NIGERIAN NOTCH

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the establishment of a Public Private Partnership styled Infrastructure company named Infra-Co with an initial seed capital of N1 Trillion.  It is envisaged that, over time, the entity will grow to N15 Trillion in assets and capital.  Infra-Co will be one of the premier infrastructure finance entities in Africa and will be wholly dedicated to Nigeria’s infrastructure development. The entity has been developed with concept designs from the National Economic Council (NEC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria.  The President had asked Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, to chair a Steering Committee tasked with setting up the company.  The initial seed capital for the entity will come from the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, NSIA, and the Africa Finance Corporation.  The board of Infra-Co will be chaired by the Central Bank Governor and include the Managing Director of the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, Pres

By Kingsley Moghalu News of exploratory discussions for a breakaway third party from the US Republican Party should not be surprising. I foresaw the likely eventual breakup of the US Republican Party after it became "the party of Trump", i.e. a personality cult, in recent years. If this happens, it will support my thesis that there is nothing inevitable about the PDP and APC in Nigeria. I've always told those skeptical about the possibilities outside of these two Nigerian political platforms, who cite "the two party structure in America", that they are comparing apples and oranges. The two parties in America are ideological. What's the difference between APC and PDP? Many politicians wake up inside PDP and go the bed in the APC, and vice versa. That's very different from a 200 year old, largely ideological democracy. Even then, political parties in America mutated and evolved over decades. Even on issues such as slavery, the Republican party of Abraham L

  By Oge Onyeanusi, Onitsha The newly appointed caretaker Chairman of Ogbaru Relief Market, Chief Ndubuisi Ochiogu has ordered immediate stoppage of construction of new shops in some parts of the market. Ochiogu who gave the order shortly on assumption of office, lamented that most of the shops were being erected on top of drainages, thereby creating a serious environmental problem in the market. He xepressed concern that his successor allowed the shops to be constructed without the approval of the State Commissioner for Commerce, Markets and Wealth Creation, Chief Uchenna Okafor (Wiper). He also decried the volume of garbages produced on daily basis by some market women selling vegetables at the nearby shoe market which they thereafter emptied into the drainages surrounding the market premises and warned the vegetable sellers to stop dumping the garbages into the drainages. He constituted a sanitation committee for the market and charged them to move into action with immediate effect

By Iju Tony Nwabunike Last week, on the invitation of the Minister of Transportation, I participated with other notable maritime stakeholders, in a meeting on the implementation of newly launched Nigeria Port Process Manual (NPPM). Whereas the NPPM was conceptualised to promote transparency, accountability, predictability and eradicate corruption in the port system, this is not the first time we are having laudable concepts on paper on how best to harvest benefits from our ports. My about three decades of operation and full time presence in our maritime environment confirms that we have ideas, know the good things to do to become great but allow narrow minded interests and in some cases, corruption to reign over our good intentions. This has had its toll on the safety of crew, cargoes and vessels transiting within and around our maritime domain thereby entrenching a controversial identity of a viable maritime country with unsafe waters on us. Crew members of some foreign flagged waters

The former governor of Imo state, Chief Godson Ikedi Ohakim, has harped on the need for a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction going forward. He made this assertion today at the country home  of Chief Mbazulike Amaechi ,  the former  first republican minister of Aviation and Transport in Nigeria. Chief Ikedi Ohakim who was on a courtesy visit with the newly elected president of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Prof George Obiozor and Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, to Chief Mbazulike Amaechi,  was emphatic of the need for an Igbo man to be president come 2023. He said that there is nothing wrong with an Igbo man becoming president and that Ohaneze Ndigbo is supporting the quest of an Igbo man to be president. He said” Because being president is not president of Ndigbo but president of Nigeria, from Igbo extraction.”  He averred that all hands must be on deck in order to achieve the survival of Ndigbo in the Nigerian nation of today. He called on Ndigbo to support Prof George Obiozor whom he described as th

The President General of Ohaneze Ndigbo Worldwide, Prof. George Obiozor, has lead the new leadership of Ohaneze Ndigbo under his watch, to visit Chief Mbazulike Amaechi, an Igbo elder statesman, and the first republican Minister of Transportion in Nigeria at his country home in Ukpo, Nnewi South LGA of Anambra state. Prof Obiozor in his opening remarks said, his administration would be for the overall interest of Ndigbo. He said that he would do everything humanly possible to stop any form of marginalization and discrimination against Ndigbo in Nigeria. Prof Obiozor opined that he would not use his position to alienate Ndigbo from the rest of Nigeria; but to negotiate for the inclusion of, Igbo man's Interest, in one and indivisible Nigeria. Continuing, Prof Obiozor said, “ Ndigbo have been neglected for too long in Nigeria, and in every sphere of life. The new Ohaneze leadership will break that ice of marginalization. Igbos are not evil; we are not destroyers; we are builders in t