Africa Business News

The Senate adopted a three per cent allocation to host communities in the Petroleum Industry Bill, despite protests by southern lawmakers at the National Assembly.
The southern lawmakers had demanded five per cent for host communities.
The number in dispute is the percentage of their total operating expenses oil companies are expected to contribute to a trust fund created for host communities.
Senator Sekibo said he is not part of the vote on the allocation clause and Senator Dickson said his privilege had been breached as his views were not accommodated.
Senate President Ahmad Lawan however says that the Senate had taken a resolution on the matter and could not go back on its decision.

The Nigerian Senate has approved the conditional electronic transmission of electoral results.
Senators voted publicly along party lines over section 52 of the electoral act amendment bill, which deals with electronic transmission of poll results.
28 Senators mostly from the PDP voted for the original amendment in the report while 52 Senators mostly from the APC voted for the amendment as proposed by Senator Sabi Abdullahi.
This means the majority of Senators voted that INEC may consider electronic transmission provided the national network coverage is adjudged to be adequate and secure by NCC and approved by the National Assembly.

The UN Human Rights Council called for those behind massive scale enforced disappearances in Syria over the past decade of conflict to be held accountable.
The resolution, presented by Britain and a number of European countries, along with the United States, Turkey and Qatar, decried that Syria’s crisis had entered a second decade marked by consistent patterns of gross violations.
Tuesday’s resolution, adopted with 26 of the council’s 47 members in favour, six opposed and 15 abstaining, voiced particular concern about the fate of tens of thousands of people who have vanished.
The text strongly condemns the continued use of involuntary or enforced disappearances in the Syrian Arab Republic, and related human rights violations and abuses, which have been carried out with consistency, in particular by the Syrian regime.
It also criticised enforced disappearances by other parties to the conflict, including the Islamic State group, but said the Syrian regime was the main perpetrator.

A cabinet minister has announced that Algeria is set to start producing coronavirus jabs from September.
Lotfi Benbahmed told National Radio Algeria that in addition to the Russian vaccine Sputnik, they will be producing the Chinese Sinovac as well.
He says Chinese technicians would arrive in Algeria by the end of the month to prepare the arrival of raw materials and the production of the vaccines would start in September.
He says the state-owned pharmaceutical company Saidal will be producing 2.5 million doses of both vaccines a month adding that locally made vaccines would be 45% cheaper than imports and 90% cheaper once the raw materials were produced in Algeria.

East African neighbours Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo have announced a joint plan to combat armed groups and foster economic growth.
The presidents of both nations signed a series of agreements in Kinshasa on security and also infrastructure - with plans for a railway to connect the nation's major cities and boost trade.
No cost and deadline were made public for the projects but a joint commission of experts who will oversee its progress was announced.

The African Union Commission has condemned the violence in South Africa that has left 72 people dead.
Protests against the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma morphed into looting and destruction of property in some provinces.
The commission in a statement says the AU Commission Chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat, condemns in the strongest terms the surge of violence that has resulted in the deaths of civilians and appalling scenes of the looting of public and private property.
He says failure to resolve the crisis would have grave impacts on the country and the region.

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, expressed the determination of the commission to deepen democracy through the use of technology.
He also put the number of Nigerians who have completed online voters’ pre-registration at 542,576.
He spoke against the backdrop of the clamour for the inclusion of electronic transmission of election results in the 2010 Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021, amidst efforts by the leadership of the National Assembly to delete the provision from the bill.
Yakubu said the voters’ register remained at the heart of any credible election.
He says the first quarter of the physical registration would commence between June 28 and September 30, while the second quarter of the exercise will start October 4 to December 30.

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele, says the N15 trillion Infrastructure Company Limited created by the federal government to bridge the nation’s huge infrastructure gap is to take off in the third quarter of the year.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says that although the government’s economic reforms had paid off in telecommunications, pension and maritime sectors, the current administration was making efforts to address the challenges in the power sector privatisation.
Emefiele says the federal government had approved KPMG as the financial adviser to InfraCo, adding that the firm is expected to commence operations in the third quarter of 2021.
He stated that for Nigeria to attain meaningful growth, there must be huge investments in key sectors of the economy, including infrastructure such as rail and power, among others.

The Senate has passed the National Electoral Offences Commission Bill which if assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari, will be charged with investigating electoral offences and prosecuting electoral offenders.
The bill will ensure that the National Electoral Offences Commission, shall have the power to appoint and maintain investigators, prosecutors and experts to prosecute electoral offenders.
The Chairman of the Committee on INEC, Senator Kabiru Gaya says the creation of the commission is critical because the Independent National Electoral Commission clearly lacks the needed human capacity to prosecute electoral offences committed across Nigeria’s 119,973 polling units.

The Senate has rejected the nomination of Lauretta Onochie as an Independent National Electoral Commission National Commissioner.
The chairman of the committee on INEC, Senator Kabiru Gaya, says Onochie’s nomination was rejected because there is a serving INEC commissioner representing Delta state.
The rejection also followed the massive outcry that has trailed her nomination, especially from members of the opposition and civil society organisations who claim she is a card-carrying member of the ruling All Progressives Congress Former INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, says any person who generated such a controversy, the appointing authorities should be careful because it can lead to a loss of trust of the electoral management body.