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SEPTEMBER 13, 2012   BY EVEREST AMAEFULE AND IFEANYI ONUBa Punchng.com   Many Nigerians on Wednesday expressed worries as the Federal Government secured a fresh $1.1bn loan (about N176bn) from the China Export Import Bank for the financing of railway and airport projects. The facility was obtained on a concessionary interest rate of 2.5 per cent, repayable in 20 years with a grace period of seven years. The agreement for the loan was signed in China by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Managing Director, China Exim Bank, Mr. Sun Ping. Ministers of Aviation, Federal Capital Territory and Minister of State for Works, Ms Stella Oduah, Mr. Bala Mohammed and Ambassador Bashir Yuguda, were also in the Nigerian team, which worked on the final details of the agreement with officials of the bank in Beijing on Wednesday. Also present were the Director-General, Debt Management Office, Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, and Special Adviser to the President on Performa...

Muhammad film: Israeli director goes into hiding after protests Sam Bacile stands by his film, Innocence of Muslims, and describes Islam as 'a cancer' Associate Press  www.guardian.co.uk An Israeli film-maker based in California has gone into hiding after his film attacking the prophet Muhammad sparked angry   assaults by ultra-conservative Muslims on US missions in Egypt and Libya , claiming the life of one American. Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, the writer and director Sam Bacile remained defiant, describing   Islam   as "a cancer". The 56-year-old said he had intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the   religion . Protesters angered by Bacile's film on Tuesday opened fire on, and burned down, the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing a US diplomat. In   Egypt , protesters scaled the walls of the US embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner. "...

  Monica Mark   in Lagos guardian.co.uk ,   Monday 10 September 2012 19.01 BST   On her twice-yearly visits to London from   Nigeria , Victoria Appiah stocks up on everything she needs for the next six months. "I basically only do food shopping back home," she says, standing outside Marks & Spencer's flagship store in Marble Arch, central London. "It's not that you can't get these things in Lagos, but everything here is much more reasonably priced. "If you want cheap products, Chinese-made have taken over in Nigeria, and you can't always vouch for quality." Thousands of Nigerians agree. Visitors from the west African nation are the UK's fourth biggest foreign spenders, ringing up an average £500 in each shop where they make purchases – four times what the average UK shopper spends. Holidaying or visiting relatives abroad is increasingly open to millions of middle class Nigerians, with the number of visitors to the UK in...

By SaharaReporters, New York MTN and Airtel are reporting that their mobile phone masts are coming under attack from gunmen in northern Nigeria who may be trying to elude police trackers through their phones. A Reuters reporter said he saw 10 masts burned to the ground on Wednesday morning in the northern Nigerian cities of Kano and Maiduguri where Islamists are waging a low-level insurgency against the Goodluck Jonathan government. Destruction of the phone masts disrupted service for local residents on their mobiles. Similarly, in Kano, Nigeria's second largest city, men on motorbikes destroyed MTN and Airtel mobile phone masts in the early hours of Wednesday, a policeman told Reuters, asking not to be named. He said Boko Haram was suspected to be behind the attack. "We confirm that like all the other major telcos, some of MTN's installations in northern Nigeria have been damaged by unknown persons," spokeswoman Funmilayo Omogbenigun said. ...

Author of this article: By Bukky Olajide and Femi Adekoya Guardian newspaper, Nigeria As the controversy over the currency reform rages on, financial analysts who spoke with The Guardian agreed that the disadvantages of introducing N5000 note outweigh the real advantages, and wondered why the CBN decided to introduce such a high denomination currency, even when robust and productive economies maintain more compact currency denomination profile. EVERY country strives to hedge its currency against insider dealings and international pressures. However, the measures to achieve such hedge differ. Every policy analyst, even the most pedestrian knows too well that the planning and implementation of any fiscal or development policy, must be premised on short, medium and long-term strategies. Likewise, the yield or goals must be articulated and measured in the same vain. In Nigeria, however, it is often difficult to determine in whose interest public policies are designed. Th...

Iyabo Lawal, Ibadan Guardian Newspaper, Nigeria. GOVERNOR Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State has explained that the regional autonomy being clamoured for by the Yoruba nation is to strengthen the viability of the country along the lines of civilized, modern and multinational society. Although Aregbesola, at the Yoruba Assembly conference held in Ibadan, the political capital of the South West, restated the region’s ‘strong faith’ in the entity called Nigeria, he, however, opined that reform was imperative. “We are of the considered opinion that our country’s backward state presently does not stem from any inherent non-viability; the problem is the way we are running it. Therefore, we believes that we must make it work by reforming it. The time is ripe, the idea is right, and the principle is just for us, as a people, to set out our vision, as regards how we want to live our lives and what we want to do with our future. To address the multi-faceted problems confronting t...

Iyabo Lawal, Ibadan Guardian Newspaper, Nigeria. GOVERNOR Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State has explained that the regional autonomy being clamoured for by the Yoruba nation is to strengthen the viability of the country along the lines of civilized, modern and multinational society. Although Aregbesola, at the Yoruba Assembly conference held in Ibadan, the political capital of the South West, restated the region’s ‘strong faith’ in the entity called Nigeria, he, however, opined that reform was imperative. “We are of the considered opinion that our country’s backward state presently does not stem from any inherent non-viability; the problem is the way we are running it. Therefore, we believes that we must make it work by reforming it. The time is ripe, the idea is right, and the principle is just for us, as a people, to set out our vision, as regards how we want to live our lives and what we want to do with our future. To address the multi-faceted problems confronting t...