 You're welcome back. It's still the breakfast on Plus TV Africa and we're going to be looking at the papers as usual on off the press this morning and we're being joined by a very special guest of honor Well, if I say that it will sound like we've never heard him on the show But it's a regular on the show and you'll know why I'm saying this We're being joined by architect Ezekiel Nyaito, public affairs analyst joining us from a quiet bomb state Good morning and welcome to the show sir Thank you for having me always a pleasure If I had the voice I would have sung a song for you for your heart for your birthday yesterday was your birthday you clock 60 actual 60 and you are a politician is just Nowadays when you hear 60 you'll be looking at all the people as the primary schools the secondary schools they the first Letter of appointment and all that to find out if that person is actually 60, but you are 60 Congratulations on that milestone sir Thank you so much. I appreciate God has been so merciful and gracious to me We're afraid you will have a hangover. You might not wake up to do the program this month But we thank God for message was more Congratulations, sir, okay, so so we're going to Daily independence now we're beginning with daily independence and the leading story is no excuses Perform or I suck you tinabu tells ministers so many people kind of liked that Statement what is your take does it portray the president as a strong-willed? person then that can do and undo when the need arises I think it's Very important communication because Nigerians were sick and tired of the last administration where The man just hands you over the office and that is it Tunibu is somebody that can relate to very easily because he micromanages and for a leader in a country like Nigeria you must be hands-on it's not enough and again against the backdrop of Entitlement mentality people believe that as you appoint them you don't appoint them to do the work You appoint them as a reward for the work they have done and it It's refreshing to hear the president say You don't do the work. I fire you and trust me. Let me tell you I I have come to that point where I'm starting to keep hope alive I'm starting to see certain things that must be And rather than wait to see if it will be I am saying it must be it. I'll tell you very little thing if your son That you know had any children for seven years and then eventually you have this child And you get a call that is in a theater room And you rush in there You are not thinking will this Um Sergeant be able to do it. No your thought is My son's gotta leave Sergeant's gotta do it. You are not hoping and waiting to see You are hoping against to because it's in your larger interest Or the side it's urgent to be successful. I'm sure you get what I'm heading to. Yeah, so Nigeria must be well Our president will perform and we the citizens will help him to perform because the issue of if or if not is over He is the president of the federal republic of Nigeria and that's finito So he must perform and we will make it possible for him to perform That's why we are saying we agree with what he said perform or quit but um Why some people are just looking at it like Will he can he is this fact that in the previous administration we had one of the most famous Quotes in our political history. I am for nobody. I'm for everybody so At the end of the tenor the second tenor There was a different interpretation to that because when he said it everybody thought this is a tough man that has come and is going to Flush out all the bad eggs that we have in our society But at the end of the day it meant something else Maybe he meant well, but he didn't have the will or The power because a lot of other people may have clipped his wings Don't you think it's possible that this can happen here? Anyway, you're keeping hope alive Yeah, these are two different paradigms One is Look, I'll be fair to all Okay We understood it to mean that okay This one says I must perform There are two different things for me. Oh, I'll tell you this There's a tendency of these you know Ethnic biases, you know Clownishness that tendency because you see a lot of your bars coming to the party Honestly and sincerely I'll say this as a senior citizen officially Okay, and that I couldn't care less If tinubus junior brother is a minister of finance And the daughter is a minister works. I couldn't care less If by appointing them These people come and fix our problems Because I don't I don't care. Look when Jonathan Former president Jonathan was the president of the federal republic of Nigeria I can't really say that the south side was better off I tend to have impression that when president Um The one that succeeded him immediate past president How can I a buhari? I think that president buhari my personal opinion Deep more for the Niger delta than president Jonathan did for the night and night Niger delta Okay And and it's understandable. So for me is Please if you want to park all the Yoruba people no problem But just make sure that there are people that will perform Now there's this argument. Oh, you can find people that can perform from any part of the globe or any part of the country True it is and there is a constitutional provision for fairness and equity in the distribution of not just resources but offices in the land But I think that you know beyond the legalities I would rather have a Yoruba man that can perform well than an uh Acquirable man that feels a sense of entitlement and gets to the office and for four years I only have my brother that is there and not the country that is better Better still let him not only for an acquirable man That can perform So between the three choices The best choice is spread it and get the best hands to do it the second Best choice is get the people from wherever and let them perform The worst is you bring in your clansmen and they do nothing like in the past administration So it's a tradition of those three, you know, the worst the good or the Manageable and then the best Good the bad the ugly we remember. Okay. Uh, well Going to the south south now the river state is a state of concern right now when the governor and the as well governor fighting now it was speculation that It might be that the minister of the federal capital might have a hand in what is happening in river state and events In the past few hours have just confirmed that he has a hand in what is happening In fact, he even did say