 You're welcome back. Right now, we're going to what has been happening in the Ministry of Works. Dave Umahi, the former governor of Eboni State, who is now the Minister of Works, is insisting that Nigerian roads will be better off if they are done with concrete rather than what they have been using to do the roads. And contractors have been ordered back to site, and he was saying just yesterday or the day before yesterday that some elements within the system are fighting him and he's trying to flush them out, take them to EFCC or ICPC and make sure that he has the rest of mind to concentrate on the work that he is supposed to do. However, there are fears that if these concrete roads will be done, there will be a spike in the capital expenditure and even now, there's 10 trillion naira owed to contractors. So we're going to be looking at this with our guests for this morning, who is Mr. Abraham Great. He is a public affairs analyst. Mr. Great, good morning and welcome to the program. Good morning to you and thank you for having me once again. I do not even know where to start, whether to start from the money owed to the contractors or the fact that the capital expenditure will rise or whether the concrete roads are what we really need at this point. Take your pick, let's begin from any of these three points that we need to talk about. You see, the Minister of Works is dealing with the major Nigerian issue, which is procurement. The bulk of the corruption in the Nigerian system happens, I think with the procurement act, the procedural. One of the reasons why many people rush into the corridor of power or into government is to be able to have leverage on what we call the national cake. And the national cake has a different way of, you know, when people cut it. You know, you and I will go into a party and we'll have gelob rice and go home. The Nigerian national cake is a very different bulk game altogether that when people have privilege to have access to federal contracts, you know, there are many ways in which they just believe that this is the, maybe this is a breakthrough in life and stuff like that. So when you have a minister or an appointee, someone that is appointed and they want to do a good job, a thorough job, they are going to face, you know, major principalities that we deal with in Nigeria. So you have to look at it in many ways. When we say, you know, contractors are owed money. Yes, it is very difficult in Nigeria to be a very, a government contractor because number one, even before you start the project that a project has been awarded for you, there are already principalities within the system who are expecting a certain percentage from you. In some cases, people even expect, you know, 30%, 20%, in some cases, 50% of the contract. I don't mean of your profit. 50% of the contracts that will be awarded to you that some entities sometimes demand. And these times, this might not have anything to do with the executive. In some cases, maybe even nothing to do with the legislature. You know, but in most cases, there are people within, maybe within the legislature that are lobbying for this. But in some cases, it's not even got to do with them. It's to do with the government workers themselves. You know, the government staff, you know, the DGs, the Vs and that, that people pounce on contracts and influence those prices. You know, David Umaye also will stop complaining about it and that another way that this happened is when the project is going on, you know, they'll bring in, you know, we need to make amendments, you know, the inflation, because of inflation, they request for more money and stuff like that. So we have never ending projects in Nigeria and you have projects being inflated. But on a genuine note, this issue of us using asphalt, you know, for Nigerian roads, it made us or made the country to depend so much on importing materials to build a federal road. The problem with that, because I'm a business person as well, and we bring, if you bring in a lot of products into the country, you realize what has been happening in the last few years. You know, you get a contract or you're servicing a contract, you know, in the private sector, for example, but the time you took that contract, the dollar was maybe five hundred and sixty pounds. That happened to me in January, you know, but by the time you are finishing your execution of the contract, you know, the dollar has gone up to eight hundred and seventy. So you are almost at, not almost, in some cases you are at a loss, because if in my case you are dealing with hundreds of thousands, even of millions of dollars, you realize that you even have no way in which you're going to cope, because if you're going to continue to, and officially they have not finished paying you, they paid you thirty percent and you have to execute. It becomes very difficult for people to be able to cope. I mean, I'm talking on the private sector, let alone the government contract. Okay, so you're saying that, but what, who is to blame for this? If you're given a thirty percent funding for a project that you are supposed to do, and it takes you so much time to complete it, such that at the time you're completing it, the dollar has gone up. Who is to blame? Well, you blame every, everything you have to blame it on the system or on the government, because you know, the government has the responsibility to out-control over inflation. You know, one of the success of any administration is the inflation, but also there is a lack of planning in our, you know, country for a long time. You see, people turn up to projects, you know, government comes and comes and they just re-appoint new contractors. Sometimes a current contractor will stop a project and restart it, and in some cases it will be re-appointed to a new, to the same contractor on a higher budget. That's what has been happening. Nigeria has over eleven thousand abandoned projects since 1960. In fact, just we've wasted billions of dollars on abandoned projects in Nigeria. So