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It is a Friday flex edition of the breakfast on plus TV Africa It's time for off the press and Chief Jida Johnson, Chief lecturer at Nigerian Institute of Journalism is joining us this morning from Karno State Hello Chief Jida Johnson, so glad to have you join us again this Friday Since you have decided to give me this gift as a title I hope I have good choice Well good morning, good morning to our viewers all over the world and depending on your time zone good day to pay It's a pleasure to be with you Pleasure to have you, so let's go straight to Daily Trust Now Daily Trust is leading with supplementary budget Senators reps get $70 billion to enhance working conditions And the right is there, it's height of insensitivity, CSOs Fund is for National Assembly, not us, that's lawmakers explaining there And then article kicks, a Senate approves to Nubu's $800 million loan Let's start with this very one Chief Jida Johnson, so Senators and reps are getting $70 billion to enhance working conditions Now place this side by side a $12,000, I mean the $8,000 that $12 million Nigerians have been announced to get for six months from the federal government The model thing seems to be changing, the model remains the same, we are in a vicious cycle If anybody is expecting anything different from what we have experienced in the last 24 years, the person is just wasting his time Well and I don't see the reason why we shouldn't make a half an Asia year to be June 1st to May 30th yet In view of the fact that we have transitioned to a new administration every May 29th And from 1999 to mid, every president that has been elected has come up with supplementary budget Every year, from 1999 to mid, every June, May, ending early June, July, you see them coming up with supplementary budget So I didn't know why we shouldn't change it so that it alleys with a change of government and a change of government We're at the beginning of a new project recycle, that's what I thought But what do I know, these people know better, the opinion government for God knows when For quarter of a century, every one of them, the Senate president has been in government since 1999 His secretary to the federal government has been in government since 1999 So the president himself has been in government and is called to have government and control of government And in partisan politics since 1999 However, you think that at something, this 10th assembly will start on the positive note Well, just yesterday they confirmed the nomination of the service chiefs You consider the security situation in the country, you thought that where those security chiefs would be They weren't just coming up here and making speeches and then going and confirming them It's just a robust term I hope these people will not turn to a robust term assembly And then you ask yourself the question, the president is quick to ask for loan But he's not quick to put his cabinet in place Who are those that are going to spend over the disbursement of these funds Or this loan that they are going to give How did they come about the 12 million Nigerians? Which, how did they come about it? Through the two sensor or through survey I want to know the means with which they come through the observation Or through statistics from agencies of government And what is the distribution of these 12 million Nigerians that are going to benefit from these 8,000 And then you give them 8,000 in six months Then what happened after six months to their lives to see It's the same thing, werily paid traders' money And then we said these things would not work There's no way you infuse too much money into the economy Then you have few few few few few few few few few few activities when it comes to production Either from the industrial part of your culture of production And then you have too much money pushing few goods Then you have IPA inflation, we already have WGT inflation inflation. I don't know basic economy, microeconomics. I don't know who is teaching these people, economics, I wasn't advising them. Besides, the president does not have the full complement of his cabinet. So who are those that are going to super tent over all of this, all of these affairs? And then these people quickly have put it. Don't forget the load, the crisis that happened with the last month of our record in his, in the twilight of his administration, when the red member were fighting amongst themselves, that there was a particular amount of allegedly that each member was entitled to $30,000 and then they were paid $13,000. And then, you know how the president, chief of staff suspended plenary for many, many, many weeks until it was time for their valeduty. So they are getting 17 billion, they said it's for national assembly, a ghost living in national assembly. Clearly. Clearly. They don't think that we don't have any kind of out of sense and they just can't do anything at all to us. Working condition of, when the living condition, that's their own working condition. When the living condition of Nigerians are heard, their own living condition is wonderful. Now they are looking at their own working condition. Oh my goodness, this people are insensitive. Well, that's the sentiment that most Nigerians are sharing over these 8,000 Naira that will be given to the poor and vulnerable Nigerians. Those questions you've asked, but I understand also that, you know, there was a time when same poor Nigerians were given 5,000 Naira from the federal government. I understand is that same list that is still, you know, in existence. What this administration has done is to add 3,000 Naira to it. And if you check critically, you find that most of these very poor people on that list are in the corner north where you find poverty at its peak. I don't