that Impeachment is not a a coup. It is constitutionally provided for in the constitution. So Whatever is going on in river state if they remove the governor, it's not a bad thing It's not a coup so long as it is the civilians that are doing it and it is in the constitution So this headline carries I have capacity to fight back wiki wants detractors Maybe this one this particular statement is for detractors as he is performing in the Federal capital territory But we do also know that he has said nobody can intimidate him and that the political structures in river state must remain the way they are Which means that the political structures that are loyal to him must remain the way they are and he can dictate To anybody at any time as far as this river state What are your comments on what is happening generally in river state between the governor and the fct minister? You know, Nigerians have A memory that sometimes treacherous we forget a probably a little too soon And we also do play a lot of the ostrich You bury your head in the sand and you think that you are buried your whole body is exposed And we also have an entitlement mentality where you want to have your cake and eat it These are the different aspects of Nigeria politics that we have become victims of Where there's a problem with the leadership And the origin of the problem of the leadership is the followership I always talk about office of the citizen of the faith the day you see there's a statement that we make and we've glorified that statement and I'm starting to think that it's a false narrative The problem of Nigeria rises and falls on leadership That's not true That's not true The problem of Nigeria because we run a constitutional democracy Rises and falls on the people that choose the leaders You can't be a governor until you have been chosen you see a goat You carry yam And give the goat to keep The goat eats the yam You turn around and cry foul The problem is it with the goat that did what it naturally would do or with you that was so Pardon me stupid to give yam to goat to keep Let me tell you until we come and take responsibility for our leadership recruitment We'll just be going around in circles If it was like a theocracy where you have no or a monarchy Where you don't have a choice I can understand with that that problem that issue rains But in a constitutional democracy Where the power of choice is vested in the people and we Decate our responsibility and would rather collect money on election day And hand over our sovereignty and our mandate To one man called mr. President or one man called the governor Whom we know who he is or she is But we play the ostrich and pretend not to know And then the man comes to office and he's himself And then you now say oh our problem is leader. No our problem is not our leader Our problem is you who and I that chose those people until we come to that reality We will never make progress in our country and we will because citizens like us Are starting to put a search light on the office of the citizen Either of the federal republic of Nigeria of acquire boom state or of your state to say we've got to wake up Now we're going to reverse state I'll tell you this If I were the governor, I will understand the seasons at times The memory of Nigeria is short Is short. There's nothing called political structure Two months to a lecture Three months to a lecture six months to a lecture You can move everything called structure All you need is number one to be wise You know where you are going. You know where you're going. You know where you're going as a governor of river state You are making the biggest mistake by starting a fight too early And let me tell you that the fct is another state And the budget is humongous And not only that we can has good control of the power of state And he has good resources at his disposal He has capacity to take care of his boys, but if you were smart You would play along Let the first year pass by some level of emotional, you know intelligence Do you understand me? Let people start to feel some level of sorry for you I mean, why is weekend doing this now? I mean, why is weekend for now? Unknown to him People are saying why is he biting the fingers that fed him? So he's not been able to establish that issue of buying the sympathy of the people He's not but but sir one one year is quite some time because if the rumors are right even though the FCT minister has denied these rumors that he wanted a percentage of Of the state's income To come to him monthly. He wanted to take an aspect of governance And leave one of the aspects of governance to the governor himself, you know So he will still be in almost absolute control of the state What if this is true and one year this money goes to an individual it will become more and more powerful Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something There's something called strategy There is something called strategy And unfortunately With all due respect most governors don't understand the meaning of that was strategy One man that understood this so well Was ibb and unfortunately a lot of our young people Were not privy and we don't have history You know ibb will set you up It's like, you know oj simpson, you know, uh trial Everybody concluded that this guy did these beds somehow They could not link him to it You understand me government there is opposition Do you get the point If I were to have advised him I'll tell him, you know what this open confrontation is still too early and still too fresh Number one number two. No, you're not going to accept this You're not going to accept this Number three is that there are many ways to kill a rat Get some information across to opposition Do you understand me You can do things that nobody traces anything to you Do you understand me somehow they can know that it'd be like say this man But you just see they're pretty No gentlemen, let's be careful. No, no, no, and then when this thing is festering You go to your boss Do you understand me? Okay This is get out of hand I'm here to protect your interest There's nowhere. This is government. You know This was starting. Let's let's let's let's let's do you understand me you start to actually While you're putting fuel somewhere You are playing the rat. You are biting and you are blowing You know, you have to be smart. Yeah, the bible says wisdom is profitable to direct This open confrontation might consume the governor unless he starts to have Very