Transportation, Economy, Health dominate news (Video)

The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has called for support of the United Nations and other stakeholders to enable stringent punishment for road offenders in the country.

Amaechi made the call when a delegation of the United Nations Decade of Action on Road Safety and Traffic Injury Prevention Nigeria paid him a visit in Abuja.

According to him, if there are stiffer punishments like going to jail for offenders of the law, then road users, especially politicians, will obey the traffic laws.

The minister urged the UN to start its advocacy from the State parliament, judiciary and the police for enforcement as this would limit the freedom of road users and instill discipline.

“The problem of road safety in Africa, not only in Nigeria, is basically the problem of consequences for action; if every human being can discipline himself or herself, then there won’t be need for parliament.

“The reason there is a parliament is because they have to direct how the society should be governed; the judiciary and police are there for the consequences of disobeying that law.

“So, if you are doing advocacy, don’t tell people not to drink and drive, tell them the consequences of drinking and driving; if they know they will spend two months in prison, they will not drink and drive.

“Go to the state, get the parliaments to pass more stringent laws, especially if the consequences include going to jail, no politician will want to go to jail; when you finish with the parliament go to the police to enforce.

“Nigerians are not very organised, which is not associated with our population; China, whose population is higher than Nigeria is more organised in obeying traffic regulation,’’ Amaechi said.

Speaking earlier, Dr Sydney Ibeanusi, Country Director, United Nations Decade of Action on Road Safety and Traffic Injury Prevention Nigeria, said the forum was collaborating with government and relevant authorities to ensure that traffic rules and regulations are obeyed.

“The United Nations Decade of Action on Road Safety and Traffic Injury Prevention Nigeria is a multi-sectorial stakeholders’ forum involving all the key relevant stakeholders in road safety issues.

“Injury prevention, which is the mandate of the United Nations, was signed by various countries including Nigeria in 2010 and it was launched in the country in 2011; it has been running since then.

“The mandate is to spread advocacy on road safety and injury prevention; a lot of work needs to be done to put road safety in everyone’s consciousness.

Revenue

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Udoma Udo Udoma, has emphasised the need for the country to increase its revenue generation.

Udoma made the call at the Public Consultation on the 2019-2021 Medium Term Fiscal Framework and Strategy Forum on Thursday in Abuja.

He said it was important for the country to substantially concentrate on increasing its oil and non-oil revenues and reduce borrowing.

“We must look at ways of squeezing out the maximum we can get from oil because oil is a wasting asset; we need to get the money and use it to solve a lot of our problems.

“We need to invest in infrastructure, invest in human capacity development and, in all we need to build up our stock of capital.

“We also need to ensure that we build the non-oil sector.

“At the moment the revenues are, on average, up by about 30 per cent from last year but it is not where we want to be; we need to do much better, ” Udoma said.

The minister also stressed the need for the country to ensure increased revenue through tax collection.

He said: “Our ratio of taxes collected to our GDP is still very low.

“We need to look at how we can generate resources so that we rely less on debts, more on revenue and also build up the revenue so our debt service to revenue ratio will bring that down.

“We must increase our revenue; that has to be the priority, because when you have that revenue, it is possible to deliver the quality infrastructure that this country requires”.

According to Udoma, the medium term framework outlines the Federal Government’s strategies and macro-economic projections for 2019-2021, built on the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

He said it provided the broad framework for the annual budget in line with the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

He also said that the framework aimed to sustain growth, diversify the productive base of the economy and reflect the priorities and objectives of the ERGP.

He expressed optimism that the country would continue to experience growth with the continued implementation of the ERGP as well as the improved outlook for oil prices.

The minister said that oil production volume was projected at 2.3million barrels per day for 2019, with an exchange rate of N305.

He said the GDP growth rate for 2019 was projected at three per cent, 3.6 per cent for 2020 and 3.9 per cent for 2021.

On the overall revenue framework, he said: “Given the assumptions, we expect to generate about 3.6trillion share of oil revenue of about 500billion.

On expenditure, Udoma said that the framework had projected a reduced budget.

“We are looking at bringing down the size of the budget from N9.1trillion in 2018 to about N8.6trillion in 2019.

“Part of the reason is that we also want to reduce the level of borrowing; we want to reduce the deficit, so we are coming down in terms of the budget size.

“However, there are certain things which we decided are important that even with a smaller budget must be addressed.

“Many of them have to do with human capacity, human development, health, education and pension.

“We are not going to compromise in terms of responsibility of the state to the Nigerian people.

On overview of the deficit financing and critical ratios, the minister said: “We are reducing the new borrowings from 1.6trillion to 1.5trillion; basically, what we are doing is to reduce the size of the budget,” Udoma said.

