FG receives $2.1bn credit from World Bank to rebuild North East Nigeria

The Federal government has received a 2.1 billion credit facility from World Bank which will be used to rebuild the troubled North East zone in Nigeria. This was announced in a statement released by the Special Adviser to President Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, The statement below.

The World Bank has unfolded a package which would see it spending up to $2.1 billion in rebuilding the badly devastated North-eastern part of Nigeria, ravaged for the past six years by the Boko Haram insurgency.

At a meeting in Washington today with representatives of the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Health Organization (WHO), President Buhari said apart from rebuilding the region in terms of infrastructure, priority must also be given to the resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs), who now number over one million.

He urged the World Bank to send a team, which would work in concert with a team from the Federal Government, so that a proper assessment of needs could be done.
The World Bank will spend the 2.1 billion dollars through its IDA (International Development Agency), which gives low interest rates loans to government. The first 10 years will be interest free, while an additional 30 years will be at lower than capital market rate.

The World Bank is eager to move in quickly, give out the loans, and give succour to the people of North-east, long at the mercy of an insurgency that has claimed over 20,000 souls.
WHO is also to invest 300 million dollars on immunization against malaria in Nigeria, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will collaborate with Dangote Foundation to ensure that the country maintains its zero polio case record of the past one year. If the effort is sustained for another two years, Nigeria will be declared fully free of polio.

FEMI ADESINA
SPECIAL ADVISER, MEDIA AND PUBLICITY
JULY 21, 2015

The Criteria For Buhari’s Ministers

President Muhammadu Buhari’s two-month-long delay in presenting his list of ministers to the Senate for screening and confirmation has generated concern in many quarters over the direction of his administration as well as its workability. However, the recent report that 33 of 36 ministerial nominees failed the integrity test conducted by various organs of government adds a new twist to the circumstances of the forthcoming cabinet.

According to the report, routine background checks on the nominees by security agencies like the Nigeria Police, the Department of State Services (DSS), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) revealed instances of past involvement in fraudulent activities, including misappropriation of public funds among other sins. This development is remarkable in many respects.

For the first time, at least since the return to civil rule in 1999, Nigerians can see a departure from the usual screening of nominees for political office that always returned them with a clean bill of health. Usually, any nominee scheduled for such security screening automatically came clean, his or her past sins notwithstanding. 

The situation was so graphic that even individuals that were known in the public domain as persons with questionable character were cleared by the security agencies involved.

The merit of the present development manifests in at least two dimensions. First, it demonstrates the extent of the collapse of values in our society and the associated rot in public service whereby many of the leading lights are actually villains who should be in jail.

Given the tradition through which ministerial nominees emerge, the failed nominees must have been persons of significant social standing with the much vaunted electoral value, but whose bases were actually built on questionable premises. Also, the development has sent a signal that nomination to public office, at least during the Buhari era, is not going to be business as usual.

With the emerging drama, however, the government should carefully identify and engage worthy Nigerians with the requisite criteria to occupy ministerial and other offices in the administration in order for the country to make progress. At least, they are available within and outside the country.
Besides, the development should serve, for the administration and the country, as a wake-up call for launching the clean-up of the socio-political system in pursuit of the change in the conduct of government business which we all desire for our nation. 

In the interest of equity, the treasury looters so identified by default should not go scot-free, but serve as the starting point of the cleansing programme of the administration.

by Leadership Editors

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