very serious strategic thinkers around him who knows how to get what he wants and yet, you know Diplomacy they say is telling somebody to go to hell and he actually looks forward to it There are many but we don't have thinking governors. We don't have strategic governors We just have this, you know brute force, you know, political No that you don't agree. You have to show that you are the governor. You have to blah blah blah No, it's not like that. You are the governor. You are the governor You are in control of the results of the state and there's a way you can do it so that no man Can pack more money than is You know some level of appreciation for him, but you can't come and run my system. No, you won't I would Devil and diplomacy that's what we're seeing Ned reverse the governor come to me free of charge I'll tell him how to balance equation. I've heard the kind of wisdom you're going to give to him He better consult you now. Okay. Um, let's move to another interesting interesting A headline interesting, especially because is what you're passionate about labor yesterday there was a protest in imo state and We found out that the The president of nlc was arrested In fact, the words that nlc is using is abducted and then that he was assaulted even though the the police say that he Was taken into protective custody. It was for his own protection that it took him but we've seen him with swollen face and We are we tend to agree with the fact that he was assaulted. Maybe not by the police We don't know that but the old fingers are pointing to the police. But now The thing is before the protest the governor sought and had an injunction that this protest cannot hold and The nlc still went ahead and did the protest and whatever happened happened. Now accusing fingers are pointed at the governor Of the state the headline reads labor accuses us or dima of abducting Brutalizing nlc president your comment on the general behavior or the general happenings in imo state yesterday You know, I I I happened to be an in-law of imo state and um I don't know a lot of times I feel Really bad about that state because imo state has Extremely resourceful set of people It has set in strategic advantages in location It has a lot of things going and I don't think that imo state has developed the way it should We have governors that seem to be more interested in politics than in governance And in that process They seem to apply a lot of underhand tactics and things that do not all go well for the welfare of the economy of that state you see this issue of Relating with workers it's one that you must understand that The bible says a workman is worthy of his pay and do not tie them out of the hall that that trades the corn You know We we've seen a lot of politics and so little governors and the welfare of the workers is not prioritized As a result the people are unhappy And then you now use might now use caught now use Extra judicial process if we were necessary to to to muscle the people Agere is a very good friend of mine and um One that we have many things in common principally the welfare of the workers and um I think that I think that what has happened is not acceptable You want to do a protest or one hand you say the court has said no But then if even if the court says no you are going to now bring thoughts to infiltrate How can you rescue? A man Who wants to Work for the workers? Who are the counter protesters? Are there the people that says no we don't want better welfare? Is that possible? It begs the question and goes without saying that it must have been organized people Brought into cause problems and then you now come to rescue agero from from the secretary not even on the street um Sorry, he was he was taken into protect protective custody from the from the secretary not while they are on the field That's the story. That's what i'm saying Who are they protecting him from? Are they protecting from the workers that he's going to talk for? Or they are protecting him from the mob that they have Stations to disrupt What could I mean? We have you seen workers protest workers and it turns a violent No Yeah, I've not seen one in Nigeria What usually happens is that when people carry out their legitimate protests They will be organized counter protests by those we know better and as a result There's the fracker, you know, but I think that Emo state needs to be a little more diplomatic in the way they handle their affairs and a lot more transparent And I also think workers need to you know the resources when I was campaigning The engagement I had with nlc was so robust and was so honest That They themselves I told them you are The problem you are the frog that sets the rain that beats you, you know, it's a local, you know Idiom, you know Why there is nothing in government that can be done without the civil servant nothing You know everything The governor cannot lift a finger without the civil servant No commissioner No head of paracetam can do anything without the civil servant So two things When you help the government to siphon the money and nothing is left and you turn around and cry Wolf then I'm just wondering if you are thinking like I'm thinking or there's something wrong with my own thinking Okay. Well, let's let's move to the guardian newspaper. Even if there are so many other Things too that we could have discussed in The previous paper they're daily independent But a red flag as domestic borrowing On domestic borrowing as tinnable considers 30 trillion naira fresh loans Um, what do you think there's almost every week now? We hear a loan here loan there loan for palliatives loan for cars loan for One thing or the other now. He's thinking about 30 trillion naira fresh loans And the government said that there would be no borrowing whatsoever I'm wondering what you think about it. You see you see you see my brother You see the bitter truth Is that we need to go back to our leadership recruitment There's something equation paper I'm setting out for INEC because these are The things that made me go As far as to the supreme court I gathered this level of experience and I was driven not that this, you know Inordinate and be short to rule but by the strong desire to interrogate our electoral process And ultimately make it better We can't continue the sins that we are doing You want to be the president of the federal republic of nigeria and you have no understanding of the fundamentals You make statements to play to the gallery