 Tonight we discuss with the Governorship Candidate of the African Democratic Congress Funchal Dohati. He is going to be talking to us about his Tiger Agenda for Lagos. And Bashir Machina loses as Supreme Court of Firms Lawan as Yorbe APC Senatorial Candidate. This is Plus Politics, and I'm Mary Annakul. Funchal Dohati, Lagos State Governorship Candidate of the African Democratic Congress ADC has promised to address the challenges in the Lagos State health sector if voted into power. According to him, his administration would prioritise education and health care systems and restore the trust that is lacking, particularly concerning public sector facilities. Tagging it as the Tiger Agenda, he has promised to focus on primary health care, critical care and life-saving emergency systems. He's here with us in the studio this evening to talk more on it. Funchal Dohati, it's so good to have you join us in the studio. Thank you. And happy New Year's in order, because happy New Year's. Same to you. Same to you. It's great to be back. Great. So, of course, everybody's trying to understand what the Tiger Agenda is. So let's start from there. Okay. Why did you christen it the Tiger Agenda? Well, I mean, Tiger is an acronym. It just turns out to be, I guess, a catchy acronym. Some have also said, are we calling it the Tiger Agenda? Because we are taking on the lion of body. I don't know about that, but it's an acronym. So Tiger stands for, the T stands for tax reforms for equity, prosperity and growth. I stands for infrastructure for a modern mega city. G stands for government reform. E stands for education and health systems that the people trust, which you mentioned in your opening. And R stands for rule of law and public order. And we think with this five pronged agenda and a set of things under each of these themes, with this five pronged agenda, the overarching vision is to deliver quality of life, dignity and respect to the average negotiation. On the one hand, and on the other, to lay a foundation for a Lagos in the first world. And we think at the end of four years and by the grace of God eight years, we would have laid a foundation which if pursued diligently will get us to a Lagos in the first world. I mean, I like the Tiger Agenda. I'm going to allow you to, you know, run us through it bit by bit. Yes. I'm very curious because every almost every gov. candidate I've spoken with in the studio seems to be talking about a certain person who they think runs Lagos. So I want to start with the question, are you running against this man? Is it about him or are you trying to save the soul of Lagos? I'm asking because I'm curious every single gov. candidate I've had, aside from the gov. of this state, talks about a certain person that has Lagos under, you know, his, yeah. So it's a good question. And I think that the question in itself, if you think about the question in itself, it should point to the signal that there is an issue, right? If every candidate is saying the same thing, there's a suggestion that, you know. But he's not running for gov. Hold on, there's a suggestion that there's no smoke without fire. Now, why is it coming up? The reason, I think, is that most people feel that the same agenda has been pursued for about 24 years in Lagos, going back to the administration of Bolatinovo. And there's also a sense that those that have succeeded him have essentially not fully been principals in their own right, but have operated to some extent as agents and an extension of that administration. And, you know, this is not written anywhere, but it is a sense that people get, it's a pervasive sense. And some, even some of the actions of the gov. would tend to lead people in that direction. So, you know, at the end of the day, I'm sure they will argue otherwise. But, you know, if it smells like a dog, sounds like a dog, works like a dog, chances are it's a dog. Let's start with the T for the Tiger agenda. How do you intend to actualize this? So, the T again, tax reforms for equity, prosperity and growth. There are a couple of things under this. First of all, we're saying that the tax system should be equitable. In other words, those that end the most should pay the most. And those that end the least should pay the least. And maybe you should even get some relief and maybe even support. But that is not always the case in Lagos of today. From two perspectives. One is that those that earn significant sums are sometimes able to evade paying taxes. But beyond that, many of the most vulnerable end up paying a very high rate of tax in effect because, you know, there are taxes and levies that are collected from them on a day to day basis. And if you look at those levies and taxes, some formal, some informal, some unofficial, if you look at them in relation to the incomes of those individuals, it's a very high rate, right? So they may end up paying a rate of tax in effect that is maybe twice or even three times what, you know, higher income people are paying. And we need to deal with that because the people are really suffering. And so we're saying that that tax system must be equitable. Secondly, we think the tax system needs to support the growth of small businesses. So we need to reform the tax administration and the tax code such that and then provide incentives for folks who are establishing businesses and for businesses to thrive in the early stages so that they can create employment which solves a problem for government. Finally, I would say here that there are other measures but I won't touch on them all but I'll just touch on the final one here which is in the administration of the tax system itself. We believe that there's a fundamental problem in the administration of taxes in Lagos state with the use of the Alphabeta consulting arrangement. We think that that is not appropriate and we will seek to unwind it as part of our tax reform agenda. Yes, I remember you granted an interview and you talked about unwinding it. Why do you want to unwind Alphabeta? I mean, I'm guessing that it was brought for a certain reason. Is it not achieving the purpose? So, well, I mean, I don't know what purpose was sort of adduced for its introduction in the first place. But if you look at the administration of the system today, really much of the work is done by the Lagos Inland Revenue Service. I have served as MDCE of three different companies all headquartered in Lagos and I have received frequently letters from the tax administration as all company