 Welcome back, it's still the run-up but we're glad to know you're still there. With 72 days to the 2023 elections, it is expedient that individuals vying for political offices seek for avenues to communicate to the public on why they should be elected into offices. And with us today, we have Mr. Akin Bredwit, Lagos Governorship Candidate under the National Rescue Movement. Welcome to the program, sir. Thank you very much. You're having me. You were supposed to be here earlier than now and you were stuck in traffic. And when you got in, the first thing I said was thank God, maybe that was wicked to say but you're hoping to come in as the governor of Lagos and I'm wondering what it's going to look like, the Lagos of your dream, transportation wise rather. Thank you. Thank you for the kind words and making me feel much better. A 20-minute journey has taken me 20 minutes, an hour, 20 minutes to get here. So it is horrendous and it's getting worse. So when people say everything is working, you kind of ask which planet are they on. But I want to start off by saying that this government has some of the best people and the best minds that you can imagine, very, very qualified people. When you talk about this government, what do you mean? Lagos... I'm talking about Lagos State, yes, as people with very good credentials. So you just have to kind of conclude that it's not that we do not have the capacity and the minds that are there, it's a question of the priorities, it's a question of agenda. Lagos has some of the best consultants that have given Lagos the plans. You have the master plan that unfortunately probably at best is only 20% implemented. I have a problem with the master plan because a lot of people have not seen this master plan. It seems to be in another plan if I'm not exact. You're right. I haven't seen it either. But I have seen a sub-regional master plan, the Kurudu sub-regional master plan, which is 2016 to 2036, nothing has been done unfortunately. So you then have to ask the question, what on earth is going wrong? And it's simply what I have concluded is a question of priorities. Somebody has set a different set of priorities and saying, well, you know, all this can wait. There's something else that is obviously more important. So someone like me, therefore, has said, we cannot continue to experience this this way. We've got to set a new set of priorities that just says, look, listen, this is exactly how we need to change our lives because it is our lives. Our lives are wasting away if we continue like this. You know, the whole carbon monoxide, the whole environment, the decay, we have to do something definitely about it because it will be responsible of us to be going through all of this and then say, well, you know, we leave it to our proxies because after all, the people in government are our proxies. They are our representatives. They are put there to do stuff for our benefit. So let's set the context. What I would like to do is to set our minds and the minds of our viewers on the Constitution, the much-villified 1999 Constitution, which our venerable senior advocates, a number of whom have said it's a rubbish Constitution, et cetera, et cetera. Well I want to say to them that before they chair it to shreds, there are elements of that Constitution that are so important that we need to actually live through. So if you go with me to Section 16, 2b, it talks about the happiness of the people. Government must work for the maximum welfare and the happiness of the people. The day I saw the word happiness in the Constitution, I almost fell out of my chair because I thought, what? This Constitution actually has a people-focused aspect to it. So there are aspects of the Constitution that we need to grab and hold dearly. I don't want them to take the Constitution away until, whilst they're arguing it, we need to implement certain parts of that Constitution. If you go to Section 2d of that Constitution, it speaks about that everyone, all the citizens must have reasonable food, shelter, livelihood, unemployment benefits, care for the aged and care for the disabled. It's all there. A lot of people will just be looking at you. Unemployment benefit? Unemployment benefit. Because, okay, we heard that in the UK, we even had UB40 benefits and got a musical banner. A lot of people will never imagine that kind of a thing is in our Constitution. What are the constraints? Why is it that we're so poor? We cannot implement that. If we're so poor, I don't know if you've seen the videos we're doing in the round where you see even the currency has begun to decay because some people were hoarding it. It was only until this new policy came out about asking people that they were going to redesign and change so people are Russian, unfortunately for some of them. The money that had been hoarded over the years has now, I don't know how true or how real that is, but this is something that we're seeing on the video, there's money. If there's 2.7 trillion outside the banks, then that means that there's money, cash in fact, not just kind of money. And then we're told that there's about 40 or so trillion that is the money supply. So at the end of the day, the question we have to ask ourselves is where is this money? Who is hoarding it? What's all this about the theft that's going on? Now if you have a mindset, this thing is mindset driven and is driven around the agenda and the priorities. If your mindset is you are there to make the people happy. Your job is for the happiness of the people. So everything that you do is driven by that question, will this make the people happy? Is this going to deliver happiness for the people? Because that's essentially, that's your primary obligation. So what I want to do is to bring that front and center government with a bold human face that says we've got to bring the humanity back into this equation. We've got to ask