the government has to have a way of planning and planning long-term and factoring inflation and doing everything possible. And this is why I agree with the Minister of Works when he says that he's going to be using concrete road technology instead of the asphalt technology, because that gives us more of a local control. We are able to produce almost every material that is needed for the concrete roads, which is actually, in fact, more durable. So you are able to, but let me give you this example. If we keep dealing the way we have been dealing until this last, you know, the last government and this government being able to hand project over to each other, but if we kept doing the way we were doing before, we would have nothing as a country to be able to, you know, to be able to live on. I give you an example. When you are making road in some of these developed words in Dubai or in UK, in Canada, in the US, sometimes they are factoring 150 years in construction. They're looking at 200 years ahead. They are planning. They're saying, okay, this road that we're about to do, it is going to be 400 kilometer road, but along the line somewhere in the next 70 years, we're going to do a tunnel that is going to pass through this. Maybe in the next 15 years, there's going to be a tram that is going to go on top of this road. Maybe there's going to be 15 bridges. I don't know. I am not aware if as a country in Nigeria, we factor in long time planning into our projects. And if we don't do that, we're not able to foresee risk. We're not able to foresee, you know, whether disadvantages. We're not able to foresee, you know, things that happen in Lagos. I'll give you an example. When Lagos began to, you know, repair roads, that was under now President Tinobu, who was governor there. Lagos population was 7 million people. By the time he was living office in 2007, Lagos was nearly over 30 million people. Today, as we speak, Lagos is over 22 million people. Are we factoring in knowing that even the Bureau of Statistics have given us data to suggest that Nigeria will increase, or double in size by 2050. We're talking about the next 25 years or 27 years. Nigeria will double in population, will be over 400 million people. Are we factoring in that some of this road will require double or triple the number of users that we're building them for today? Are we building for generation? That's interesting. So now capital expenditure will go up because of this innovation because the minister for works has said that he's going to use concrete. But we've just seen that, like you have said, there's a possibility that maybe 90% of what we're going to be using will be local. So there wouldn't be any need for importation. One of the fears that people had was that if this is going to be done, the price of cement might go up and the common man may not have it because they will be using it for construction of roads. But surprisingly, there's now what Nigerians are calling the War of Cement because we have two cement producers, giant cement producers in Nigeria now competing for price who will be lower than the other. So the price has crashed, which means if there's anything to be done about housing, if there's anything to be done about the roads, this is the time. So it's contrary to what people were expecting. But now that the projection is that capital expenditure will rise maybe higher than when it was supposed to be the normal asphalt that was used on our roads and all that. How can we marry the two together? On the one hand, we're seeing that we're getting local products or local raw materials to do our roads. On the other hand, people are saying that capital expenditure will rise. How do we reconcile that? Well, we need to, as a country, we need to do a few things. Number one is the fact that we need to be quick in re-establishing new monetary policy in the country. And we're grateful that we've got some of this experience supposedly as the CBN governor and the economic team, the minister of finance and stuff. They need to get around the table and find a way first to stop, you know, inflation skyrocketing. We need to be able to have our inflation first under control. Then we have to be able to have a very simple, you know, a monetary policy that will ease the economic roles in the country. Secondly, we need to go back to our economic, sorry, commodity, I think it's a price control act or commodity act or something like that. Nigeria is too capitalistic as a country. Everybody, you know, want to make a milk of every situation. Price control in Nigeria is very, very difficult. You know, you can find the same cement or you can find the material for 1000 Naira in Lagos, but the same thing might be costing you maybe 270 in a kitty. So that's why you find that a lot of people depend on transportation for their goods because they're going to pick yam from the nut to bring to the south. And, you know, something that is costing them maybe 100 Naira, but the time is getting to Lagos, they're now selling it at 3000 Naira. We need to really work on controlling price in our country. If not, you find out that the man who is doing Suya beside your house, you wake up and you go to the man and he's giving you some more Suya and you say, what happened? I want 1000 Naira Suya. You tell me the price of dollar has gone up. How has the price of dollar got to do with the Suya man? The same thing with somebody that is selling something local, baby boy, beside you. We need to nip it in the butt in the issue of price in the country. If not, we will have a country that we're living in but we cannot afford. Prices are not supposed to go up when we are producing this thing locally. Especially now that Nigeria is not fixing. Let's put this in context. We're fixing a lot of federal roads. We're fixing our railways and stuff. This will make transportation cheaper. We should bring down the price of cement and so many other building materials. But the producers of this thing are willing to cooperate. I saw in the news that Gangote