 And I bring you the warm felicitations of President Mohamad Ibuhari, President Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And on his behalf, I congratulate you all, participants of the senior course for your excellent performance and your preferment today to the very special privilege as a member of the National Institute, MNI. And to those who in addition got their friend certificates, I say, felicitations à vous, tout, bien fait. For those who do not speak French here, all I was saying was that anyone who doesn't speak French has a problem. Congratulations to you all and well done. I also congratulate family and friends and especially spouses and participants on this joyful occasion. It will be remiss of me of course if I fail to congratulate you all on your very well researched and thought provoking presentation to Mr. President on Thursday on getting things done, strategies for policy and program implementation in Nigeria. Congratulations and well done. You are graduating at probably the most consequential period in Nigeria's history. A time of immense challenges and even more enormous opportunities. Permit me therefore to spend a few minutes to broadly sweep through some of the challenges we have faced and how we have surmounted or are surmounting them. The point of the exercise being to exercise your minds are members of Nigeria's foremost think tank as we interrogate how optimally leadership or other actors responded and perhaps what more needs to be done. I'll mention in particular four areas. The first is the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the future of our public health services. The second is the response to the economic downturn in the aftermath of the pandemic and the issue of continuous growth. The third is what I've described as unicorns and the future of youth employment in Nigeria and the fourth is the new national development plan. Let me begin very quickly with how we'll respond to the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. The most devastating global health crisis in living memory. Shortly after the COVID-19 patient, the first COVID-19 patient in sub-Saharan Africa was identified in Nigeria. A sample of the virus was sent to the Africa Center of Excellence for genomic studies of infectious diseases at Ede in Ocean State. There, a team led by Professor Kristin Happey analyzed the sample and was able within 48 hours to share with the global science community the very first genome sequence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 from Africa. Most people did not even know that we have that capacity or that the facility existed or that it had even been recognized internationally. Second, we were able to scale up testing and case management, our capacity to do so quickly, activating 120 laboratories nationwide from just five before the pandemic, and most of them public laboratories. One reason why we've been able to manage this pandemic better than many expected and even better than well there are more developed economies is the structure of our public health services. Our public health services are experienced and robust. The Ebola outbreak in 2014 and our ongoing battles with LASA fever and the successes we've had with polio eradication helped us to tighten our epidemic contingency plans to strengthen our emergency coordination and surveillance capacities. It's also ensured that we invested in public health facilities. One of the key lessons that we learned from our response to the Ebola outbreak was the need to build systems quote in peace time that can then be used during outbreaks. Our national center for disease control which was founded in 2011, but in 2018 Mr. Preston accented to its becoming an independent agency. As it turned out, the NCDC's independence was important and has been able to function on restraint by bureaucracy when the pandemic struck. With the NCDC's national health reference laboratory in Gadua and Abuja, its state-of-the-art equipment and well-trained scientists is evident that the NCDC is one of the best prepared and best resourced of its kind, at least in Africa. The president also directed the setting up of our locally and now internationally acclaimed presidential task force on COVID-19. An interministerial interagency team led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation reporting directly to Mr. President which coordinated the national response, set the rules, briefed the nation daily for months. The task force with the issued and enforced COVID protocols for travel and general movement. Many of those protocols were later copied by other countries. When the first doses of the vaccines came, the task force quickly developed the protocols and the public health system that was already used for mass vaccinations deployed across the country in every nook and cranny of Nigeria so that the first eligible vaccine candidates received their vaccinations seamlessly. So going forward, what do we need to do? I think flowing from the reality that every nation is on her own in a global pandemic and even how vaccine-rich nations at some point bound exports in order to meet their local needs is clear that we must take our own destiny in our hands. But what do we have already? What is it that we have already? Last December, the National Institute of Medical Research launched a new set of COVID-19 test kits that can produce results in 57 minutes. The new kit was designed by Joseph Scheibo, a molecular virologist at the National Institute for Medical Research. By the end of the year, the Africa Center of Excellence in Osho State will inaugurate the biggest genomic center in Africa. Earlier this year, that center was selected by the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, and the Harvard University to be part of a prestigious scientific coalition that will help set up an early-warning system to prevent and respond to future outbreaks and pandemics anywhere in the world. In September 2020, the World Health Organization named the genomic center one of two, the other is in South Africa, specialized continental reference sequencing research laboratories for emerging pathogens. Professor Happy and his team have also produced a groundbreaking rapid test certified by the Food and Drug Administration of the US government, and it costs around $3, much less than the average PCR test will cost. In addition, the test doesn't even require the highly-equipped laboratories that tend to be very expensive. But more remarkably, they are developing a Nigerian anticovid vaccine. The Africa Center of Excellence for Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology, led by Professor Waike Ibrahim, has also developed capacity capable of doing mass testing as good as anywhere in the world. During their Ebola outbreak in West Africa, between 2014 and 2016, the Africa Center was instrumental to