 Welcome back. It's time for the very first hot topic on the program this morning. I want to take a look at the economic realities of the President Muhammad Abu-Hari's administration and want to know how well this administration have matched words, production, since 2015 when they came on board. And we have been joined by Mr. Frank Elanya, Technology and Media News Editor at Business Day. Mr. Elanya, good morning. Thanks for having me on the show this morning. Okay, you're welcome. As I said earlier before you joined us, if you want to judge someone's actions, you probably should best start at his words. What promises did he make to you before you say, oh, he failed me? And so I'm going to take a look at an excerpt from the inaugural speech of President Muhammad Abu-Hari in 2015. And you probably want to listen to it. Here we have it. Quote, at home we face enormous challenges, insecurity, pervasive corruption, the heater turn ending, and similarly impossible fuel and power shortages are the immediate concerns. We are going to tackle them head-on. Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us. We must not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism. We can fix our problems. That's quoting President Muhammad Abu-Hari, the outgoing president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. You are of the Business Day newspaper and I'm very much aware that your paper has done a lot of investigations and reportage on this administration. Has this government from your findings been able to fix economic problems? Yeah, so importantly that last sentence there, which is we will fix our problems. What we have found is that the president or the outgoing administration, because by May this administration will be done, the outgoing administration had a lot to promise. There was a 1.8 million jobs they promised to create. There were several other promises that were made about fighting corruption, about creating energy, about 10,000 megawatts of energy that was promised. There was the reduction of the exchange rates that the administration also promised. But by May we would have had a lot of failed promises. One of the things that this administration like to talk about is how they fixed infrastructure, which was also one of the promises that they made. But we have seen how they did that with a lot of loans, with a lot of living generations of Nigerians that are yet to come in deep debt. We've got close to about 7 trillion nara debt waiting for us right now. We've got several other... Okay, so let's talk about jobs for instance. We have 33.3 percent unemployment rate going on for us. And then just yesterday we had the NBS now review how they measure unemployment to say that if you have worked only one hour in a week I think, I think that's what I said, in a week that you are employed, which I think is very ridiculous in this time. Because that would now mean that if you just sit at home and work for one hour it means that you are employed. So whatever work that you have means that this administration is claiming that they have created a lot of jobs. The thing is that the present administration had a lot of writing for them. First of all they came in on a wave of support because the general administration didn't do quite well and then they wrote on that promise that they were going to do a lot of stuff and then coming in you were expecting okay by this time a lot of things would have happened. They had a lot of money. Money was not a problem. They had a lot of resources where it was there for them to do a lot with. They had a lot of support that they could have used but we saw that at the end of the day nothing was done. Let's look at the side of education for instance. ASU has had the longest strike that we can think about in the period of President Muhammad Buhari. We had several of them. It was becoming a thing of almost like every quarter ASU who go on strike. Last year we had the longest strike from ASU and we can assure that that problem has not been dealt with. And then in the telecom industry for instance now telecom operators now have to pay about 42 taxes. Some of the things that the President did was to give us a say the financial bill but the financial bill didn't actually be address anything. What it only did was to create more taxes. So every time that there was a financial bill your industry operators only expect oh tax are going to go up but then you are asking yourself what exactly are they using these taxes for? And you don't see what exactly is being used for. So there's a lot that was riding on this administration. They could have taken advantage of they had a lot of promise. They had a lot of good will from the people but I think that at the end of the day they misused it and they didn't deliver the promises that they make. Okay but we also have a report from an auditing tax and advisory services firm KPMG which says unemployment rate poverty rate will hit 40.6% this year. This administration is going but they are also sharing this year and whatever that figure will become is also part of what has happened in the last eight years. So what are your comments on these findings by KPMG? Yeah so it's absolutely spot on. I think the next administration that's an incoming president who have a lot of job to do cleaning up is like you're coming into a house with a lot of mess inside it. Usually what will happen is that when you're moving into a house it's like empty and you just all you just do what you have to do is just you clean up maybe just wash a little bit and bring your furniture and you continue to leave but this time around it's as if you're going into a house that's dilapidated so you ultimately may need to rebuild from from start. That is what the administration of the our inquiry has done so far and jobs have become a thing of a rarity in the policy and it's not going to look well for the next administration. So I'm thinking that with 40% unemployment rates looking at us the priority of the national musician should be to how do you create jobs with low-hanging folks. What are the things that you can do immediately to get Nigerians back to work because people need to work and because also they face a lot of issues that you can even start to imagine. There's a lot that people are are facing. Think about the cash crunch that people are also facing currently. It hasn't gone away and which is also what impacted the GDP report that came out this week bringing it down to 2.3 percent and I think it's to have been worse if you ask me probably somewhere around 1.9 percent that's where it should be but the NPS said is 2.3 percent and we've also seen that that has reflected in the NPR that the the MPC released which has now taking our interest rates up up to where it's not supposed to be and that doesn't look good for businesses you know because it means that you don't have funds or if you're going to borrow any money right now you have to pay a lot more to do that. What that also means is that you wouldn't have the capacity to create more jobs because if you're paying a lot more interest rates means that you have to be careful about the money that you're going to borrow which also means that people are not going to get more jobs or they're going to see more employment created. I think what what the NPS should be thinking about is how do you make more people want to create jobs. How do you make the environment a lot easier for people businesses want to try but they're not seeing that opportunity. Let me let me let me let me cut you here so that I can get something straight from you. This administration you said is leaving Nigeria like a dilapidated structure and the next administration has to come up and start to rebuild and all that but when this administration was demolishing so to speak the country or before they started that the incoming administration was said to be there with the bulldozers they provided the the fuel they provided everything for this administration to do what they were doing because they were there at the campaigns they