 Just Correctional Centre comes under attack by bandits suspected of trying to free colleagues who will be getting more information about the situation this morning. Elsewhere in Platoon State, the regal people will release the names of 10 people killed and suspected following the attack. We'll be talking to both sides. Countries around the world enact travel bans against South and Africa over Omicron coronavirus variants but Africa isn't happy. We'll be reviewing the deal daily this morning. Stay tuned with us as we also have a guest join us to make sense of all of the headlines. Welcome to the breakfast on PLOS TV Africa. I am Justin. And I am Messi Boko. It's good to have you join us this beautiful Monday morning. And of course we'll begin with what is trending in Nigeria across the social media platforms and of course the global space this morning and Uganda is in the news this morning. The country risks are losing their only international airport all because of some deal. They signed with China and right now they cannot repay and it is. And you're just about losing that particular airport and the lessons to be asked to get from that particular story is just how far would you go about borrowing when you did not really protect your international sovereignty and some of your international assets that is about time to be lost. You know they signed that particular agreement with China on November 17, 2015. That's about six years ago and they were to borrow or they borrowed two hundred and seven million dollars at two percent upon disbursement and it's supposed to have a maturity period of 20 years including a seven year grace period but over time they've been defaulting to some of those agreement and right now they have even sent a delegation that is Uganda sent a delegation to China to see if they can sort of refinance or talk about how to go about it but right now the Chinese companies they are not budging and they are saying that you have to pay us or take your report. Well I feel that that particular conversation has generated a lot of reaction in the space I mean over it started from when up until the weekend and up until this morning I'm sure a lot of people are still talking about it and the big question is you know the next year is that Nigeria's indebtedness to China calls for a lot of concern as well. So but first of all you would also want to agree with me that the clause that was signed because it has to do with it some people have described it as a toxic clause and the fact that relocation so if you look at that you know contract that was signed 85% at the end of the day they actually had over 85% of you know the airport that's what he meant they would have control over it so about 85% and some persons are saying that you know that's to ensure that China I mean Uganda actually pays you know her debt at the end of the day so they're able to manage and ensure that they pay their debt but however the case might be the fact that you know a lot of persons are worried about you know Nigeria also losing her asset it's also generating that particular conversation and whether or not you know some people are saying okay that's not the case the case is it's in the clause it's in the agreement and that's what happens if you go to actually lend money from someone they are usually terms of agreement and so at the end of the day if you're not able to keep up to I mean leave up to expectation then the expected will happen right but usually because of the desperation and wanting to take money most time we don't pay attention you know to the details that we actually say let's not forget that in 2020 there was some you know reaction concern including the National Assembly concerned about the you know the clause in you know our borrowings to China and all of that and of course you have the Minister for Transport Rotimi Amici saying oh you know nothing really at some point they were saying oh we also started chance of you know losing our asset right but at all the point of saying okay it's nothing to worry about there's nothing really really to be worried about well I'm thinking that you know this is actually a global I don't know how to call it it's actually a tool that's been used by different countries including the United States including you know what's it called again the monetary institutions financial institutions they call them the debt trap diplomacy debt trap diplomacy and so at the end of the day this is what happens I think it also happens amongst individual the fact that you know the these powerful nations that have the resources to lend they also you know give excess credit to the borrower at the end of the day the essence with the rational behind that is that so they can actually giving that they make it so much that you know getting back the loan it becomes when it becomes very difficult for you to pay back they are looking at you know having political control and some other economic control over your asset if you talk about China a lot of people also China's involvement in you know African's development if you look at it right now the fact that you know China has a huge presence in Africa in terms of you know pushing for organization and what have you the fact that all of these loans that you have for development of infrastructure infrastructure yes so whether or not it has happened it has happened in the case of I think Zambia in Sri Lanka it has also happened whether unable to repay their loans and of course they took over you know the asset they had to take it because agreement is agreement like you want to see the local parents yes and the truth is that when you sign agreement or when you sign contract for loans or the financial obligation you should be wary I'm sure they call it the covenants of the contractor what you would do what the other party would do you know you should study this you know clauses clause by clause and be certain that as much as possible you'll not be caught in some sort of a quagmire at the end of the day you'll not be able to maybe on the surface you might like okay it's about 20 years in 20 years now give or tell I should be able to meet this particular you know amount and if I don't I might have a way of maybe refinancing but it's not always the case if you go into any contract be it loan be it maybe for something just as much as possible go through the clauses to be certain that it is something that you can handle say for me right now I am saying that this is for me it should be a call that Africa as a continent should stop the borrowings enough of it we have we have just become you know the thing where you don't look inwards and try to solve your problem and every other time you're running to you know this nation and they would always dictate for instance when you have the IMF Loaning Monastery when you have the World Bank and what have you Loaning