By Prince Charles Dickson PhD

In June the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network published its Sustainable Development Report 2023, which tracks the progress of the 193 member states towards attaining the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ‘From 2015 to 2019’, the network wrote, ‘the world made some progress on the SDGs, although this was already vastly insufficient to achieve the goals.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 and other simultaneous crises, SDG progress has stalled globally’. This development agenda was adopted in 2015, with targets intended to be met by 2030. However, halfway to this deadline, the report noted that ‘all of the SDGs are seriously off track’.

Why are the UN member states unable to meet their SDG commitments? ‘At their core’, the network said, ‘the SDGs are an investment agenda: it is critical that UN member states adopt and implement the SDG stimulus and support a comprehensive reform of the global financial architecture’.

However, few states have met their financial obligations. Indeed, to realise the SDG agenda, the poorer nations would require at least an additional $4 trillion in investment per year.

No development is possible these days, as most of the poorer nations are in the grip of a permanent debt crisis. That is why the Sustainable Development Report 2023 calls for a revision of the credit rating system, which paralyses the ability of countries to borrow money (and when they are able to borrow, it is at rates significantly higher than those given to richer countries).

Furthermore, the report calls on the banking system to revise liquidity structures for poorer countries, ‘especially regarding sovereign debt, to forestall self-fulfilling banking and balance-of-payments crises.

It is essential to place the sovereign debt crisis at the top of discussions on development. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that ‘the public debt of developing countries, excluding China, reached $11.5 trillion in 2021’.

That same year, developing countries paid $400 billion to service their debt – more than twice the amount of official development aid they received. Most countries are not borrowing money to invest in their populations, but to pay off the bondholders, which is why we consider this not financing for development but financing for debt-servicing.

Reading the UN and academic literature on development is depressing. The conversation is trapped by the strictures of the intractable and permanent debt crisis.

Whether the issue of debt is highlighted or ignored, its existence forecloses the possibility of any genuine advance for the world’s peoples.

Conclusions of reports often end with a moral call – this is what should happen – rather than an assessment of the situation based on the facts of the neo-colonial structure of the world economy: developing countries, with rich holdings of resources, are unable to earn just prices for their exports, which means that they do not accumulate sufficient wealth to industrialise with their own population’s well-being in mind, nor can they finance the social goods required for their population.

Due to this suffocation from debt, and due to the impoverishment of academic development theory, no effective general theoretical orientation has been provided to guide realistic and holistic development agendas, and no outlines seem readily available for an exit from the permanent debt-austerity cycle.

I have quoted copiously from my friends at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, where they are eager to open a discussion about the need for a new socialist development theory – one that is built from the projects being pursued by peoples’ movements and progressive governments.

In the outgone week, the House of Representatives approved the N500 billion requested by Mr. Tinubu for the provision of palliatives to mitigate the impact of petroleum subsidy removal on Nigerians, amending the 2022 Supplementary Appropriations Act as requested by the president.

Mr Tinubu had in a letter asked the National Assembly to amend the 2022 Supplementary Appropriations Act by extracting N500 billion to provide palliatives.

The lower chamber considered the amendment bill and passed it. Meanwhile, the President said 12m families will get N8, 000 over a period of six months to ameliorate the hardships faced by Nigerians as a result of subsidy removal.

According to a letter to the House of Representatives read by Speaker Tajudeen Abbas during plenary on Tuesday, Tinubu said it was to enable poor and vulnerable Nigerians cope with the cost of meeting basic needs.

The letter was for approval of additional financing for the national social safety net programme scaled up by the National Assembly. The President said this would have a multiplier effect on about 60 million individuals.

I should have done this first but it is never late, let me first issue a caveat, I am not a finance expert, an economist, or auditor, I am not a banker, I have not held the post of cashier, or treasurer. My mathematics is poor, but I know one plus one is equal to two.

I also know money magic when I see one…however, in the light of all the economic jargon above I say with a sense of full respect for the office of Mr. President of Nigeria that the current route being taken would not work, we have gone that way before but met with a jam lock, we have gone there before and discovered it was a scam, we have passed that route and it leads nowhere.

I won’t go into explaining how such a humongous sum could be better utilized or how it could solve transportation problems for example or the logic of subsidy removal and borrowing again, the World Bank and their policies, I won’t go into the debate of the merits and disadvantages. I won’t risk sounding pedestrian, but I will end with this short story.

It’s a slow day in little Tensleep, Wyoming. The sun is beating down, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit…

On this particular day a rich tourist from back east is driving through town. He stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her “services” on credit. The hooker (prostitute) rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism. This is voodoo economics, don’t ask how it works, if it works, when it will work, who it works for, no one earned anything, it’s just from here to here, , like it is said in common place what do we know—May Nigeria win!

(OYO NEWS)

By Paul Ashibel

FilmsTobacco Smoking: It’s Time To Stop The Initiation Ceremony are a preferred source of entertainment and learning for many, and audiences are often quick to mirror in their daily lives what they have seen on screen.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control which Nigeria ratified on October 20, 2005, requires parties to implement a comprehensive ban on Tobacco Advertising, Promotion and Sponsorship (TAPS) in the spirit and letter of Article 13 of the treaty. And in 2015, Nigeria enacted her National Tobacco Control Act (NTC Act, 2015) with provisions banning tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship in any way, shape, or form.