ourselves what's the purpose of government anyway? What's the purpose of governance? It's just an administration to administer the commonwealth to the extent that all citizens are catered for and accounted for. That's the purpose of it. Let's start to get specifics out of this. Before we begin to hear like we heard in one state that said that they have created a ministry for happiness, when if I can easily come to work on the island living on the mainland, I will be happy. I don't need another ministry to do that for me. And we heard from another state that there is a stomach infrastructure. We never had definite things that they were telling us, that these are the things we're going to do in order for the people to get happiness or to get this stomach infrastructure. So we're taking specifics. Now I started with transportation, which is like, you know, Lagos, you know, traffic hold up and all that. So what are you specifically are you going to do in the transport sector to make sure the gridlock is out, to make sure we're safe on our roads and no armed robbers would be attacking us when we're walking on the road. And maybe most importantly, to remove the Aguero syndrome from the Lagos because they are the ones who extort people and cause a nuisance, at least according to the people who have had costs to deal with this people. So what are you going to do in that sector specifically? Well, thankfully, that's why it's good to have these conversations because you've already provided the answers yourself. You know, I started off by telling you that the government has very, very capable people, you know, people who have the right credentials. So it's not for want of the ability to be able to do these things. So you've got to say, so why aren't these things being done? You know, a number of these things are quite simple. If you take a state like Lagos, for example, Lagos is an island, which means that it is surrounded by water. Now, two ways of dealing with transport is you either build more roads or you get most of the vehicles off the road. OK? Or you bring in other forms. Now, if you can't do any of those two, then you bring in other forms, which are the quick solutions of transportation. So a key element of Lagos, and I've said this, you know, a few times, is water transportation. If you go to countries where, you know, they have the same kind of configuration, water, big, large ferries are used to take people up and down, north, south, east, west of the island. You would just have to build maybe some jetties and additional jetties to the ones that are there. If you take this very, very seriously, it's something that you can do extremely quickly. Now, there are parts where a massive jet ferry can't access. And what you then do is that you could now introduce an element of hovercrafts. You know, hovercrafts are the ones that have kind of like the flat thing. And they, you know, they almost like skim the surface, you know, of the water. So you can do some kind of transshipment. Use a big ferry, you know, to go through the deeper ends of the water and then do a sort of transshipment with a small set of ferries that would kind of be feeder transportation, you know, as it were. The smaller ones feeding into the bigger ones. And then the bigger ones will leave the depart at particular points in time, scheduled, you know, points in time. So you could quickly deploy that. That would be very, very low hanging fruit. When I was growing up in Lagos, you had the big ferries, you know, that was shuttling people, especially your papa Marina route. You know, you had the Texas ferry and stuff. So it's not even as if this is something that has not been done before. But certain constraints or things have just been put in the way of these things happening. And the private sector could be incentivized to really do that. The other one, of course, is the one we've been waiting for, for such a long time, which is the rail. In all civilized, absolutely. So you have to again say, it's not for want of the capable hands. It's about priority. I will set the priority to the extent that you have a deadline in which to, you know, sort things out. So this question about right-of-way approvals here, there and whatever and all that kind of. If I have to bust through and not have the approval and just go ahead and do it, we'll see ourselves in court. But at least the people get to do whatever it is they need to get to. You see, the question is this. Does government realize that by not letting people move freely and quickly, it's stopping commerce? Okay? And when you don't get commerce moving, you're depriving yourself of the growth of society. You need society to grow. So you kind of wonder whose agenda are we playing? You know, what on earth is going on? So it's important that we then get ourselves to know where our true north is. And I'll tell you something else that bothers me. There's a lot of unethical behavior and mindset in all of this. If we reset, we have to press the ethical button. You have to bring an ethos into governance that helps us drive. A lot of these things that seem seemingly are intractable can be solved by our mindsets. When you talk about Akberu, we're all laughing at this thing as if it's normal behavior. Akberu is unlawful behavior. Extortion is criminal. You know, you have laws, extant laws that speak to the criminality of all of these things that it's just about law enforcement to get these characters, you know, off the road that have been done in one fell swoop. It's really an institution, if you ask me. It's an agenda. Well, let me go to Bayo. Bayo is standing by. My colleague is standing by. I'm very sure he's burning to ask some questions. Before we take a break for the news, Bayo, over to you. Thank you. And I've been listening to Mr. Brathwaite. And it's been quite interesting to follow through with his thoughts. I'd just like to ask you