Giant stride

The Senate has agreed to give an accelerated approval to  President Muhammadu Buhari’s  request to raise a fresh loan of N850bn from the domestic capital market to fund projects in the 2020 budget. The approval was given soon after the President of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan read a letter from President Muhammadu Buhari, seeking for the approval to go for fresh loan of N850 Billion from the Domestic Capital Market. The upper chamber also mandated it’s Finance and Appropriation Committees to liaise with the Finance Minister to obtain more details of the loan request.

In response to the National Assembly’s earlier expression of displeasure at the manner in which the federal government handled the conditional cash transfer scheme, the presidency has fired back, stating that poor Nigerians are not people who can access internet or have bank verification number(BVN). This was contained in a statement signed by  Maryam Uwais, Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments on Thursday, where details of how National Social Investment Programme works and how the poor and vulnerable are reached. “The National Cash Transfer Programme derives all the cash transfer beneficiaries from a National Social Register (NSR), comprising State Social Registers that are developed and hosted by the State Ministries of Panning of each State. “The process for objective identification of poor and vulnerable households is as provided in the Financing Agreement (F.A) signed between Nigeria and the World Bank, for which purpose the World Bank IDA Cred...