The Nation Newspaper

Tag: LOAN

  • Budget: Buhari writes NASS to borrow $29.96bn external loan

    Budget: Buhari writes NASS to borrow $29.96bn external loan

    President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday forwarded a request to the National Assembly to approve external borrowing plan of $29.960 billion to execute key infrastructural projects across the country between 2016 and 2018.

    The president also requested for virement of N180.8 billion in the 2016 budget for provision of needed votes for some critical sectors across the 36 states of the federation and the FCT.

    Buhari made the requests in two separate letters to the President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, which were read on the floor of both chambers.

    The president, in the external borrowing plan, explained that targeted projects cuts across all sectors with special emphasis on infrastructure, agriculture, health, education, water supply, growth and employment generation.

    Other sectors he said included poverty reduction through social safety net programmes and governance and financial management reforms, among others.

    According to him, the cost of the projects and programmes under the borrowing (rolling) plan is $29.960 billion.

    This is made up of proposed projects and programmes loan of $11.274 billion, Special National Infrastructure projects $10.686 billion, Euro bonds of $4.5 billion and Federal Government budget support of $3.5 billion.

    He explained further that the loan was very necessary in view of the serious infrastructure deficit in the country.

    He said the country had huge infrastructure deficit and enormous financial resources required to fill the gap in the face of dwindling resources.

    “This is in addition to the inability of our annual budgetary provisions to bridge the deficit. It has become necessary to resort to prudent external borrowing to bridge the financing gap.

    “This will largely be applied to key infrastructure projects namely power, railway and roads among others,” he added.

    Buhari said the N180 billion would be moved from monies already appropriated for special intervention programmes both recurrent and capital for funding of critical recurrent and capital items.

    He said the request arose due to shortfalls in provisions for personnel costs; inadequate provision ab initio for amnesty programme; continuing requirements to sustain the war against insurgency; and depreciation of the Naira.

    The letter reads in part: “In the course of implementing the 2016 Appropriation Act, several MDAs have presented issues pertaining to salary shortfalls, the settlement of part of which has led to the depletion of the Public Service Wage Adjustment.

    “This Vote, which had a provision of N33,597,400,000, now has a balance of N2, 758,296,000.

    “The provision for NYSC in the 2016 budget is inadequate to cater for the number of corps members to be mobilised this year.

    “In fact, an additional N8.5 billion is required to cover the backlog of 129,469 corps members who are due for call-up but would otherwise be left out till next year due to funding constraints.

    “Similarly, the provision for meal subsidy for the Unity Colleges is inadequate for the number of students in the schools.

    “Due to the devaluation of the Naira, the budgetary provisions for the foreign missions are no longer sufficient to cover all their costs.”

    In another letter dated Oct. 24, the president also requested the National Assembly to approve the virement of funds appropriated for special intervention (recurrent) and special intervention (capital) to fund some critical recurrent and capital items.

    According to him, the reasons for the request for virement, include shortfalls in provisions for personnel costs; inadequate provision ab initio for some items like the amnesty programme; continuing requirements to sustain the war against insurgency and depreciation of the naira.

    “However, considering the fact that budgeted revenues are running behind target due to the renewed violence in the Niger Delta.

    “Also there are no supplementary revenue sources, the most viable option for now is the virement of appropriated funds from heads or sub-heads that may not be fully utilised before the end of this fiscal year,” Buhari added.

    An analysis of the proposed virement shows that Public Service Wage Adjustment (PSWA) will gulp N71,800 billion.

    “Contingency N1.2 billion, margin for increase in cost N2 billion for cadet feeding – Police Academy, Wudil, Kano, N932.4 million; amnesty programme N35 billion; internal operations of the armed forces N5.205 billion.

    “Operation Lafiya Dole N13.933 billion; NYSC N19.792 billion; foreign missions N14.667 billion, and augmentation of meal subsidy/direct teaching and laboratory cost of N900 million bringing the total to N166.630,886,954 billion.

    “Statutory transfers to Public Complaints Commission is estimated to gulp N1.2 billion while the virement in respect of capital expenditure for the Nigerian Air Force is N12.708 billion.

    “Capital Supplementation: Presidential Initiative for the North East (PINE) is N1.5 billion bringing the total to N14,208,367,476 billion.”

