FG Urges French Investors to Tap Opportunities under ERGP
who spoke with THISDAY from Maiduguri on phone, said: “Yes, there was a suicide attack on a camp in Pulka on Monday, three persons died and seven other persons were injured.”
Bukar, who is the Secretary of the Hunters Association in Borno State, added: “Our fear is that, the insurgents would want to use the festive period to create problems in order to seek relevance therefore, people should be extra careful and support security personnel with information at all times.”
A military officer, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media, said the clusters of camps in Pulka and Gwoza have created a new security challenge.
He said: “We have clusters of camps spread across, all within Pulka town and this is due largely to the growing population of IDPs especially, those recently brought in from Cameroon.
“This has created a challenge both in terms of security surveillance and service delivery especially, as the town has no telecommunications network to ensure ease of monitoring and control.”
Attempts to get official confirmation from both National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and Borno State Emergency Management Agency (BOSEMA) were unsuccessful
Phone calls to both Abdulkadir Ibrahim (Information Officer, NEMA) and Engr. Ahmed Satomi (Chairman, BOSEMA) were not picked at the time of filing this report.
Pulka, is 16 kilometres from Gwoza town, 135 kilometres away from Maiduguri, Borno State capital, North-east
The attack came barely a day after Sunday’s attack where six soldiers lost their lives with a dozen others injured and heavy fighting equipment reportedly carted away when a military convoy was ambushed by suspected Boko Haram insurgents in Sandiya village, around Konduga town on the Damboa /Konduga border, which is 76 kilometres away from Pulka town in Borno State.
Pulka was liberated from the hands of Boko Haram insurgents by the military in early 2016 after been held for close to two years. Ndubuisi Francis The federal government has called on French investors to key into the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) as well as take advantage of the opportunities that the country currently presents to invest in Nigeria.
The Budget and National Planning Minister, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, who made the call when a delegation of French businessmen paid him a visit in Abuja, stated that Nigeria’s priority was to create a better environment for businesses to thrive, as the country is focused on expanding the productive base of the economy.
While receiving the delegation which was accompanied by the French Ambassador to Nigeria, Denys Gauer, the minister said the country was more than ever open for business.
He welcomed the increasing interest in Nigeria by both domestic and foreign investors and assured that the government was determined to continue with the various initiatives that are already improving the business climate as set out in the ERGP.
A statement released by Udoma’s Special Adviser (Media), Mr. Akpandem James, said the minister indicated that as a way to monitor the progress of government’s reforms a target of moving 20 places up was set in 2017 on the World Bank Ease-ofDoing-Business rankings.
However, he noted that in the World Bank’s latest rankings, released in October 2017, the country moved up 24 places, describing it as a remarkable achievement.
He added that Nigeria has also been recognised as one of the ten top reforming countries in the world.
The more than 30-man delegation, comprising investors in the oil and gas, energy, manufacturing, banking and logistics sectors, among others, is in Nigeria to explore possible areas of investment in the country.
The minister said there exist in Nigeria ample opportunities for investment particularly in agriculture, manufacturing, oil and gas, power, rail, mining and shipping among others.
He explained that the fall in crude oil price was a wake-up call for the diversification of the country’s economy which has historically relied, almost entirely, on crude oil for its foreign exchange earnings and government revenues.
The government’s response to this, he said, was the development of an ambitious four- year plan to dramatically turn around the economic direction of the country, adding that the ERGP is aimed at increasing the productivity of the Nigerian economy by encouraging private sector investment.
Earlier in his remarks, the leader of the French delegation, Movement des Enterprises de France (MEDEF), Philippe Lebonne, told the minister that MEDEF is the largest French business confederation and the largest employer of labour in France, with an estimated 750,000 firms, 90 per cent of which, he said, is made up of small and medium scale enterprises.