The Federal Government, on Wednesday, in Abuja, approved the sum of N16.77bn as reimbursement to the Borno State Government for the out-of-pocket sums invested in the construction of federal roads.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, disclosed this after this week’s Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House, Abuja.
Akande who did not give assurances of when the monies will be disbursed to the North-Eastern state said the memo was put forward by the President himself.
However, the disbursement will only follow a debt sustainability analysis to be carried out by the Debt Management Office.
He said, “The council approved the president’s memo for the reimbursement of funds expended by the state government for federal projects and its total sum of N16.77bn which will be processed after a debt sustainability analysis has been carried out by the debt management office leading to the issuance of debt instruments and a promissory note of the same value to be approved by the National Assembly.”
On his part, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Olorunimbe Mamora, revealed that the council approved an action plan for the deployment of technology to fight climate change.
He said, “The memo brought before the council this morning by our Ministry has to do with the National technological action plan for climate change mitigation and adaptation in Nigeria’s most vulnerable sectors.
“Of course, we all know climate change is a global issue and the entire global community is worried. It’s becoming necessary for nations to start taking actions particularly geared towards mitigation and adaptation. To achieve this, you have to leverage technology. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you will need technology and that’s why we’re talking about renewable energy this time around.”
Mamora lamented that Nigeria’s technology required an upgrade to meet up with global adaptation standards.
“So one of the very first things that we had to do in our situation was to set up a committee that we look into our technology.
“Our technology needs to meet up with those processes to achieve mitigation and adaptation.
“And that’s exactly what we did. We now have a plan of action in place, which we presented to the Council this morning and was approved,” he explained.