 You're still on to the breakfast on plus TV Africa right now We are going to look at the newspapers and see what the headlines are saying this morning and joining us to talk On this headlines is a toon. They call our way a legal practitioner here in Lagos state. Good morning and welcome to the program sir Happy new year to you Thank you And I also wish our great be happy new year. Yeah so we're beginning with a guardian newspaper and The leading headline there is saying Despite 20 million out-of-school children 29 states fail to access 68 billion narrow universal basic education fund Let's start with that and get your comments Honestly speaking When I read that story My art started bleeding bleeding that we have many To improve the educational infrastructures in the primary school And then the state will decline or will refuse to take advantage All that helps me as a passing is that these people are Not interested in something They are probably kids in some way else They don't pay any payment to education And when you look around the walls You find out No nation can ever develop without massive massive investment in education Well because maybe they don't Nothing will not be something meaningful With the different government We are not interested in that national fund to collect That is Okay, we have a little hitch there But now we are talking about 29 states failing to access 68 billion Naira universal basic education fund and this fund is a grant that is giving to states to upgrade their facilities in the schools Primary schools especially and the states are failing to access that I'm failing to take advantage of that possibly because They are required to give 50 percent of these amount that is supposed to be accessed From the source so because of the 50 percent Maybe I'm just saying because they didn't come out the states didn't come out to say Categorically that this was the reason why they were not able to or they refused to access the funds 50 percent if you're going to get 10 Millionaire for instance and you're expected to bring five million era and the other five million will be added on to you So that you can do what you need to do in the educational sector and you refuse to do it It's a question. We're asking ourselves even as the federal government has also Not done not lived up to expectation We are we're expecting that this government will do better and give us more than the seven the paltry seven percent That they gave us for education in our budget at today color only has rejoined us. Yes, sorry Go right ahead. We lost your audio hearts from point Even if the UK river stage Where there is a boat? That's all the first of all basic infrastructures Have been provided in schools and some of these other places We are simply chance of the last big pick up schools Where our children are cooling in those places? then up north Look at the number of out of school children Look at the number of our children that are only this kid On that the guys of the elementary school Islamic educational activities I wish we got to that. I don't want you to ask when have you ever seen children go me this week And so we are a day in Afghanistan and Pakistan in India Kentucky on that the guys of religion But that's not speaking. I think we must find a way To impose this as possibilities on the state government and the federal government When it comes to insurance that we have adequate materials and resources and provisions For the children to be able to go to school. Not just go to school Go to school. I've been to the very very easy for both the teacher and the student to extend ideas and learn new things Are you still there today? That's my take on that. Okay. Well, yeah We're still talking about education when we find out that education is not taking seriously here in Nigeria And you want to move to other countries to go and get an education right now? We're seeing something really scary for me. It is scary where stories coming from Togo from Banner Republic and all that you can just walk in and walk out with a degree it's it's okay, so now federal government has Sacked NSIP boss suspended certificates from Banner Togo Universities and all that all the media houses are carrying this story this morning about the suspension of those Countries that certificates that come into Nigeria. I'd like to get your comment on that. It's like Village people don't follow us go township. That's how it is Have run a netline with regards to the Sales and purchases of certificates Yeah, from some of these people with African countries For me, I think we are not making it for critical Why do I say that? Not long ago Similar things were said about the University here in Lagos Yeah, certificates are being sold and they are being bought. In millions of Naira I also remember There's a polytechnic also in Lagos, India in which it's been pointed out in the fact That they also sell and buy certificates in that sensation You talk for so many other schools in Nigeria So if we are doing this in Nigeria Why would we say respect That everything was the perfect In this other country and it is not just in Nigeria There's only four of these things done In people in places like Korea, South Korea and some of these other countries of the world It's not a new phenomenon. It has always been that I Remember when I was in second school We had a teacher who said he's called somewhere and now got to PhD But the quality of his teaching and taking about 40 years ago was a suspect And when the students began to complain And the principal and the educational authorities were forced to do the investigation It was found that this man was carrying a PhD in Economic Certification from the US So The responsibility is on the control authorities The federal means of education the state means of education to strengthen the control