Festus Keyamo, minister of aviation and aerospace development, says Emirates Airlines has given a definite date to resume flight operations to Nigeria.

The minister made this known on Wednesday in a post on his X page.

Keyamo said he got correspondence from Emirates Airline when he visited Salem Saeed Al-Shamsi, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Abuja.

“Yesterday, I paid a working visit to the Ambassador of the UAE to Nigeria, His Excellency, Salem Saeed Al-Shamsi at the UAE Embassy in Abuja. He handed me a correspondence from the Emirates Airline indicating a definite date for their resumption of flights to Nigeria,” Keyamo said.

“That date will be formally announced by Emirates Airlines in a matter of days.”

In October 2022, Emirates Airlines suspended flight operations to Nigeria over its inability to repatriate funds trapped in the country.

The airline suspended operations twice last year, with the first in August 2022.

Emirates Airline said the suspension in October was due to its $85 million revenue trapped in Nigeria.

On November 19, 2023, Keyamo said Emirates Airlines would soon announce the exact date of their resumption of flight operations to Nigeria.

He also said the federal government is working on some details concerning the resumption.

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has rejected the N48,000 proposed by the Federal Government as the new minimum wage, saying it does not make any sense.

The TUC President, Festus Osifo berated the FG’s proposal while speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday.

Osifo said the federal government was not being serious in the negotiation with the workers.

According to Osifo, the least federal workers are already earning up to N77,000, saying proposing N48,000 at the moment is ‘abysmal.’

He said, “Before President Muhammadu Buhari left office, the last person in the federal ministry was actually earning N42,000.

“If you now factor in the wage award of N35,000 that was given, N42,000 plus N35,000 will give us N77,000, so as of today what the least federal government worker earns is N77,000.

“So, the question that we now ask is that if the least federal government worker is earning N77,000, why are you now coming to present N48,000? It does not just make any sense,” he said.

Osifor challenged the Federal Government to come forward with data backing the N48,000 proposal and convince the union members on how that amount reflect the reality of the average Nigerian worker.

Recall that earlier on Wednesday, the labour unions walked out of the ongoing minimum wage negotiations with the government and the Organised Private Sector following what the union leaders described as a ridiculous offer by the government.

The TUC leader said that at the meeting, the labour unions proposed a N615,000 minimum wage which they gave a breakdown of how it was arrived at.

He said that the government on its part presented N48,000 with no breakdown of how it can cater for the needs of the Nigerian workers.

According to Osifo, failure to back the N48,000 proposal up with data shows unpreparedness on the part of the government which was why the union leaders walked out of the meeting.

He said that the union members still maintain that all conversations around a new national minimum wage must be concluded by the end of May.

1. A family dispute over the sharing of inheritance has led to grief and death in the quiet community of Larabar-Albasawa on the outskirts of Gezawa, headquarters of Gezawa Local Government Area of Kano State. Eight people were confirmed dead and more than 20 are now at the Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital, Kano, after 38-year-old Shafiu Abubakar set a mosque on fire while worshippers were observing the early morning prayer.

2. The Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress on Wednesday dumped the minimum wage negotiation after the Federal Government offered to pay N48,000, a figure far below the N615,00 the unions were demanding as the new national minimum wage.

3. The average price of imported food commodities to Nigeria rose to its highest level, reaching 34 per cent in one year between April 2023 and April 2024. This represents an increase of 200 basis points from 32 per cent recorded in March 2024, according to an analysis of the Consumer Price Index report released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday.

4. The Federal Government is set to tackle the power challenges in Nigeria with an additional 500 million standard cubic feet of gas in the domestic market. The government said it would also enhance industrialisation and create more jobs with more gas supply into the nation’s economy.

5. The result of the autopsy conducted on the body of the late singer, Ilerioluwa Aloba, aka Mohbad, is said to have been unable to ascertain the cause of his death. A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Wahab Shittu, disclosed this while addressing the press at the coroner’s inquest held in Lagos State on Wednesday.

6. An official of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Uduo Achu, on Wednesday, narrated to the Federal High Court in Lagos how a convicted drug baron, Steve Adigwe, also known as Isioma Obobo, received huge sums of money from the illicit trade and laundered the same. Achu said that the convict attempted to disguise the origin of the said money which is over N400m.

7. The process for nationwide deployment of Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, vehicles has commenced. Not less than 530 buses are to be deployed by the end of the month in six pioneering states. These are Oyo, Lagos, Kwara, Kogi, Kaduna, Nasarawa, and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT Abuja.

8. Five loyalists of Nyesom Wike, Minister of Federal Capital Territory, FCT, have resigned from the cabinet of Governor Siminalayi Fubara. They were among those who rejoined the cabinet after President Bola Tinubu brokered a peace deal that eventually collapsed.

9. The FCT Department of Development Control has commenced the demolition of over 500 illegal structures at the popular Karmo market in the territory. The assistant director of sector monitor in the Department of Development Control, Tpl Garba Jibrin, said the administration decided to demolish the market because the area has been encountering lots of bottlenecks because of the market since inception of Abuja.

10. The Federal Government is working to reconstitute the governing councils of its universities across the country, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Chris Maiyaki, has said. He said the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, had constituted a panel to work on the list of the people who would be on the councils.