 Rydych chi'n mynd i'r cerdodiad ar y canfod diolch i poeni, y Pryddau Lleidio Adibai poeni sy'n fawr, Rydych chi'n mynd i'r polygol hynny yn garllant a lleddo ar gyllidol o'r reurdod wych yn ymgeigol iaith y cyfweithiau mewn cerdodiad y Prydau Adieikol 23, rydych chi'n mynd i'r lleidio cyfeirio lŷnwyr felly rai'r llodd efo gwirioneddol yn fawr i realist leidio cyfeirio ei wneud i gael yn ei fawr. Wrth gwrs, mae'n fathau'r cyfrif swydd is the way forward if Nigeria would use foreign policy to advance its own domestic priorities in sphares of fighting poverty and ending insecurity. While joining us live today is Prince Adiwoli Adebayahee. He is the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP. It's good to have you join us. Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here. Great. A couple of us watched some clips from the NIA conversation. Of course many people would look at that as our own shathom house. For those who don't go to shathom house. But let's start by talking about the relationship with our foreign policy and fighting poverty. Explain that to us. Well is it the every country on the international stage it's like a housewife we see in the market. If you see a housewife going to a milk store in the market it means that she lacks milk at home and she needs milk. So the other woman might go to a tomato store because she wants she needs tomato. That one goes to where they sell their shits. So it will be a foolish for a housewife that needs their shits to go to a tomato store reprising tomatoes. So you go outside internationally to express your domestic priorities. And in our foreign policy today we've not always been doing that. And under an SDP government if you look at our manifesto we're trying to direct our leaders and to direct the country to where you go on the international stage to face your problems at home. To try to take advantage of relationships internationally of business internationally of trade of investment so that the foreign minister is an extension of the government in trying to bring goodies back home. And that is why we didn't go to the Shetham House even though we were the first to be contacted. We realized that we must let Nigerians first understand what foreign policy is all about. And our engagement with the international community should be based on the fact that in this country what we face now is crippling poverty and debilitating insecurity. And if I'm going to be president of Nigeria and I'm the chief diplomat of Nigeria any country that I engage in in the world I must ask myself how is this engagement capable of helping me to reduce poverty in my country to the point of eliminating poverty how does it conduce to an arrangement whereby I can keep Nigeria secure by having full control of our territorial integrity and by having peace law and order in the country and safety and ensuring that this country is a country where the citizens feel at home and they feel secure and now our international partners have to do the same thing for their own country. It is to balance both that will determine which organizations we join, which international organizations we perform very active and which priorities we pursue. And when we are sending people overseas to our various high commissions to our various embassies we are not sending people overseas because they wanted to be senator at home on the law selection or they wanted to be governor in their state on the law selection. It will be that if I want nuclear energy technology from France then I'm going to send a well respected French-speaking nuclear scientists to go to that country and represent it. How many of those do we have here? We have so many of them. Nigeria is a country that has a field in part one of the greatest nuclear scientists that has worked for licensing and operating that all over the world has been in Nigeria. So Nigeria is very good. In fact what we don't realize is that. Do they work at the resident here? Because you say they can be Nigerians of course but then half the time they get snatched up by other countries. Anywhere you find Nigerians, they belong to Nigerians. When I will all became finance minister he met MSU Moro who was working for Shell. I will all just went to have a meeting with Shell and I met a Nigerian, a very young man, very brilliant from Karnostate and said how can you be this brilliant? And you are the other side of the table and he insisted that he must come and work for Nigerian government so you can do that, you can co-op your citizens. We would all realize that when South Africa changed from apartheid government to become a democratic government and there was a policy to go to South Africa to remove the biological weapons from South Africa. Nigeria's Morisyw was one of those that led the delegation from Washington to go and program biological weapons in South Africa. But what did Nigerian make of him? He made him a lecture man. He did not make him a biological weapon expert. So these are the priorities that we need to set and we can do that successfully. And talking about relationships, I mean the US and the UK have had very healthy bilateral relationships with us. We've had I think maybe the longest relationship with the UK, the US. And many say that prioritizing the countries that you have relationships with and based on their own foreign policies. Of course don't you think that the UK and the US may be top the list? For the point of view of the British, I think they are happy with the relationship with us because if you look at 1960, first we are British colonies, in some way we are still tied to them in a particular way. And if you look at our relationship with Britain and if you look at right from colonial time and now and if you look at from 1960, Britain has been getting better as a country. British businesses have been doing very well here and in the balance of trade it's always been on the side of the British. In the balance of payment it's always been on the side of the British. It's not because the British are not nice people, it's because they have a better government, they have better leadership. So once we have a better leadership here, we will still continue our relationship with Britain but we will have common sense which is very abundant in London and the shortage of Britain and Buja. That's why you don't find