Journalists were on Tuesday denied access to cover the induction programme for returning and newly-elected state governors.
Save for the Nigerian Television Authority crew, security agents barred representatives of other media houses from accessing the venue, the Old Banquet Hall, within the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Reporters duly accredited to cover the Nigeria Governors Forum as their beat, were also denied access to the venue on Tuesday.
The two-day event had started on Monday with Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo representing President Muhammadu Buhari.
Osinbajo, while addressing the attendees, had asked them to rack their brains on how to source funds to tackle the myriads of financial challenges confronting the states, especially how to pay the new minimum wage of N30,000.
He had called on them to raise their Internally Generated Revenue as an option, in addition to using technology to open up the economic space for the teeming youths in the states.
However, it was the warning by the Chairman of the NGF and outgoing Governor of Zamfara State, Mr Abdulaziz Yari, that Nigeria could slide into recession again between 2020 and 2021, that jolted the newly-elected governors and other attendees.
Yari had noted that the governors’ take-off on May 29 might not be smooth unless the new governors quickly learnt how to manage state resources prudently.
“On our part, we made a lot of achievements in infrastructural development and provision of social services because we enjoyed a relatively high oil price of between $100 and $114 per barrel between 2001 and the middle of 2014.
“However, by the mid-2014, the price of crude oil, which is sadly the main driving force of government’s expenditure, dropped to $75 per barrel. It, therefore, became very difficult for many states to even pay salaries of their workers.
“This scenario is a wake-up call for all of you to come amply prepared to face these kinds of challenges, especially since we are expecting the possibility of another cycle of recession by mid-2020 and which may last up to third quarter of 2021.
The news report on the Yari warning, which made the covers of many national newspapers on Tuesday (yesterday), was reportedly not taken kindly by the governors.
Security agents, apparently reading their body language, reacted by denying journalists access to the venue on Tuesday, claiming that the NGF gave the directive to stop the reporters.
However, the NGF’s spokesman, Abdulrazaq Barkindo, said the forum did not ask the security agents to bar journalists.
He claimed that the security agents must have acted alone.
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