 platform is a private initiative supported by government and we're prepared to have the UAE and Nigeria platform. I'm sure that there are some informal platforms already but we're happy to have that kind of platform and of course the government will be fully supportive of it but because of the way that we intend to approach this is to allow a natural is to allow these sorts of things to grow organically through the private sector but once we have them we're prepared to support them the government of course will be very happy to support any UAE in Nigeria business or trading platforms that exist. Now the general procedures and I think I can just probably just repeat this once or twice we have what is called the Nigeria Investment Promotion Council. Now the NIPC is a one-stop shop for business facilitation generally. One of the things that I want us to do is and we have very very highly competent individuals who work there led by lady called Yawande Sadiku who herself used to be in the private sector and very high-open banking and who is now the leader of the the director general of the NIPC. So a lot of questions around what can we do to find good partners what do we need to do to for what sort of issues you may have NIPC and we also have a website the NIPC has a website you know Nigeria Investment Promotion Council also has a website. All of these sorts of questions can be easily answered by the NIPC and I think that that's what will make the most sense because some of them there are questions that you may want to ask especially if you want to cross-check persons who you are doing business with you know there are times when you are not sure of the of the sorts of individuals that you want to do business with. They are ready to help. In some cases you are looking for specific things such as assistance with state governments you know for example of course as you know as I said we have 36 states in Nigeria if you wanted to invest outside of the federal capital territory say you wanted to invest in Kanduna or you wanted to invest in Sokoto or somewhere you will need some assistance with state governments. The NIPC is in a position to do all of the facilitation as required. One of the things we try to do is to work very closely with all the state governments. I chair what is called the National Economic Council which is a monthly meeting of state governments. We held one just on Thursday. All the state governors come together and I chair that meeting so we're able to do a lot of facilitation of businesses and all of that with the NIPC and all other regulators who are usually in attendance. Now what are the procedures for guaranteeing investors and how do you reduce your risk? Well generally speaking investors are guaranteed by the existing legal framework. Existing legal framework including our constitution does not allow expropriation of businesses so government cannot take over businesses and government cannot expropriate property. There is a due process. Constitutionally you are not allowed to do so. This is one of the reasons why I talked about the judiciary especially in enforcement of contracts. With respect to enforcement of contract and we urge our investors to seek proper legal advice and draw legal agreements that of course are binding under Nigerian law. Now what we then do is to protect that as much as we can to protect your agreements, protect legal agreements. Of course sometimes legal procedures can be slow but the truth of the matter is that under our law, under existing laws, we have adequate provision both in commercial law as I said a few minutes ago. We have a new companies and allied matters act which takes into account most of the modern concerns or most of the current concerns that persons who are doing business especially as corporate entities may have and we've tried to ensure that that particular legislation is one that is as forward-looking as possible. So I think that generally speaking we have a legal system that works quite well. As I said there are occasionally delays in the process and legal process sometimes that takes a while but the truth is that we have a legal system that works very well and of course is based on the traditions of English law which most most investors are probably familiar with especially those who do business in any of the western countries. We also have and one of the things that I as a corporate solicitor and corporate litigator at various times would urge is that in your agreement you have arbitration clauses or ADL clauses, alternative dispute resolution clauses so that you are able to go outside the court system to resolve disputes that there may be and in many of the states we now have alternative dispute regulate alternative dispute resolution mechanisms where you can resolve disputes outside of the regular court system. So Anders talked about port congestion and airports not functioning according to international standards or by international standards. Yes there have been some problems with the ports in Lagos and in some senses is a good problem because there is an influx of there is a great deal of trade and activity. Now in resolving that in the short term you know one of the reasons why I was slightly elated coming here is that we are trying to look at how and this is also another business opportunity. We are developing inland ports and trying to ensure that we have inland ports in the various parts of Nigeria where goods can be undelivered. We are also at the moment building a new railway system the Lagos Cano Rail starting from their papa ports which we hope will be we hope the Lagos Ibadon end of it or the Lagos Ibadon part of it starting from their papa port will be completed by February this year. We had hoped it would be completed by March but we found that there are difficulties especially with the corridor the rail corridor some encroachments of the rail corridor and settling some of the issues around those who are built in the rail corridor and ensuring that compensation is paid to them that is causing some delays. So we expect that the rail route will take out a lot of cargo from the ports outside Lagos and that would also help considerably in decongesting the ports. We're working very actively also on all of the airports and all that and for those who visit quite frequently you'll notice that they have been incremental changes some of them the visa on arrival procedure some of them the clearing procedure and all of that. We're working also to ensure that those attain standards that are applicable anywhere in the world. As I pointed out in the course of my presentation the major airports in Nigeria are being concessured and this is really my view the long-term approach is the concessioning of those airports so that private sector can run them. My belief is that the private sector is a much more efficient much more efficient manager of facilities a much more efficient manager of resources and I think that this would be a very good thing for Nigeria and