Last week, the Federal Executive Council (Fec) directed all federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to ensure that locally-produced and assembled goods are henceforth given first priority in all their procurements, especially procurements relating to vehicles and their spare parts.
The Fec also directed the Office of the National Economic Adviser to conduct a comprehensive review of tariffs to ensure protection and promotion of local industries.

IN the next two weeks, Nigerians will troop out to cast their votes for the candidates of their choice in the 2011 general election. The process will see the election of the next set of politicians that will rule them for the next four years.

AT this time, our leaders, irrespective of their respective ethnic, religious, or political leaning should be bemoaning the devious bombing of Abuja on October 1 – a day the rich and the deprived rolled out the drums to celebrate the country’s 50th independence anniversary.

For sometime now, the Nigerian capital market has been enmeshed in crisis that has the potential to vitiate the gains it has recorded since its establishment in 1961. The   crisis, which  reached its climax recently   resulted  in the unceremonial removal  of Professor Ndi  Okereke-Onyiuke, erstwhile director general of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and Alhaji Aliko Dangote whose election as president of the NSE has been mired in litigation.

UGANDA is usually not a destination most people would associate with pilgrimage. But I just had a most wonderful, almost surreal experience while on a pilgrimage to Uganda to commemorate the killing of innocent Ugandans; the first converts to Christianity in that country. The pilgrimage is an experience that leaves me with reassuring appreciation of the awesomeness of God.

ALSO, in addition to the capacity building carried out for the CSOs within the country, SRIP organised a capacity building outside the country in March 2008. SRIP management led a team of parliamentarians and CSO activists from Nigerian SRIP focal states to the study tour of the South African parliamentary and CSO institutions.

The federal government through Mr. John Odey, minister of environment recently asked the oil giant, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), to clean up 268 sites in the Niger Delta which the company has polluted over the years. The federal government equally asked the oil company to accelerate action on the remediation plan for all impacted sites in the Niger Delta.

THE increasing wave of armed robbery in the country in recent times is indeed alarming and worrisome. Lives and properties are no longer completely safe on the highways and homes as armed robbers now strike with impunity at their unfortunate and hapless victims without quick intervention and protection from the police and other security forces. Added to armed robbery is kidnapping and demand for huge ransoms from their victims and their immediate families. Assassinations for obviously politically motivated reasons have also become rampant.