Violation

A group of United Nations agencies has issued a joint statement calling for a ban on tests meant to assess the virginity of a girl or a woman.

The agencies, in the statement, issued during the World Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics in Rio de Janeiro, stressed that such tests were both unscientific and a violation of human rights.

The agencies are: the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), UN Women and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“So-called ‘virginity testing’ – also often referred to as hymen, ‘two-finger’ or per vaginal examination – is a gynaecological inspection of female genitalia carried out in the false belief that it can reliably determine whether a woman or girl has had vaginal intercourse,” the group said.

In a global call to eliminate violence against women and girls everywhere, the UN agencies said: “This medically unnecessary and, often times, painful, humiliating and traumatic practice must end”.

The practice is a long-standing tradition documented in at least 20 countries, spanning all regions of the world.

Women and girls are often forced to undergo virginity testing for various reasons, including requests from parents or potential partners to establish marriage eligibility or even from potential employers.

It is mostly performed by doctors, police officers, or community leaders on women and girls, to assess their virtue, honour or social value.

According to the UN agencies, the practice has “no scientific or clinical basis” and that “there is no examination that can prove a girl or woman has had sex”.

The agencies said that the “appearance of girl’s or woman’s hymen cannot prove whether they have had sexual intercourse or are sexually active or not”.

They denounced virginity testing as a violation of the rights of girls and women, which can be detrimental to their physical, psychological and social well-being.

The examination can be “painful, humiliating and traumatic” and reinforces stereotyped notions of female sexuality and gender inequality.

In some regions, it is common for health professionals to perform virginity testing on victims of rape, supposedly to ascertain whether or not rape occurred, they said.

“Given the lack of clinical basis, the procedure is deemed unnecessary and can cause pain and mimic the original act of sexual violence, exacerbating survivors’ sense of disempowerment and cause re-victimisation.

“The result of this unscientific test can impact upon judicial proceedings, often to the detriment of victims and in favour of perpetrators, sometimes resulting in perpetrators being acquitted.

“Given that these procedures are unnecessary and potentially harmful, it is unethical for doctors or other health providers to undertake them.

“Such procedures must never be carried out,” the agencies said while calling for collaborative response across societies, supported by the public health community and all health professionals.

Dr Princess Simelela, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Family, Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health, said: “Health professionals can be great agents for change”.

“With support from health systems and governments, they can recognise that ‘virginity testing’ has no medical or clinical bases, refuse to carry out the harmful practice and educate the public about this.’’

The WHO official also said that, in doing so, they would be “upholding the Hippocratic Oath of ‘do no harm’ and safeguarding the human rights of girls and women in their care”.

Population

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says the world’s population is set to grow by 2.2 billion between 2018 and 2050.

UNFPA, in its ‘State of World Population 2018’ survey released in Geneva, said more than half of that growth – 1.3 billion – is likely to be in sub-Saharan Africa.

According to UNFPA, there are 43 countries where women have more than four or more children and 38 of these are in Africa.

In all but five East African countries, fewer than half of all women surveyed said they would prefer not to have any more children.

According to UNFPA’s predictions, Africa’s share of the world population will grow from 17 per cent in 2017, to 26 per cent in 2050.

The report indicates that fertility rates are “significantly lower” in cities than in rural areas on the African continent.

In Ethiopia, women have around 2.1 children in cities, whereas they have around five in the rest of the country.

The UN agency said in sub-Saharan Africa, women’s rights were hampered by limited access to healthcare and education, along with “entrenched gender discrimination”.

Director of UNFPA in Geneva, Monica Ferro, said that the trend globally was for smaller families, indicating that more people were making choices about exactly how many children they wanted or could raise.

“No matter if it is a high fertility-rate country or low fertility-rate country; in both of them, you will find individuals and couples who say they don’t have the number of children they want.

“They either have too many or too few,” the UNFPA official said.

Underlining the link between conflict and insecurity with bigger families, the UNFPA data also shows that Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Timor-Leste and Yemen have higher fertility rates than the overall average of 2.5 children per woman.

“In developing countries, 671 million women have chosen to use modern contraception.

“But at the same time, we know that 250 million in the developing world want to control their fertility and lack access to modern contraceptive methods,” Ferro said.

She said in the nearly 25 years since the landmark International Conference on Population and Development was endorsed by 179 Governments, people’s reproductive rights had “substantially improved around the world”.

She noted that States agreed then that it was important for couples and individuals to decide the number, spacing and timing of their children and that such decision were made free from discrimination, coercion or violence.

“Every year, 300,000 women die during pregnancy or childbirth because they have no choices in maternal healthcare.

“Every day, thousands of girls are forced into child and early marriage and are victims of female genital mutilation; they have no choices,” the UNFPA official said. (NAN)