CEOs have. I have never received a letter from Alphabeta. All the letters you receive are from Lagos Inland Revenue Service. When they're coming to do assessments, it's Lagos Inland Revenue Service. When they're coming to do the audits, it's Lagos Inland Revenue Service. So a lot of the work is done by Lagos Inland Revenue Service. The role that Alphabeta is playing has more to do with record keeping, presumably, and maybe technology and those kinds of things. And there is no reason why you should have the kind of contract we have which essentially seeds a portion of the state's revenue, your money and my money, to this company which is owned by private individuals, a few. There's no transparency, no accountability around it. And it's huge sums of money. And so if it was the case at the outset that government needed a consultant to put in place a monitoring or record keeping system or a technology system, that is something you employ a consultant to do. You pay them a fee for a fixed period and they move on and you operate your system. So the system that we have in place today, actually there is no either moral or economic justification. So you're saying you're going to probe Alphabeta? Well, what I'm saying is that we're going to extricate the state from it. In the first place we'll unwind it. We will look at the arrangements around it. If there is reason to pursue further actions through the criminal justice system or the judicial system, we will not hesitate to do it if it is called for. But that is not our primary goal. Our primary goal is to unwind it and to create a situation where the state is getting value for money and it's not paying over resources that belongs to its people for no just reason. Let's talk about the business environment which is very important because a lot of people run to Lagos. Even though Nigeria still has that problem of one city-state and half the time, those cities are not necessarily living up to expectations. So we keep seeing more and more people pouring into Lagos. What do you think can be done to enable the business environment further to be more friendly and attract more and more investments? So it's a good question and there are a few dimensions to it. One is that businesses run in an environment and the environment is largely determined by infrastructure. To the extent that we can create an environment that has a good infrastructure base, businesses will benefit from it, whether that is transit infrastructure, power infrastructure, water, all those things. But beyond that, the operations of government must be supportive of business and not by lip service but in reality. So what does that mean? It means that when somebody establishes a business, a new business person, employs one person to people, that is not the time for government agencies a week later or two weeks later to show up on their doorstep and be demanding all sorts of things. Government needs to be supportive of getting those businesses off the ground first. Let them employ people. That's what we need. We have a huge unemployment problem. We have a lot of youth and that is what is going to drive the productivity of the overall economy. That's on the one hand. As part of that, there's a broader government reform agenda, which is the G in our Tiger agenda, which says that a lot of the time, the reason why you see this predatory activity by government agencies is not so much about raising revenue for government or even stopping people from doing the wrong thing. It's really about using those powers as a means to extort resources from people. Some of that is driven by the fact that the public service and the civil servants are not adequately compensated. How do you mean? So their salaries, in many cases, are not reasonable compensation. When you compare them to what their contemporaries in the private sector earn. So if people are not reasonably compensated, you do not really fully have the moral authority to insist that... Actually, you do, but it's not going to work. In the sense that you have to compensate people well and then insist on integrity. I want to differ on the issue of the civil service. This might not be popular opinion, but then do you not think that the civil service is over bloated, hence the government being unable to renumerate them as it should be? Again, we have a lot of duplication of offices, duplication of ministries, departments, agencies. You just keep coming up and then of course the government is going belly up. So compensation for me is a bit of a mirage, isn't it? No, I don't think it's a mirage and two wrongs don't make a right. So you have good people in the system, you have bad people in the system. So you cannot punish the good people for not taking the decisions that you should. If you end up with a bloated civil service, it's not the good people in the system that employ those people. And so in trying to fix a problem, you address both sides. You address the compensation side. But do people have to leave? Ultimately, you may get to a situation where people need to leave. You may get there, sure. I mean, imagine if you were a private company, wouldn't you do the same thing to be able to reduce? You would, you would, but there's a process you go through. And I don't believe, for example, that you should go in and say, until I fire so many people, I'm not going to raise salaries. No, I think that's the wrong approach. I think you need to go and start addressing the compensation, introduce other things like meritocracy and accountability, monitoring performance and so on and so forth. And the other part will follow. But you have to lead with good faith. And then you have a roadmap for getting to where you need to get to. And without that, I think you will struggle. And the other things which you need to have in place, ensuring accountability, ensuring that people do what they're supposed to do, that they're not pursuing conflicts of interest, that they're not preying on your citizens. You will only be able to do that when you start this other process. And by the way, you know, when you look at the overall budget of Lagos and you look at the personnel cost element of the budget in relation to the overall total budget, you see that this roadmap approach that I'm suggesting is quite doable because the personnel cost is probably less than 10% of the overall budget of Lagos, the annual budget. Let's talk about the E. It talks about emergency services. I mean, if we delve into the health sector, it's a