Author: straightnewsng.com

The Senate, Wednesday, was told that the 600 state-owned enterprises in the country gulped not less than $3 billion on yearly basis with little or no returns into the public purse. The Upper Chamber was also informed that the N2.28 trillion deficit in the N10.33 trillion 2020 budget could best be funded by proceeds from privatization of moribund national assets than borrowing from foreign and local loans. Speaking in Abuja during an interactive session with the Senator Theodore Orji, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP-led Senate Committee on Privatization, Alex Okoh, the Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, said…

As the negotiation meeting between the Federal Government and the organised labour on the Consequential Adjustment on the new minimum wage ended in a deadlock Wednesday night, some state governments in the country may be perfecting plans to short change their workers. Apart from Ekiti and Kaduna State governments that have started paying their workers from Grade levels 01-06, other states are yet to pay or agree on the template for payment. Five months ago, for example, Akwa Ibom State government inaugurated a 14-member committee to work out modalities for the implementation of N30,000 new national minimum wage for workers…

By Akanimo Sampson Fifty-three migrant family groups comprising 64 children, 29 women and 33 men were last week air-lifted from the city of Matamoros (Tamaulipas, Mexico) to San Pedro Sula (Honduras). The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a United Nations agency, organised a charter flight for the 126 migrants who expressed their decision to return voluntarily to their country of origin. IOM deployed all efforts and collaborated closely with the Honduran Embassy in Mexico and with the National Migration Institute of Mexico to arrange for this first charter flight in its Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programme. In the days preceding…

By Akanimo Sampson The United Nations migration agency, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has assisted 142 stranded Ethiopians to safely return home from Djibouti. The returnees who were en-route to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were stranded in Djibouti where smugglers abandoned them after robbing them of their money, leaving them with no means to continue their journey or return to Ethiopia. “I worked as an assistant loader for a truck for two years to save four thousand birr ($135)”, Edris Ahmed (name changed) told IOM. “We paid 2,000 birr ($70) for the smuggler to get us to…

By Akanimo Sampson At a major conference on the brain drain phenomenon at the headquarters of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations agency warned that Central and Eastern European countries are seeing dramatic shifts in their migration patterns, changing the makeup of communities and posing heretofore unseen challenges. With 57 participating States in North America, Europe and Asia, OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organisation. It works for stability, peace and democracy for more than a billion people, through political dialogue about shared values and through practical work that…

By Akanimo Sampson The Director-General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), António Vitorino, has said that continued military operations in Syria will have devastating consequences for the seven million people living in the Northern axis of the troubled country. According to the big boss of the United Nations migration agency, ‘’the cycle of successive displacement is particularly concerning.’’ Many of Syria’s 6.1 million internally displaced have been repeatedly forced from their homes, in some cases after they have returned to their communities. Between May and August of this year, fighting displaced an estimated 400,000 Syrians in the northwest of the country. Vitorino said…

A Ghanaian clergyman has asked Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State “When you get to that top, return my sword to me.” Presenting a well-decorated sword to the governor in his church, Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, founder of Action Chapel International in Accra, Ghana, noted “But until then keep it. May the Lord guide you and as you hold this sword in your hand maintain it until you climb to the mountain!” Excited Duncan-Williams, who played host to the governor during a recent three-day Prophetic encounter gathering, recalled “Before the election, I lifted up a sword over you here and…

Nationwide strike is imminent on Wednesday, October 16 as talks between the organized labour and the Federal Government has collapsed. The follows failure by both parties to reach a truce on the terms for the implementation of the N30,000 minimum wage signed into law on April 18. But, Nigeria’s Labour and Employment Minister, Chris Ngige, has described the proposed strike by organised labour as an attempt to intimidate the government. A report monitored from TVC NEWS, Lagos said the stalemate ensued as meeting by both sides could stave off the showdown, action which will either result in the suspension of…

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP National Legal Adviser, Mr. Emmanuel Enoidem, has accused Ndutimi Alaibe, the failed PDP Governorship aspirant of Bayelsa State of running away from the state over purported insecurity. Enoidem was reacting to approval granted by the Chief Judge for the transfer of Alaibe’s suit challenging the emergence of Senator Douye Diri in the November 16 election to Abuja. This follows the ruling in a suit by governorship aspirant that the case would no longer be heard at the Federal High Court, Yenagoa. “Why is he running away? Is this not the state he wanted to govern?…

Higher food prices helped push up annual inflation in Nigeria last month after three consecutive months of declines, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. Nigerian inflation rose to 11.24% in September from 11.02% in August, which was its lowest in almost four years. Inflation had been falling steadily since May. The International Monetary Fund, IMF, said last week that the planned introduction of a sales tax to partly finance the government’s record 2020 budget and a new minimum wage could help drive up inflation. Tuesday’s data showed food price inflation, the main driver of overall inflation rose to…