containing the epidemic in the South region by the development of a 15-minute rapid diagnostic test. This method was approved by the World Health Organization, the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA of the US government. The same center developed a 10-minute rapid diagnostic test for Lhasa fever, setting in motion the possible development of the next vaccine for that disease. And Nigeria is currently in talks with the World Bank, its private lending arm, to raise $30 million to finance a vaccine plant. Biovaxins limited with 49% owned by the Nigerian government and the balance held by Mayam Baker Nigeria PLC, plans to begin construction of the plant in the first quarter of next year. The plant will initially fill and finish, which means importing raw materials for the vaccines and then packaging it for distribution. Full manufacturing is expected to follow. So these are some of the developments and some of what we've been able to do so far. Now what about our response to the economic downturn in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic? The damage done to the economy by COVID-19 and the global lockdowns was great. GDP contracted, as I'm sure we know, by a minor 6.10% by 0.10% during the second quarter of 2020. All price at one point was about $10 below production costs. A barrel then finally settled at about $45 a barrel during the second quarter of 2020. Unemployment went up to 33.3% in the fourth quarter of 2020. The transportation sector declined by 49%. Hospitality fell by 40%. Education by 24%. Real estate by 22%. Trade declined by 17% and construction by 40%. So we were in a terrible economic situation. In response, the President took two swift steps. One was to set up an inter-ministerial committee headed by the Minister of Finance to quickly work out the implications of and the immediate mitigation of the economic shocks that were headed for. The second was that the President directed me and a team of ministers and inter-agency heads to draw up a 12-month economic emergency plan which became known as the Economic Sustainability Plan. We were clear that the only way of avoiding an economic disaster that could last for years was for government to essentially put forward a major fiscal stimulus plan. Such a plan must have clear objectives of saving jobs, creating new ones, supporting businesses that may close down and employees that may not be paid during the lockdowns and of course healthcare support to reduce the COVID-19 case load. So we promptly put together a stimulus plan in the order of $2.3 trillion. We took quick fiscal measures including a grant of an additional moratorium of one year on CBN intervention facilities, a reduction in interest rates on intervention facilities from 9% to 5%. A grant of regulatory forbearance to banks so that borrowers could have some breathing space, including restructuring of outstanding debts. And of course there were several disbursements that the CBN made to 3.9 million smallholder farmers under the anchor borrowers program about $134 billion to 38,000 beneficiaries under the AGS IMAE scheme and also to about 672,000 beneficiaries. And then generally a disbursement of about $103 billion to a 110 healthcare project in all the states of the federation. We also instituted an MSME survival fund. This was designed to keep as many junior private sector workers as possible employed and paid 1.1 million people benefited from the fund. Another important part of the ESP was the agreed for food and jobs plan to provide jobs and food. Through a mass agriculture scheme 6.39 million farmers were enumerated under the program and they were geotagged to their land. So today we have geotagged to their land a minimum of 6.3 million Nigerian farmers. 320 hectares of land of course has been cleared across eight states and that continues at about 40 hectares per state. And $401 billion has been allocated to farmers across 40 crop valuations including beef production, aquaculture poultry farming, etc. The president also approved the fertilizer subsidy program. The subsidy payment is evidence-based and tied to the farmer enumeration process. The subsidy is to be paid directly to each farmer's BVN verified account. A subsidy of $5.1 billion has been paid so far to over 1.1 million farmers. The third component of the ESP or the Economic Sustainability Plan is the social housing program. 300,000 homes to be built across the country. The states are to provide the land free and we've got already 24 states have provided land. And this is to create and of course will create thousands of jobs and boost the local building materials industry. The design is to build two bedroom homes costing not more than 2 million Naira each so that a person earning a minimum wage can pay back the mortgage in 15 years. Bono State working with the Family Homes Fund which implements the project has built 8,000 of those units already. Then we have the solar electrification program which is called Solar Power Niger with 5 million new solar connections to reach 25 million people. It's also designed to create several jobs and develop a local solar industry including the assembly and manufacturing of components of solar home systems and of grid solutions. And all of these, I mean of course there's far more detail but I'm abbreviating as much as possible. Now I come to the third point which is the unicorns and the future of youth employment. In the past few years we have seen Nigerian startups owned by young men and women. These are technology startups mainly grow from scratch to billion-dollar businesses. As of 2021 more than six of such companies have been named unicorns. A unicorn is a company that is worth over a billion dollars not a billion Naira, a billion dollars. Six of these companies started between 2016 and now in the middle of two recessions and the global health crisis. The companies are OPE, Paystack, Flutterwave, Andella, Pigivest and Jumia in the e-commerce sector. Paystack and Flutterwave were co-founded in 2016 by two graduates of Babcock University in their 20s. Paystack is a payment processing company and I'm sure many have heard that it was eventually bought over and striped the American multinational. It's now estimated to be worth a billion dollars. Flutterwave, also a payment processing company founded also in 2016 is now worth nearly three billion dollars and both companies employ hundreds of young men and women. Flutterwave was also founded by two young Nigerians in their 20s. There's also Pigivest founded by a young Nigerian lady and her colleagues, ex-students of Covenant University in Lagos. Pigivest is a wealth management platform that at the end of 2019 had helped more than a million users to save about 80 million dollars. And of course you have InterSwitch, you have Jumia and several of these other icons of Unicorns. And what is responsible