cement and the rest of them were dropping the price of cement. But if you do a national probe, if you send it after we intervene or the Federal Executive Council have to sit down and look more, how much is really the cost of production for these items. I won't mention what item it is but it's one of the items that is on me today. I used to sell this item in the UK and I'll go to China and I'll tell you the truth. You can go into the store anywhere in the world and in fact I'll tell you what it is. Suit. This suit. I used to make my own suit. I'll go into China. I'll make suits and I'll bring them to Europe to sell. But I'll tell you the truth. There is no suit under this planet unless it's the bottom or some of the inside material that should cost you more than $47. But you see, you're walking to some stores and you are seeing suits for $2,000. You're seeing them. That's what got me angry, 2008, 2009. I started going to China and I will bring in my own products. You know, if I not have label, but it's exactly the same design, the same material in the same place where they are making the same thing and it might not even cost me that much. How much is the real cost of production per unit from source? How much are they selling it? And this is why you find that the rich are extremely rich in Nigeria because the masses are seriously taking advantage of. Well, but have you also factored in what is happening at our ports where you clear your goods from abroad and all that when the dollar is going higher and higher, is it not influencing it? You said something about the Bolesela and the people on the roadside how the dollar is affecting them. I give you a scenario where I know a lot about. For instance someone is trying to sell vegetables that should go for 100 Naira is now going for 1,000 Naira or 500 Naira and you are asking what the dollar has to do with this. You know, it's the dollar that we use to buy the fertilizers because we don't have them here. It's the dollars that we use to buy the herbicides that come. For instance a regular herbicide used to sell for 1,000 Naira now it is being sold for 5,000 Naira. So the farmer who buys it or who used to buy it for 1,000 Naira to use on his farm or have farm now buys for 5,000 Naira. What do you expect him to do? So the dollar is affecting everything in our community in our society. So maybe we cannot blame the people at the roadside that do not import from China just like that. But there are things that are connected to them. Now we are asking what is the best approach that we can use to make sure these things that our economy revolve around are working well. The oil how can we account for the oil that we have, we produce and how can we utilize can we leverage on the fact that we are having this oil in Nigeria and we do not have to be importing this oil. How can we make the dollar to come down as well. There used to be a time where one Naira was greater than a dollar. The dollar was like 70 Kobo or 70 Kobo or something like that to a dollar. Right now the dollar is 1,025 Naira as the last time I checked. What can we do to bring down the price of the dollar because it affects everything else and what can we do to make sure that the oil we produce works for us rather than against us. Well, let me start by saying that it's not everything that is affected by the dollar. I give the analogy of the Bali seller, the Suya seller you know you cannot really trace in most cases how the dollar price affects some of the commodities that are nearest to us or that cost us close to nothing to produce. We have an attitude as a people to be greedy. I'm saying that with every sense. I do agree with you that a lot of people are very greedy but you know if I want to send my school to a good school my child's rather to a good school yesterday or so we're talking about House of Reps looking into the matter where schools now charge school fee in dollars hotels charge in dollars flight tickets is in dollars everything is in dollars. If I am one of the, forgive the language abokis that cut people's nails for instance and I need to send my child to school there are other things that I need to buy that are affected by the dollar so I will raise my price for cutting the nails from $15 to $100 or $200 so that I can raise the money to buy the things that are affected by the dollar so it's intertwined that's what I'm trying to say I'm not saying your analogy was wrong. Yeah I get what you mean it's intertwined but we still need national orientation we need to our ethics and value in the country we have, the country I agree with the president when he was campaigning and when he was taking the oath of office when he says that we need to have a change of mindset an average Nigerian is looking for how to take advantage of another Nigerian just is just incredibly too much and also this until we overcome this sector of people of wealthy people in Nigeria that has nothing their wealth has nothing traceable to intellectualism nothing, nothing traceable there are so many people today who has no morals who have no value who also have no intellectual to be able to know that they are doing something wrong there are so many illiterate who are extremely rich in Nigeria so even when we are making policy we are making laws we are trying to fight in the country it's got nothing to do with them they've got this thing like a right that is like their birthright some of them are connected to government generation to generation let me give you one analogy if I may, if we still have time you know I made it's a long time ago maybe about 16, 17 years ago a man came to the UK and I was privileged to take him back to the airport so I was driving into the airport and a friend of mine called me and said he was talking to me I mean the phone was on speaker because I was using bluetooth in my car and he said you know you can't eat my friend was just joking and he said you can't eat your cake and have it so this man that I was taking allowed me to to finish the conversation and