massive problem. We're seeing the brain drain, a loss of doctors and nurses and general health workers, you know, going away to other countries because of course they're needed there because they have better welfare and better insurance as compared to what we have in the country. Now I did speak to a doctor at Luce who talked about the fact that the emergency department is a total mess. You can barely get a canola, you know, to attend to a patient. How do you intend to deal with this? Because of course we, Luce of course might be federal but then we have state services. And like I always say, when I was a child you could easily locate a health post but now you can't find them. Yeah, so it's a good question. And ultimately healthcare will be met by both the private and public sectors ultimately. And it is today and that will be the case always. But I think where we see gaps is in the quality of care that is delivered in the public sector facilities. And that has eroded trust over time. And so people will opt away from that system and for good reason. Now our approach is what we've called, it's a barbell approach. So on the one side of the barbell we have primary care. A primary care focus. And on the other side we have a critical care and emergency care focus. Now on the primary care we're saying that look where we see a lot of the mortality today, where a lot of the loss and pain is occurring today is in the area of primary care. And where we're seeing the burden of mortality is around maternity, around newborn, pre-anantinatal and early child mortality. And a lot of that is around primary care. A lot of it is avoidable. And what you need to do is to have a situation where you are delivering primary healthcare in government facilities that actually is delivering care and therefore people seek it. It's not so much about the most state of the art facilities when primary care is concerned. It's about basic care using technology to ensure that people are accessing the system that you're keeping track of babies that are born, they are being monitored and brought in for their vaccinations and so on and so forth. And ensuring that you deal with care in a preventive way. Does that mean you will not have problems that occur? No, obviously you will but they will be much reduced and they generally will come in at a time when you can do something about them. So to do that again, it's linked to a government reform agenda which says that people have to reasonably compensated, you have to create the right conditions and show that they have supplies, which is not about building huge buildings, it's supplies, right? I mean the cost of that is not, it's not commensurate with the cost of building facilities. And ensuring then that you monitor the quality and you have the supervision in place and the quality control systems to track customer experiences when they come in. It's the same way you would manage, for example, people who come in to, you know, to get service in any facility. And when you do that, you then deliver healthcare services again that people trust, which is our goal, and people will then proactively seek those services. Because I know that you can't talk healthcare without talking about local governments. I ask you, will your government be local government friendly? We know that there's been a running battle between state and local governments in terms of monies. How do you wade into this matter? Because most times in most states, some of these local governments are at the mercy of state governments. So at the end of the day, philosophically my approach is that, you know, you have to manage services close to the people. So in an ideal world, those services that are best delivered at local government level should be delivered there and the resources should be provided for them to deal with them. What I would add is that commensurate with that, or at the same time you do that, you have to ensure that you're building capacity within the local governments to manage those resources. And so one of the issues that we've had in local government, state government relations has been that the, as you know, local government elections are handled by the state. So a lot of the time, the hood ends up empowering the local government is a function of who is at the center. And those decisions are not always driven by capacity considerations, competence considerations. It's often driven by things like loyalty, party loyalty, you know, loyalty to the state and ensuring that you have somebody there who's going to do your bidding. Now in that scenario, you know, there's no alignment between that and deploying a lot of resources there because, you know, the capacity may not be there. So we're saying that, yes, you want to devolve to the local governments. You want to have strong local governments that can do the work and support them from the state. Devolve resources. But in doing that, you need to ensure that you're building capacity in the local government so that at the end of the day, the people are not suffering. Let's talk about the main, some of the major problems of Lagos. Of course, you know, traffic is top on that list. But then most recently, we're dealing with fuel scarcity. We're dealing with not being able to get the Naira. And so, of course, we can then now go down to talking about the Lagos traffic and then we can talk about traffic without talking about how bad the roads in Lagos are and how they seem a bit abandoned. Even though people make a case for some of them being federal roads, but let's look at the inroads in Lagos. How pliable are they? So I think that there are two sides to this issue. One is that the roads, yes, the roads are not always in good condition and many of them have potholes and things like that. And particularly where those potholes are at like high traffic areas, intersections, et cetera, it's a compounded effect that those things have which adds to the traffic that we see. And it's not trivial the traffic that we have. We have one of the highest commute times in the world which has implications for health and so on and people don't think about the health part. Governor El Rufai did say that all Lagotians need to go to heaven. Yes, having spent time in hell, although, I mean, I don't know why but anyway, so here's the thing. So you have that, but I think also that in addressing this there are two things that we have to do. One which is the long-term solution is that we have to de-emphasize the roads because right