know anyone in the south-south that has benefited from that. I don't know if you do know. And then if you look at this 70 billion Naira that senators and reps are going to get to enhance their working conditions, I heard someone breaking it down and saying it will come down to one member getting 120 million Naira. And you know, so when you put all of that together and then you ask yourself, who are those that actually need this help the most? Who are those I need this palliative the most? Is it these people who already reach all those who are poor and then 12 million out of over 200 million Nigerians? A lot of Nigerians have already been pushed into the poverty line. If you have 200 million Nigerians, you have more than 70 to 80% of Nigerians living under poverty below poverty line, then who are those? It's just a sprinkle. It's just a sprinkle. It's just this a dust of the sun, of the sun of the seashore. So as far as I'm concerned, at least what has happened to that list are those on the list are they dead? Some of them are dead. Is there need for us to inject into that list a new set of people? And then what accounting did we get for the previous disbursements? And then why are they sure that there's only people in the north that are living in abject poverty? What happened? It's a nation, it's national money too. There shouldn't be any form of discrimination. There should be any form of discrimination. Somebody that is poor in Kano is the same as someone that is poor in Pekos. If they want to see, we should throw the lens of the camera and take them to the nooks and crannies of Pekos and see the poverty. Because if you go to a state, you go to Nigeria, you go to Delta, you go to Cross River, you go to Aqaibon. Well, they said in a bid to ensure credibility that digital transfers will be made directly to beneficiaries' accounts. So that would also make it possible for Nigerians to possibly monitor it this time. And I'm guessing that CSOs like Serap would definitely look into the breakdown of how these monies are spent and those who are going to be receiving these are lots. How, how, how did they come up with this policy? And what are those that are going to come up with the policy? What brings to me section did they put into coming up with this policy? Who are those that sat with the president to come up with this policy? By law, the president is meant to have a federal executive council. Also, 60 days, 60 days is required by the law. Well, if you are waiting for 60 days to put this cabinet in the room before they start doing this, anything is doing and it's just the personalization of what is expected of his federal executive council member to assist him in doing it. So as far as I'm concerned, you have not, you don't have the full compliment of the executive which is an important arm of the government. You have the full compliment. The National Assembly was sworn in, they were inaugurated in June 13th to be precise and between June 13th and today which is July 14th, they've already had their own executive and they are now having the president that has been inaugurated earlier, that has been elected earlier, not having a cabinet in preschool. I'm saying that it is the same set of civil servants that quote unquote destructed the disbursement of the previous one that you'll be given the responsibility of managing this one. So the president does not have his own management team. It's like you are producing your program without having the full compliment of your production team. You are using a duck approach to do your production and we keep saying it and everybody will say, no, give the president time. That's how they say give Bwari time and after eight years, every one of them is liberally and calling Bwari whatever name they want to call him. And this is the time we want to draw me in. Who are those that are going to assist the president in implementing all of these policies that is being turned out and now all of these policies are just mere perturbation, perturbation by the power conferred on him by the constitution as the president. As far as the president is concerned, the president is ruling like an M pronoun and not like the president of the federal republic because by law is meant to be assisted in the management of government affairs by the federal executive council. Without that, whatever the president is doing, the president is just doing by, by, by proclamation, by executive, by executive fear and in public governance, we say the executive is trying to be smart. The executive is trying, is being lazy. The executive is circumventing the process when the executive resort to executive order to do what he should have done through the normal legislative arm of government in running, in running, in running the government. And we keep our, we keep our fingers crossed whether we like it or not, two months is almost gone. Two months is almost gone in the presidency of parliament in Mbu. So by May 29, if the court rulings succeed, by May 29, 2027, that the first time we come to an end, if he's elected, he'll get the second term. And if he's not elected, he will go back on board. All of these days, he has lost in his administration, he cannot recover. That's the reality and we keep drumming it. And because that has not been done, you come down to this, particularly to states controlled by APC in the Southwest, the list of the commissioners are not out. For example, in my state in Lagos, the list of the commissioners are not out, because they are waiting for signal or what, who and who will be in the cabinet in the National to know those who come back on in the state. And then once you do all of that, you keep, you don't kickstart governance. You keep governance at a slow pace. Everything is happening at the moment. So we'll be waiting every