British politicians coming to NIA in Victoria Island to come and talk about their problem but you find our people going to Shetham House, taking British Airways plane, filling the plane with our own money and they're going there to pay for air time. So what our government will do is, we're not against Britain, is that we will do our own part. It's like a friendly game of wrestling. You have to hold your ground. So it's just that, it's like playing tennis or playing ping pong with your opponent. The bat is in your hand, it's in your hand. So if he plays to you and you do not play back, you can't blame him for that. You will lose the match. But if you play with him and he plays with you, the game will become more interesting and you become friends. So what is happening is that domestically, our leaders are disconnected with the purpose of government. They don't understand why Nigeria is a republic. They don't understand the priorities of a citizen. They don't realise the minimum guarantees of our constitution that will give to our citizen that if you are born in Nigeria, there are certain indignities that should not happen to you, just because you are born in Nigeria. You should be free from hunger. You should be free from simple diseases. You should be free from joblessness. You should be free from insecurity. You should be free from homelessness. You should be free from potholes, bad things that can easily cut your life short. So these are the guarantees and the resources are here in Nigeria. So when you go overseas, you are looking for partners who will come and do business with you in a wholesome way that you can still have control of your resources. They can make money out of it. And you will see that when I talk of the British, the Americans, in dealing with us, they are also dealing with other former colonies. They are dealing with India. They are dealing with Singapore. They are dealing with Canada. The US used to be a colony of the UK. And those countries are doing well. They are dealing with Egypt. They are dealing with so many other countries that used to be under them. What is the difference? The difference is that in those countries, they've learned how to be friends of the British, friends of the Americans, with some integrity at home. So it's just like your friend comes to your house to visit you. You're not likely to say your wife should go to the bedroom and go and stay in the gatehouse. Your mother should stop coming to the living room because you are hosting your friend. But if you do so, your friend is not going to control your house for you. You will just go away that this person lacks home training and has no common sense. So next time he's coming, he will bring his dog. And his dog is going to go straight to the kitchen while your wife is cooking and eating all the food because he knows you are not protecting your home. But if you protect your home, you manage, he will sit with you in the parlor. He will respect the limit you give to him. And if you are a security guard, you will respect him. That you have to respect for your security guard. If your security guard says so, can I open your boot and check? He will allow him to do so because he knows that you are protecting your home. So you need to do well internationally. You need a government that respects you. So Nigerians cannot say when we go overseas, they don't respect our passport. They beat us up. But they are beating you up at home as well. They don't respect even your best certificate in your country. They don't respect anything about you. So I don't know any Nigerian who will say he's been to England and the British policeman has slapped his face. But you are very much likely to be slapped in Nigeria here. So that's why my foreign policy will reflect first our domestic priorities. So no foreign agents, no foreign government can maltreat Nigerians because they already know from the briefing they get from the embassy that Nigerians value their citizens very well and Nigerians value their money very well. But if your president is coming like comatose in their hospital and they can see his Medulla Obelagata and his test time in their hospital, how are they going to now respect you when you now dress up and start talking? So they know you have like seven days to live or 10 years to die. So they all have all that confidential information which they will have had to send their secret service to find out about you. Now they know everything. They know everything about you. How are they going to respect you if most of your oil money is kept in their country or you are hiding it from them, from your citizens? So they won't respect you. So that is what I will try to explain to Nigerians. Let's talk about, yes, because you see you're saying whatever we must, whatever picture we want to paint to the international, on the international scene we have to start from where we are. Why do you think, I believe that in this country like you said we have some very intelligent people, technocrats, professionals and we're hoping that these same sets of people would make it to leadership. Why do you think that we've continued to go around in these circles of bad governance or having the wrong people in the wrong office? What do you think is responsible for that? There are three reasons for that. One is that being intelligent, being speaking where a lot of that does not automatically mean that you have leadership qualities. So many would blow out the grammar on TV but the first opportunity to see about $10,000, they will lose their sense. So that's number one. So you need to have character along with it. Secondly, the people who are in charge of Nigeria are not visionary leaders. They are people who believe in state capture. That is to say if they grab the power then they will keep, if you have talent they'll keep you at the back of the bus. Because they don't want to lose grip. They don't want the country to make so much progress that they're no longer in charge. But why do you want to run a country? I mean you tell me you want this country to progress and then you get into power then you put the people who would help you progress in that office, you know, in the backbone. