The Big 5: President Buhari grants a little girl’s wish, Minister of Finance says Nigeria needs to keep borrowing, and other top stories

Buhari

Good morning.

Here are the top 5 stories you should be monitoring today:

President Muhammadu Buhari is starting the week on a pretty inspiring note.

In a very unprecedented turn of events, President Buhari granted the wish of a little girl, Aysha Aliyu Gebi, from Bauchi State who wrote a letter requesting to see him.

The snapshot of Aysha’s letter, tweeted by her uncle, got a reply from President Buhari’s spokesman Bashir Ahmad asking her to be brought to The Aso Villa upon the president’s request.

A stuff of fairytales, right? Read the letter she wrote to President Buhari.

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Fairytale over. Back to reality. In what appears to be a fire brigade damage control, The World Bank has begun contradicting itself regarding the statement made last week by its president, Jim Yong Kim that President Buhari asked the bank to shift its intervention focus to North-Eastern states.

Of course, the statement stirred controversy, with Ekiti state governor Ayodele Fayose saying “Nigeria is now more divided than ever.” But, the Presidency had a ready defence which they made in this statement.

However, in a new statement, the Senior Communications Officer of World Bank Nigeria, Olufunke Olufon said the bank has investments scattered across Nigeria. See how much she says the investment is worth.

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Meanwhile, there’s a rather unexpected move (or was it) on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) fraud allegations alleged in the Minister of State for Petroleum Dr Ibe Kachikwu’s leaked petition to the president.

The Presidency has denied any such fraud within the corporation saying that it never awarded contracts worth $25bn or that the same amount is missing.

Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Mr Laolu Akande, released a statement to that effect. Read the full statement here.

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A lot of huge amounts of money have been mentioned over the past few week but it just doesn’t seem to be enough.

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has said the Federal Government will need to keep borrowing to be able to save jobs. This is following the President’s request to the Senate for the approval of an external loan of $5.5 billion.

According to her, Nigeria’s source of revenue has dropped by nearly 85 percent, leaving the country with no other option than to borrow.

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But one wonders why despite all these funds, the Aso Rock clinic still complains of not receiving any capital allocation in 2017?

Permanent Secretary of the State House, Jalal Arabi, in a statement said the media reports suggesting that the State House Medical Centre had received N11.01billion as an appropriation for the period 2015-2017 are not true.

Here’s everything he said.

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But it’s not only the State House complaining. The labour force is also crying out that the upward review of the minimum wage for Nigerian workers to N30,000 by the House of Representatives “is not enough.”

President of the Trade Union Congress, Bobboi Kaigama, on Saturday said the organised labour is demanding the new minimum wage be fixed at N56,000.

While he appreciated the efforts, he requested that more pressure is put on the government. Here’s what he said.

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