again it's an investment opportunity that is the private the concessioning of the airports. Someone asked also what is the difference between the Nigeria that is projected in the media and the Nigeria I operate in. Well I think generally speaking when you look at how a country is projected a lot depends on where you're at. If you operate for example in any part of Nigeria you probably will find that the news generally is not anywhere near what you might find in you know in the media. The media naturally wants to highlight bad news which is you know I think that's just the stocking trade of this gentleman who is seated here. I mean I think for who is interested in hearing that oh you know nice things are happening in Sokoto state. Nobody wants to hear that. People want to hear that. A train crashed you know plane fell out of the skies. Those are the kinds of things we want to hear but I think that anybody who is functioning within a system and I was speaking to one of our European ambassadors the other day about terrorism and I said that their countries for example were you know school shootings alone shooting kids in school alone 22 in one month. I mean if you if you highlighted only that you wouldn't even want to go to school there in that country of the world. But this is a huge country and there's so many different things that are going on and fortunately for us also in many of the areas where we have the most challenging security problems especially the Hertzman farmer clashes are restricted. They're not you know the major issues are not spread across the country which are some of the security challenges we have. Also the Boko Haram crisis which we believe is more or less resolved except for some opportunistic attacks here and there. That is also in a restricted area it's not across the entire country. Nigeria as we know is a very huge country very very huge country and most people who are in one part of the country really except for social media these days probably don't even know what is going on in in another part of the country. So I think that by and large the sorts of challenges that we face are challenges that are faced you know by many countries of the world and sometimes those challenges are seasonal you have some challenges that are you know that are seasonal but you would try to deal with them as they come and would try to you know also develop long-term strategies for dealing with them. By and large I'm sure that most people who have visited Nigeria or who do business in Nigeria will find that it is generally speaking a safe place to do business and most businesses are unaffected by the major by some of the things that we hear or see in the media. Commercial banks administering credit the whole issue around agriculture and credit for agriculture is one that we're working on very seriously well now the bank of agriculture in the new in the current budget we are capitalizing the bank of agriculture which we hope will be a more direct way of offering credit to commercial farmers but we also want to push the commercial banks to give agricultural credit. It's an important point you've made and we all accept the point that generally speaking commercial banks except one or two are not always they're not always ready to give credit for agriculture and one of the reasons is because the commercial banks by just putting their money in treasury bills make substantial amounts of money but now that the that rates are coming down they are now going to be forced to push out credit and actually give credit if you are making 17 percent on treasury bills they're not likely to invest in any the real sector in any way including agriculture but now that rates are coming down it's becoming more obvious that they need to put out the they need to to give credit and we've been also working with the central bank to ensure that NISEL i'm sure some of us are familiar with NISEL which is a credit which deris credit for agriculture that NISEL is given a much more prominent role to play so that working with the commercial banks you can have lower you can have cheaper money for for agriculture so that that i think is something that we're paying you know great attention to and i and i think that for those who want to do some for those who want to do business in agriculture you might well be able to find credit for many you know it's not just agriculture the real sector generally you know if you don't have a track record of business it many have said that there are difficulties with just accessing with accessing credit but i think with what we're doing at the moment and with rates coming down lending to the real sector will definitely um power sector roads and transportation let me just talk about power sector very quickly especially in relation to business of course many of you would know those who are familiar with the Nigerian business environment know that we there was a power sector reform where most where the generation and distribution was privatized and so we have gencos we have generating companies that are private we also have distribution companies that are private only transmission the tcm is governmental the federal government now we've had some difficulties with the discote that's distribution generating capacity is quite good i mean we've moved on installed capacity something in the order of about 15 000 megawatts of power and there's so many new initiatives in solar and solar renewable energy general we don't really have a problem with generation the problem is with the last mile delivering the distribution and the last mile and because of discos have a great deal of difficulty because of their leveraging they reform itself when it was done from 2005 or so did not really look in particular at the at how deep the pockets of a lot of the discos were the discos find themselves in a situation where they simply don't have most of the resources that were required to do to invest more in metering to invest in distribution assets transformers transmission lines etc so they have so the discos have a problem now what we how we try to resolve that is by saying by doing what we call the eligible customer arrangement now the declaration of the eligible customer means that you can have a willing buyer willing seller arrangement and so you can go outside the discos and if anyone was following some of the news on the bar center recently we'll find that what we're doing now is that we are actually allowing generating companies to supply power directly to industrial clusters including markets going outside for the discos going outside the discos so if a disco that occupies a particular territory is unable to deliver power what we've done is that by the eligible customer arrangement it is possible for a company for a company that's generating power either to a cluster or from the grid to sell power especially to industrial concerns and all that we find that that has worked quite well although the discos of course are unhappy about it but