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense but that is a challenge because every country that makes progress in the democracy, their leadership comes from the people. And you don't have any person being power for a long time. And here in Nigeria from 1966, the same clique are in power. They can only drop out of power if they die or something that serious happens to them. So they want to keep the system going. That's the second reason. The third reason is that Nigerians like entertainment. So even when they see qualified people they are following those who are entertaining them because there is an innate conservatism that is in Nigeria. They want progress but they don't want change. So they just want a better version of the same thing. So if they have a... Who's this day you mean? Because I mean I'm guessing that today's Nigeria and all things, I mean we all have been bitten by that bug of no money, no fuel, no light. Why would that same person fall in the category of these day that you're making reference to? Now people can complain about the problem of today, the symptom. But the solution, they will not, is that somebody who is having malaria but he lives in a nice house that is full of mosquitoes. So he's not going to leave the house because he loves the house but his mosquito is still killing him. So he's going to say okay I want better supply of a paradole, better supply of anodgistic, better supply of malaria medicine. But if you say to be free from this malaria you have to quit the house, he's not going to do so. So it's require political education. It's not because Nigerians are laid back, it's because countries that make change, the change has to come from inside your head first. You have to say I'm done with this, I want to accept this. So that has to happen. Second is that you have to also have ability to design from re-change from when you are being fooled. So when this, because if you say you want, if you are being oppressed and you say you want a change, the oppressor will be changing his colour, changing his, but he's not changing his system. So you have to notice when you are changing personality, changing colour, changing slogan. So there are still Nigerians who believe that if you are in APC and you move to PDP, okay the man has changed. So which is not sensible but a lot of people believe that if you are in PDP and you change to labour, they will say oh the man has changed. So it is, so you need a level of consciousness on a mass scale and both social media and traditional media have a role to play in making sure that they are entertaining people. It's fine, but they are educating them more. So if you look at the political discourse, now if what I'm discussing with you is boring to some people because based on policy, based on ideas, but if I say that so-so-so person is a drug dealer, so-so person is a thief, so-so person is a thief, then it will trend more because they think that politicians have entertainment and vulgarity. So it is for us now to say, look, there are consequences to an election. You can, the person you elect as president can determine whether you live or die. If it's a good commodity or it's not a good one. Whether you are able to assess simple basic amenities of life, whether your children can finish school on time, whether you can have a disease that you go for a surgery and is over or that disease can actually kill you. Based on what kind of person you elect in government. So if people realize this and they also realize that there's no magic in a democracy, there's no, I don't know any democratic system that has been built on prayers. The democratic system is built on decision making and that the most important decision is that one that is in photo mix. Every other decision made in government is based on the original decision that the voter makes to say, I'm going to elect this person to make all those decisions. So if we can correlate all of this and we have an open space and we're actually consciously looking for talents. So if anybody comes up is talking fast, is talking nice, you can start to interrogate him, check his background, check his ability to answer cogent questions, test him in many multi-dimensional way to know that this person is consistent, this person is coherent, this person is actually competent and then you start to test the person in terms of character. So all those things are what make those countries that you see on TV and you want to go to it is kind of quality of decisions that their voters make that makes the country to be like that. But if you want to make poor decisions, you want to be inattentive, you want to be entertained or you want to food according to your prejudice, then you are going to get the same government that reflects those values in the judgement. Let's talk about the realities that are on ground. I mean just as you said there's a lot of mud slinging now that you said, I said. And now the most recent is who stands behind or who throws his weight behind the Naira, the new Naira notes situation or who is against it. There seems to be a lot of people filing behind the CBN governor and then a few other people who are on the opposing end saying that this one way or the other is the sabotage of the elections. But what do you think about the CBN policy on the new Naira notes and of course the fact that tomorrow supposedly is the deadline but there's been a Supreme Court injunction on a staying of, I think they said yes, the stay of action for everyone concerned until I think February 25. First and foremost, there are three layers to it. Before it became this theatre of absurd where it's now related to election the original era was that the central bank governor I've been saying it over time doesn't work for the central bank. He works for a few people in the state house and he has abandoned his ability I'm sorry, what? He has abandoned his ability to govern his but it's called a governor he's supposed to govern the bank but he has been an error boy a dutyful error boy to certain private priorities in the state house in Nassau Casubila. And who are these people? I don't know because they keep changing every day that place and how do you know that I don't know because of his priorities. Number one there are two components to finance to public finance the fiscal side that is the revenue that government receives and the expenditure that the government makes they are contained in the budget usually all over the world