now and then to look at the statement that we issued by the spokesperson to the president, or to look at whatever the president will see, or news that will come out from Aso-Rob, through tweets from agencies, from news agencies of government and media organs of the government. So that's not how you run a nation. That's, you must run a nation as with a business like approach. And we keep saying it, whatever anybody like, let them see. We keep saying what we are saying. This is what we said. When Bari was in government and it's unfortunate that we were, we were damn right at the end of the day. But we want the people in power that have been elected to do the right thing, tick, set the clock, tick, tick what you have to do. Too quick. You don't have to wait for anything to get installed. We're thinking, this week, by Friday this week, today is Friday, I would have seen the list, the full list of the ministers that they'll be working with president to know, but it hasn't come out. So we just, as you said, we keep our fingers crossed on that and see when the president, there is a timeline. So I'm sure he would not exceed that. So let's move on. Going down, you have steel on the daily trust. Chinubu declared state of emergency on food security. Page five is where details of that is found. Yeah. That's a step in the right direction. We just hope that it's just not a policy statement that is not back with policy action. This is step in the right direction. In fact, that's, she'll have been the first step, the president she'll have taken before the removal of petroleum subsidy. That should have been the first step because prior to his inauguration, this, the condition of living and the standard of living of every Nigerian was not something to write home about. We are double digit inflation. And then most Nigerians who are just living from hands to mouth. And we thought that when the president comes in, he would do something about our culture. You need food security for you to have national security. So I hope and be needed. And this will not be politicized. We recall when the president heard that the opening of the national green reserve, that green should be open and fertilizer, even to people and stuff like that. I think that if you learn a template from when Fermi Addition was the minister of agriculture, the president of ADB and what obtains with the agricultural sector during his tenure as agriculture minister, I hope that this will be done disproportionately. A lot of Nigerians are prejudiced. I don't want to use, I don't know, they are prejudiced. They are just, they are just, they are surviving. That's not the reality. Right on that is headline, you have Kirby government distribute 2.3 billion era fertilizers to farmers. But then you can't be talking about farming, emergency on food security without dealing with the insecurity that farmers are going through, especially in Benwear State, which is the food basket of the nation. We've seen how that place has been ravaged by all manner of conflicts. They have been killed. They can't go to their farms. And whatever, no amount of fertilizers or anything given to these people is going to fix the food insecurity until security is assured for the farmers to be able to go to their farm lands, farm and harvest their produce in peace and in safety. Right. You know, that's why I said that food security is the key to national security. If you are not, every nation that has developed, an ungriman is an ungriman. An ungriman cannot eat or sold his bat right because he was hungry. So if he sold his bat right because he was hungry, you can imagine what happens to an ungriman. So every nation that has developed has conquered hunger. Food is one of the cheapest things that you see in developed economy. So and then, but when you come to developing economy, food is one of the most cost-less things. In fact, in actual sense, we spend the bulk of our income on feeding ourselves, which is the basic of all the needs of land. According to Master, if you look at Master Iraqis of needs, the base of that need is physiological needs. And then when you spend 80 to 90 percent of your income on the first, on the first two of the base of the Iraqi of needs, then your nation is not really ready to to develop because you need you need to need your people to save. You need your people to even when there's a saving culture, that's when there is credit for those that want to to get money through the banking system. But we don't have any saving culture. All what you are, all what you are, you spend on it. Exactly. How many Nigerians, especially the middle class and the poor can save these things? The first global economic crisis, the first global economic crisis, recorded by man in any document, upon when Joseph was in Egypt, and there are comprehensive ideas that came to my first. Now, they had an agrarian and aggressive agrarian policy that created new cities, silos, and the rest of it. And then the second strategy that came out of that is the saving culture. 20 percent of what was harvested was saved and preserved. And what was saved for seven years was able to prevent not only Egypt, but all other nations from the farming that came. So this is a basic, it's very, very clear. This is economics 101. And then you know what successive government denying the people want spending the loads of money they have, their disposable income on feeding themselves, not having a saving culture, destroying the middle class. And then you want the economy to go. The economy cannot go. I hope and I applaud the president for coming with this, with this policy. I just hope that it's not just rhetorics. All of these things are back, are back with actions. Yeah. Well, on top of the master there, you have plateau crisis, tight security as core members arrive, new NYSC orientation camp. And then beside that, you have labor party, INEC, beaker over call for Yakubu suspension, persecution. And then you have NCAA grounds, max airs, B737 planes, probes, adult treated fuel. This is not the kind of story you want to be hearing with regards to air flights, right? Yeah. Travels. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, for some of us that I have to use this travel hours and at last week, this week I mean, can, next week I mean, and so essentially, and then you can travel through the roads because, because of the fear of the insecurity and giving your family members and some sort of, sanity when, when you are away from home. Exactly. However, traveling through the air has become, has become a major, a major, a major issue when you have to treat it fully. You know, when you have to treat it fully, you pack your car on the road. But if it, if it tends to affect your aircraft, why are you going to pack the car in the air? You pack it, where is the packing station? Where is you, what you have is the inevitable and preventive that inevitable is, is, I think, I think one, one Nigerian journalist then based abroad first posted that tweet and he would, if you, if you don't then posted that which was the first person that drew attention of, of Nigerian to this particular issue and is unfortunate that we have lost the value for attribution in journalism that even the media organizations that carry the story did not even have to put the source of their story. Well, credit must be given that's, that's distinctive journalism. Credit must be given to whom it is still was David only in that broke the story and we saw the story of what I was tripping. Even the regulatory agency did not do anything not to that story got broken. And then the following, the, the, the, some of my colleagues that went can together cannot go back to Abuja because of the cancellation, because all flights, some of them booked to, to Max Air and Max Air seems to be one of, one of them, the very, very few and good airlines that we have in Nigeria. I hope the needful will be done, this matter will be investigated and whoever was responsible for selling or dispensing this and the tweeted for it should be prosecuted beyond naming them, beyond taking actions must be taken. Because you see reward must be for good behavior and bad behavior. If there are no reward for bad behavior, then definitely you, you will be seen all of this. Someone who's irresponsible, someone is trying to be economic, someone is playing with the lives of other and other to make sure. Yeah, because if air travel is not safe, you want to put the lives of people in danger and you want to. Yeah, if air travel is not safe, you can't travel on the road, you can't travel by air and the Nigerians will be grounded for good, which is not something one to even begin to contemplate right now. Let's move to the punch newspaper. But, but don't forget, those in comment have access to private jet. Oh, definitely, they do. Let's move to the punch newspaper. Food shortage is the headline here, the major headline here. Food shortage to Nubu declared state of emergency plans 500,000 hectares farmland. They're also leading with that same headline that the other newspaper led with. But they're giving more information. He's planning 500,000 hectares of farmland. The writers, their president orders year round farming releases fertilizer, grains to farmers, households, security agents deployed to farms as FG plants transport, concessionary loans for farmers. So this has more details. You want to comment on some of the writers there? Security agents have been deployed to farms as federal government plans transports will be deployed. You see the news is the news, you know, the way we write headlines, we write headlines in the present tense, thinking that those actions are already happened. What these are the intentions of government that we have on this? We don't write headlines of the future tense. We just write in the present tense thinking that already the action has been taken. What we need to do is to interrogate, to keep this newspaper as a receipt. And then in the next one month, in the next two months, we begin to interrogate, we begin to investigate, we begin to track, to track and monitor what government is doing with respect to these policy statements that have been issued. And when the president in his inaugural speech, during his inauguration, said that okay for a price subsidy has been removed, we saw what happened with what the petroleum stations, what they did immediately, the pump prices jumped up. What he said with the unified foreign exchange, we saw how long it took for them to implement their policies. So what we do is to look at what they have said and two weeks, three weeks down the line. We begin to interrogate, we begin to ask questions beyond seeing it, beyond making these policy statements. What are the steps that government has taken? You promised to do this also, so that is what you have done. So we must monitor the progress and report back to Nigerian, what government is doing, what government is not doing. That's our work dog responsibility. We keep a watch on them and then we bring accountability to what they are doing. They have given us this. Let's bring the account to the table. That's our responsibility. Okay, let's look at the mass head. There you have National Assembly approves 819 billion era for subsidy palliative projects. You have Angotis cement plants, new plants in Nigeria, Ghana, others. And then you have service chiefs get Senate Nord vow to tackle insecurity. You want to talk about the service chiefs? These are the questions you have talked about Yeah, these are, you see, you service chiefs were appointed and the four of them got nomination on the same