 Nigeria's Minister of Finance budget a national plan in Zainab Ahmed on Thursday announced that the planned removal of fuel subsidy in June 2023 has been suspended. She added that preparatory works will continue in consultation with the states, other key stakeholders including representatives of the incoming administration. We'll take a look at this today on the breakfast. We also will be looking at what the issues most prevalent in stopping violence towards children are. Today we will be asking the question how to battle and stop child abuse in Nigeria. And also we'll be looking at the papers to see what the headlines are and try to see what comments we can get from our analysts. Good morning and welcome to the breakfast Friday flex edition. I am Maureen. And I am Nyam Gul. It's good to have you and like we said Friday flex we're hoping that you're going to flex. Yesterday was really terrible going away from work wherever you may have been going from to your house. I went from here to Jodubega which is a journey of 30, 35 minutes and worst case scenario should take you 45 minutes. Guess what? I left here at 4.30. I got home at 20 minutes to midnight. Because it rained. Because it rained and there was a lot of traffic. So what is the correlation between rain and traffic and what is the government not doing or what are we not doing to make sure that whether it rains or not we can move freely in Lagos. It was terrible. I mean 45 minutes journey max taking more than 6 hours is unheard of. You know it's something that we know that whenever it rains in Nigeria there will be serious traffic and the question you ask is quite germane what is the government doing or not doing to make sure that this doesn't continue. Because just as you suffered many people across the state suffered. There are people who live in areas where their roads are terrible and if without the rain it took them 2-3 hours to navigate the road when it rains you can only imagine what it would take them to get home because once it rains the water covers the bad spots and so motorists are very careful you don't know where to go in and where not to go in so it further slows the movement and that is why when it rains traffic builds up the more and so traffic goes haywire. And I don't understand why even high-brow areas like Vi and let it rain it's a terrible sight. There are so many people who even if they wanted to go home they couldn't leave their offices because everywhere was flooded so they just stayed inside their offices and waited for the water to go down a little bit before they can cross into the road especially if you don't have a car to enter that water sometimes it's a problem for the cars and everything so I don't really know what government is doing I think they need to do more to make sure that the drainage system is better especially here in Lagos. Yes, people may be in discipline because they throw things into the gutters and all that but they should think outside the box and see how these kind of problems can be dealt with here in Lagos. Yeah, it all begins and ends with leadership really and they all eat to the people to steer the direction if you put in place laws implement them to make sure that environment is protected. I mean Lagos Island is aka Waterland so everybody knows that's why when it rains you almost need canals to paddle through. Coupled with the fact that even the water is not good enough anyway. And then we live in a country where there's no public water as it were because there used to be a time you could find taps in places, you know. You're taking me down memory lane. There in our Secondary School days we play on them, go turn on the tap, drink water and continue playing. Today who touch you? If you don't get money for pure water you're on your own or you take water from home, you know, it's not funny. Then people have to make boreholes for themselves, drill boreholes for themselves and I hear they're trying to make a bill to come so that you have to pay to be able to drill water in your house, you'll have to pay taxes, you'll have to do a lot of things. Why don't just give us the water, let's pay the taxes and not let us have to be the ones that will have to provide water for ourselves and then pay you the taxes. Don't be like NEPA, you know, you buy your transformer, you pay bills to them. You pay land, you charge, you buy land. And then you drill your borehole and someone comes and tells you to come and pay tax on the borehole you drilled in the compound you bought with your own money. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, like you said. So what then are you providing, in essence, as government? The receipts for the tax. It's sad. Okay, well, we live in Nigeria and we thank God for small messes because in Nigeria everything can be turned into humor so we can laugh over it and I'm sure that's why our mental health is where it is. It could have been worse than the way it is, but we shouldn't be laughing at things that are really, really bad and we need to tell the people that are responsible to sit up. Okay, I'll give you an example of a very annoying thing and I'll mention a name, the Abia State Governor. What's his name again? Abia State Governor Ipazu came up with a policy that in the primary healthcare system when you go there and give birth the government gives you some money. Guess how much? 500 Naira. And then when someone, the person who was interviewing him was asking, 500 Naira, your excellency, he said, are you asking me? Do you know what 500 Naira will do to a poor woman? Imagine that. And I was looking at him like, you know, you are a governor, you were elected into office and then you come out with a policy to help your people and it's 500 Naira for a woman who has gone into labor, delivered a baby that could be a governor tomorrow and then you're giving her 500 Naira. Again, I would say in an opaque country, seventh largest oil producer in the world, if you compare what Nigerians and how Nigerians live the way people from Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations, the way they live, you'd wonder what has happened to us as a people. And when you talk about comments, you talk about Abia. Abia is in Abia. And the Abia governor has given 500. What kind of thing is that? Abia is a tragedy that we hope would be changed because, you know, I went to that state some