 It's time now for our first hot topic, and we're talking about the fact that the president has launched expatriate employment levy. We'll get to find out what that is and how it's going to impact on the economy. And we're being joined by Mr. Boulaghan Olujadeh, a public affairs analyst. Good morning, and welcome to the program, Mr. Olujadeh. Good morning, Nain. It's been on the program. Everything is being done. Frantic efforts are being made to make sure that our economy improves. And the president has just launched this expatriate employment levy, saying that it will bring more money, it will make for more employment opportunities for our people, and so many other glowing things that this thing is going to bring to us. First of all, make us understand what this actually means. Well, essentially, this is just something to channel or to influence the employers of expatriates to look inside Nigeria for their staffing. So rather than bring, say, Chinese or European or other members of the international community and employ them for certain reasons, for which there are competent Nigerians, there are skills that are available in country. The government is trying to see the attention of these employers to employ Nigerians instead of the foreign ones that are employed. It will help to foster employment. And then the levy that you have to pay for employing expatriates could be a disincentive for employing expatriates while at the same time, where you must, you pay levy and government make some income by virtue of that. It's just one of those things that you put into the entire mix to have drive up employment and maybe to a certain extent revenue. I think more employment is some sort of local content, a version of content that is more pervasive outside of the usual oil and gas area where we have strong local content issues. Yeah, because I was, apart from the fact of this payment, if you have to employ an expatriate, which I didn't hear before now, I was wondering what the marked difference was between these and what we've already had in place before, even though it's not being adhered to, this quota system for Indians, the employment of Indians in jobs that Indians can do. I don't know how this is different from that, apart from this payment that has been attached to it. The payment changes behavior, that is the reality. It's a different case when all you are saying is, oh, you must obtain your expatriate quota, you must file your expatriate returns and all of that. Now, that there is a disincentive for hiring expatriate and an incentive for hiring Nigerian, they will definitely have certain influence on behavior of the applicable employers. That's right there, the difference, they live here. I'm just, well, I'm curious. Sometimes let's say price of fuel goes up. The transporter will put the price, the extra price on the passengers that take these buses or these cars and all that. Now we've already found a situation where the government insists that jobs that can be taken by Nigerians should not be given to expatriates. That was the existing law and a lot of these companies leave that, they know that and still bring their expatriates here and then pay them more. Some of whom are, even we hear, prisoners in their country serving a jail term here in Nigeria and all that, we've heard all those kinds of things, but they still pay them more than they pay the Nigerian workers, maybe even of the same quota as the ones they bring from overseas. Now, will this not be a situation where because they are bringing people from their countries or anywhere else, they are still going to remove or reduce the price or the salaries of the Nigerian workers, I'm just being pessimistic here. In order for them to pay for the expatriates that they are bringing from outside the country, will it not affect us negatively? That would be something for the Nigerian labor companies where they have a mandate for issues around employer, employee and their relationship. They've not been able to solve this problem all this while. The disparity between the payments of the expatriates and the Nigerian people, I'm not sure they've been able to solve this. How do you think they can solve this now? Well, sorry, I still don't believe that you can truly legislate and effectively legislate that, that you can step into that place and say, this is how much you must pay. Beyond issues around minimum wage, how do you tell an employer of labor that you must pay this person, you must pay this sort of thing. Where there are issues around disparity in treatment that are believed to be unfair, unfair labor practice, it either becomes an issue of litigation or something of Nigerian labor Congress to step into. That is what that decision is set up to do. So your people are being treated, then you sit back and you are expecting that it will be somebody in Abuja who will help you to solve that problem. I think labor has to do a lot that we are practicing. But who are labor? Because a lot of these people are casual workers. You go there, it's not as if they are staff, they are casual workers, they pay them a certain sum of money. The other people who come from there, I don't know whether they are staff or they bring them as casual workers as well, but they still end more. Now if labor is talking to these companies regarding these people, will they have that right? Are these casual workers also part of labor? You see, labor is actually a lot more important than the credit we are giving to them or maybe than what they are doing in our own environment. We see labor shut down Canada, shut down some part of Europe. In fact, in the past couple of weeks, there have been certain farmers' union issues in some part of Europe. And those things, they cause the attention of all stakeholders to discuss, negotiate and resolve the issues at stake. So while an individual factory worker may not be strong