Monastery they give you condition they tell you what to do they tell you how to use the money sometimes they ask you to devalue your currency we have seen that a couple of times in our country where we constantly devalue our currency that's the Naira and that's what happens because you are a beggar you borrow and yes that's what happens so you always be faced with all of that choice so I'm thinking that is high time you know Africans wake up and the big brother of Africa is Niger it's that we put our feet down and begin to look at you know look inwards I get all of that and stop all of the excessive borrowing because first of all that's what you said excessive we will not be talking about you know anybody losing her national asset there will be no consent for it in the first place if we are not going to borrow okay yeah I get it but economically you know the economists would tell you that there's nothing really wrong with borrowing because even that even finance in general you could do equity you could do debt financing but as much as possible when you do debt financing you should be able to as much as possible to measure you know the risks involved before and then not to borrow beyond what you need sometimes some people borrow you know to you know to finance unreasonable you know things for instance if you're trying to borrow 40 millionaire to or billion to offset you know recurrent expenditure does not really make sense maybe for salaries at the end of the day there's no particular or capital project attached to that particular borrow at the end of the day you might struggle you know when it comes to refinancing or repaying those loans now in the case of Surinaka I mean they actually utilized the money very well but they were unable to you know meet up and pay their debt my point is you know borrowing yes now like you rightly mentioned there's nothing wrong in borrowing but you know in the case of Africa it feels like we borrow for oh and bear we borrow for parties we borrow for favoritism yeah because that's what the case is we borrow most lines are the money just at the end of the day we don't see especially for Nigeria as much as we're still saying yes we're borrowing for infrastructural you know development how many of these we see introduce infrastructure how well have we utilized it my point is you will not blame China for because China has a stringent policy in terms of loan I mean everyone should know that including Africa the fact that we're not even learning the lessons what's even hard breaking so you wouldn't really would you blame them that's what I would it's the same thing as saying as an individual I come to borrow from you and what for what purpose am I borrowing and because most times we're always desperate I would say the word at least the word desperate we don't pay attention you know to the terms to the terms and agreement and that's almost the case you know right now they're asking for renauguration according to you know those who have described that as a toxic you know class but who do you think China was I mean it was there because from the word they should have noticed whoever is actually lending would be lending and you know having an interest at the end of the day her interest will be protected and that's what it is so even if Nigeria you know gets to a point where they are borrowing to other nations do you think that you know all of those classes would not be there in the first place I'm thinking that this should be a lesson for us we need to you know relax on all of this going and look for other means I have been hearing of diversification of economy since 1960 since 1966 I mean up until now we're talking about the diversification of you know our economy and we haven't really you know gotten to anywhere this point in time so we're still talking about it every other time to develop the class we should move beyond that and try to grow our idea you know yes away from all of that away from the Uganda episode and the entire airport being lost to China our stories are making you know the rounds across and various spaces you know not just in Nigeria but still in Africa let's stay with Africa for a bit and talk about the Omicron virus which was detected in South Africa you know and a lot of countries including the United States the European countries and some of Southeast Asian countries are actually placing travel bands you know from South Africa and of course other countries as well because of how dangerous and how transmissible this particular virus is that Omicron and here in Nigeria some virologists are saying that the federal government of Nigeria should also follow suit you know just as much as possible so we don't have you know the case of a fort a fort wave of the virus in the wake of Christmas and the Utah being around the corner restrictions you know that's been put usually when you have an outbreak and of course there's a scare that you're going to have a new wave or whatever view the point is I don't think that has really been very effective and you would also want to agree that some you know stakeholders I mean some persons a special advice at a time to President Joe Biden has actually raised a concern and I'm thinking that you know a lot of countries especially for the continent Africa will be punished for it punishes and you know pushes the economy South Africa is actually complaining when I'm saying that it's a punishment to this economy because we begin to restrict travels and we begin to restrict people from coming as soon as that variant was actually discovered or whatever there's been a lot of economic implications for South Africa and for me the choice of saying let's begin to put out all of that restriction does not solve the problem as much as some other persons will say okay it's time for us to vaccinate Africa it feels like you know Africa is the problem and it costs a lot of concern because I remember the time I can't remember its name really really there was really a concern that when we had the coronavirus and there were a lot of speculation saying you know we're going to have a lot of dead bodies in Africa people are going to die so we at the time Africa was actually the case Africa recorded you know the entire continent recorded 100,000 cases now when you want to look at you know number of persons who have died the record was you also had to look at the record of you know 3,000 and so that you know there were a lot of questions as to what is going on because if you look at the number of persons who have contracted the virus and the number of persons who have died there's no correlation why do you have 3,000 in the entire continent out of 100 alright mercy I understand that you have a particular track to this report let's see that video I will come back and talk some more stay with us it's still the breakfast most predominant clinical complaint