 You're welcome back. We're still talking things that are affecting us as a people and right now we're concerned about food security. But a reverse way of it if you ask me. Renewed rice smuggling threatens local production is what we're looking at right now. It means that a lot of rice will come from outside the country and local production will be affected. But it's a possibility that it will become cheaper for people to buy. And so we are between the devil and the dark blue sea or the deep blue sea. All right, we're being joined by Abraham Great, a public affairs analyst on the program this morning. Abraham, good morning and welcome to the program. Good morning. Nice to be with you again. Okay, like I was saying in the introduction, this we are between the devil and the deep blue sea because smuggling like they say has returned. And local production may be affected. But on the reverse side, it will mean that maybe rice will be as cheap as it used to be before the blocking of the borders. Now, first of all, how much of a threat is this? Because if the borders are opened, it does not mean smuggling has been legalized. Why is this even an issue at this moment in your opinion? I think Nigeria needs to be a lot more strong on our foreign policy. One of the first things that a country needs to secure is its own border. And the security of our border does not just mean that we put gates there or that we put personnel and gun in there. That is part of a strong, you know, border reinforcement. But even the policies, the penalties, both for smugglers and for custom officers or anyone or police officers that are involved in enabling struggling in itself. So all of that needs to be a lot stronger or a lot. We need to look more into that to make it really, really difficult for people to be incentivized to be able to smuggle. There is no direct proof that the price of rice will reduce because it is being smuggled into Nigeria in the first place. Yes, the proliferation of it means that it might be a lot more surplus. But what is the data behind that? The fact that it is significantly, really significantly cheaper than the rice that is being produced in Nigeria. What we have in Nigeria is mostly greed. When I mean greed, I mean, people find quick ways to make money. People find quick ways to bring any product and services into the country. And because there is no per se, I've been recommended that we have a tribunal that government set up to regulate price. There is no evidence that shows that the local rice produced in Nigeria should be any more expensive than the one that comes from abroad. Okay, but it's not actually that it is because it is produced in Nigeria. Rather, it's because at the time that the federal government stopped the importation of rice and other commodities from outside Nigeria, the supply was grossly inadequate, so it made the price to go up. That's my thinking. But the government, my problem now is the government has said that they invested so much in rice production within the country and now smuggling threatens that local production even in spite of their investment. Do you think the federal government did enough for the production of rice, local production of rice? Because if we have enough in Nigeria, there wouldn't be any need to even smuggle any more in. As I said, Nigeria in many cases, we're beginning to have data, but we still lack the ability to curate accurate data in the country. The federal government has done a lot in incentivizing agriculture, fertilizer in the past government, and I'm sure the current government is going to do a lot more. But I'm saying to you that there is a causation between price-fixing and scarcity in Nigeria, because it is not evident that more production in Nigeria itself, and I'm saying this because I'm an investor in Nigeria also, even in the sector of agriculture, there is no direct evidence that shows that when there is more production of rice in Nigeria, that the price will reduce. The Nigerians' people set prices a lot on their own. And I'll give you an example. You go out to go and buy suya, ordinary suya. The man selling suya will tell you that the price of dollar has gone up, and so he's going to reduce the meat he cuts for you. The one that is selling ram will say to him also that the price of dollar, but when you look at the causation between the transportation or where they raided ram and where they set it, there is no forex. Somebody will argue with me, oh, look, transportation, most of it, there is very little cost in them transporting. Some comes from the north and stuff like that. We need a very stronger policy in price regulation in Nigeria. How will that impact on the economy? Because it seems to be like the price control that we saw in the first coming of Muhammad Abu Hari when he was a military head of state. Price control, army will go into the market and set a price for commodities and all that. How will that, will we separate that from interference on free market? So there is a need. It's not going to be a quick fix. There is a need to re-engineer the public infrastructures in Nigeria. There's also a need to re-engineer the economy and to automate as many things as possible in Nigeria. The lack of automation means that people can just wake up. The market itself, I understand people will want us to have the concept of a free market, but a free market should not be a frivolous market. Free markets should not be abiding on the pockets of the people. There is a need for there to be a central regulation of price of commodity. That means that we have to impute nearly every commodity that is produced in Nigeria into a central system that has to be monitoring to be able to know what is the cost of production, what is the cost of transportation, what is the cost of maintenance, I mean the holistic cost of operation. So the science behind that, as it's been done in Switzerland, means that the government will then know instead of subsidizing fuel, or what have you, the government can then say, you know what? As it's been done in Switzerland or in America, we have a problem here, a shortfall here. We can actually subsidize food, because the most important thing in every country I've always referred to Mansloura Iraqiov need, physiological need, which includes food. If government must subsidize anything in any country, it must include the physiological need, which is food and electricity. Well, I don't know how that will work in Nigeria, I don't know. Everything seems to be tied to the other. For instance, you're talking about the Ram and the Suya and someone telling, challenging you that the transportation and all that. Yeah, okay, what about even the dollar? A farmer goes to farm and he cannot buy farm imputes anymore, because the dollar is up and everything that we are using in the farm is imported. So it affects how much he puts into production of rice, for instance. So rice that should have sold for like 20,000 Naira, because he spent like 10,000 Naira on one bag, it will now sell for like 30,000, 40,000 Naira, because now he's spending up to 25,000 Naira to get that one bag of rice. So everything is interwoven. But in your opinion, where do we start from to begin to curb some of these things? Where do we start from to make ourselves self-sufficient as a country? Because that is what it boils down to. If they're smuggling into the country, it means that we are not self-sufficient, we are not having enough. Where do we start to make Nigeria self-sufficient in terms of food especially? We have to go back to what I said first in terms of, you know, we have to reduce the incentive for people to smuggle in the first place. What is the root cause of struggle? Part of the cause for smuggling, rather, in Nigeria that I have found is that people are greedy, people want fast money, people want to. You know, I'll give you an example of Canada, where I am at the moment. It is extremely difficult for you to bring in many things. Even from America, if you travel, I live about 36 minutes away from the side of New York here. And even in cases, the stress you go through as a custom just to bring in just a little thing. You know, I was coming from the UK just a few days ago, about three days ago. And the custom had to stop you to be sure that you do not have goods that is more than $200 from the UK, including clothing. I was going to bring in, you know, a Range Rover from the UK because I'm just so used to the car and the BMW. When we moved here, the price that they put on both cars was nearly 16,000 pounds for us to be able to bring it to Canada. They're not making it easy for you to bring anything into Canada. Now, what does that mean? That means that at some point Nigerians will have to temporarily eat what they grow. What that also means is that maybe some food, maybe combi or what have you, may not be available in the market for a while. There may be shortage of things that have been imported because there has to be an element of intentionality. You don't only deter people from bringing things in. You also intentionally ban certain products intentionally and make sure that your border is secure so that you can grow your economy. Economy should be part of the major, one of the major hub of prosperity in any country. I mean agriculture. Agriculture should build a source of prosperity for many citizens in a country. So we need to be intentional about securing our borders. We need to be intentional about price fixing. We also need to be very intentional about creating consequence and deterrent for people to be able to smuggle banned products into the country. Okay, Abraham, great. Thank you so much for your thoughts this morning. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, we've been talking with Abraham Great, a public affairs analyst, talking to us from Canada. And that is how we wrap it up. But before we go, as usual, let's give you the quote for the day. Sometimes it's the mistakes that turn out to be the best part of life. That is according to Kari Ryan. We do hope that you're going to have a pleasant meeting. Let's do it again tomorrow. My name is Nyamungu Aghaji.