measures The accreditation measures and also the investigative measures So the ones of this is then the certificate We showed as we used to do in those things after 15, 25 and 30 years in a very discreet manner whether this certificate is a new or not And with the cooking edge technologies as the people's disposal now Internet, Google and what has to easy telephone conversations and what has to Internet, what has to be, what has to be It shouldn't be too difficult to clarify statistics within two, three years Then we also let our viewers know When people like all of them enter the university Especially in the rest of the country which has a very strong control measure They will accept whatever it is to bring But behind your back they will begin to Encertificate and you'll certificate They will discreetly write to most of these places This is some of these places and some of these schools to go out to them The list of graduates, two people go to their last school and so so so yes and no other And most of them are obliged And with that you may even be your final year in the university in the University of Benton And they discovered that the results are submitted So access admission is a theory and then they will just tell you out very quietly without any noise But the truth of the matter is that why is this report in the department today Both the people sending the certificate Both the people buying and both the people accepting those certificates and they know as you got the transaction that will take place in these places So we are merely trying or we are trying to remove the spec in somebody's eyes when we have loads and beans in our own eyes Oh well Like you said, these things also happen in Nigeria and I don't know what the government will do about that I don't know But just suspending certificates from these countries is that the right way to go What else could they have done Because there may be some people who have certificates from these countries that genuinely went to school in those countries and spent the whole years that they needed to spend in the universities But now just to suspend them it means everybody that's a blanket a solution for everybody whether you're fake or not fake I think the right path is to suspend And then when you have suspended the suspension is not going to affect those who have earlier lost some certificates from those places and all that This is the new people that are bringing those certificates that will not be accepted to be accredited or to be accepted So but those who have submitted in the past I am sure what the federal government will do what the federal government will do is to now begin a decrypt investigation of the certificates they have taken from some of these places in the past and then find out or ascertain whether they are genuine or not So even the future they are able to stop on the fact that those certificates are equally fake can occur that will take as appropriate a criminal in the past By now telling us certificates is a very rarely serious matter it's a criminal open and I'm sure the federal government and the state government will not do it both as a civil and a criminal matter Okay let's move to another headline still on the Guardian newspaper federal government directs MDS to remit 100% of generated revenue Will this help us or will it not Whatever whatever revenues MDS generates the federal government is asking them to remit 100% of it to the federal coffers Is this a good thing or a bad thing for our economy Fortunately that is what should be done A revenue generated agency can also not begin also to appropriate such revenue that is generated because of some control measures input somewhere Let's say for example the joint admission matriculation board that is jammed that organization has shown the capacity to remit generated lots of funds and what I suspect they do now after they have generated the funds taking what they want to take they return the remaining or the balance to the federal government to the coffers of the federal government that is not the way should be done what all organizations whether at the state level at the local government level ordinary nation will do whatever revenue is generated they will send to the coffers of the federation and they are on a yearly basis they will also make a budget they will require to spend both on recorrent and capital expenditure and once the national assembly approves this or passes into law then the account generator and all the respective agencies will be remitting that budget to them to be able to make whatever recorrent and the capital expenditure that they have said they will do within the year and not for them to generate the revenue and begin to spend it within some accountability somewhere and of course there is a budget which is the base for them which you will find it difficult to implement or to control or to monitor if they are the one generator and also spending part of the problem we have in this country like some of us have already said is that many times the control with regards to funders and generators are not being properly controlled and that goes because all the agencies need to stop I am sure it will stop some of the nicotine that we have seen some of these places will be drastically reduced if not totally eliminated Okay, a final one from the Guardian before we move on to another newspaper is southern middle belt leaders petition Tinobu on restructuring Honestly speaking anybody who loves this country I want to see our hopes and pray that it remains one we will encourage the present government to engage in some destructuring when we say destructuring or when we propose destructuring no, we are not talking about competition we are not also hoping that we break this country into timings or states what we are saying that the fundamentals of