Nigeria Governors' Forum First Meeting for 2022

COMMUNIQUE ISSUED AT THE END OF THE 1ST MEETING OF THE NIGERIA GOVERNORS’ FORUM HELD ON WEDNESDAY, 19th January 2022.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

We, the members of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum at our first meeting of the year 2022, deliberated on several matters of national importance and concluded as follows:

THE ELECTORAL ACT

On the electoral act, Governors commended the Senate of the Federal Republic for accelerating the removal of the contentious clauses in the draft electoral bill and hope that the second chamber, the House of Representatives would also follow suit so that the revised electoral bill can return to Mr. President for assent so that this can then enable the various institutions, particularly INEC to proceed her pace with its responsibilities towards the various elections in 2022 and 2023.

PETROLEUM SUBSIDY

The Forum also discussed the issue around petroleum subsidy and concluded to engage the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress on how best to address this issue without causing any disaffection or with the view to savaging the Nigerian economy for the Nigerian people at the end of the day.?

So, we shall be engaging the Nigerian Labour Congress as sub-national leaders with the view to ensuring that the outcome of our engagement will also be fed into the national discussion.

HEALTH

We also discussed the health update particularly in relation to COVID-19 infections and expressed happiness that the current Omicron variant has been declining progressively. However, we also noted that there is the need for States led by us to ramp up the COVID-19 vaccination exercise.?

On nutrition which remains a priority of the Government, the Governors concluded that there is a need to increase our support in terms of budgetary provisions for nutrition.?

PRESENTATIONS

We received a presentation from the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, (PABEC), on the ease of doing business and discussed the next phase of doing a business survey with the special adviser to Mr. President on ease of doing business, Dr. Oduwole, and the country director of the World Bank, Dr. Shubham Chaudhuri.

The presentation elaborated on the need to step up the reforms towards improving the investment and business climate at the sub-national level.

NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

Governors also reviewed the recently launched national development plan 2021-2025 with the view to ensuring that the national development plan is aligned to individual state development plans that have been produced or in the process of?being produced to ensure synergy between the development efforts by the Federal as well as State Governments.