…As Lassa Fever Records 156 Deaths, 43 Cases of Monkey Pox Confirmed, 9 States Affected—Health Minister
Williams Anuku Abuja
As the Federal Government initiate moves to recover funds it loaned out to states, under its bailout programme, members of the Nigerian Governors Forum have rejected the repayment structure of deducting N162million monthly over a 30 year period.
A total of N614billion was loaned out from the federation account to indebted states at the onset of the current administration, under the supervision of the former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, being the lending institution on behalf of the federal government had initially settled for N252million monthly deductions from the indebted states allocations over a period of 20 years.
But the governors arising from their meeting in Abuja on Tuesday, said the plan does not go down well with them.
According to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zanaib Ahmed, the governors are demanding for a review of the repayment plan, even though deductions for the month of September and October this year has already been made.
“The Federal Government has made the first and second months, N252 million monthly deductions for September and October, based on the twenty years repayment period.
“Following the outcry of state governors, another repayment schedule plan extending the year to thirty years and monthly repayment of N162 million was presented to NEC on Tuesday.
“However, the state governors were still not satisfied with the repayment extension to thirty years.
“The budget support facility was initially for twenty years repayment period. And when we made the first deduction in September, the states had complained that the amount deducted, which was N252 million, was too harsh.
“So, since then, the Central Bank of Nigeria, who is the lender, has revised the condition to make the repayment period longer. And so the new repayment period is thirty years. And this means that the states will be paying monthly N162 million. But again today, the states still were not satisfied with the condition.
“So, we are expecting that the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, CBN and the states will engage again with the view of having the CBN further revise the condition to reduce the monthly repayment burden, “she stated.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire presented a status report of diseases taking its toll on Nigerians.
According to contemporary report detailing the prevalence of diseases in the country, as released by the Centre for Disease Control, Lassa Fever in Nigeria in 2019 recorded 739 confirmed cases, 156 deaths and 23 States affected.
In another development, cases of confirmed yellow fever stood at 86 with 10 deaths recorded and 17 states affected so far.
The most recent monkey pox has recorded 43 confirmed cases, although no death has been recorded, 9 states are currently affected.
For meningitis and measles 122 cases have been confirmed in the country with 101 deaths, and 18 states affected.
In total, there are 2,150 confirmed cases, 275 deaths and 36 States affected respectively.
According to Ehanire, States have responsibility for health, including preparedness for and response to disease outbreaks within their boundaries.
On polio and update on routine immunization, he said Nigeria was steadily progressing towards polio certification by June 2020.
He added that the country has not had a case of wide polio virus for the past three years, stressing that there was still work to be done to sustain the current gains and stop the transmission of circulating Vaccine Derived Polio Viruses (cVDPV2).