enough, that is where labor comes in, because labor is an organized society, it's an organized structure that is much bigger and stronger and can affect changes as far as labor practices is concerned. So what you are probably saying is that our labor has not been living up to the expectation. That is what I hear you say. Really, let me put it differently. In some organizations, even here in Nigeria, their staff are not allowed to have a union. Now if there is a problem in an organization like that, where there is no union, which is affiliated to labor, you know, officially, and there is a problem in that organization, can labor intervene when these people are not actually their members, even though they are in the labor market? When they are not unionized, there are alternatives. There is an entire force whose purpose of being set up was to resolve labor market. I have taken my own from my employer for industrial and I got justice for the injustice that was done to me. So there are structures within the system that are dedicated to what you're talking about. If you are not unionized and labor cannot help you, go to the industrial court and make your kids. Okay. Very good. Now, what are the impacts on the FDI? Some people have the fear that when you disincentivize, that's the word you used, bringing of expatriates from other countries. Some people might just be very reluctant to come and invest in Nigeria because they have fit in the people that they bring, but they know now that if they want to bring these people, they are going to bring those people at a huge cost to themselves. So there might be discourage. Do you think that as well? Well, I will extend, in my response, I will extend that question. It does appear that Nigerians have a black quality and over-blooded image of our capacity to deliver artisanship, especially people are horrible to artisanship and it is a call or not. It's not just a call or not that we must look at our education and see how we can infuse the necessary skills to be able to deliver at the level of confidence that some of these people are delivering. People in construction in Lagos rather go to Potomu to go and bring Thailand, than to use Nigerian Thailand. Why? The skills that we've just completed have been involved in recent in the building group. They kind of finish it and have seen our scene to the end. So where you have a foreign hours come and where he is coming from, he has strange hands with capacity to deliver to the quality that he wants. The tendency is that they want to bring those people in, not beyond the issue of providing jobs for their own people. It's also guaranteeing the quality of the jobs that will be delivered by their own people, better than what are for a capital of people. So it's a call on the entire system because it involves a lot of factors that we're talking about here. Then why you bring somebody from Ghana to come and work in Nigeria? It will definitely end a little more because you're bringing them to a strange environment. So there are certain inconveniences that are associated with putting that guy from where he is to where you want him to come and work. And there might be some sort of compensation for that above someone who is at home already and you are given the same jobs. That is part of the problem that we're facing. So we need to extend it largely and ask people, especially who are hiring casual workers and they will tell you the story of the Nigerian artisan, artisan, artisan-shaped space. It's not a very nice story from plumbing to electrical works to tiling to everything that you can think about. So let's fix that in our own design, designing of what we call education or acquisition of skill to our people who are competent. These are part of the thing that will help this initiative that the government is talking about to also succeed. It even maybe goes beyond competence. I think we might have artisans that are very competent, but will they not cut corners? Because cutting corners does not really mean that you are not competent enough. But are you disciplined enough? Do you have the integrity to deliver on what you promised that you are going to deliver? Because molding of blocks, for instance, you know how to mold blocks. You know the measure that you should use, pay a bag of cement. But you want to use one bag of cement to mold like a hundred blocks. That is not because you don't know how to mold blocks, but it's because you want to make more profit, and that's a place I think our people are most guilty. But the question I ask, and I'm going back to it, is that will this not discourage people who want to come and invest in Nigeria or people who believe that the kind of business they want to come and do here, the expertise, the need and the integrity, the need will only come from outside? With this kind of law, will there not be discourage coming to Nigeria? I don't think it's enough to discourage any investor who is sincere and sees an opportunity in an environment. We are talking about the skills you require to deliver the return on your investment. If those skills are available in the country where you are, then why can't you get them and use them? Why should that be a discouragement and you're not allowed to bring your skills from the other side? The only problem I see is where there are no such skills. I'll give you an example. There was an oil company where I used to have an office, my office used to be there. They started business. They built an entire tower and it was filled with expertise. But over time, all the expertise have left and have been replaced by Nigerian. So once the labor that you require are available, it will not be a disincentive for you, unless you have another motive. The motive is investment. It's a different story if you are a government person and you have a mandate to bring people from your country to come and employ in another