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Rivers: NDE empowers beneficiaries with equipment, starter-packs, cash
Barth Ndubuwah, Port Harcourt
The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has given equipment, starter packs and cash to 32 beneficiaries of their recent vocational skills acquisition training programme in Port Harcourt,the Rivers State capital.
The beneficiaries comprising 12 on School On Wheel (SOW) and 20 on Community Base Training Scheme (CBTS) were presented with equipment, starter packs and cash by the Director General (DG) of NDE, Mallam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo.
Represented by the Rivers State Coordinator of NDE, Mrs Maureen Okeji, the DG while presenting the packages to the beneficiaries told them to count themselves lucky to have been selected for such gesture. Mallam Fikpo urged the beneficiaries to ensure that they repay their loans promptly to enable others benefit from the Federal Government’s gesture.
“We are here for resettlement programme. I can recall some of your faces in the last vocational training. NDE deems it necessary to empower you,so that the skills gotten from the training will not be a waste. I urge you therefore to effectively utilize the equipment to your benefit and by also training others to be self-sufficient.
“The empowerment is a loan package, so it must be repayed promptly, for others to also benefit from the gesture. NDE will also equip you with starter-packs to effectively start your business. The equipment must not be sold,it has to be used for the purpose it was meant for,”the DG stressed.
Mrs Okeji reminded the beneficiaries that anything done today will be reported back to the NDE headquarters.
In her remarks at the event, the Head of Department, Vocational Skills Department (VSD), Birayesieghe George said the beneficiaries were the lucky ones to have been selected from the lot.
She urged them to go and promptly establish their businesses. George appealed to the beneficiaries to always pay the instalments of their loan as at when due.
“You are the lucky ones from the lot that were selected. Go and establish your business and please pay your loan instalments as at when due. It is important that you pay back,so that others can get the loan,” she said.
In his goodwill message,the Paramount Ruler of Rumunduru Community, in Obio/Akpor Local Governnment Area of Rivers State, Eze David Chukumati thanked NDE Management for the kind gesture to the beneficiaries.
The Royal Father expressed happiness for the success of the programme and tasked the beneficiaries to take advantage of the training to improve their lives.
In her response shortly after receiving her package,one of the beneficiaries who spoke on behalf of others, Madam Goodness Ogbonda thanked the Management of NDE for the opportunity given them to acquire the training. She assured that they will not let the Directorate, their families and Rivers State at large down.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, and Nigeria Guild of Editors, NGE, have called on Nigerian authorities at all levels of government to stop using repressive and anti-media laws to target, intimidate and harass journalists, critics and media houses.
The groups made the demand after an interactive session on ‘the state of press freedom in Nigeria’ held at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Ikeja.
In a joint statement, SERAP and NGE said that, “the government of President Bola Tinubu, the country’s 36 governors and FCT minister must now genuinely uphold press freedom, ensure access to information to all Nigerians, obey court judgments, and respect the rule of law”.
They expressed concerns about the escalating crackdown on the right to freedom of expression and media freedom and the flagrant disregard for the rule of law by authorities at all levels of government.
The groups note that the suppression of the press in recent times takes various forms ranging from extrajudicial to unlawful detentions, disappearances, malicious prosecutions and wrongful use of both legislation and law enforcement.
The statement read in part: “We would continue to speak truth to power and to hold authorities to account for their constitutional and international obligations including on freedom of expression and media freedom.
“Nigeria as a country has a long and unpleasant history of press gagging and clampdown on media freedom, which is evidence of extensive state censorship of media and in some cases, the utter control of state-owned media houses.
“This position has not changed considerably despite almost 25 years of unbroken democratic rule in the Fourth Republic.”
A Magistrate Court sitting in Wuse Zone 2, Abuja, on Friday, ordered the Federal Capital Territory Internal Revenue Service (FCT-IRS) to seal off a company, Ifedi A.K. Nigeria Ltd, over allegations bordering on non-filing of annual returns.
The Magistrate, Janada Balami, gave the order after lawyer to FCT-IRS, Michael Towolawi, moved the application to the effect.
Towolawi told the court that the company had failed to file its annual returns from 2019 to 2023 in breach of Section 81 of the Personal Income Tax Act, LFN, 2004, and amended in 2011.
He said all efforts to make the company comply with the law proved abortive.
The lawyer, therefore, applied that the company be compel to appear before the court to explain why it acted in breach of the law.
Balami, who held that the application by the agency against the company had merit, accordingly granted same to seal the No 6, Rudolph Close, Off Katsina-Ala Street, Maitama, Abuja.
She, consequently, ordered the company, the sole defendant in the matter, to appear before the court on May 16.
The Director, Legal Services of the FCT-IRS, Festus Tsavar, told journalists after the proceeding that the service would move against companies that do not file their annual returns as provided by law.
“You know that we have a new minister in FCT that is doing a lot of projects and that hinges on money.
“And of course, you are aware that FCT has come out of TSA.
“So it is the internally generated revenue that will make the government of FCT to be able to do those projects completely within required time,” he said.
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