The Nigerian Senate has announced its approval of a loan valued at €995 million from the Brazilian Development Bank and Deutsche Bank for the development of Nigeria’s agriculture value chain.

This was disclosed by the federal government on Wednesday evening after the Senate approved the loan, stating that the Green Imperative Scheme would train 100,000 new extension workers, create about 5 million jobs, and positively impact over 35 million Nigerians in a 5-10 year period.

The federal government said, “Today, the Nigerian Senate, approved the President’s request for approval of €995 million in loans from the Export-Import Bank of Brazil (BNDES) & Deutsche Bank of Germany (and guaranteed by the Islamic Development Bank) for the Green Imperative Agricultural Mechanisation program.

The Loan will fund 632 privately-operated primary production (mechanisation) service centres and 142 Agro-processing (value addition) service centres across Nigeria’s 774 LGAs, and reactivate 6 privately-owned partially-operational or moribund tractor assembly plants nationwide.”

The federal government added that the service centres built with the loans would be used to cover crop and livestock commodities prioritized towards food security and trade.

What you should know 

Nairametrics reported in February 2021 that the Federal Government had signed a fresh $1.2 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Development Bank of Brazil for agriculture modernization in Nigeria.

The credit facility is called “the Green Imperative Project (GIP)” and will last for a period of 15 years.

The Governors’ Forum, Conference of Speakers of State Legislature and other governance stakeholders announced that they reached a resolution over the implementation of financial autonomy for State Legislature and Judiciary.

This was disclosed by the Ekiti State Governor and Chairman Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Kayode Fayemi, after the meeting, which was held in Abuja on Monday, and presided by the Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari.

What the Governor said

“We are here for legislative and judicial autonomy and Governors; Speakers of State Assemblies and the Judges of the States are on the same page as far as this issue is concerned,” he said.

We just emerged from a meeting with the Solicitor General of the Federation, the representatives of the judiciary and those of the Conference of Speakers and we are all in force; an agreement has been reached.

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The issue is about implementation. There has been no objection from governors on judicial and legislative autonomy.

As a matter of fact, it would not have passed if governors were not in support in the first instance. So, that issue has been fully and holistically addressed,” Fayemi said.

The Governor also said that the final document of the agreement should be ready for implementation by May 2021 and urged striking workers  to return  to offices “because as far as this has gone, we have met with all the parties concerned and the President, through his Chief of Staff, has been monitoring what has been happening.”

What you should know

Nairametrics reported earlier this month that members of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) went on strike with the closure of Federal High Courts in different states across the nation. The union said the purpose of the strike was to draw attention to the financial autonomy of Nigeria’s Judiciary.