governments run into trouble all the time because sometimes they don't collect enough and they have bogus priorities and they want to go and pursue those. The job of the central bank if the general bank governor knows basic economics and knows his duty is to make sure that governments come and governments go. I will not allow government of the day elected by the people whether they are competent or not I will not allow them to destroy the economy. So if they are taking a measure that is dangerous so the fiscal and monetary health of the country the central bank is meant to take countermeasures. So if a government is over borrowing they will make the cost of borrowing to be higher so that they can discipline the government they will comply and enforce the laws relating to creating a credit and creating a debt. So the central bank has abandoned all of that. So everything that is the priority of the government in place is what they do and it is not because the central bank governor is a lover of President Buwari no even when President Jonathan was there he did the same thing for them it is just the wrong person to be in the central bank so it appears to be a total opposite of what the governor of the central bank is saying If you compare us for example So you are against this CBN policy from the get go? It is not a policy and it is not maybe as opposed to the sanction it is not, it is an exercise because if it is a policy where is the policy document? Because there is a way you do policy in government you will come out with a blueprint you will take it around those who are interested they will become your white paper so you will not know that okay every five years we change our currency this is how much time it takes these are the stakeholders no what happens is that as this government is going they are all wired now and desperate to award all sorts of contracts so they manage to award this putting crayon on the money and change the colour that is what they achieve now in doing so the central bank has a history of having changed our money in 1967 they changed our money when we had the civil war from old pound to new pound in 1973 the central bank changed us from the pound to the Naira in 1984 they changed us from changes of colour and that was terribly done people were committing suicide because then head of state Major General Buhari gave Nigeria 12 days to change our currency he gave reasons our money has been thrown abroad our money has been hidden in people's houses it was a highly unintelligent exercise so people were committing suicide soldiers were beating people all over Nigeria families got ruined because people had a lot of cash at that time there was no POS there was no transfer so some people would take their money to the bank and they would not get it back they were even doing deals with bank manager okay just give me half of my money so bank managers became very rich and soldiers were flogging everybody and if you were a military man you carry your money to the bank they would march you inside you can change your own within five minutes at gunpoint but if you are a civilian you will suffer so now was it that Buhari was trying to help us with election at that time the man would do respect whom we elected as president whom we are responsible for is totally unfit so now at that time we survived that but under our bus engine and Shah Soludo we changed money many times but I don't know we introduced new notes we changed from paper to polymer when the polymer was not doing well we changed back to paper it was seamless and I can tell you this in my private life before I became a candidate I spent many years as a lawyer to currency producers in many parts of the world so I've been involved in currency design currency exercise and all of that it's never done this way and I won't surprise that even the traditional bad advisor to Nigeria, IMF even they are alarmed that anybody can shock their economy this much so from that point of view that even the minister in charge of finance was not aware Nassima not aware and the manufacturer association not aware all those people who use money nobody was aware they're in a hurry to award the contract to themselves now they're not running to a problem because of the lack of professionalism and the poor timeline that they use what happens to them was that they absorb a lot of currency in but they didn't have enough printed so they now went into rationing so because of that rationing they now said if you go to a counter they should not give it to you they should give it to you through a bottleneck called ATM machine ordinarily this ATM machine suffer calibration problem the cassette jam sometimes so that they don't have power so they now constricted it to make to manage that shortage because they didn't so you're saying that what the CBN governor has been saying about the fact that oh we've sent money to the banks it's the banks that are not releasing these monies is a betrayal of sorts no the central bank governor is in panic naturally it's not a good manager piece of competition so his line is confused so as a result of that the bankers committee what has not called their meeting so what is happening is that when I started doing my investigation I started to find out where is this money I found out that I did one direct study in Benicity one first generation bank I don't want to give them free advice here in a very big rich zona branch they were sent 100,000 error in new notes and the bank manager said if her own staff was already saying madam before you carry this 100,000 into the cassette let us we your workers let us go and line up first so that we can withdraw 5,000 error each so that we can have transport money to go home so that's inside the bank so they just lying because they are regulators of these bankers so they are not going to come out and say our regulator is lying so now in order to now explain to a populated and confused president why this commotion is there they now say well we are trying our best to stop people from taking the money to bribe voters now if you look at the original reason given by the central bank it gave three reasons one is that they did not mention voters money it's a one that there was too much money outside the banking vote so they wanted to mop it up yes two that the money some of them