is severe fatigue for one or two days with then the headache and the body aches and pain some of them will have what they call a scratchy throat and some will have a cough a dry cough but it's not a cough it comes and go and that's more or less the big symptoms that we have seen we also have seen clinically that the oxygen requirements when you do that what we call the sats that's normal in all of the patients I haven't picked up one and so my other colleagues as well I picked up anyone at this stage requiring oxygen some of them would have a temperature it's not a very high temperature I only had one child that was severely ill with a temperature of what we call 40 degrees and with quite a fast pulse rate but we managed to treat it home and within 48 hours it was dramatically better can't believe it was the same child that I have seen alright welcome back that's just you know it's a lot really still happening concerning this Omicron and mercy just yesterday before we just leave this topic just yesterday a lot of you know travelers were stranded at airport in South Africa they said that they needed to get home and they are not being allowed you know exit out of that particular country like I mentioned earlier I don't think that you know putting out restriction travel restriction has solved the problem you know of the spread of the virus that's number one so we need to rethink you know the economic implication it has for you know some of those countries but whether or not we need to vaccinate the entire continent some persons have actually post elated it's another you know conversation but we need to just move away you know from this particular topic at this point we should we should really yeah and to the last you know issue trendings all over the social media space is that of the minister sorry the DG of the Nigeria of Indaspora Commission that's an advocate that she is in the news again and she tries to block the journalists call yeah of course do you remember I don't know if you remember I think some time recently we had David and they talking about you know the debt of it to new the lady who lost her life in and quite quite sad yeah but I mean what she did because I actually saw a video of that it's very unprofessional right I'm thinking that first of all you are in a space and then the guest is now trying to tell us what to do and what not to do I'm thinking that if there's nothing to hide it's okay to go ahead with the conversation put your facts straight put your argument rather than saying oh you don't want you can't it is really really not good and that's the high-handedness we talk about every other time that we see in display in our country it really doesn't really you know make any kind of sense so that's it I saw that video she constantly was saying no I don't want to talk to him you can't talk to him don't bring him on air why who say so he's concerned about what's going on I mean this issue is something that concerns not just Nigerians at home but also Nigerians living abroad so they want to really know Nigerians would actually really want to know how you know much of worthiness the issue of contention here has been the fact that the Nigerian government has not really been involved at a time you know she also said that she got the information I mean they were really in the know five months ago and they were already in the works and you know they even they is of the opinion that that's not the case that they probably had because all of that was already in public space they had he had reached out personally and nothing was done but like I always say it's better to put out your facts you put out your issues rather than you know putting that out it is totally you know not professional and unacceptable alright so let's take yet another video and send in this particular issue hello hello go ahead right so my name is Deagon Dane and I'm a journalist who actually broke the story about it in March now I have a very it's a very simple question which isn't it's not exactly directly ministered to the work of need come but it's it's an adjunct and I'll explain why I'm asking this question now what was said in the aftermath of it's news there repeatedly was that there was no money the commission is underfunded the ministry of foreign affairs is underfunded there's basically no money that's how called for eight months it wasn't possible to raise no number one that is not even true no no no sorry that is not true nobody said that what you went out and put the picture of some guy you said he was defrauding people and the ambassador we asked him they might have said yes at that time if you wait for bureaucracy you will not do anything so immediately to news broke because the father was in touch that guy that you said was a fraud actually was the contact person look go to like I said this girl's case is an abjure you took her to fire away it's like you are in Lagos you took her to my degree so they raised funds I think they were looking for a thousand surface and immediately so that did not stop now the lawyer was engaged but they raised thousands of dollars to pay the lawyer because the ambassador thought outside the box yes there are still no funds but that did stop into this case because we know that the father can't even afford anything and when this case broke they said you also said that guy asked for 400,000 they said okay what do you have we're all raising funds I think that's an unfair thing for the guy whose picture you put up very embarrassingly to ask so the guy said okay what do you have we have raised this amount of money when they said that they have anything they would say went out and raised the money yes funds is an issue but in this to news case the people raised the funds themselves and the Nigerian community went out so no excuse me if you are a lawyer ask any lawyer the loss of this guy had been jailed for two years this was not the question I was asked okay what is your question you put the facts to answer your question so that is the thing if it took in eight months right the commission then there was no money on ground it's not the commission please it's not the commission whatever the case is that is not even true let's hear it's a question let's hear it's a question so that we can address it alright welcome back that's the DG over night come there in a heated you know back and forth which I'm John Lister David Hunde over the issue of Nigerian who died in a court of war and he could not really get his question out there because he felt he was being blocked by the DG of the night come that's actually blocked by the DG of night come I just thought that would have been handled better anyway that's as much as we can take on this particular segment we will take a break and when we return we'll be talking about what's on the front pages of major dailies this morning stay with us