federation should be institutionalized so that some of the challenges that this unitary system of government that are running will be reduced if not totally eliminated for example we are talking about state police for example we are talking about the freedom of religion we are talking about allowing the state to have a court of appeal and the supreme court we are also talking about the state having control over their mineral resources over their water over whatever is within the boundaries of their respective states and then pay royalties taxes to the federal government for a management and then also for the roaming of the army and all of the those things that are central to all the states we also want to look at the situation in which salary that civil servants earn in legacy with the difference on what the civil servants for example with the army the cost of living in legacy is way way higher than the cost of living in places like Gigawa Sanfara and Sokoto state so all these minimum wage that people talk about will also be affected by the stock exchange all these state assemblies assemblies a local government earning the same salaries and allow us to do the same of the past for example a state like 86 that's very very poor we say no our assembly members will only take existing allowances we are not going to be providing accommodation for them we are not going to be buying cows for them and what have you those are the kind of the stock exchange that we are talking about if we have such a stock exchange and then a lot of responsibilities are placed on the subject of the local government on the subject of the state government with regards to security I am sure the security challenge that we have in the country today will be minimized or reduced it is not as good as we thought because what is causing security in some of these places is the hunger for land the fight for land between the farmers and the others what is also causing the insecurity is the enormous mineral resources potential that has been cut off that has been worn off want to seize the land in which they are embedded and begin to take away those mineral resources without paying revenue or anything to the federal government actually what you have in the past paid with the lease and canvass the lease for the crop turning before he was one of the presidents when he created additional local governments in legal state among other landmark achievements so whether we have the courage to step on the toes of some powerful people who are opposed to the structure of this country is a recent thing entirely because it is easier when you are outside when you are not the one inside you to begin to mouth and canvass this thing but when you get in there you will find out that the issues are very complex that a lot of landmines will be laid if not already laid for you and all that it is about political courage it is about the man who will not care about whether he gets a second term or not but if as you are thinking about the second term I doubt it whether it will be able to engage the meaningful structure of the country wow so it depends on the ambition of one man at the end of the day okay moving to the punch newspaper and the leading headline is NNPCL marketers clash over subsidy operators peg petrol at 1,200 naira per litre the writers are saying marketers of post federal government on subsidy NNPCL says fuel importation costs now fully recovered dealers insist on 1,200 naira per litre fuel and 112 oil theft cases recorded in one week 1,200 naira per litre can we survive it anytime we are talking about the fuel going so high they bring statistics from other countries how they pay for a litre of fuel some countries are paying 1,500 naira some are 2,000 some are 1,000 and all that and I keep asking myself if the minimum wage is the same in those countries if the per capita income is the same in those countries can we survive 1,200 naira per litre it depends on the difficulties but let me begin to say that it's unfortunate that those who sold the dollar to us that with the total dilapidation of the activities in the petroleum sector this subsidy issue is being a thing of the past and not the one in being combustion that the subsidy has not been totally removed in fact I was watching on television and I read some things that the economics Mr. Rewaney of financial dilapidation published last week on this first subsidy thing some of the things they have said could be said to be true for us neither here nor there why do I say that because I do know that people lie oftentimes lie with statistics you yourself have said something that is very fundamental this morning that is the minimum wage and value of quality the same some of the countries that have been mentioned when compared to Nigeria the answer is no but it can then we are having this country and what those who sold the dollar to us that wants to dilapidate wants to demote the subsidy in those places didn't tell us that you will require to have a stable exchange rate for you to be able to maintain a standard or a package or a unique or a regime of oil prices or oil prices that will not change if your dollar or your Naira or your currency is at the mercy of the dollar in which petroleum products that give you a petroleum product are denominator there will never be a stable price of petroleum resources in that kind of a country so when you are not even low the bulk of the fuel that we consume in this country has been imported from abroad and they are denominated in Naira and the value of our own quality is slightly on a daily basis whereas the dollar has remained stable so how do you bridge this gap that is the the million dollar question and you will need to be self-suffocating in terms of production of petroleum products at all and if you are self-suffocating there is still going