However, regardless of how comprehensive and carefully crafted a law is, the power of any law is in its enforcement, and without action, laws are really only words on paper. The jaundiced state of enforcement in Nigeria has popularised the opinion that Nigeria’s policy challenge does not lie in the lack of laws; rather, it lies in the lack of will to execute the laws.

TAPS is strongly frowned upon by Nigeria’s tobacco control laws, especially in relation to smoking in movies. Even in the light of the NTC Act posturing, tobacco glamourisation on screen has been on the rise.

The Nigerian movie industry also known as Nollywood is an entertainment giant feeding audiences in Nigeria and around the world. The industry is thus highly regarded and plays a fair role in shaping popular culture. The power to influence thoughts and actions has opened the industry to diverse interests, and the tobacco industry exploits this by encouraging the depiction of smoking in movies – a subtle marketing art to initiate young and impressionable Nigerians into smoking.

Video streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Showmax have exacerbated the problem by listing movies with heavy tobacco glamourisation and violating local tobacco control laws. Beyond advertising conventional cigarettes, the videos on these streaming sites are introducing young people to several new tobacco products including smokeless tobacco, vapes and shisha.

The signs continue to suggest that the meteoric rise in the use of shisha in the country is not unconnected to the on-screen portrayal of the health wrecking habit as trendy and cool.

A generation of young people who consume these videos delivered to their TV screens and conveniently to their mobile phones on-the-go, unknown to them are conditioned and shuffled down an initiation pipe – with suggestions and subtle cues nudging them to adopt tobacco use in diverse forms.

This conditioning has become alarmingly high, and it is now pertinent that the Federal Government, through the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) and National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), should stop the unholy initiation ceremony targeted at the youth by enforcing the ban on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship on screen and other platforms that are used to engage them.

Environs News Nigeria

BREAKDOWN OF THE STUDENT’S LOAN

President Tinubu signed the students’ loan bill into law which seeks to provide financial solution to Nigerian Students for the purpose of Tertiary Education.

Here are few things you need to know about the bill;

PURPOSE OF THE LOAN

The loan can be accessed for the purpose of paying school fees, accommodation, textbooks, research, education materials or any other purpose that’s justified by the institutions. The amount will differ from student to student and department to department. Technical Courses will require more funding than Non-technical.

ELIGIBILITY
Students applying for the loan must;
1. Have secured an admission into any Tertiary Institution (Federal or State Universities, Polytechnics, Collages of Education or any other Tertiary Institutions)
2. Come from a family with an annual income of less than N500,000.
3. Provide at least 2 guarantors (Civil Servant above Level 12 or Lawyer with at least 10 years post-call experience)

DISQUALIFICATION
Students are disqualified from applying if;
1. They have defaulted in any loan before (go to your banks and check your credit history ooh before you come online and be insulting government on top of loan you refused to pay from Kuda, Palmpay or NIRSAL)
2. They have proven case of exam malpractice
3. They have ever been convicted for any offense of dishonesty or fraud (yahoo boys una weldon ooh)
4. They have ever been convicted of drug abuse
5. Their parents defaulted on any loan before (ask your parents to also check their credit history)

METHOD OF APPLICATION
Applications will be submitted to the Students Affairs Offices of the respective institutions alongside relevant documents and qualified applications will be forwarded officially by the institution to the Chairman of the Education Bank in their territory.

WHAT IS EDUCATION BANK AGAIN?

The Student Loan Bill will also establish an Education Bank with the purpose of facilitating the mobilization of funds to provide the students loan and also ensure constant supply of the loans to Nigerians for better Tertiary Education in Nigeria. The Bank will start with a share capital of N1billion at N1/share with FG holding 100% of the shares.

SOURCE OF FUNDS FOR THE BANK
The bill also establishs a Fund called “Students Loan Fund” which will serve as the fund in the bank to be accessible by students. All monies or any contributions to the fund will be managed by the education bank. The fund will get supply from the following sources;

1. Education Bonds
2. All interests arising from deposits of the bank
3. Education endowment fund schems
4. 1% of taxes, levels and duties to FG through FIRS, NIS and Customs.
5. 1% of profits from Oil and Other Natural Resources.
6. Grants, Gifts, and any other endowments.

By the signing of the bill today, legally all profits and taxes due to the fund under the bill will start counting.

DISBURSEMENT AND REPAYMENT

The Loan application will be forwarded to the Minister of Education for approval within 30 days of submission to the Bank. And disbursement will be made immediately after Minister’s approval.

The loan repayment will start 2 years after NYSC. Payments will be 10% direct deductions from beneficiaries salary account. If for example you are working with INGAWA Nig Limited and your salary is N100k. Then Ingawa Nigeria Limited will be deducting N10k and remit same on your behalf to the Education Bank being repayment for your loan.

Self employed gradautes will have only 60 days to document their income for deductions. They will also remit 10% of their monthly profits or face penalty.

The bill did not provide assumption of not getting a job or self employment after 2 years when we have graduates of 5-10years without jobs. Even though thats a way of pushing them to be self employed and produce for the nation.

DEFAULTERS

Whoever benefits and refuses to pay back for his younger ones to benefit is liable to 2 years imprisonment or a fine of N500,000.