has been off the country for music concert, yesterday night he lands Nigeria, as he low-key hit the Quilox club with Tiwa Savage.

Wizkid and Tiwa Savage shared same videos on their Insta stories without showing their faces.

View this post on Instagram

As Wizkid lands Nigeria, he low-key hit the club with his girlfriend Tiwa Savgae

A post shared by Naijaeverything Entertainment (@naijaeverything) on Nov 2, 2019 at 10:13pm PDT

Popular ibadan singer Qdot gifts his mother, Afolashade a new house on her birthday yesterday.

Sharing the good news, Qdot wrote; Happy birthday to my mum #afolashade temi nikan + special birthday gift next year will be bigger than this love you Mum.