Insur ance g emium to hit Insurance grross pr premium N2.5 trillion in 2015, says NAICOM
Vol. 7 No. 92
Monday, March 12, 2012
Rabiul Thani 19, 1433 AH
PAGE 19
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FRONT PAGE COMMENT
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Poverty in the North
ast month, the National Bureau of Statistics came out with the Nigeria Poverty Profile Report 2010 which showed, among other things, that absolute poverty is rising throughout the country and, more importantly, that the North is the most economically depressed and poverty-stricken part of the country. If the Bureau’s statistics have any significance at all, it is that they have confirmed, with facts and figures,
what we have always known to be the case. It has always been obvious, from the increasingly falling living standards of most Nigerians, the rising level of rural and infrastructural decay, the rising rate of unemployment and the collapse of industries, to mention but a few, that absolute poverty has been on the rise in our county. According to the Bureau’s figures, well over 60 million Nigerians now live below the poverty line-living on
less than one dollar a day, as has now become the fashionable way of saying it. And, according to the Bureau also, most of these poor of the poor are northerners. The Bureau in fact cited the North-East geo-political zone as the poorest region of the country. The North has been in a dire strait economically for long time now. Over the decades since the 1970s, the region’s Contd on Page 12
Confusion over deaths in reprisals in Jos . . . As suicide bombers kill 3 in Catholic Church We’re winning war on terror – Jonathan >> PAGE 3 From Nankpah Bwakan & Bayo Alabira, Jos, with agency reports
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hristian youths allegedly killed at least 10 people in reprisal attacks after a suspected suicide bomber hit a Catholic church in Jos, the Plateau state capital yesterday, killing three people, authorities said. “The situation is bad,” Plateau state health commissioner, Sati Dakwat told Reuters. “Several were killed in the reprisal attacks, more than 10.” But the commissioner, in an interview with Channels TV last Contd on Page 2
Two women running away from the scene of the bomb blast at St. Finbarr's Catholic Church at Rayfield, yesterday in Jos. Photo: NAN
INSIDE
PDP govs agree on consensus chairman >>PAGE 2
Embrace dialogue, North’s govs urge Boko Haram
Suspects admit killing Briton, Italian
>>PAGE 3
NUPENG threatens nationwide strike
>>PAGE 3
WWW.PEOPLESDAILY-ONLINE.COM
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ACN slams naming of Abuja district after Jonathan >>PAGE 7