    Lastly, the president requested that N300 million be vired from the budget of the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing to fund the construction of 132KVA sub-station of fallen transmission towers, replacement of glass insulators at Gwaram, Jigawa. (NAN)

  • Skye Bank gets CBN’s loan to boost liquidity

    Skye Bank gets CBN’s loan to boost liquidity

    The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has provided loan to Skye Bank Plc to boost its liquidity after the lender breached requirements on capital and lending.

    The short-term lending facility will allow the new management to “ensure that some withdrawals it suffered in the wake of the undue panic of last week do not adversely affect its operations,’’ Isaac Okorafor, a spokesman for the CBN told Bloomberg.

    The regulator has also issued guarantees to the bank’s depositors and creditors as a demonstration of its health, he said.

    The CBN replaced top managers of the lender earlier this month after it breached required thresholds for liquidity and non-performing loans. While the regulator moved to calm markets, assuring that the bank and indeed, the industry remained healthy, its stock plunged to record lows, leading to declines among other lenders.

    Skye Bank’s shares, however, rose for the fourth straight day yesterday, gaining nine per cent to 85 kobo in Lagos trading, the best performance on the 171-member Nigerian Stock Exchange All-Share Index. Almost 53 million shares were traded, more than three times the three-month average. It has declined by 46 per cent this year, compared with a 1.8 per cent retreat by the Nigerian All Share Index. The CBN said it has no plan to sell Skye Bank.

    In an earlier statement, the new management at Skye Bank said the lender’s fundamentals remained strong and virile, assuring customers and other stakeholders of the safety of their funds and investments.

    Its Group Managing Director/CEO, Tokunbo Abiru, said his team would leverage on the bank’s reputable information technology platform to make it not just a frontline retail and commercial bank, but also an industry leader.

    Abiru, who outlined his vision for the lender, said his team would harness the expertise and skill sets of the bank’s employees and the reconstituted board to take the bank to new heights.

    He noted that as a Systematically Important Bank (SIB), Skye Bank occupies a sensitive role in the financial life of Nigerians and the entire West African sub-region.

  • Akwa Ibom ready for Fed Govt’s N90b loan to states

    The Akwa Ibom State Government yesterday said the state will be among those to enjoy the Federal Government’s N90 billion loan facility.

    The government said it had met the “sustainability analysis” required to qualify for the loan.

    Finance Commissioner Akan Okon addressed reporters in Uyo, the state capital, on the loan facility and related matters.

    Okon, in company of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs Commissioner Victor Antai, spoke on the economy under Governor Udom Emmanuel and the management of local government finances.

    The commissioner said the government would avail itself of the window the new loan facility offered in view of the dwindling revenue and huge financial burden facing the government.

    According to him, the state received N5.3 billion as allocation from the Federation Account in May, while its wage bill was N4.8 billion, making it difficult for the state to meet its financial obligations.

    Okon said: “I want to state that in May, we received N5.3 billion and the wage bill was N4.8 billion. With this, you can see that government is in a very tight situation.

    “With the dwindling finances experienced in the state, the government has to key into the window of the new loan facility being offered by the Federal Government.”

    The commissioner said money that came from the Federation Account to the local governments was not sufficient to pay teachers’ salaries and local government employees, much less the pensioners in the local government.

    He said the state would abide by the conditions to qualify for the loan, adding that it would enable the state to meet its financial obligations.

    Okon recalled that between June, last year, and last month, the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) was only N15 billion, adding that this was not good enough in an economic recession.

    The commissioner said as part of efforts to increase the IGR, the government had introduced e-receipt payment into its business.

    He added that electronic receipt payment would eliminate or reduce leakages in government revenue.

    Okon said the electronic receipt was a strategy to enhance the collection of the IGR.

    According to him, the e-receipt was government’s initiative to block leakages in the current manual receipt issuance to tax payers and other government transactions.

    Okon said: “Funds that sometimes get lost in the labyrinth of bureaucracy will be made available to government to provide services to the people.”

    Akwa Ibom did not apply for the first phase of bailout loan given to states last year.

    The state said it was not necessary then.