to be another challenge in that area and what is the challenge so long as you are selling the crude oil to the refineries in Nigeria at the international market rate and in dollars they will also not be able to guarantee a stable a petroleum product price in Nigeria it is the rate at which they buy in the international market and the cost of producing and distribution in the country that will determine how much they will also sell locally even when they are producing it locally so it is a very complex issue and that is the reason why the federal government should have the most high prospects in removing or in doing a wholesale remover of the so-called subsidies that will be on the petroleum products in Nigeria let's go to COVID-19 beneficiaries protest as banks begin COVID-19 loan recovery they got some loans, COVID-19 loans maybe to eat their businesses and so many other things and now the recovery process is bringing protests from those who benefited from it what are your comments what are your attitudes to paying loans or in the zero most of the people that access those loans are not access not because they have the intention to pay back in fact I can remember some of my acquaintances who not give me and call me to go for the loan they fit as a kind of a booty they are on shelves which is not going to be repaid back and unfortunately too there were no student controls or measures put on ground for the recovery for some of the amelibic COVID-19 loans they were mainly directed to the website to apply for the loan and provide some data to back it up and I can remember somebody calling me to apply for it he said the website is always done but I should try to access the website between 12 midnight and 5 am in the morning which I didn't do now some of those who access this loan may have provided wrong data wrong statistics or information that will make it difficult for the government of the bank to be able to trace them yes they could have NIN yes they could have BGM but if they have some of these information and they have relocated abroad how will they be able to recover the loans from them for some of them use this loan to sort up the funds that they wanted to use this is a very complex thing I recollect that in the past we used to have a student loan board that gave loans to so many Nigeria to study in those days and I'm speaking to you less than 10 percent of such loans have been recovered most of those who access the loans disappear into thin air and they are never found till today and it's not peculiar to Nigeria a loan I remember getting a loan from the UK and relocating to Nigeria and teaching to pay the British government all the institutions are giving a loan in the UK have to hire a lawyer in Nigeria and get security people to chase this person and after they trace him and got him they hire the lawyer to prosecute him in the Nigerian court to recover the loans so if you have thousands of millions of people who have done similar things are you going to hire million security men to trace or trace them or sort them out and also millions of lawyers to find petitions in court to recover the loans as far as I'm concerned the federal government is having a very very bad loan in his hands are you going to use good money to chase the budget? daily trust we're starting with a smaller headline national assemblies budget of 344.4 billion is higher than 15 federal universities that's one of the headlines there at the top of that newspaper what are your comments 15 federal universities do not have a budget that is the budget of the national assembly of people who are less than 500 or at least less than 1,000 they have 344.4 billion in IRA what are your thoughts? my brother this is one of my fears for the represent common for what you follow if he came into power the running of the country is being done in the ways and manner his predecessors have also done and which we have done things in the past we didn't work for all while we will continue to check the same path in the return to this civil rule when the government are taking a budget to put up the national assembly the national assembly have only found ways to increase those budget proposals not with few millions of Naira not with few thousand not with few billion but among it of 3 million of Naira for God's sake we are talking about fiscal governance we are talking about fiscal prices of contracts and services in Nigeria we are talking about in all the different segments of the governor what would our perspective that the budget proposal that was taken to the national assembly will even be further reduced by the national assembly in a way in which we are just cutting our clothes according to the size of our clothes because the national government is going to be financed with borrowing from different parts of the country coming internally and externally so why will you be borrowing money or why will you be anticipating borrowers and predicting your budget estimate for the year of money that are going to be borrowing from certain places it means that if you don't get that money tomorrow the federal government will go back to what it has always been doing whether means that is asking the CBN to begin to print money which they will spend there without any backup that will lead to our inflation will lead to more corruption and if care is not taken they break down of law another because the people are already getting put to the wall and by the time they are back to the wall they will begin to kick back they will begin to fight back the national assembly are showing selfishness they are not demonstrating that they are paytops they are not demonstrating that they know where the shoes are painting where the ordinary Nigerians and look at what they did they got them there they bought shoes they bought shoes utility vehicle for them