for the successes of these companies? Providence and good policies. Providence because COVID-19 was a boom period for online payment systems. Policy because Mr. President approved the establishment of a technology and creativity advisory group that helped to formulate new banking policies to accommodate new technology-enabled payment systems such that these tech companies could process payments without being full-scale banks. Of course if they had to be full-scale banks they'd have to have 25 billion as capital before starting. But because of the new policies that President approved, they were then able through the CBN. The CBN was able to issue fresh licenses for payment processing. The federal government and the federal government since then has established a 75 billion National Youth Investment Fund. This provides financial support for small businesses in any field. Central Bank has also established a creative sector fund. This is for young people in entertainment and technology. There's also a new program called Investing in Digital and Creative Enterprises. An over $600 million program which we're working on with the AFDB that will support young tech and creative sector entrepreneurs through the provision of finance, skills development and infrastructure. In the year, the federal government partnered with the UNDP and the private sector to start a program called the Jubilee Fellows Internship Program. So for the next five years every year beginning this year after youth service 20,000 young people will be given internship opportunities in private sector companies and public agencies. They will be paid in full for the entire period of the internship. The idea is that they will learn relevant career and life skills which will enable them to transition seamlessly into professional business or public sector careers while also earning, as I said, a good pay. These snapshots that have given of the various activities, economic health care etc. are to show us that there are possibilities and that we are not facing an uncertain future without any tools at our disposal. However, we know that if we are to inaugurate a new age of accelerated growth then we must adopt a strategic direction and policy orientation. Today two quarters consecutively will record a growth of 5% and 4.3%. And there is no question at all that the growth trajectory will continue to be good. This is precisely what the federal government seeks to do, especially through our new national development plan 2021 to 2025 which was recently approved by the Federal Executive Council. So in terms of strategic direction the cornerstone of the strategy is boosting productivity by focusing on value addition as a guiding principle for all sectors especially agriculture, manufacturing solid minerals, digital services tourism, hospitality entertainment etc. In agriculture for example just as we seek to increase production of rice as one example we are paying equal attention to other parts of the value chain such as storage, transportation processing and marketing because everyone recognizes today that it is value added services that create jobs and opportunities not just production of crops similarly in the mining sector we recognize that exploitation and extraction will not create the jobs that we need our aim is to focus therefore on resource beneficiation local industries will be created thereby creating world along the mineral value chain there are a number of cardinal principles of the strategic direction that is enshrined in the national development plan but just one or two of them the first is the centrality of job creation all programs and policies are to be viewed from the lens of the number of jobs direct and indirect that they create secondly is the loosening of restrictions on trade and generalized restrictions on trade we believe that generalized restrictions on trade are counterproductive especially when they impede the ability of local industries to procure inputs our focus instead will be on allowing import of goods to which value can then be added before domestic consumption or exploitation for example look at cotton importing cotton for diamond making now there are those who will argue that we should ensure that we grow all our cotton but the issue really is that where the jobs are created is on value addition Bangladesh for example only grows 2% of its annual cotton requirement and it is the largest garment exporter in the world it imported recently in the last year 11.8 billion dollars of textiles and apparels while it exported 31 billion dollars in 2019 much higher than we exported in oil thirdly the main fiscal challenge facing Nigeria is inadequate revenues especially in the face of lower oil revenues and your research pointed that out also yesterday is therefore essential to improve tax administration vigorously collection of revenues due to the federal government ministries departments and agencies and bring all high earning agencies into the federal budget yesterday on Thursday I believe during the discussions that we had on your presentation I made the point that in Nigeria we have over 142 people individuals who pay self-assessed tax of more than 10 million Naira only 142 who pay self-assessed tax of more than 10 million Naira I'm not talking about individuals 90% of them are from Lagos state 90% so in this whole country the people who have rose roices have big cars of all sorts only that tiny fraction pay 10 million self-assessed taxes everybody else can never enough to be able to pay that kind of money so we need to be more aggressive about tax collection especially tax collection from those who certainly have the resources concurrently we must lower customs duties and tariffs on raw materials and intermediate goods used in manufacturing while giving reciprocal non-tariff based support like procurement subsidies and tax breaks to priority sectors fourthly we must create a conducive environment for businesses to thrive we need to eliminate red tape extortion enhancement or small businesses which increase their costs so let me just end by reminding our new MNI's that every MNI belongs to an elite club of thought leaders of Nigeria you are in the front lines to build a better future for our country you must be the first promoters of Nigeria's unity the seminal policy work that we produced here which is submitted to Mr. President shows clearly what can be done where the best Nigerian minds regardless of ethnicity or religion work together for the good of our nation and its peoples and I think that we demonstrate here every year the merits of this collective the members of the National Institute that it is possible for our country to be united for people to work together for the common good of our people and our nation so again let me congratulate you and wish you all the very best in the years to come God bless you