Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, has disowned the N206 billion inserted into the ministry’s 2023 budget estimates. Farouq, at a budget defence session with the Senate Committee on Special Duties on Monday, said her ministry was surprised that the fund, meant to implement projects for the North East Development Commission (NEDC), was inserted in the budget after a similar request in 2022 was not released. A member of the committee, Elisha Abbo, had asked Farouq about N206 billion in the budget that the ministry intended to borrow. He said, “In 2023, you intend…

Rescuers on Tuesday struggled to find more bodies from the rubble of homes and buildings toppled by an earthquake that killed at least 162 people and injured hundreds on Indonesia’s main island of Java. More heavy equipment reached the hardest-hit city of Cianjur in the country’s most densely populated province of West Java, where the magnitude 5.6 land-based quake struck Monday afternoon. Terrified residents fled into the street, some covered in blood and debris. Damaged roads and bridges, power blackouts and lack of heavy equipment previously hampered Indonesia’s rescuers after the quake set off a landslide that blocked streets and…

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE Ukraine urged residents of Kyiv and several other areas to limit electricity use as it seeks to recover from Russian strikes on the power grid while the elderly and vulnerable were preparing for a voluntary evacuation of war-ravaged Kherson. LIFE IN UKRAINE * Ukrainians are most likely to live with blackouts at least until the end of March, the head of a major energy provider said. * As they head into a cold winter, residents of a bombed-out Ukrainian village say they appreciate a warm bath in a mural painted by graffiti artist Banksy. The mural shows a…

Barely six months to the end of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, the Federal Government’s total debts and other financial liabilities have reached N71.46 trillion. The figure does not include undocumented contingent liabilities to university lecturers, public school teachers and other public employees to whom government is indebted. Analysts say these undocumented liabilities could run into several trillions. The figures also exclude other pending financial liabilities to non-lending bilateral and multilateral institutions. These include regional and global institutions the country subscribes to as a member. While the traditional debt stock of the central government has ballooned from less than N10 trillion…