We are pleasantly gratified to note that the Made-in-Nigeria campaign is finding more willing advocates, especially at the commanding heights of the Federal Government. Gradually, this important inward-looking crusade is catching the fancy of people in leadership positions.

MORE than thirteen years after the Stamp Duty Act of 2004 was enacted, its implementation has become needful. In fact, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in January 2016, ordered the banks to start deducting N50 stamp duties on deposits into current accounts with value of N1,000 and above, as part of efforts to boost government’s revenue.

THE recent announcement by the Bankers’ Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria {CBN) that banks are henceforth to set aside five per cent of their profits after tax to finance the agriculture sector and non-oil exports should have been cause for cheers nationwide.

IN what is becoming a horrible regular ritual, xenophobic attack by hoodlums in South Africa, specially targeting Nigerians has flared up again in Pretoria and Johannesburg.

THE nation’s fiscal and monetary authorities were upbeat when results of the country’s USD1 billion Euro- bond offer indicated that it was oversubscribed by a landslide, a massive 800 percent. Not only that, the rate was equally significantly lower than expected. Both outcomes point to positive investor sentiment.

LAST month, the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo and the Budget and Planning Minister, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, announced that the Federal Government would soon launch an Economic Recovery Programme (ERP), designed to lift the nation out of recession. The VP had repeatedly stated that recession would be over “soon” without giving a definite time line.

THE Management of cancer in Nigeria has remained a national scandal. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 100,000 Nigerians are diagnosed with cancer yearly, out of which about 80,000 die.

Implementation of the mandatory 20 per cent Import Adjustment Tax (IAT) on medicaments by the Nigeria Customs Service, as provided in the 2016 Fiscal Policy Measures (FPM), made up of Supplementary Protection Measures (SPM), is an ill wind that is blowing Nigerians no good.

One of the essential ingredients of Constitutional Democracy is the existence of virile opposition where dissenting voices are not stifled. In the build-up to the February 6, 2017, protest against economic hardship in the country organized by Enough is Enough Coalition, also known as One Voice Nigeria, the police deployed all kinds of tactics to frustrate the protest which had hip-hop icon, Tuface Idibia as the brand artiste.

But for a chance encounter with eagle-eyed Customs officers, another batch of 661 illegal high-calibre rifles would have successfully entered the Nigerian heartland and deploy to worsen the already high rate of insecurity in the country.