Daily Watch – States borrow big from pensions, Atiku to challenge Buhari for presidency
8th October 2018
- Pension fund operators have invested ₦151.95 billion of in state government securities as of the end of Q2 2018. PenCom figures show that this is to 1.8 per cent of the total pension funds, which stood at ₦8.23 trillion in the period under review. PenCom has however barred the pension operators from investing the increasing funds in state government’s securities that had yet to comply with the Contributory Pension Scheme. 27 states have enacted laws on the CPS, while eight states are at the bill stage. One state, however, has yet to commence the process of enacting a law on the CPS.
- The minister of finance, Zainab Ahmed, has said that all those responsible for the failure of Skye Bank will be prosecuted. During a visit to the NDIC, Ahmed ordered Umaru Ibrahim, NDIC’s CEO, to ensure that a thorough investigation is carried out on the failure of the bank. “The example of the recently wound-up Skye Bank, now Polaris Bank is something we would look into. We would find out what happened. Your investigation must be thorough, we are going to hold whoever is responsible for the failure of that bank,” she said. Ahmed said NDIC must continue monitoring banks so that problems are detected and solved early.
- Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s vice president between 1999 and 2007, has been elected the presidential candidate of the PDP. At the PDP national convention in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, which ended yesterday, Abubakar defeated 11 other aspirants to clinch the hotly-contested ticket. His victory sets him as the main challenger to President Buhari in the 2019 general election. Abubakar left the PDP in the build up to the 2007 election to be the flag bearer of the then opposition Action Congress. He lost the election to late President Umaru Yar’Adua. He later joined the PDP again and sought to be the party’s candidate in 2011. He lost the ticket to Goodluck Jonathan. Abubakar, in the build up to the 2015 election again left the PDP for the then newly formed APC. Buhari went on to win the general election and is now seeking re-election.
- The Bank of Industry has announced the disbursement of ₦2.8 billion intervention funds to 20,550 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. According to the Managing Director, BoI, Olukayode Pitan, 280 Small and Medium Enterprises also got part of the intervention funds disbursed to small business owners in Kaduna State. Pitan said the bank had plans to establish a shared facility in partnership with the federal and state governments as well as other relevant agencies in Kaduna, and that the shared facility would be fully equipped with adequate machinery so that the financial burden of buying equipment or renting space would be lifted off the shoulders of entrepreneurs.