your thoughts on the real system because you were talking about transportation. If you look at New Delhi, which is the capital of India, it's called the National Capital Region, NCR. It has 22 to 23 million people, which is almost the same population as Baygos. And New Delhi has, New Delhi is 1,483 square kilometers, whereas Baygos is 1,171 square kilometers. Now, New Delhi's metro is 348.12 kilometers. So basically what they did in India is the metro, Koba's Uttar Pradesh, which is the state, the largest state in India, actually, it's 100 million people. So Koba's Uttar Pradesh, Koba's Haryana, Koba, all these states around. So if you talk of Baygos, it would be states, parts of your state, because people come from all these places into Baygos. And we know already people live in a new state. But then the real system that Lagos has put, the light and the red and the blue rail, I don't know what the total kilometers are. I think they are less than 25 or something like this. So you mentioned fairy, what exactly would be your reaction or your response to making an electric rail system more efficient with more coverage in Lagos with a population of 22 million? Again, thank you very much. I did say earlier to your colleague that we've got brains with the answers. Even hearing from you, the statistics that you've reeled out are shocking to me, the extent to which you say India has covered their own expanse. This shows that that's a government that wants to do stuff, because that's nearly a third of the whole kilometers of New Delhi that you mentioned, that they've now rolled out their rolling stock. We have been trying for at least 12 years, at least for one generation to try and even roll out one rail stock. That is shameful. It is sad. It's unconscionable, really, to say the least. And what I would do is get on with it. As a private sector individual, you have deadlines that you need to meet. Because bear in mind something else, that if you take more time than is actually budgeted for, what you've effected on is that you've increased the cost of running that project. And who gets to really lose out on that, that's the people. Who gets to be unhappy about the unhappiness continues. It's the people. If you want your people to really be happy, if you really want to make sure that people have reasonable livelihood, then you need to get these things done snappily. They have to be done in order. You don't have forever to do this. Life is going on. We're getting older and older. Look, the beards are going from black to gray to white. So at the end of the day, we have to just get on with it. I will change the priorities, because this is just a question of priority and priority setting. All the things are there. The loans are there. It's not the governor that's going there and constructing the rails. The people are there. The experts are there. The consultants are there. So it comes down to priority setting. It comes down to who cares, who gives a damn. So I would reset the priority. I would say and give conditions that say, hey, look, if this thing is not done by this date, then somebody is going to be paying penalties. And you will be surprised at how fast that is going to happen. I'm going to be done. It's just about reprioritization, really. OK. Well, I know you're bursting with more questions. But at this point, we might just need to take a break when we return. After the news, we'll be looking at so many other ones. Maybe we'll be more snappy than these. We'll look at the population. We'll look at education. We'll look at the economy. These are the things that really concern the people. If you address that, and we know that they are good enough for us, then the next thing is to use our PVCs and know what to do. But in the meantime, I'd like to let you know that the show continues. We are going to just take a short break and bring the news. And after that, we conclude with Mr. Braidweight. Stay with us. Well, we're still here. And we're happy that you are there as well, watching us. It's still the run-up on Plus TV Africa. We're still here with the NRM candidate, Governorship Candidate for Legal State, Mr. Akin Braidweight, NRC, National Rescue Movement. I'm going back to that viola days, the NRC and the SDC. Yes, yes, yes. When it was two parties, it was really easy for us. Now there are so many parties. But you were not originally in NRM. Correct. Why did you, because a lot of people, when you cross-cap it, they say you ran away. Why did you run away from where you were? You know, there's a time for everything. There's a time to fight. There's a time to run. So the good book says, I ran. Yes. Because of ideological differences. The Nigerian political system is broken. I think most pundits will agree with that view. And we have to fix it. At the end of the day, you look at politics as the upstream and look at governance and government as downstream. So whatever happens in government takes its bearings from what happens right there in the upstream section. My definition of politics is that it is human affairs and economics. And everything that has to happen with human affairs has to come from an ideological base. You recall that I said earlier at the beginning that we have to bring the ethics back into everything that we do in life, and especially in the area of governance. So if I do see that my ideology is social justice, it's about ethics. And if I'm going along and I see that there's a big variance and it's growing, I will excuse myself. Because there's no point in trying to fight and to try to force people. So you had to leave there and become a member of NRM that has a B for it. A B for its logo, yes. It always beats me why that is. But we'll come to that if we have time. Right now we want to look at the population of Lagos state. There seemed to be a death in the number of public schools, for instance, because now it has given room to