- Accelerates all-year-round farming of 118,657 hectares of wheat in 15 states
By Joel Okwara
Following an appeal by Mr Ediri Oyibo, Editor of online newspaper, TheNewsGuru.com (TNG), for stakeholders to rethink funding models for media organisations, the Federal Government has said media organisations in the country will now have access to single-digit interest loans through the Bank of Industry (BOI).
Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, made the position of the government known on Monday, May 27, at the Third Ministerial Sectoral Update at the National Press Centre in Abuja.
Mr Oyibo had, in a paper presented on the survival of newsrooms in Nigeria, at the Centre for Journalism, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, stressed the need for institutional support for media organisations in the country.
Citing the example of Google News Initiative (GNI) Journalism Emergency Relief Fund (JERF), the TNG Editor noted that quality journalism is capital-intensive, joining professionals and scholars in the media industry to call for the establishment of a National Media Development Fund in Nigeria.
Announcing the single-digit interest loans, Idris urged media houses to develop bankable proposals, to enable them benefit from the loans, which he said would be facilitated through the Ministry of Trade and Investment as well as the BOI.
The single-digit interest loan offered by the government to media firms in the country is coming at a time when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) jacked up interest rate from 24.75 per cent to 26.25 per cent.
In a related development, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, has said that an estimated 309bn has been injected into the Nigerian economy through harvest in the past one year.
Kyari made the announcement while giving an update on the achievements of the ministry, as part of activities marking the first anniversary of President Bola Tinubu.
He revealed that as part of efforts to address food and nutrition security, the government has launched the dry season farming with cultivation of 118,657 hectares of wheat in 15 states in acceleration of all-year round farming.
He also said the government has procured and distributed to all states and the Federal Capital Territory, 58,500 metric tones of milled rice to dampen escalating prices and the fortification of crops with vitamin A micronutrient, to enrich nutrition content and health value of commodities.
In response to persistent food inflation, the minister explained that the government has taken measures to distribute 60,432 metric tones of improved seeds, 887,255 metric tones of seedlings and 62,328 metric tones of inorganic fertilizers and equipment to farmers across different value chains, to enhance production.