now it's only roads. So rail needs to be a mainstream option and we've been pursuing rail for 14 years. We've commissioned it but it's not operational so we don't still don't have rail. Are you talking about the blue line? I'm talking about the blue line, yes. So we need to have rail across the state and then we need to have better use of our waterways because we have waterways including the lagoon which runs through the state. We have not made good use of those and we need to do more. So if we pick a few routes and we have robust vessels plying those routes we can move a significant number of people through those routes. Just pick a few key routes and do that. That will help. So that will de-emphasize the roads. But on the roads themselves even with the existing road infrastructure I think we can get a whole lot more out of our existing roads if we just created more order less confusion, less chaos on those roads. I think that I use the analogy of an airport and to say that the way you get a large number of people through an airport on a daily basis is because it's very orderly. It is organized, structured, planned. There are lines there, structured and all of that. If you didn't have that, if people just showed up and were trying to make their way you wouldn't get even a fraction of the number of people that you get. And there's a similar analogy to the roads. So we need to do more in terms of ensuring that we have greater law and order on the roads encroachment on roads. There are people driving against traffic law enforcement agents who are not there necessarily to stop the bad behavior. They are there to extort people and allow them to then do what they want to do. Commercial drivers who act like a law unto themselves. And then the activities of the so-called aguerus who also compound the issues on the roads. So all of these things I think need to be dealt with at the most value for the roads. Otherwise, you will keep building roads and you will not get the value of them. It almost will never be enough. Absolutely. Let's quickly, because we don't have time, talk about the elections, because I mean, like you said, 11 more days to the governorship elections. No, no, not 11, it's on the 11th of March. And the 11th of March, sorry. But we have 19 more days to the elections. What are your major concerns for this election? Are you worried about anything or are you certain that it's going to be free for incredible? And looking at all the situations or all the things that have been happening, again, I talk about the fact that people have new access to the narrow end. And many would applaud the central bank that this is a way of also reducing the level of vote buying and that we can suffer now and then be happier later. How does all of this play out? You say use the word certain to be certain and I'm not sure which one can be certain about anything. I think that... So I was optimistic about this election and I think I still am. I'm optimistic that we will see a better election than we've seen in prior election cycles. I think that you are more likely to see election where the people's votes will count, where the will of the people will be reflected in the results that we will see. So all of those, I think, are good things. I think INEC... Have they done a perfect job? No. Have they tried? I would say yes. I believe that they are dealing with a tremendously challenging job and I think that we have to give them credit for their resolve to do things the right way. Not everybody in INEC may be a good person but I think on average I think I would personally give them a pass mark. Now the challenges that we are currently facing I think are multifaceted. The question of fuel, the question of the Naira change and so on and so forth. It's difficult to sort of assess the underlying motives but whatever you might think the motives, whatever view you might take of the motives I think the implementation certainly leaves a lot to be desired. How so? Well, I mean, I think that if you take, first of all, fuel, there's no reason why we should be facing fuel, the kind of fuel scarcity that we are. There's just no reason, right? If things are well managed and of course it's a downstream symptom of poor management of the petroleum value chain, which is a long story. With respect to the Naira, I think part of what's going on is an underestimation of what is required to accomplish what has been set out to accomplish, right? Because, yes, I understand the notion of redesign of the Naira to deal with illicit stores of previous Naira and so on. I understand that. But you have to think who are the people standing in queues. It's not the guys who have billions stored away. Who are the guys who are bearing the brunt of this exercise? It's the market women. I was in Shomolu Market on Saturday going around the market and the mood in the market, you know, people are just beaten down, right? The women are saying that, look, you know, they're doing a fraction of the business that they ought to do and it's not as if these guys are making a terrible amount of money, right? So there's that aspect of it and I think that could have been better sort of thought about and planned. But I mean, you know, ultimately I think it's for the good but we need to manage it better. Finally, because we have to go now in a few seconds. The President has said we should give him seven days. He's going to change, you know, there will be a turnaround of sorts and he'll ease the sorrows of the average Nigerian. How trusting are you of Mr. President and his promise? I don't actually know if I should respond to that because we need to know. Here's the thing. I don't think there's any basis for that statement. I don't think there's any basis. I mean, on what basis is he making the statement that in seven days he's going to fix it? Mr. President, and he's had your cries and all the moaning and going and going. Yeah, but he's in asshole rock. He's not implementing anything. So he cannot give us a promise of seven days because he doesn't know. Okay. Well, I want to say thank you. Okay. This has been a very interesting conversation. Fushad El-Herti is the governorship candidate of the ADC here in Lagos State. Well, I wish you all the best in the coming elections and in all your campaigns. Thank you so much, Mary. Oh, it's a pleasure. Well, we'll take a quick break when we return. We'll be discussing the Supreme Court affirming Ahmed Lawan as senator or candidate for your behalf. Stay with us.