  • Five states meet N90b loan conditions

    Five states meet N90b loan conditions

    • Disbursement starts next FAAC meeting

    Five states  have completed the process for obtaining the N90 billion budget support  facility being provided by the Federal Government to state governments while one state has opted out of the  loan scheme.

    Akwa Ibom State governor, Udom Emmanuel,  told State House correspondents at the end of the 68th National Economic Council (NEC) meeting chaired by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.

    He was accompanied to the briefing by the Kaduna State Deputy Governor, Bala Bantex, Minister of Trade and Investment, Okey Enelamah, Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, Mrs Maryam Uwais.

    The Federal Government had earlier given 22 stringent conditions for the states to satisfy before accessing the loan.

    Emmanuel, who declined to list the five successful states and the one that opted out, said the disbursement of the loan will begin during the next Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting.

    He said: “The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, also briefed the Council on the Federal Government’s N90 billion budget support loan facility for states at a per cent interest rate.

    “Five states have already completed the process for borrowing from the Presidential Budget Support Facility for States, which will help states to pay salaries and other pertinent emoluments. Others states are expected to proceed to tap from the facility.

    “Though I am not the Minister, I can throw more light on the question. The N90 billion is the same thing as I have mentioned. I wouldn’t want you to call it a bail out. I want to call it the exact name that it is.

    “What the minister explained was that first tranche of N50 billion bond will be issued and the N40 billion will follow to make N90 billion. It is just to make this available; it is not compulsory, what is important is can people have access to a lifeline? You see what is happening today is not peculiar to Nigeria as a country, you know the impact of the fall in crude oil price that has actually got to oil producing countries like Nigeria.

    “What we are looking at is what are the solutions, we must provide a lifeline for people to survive and to move on, I don’t think its too much.”

    On the five states that have scaled through and the one that opterd out, he said: “As at today, this window just opened; we don’t know how many will decline at the end of it. So I think we cannot actually answer that question prematurely so that we give you the actual fact but let me explain as the minister did here the other time. There is a reconstruction going on.

    “It doesn’t actually mean that states which will take this money does not have something acruable also from the Federal Government, pending the time we reconcile our book, the Federal Government may have some balances to settle the state government but in the meantime while we are awaiting for those reconciliation to be concluded, can we open up the window so we can have access to liquidity and implement our 2016 budget, I think that is the whole idea.”

    He also disclosed that the Minister of Finance reported to the Council that the balance in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) as at June 15 this year was $2.261 billion.

    The governor also said Council was informed that work was ongoing on the forensic audit with respect to ECA payment into Federation Account and Revenue Generating Agencies (RGAs).

  • Buhari advised to recover looted funds, shun IMF loan

    Buhari advised to recover looted funds, shun IMF loan

    President Muhammadu Buhari has been advised to redouble his efforts at recovering looted public funds so that such funds could be ploughed back into the economy instead of seeking loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

    An agro-allied economist and aviation expert, Captain John Okakpu, who spoke with reporters in Lagos at the weekend, said the president should ignore calls to seek foreign credit line to put the economy back in shape.

    Okakpu, who is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ABX World, condemned the stringent conditions Switzerland and other foreign financial institutions have handed down to the Federal Government before repatriating the looted funds in their custody. “That is completely wrong; Nigeria has the right to decide on whatever it wants to do with the funds,” he said.

    He urged the National Assembly to pass laws that will prescribe stiff penalties for fund looters to make stealing unattractive.

    According to Okakpu, the repatriated stolen funds could be given to Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) at a single digit interest rate to create more impact on the economy.

    “We have to start taking care of ourselves. Over the years, IMF has been giving us loans, knowing that we are corrupt,” he said.

    He said amnesty should be granted to fund looters, arguing that the gesture would encourage them to repatriate their loot.

    He  said: “The amnesty means whatever anybody has starched abroad, let’s grant them official pardon and deposit it with Nigerian banks; the fund could be given as loan at single digit interest rate for indigenous investors to develop other sectors of the  economy as we move away from oil and gas.

    “If you look at other nations, they have systems to control this kind of amnesty; they use their money to develop their countries, whereas, we feed them with our funds. Amnesty is a way out.