time ago and that was around 2009. For the first time I went to Aba and I was eager to see what that place would look like because I've had a lot about Aba, you know. And I was shocked to see the sorry state. Oh, it's true. Is it the roads or the heap of refuse? Oh, my God. It was terrible. I was asking you before we came on air that isn't it tragic that you would have, you grow up with all your dreams and aspirations and become fortunate enough to become the governor of a state and you don't leave legacies and all you do is manage to pay salaries. And at the end of the day, as it's become the case in Nigeria, many of the governors are not even able to pay the salaries. Oh, well, I don't know if you use the right words. You said they are not able to. I think they just don't want to pay salaries. That's what I mean. They're not able to. I don't know because this is not like, okay, there are no funds coming up or coming into the state. There are things that you're doing, misplacement of priorities are there. There are people you're settling and all that. And I used to work, let me live a beer, I used to work at some point with the governor of a state and then let me not mention the state before I get lynched. We would go out as a press crew and sometimes we wouldn't even have water to drink. We would have to buy the water ourselves as a press crew and put it in a bus and be drinking. So if you don't have water, you know, you won't have food and then you won't even have maybe some allowance for going out with the governor. Sometimes it was very, very dangerous. But do you know, there was money always voted for the touts that would come around. Of course. They would come around. And they would give them a particular envelope to go and share. And the press people don't have anything, even the water to drink. Nigerians have made the mistake of focusing most of their efforts on the federal government. I've said that repeatedly. The states should be focused on, which is why a one-time finance minister, Ngozi Okonjoywela, published the allocations to the states so that citizens will be able to follow up and question their governors as to how these funds and monies are spent. The state governors in Nigeria, most of them are not creative enough. They've not been able to make the states viable enough to be self-sustaining. And that is why we're hearing all this. And the sad thing is, he will waste four years doing nothing and then come back to vie for another four years. When he comes to vie for another four years and then we will vote, it's our person. Even if it's a thief, it's our own thief. It's our turn to produce a thief. So I don't know. We have to sit up in Nigeria and make our leaders accountable. See what is happening in Sudan right now. Why would people be engaged and not be paid? Why would we even have to hear that kind of a story? Now they told us it was 5,500 people and then they've come up with another figure that is more than 3 million people Nigerians who are living in Sudan. I know we mentioned it the other day that we hope that the people who are being, the number being called, they will find out if there are others that went there, whether illegally or anything, but so long as they're Nigerians. But the figure from 5,500 moving to almost like 4 million or 5 million is outrageous. It is outrageous. I don't know. Though I heard that $100 has been given to each of the returnees totaling to $149,700 to empower them to get to their homes. Well, numbers. Questions as to how many of them are there? How many of them are students? How many of them are not students? How many of them when they are legally or undocumented, we don't know. I guess these are questions we'll be asking at the end of the day when our people have come home first. For me, that is the important thing. Let them leave that war-torn zone. Then later we can talk about the money and all of that. Now life matters the most at this point in time. We know our people and our stories. But let our people come home first. Let them be safe. Leave the war-torn Sudan. Come home to us safely. Then we can begin to analyze the Kobos and the Nairas who took what and who didn't take what. We can ask them how it was that every bus was hired for about 30 million from the calculations I made. How much they paid for every bus that was hired to take them to Egypt. You calculated it's about 30 million and I was asking myself, what is it to buy a bus? A fresh bus. The question I'm asking right now is what happened? Why did the buses stop? But that we'll take a look at later on. Right now it's time for us to take a look at the theme of the day, isn't it? The value of a good deed for the soul. Stopping a wrong where we say it. So, well Nigerian leaders should hear that and we too should hear that because like they say, stopping a wrong where we say it like they say, when you see something say something. Some of these things we are the people who cause it. Somebody goes to office steals the money, comes home you give him a cheap density title. We have cost it. Somebody goes there does a very good job, comes out and you tell him that it was a fool. He should have stolen when he was there. And then you don't recognize them in the society. So what do you think that kind of person should do when he has the opportunity or the next person who is going there that is seeing you do that. Go there with the mindset of representing your district stealing and making sure you get the largest share of the cake. And you know another thing that Nigerians do these days which is very appalling is the fact that they find someone in trouble and instead of jumping to help and rescue the first thing that comes to mind is how to snap it, how to record it how to upload it and be the first person to break the story. It is unbelievable the level of decadence the level of immorality the level of lack of love that is being experienced and displayed this day in Nigeria but across the globe. And like we said when we see something sometimes we laugh because we turn everything to humor here in Nigeria. That's how at some point all of us including the people who had the power to change things were laughing because when kidnappers began this thing it was a thief it is because you are tracking that's how they can't kidnap you is because you don't have a high gate that's why they can't kidnap you. Now we have one of the trending topics is that bandits have kidnapped Zamfara district head we've seen also where they've kidnapped lawmakers, sitting and ex-lawmakers we've seen where they've kidnapped people high profile people in Nigeria and then we ask how did we get here how did it let this thing to fester in our country. The district head of Kusuwa Daji in Kaurah Namoda local government of Zamfara state Ibrahim Sarkin Fada was kidnapped and this happened at his residence. In his own house he came early in the morning and shot several bullets and took him away very sad then. Kidnapping has become one of the most lucrative businesses in this part of the world. There was a time when it became so bad that in some parts of the east we were told that negotiations got to 30,000 Naira they kidnapped people and then you pay 30,000 Naira to come take your people. 