there's no exclusive jurisdiction they don't have exclusive jurisdiction and they are unable to provide where they are unable to provide power we work on the eligible customer or the willing buyer willing seller arrangement at the moment we've done that for quite a few economic clusters and we intend to continue to do so because really the strategy for us is that you cannot rely entirely on power coming from the grid so a lot of off grid power is what we're investing in now so there are several you know small companies that are able to produce either in some cases solar in some cases in some cases thermal capacity and fuel IPPs to provide power across across the country in different in the different economic clusters so that I think is the solution but I very strongly believe that with what we're doing at the moment we will be able to deal with large portions of the power sector of course I don't want to take you through all of the you know the economics of the whole value chain and all of that but I think that with what has been done at the moment we can really make significant improvement in power delivery especially to the commercial clusters um policies to encourage startups several we have several policies to encourage startups and many of those policies revolve around the bank of industry the bank of industry has a new fund specifically devoted to startups the government also has been supporting startups directly recently we set up what is called the technical the advisory group on technology and creativity which is really you know a group of a group consisting of startups several owners of startups and owners of businesses in technology and entertainment and I chair that particular advisory group I've been working a lot on developing policy for the startups the policies include access to credit and all that and that really is from my own office and so we've there's so many in fact just recently just last week I believe it was or barely 10 days ago we were in Silicon Valley with a group of startups talking directly to investors and so many investment decisions were made right there and then I think that there's enough room for startups that we are encouraging that through the bank of industry through CBN funding and we're also encouraging venture capitalists to invest in in our startups and that is in that respect we're doing very well in fact just recently we launched what is called the students challenge where universities across the country are competing for funds for their own startups and all that and this is all this is mostly government supported with with some private sector participation so I think generally speaking startups have very very good opportunities somebody asked about elections and trade what how the 2019 elections may affect trade and investment I don't think it will be significant at all there and the simple reason is that the policies that are in place you know lead out there in a legal framework we cannot afford a situation where an election cycle in any way in any way affects or impunes on investment and that's why all of the investments all of the investment initiatives are backed by law or by executive order so that nothing really changes if however an election an election cycle plays out so I don't think that that will be a significant I don't think it will be a significant problem except of course if you are investing in the politicians you know if you are not investing the politicians it should be just fine raising the value of I think we've talked about that somebody talked about congestion of traffic in Lagos you know well Lagos I think has improved considerably like most mega cities New York Bangkok and several cities you have traffic challenges I think that what has happened in Lagos is that there are of course as you know there are new road initiatives at the fourth main land bridge which again is a major investment opportunity although I know that there are several takers now so there are it's a continuous thing being done we're looking at how in various ways especially where federal roads are concerned how can concession those federal roads overall or hand them to the state government we're recently handed over the airport road the road leading from Lagos airport out to Oshoody and all of those areas to the Lagos state government to enable them develop that facility and told it if they wish so I think that building more roads and also managing the traffic is the only way to go we don't involve ourselves in managing traffic in the states because that's the state function but I believe that with Lagos you know as with any very busy capital city the traffic cycles are also fairly determined unless of course there is a major there's a major problem otherwise most people who leave or work in Lagos have somehow you know managed to look at the cycles you know when the you know when the rush hour is and you know when things are lighter challenging administrative decisions in courts yes that's very that's that's always available and just as you said as a lawyer I have seen or been part of several challenges of administrative decisions and the courts are very frequently rolled in favor of the challenges of administrative decisions I don't think that there's a problem whatsoever with that although what we've also tried to do especially with investments is to create opportunities for investors to arbitrate those disputes and in some cases by going up to the NIPC or some other regulatory authority we try to work out if these are decisions that can be sorted out especially for and this is what I was talking about when I talked about the labs that were held where administrative bottlenecks disturb an investment you know and in this lab structure we bring together all of the regulatory authorities investors and try and get them into a room to work out whatever administrative records there are and this lab structure has worked very effectively because we make sure that all the major regulators are there in the room and as I said I also participate in some of the sessions of the labs local content I think already we've done a lot of work with local content there are two executive orders specifically directed at local content saying that in procurements whether it's procurement of rules of services local content must be prioritized executive order three I believe it is and five orders aside from local content in oil and gas which is regulated by existing legislation so there is ample provision for that logistics and freight forwarding there is a lot of activity around that now especially logistics and just recently I know that mask the shipping company and logistics company working with the with the seat with the with I'm trying to remember the particular body that they're working with one of the world bank one of the world bank groups have come and they're looking at logistics especially with agro with the agro allied industry they're looking at how to deal with logistics bringing farm products from