The Senate gave consideration to President Muhammadu Buhari’s request for legislative approval for virements totalling N180.8bn in the 2016 budget to cater for some sectors of the economy. The Senate referred the request to its Committee on Appropriations and Finance, which was mandated to report...

State governments are spending billions of naira of public funds on constructing and maintaining presidential lodges that are rarely used by presidents. This practice has continued in spite of the cash crunch that has left many states unable to pay salaries of their workers. Presidential lodges...

•Finance ministry says it’s unaware of payments The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has disclosed that the federal government will refund about N20 billion to each state for funds they had spent on federal projects in their states. Dogara made the disclosure...

Stakeholders from the Niger Delta under the aegis of the Pan Niger Delta Forum attributed the renewed militancy in the region to what they called alienation and lack of meaningful development of the region. They said they had consulted widely and had come up with...

Like the exercises before it, the celebrated priva­tisation of the Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and its mo­bile arm, MTEL, is heading for the rocks. The plan of its new owners, NATCOM Telecommunica­tions, to join the league of suc­cessful telecom providers in the country is...

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund, IMF, have piled pressure on the Federal Government to come up with an economic blueprint, if its drive for foreign loans was not to be stalled. Vanguard gathered that officials of both financial institutions have questioned the...