30,000 Naira. We've already touched on these federal governments spent 1.5 billion to evacuate 1,500 Nigerians from Europe over Russia Ukraine war. This is not exactly what we talked about we were talking about Sudan the 1,500 they spent 1.5 billion Naira to evacuate them. This one is not really that much in the news because what Nigerians are really what's on the lips of Nigerians at this moment is that of the Sudan war which has actually become very intense the ceasefire agreement is not respected just as it was never respected in the first and second instances this time around it's still not respected we hear that gunfire is still there it's become intensified it's become intensified Nima also paid 1,497 returnies $100 each to help them find their way home when they get to Nigeria. That was for the Ukraine war $100 in the black market it's about $750 per dollar so that would be about 75,000 Naira what am I saying 75,000 Naira for each person to find their way to where they come from okay I don't know if we have the video of the Nigerians stranded in the Sahara desert because drivers refused to move on with them they left them there in the desert because they were not paid the drivers were not paid and these drivers possibly maybe Sudanese maybe Egyptians I don't know where they got the drivers from there you have visuals on the screen the children lamenting that they have been left in an unknown zone I saw some of the videos trending they said they didn't know where they were at that point in time imagine that this is totally you know so they are carrying placards even outside the country so it has to degenerate into the point this is not good for Nigeria's image we will be protesting even outside the country and how do we even defend the government in things like this do we have audio to this visual what is happening tell them what you want tell them what you want we need justice we need to go we need justice we need to go they are talking to you they want to ask you a question before we start this journey we have to go the question is poorly equipped poorly organized and the students are here stranded for the past four days there is no access to food, no access to clean water no electricity nothing and even just as we sit in here almost everywhere you can hear gunshots we are not safe most of the ladies here we spent days without taking baths no enough bathroom no enough water no water at all nothing at all nothing like we Muslims look at it like we have to work very very fast to face this water to perform ablution well there you have those visuals that trended yesterday from Nigerians who are stranded in Sudan well on their way from Sudan to Egypt because that was the plan to move them from Sudan to Egypt from where the police would lift them and bring them back to Nigeria but yesterday we were inundated with visuals and reports of how the buses convened them from Sudan to Egypt stopped midway and the Nigerian students there began to lament and cry because they didn't know where they were and we began to wonder why on earth will the bus drivers stop what went wrong with the arrangements and was there no money were they waiting for checks were they why if they had the money to rent the buses we suppose that the entire money that was voted for that was available so why were the bus drivers not paid because that was the report that came that they were not paid who was holding the money exactly at some point Abikadabri Honourable Abikadabri released a tweet where she explained that there were a lot of the problems and that the buses had continued to move we're hoping we're going to have an update that will gladden our hearts 500 5500 people now almost 5 million we're yet to see how it's going to be why will Nigerians in that kind of number even go to Sudan that means there are fundamental problems that will make someone to leave a country like Nigeria a country that is even poorer than Nigeria to Sudan to Sudan of all places and all that and then we had this same situation almost the same situation in Ukraine and people were also ferried back home and this kind of money that was spent on the people 149,700 dollars was spent on evacuating the people back to Nigeria and 100 dollars was given to everybody to come home or to go home to wherever they are does it mean that there are stories we've not still heard from that exercise in Ukraine or why is it that now that they have the experience from Ukraine we were expecting that in Sudan it will be more seamless and then now they also have health from air peace for free so they should have had more time more money more support and everything to make sure this thing is seamless and I just wonder Nigeria makes you wonder, doesn't it? Nigeria we hear while you are still watching the breakfast on Place TV Africa it is Friday flex edition of the program Moran will be taking me out today yes it's Friday we need to flex and you have to take me out well let's see how much you can flex women empowerment nowadays we should be the ones to be spoiled well unfortunately for you Nyamgul I am not a feminist I like being a woman I like being soft I like being pampered I like being a strong man in charge taking good care of me I am not advanced by strong man do you mean the muscles or the purse? everything okay ladies and gentlemen it's still Friday flex on Place TV Africa we are going to take a short break and in that short break we'll bring you the weather report when we return we'll be looking at the papers stay with us