best bought billions of Naira and then last December the Senate president said some certain things are being sent to Senators Akan for their enjoyment for their holiday enjoyment for their vacation for God's sake if the ordinary men on the streets if they have society in the streets best they best in the ways of the national assembly people the best in the ways of houses of assembly between all the different states should be the ones to be called titans before they begin to call on the ordinary Nigerians to also guard their ways I mean I'm sorry to say we are not ready to move the nation forward if this is the way and manner the national assembly will be given okay well we are still hopeful we'll be good let me join these two headlines together on the daily trust identify okay not central governors to federal government identify root causes of plan 2 killings for lasting peace NBA decries intelligence failure to prioritize security those are the riders pandeva, feniferia, or hanese NBF seek end to killings in the north several bandits killed in Kaduna two gunned down as Bukohara Mataks Chibok okay the second headline I'm adding there is Tudumbiri one month after residents are with compensation outcome of committee report remember that when this plan 2 killings took place the president said or directed that compensation or not even compensation that palliatives and some other things to these people who have lost loved ones lost farmlands and lost a lot of other things and now we're talking about Tudumbiri where the army bombed the people and killed over 100 people and they were asked to compensate them till date nobody has heard the report of the committee set for that purpose and nobody has been given compensation and just what are your thoughts it has happened in Plattu in Tudumbiri it has happened in Kaduna it has happened everywhere and if we're talking compensation that will never arrive what are we even talking about let me say that I don't know I am not sure whether the committee set up to investigate but I think what happened in Tudumbiri had submitted this report one month later one month later is it not too long even for people have died already people are grieving already it is ordinarily competition between the people of Tudumbiri should have been increasing the session would have been maybe the president had come the nation's emergency agencies should have moved in there to provide certain basis to call the people and then when that has been done and the committee is reaching and is speaking and compiling their reports collecting the names of the people that affected the property that has been damaged and now that then when the committee supports the findings of the report will be the basis of compensation for the people of Tudumbiri but before this happened there is nothing stopping the local government where this happened the national emergency agency and the state government provided certain basic relief to the people before the federal government gets hold of the report for whatever committee it might have have been set up and all that but just like we are doing now raising anxiety at the end of the day this matter will not be shed under the carpet it is not impossible we have had the state government we have had the local government the federal government talking about compensation in the last trip of the thing we are talking about since we have been having the book and the nothing has happened it is only the governors in Boronu state that one can say have a living to the challenge of rehabilitating their people of reflecting them not much has happened in other parts of the country remember there was a time that some bandit went to attack a war in which almost about 40 people were killed and not to show that the people affected by that by the killings in the war had been fully rehabilitated we cry when these things happen and immediately the doors begin to settle the matters are shed under the carpet but I suspect that this is not impossible and it has been my fear for the federal government the federal government that no matter what good intentions it may be having no matter what good intentions it may be having resources many funds are likely to be an impediment to most of the things that we want to do we have said this morning our ability to sell petroleum products in the international market is being hampered not just by the activities of the pipeline vendors but also the concrete that we are selling we also know that the world is now investing in cleaner energy so the demand for petroleum products in the international will continue to go down so if the economy is predicated from selling crude oil in the international market it will be at the vagaries of the frontiers that what has happened in the international oil market so as good as the intention might be to begin to compress to rehabilitate these people where the funding will come from will most likely be a challenge for both the federal government the state government the local government we've eaten our cake before baking it what miracles will we bring to get the cake back it seems to be in the hands of God and politicians who are conscious who want to do things out of the box and not the way we've been doing it since 1999 alright we'll keep praying to God and then we tell God please give conscience to our politicians so that tomorrow we'll know that Nigeria will grow from trend to trend we'd like to thank you Mr. Atunde Kolaulay for coming on the program this morning it's been a marathon we're glad that you could give us the stand thank you so much I wish you a lovely day you too we've been talking with Mr. Atunde Kolaulay a legal practitioner here in Degos we're reviewing the headlines this morning we're going to take a short break and when we return we'll take our first hot topic stay with us