The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has hailed President Bola Tinubu’s approval of a 30 per cent debt discount for Nigerian airlines, but warns that without urgent reforms to the sector’s high-cost structure, the relief may offer only temporary respite rather than a lasting solution. In a statement released on 26 April and signed by its Chief Executive Officer, Muda Yusuf, an economist, the Centre described the debt relief as timely, given the financial burden airline operators continue to bear. However, it maintained that a debt discount alone is insufficient. Recall that Mr Tinubu approved a 30…
Author: Ibrahim Awotunde
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Foundation, Bola Atta has called for the urgent revival of history education, warning that Nigerian girls could grow up without a sense of identity if the trend continues. Ms Atta spoke at Queen’s College on Wednesday during ‘HerStory of Nigeria School Tour’, a project by Asiri Magazine aimed at documenting and archiving the history of Nigerian women. The event also marked the launch of the HerStory of Nigeria Illustration Magazine. Delivering the keynote address, Ms Atta said history had steadily faded from school curricula and public…
Sixteen years after it was first conceived, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCo), and the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) have formally handed over a state-of-the-art Geosciences Centre of Excellence to the University of Lagos (UNILAG), marking the completion of a strategic investment in Nigeria’s research capacity. The facility, commissioned on Friday, is the product of a collaboration involving Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCo), the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), and other co-venture partners. It is expected to reduce Nigeria’s reliance on foreign laboratories…
Road construction accounts for about 60 per cent of telecommunication network outages in Nigeria, industry experts have said, warning that repeated excavation of roads to lay fibre cables is driving service disruptions and rising deployment costs. Stakeholders made the call on Thursday in Lagos at the 8th Policy Implementation Assisted Forum (PIAFO) National Dig-Once Policy Forum, where they urged federal and state governments to adopt a coordinated framework for fibre deployment alongside road construction. The forum, themed “Accelerating Nigeria’s Digital Backbone: Dig-Once Policy, Project BRIDGE and Strategies for Effective Fibre Deployment,” focused on aligning infrastructure planning to improve broadband access…
When Obinna Chima’s wife began to shake and slow down years ago, neither of them knew what to call it. Doctors treated her for other conditions. No one mentioned Parkinson’s disease. That changed in January 2020, when she finally received a proper diagnosis. “Before then, she had all these symptoms, but she wasn’t properly diagnosed,” Mr Chima said. “She would go to hospital, they would do one thing, give her medication she needed, sometimes based on antidepressants.” According to Parkinson’s Africa, her experience reflects that of thousands of Nigerians living with the disease without knowing it. On 11 April, the organisation marked…
As the International Day for Street Children is observed globally on 12 April, the reality in Nigeria tells a different story. Many of the children the day represents do not know it exists. They wake under bridges, in motor parks and at bus stops, and set out in search of food. International Day for Street Children (IDSC) has been celebrated globally since 2012, to recognise the humanity, dignity and defiance of street children in the face of unimaginable hardships. According to the Consortium for Street Children (CSC), this year’s celebration focuses on one of the most urgent challenges facing street-connected…
Lagos’ growing housing crisis reflects deeper structural failures in governance, service delivery and urban policy, according to a new report by the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC). Presented on Thursday in Lagos, the report which is based on 18 months of research across nine city systems found that rapid urbanisation, weak service delivery and elite capture of urban resources are pushing the majority of residents, many of whom live and work in informal systems, further to the margins. “We are sitting on a time bomb,” said Bimbo Osobe, President of the Nigeria Slum and Informal Settlement Federation, describing the scale…
Nigeria’s real estate sector has overtaken crude oil and natural gas in contributing to the economy for the first time since independence, yet millions of Nigerians remain unable to afford housing, the Founding Director of Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development (CHSD), University of Lagos (UNILAG), Timothy Nubi, a professor, has said. This contradiction shaped discussions at the Urban Action Forum, organised by the CHSD in collaboration with the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC), held on Wednesday at the Arthur Mbanefo Digital Research Centre, UNILAG. Themed “A Roadmap for a Sustainable Urban Regeneration in Africa,” the event brought together academics,…
By Ibrahim Awotunde The Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Folasade Ogunsola, a professor of Medical Microbiology, has called for a fundamental rethinking of academic partnerships between Nigeria and the United Kingdom, arguing that global north-south collaborations must move beyond arrangements in which African institutions serve as junior partners implementing agendas set elsewhere. Mrs Ogunsola made the call on 18 March at the Presidential Keynote and Global Goals Roundtables, themed “Co-creating Sustainable Futures for Africa”. The event, which featured a presidential keynote delivered by President and Vice-Chancellor of LSE, Larry Kramer, was jointly convened by UNILAG and the…