day in the main appearances. How many minutes did they spend with them? What level of interrogation? What type of questioning were they asked? And then what template did they come up with in addressing the, yeah, they secured. I think that the confirmation process for us in Nigeria should go to the committee, let the committee like, it makes it easier that the committee, we see the confirmation process in other, in other client for, for sensitive, for sensitive position is not somebody just coming taking a bow and going or somebody one or two people asking questions. You have formed your committee, the committee, there's a committee on defense, let the committee on defense, let them sit with the, with this, with these service chiefs and interact with them, probably spend one with, with all of them. And then once your nomination is advanced from the committee to the, to the floor, it's as good as confirmation. Everybody will vote on it, it's as good as you have 60 to 90 percent of being clear and we should, we should to revert to that, the fact, and that one of the unfortunate experience we have with these democracies that face of the presidents once his nomination was sent, because he started with the process of sending is the list of, of, of, of, of offices and officers that will be confirmed by the Senate to the Senate and the all of a sudden without going into the normal committee screening and the rest of it, if we're advancing the nomination to the floor and then we have adopted that to be the norm, that's not the norm. Okay, let's quickly touch on the others before we wrap up. So we'll go straight to the Guardian, which reads, it leads with despite huge revenue, Lagos local councils underperform, Washington residents, Spain's, that's their big story on the Guardian newspaper. And details of that on page four and five. You can quote me, you can quote me, Gide Johnson, and I'm saying it emphatically. There are no local governments in Lagos state. What you have are extensions of the government, of the office of the governor, and what you have are the extensions of the political patronage of some political leaders. And I can give you comprehensive analysis because local government is one of the areas that I'm interested when it comes to governance. Time will not permit us for that. Yeah, time will not permit us for all of that, but looking at the pictures there on the front pages. If you look at development, if you look at, if you look at a theory of national development, we said there's what is called trickle down theory, that development will trickle down from the top. No, no, no. Development comes from the base. Now, when the local government is tied full of funds, when the local government are not allowed to elect their own representative, to the point that even a council is nominated by one leader that might not even be living in local government, this is what you have. All you need to do is to take a trip around and see what the local governments are doing. They are strapped of funds and then in most cases, some of the people even aspiring who are the local government chairman quote unquote, elected local government chairman or local government vice chairman or secretary of the local government and not even do missile and not even resident of the local government. Any official of the government can join me in the debate in any of your programs to come and have the face of concern in this particular particular particular matter. So we may have to do that. Yeah, that's just existing in name. That's something we may have to fix so that we can actually take a look at this issue of local government autonomy or not. This chairman and councillors want to find out. Unfortunately, the president, unfortunately, the president is an advocate quote unquote of local government autonomy that he took further government to court when he created the local development council area. I hope those two government development council area will be listed. Matter of fact, even recently when he met with the governor, he also advocated for cooperation, you know, amongst the governors and the local government councillors. So this is something that really means. But unfortunately, when the when the night assembly when the night assembly made amendments for local government, you know, it failed. We just we just to vote about I think focus about 20 states voted for local government autonomy so that I make an arrest. You get your money directly, not to jump state account. You know, some of the states that voted against it, my state legal state, the neighboring state of the state to the third state on those things. You can never imagine the states from the south west that believe in progressive ideology will be the states that were against local government autonomy. Otherwise, as we speak today, the local government administration will have been autonomous of the state government and get their resources directly from the federal government and the elections will be conducted for them by not see it and then you write man in most states, you don't even have the local government administration. It's anti-carto democratic principle and democratic value and I'm throwing out a challenge. We're going to we're going to fix that so we have a very robust we're going to fix that so that we can have a very robust discussion on this as it bothers on development because the local government you cannot overemphasize the importance of the local governments, the local government areas to development in the country as a whole. Well, thank you so much, Judith Johnson, for your time today as always on the breakfast. It's a pleasure to be with you. Have a wonderful weekend. You too. Have a great day. We move on now to our very first hot topic on the breakfast in a moment. Just stay with us.