person's company. That's a different story. But if your mandate is investment and what you are shooting at is return and the skills that you need are available in the country, then you shoot for your investment and make your money and will, unless you have another idea. You made a comment that we need to look inward and talk to ourselves concerning artisanship in Nigeria. But now this pronouncement has been made, the law has been made, expatriates will, you'll have to pay for expatriates that you bring and all that. I don't want to ask whether it is premature to do this. We should have, is it the chicken before the egg or something? Should we have done that inward looking before we bring this kind of a law down or not? But I'm asking now that this has come, what do we do to repair the wrong that possibly made it possible for other, for people to bring expatriates into the country in the first place? Like you said, we should look inward. So what do we do now when the law is already here? Well, it's never too late to look inward, to actually analyze that speech properly. We put the cup for the folks, but it is what it is today. So let's go look inward into that speech. I have a live experience with me in the building project completely and the snagging is something totally embarrassing in some of the area. So those skills, if you're going to be a plumber, a plumber in Europe, you get some certification, certain tree. If you're going to be whatever artisanship space you find yourself, you're properly trained to deliver on those things and you're satisfied as well. But the quality of what we are seeing with our people should call us back to those days of those vocational school, technical schools and the skills that are part in all those spaces. It is not everybody that needs to be a university graduate to be able to earn a fair wage by battle of the skill that they have learned and are able to deliver on. So we need to go back and find out why all those institutions are used to produce those people. Why did that? How sometimes last week was built in the 60s. If you see these skills, the level of artisanship that is on ground in that mazelos, I was just comparing it to my own recent experience of a building built in 2020-2024. And I'm asking myself, where were those skills people, where were those artisans that worked on this legacy something built in 2020-2024? Something happened. All those skills disappeared. We need to do something about it. Okay. We're done with this. Let's just digress a little bit and our time is really short, but I'd like your comment on what has happened recently. The MPC raised the interest rate to 22.77% or something like that. And their excuse is that it's going to fight inflation. And a lot of us do not even understand. This is economics. This is money matters that we don't know how it works. Would like to know your comments on this. Okay. And then fighting inflation. How does it relate? Yeah. One of the major problems that the CBN fight is inflation versus interest rate. Because most of the time, two of them are pulling in opposite direction. So you need to now ask yourself, how do I find the delicate balance in between this? We have currently in Nigeria a case in which several trees are falling on top of one another. So when you have such a scenario, you want to ask yourself, which one is the topmost tree that I need to meet first, so that we can begin to deal with the other ones that are underneath. So there is the monetary tightening, but what the government is trying to do is to tighten the monetary space, so that the volume of Naira that is available in the system, which are part of what is contributing to that sloping slide of the Naira against the dollar. So many people that is Naira in the system. So people are using this Naira to purchase the acquisition of dollars, not because they are importing anything, but because they want to stockpile it as a stock of value. So we've seen a situation in which some weeks ago, via the Treasury bill that was sold, government moped up over one trillion Naira and said like that is in a 365 a day instrument, a loop was almost one trillion. So that amount is taken out of the system. It is not available for the next one year to be running after dollars that are not needed. Now this what we have seen with interest rate high is along the same direction. It will mop up the money that is available in circulation and it will further constrain what it will constrain the capacity of people to deploy those Naira to change the wrong stuff that especially in the foreign exchange space, which we have seen. It is a tested monetary policy and it's been shown to be effective, however there may be many discussions within our own monetary system right now that may fight against the efficacy of this policy. Remember we have been here before when the former governor gradually moved this MPR from 12th percent, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 18.5, 18.75 that is what we had in the past but it did not succeed effectively in curtailing the inflation as we would have love to see. So there are other distortions that we need to continue to deal with but this is a tested path for curtailing inflation. We live effective enough it's left to be seen. Okay, well that's the thing where all the universal laws have been defied in the Nigerian context you know it works everywhere else when it comes here we don't see how it works. Good luck to the Central Bank of Nigeria, good luck to Nigeria, good luck to all of us but we'd like to thank you at this point Mr. Bolaon or Lodje Dey for coming and sharing your time with us and your thoughts as well. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for coming. Okay, we've been talking with Mr. Bolaon or Lodje Dey, public affairs analyst. We'll take a break now and when we return our second hot topic will be up. Stay with us.