were there at the drawing board deciding what to do with Nigeria so are you seeing a branch off from what this administration has done because it seems as if what the next administration is talking about is continuing whatever this administration has done do you think there's going to be a breakaway at all. I I think that continuing where Buhari has stopped will be the biggest tragedy that the next administration will have because where he stopped is an absolute mess so you need to fear off completely from where he stopped I mean just reject things from the beginning. First of all is that the Buhari administration didn't have a good team okay so wherever the next administration is going to employ to be ministers to be ministers will be very important. I think this is the time not to think about politics where somebody is coming from or how much somebody contributed to your campaign I think this is time to think about how do you bring in technocrats to help you rebuild this dilapidated structure called Nigeria you know if you're still thinking about oh I'm going to continue where this guy stopped and all that you are making the biggest mistake and that's a recipe for me for failure from day one which means I'm not going to expect anything from you. What is there to continue with is it is it the depth which means you're saying you're you're going to continue borrowing first of all we need to start to think about how do we start production how do we revive our production lines the PMIs are down as in all time all time low so production needs to be a priority for the next administration. Guari's administration did not prioritize it it's focused more on politics how do you survive and get yourself to to to the end of the line instead of prioritizing how do you build and improve the welfare of Nigerians it didn't do that so in this administration the rhetoric should desist from thinking how do I continue to how do I make things better for the ordinary Nigerians because at the end of the day it is what the street says that happens it is what the street it is a feeling on the street that you used to judge how good you have performed and not how your friends or how your politicians are feeling you know so this is a time for we not to think about who contributed the most to my campaign but to who is going to help me rebuild this structure and make it a sustainable structure first of all we need to start thinking about how do we put as in generate revenue from within before we start thinking about and then how do we start paying up some of the depth that we have and everybody's celebrating a right and and then go to the refinery but is a shame actually for me for this administration that over a period as in one person was able to build um a refinery from scratch over a period of seven years but then it has taken us about donkeys many years to to just revive four refineries that we already have and we've collected a lot of loans for that same every year we keep projecting for those refineries but then at the end of the day nothing is done and I'm told this year that uh yeah there's been a lot of revamping a lot of things are happening at the refineries and all that if it's not functioning it's not functioning we hear the stories every year so in what we need to start thinking about is how do we um boost production how do we start generating revenue from within and then reduce the idea of going abroad to to collect loans because we are not having it easy right now all right Frank um the prevailing economic realities on ground uh affirming all of that all that you're saying Nigerians are crying uh the massive development challenges uh are still very very prevalent as you are saying and as we can see let let's look at you've mentioned one or two of the reasons why this administration has not performed well let's look at why this administration has filled as much as it has or as much as you have said it has failed even though it came on board with all those promises to fix all of our problems what are some of these mistakes that this administration made that you would say made it unable to diversify this economy as it should have to reduce dependence on oil for export and revenue and you know build strong institutions that could have changed the game for the nation i think number one was the um the choice or the delay in selecting a team that's number one okay so um Uhari spent more time um thinking about politics than uh than he should have in trying to think about who was going to be part of his team so he took him about six months when he was elected in 2015 to announce the ministers and that for me was um the beginning of this failure as a president all right um if if um he he made us a lot of promises um pointing out some of the mistakes of the Jonathan administration and what would have been thought that uh before he had even been declared as the president that he had already started assembling the team that was going to help him um for some of the things that he pointed out but it took him six months for him to announce his ministers and that was not good enough and when he eventually did we saw that um practically about 80 of them were not fit for us you know so we had a minister of education who was almost um not not like not in action but um throughout the eight years um if you talk about asus today what you talk about is uh chris and gigi who has been negotiating with asu but adamu adamu for instance have not really itemized what his vision is for the education um for for education um we talk about the minister of commerce i don't know who that is i mean till now i i can pinpoint to um what the name was you know we talked about the minister of science and technology the person was in tonikando all through the eight years so first of all is who are the people that make up the team or who are the people that are going to make up the team of the president so you need to sometimes need to be carefully taught out okay Nigeria does not need politics or let the politics end after your declared president after that work starts immediately we should start seeing a situation where when you are declared president in the next week you are already announcing who your ministers are there should be a point there should be something happening already because there's no time for you to even wait um we live in a world today where you don't think about saying i am i'm playing second field because those who are ahead of you are not waiting for you they are already moving forward why are you trying to catch up they've already moved like 10 steps ahead of you so it is important that we think about who the teams are and then beyond what who the teams are is what are they bringing to the table every minister for me should have a vision for the ministry and they should be allowed to work i think we should devolve ourselves from this situation where ministers have to first of all go and seek an approval from the president before they work it doesn't help because when they get to abuja the bureaucrat is sessing and there's a chief of staff that they have to go through which is the issue that we have with the the um carry um um issues ministers complaining that they couldn't get to the president and get things done on time all right so there should be a system that allows them to get the approvals done and their visions should be itemized and there should be a monthly review of what you're doing as a minister let's let the president have a retreat with them every quarter to say what have you achieved and he should be ready to fire if you're not going to think that shouldn't be no reason you should continue as a minister all right thank you frank thank you frank and lehannia for your time we will not be able to continue this discussion with you but we will continue this assessment as we move to the second hot topic but thanks so much frank eliana thank you for having me time with us frank eliana is technology and media news editor at business day stay with us we'll be back with our second hot topic