    “Fighting people to get these funds may take time and lead  to nowhere. Between the last 30 and 40 years, so much funds have been stolen and taken away from Nigeria. If amnesty is extended in place, the Nigerian banks will become so big even as to extend facilities to the IMF. Fighting to get the money from them may cost more than what they will remit at the end of the day; even if you recover $10billion from them, it is just a fraction.”

    He said if the Federal Government embraces the amnesty option and give it legal backing, in the next six months, over $100billion could be repatriated to the system.

    Okakpu said for an ailing economy like Nigeria’s, there is need to inject funds that will energise the system and put money into the hands of the citizens.

    According to him, the promotion of agric produce has become imperative in the face of slump in the prices of crude oil in the international market, adding that current global realities have made it important for government to be more creative in exploring other sources of revenues  than depending on crude oil.

    H said: “In Africa today, Kenya is leading in a network called Global GAP; which involves all the supermarkets in Europe and North America. Unfortunately, neither the Federal Government, state, local nor community in Nigeria has Global Gap certification, which is one of the reasons we can’t even sell our agro-allied produce direct to Shoprite.

    “How do we put our products to the world? Kenya leading the African Continent has 1,879, certifications; South Africa has 1,797; Egypt has 671, Ghana has over 200 certifications, and others, while Nigeria is zero.

    “Agriculture is private sector driven. What is expected of the government is policy direction and structures in place to empower subsistence farmers, not commercial farmers only.“

  • Chukwubuikem joins Sunshine Stars on loan

    Chukwubuikem joins Sunshine Stars on loan

    Meshak Chukwubuikem has joined Sunshine Stars on loan from FC IfeanyiUbah for the second round of the Nigeria league.

    The forward told AfricanFootball.com his transfer was a done deal and he is delighted to join the Akure outfit.

    “I have joined Sunshine Stars for the second round of the league. The deal is signed . I will be there on loan till the end of the season and I am looking forward to making a great impact,” he disclosed.

    Chukwubuikem has played for Enyimba, Akwa United, 3SC, Rangers and FC IfeanyiUbah.

  • N1b agric loan coming for youths

    A group known as Abia State Youths for Agriculture (YFA) has something big to look out for: a N1.340 billion loan from the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund (MSMEDF).

    This was made known in a letter dated April 8 signed by Dr M. A. Olaitan of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to the Managing Director, Stateman Microfinance Bank Ltd, Uzuakoli, where the apex bank is asking them to provide collateral for the above sum.

    Speaking with The Nation, in Umuahia, the state Public Relations Officer (PRO) of YFA, Friday Chinedum said that the delay in accessing the fund is because they are yet to complete the provisions for the 30% required before the fund is released.

    “We are at the verge of doing that, which will not be long,” he said.

    Chinedum said that all hope is not lost in accessing the funds for the genuine farmers in the state and urged members of the YFA not to be dismayed as efforts are in top gear to ensure that they improve their farm yields this season with the loan.

    He said that members of YFA who have registered for the scheme will have nothing to regret, stressing that they should stop listening to those who intend to destroy the association through damaging and false statements.

    Chinedum said, “Our members should not listen to those who have the mindset to destabilise the association, as it is wrong for people to destroy the house they have helped to build, we need to be together to achieve our aim.”

    “It is expected that when the loan is accessed, we are going to train our members and youths in all areas of farming after which they will be given take-off loan which will be monitored to avoid misuse.”

     

  • Suit querying N213b loan to private power firms stalled

    Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja, has declined a suit querying the N213 billion loan handed by the Federal Government to privatised electricity companies under the Nigeria Electricity Market Stabilisation Facility (NEMSF).

    The plaintiff, Baribefi Tebira, sought to restrain the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from giving out the money, from which he said about N57.79 billion had been disbursed as at mid-February.

    Tebira, a lawyer, contended among others, that the arrangement was fraudulent and meant to swindle the country. Also, he noted that the facility is a duplication of an earlier one – the N300 billion Power and Aviation Intervention Fund (PAIF) – created by the Federal Government in 2013 and from which N11.628 billion was disbursed by June 2013.

    He argued that the CBN lacked the powers, under its establishment law (particularly, Section 34(c) and (d) of the CBN Act 2004), to create a loan facility of 10 years to private companies at 10 per cent.

