Nigeria is a dominant force in para sports in Africa, besides producing global champions. The country finished the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games with four gold, silver and five bronze medals to finish third in the continent behind Tunisia and Algeria. Nigeria has featured in every summer Paralympics since it made its debut at Barcelona 1992 and the sport has evolved a lot in the country since then as CGTN's Deji Bademosi reports.
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
Video - Nigeria takes pride in para sports performances
Video - Food scarcity looms in Nigeria as severe floods destroy crops
Nigeria’s food security is under threat due to climate change. This year’s floods have so far destroyed crops worth millions of dollars. Attacks on rural farming communities have also continued unabated.
Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris reports from northwest Nigeria.
Nigeria suffers widespread blackouts after electricity grid fails
Nigeria's national electricity grid collapsed on Monday leaving many parts of the country without power, electricity distribution companies said.
The grid has collapsed at least four times this year, which authorities blame on technical problems. Last month workers from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) went on strike and temporarily shut the grid.
Electricity distribution firms, known as Discos, said the outage happened earlier on Monday and they were working with TCN to restore supplies. They did not state the cause of the outage.
Nigeria has installed capacity of 12,500 megawatts but produces about a quarter of that, leaving many Nigerians and businesses reliant on diesel-powered generators. Diesel prices have soared since the start of the year.
The nation's sclerotic power grid, and its precarious energy supply, are often cited by businesses as a key issue hindering growth in Africa's most populous country.
By MacDonald Dzirutwe
Related stories: Nigeria runs on generators and nine hours of power a day
Nigerian cities in darkness as electricity grid collapses again
Monday, September 26, 2022
Nigeria's fuel subsidies surpassed $1 billion in August as it supplied more petrol
The cost of Nigeria's fuel subsidies rose to 525.714 billion naira ($1.22 billion) in August, bringing the total spent this year to 2.568 trillion naira, according to figures submitted to the government by state oil company NNPC.
The ballooning costs of keeping petrol prices low in Africa's most populous nation are straining the budget and draining revenue from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp (NNPC).
In April, Nigeria's parliament approved a 4-trillion-naira petrol subsidy for this year after the government in January reversed a pledge to end its subsidies to avert protests in the run-up to presidential elections in February 2023.
NNPC has not submitted any money to the federal government this year due largely to subsidy costs. August's bill compared with 448.782 billion naira in July, according to a document NNPC submitted on Friday to the Federation Account Allocation Committee.
Part of the increased cost was down to a bigger daily supply of petrol, which rose to 71.8 million litres, up nearly 10% from July, according to information submitted at the same meeting by regulator Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority.
Oil production in August averaged 1.18 million barrels per day, well below the nation's OPEC quota of 1.8 million bpd, due in large part to theft from pipelines that has curtailed production.
By Camillus Eboh
Nigeria to Allow Savers to Dip Into Pension Funds for Mortgages
Nigeria enacted regulations allowing citizens to tap into their pension contributions to fund mortgages, as it looks for ways to help more people buy homes.
The National Pension Commission “approved the issuance and immediate implementation” of guidelines for retirement savings account holders to use a portion of their balance to pay for residential housing loans, it said in an emailed statement.
A pension holder must pay into the fund for at least five years to qualify, and can withdraw a maximum of 25% of the savings, it said.
Africa’s most populous nation, with more than 200 million people, Nigeria is trying to turn more of its citizens into homeowners. A report published by the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2019 found the nation had a deficit of about 20 million housing units, which would require 21 trillion naira ($48.2 billion) to finance.
Citizens have faced challenges accessing property finance as most funds available are short-term whereas mortgages require payments over a long period of time.
By Emele Onu
Bloomberg
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