he said to me he said tell your friend not to say that proverb again he said that was the proverb he said when he got married you know his wife was going to follow the father to the UK for shopping and he refused maybe two weeks after his wedding and the wife was angry and went to her father and said my husband said I'm not going to travel with you I asked him why he said because he can't afford it I said my dad would pay for now my responsibility so the father asked him to come so when he came he said why did you speak to my daughter like that I said sir before I married her she was your responsibility and she can't eat her cake and have it it is now my responsibility to send her for shopping I can't afford it now because I can't eat my cake and have it the man said you know what that's a very wrong proverb for you to say I will introduce you to a cake have it the more you eat it the more you have it and what he told him that was Nigeria national cake introduced him to contracting in Nigeria and the more they take the bigger he gets that is a very destructive mentality that is killing Nigeria today when you look at the procurement act the process of securing how competitive are these biddings and then what is the value of our money what are the contractors qualification what are the kind of accountability or oversight that we have over procurement in Nigeria so you'll find that one of our major problem is the procurement act because until we fix this issue of illiterate people who think that the government belongs to them that the national cake belongs to them there are people who have been eating from the Nigerian system since before independence and from generation to generation it's become their right are you aware that there are people in Nigeria that even the president of the country cannot control and they dictate where contracts go how contracts go the price and can even sit down where they are and begin to inflate prices now how do we know that this government is successful is until we are able to be strong enough to confront these powers and principalities and power and the people that are bringing the nation to his knees you have raised a lot of questions here and our time is going up but the critical thing you said is that we need reorientation where do we begin this reorientation from I'm saying this because you raised the point that the average Nigerian is greedy I agree with you I've seen a lot of things that if we could have done better we could have just for instance the time that we had cash crunch where people who are operating the POS machine they will have the money for every 5,000 Naira you will pay 3,000 Naira that was really really exploitative and we also see a situation where families are being grouped together and given let's say 10,000 or 15,000 for 6 months and then they are saying that is palliative that is poverty alleviation people will have that for 6 months and that is the end and we are seeing prayers to the inboxes of some senators to the tune of just a paltry as they called it 2 million Naira to a senator who is coming from among us that we voted in at a time where families are going to be given 10,000 Naira for 6 months which maybe 100 families will have to come together before you can get up to 2 million someone is calling 2 million Naira a paltry sum to the senators you know you get what I'm saying when people who are supposed to show lead by example are living flamboyant lives and asking the people to tighten their bells so where do we start from from the greedy normal person where the politician comes from or from the politicians who have arrived and are showing us that there is just a divide between the house and the house not where do we start the orientation to get a better and more patriotic Nigeria we need every approach possible to address our issue in Nigeria I am not the one that is quick to criticize the executive, the legislature or judiciary or what have you because even as a person I understand what the brief about it because we are wrapping up just go ahead yeah so we need to fix things from top to bottom as well as from bottom up so from top to bottom we have to consider optics the optics of government needs to mirror the intention of government a lot of the time we find that government intend well you want to do well but you have to watch out for your optics but in terms of from bottom up also you need upset it before national orientation I give you an example we are trying to build even federal road not even local road now or state roads and people are disturbing you to say we are homonilla you can pass through here even federal government contractors sometimes deal with so we need to sort out a lot of issue and reorient our people like the land use act the land acquisitions the compensation for land owners of a road passage community consent and stuff like that there is a need for the entire nation to know that we are paying for industrial revolution if I can put that in Nigeria should be entering a phase right now that Europe and America entered hundreds of years ago which is we need to industrialize our country and to do this massive road infrastructure for that to happen we need to fix the procurement act we need to fix the land use act and we need national orientation okay thank you so much it's just to end today it's like the bible says all have seen the fallen short of the glory of god so we have to all collectively accept the fact that we need to do better and our Nigeria will be great again thank you so much Ibrahim great for coming on the show this morning thank you for having me it's a pleasure it's working thank you that was Ibrahim great public affairs analyst talking to us here on the show and we were looking at the fears that concrete roads will spike capital expenditure a 10 trillion Naira owed to contractors and we were able to identify where the problems are and how we can move our country forward without fear well we'll take a short break and return with our final hot topic stay with us