ALL THE RELEVANT NEWS: THURSDAY

24 Nov ALL THE RELEVANT NEWS: THURSDAY

🌍Highlights of FEC Meeting:
The weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) held on Wednesday, presided over by President Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
* AGF, Abubakar Malami, told state house correspondents after the meeting that $1 billion in looted funds have been recovered so far by the administration. He said the recovered funds have been deployed to various sectors of the economy, including poverty alleviation, while over 3,000 convictions have been recorded.
Other highlights of the meeting include:
*Approval for a new anti-corruption strategy document to strengthen the anti-graft fight in the country.
*Approval of N14.09 billion as augmentation of the contract sum for the construction of a road in Kano state. With this, the budget for the road project was raised from N22 billion to N36.89 billion

🌍President Buhari, will later today attend an African Union (AU) summit scheduled to hold in Niger Republic. He returns on Friday.

🌍FG, States, LGs share N736.78 bn revenue in October as Excess Crude Account rises to $472,513

🌍VP Osinbajo stated on Wednesday during a meeting with senior administration officials and researchers at Carleton University, Ottawa that by deepening educational cooperation and facilitating collaboration in critical areas such as entrepreneurship, innovation and technology, more opportunities are created to find solutions to the social issues and challenges in the world.

🌍Oil prices declined on Thursday, hovering around two-month lows, as the Group of Seven nations’ proposed range for a price cap on Russian oil was higher than current trading levels, alleviating concerns over tight supply. Brent crude futures dipped 50 cents, or 0.6%, to $84.91 a barrel by 0702 GMT

🌍The Federal Government, through the Debt Management Office (DMO), raised N3.3 trillion from the domestic market to finance the 2022 budget deficit.

🌍The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in Abuja yesterday unveiled a Beneficial Ownership Register (BOR) platform for companies in a bid to improve transparency.

🌍President Buhari has nominated Lauretta Onochie as the substantive chairman of the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDC); also an administrator from Bayelsa State, Samuel Ogbuku, as the substantive Managing Director of the NDDC, while appointing 15 other nominees as members of the board.

🌍The Minister of Communications, Isa Pantami, has secured N16.7 billion from the Federal Executive Council to provide broadband access for 20 markets and 18 schools in the six geopolitical zones of the country.

🌍2023 Politics: Labour Party has condemned the grounding of its campaign aircraft by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), a situation it said almost disrupted its scheduled campaign rally in Ibadan on Wednesday.

🌍Security Stories: Suspected terrorists have abducted four persons consisting a man, woman and two children, in Kolo village, in the Gusau Local Government Area of Zamfara State, demanding N10m ransom and rejected the old naira notes.
* The Edo State Police Command operatives said they rescued 17 kidnapped victims who were abducted along Benin/Lagos Expressway on Sunday. They, however, said three of the victims were still in the kidnappers’ den, adding that efforts were ongoing to rescue them and arrest the hoodlums.
* Armed men Tuesday night invaded Wumat village of Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State, killed eight people and injured some others.

🌍Russia-Ukraine War: A series of strikes has knocked out electricity supplies to large parts of Ukraine, including Lviv, Odessa and Kyiv. More than half of neighbouring Moldova is without electricity as well.
* Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy network for weeks, damaging almost half of it. Yesterday’s missile strikes have also killed at least three people in Kyiv
*An earlier strike in the southern Zaporizhzhia region left a newborn baby dead

🌍Global Briefs: Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in as prime minister of Malaysia on Thursday, capping a three-decade political journey from a protege of veteran leader Mahathir Mohamad to protest leader, a prisoner convicted of sodomy and opposition leader. His appointment ends five days of unprecedented post-election crisis, but could usher in a new instability with his rival, former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin, challenging him to prove his majority in parliament.