farm to the table and there's a fair amount of what's going on in that respect and mask as we know is one of the major logistics companies in the world and they are investing heavily in logistics right there those who are interested in logistics and all of that that also I think is a good business opportunity and of course where you see some of the big names going into it clearly that must tell you something about the prospect somebody asked why only Lagos and Kando are mentioned in the presentation that's not correct I mentioned several other cities I mentioned about several cities especially with respect to location of businesses when I was talking about malls I talked about those cities but the reason why I mentioned Lagos and Kano in particular is because in implementing now these are the two these are two major commercial centers Potapot is another but in terms of commerce in terms of just trading Lagos and Kano are the top two and what we try to do was to because so many businesses go to those two locations we try to implement some of the reforms in those two locations first of course we're implementing the reforms across the country but in Lagos and Kano we want to implement those reforms there first because that's where you'll find you know that several businesses tend to go especially some of the companies that have come into the country for various reasons as outside of oil and gas most of the non-oil investments have tended to go in that direction somebody asked about estimated billing when will that stop and all of that well this is the point we're making and this is why the discos as we've said lacked many of them lacked the capacity because they simply don't have the investments to be able to do the billing and metering and all that and that's where we're doing the willing buyer willing sell option but we think that with some of the fresh investments we expect will go into discos and in the next couple of months we expect that some fresh investments will come there we think that that and we also have a metering plan there's a major metering plan what we're trying to do with metering is to take it completely outside of the discos and to allow independent companies to meter and to charge for their own metering so that particular metering plan is one that we intend to pursue i think we should start operations by end of september i believe it is to begin the independent companies doing metering once that is done you wouldn't have any estimated billing because meters will be available for all consumers somebody asked about young Nigerians in government there's several young Nigerians in government several i work with practice in fact practically everybody who works with me is under 40 my advisors my assistants technical advisors almost all of them are under 40 so there are several young Nigerians in government question of course is that you know if if if you're looking for a 30 year old minister of finance and all of that yeah it could come you know those sorts of things happen but there are rarities you don't have a macron everywhere in the world you know every once in a while you get a macron but it's it's not it's not the norm generally speaking a bit of experience is also required in order to be able to deliver effectively i think that one needs a bit of experience and what has happened you know what what i think is good is that young people who want to be in government start you know as advisors assistants special assistants and those kinds of things all work in the bureaucracy and several of them are exposed to government and the way that business is done in government several of them of course are the experts that we rely on but it's an amount of you know experience is also garnered by just being there seeing things being done interacting with politicians with bureaucrats and all of that it's not just about being smart you know i mean government is not just being clever it's not just being smart you have to deal with politicians deal with bureaucrats deal with all sorts of tensions sometimes ethnic sometimes religious so i think that a bit of i think working with government is a in those capacities is always a good thing always a good training ground but there is nothing there's nothing whatsoever that stops a young person from aspiring to any positions in government that they may please there are no special things for foreign graduates we welcome everyone and many foreign graduates back home working i have a very substantial number of foreign graduates who work with me many nigerians are also foreign graduates in fact practically every nigerian goes to school in nigeria and abroad so i mean we welcome all of you but we don't have any special provisions for foreign graduates anyone who wants to come home of course is very very welcome um the company asked about concessions for investing in uh cct one of the major things is that if you start a company if you if you are starting a company and if you look at that on premium of incentives which i've just referred to is also available on the nipc website you most likely are eligible for what is called the pioneer status which enables you to have five years at least of free uh tax free five tax free years so you're not paying tax for the first five years so if you come and establish your business you're most likely going to be entitled to no corporation tax etc for the first uh five years and also importation you can wholly own your business even as a foreigner you can repatriate hundred percent of your capital you can engage who you like to work so long as they are technically technical people can engage them to work so they the concessions uh or incentives are all there um i think somebody asked how soon for nigeria well we've only just announced and uh we're also looking at the business case there are several different investment issues around it there is a determination to ensure that i said it's private sector led and we have several you know interested persons who are looking at it i would say that you know uh within a 12 to 18 month period we should expect you know uh actual takeoff if uh if things go in the normal course that we expect them to go but it's not uh it's not starting tomorrow because obviously there are many things that need to be done i think that's about most of the questions that were asked i think yes i think there's a question about sports you know and i i'm not i accept it there's a specific uh thing on sports what we've tried i mean they just as with every aspect of Nigerian life and business entertainment uh we as i said we have the advisory group on technology and and creativity beg your pardon so anyone who is interested in business in any of those areas uh we probably will function within that that context but every aspect of Nigerian uh of of Nigerian life is who is open for business you want to invest in sports depending on what it is or what the specifics are i'm sure that these are areas i will come look at thank you thank you