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FG okays $1m for free contraceptives

The Minister of Health , Prof . Isaac Adewole , on Wednesday said the Federal Government has released $ 1 m for the delivery of contraceptives for the enhancement of quality family planning among Nigerians .

Adewole said this while briefing State House Correspondents at the end of a meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa , Abuja .

According to him , procurement for the implementation of the plan had been secured .

He said following a presidential approval of the joint venture agreement between the Federal Government and May $ Baker for the production of local vaccines , a board had been constituted on January 19 to oversee the venture .

Consequently , he said Nigeria would begin to produce its vaccines within the next two years .

Adewole added that the government was fine - tuning arrangements for the enrolment of 320, 000 members of the National Youths Service Corps for the National Health Insurance Scheme yearly .

The council also approved the completion of an abandon Gari irrigation projects in Kano and Jigawa states .

The project was abandoned at 50 per cent completion.

The Minister of Water Resources , Suleiman Adamu , said the project was one of the 116 abandoned projects inherited in the ministry .

He recalled that the programme inaugurated in 2016 under the Water Resources Road Map of National Irrigation and Drainage programme from 2016 to 2030 , adding that the initial focus was to increase irrigation by 100, 000 hectares between 2016 and 2020 .

He said if all projects were completed the government would record more than 100, 000 hectares projected .

“ We felt that we should complete this project otherwise all the investments made would have been lost forever , ” he said .

The Minister of State for Power , Works and Housing , Mustapha Shehuri , said the council approved a N10 . 509, 584, 730. 13 bn contract for the repair of Hadejia - Nguru spanning Jigawa and Yobe states .

He explained that the contract was for the rehabilitation of the first phase of the road , which is about 30 kilometres . The job was awarded to a civil engineering company , Mothercat .

According to him , a journey which is supposed to be an hour drive on the road which was constructed in the 70 s now takes four hours because the road has collapsed .

The Minister of Agriculture , Audu Ogbeh , announced during the FEC press briefing that locusts and quella birds from neighbouring Niger Republic had invaded farms in parts of Borno and Adamawa states .

He revealed , however , that efforts of his ministry to curb the destruction by aerial spraying insecticides on affected farms and areas had been hampered by warnings from the Nigerian military about security concerns .

According to him , the military warned that Boko Haram terrorists operating in those areas could shoot down the airplanes spraying the chemicals over the farms .

He said most of the approvals his ministry got from 2016 to date had to do with pest control.

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