private individuals to establish up to about 20,000 schools out of which only 35% is approved by government and all that. So which means there are people who are desperate to go to school, but they are not enough schools and all that. And for a people to develop, for a place to develop, you have to have people who are educated. So what specifically will you do in terms of education to improve the level of education, the standards, and everything in Lagos state very briefly so that we can cover up? Other things. Yeah, the sad thing is that in Lagos, we have over 2 million children out of school. And it again comes back to this thing about what's the agenda? Are we following the ground norm of society, which is a constitution, which says that you have to ensure that all social services are provided for everyone. Education is a social service. It's not something that government does to make profit. But it depends on, again, your mindset around these things and how you look at this stuff. Because why do you want your people educated anyway? Because you're living in a world where you're competitive. And it is the people that are going to compete in the world stage. It's the people that are going to build, manufacture, create, grow in agriculture. All of these things are stuff that we need to get done. And we can only get them done if our people are educated. So the starting point is very, very vital. The immediate thing I would do is that I would give autonomy to local governments. You see, in creating a constitution, you're looking at society and how you structure society. So our society is structured on three levels, federal, state, and local government. Each level has its own responsibility. So the federal will have responsibility for the federal schools and universities. State has its own responsibility. Local government has a responsibility for three levels of education. Basic, primary education, adult education, and vocational education and training. So I have to hand that back to say, look, guys, you've got to face what you've got to face. Don't just sit around. What are you, local government authorities and whatever doing? You've got to face what you need to face. And that's your responsibility. And there's a report card for that. So they have to take on the basic primary education aspect. The constitution gives them that constitutional responsibility, the IGR that they make, and all the fact that is shared down to them is meant to cover parts of what it's meant for, is education. It's explicitly stated, expressly so. And that's what they have to do, whether they like it or not. If they don't want to do it, then they need to get out of the position and let those who rightly can and have the capacity and capability do have will encourage such people to take up those things. The second aspect is that the state kind of sets the mark. And you cannot continue to teach using old methods and old tools. So technology has to be an essential part, because you don't need all the classrooms that you have today. Roll out the state will ensure that it rolls out internet, fast internet as a tool and as a platform for education, because now we can have the best teachers anywhere in the world teaching our children by using remote learning methods and capabilities. There are also things that are already there that are there for. And there's something they now call self-paced learning. You don't have to now take everybody through a root system. So all our kids will be put through their self-paced learning. And it will be different strands and different columns of clusters of learning. Because if this one is science oriented and whatever, then they'll be going through those kind of modules. And the artificial intelligence as built into the computerized system will help that child along and will push that child along the thing. Self-paced learning, it will do the scoring and help that child. And it will be gamified in such a way that the children enjoy it. And they will go through it. And that puts us really back. We have to have our children coding and getting into all this internet related world, because that's also where the world is going. Robotics, all of these things. We have to change the whole way in which we approach education. And that's how we're going to do it. Bayo, you were standing by. I'm sure you have questions to reel out. So over to you. Yeah. Thank you, Yungu. And once again, Mr. Akinbrayfi, thank you for your perspectives. I was still in education. If you observe what has happened or what has been happening in the country, say, in the past 30 years, there's been a lot of focus on building universities, establishing universities, to the detriment of the primary school. We have focused so much on that, spent too much money on the government's private sector religious organizations. And we keep complaining that the conduct of our citizens are values, yourselves talk about ethos and so on today. But I want to ask you, because you have mentioned the primary school and what the local governments are actually supposed to be doing, two great questions. One, what calibre of people with your administration and college to take over the governance at the local government level? Because those things you mentioned are no things in my view that a kind of people who run local governments today with due respect are going to be able to deal with. Second question, what percentage of young budgets are you prepared to dedicate to primary school education as a foundation? Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's start with the last question. Since it won't be the state, it will be for the local government. And I would think that they must be looking at at least 12% to 15% of the budget to really cover that properly. And essentially, as I said, one would really help them. The state is there to provide support, not to take over the role of a tier of government that has been very, very carefully crafted. And that works everywhere in the world. Even that's how China was able to bring its hundreds of millions out of poverty by really, really going and doing things really at the local level. So you're having a bottom up. So if you and I really believe that you have to build a proper foundation and you have to grow your society bottom up, then it means that we need to pay serious attention to what's going on at that foundational level. Now, the local government level is within proximity of the people. So in effect, when you're doing local government, giving that role back to local government, then it's the people. Power belongs back to the people. So the people get to decide who really should be in terms of the kind of caliber of person that has to be defined. When you're going for a job, such as I am going for the job of governor, there has to be certain person specification that must be met. And you're absolutely correct that we must say, OK, what specification of what type of person, what type of individual, what type of man or woman is going to be able to do this job, build the GDP, grow GDP of local government, build primary health care in local government, construct the roads that our local government roads under the purview of local government, who amongst us should be the kind of person that we would need to employ into that capacity. Who are the counselors? That must be the lawmakers, and that must be the good governance inspectors, as it were. Because that's the role that they're meant to also play. They need to go and see what's going on and have that oversight of what's happening at the local government. So anything that's happening at federal state also needs to obtain at the local government level. So you have this group of people, not just the local government chairman, but the counselors who are really, really meant to go out there and do their job day after day after day to ensure that all of these things that they have a balance scorecard and ensure that all of these things that we expect to happen actually happen. So it's up to us the people. We've taken our eye off the ball. We've taken our views away from local governance. And that's why you have anything goes to the point where we're just saddled with those who are thrown at us. That definitely has to change. OK. Thank you. Just one more follow-up question on my side. And now I'm talking about health. I'm not going to talk about the hospitals, the hardware. But I want to talk about, if you like, the software, the personnel, medical practitioners, paramedical staff, and so on. In the recent past, we've seen a situation in which Nigeria has been losing some of its medical personnel to some so-called developed economies. And we all know it's because if you take Britain, especially, that the exit imposed a lot of challenges on the United Kingdom. And they lost a lot of money. They also have come in there to work, who now have to go back to go elsewhere. But the question I have is, today, globally, talent is acquired from anywhere. The British example of taking our doctors out justifies an emerging trend in the international talent acquisition process. So the question is, what would you do, given the fact that legal state has, at least in the country, probably the best or one of the best health care systems, even though we still complain generally, we are far below, as in hope, where we should be? Well, how could you retain and motivate health professionals for the legal state public service, given this challenge that I have mentioned, that's global? Just briefly. Right, OK. So I think that, basically, you cannot encourage people without proper incentives. I do believe that we really need to look at the remuneration packages of our professionals. You can't ask people to be doing such serious work as really, really helping to preserve the lives of our citizens and then just don't look at whether their take home pay really takes them home. They must have very, very good living wages. The facilities must really definitely be top notch. The Constitution, as I alluded to earlier in section 16, really speaks to the fact that we must have quality maximum welfare of everybody, including our professionals who are providing the services. So you start from that very, very first principle that says, is this going to make people happy? Both those who are providing the services and those who are going to be the recipients of the services. So if we start from that basic, we will find what is required to really look after these people, i.e., our doctors, our professionals. And then they, in turn, will look after our citizens and provide happiness. OK, I wish we had more time. Please, ladies and gentlemen, if you're watching us now, you can still ask your questions, even though we can't take them on the program today. It's at plus TV Africa, if it is on Twitter or Instagram. And I'm hoping that you have also a social media account that people can connect with. Yes, I can breathe with its world on Instagram and I can breathe with it on Twitter. I can breathe with wealth on Instagram. No, I can breathe with its world. OK, well, OK. Yeah, I can breathe with its world on Instagram. And I can breathe with it on Twitter. OK. And I've got a website, I can breathe with it.com. OK, so if you have any questions, you can ask him. At least we have a channel that we can ask him any questions. And I'd like to say that you've been a wonderful audience and let's do it again tomorrow. Bayo, thank you so much for being there for us, as always. My pleasure. OK, so we'd like to thank you so much for coming on the show today and we wish you well. Thank you very much for having me. I've enjoyed it. So if you're watching us as they run up and we'll return tomorrow for another edition, until then, my name is Nyam Gul Aghaji. Thanks for being there.