    The plaintiff urged the court to declare that the loan paid from the NEMSF by the CBN to the privatised electricity companies, which were privatised under the Public Enterprises (Privatisation and Commercialisation) Act was illegal and contrary to public policy.

    Tebira sought an order of perpetual injunction restraining the CBN from further disbursing any fund by whatever name, whether NEMSF or other, to the privatised electricity generating and distribution companies under the Public Enterprises (Privatisation and Commercialisation) Act.

    He prayed for an order directing the CBN to terminate and recall such facilities granted to the privatised  companies under the NEMSF.

    Defendants in the suit were the CBN, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Power, Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the attorney general of the federation (AGF).

    The plaintiff argued, in a supporting affidavit, that having been privatised and the companies having increased tariffs more than once and directed customers to make down payment for meters, there was no justification for the Fed Government to further hand out public funds to them.

    “As much as government owns shares in these companies, majority of the shares in the companies have been bought by private investors, who before buying them, demonstrated capacity to finance the project as a private commercial concern.

    “I am surprised that the same private investors, after demonstrating they can acquire such shares are applying for loans under the facility created by the CBN over projects they claimed to be able to finance, which was a criteria for winning the bid process,” Tebira said.

    He argued that even if such loan should be granted, there was no need creating another one as the better organised N300 billion PAIF, created in 2013, and from which only over N11 billion had been accessed, was not yet exhausted.

    “I am aware that the PAIF was created for the same purpose and the facility was disbursed under stringent measures, using the Bank of Industry (BOI) as the authorised deposit money bank and the African Finance Corporation (AFC) as the technical adviser.

    “The NEMSF, unlike the PAIF, was created with relaxed rules, no regulators and technical partners, with 14 private commercial banks acting as deposit money banks as disbursing banks.

    “The CBN, as a defacti bank, can indirectly give loans and advances for a maximum period of one year at a minimum rate of interest, which should not be less that one per cent above the bank’s minimum rediscount rate. Banks minimum rediscount rate as at December 2014 was 13 per cent.

    “The first defendant (CBN) can only give advances and credit facilities for a maximum period of one year as against the 10 years the first defendant is advancing credit facilities to the companies.

    “The process is fraudulent. The process demonstrates a colossal looting of the treasury in the guise of formulating bogus sector-driven monetary and banking policies aimed at revitalising the power sector,” Tebira said.

  • Buhari in China: Beyond the loan

    What Femi Adesina, President Muhammadu Buhari’s media adviser noted and dispatched to Nigeria on his visit (with his principal) to the People’s Republic of China penultimate week isn’t different from what every traveller to that land of Mao Tse-tung observed.

    Sharing his findings with compatriots in his essay, Dispatch from China: what order, discipline did to China, Adesina quotes Buhari as saying of Beijing, the Chinese capital: “Did you notice the level of discipline in this city? Did you notice the cleanliness and order? Did you see anybody throwing litter or garbage anywhere? And did you see their security agents, how smart and dutiful they were?”

    The Nigerian leader spoke in a jet when leaving Beijing for Shanghai. As he and Adesina and another aide watched the city recede, they froze in wistful amazement at how a society’s hundreds of millions of citizens could be so shaped as to see discipline as the first patriotic duty. Femi Adesina was to exclaim: “Discipline is the name of the game, and it has done China a world of good.”

    A few decades ago, a commentator, Doak Barnett, not known for any love for Communist China also wrote: “Some years ago, a foreigner who had just toured Communist China came out to Hong Kong and remarked,  with awe in his voice: ‘I never thought that human beings and society could be reconstructed so easily’. If he meant that the changes of recent years had been relatively painless, he was very wrong. The plastic surgery that the communists had been performing on Chinese society for over a decade had been painful indeed for millions of Chinese… But if, in using the word ‘easily’, the visitor actually meant ‘rapidly’, it is easy to share some of his awe. The Chinese communists have dramatically demonstrated that an effective … regime can achieve extensive social change at a breakneck pace.

    What did the trick?

    Following the 1949 Revolution in China, the great Mao Tse-tung who led the movement shut the borders of the country to the outside world. He and his loyal communist leaders adopted a tough stance that ensured that the people and their rulers fed only on what was available inwards, locally. The cars they rode, however archaic, were what the “elite” Politburo (Communist Party Leadership) and the other working classes alike used.

