- Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Emmanuel Kachikwu has explained that the unbundling exercise to be carried out by the FG on the NNPC has not yet kicked off. Kachikwu said, “We have not unbundled NNPC. We had a press conference yesterday where I explained this. What we have simply done is re-organisation. We have five business entities focused on business: Upstream, Downstream, Refineries, Gas and Power that were there before. There is also Ventures that capture all our little companies that were not having proper stewardship. They are run by individuals who report to the GMD.” Earlier, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) had shut down the operations of the NNPC nationwide until further notice following reports of the unbundling. Unconfirmed reports say that the strike has been called off.
- General Electric has announced that it will partner Dangote Group for cement production. The Dangote Group’s Obajana plant records a daily production of 30,000 tons of cement. GE is expected to supply the cement giant with enough power to curb shortages from power supply in the country. The chairman of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, had said earlier that his company should be able to generate about 12,000 megawatts of electricity for Nigeria by 2018, and his business estate would start selling foreign exchange to the CBN by 2020.
- A report by the Centre for Democracy and Development in partnership with the Pastoral Resolve has blamed the absence of government control and the provision of security in rural areas as some of the main reasons for the repeated clashes between herdsmen and farmers and other forms of rural banditry in Nigeria. The report, “Addressing Rural Banditry in Northern Nigeria”, sought to identify and document the root causes, dynamics and implications of the frequent acts of rural banditry and other forms of violence in Northern Nigeria. There has been a spike in the number of clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers, mostly in the north central region, and other parts of Nigeria. SBM Intelligence had last year published Terror In The Food Basket, a report on that conflict.
- The Lagos state government has sealed Lekki Gardens over the collapse of a five-storey building under construction at Kushenla Road, Ikate Elegushi in the Lekki area. The commissioner for information and strategy, Steve Ayorinde, confirmed this while expressing condolence with families of the victims. According to Ayorinde, the collapsed building had been served a contravention notice for exceeding the approved number of floors. However, in an act of defiance, the owners of the building, Messrs Lekki Worldwide Estate Limited, the promoters of Lekki Gardens, criminally unsealed the property and continued building beyond the approved floors until the unfortunate incident of Tuesday which led to loss of lives. The Lagos State Emergency Management Agency has confirmed that deaths of over 30 people so far. Michael Akindele, general manager of LASEMA, said that as at 12.40 pm on Wednesday, 13 other people had been rescued.