had loved their integrity they were already overused some are inspired so they into three that the money was being used to play ransom to do other criminality so they needed to control that now if you had studied basic economics you will know that the policy of justice cannot be achieved by changing colour one if you want money to stay in the banking sector two things you have to do within your territory you have to make it more profitable to keep your money in the bank in those days when I was growing up my grandmother used to my great grandmother used to keep her money under the pillow and my grandmother used to argue with her that if you put this money in the bank you will end some interest on it why you put your money under your pillow so now if you keep your money inside your pocket it is safer there than inside the bank because you put your money inside the bank and you go to the bank two minutes later to withdraw it you pay COT if you transfer to buy dairy you pay COT so because of that your money is losing value you are paying high cost of transaction so people will not go to put their money in the bank so that policy of changing the colour does not change it second if the money has expired you what you can do is to take that money inside the bank and not reissue it but when their policy or so-called lack of policy started operating the bank started recycling the money you give the money to them go to the ATM and get the same money thirdly criminals the only way to stop criminals from collecting money is not to change the colour of the money because if the naira is green I change it to blue the kidnapper will collect blue naira lastly if he has studied basic economics if he went to school of economics for one hour he will realise that our money circulates according to value value creation in economics in Nigeria is that the underbank sector the informal sector has more value so money will go to the where there is value there is more garish sold in the market and the bushes than in the supermarket there is more food given by mama put than inside the hotel so there is more transportation done by Kabukabu than is done by transport companies so it is where the value and services are being rendered that's where money will go so you can change the colour of the money a million times what you need to do to formalise your economy so this last one they are doing is just an excuse to say we are trying to save you from people who are buy food then politicians decided to take position on me because of the fact that we have an unthinking political class oh it's going to hurt my opponent there must be a good policy that is what you are saying now before we go let's talk a little bit about the politics within your political party because we are almost out of time recently the chairman of the state the sdp in your state moved on to the people's democratic party which some according to them some other members on the x score just you know that what did they do they are about let's have your take on this because a lot of people would say that one way or the other this has discombobilated your party has it affected you know because this is almost a few days to elections and for members of your executive to move to another political party that does not say anything good about how the party loyalty or whether loyalty of your people lie no it's the only thing it has done is that it has cost pdp money be basically that because what do you mean by that because they spent a lot of their money by high time on celebrating it but it says the person who left your party so you are saying the person who left your party has no relevance whatsoever the person who has her party has no relevance but if you listen to her speech why she left the party she said the sdp is very good party and she learned a lot in the sdp but she saw the view that the party she is going to because she is from Lagos state the party she is going to has more energy for governorship election and they ask her who are you still going to for the national level say I'm still going to vote for the sdp at national level because I think they have the best platform so and she's very good person when she was in the party she learned a very good service of the party and she took that decision and they asked that did you go with 7000 members of the party she said no just 16 of us left the party every hour in sdp Lagos state we have over 200 people joining the party so if 16 left that's not a calamity but I can assure you that people have left Labour party who see state come to join our party we don't have money to advertise academic achievements we are more interested in making sure that we send our message to the people so it's a thing of pride for me that a state chairman of our party who left our party can cost PDP millions of Naira on live air time to celebrate but in the end I don't think it's going to make much of a difference the key issue we want the general to understand is that the sdp is not to pay the politics of code what we are trying to let you know there's nothing facile there is that this country has a stream poverty 1.3 million people in poverty we cannot afford to hyfford 30 people in poverty so we must deal with it given how much resources we have secondly the most states in Nigeria are insecure 36 of them and FCT people are kidnapping people in the FCT they even threaten to kidnap Wari and they run into a seller to hide themselves I was told so you cannot afford to have one missing child in Nigeria so you need to have a serious managed government that is focused on eradicating poverty and keeping the country secure and anywhere you call us to come and talk about those things who will come but if you want to do entertainment wait until after the election because we don't think that election is for entertainment election is for setting the country all right I will want to help you back again maybe next time for a whole hour because there's a lot more to talk about but Prince Adeolah Adeyra is the presidential candidate of the social democratic party sdp thank you so much for speaking with us it's a pleasure all right I'm going to bless Nigeria we'll take a quick break when we return we'll be talking about the supreme court's position on the new naira notes and of course what the agf is saying about it's doing