    No palatial palate was cultivated to hunger for a billionaire’s breakfast. Since it was a peasant and workers socialist putsch in the first place, China under Mao couldn’t be allowed to tolerate the contradiction of a heavily moneyed class to exist side by side with the poor as we have in Nigeria. In this huge enclosure untainted by the unbridled spending and consumerist culture of the capitalist Western world, Mao began to remould China and its people.

    In 1958, the country embarked on the Great Leap Forward Programme (Walking on Two Feet). Agriculture and industry saw China match the old Soviet Union and the formidable Western powers of US and UK in industrial, scientific and technological production. The Cultural Revolution that followed disavowed the intrusion of destructive moral values that could either retard or bring down altogether the progress in the political, social and economic spheres of the new China. Actually, the cultural war was what deepened the discipline Mao sought for his people. It aided in reshaping and adjusting the mighty masses of the population. It poised them for the gigantic solemn task of forming a new society and freeing the people from dependence on foreign tastes. The Chinese nation has been described as a Spartan nation of “infinite patience and adaptability”. This enabled them to endure the painful pill Mao gave them. It has also helped them to survive tumultuous upheavals, all of which have finally pushed China to become the world’s number two economic power house, after the USA. Today, experts say in a few decades China will leap into the number one position.

    In view of all these, I am not at all moved by the loan coming our way in Nigeria as a result of our President’s trip to China nor am I excited that at last the Chinese will soon be here to upgrade our derelict and Neanderthal infrastructure. I am interested rather in what Buhari’s encounter with the Chinese has taught: unruliness in our politics, in how we handled our wealth when we had it a plenty, in our leadership template as the cause of all our woes today. And it would continue this way, and take worst turns if we don’t first battle this character drawback the way the Chinese did it.

    Let the Americans also bring in their dollars and the Britons their Pound Sterling and Europe its Euros in loans of any tenor. This will not solve our problems if we do not do the first things first. The Yoruba say if you fail to inculcate the virtues of integrity and self-restraint in your offspring and all you think of is to throw wealth at them in the form of building property for them and educating them without moral spinal cord, these ill-tutored children would end up becoming barbarians, destroying your legacy and prized name.

    We have built a nation of wealth-worshipping citizens and leaders who view the world through a prosperity telescope. We do not honour labour. Preferment, whether social, economic or political is brewed in the cauldron of corruption. Our youth and women who ought to be our treasured capital and engine of development are wasting because we don’t capture them in our vision. They have permitted themselves to be caged in the pigeonhole of idleness, refusing to breakout but turning to criminality. Who cares? Everybody is a felon. Everybody plays a smart one. We are all Smart Alec.

    It is the system thrown up by our lifestyle of indiscipline that is responsible for this mass social decay. The system has allowed too much foul money among the political class and their cronies. There is a surfeit of this wealth also in the civil service bureaucracy and its contractor entrepreneurs. When everyone aspires to join them, including students waiting to finish school, you have a perfect setting for the emergence of the patriarch and matriarch of indiscipline. Now, the ensuing cloying affluence of the few has as given Nigeria a pejorative world title: We are the biggest exporter of illicit money on the planet. Refer to the disclosure of the Panama Papers. And yet there is poverty in the land. This reminds us of the lament of the Ancient Mariner: water water everywhere but none to drink!

     

    • Ojewale is a journalist and writer in Ota, Ogun State.
  • House okays govt’s N5b loan request

    House okays govt’s N5b loan request

    The Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly yesterday approved the request by Governor Udom Emmanuel to obtain a loan of N5 billion to enable the government complete some projects. The Assembly also approved the government’s’ request for approval to guarantee N10 billion  contractor’s finance scheme for the dualisation of Etinan-Ndon Eyo road.

    In the two letters addressed to the Speaker, Onofiok Luke, and read by the Clerk of the House, Mrs Mandu Umoren,  Emmanuel said: “United Bank for Africa (UBA) has agreed to offer the facility to the contractor – Wizchino Engineering Limited at an interest rate of 14.5 per cent per annum payable within 36 months .”

     Members of the House spoke in favour of the requests.

    Both requests  were granted after the Speaker opened the floor for contrary opinions on the request but none spoke.