AHEAD of the anticipated inauguration of the second tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has taken another bold step towards the actualisation of the nation’s economic diversification agenda by shifting the focus of the highly successful Anchor Borrowers’ programme to the palm oil sector. Rice production had taken the main benefit of the programme introduced in November 2015.

AS the nation gets ready for the supplementary elections scheduled for this Saturday, March 23, 2019, the eyes of Nigerians and the international community are still on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to complete the work it started about a month ago: ensuring the emergence of governors and the remaining lawmakers in seven states through free, fair, credible and conclusive elections.

AS at Friday, March 15, 2019, the official count of the dead from the collapsed school building on Massey Street, Lagos Island, had reached 20, while 45 injured persons were still in various hospitals.

Apart from increasing the cost of our elections, it led to the printing of ballot papers that were so long they were difficult to handle. This obviously accounted for the large number of invalid and cancelled ballots which, in turn, resulted in an unprecedented number of inconclusive elections, especially during the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections.

Shortly before the rescheduled Presidential and National Assembly elections, Buhari deployed the military and ordered them to be ruthless with ballot box snatchers and ensure election riggers “paid with their lives”. Responding, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Tukur Buratai, affirmed that the Army would carry out the President’s order in line with constitutional injunctions.