and make the people happy and you do not realize that those statements Are not Are not factual. They are not possible. They are not implementable. They are not thought through You know, we just want to say things that the people and then we are gobbledy enough That when they say those things oh we clap clap clap clap clap When are we going to sit down and say sir with all due respect? What's the current situation and why do you say this is not going to happen? What you have in mind to do so there is there's robust engagement and interrogation To ensure that by the time you get into the office There's the percentage of what you are not aware of is not more than 2030 As I sit here, I could tell you about the government of akwae bomb state Nothing less than 70 percent Because I studied I read I Get it I could tell you the things I will not be able to do as governor Because the resources are not there I could tell you the things I could do Because I took time, you know, there was something that mr. Donal Duke told me I don't know whether jokingly or seriously He said yeah, because he doesn't like to come in here. I took he just calls me in here, you know You know, you know in cross river. You have me as a name Anyway, it's it yeah You have so much money in a quiet bomb state. You don't need to think I have no money in cross river. So all I do is think At first I laughed at it But at the end of the day, I discovered that that was the most indicting statement anybody could make No matter how much money you have you cannot but be a thinking governor You must be a thinking governor But how many governors do we have that are thinking governors and because he was thinking With the mega resources he had Today he remains to the best of my knowledge the only governor That has branded a state and that brand has remained notwithstanding efforts by past people To probably make no sense of it and everything but everybody continues to say oh Cross river is tourism Calabar carnival and it's still lasting. Why am I saying this? We need to know that there's nothing wrong in borrowing Absolutely nothing wrong in borrowing But I get concerned. It's just simple fundamentals is abc That you don't you borrow to return You borrow to return the sequel must close You unless you have that at the back of your mind, but you see politicians are like yeah, yeah It will close. Maybe you have to have left office, but that's wrong Because you're thinking your administration. You're thinking yourself. You're thinking your name You it's like the government. You're not even Nigeria to be about you No, are you giving a quiet bomb state to be about the governor? No It's about the people about generations unborn. It's about thinking about the next generation as a leader If you cannot consider the next generation, you do not have right to have that tag of a leader You must think generational and not administration These are the issues and the matters that bother me about government There's nothing wrong with borrowing that please you cannot borrow for consumption It's it's one two three simple fundamentals Show me how the circle closes Let me tell you there are a lot of things about our country that people have not exposed, you know are not exposed to Where are we getting a lot of our resources from? Everybody knows oil Question number one. What is our production quota? Why is it so? Question number two. Have we engaged our future in any way? That shouldn't be a private conversation That shouldn't be a secret of a clique That should be a national discourse Because there's a lot of insinuations We have like no forward borrowing against productions today so that even if we double our production now because of the understandings that we have of taking in advance and You know, colorizing it as it were with the crude. There's so much Opacity within our system so for me I don't have anything against borrowing. He can borrow 50 trillion which he actually needs to borrow But can we have this class of thinkers that sit down and and say we must be disciplined The president is thinking of buying a yacht for himself Of people are thinking in terms of buying proud doors for national assembly People are just not let me let me end on this because time is probably not outside. It is important. I make this statement Rappel if I agree. Good. Yes, just raffle. Yeah Yeah, number one is that Our nyra is having problem Why is the nyra having problem? Because the supply of the law per dollar is short Now what do you do? I'll tell you one, two, three things. Number one, we celebrated our You know, the the dubai route being open to us Are we thinking Dubai route does two things to Nigeria One my sixth birthday would probably have been celebrated in dubai That was the destination of celebration for Nigerians And you know what that means a hundred people are coming over to Dubai to celebrate with me Each of them will not need to spend less than 20,000 dollars multiply with that What do we gain at the end of the day? Nothing. That is number one leisure luxury enjoyment Number two is buying buy buy buy buy And these two things that we need in Nigeria today. Let's wrap up They should strategically burn Dubai number two Why do we want to buy rados instead of innocent? Does it make sense? Number three, they've released a list of 43 items That you can now beat for quarry exchange to are we you know, we need to forget IMF And sit down and think From first principles to solve our problems. All right We need the clincher here is that we need governors who are thinkers. We need Not only governors we need Leaders who are thinkers no matter how much money we have We should never be the dodgy thing that we have a lot of money our problem is how to spend it Well, this is how we wrap it up because of time Architect Ezekiel Nyaitouk. Thank you for your time. And once again, happy birthday Happy birthday senior citizen Of the federal republic of Nigeria Thank you so much for your time this morning Thank you. Thank you We'll be talking with architect Ezekiel Nyaitouk, a public affairs analyst who eventually turned 60 Yesterday and we congratulate him for that and pray that God keeps him Alive for longer and strengthens him to do the job he has been doing Especially in as regards this citizen of the office of the citizen of Nigeria We'll take a short break now and we will be joined by an L NLC chief team that will be telling us First hand what happened in the most state yesterday. Stay with us