NIS scam: Court grants ex-minister Abba Moro bail on self-recognition

ABBA MORO: FORMER INTERIOR MINISTER

Justice Anwuli Chikere of the Federal High Court in Abuja has granted bail to former interior minister, Abba Moro, who is facing charges over the 2014 tragic Nigeria Immigration recruitment in which more than a dozen job seekers died.

Mr. Moro was given bail on self-recognition, and without conditions.

The judge said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission failed to prove that Mr. Moro would interfere with his trial.

The judge, however, ruled that two other defendants should pay N100 million each with a surety in like sum. The sureties must be of the directorate cadre in the civil service.

The sureties and the defendants are to submit two recent passports as well as their international passports, and the sureties must also have landed properties worth the amount in any part of the country.

Mr. Moro and four others are facing an 11-count charge of money laundering.

They are accused of defrauding 676, 675 applicants of the sum of N676, 675, 000, being the aggregate of N1000 paid by each applicant to Drexel ahead of the recruitment.

Mr. Moro was earlier held at the Kuje prison in Abuja pending the determination of his bail application.

While he was detained, Anastasia Daniel-Nwobia, a former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Interior, was permitted to continue her administrative bail

ICT stakeholders solicits for open data initiative in Nigeria

Information Communication Technology stakeholders have described open data initiative, a policy guideline being proposed by National Information Technology Development Agency, (NITDA) as crucial to the socio economic development of the country.

The stakeholders, who met in Port Harcourt on agreed that for the nation to develop in line with national planning, some important data must be made available and open for easy accessibility and usage.

The forum maintained that NITDA should come up with principles that would encourage openness of data and also established guiding principle to Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for best global practice in data collation and usage.

In his welcome address, Dr. Vincent Olatunji, NITDA’s acting director general, who was represented at the forum by the Head of Standards, Guidelines and Regulations, Barrister Lazarus Ikoti informed the stakeholders that lack of data in Nigeria is hindering the development in the country.

He cited an example with the effect insurgency in the country and stressed that lack of data has made it difficult for the country to actually know the number of Internally Displaced persons (IDPs) in the country.

He said the issue of open data has drawn so much interest in the international community and Nigeria as a country cannot afford to lag behind.

He stated that it was because of this the Agency attached so much premium to open data, adding that, ” the world is drifting toward open data and many organizations like open Data for Development were springing up to support open data initiative”.

He assured that NITDA would partner with these organisations to derive maximum benefits for Open Data in Nigeria adding that the Agency since 2013 has begun preparation to make Nigeria one of the countries that has complied with this initiative.

While acknowledging the role of standard, guideline and regulations to the success of harnessing the benefit of ICT, Dr Olatunji stated that the Agency would begin enforcement of most of the guidelines the Agency has published in the past.‎

“We are not going to stop at publishing the standards but shall go all out to enforce. To enforce these Standards, we shall work with the relevant government agencies to secure their support,” he hinted.

The NITDA boss stated that Africa Open Data conference which was held in 2015 has earmarked some fund as seed support to empower Africa emerging Open Data entrepreneur which would be used to improve on data collation for sustainable global development goals.

Meanwhile the discussions from the stakeholders meeting has been far reaching as they were unanimous that for the open data initiative to get the widely acceptance among Nigerians MDAs, a directorate must be established among MDAs with the sole aim of ensuring awareness, accessibility and usability of data.

80% of Nigeria’s revenue goes into debt servicing – IDB

The Resident Representatives of IDB in Nigeria, Abdallah Mohammed Kiliaki, who made this known during courtesy visit to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, Senator Shehu sani, lamented that the amount is very high when compared to other countries.

Kiliaki explained that ‎Nigeria’s Debts GDP ratio is low at 17 per cent, but resources being used to pay the debts are enormous going by percentages taken on yearly basis.

He said: “‎My visit is very crucial because we need to look at the debt profile of a country before we give new a contractual sort of financing.

“We also work closely with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to ensure that our financing has the required threshold of grant financing, which is normally 35 per cent, but at the same time there were financing that is not a burden to a country to the extent that the debt may not be sustainable.

“When talking about unsustainable debt, it means that a country or a borrower is unable to pay.

“So we take very serious note of that.

“When you look at the debt GDP ratio of Nigeria, it is very low.

“It is very low.

“It is 17 per cent compared to Italy and other countries, which is about 150 per cent, while that of the United States is about 100 per cent.

“But there is a caveat: it is true that debt to GDP ratio is low but when you look at the amount, the revenue to debt servicing ratio, the amount of money that the government is collecting, the revenue of the government vis-a-vis the ratio to the total debt, I think Nigeria pays about 75 to 80 per cent of its revenue to service debt.

“So, this is very, very high compared to other countries where they use just 10 per cent.

“Debt to GDP ratio is low.

“Meaning that that there is capacity to borrow.

“At the same time, the domestic resources to service those debts, the ratio is quite high.

“What that means is that one, the government of Nigeria needs to expand or mobilise additional resources through taxation by broadening the tax base but at the same time we as lenders, financiers, we need to reconsider our conditions of financing.

“Meaning that we should try as much as we can to extend to Nigeria financing that will not make it difficult for the country to pay its debt.

“There is a role that the government can play and there is a role that we as financier can play.”

In his remarks, Senator Sani declared that Nigeria’s total debts presently stand at $60 billion.

He implored bank and other multilateral financial institutions to stop propping the country into taking more loans on account of its low ratio of debts servicing to GDP.

He said that what is 17 per cent today may, if needed control measures are not applied, go up to 77 per cent and invariably returning the country back to where it was before 2006 when the London and Paris Clubs wrote off a substantial part of her foreign debts then.