 All right, we're moving into our first major conversation for today, and that is the cabinet reshuffle by President Muammar Dabuhari. He has fired two ministers, the Minister of Power and Agriculture, and replaced them. Of course, it has been described as, you know, the steps being taken because they were underperforming ministers. This morning we are speaking with Mark Adebayo, who is a public affairs analyst, and Mr. Ayodili Adyo, who is the managing director of the Avalon here in Nigeria. Good morning to you both. Thanks for joining us. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Mr. Adebayo, I'll start with you. I want to get your thoughts on this story generally. When you heard, you know, the news that these two people have been fired, do you see this as great news in the steps towards achieving, you know, better for Nigeria? Well, my first impression was that, well, the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is constitutionally empowered to appoint ministers and to relive them of their appointments. He has the power of hire and fire over all his opportunities. So, but to basically speaking for me, it's a non-event, but it is something that I only hope that those who are replacing them with would do something better. In the area of the Minister of Power, for instance, it's difficult to be able to point out at any achievement, any sterling performance that he has been able to achieve since he came into office. You know, what we have seen is that the last two years, four years before he came into office, electricity staff has been increased by about 400 percent, with that corresponding deliverables to Nigeria. You don't see power is far and in between, the issue of power in Nigeria is degenerating by the day, in the area of generation, in the area of distribution. So that was not in the Minister of Power did that was, that couldn't have warranted him relive of his appointment. In the area of agriculture, you would discover that things, food is extremely expensive now. You know, when as a family man, we are used to put $20,000 down now, now you have to put something like $50,000 to $60,000. For upkeep, for just the buy food for one week, it's extremely expensive. So a lot of hunger in the land, which is causing a lot of hunger. But for me, the President is not go far enough. The President is not go far enough. Okay. So what do you say about the Health Minister? Now the National Association of Resident Doctors of Nigeria have been in the strike for about three or so weeks now, hundreds of Nigerians have died because of that. And then, you know, right here in our shores, right there in our country, right there in the federal capital territory, Nigerian doctors in their hundreds were clean up to get job from another country, Saudi Arabia. I mean, it tells you that Nigeria Health sector is in crisis. What is that minister still doing there? Now we have a minister that has been alleged to have, you know, terrorism sympathy, who is still in the government. I was thinking that those ministers should go, the health minister, the communication minister, because once there is a serious allegation against you like that, you have to be, you have to go, you know. So the reshuffment did not go far enough. The President needs to look at critical area. What are the area of defense? You know, which is responsible for our security? Well, what does the, the President should look at critical, everybody, everybody involved in the security management of this country ought to go, ought to be replaced. Okay, Mr. Adebayo, let's quickly bring in Mr. Adebayo to get your initial reaction to this Cabinet reshuffle by the President. I think it was very important to move by the President because these were two ministries that have quite frankly been on the performing in the last two years. Now if you talk about the agricultural sector, you know, Mr. Adebayo alluded to the fact that food prices have been skyrocketing. Of course that is not directly the fault of the minister, but you would have expected some strategic response from that ministry in terms of certain policies and initiatives that would have driven the agricultural sector forward, which did not happen. You would realize that in the last few years the agricultural sector has been the engine of growth of our economy. It's been growing steadily over the last few years. But in recent times, the agricultural sector has been shrinking. In fact, in the last two years, the economy has enjoyed a boost largely from the information technology sector, whereas the agricultural sector has been shrinking. So it points clearly that it's a problem with the leadership in that particular sector. So to that extent, it seems like a very sensible decision for me. On the part of the power sector, I mean it's clear to everyone, in 2017 the former minister of power had initiated some sort of a strategic roadmap called the past sector recovery plan, which amongst other things was to do three critical things which was to increase power supply, to make the sector more robust and attractive to private sector investment and to make the sector financially viable. And that roadmap was to run up to 2021, such that even the World Bank was willing to provide a counterpart funding of $2.5 billion. Unfortunately, when this new minister came in, the biggest mistake he did was not to stick to that particular roadmap and decided to invent the will and pursue policies that were counter to roadmap that delayed on the ground. And what did that give us? That continued to give us frequent grid collapses, higher electricity tariff, a very result, very little results to show for it. But thankfully, the president has found the courage to do the right thing. Even though many would argue he's coming at the eighth day of the week, but thankfully he's done the right thing and we can only hope that the two people that have been replaced in those both ministries will chart the course forward. Well, we'll get to talk about that and also look at these two people who are replacing the ones fired and seeing how much they've also performed where they're coming from. But Mr. Adio, there's something that I feel and I've said here before that a lot of times we don't have actual indices for rating the performance of people in government. And that includes not just ministers and everybody who's in charge of any MDA, even governors and presidents themselves, there's no actual indices for rating how they perform. So I want you to share your thoughts on how you rate a performing minister. In what ways can you properly rate a performing minister and how long should it take before a government realizes this person doesn't seem to be doing well enough. It's time to make a change. I would argue that there are ways, there are standard ways to evaluate people who hold political offices. The only difference is that because usually political office is more emotional and once you connect to people emotionally, you blow the lines of how to really evaluate you in terms of the work that you have done on the ground. But to the extent of the question that you've asked, I think there are clear ways to evaluate a minister. One is first the strategic agenda and the policy direction that the ministry sets. How clear that vision is, what the objectives are and how achievable those objectives are. You also have to look at how well that ministry had implemented that plan and consequently the results of the policies that that particular minister had pursued over that critical period of time. And so you are able to access that given the context of the budgetary allocation available to that particular ministry. So for instance in the power sector, you can measure it by the amount of investments that have come into the private sector to improve transmission capacity, to improve generation capacity, to improve distribution capacity. You can measure that the amount of electricity supply that average Nigeria now has, you can evaluate that by how cheap and affordable the power supply is, especially for the manufacturing sector to be able to produce and become globally competitive. So there are clear indices for which you can evaluate setting ministries or departments of government. Now the only problem is that people like to be a lot more emotional than they are and looking at the numbers. And if we look closely at the numbers, you will see that these particular two ministers have dropped the ball. And if you went to the streets in Yaba or in or in TBS or anywhere in Lagos and you put a microphone on anybody's mouth, they will tell you clearly that there have been a problem with these two ministries and the results are clear for everyone to see that they are quite underperformed. And it's a courageous thing for the president to change, to change, to do a quick substitute. In about 20 seconds, in 20 seconds, how long would you expect the change to be made when a minister is on a performing? Well, I mean, that's quite a difficult question. But I think that a four-year period, I would argue that a four-year period is enough for you to implement an idea and to see the situation. A four-year time will be a sensible time. Okay, let's bring in Mr Adebayo now. We know that Nigeria needs about 180,000 to about 200,000 megawatts of electricity, you know, of power for us to have stable electricity in Nigeria. But we're currently around 4,000, you know, generating just about 4,000, you know, way, way, way under what we need. And when Salim Maman, you know, came into office, he said that he was going to take our power generating capacity to 11,000 megawatts. He then upped that to about 25,000 megawatts. But then we know that we're still highly underperforming. So when we look really at, you know, the gap regarding where we are with power and where we ought to be, what do you think the minister, you know, missed out, what he could have done, you know, to make sure that we close that gap? And is that going to be possible within the next two years in power? Thank you, Anita. You see, the issue is that he probably sets a bar for himself that he couldn't he couldn't scale. And it is quite clear that he did not have a strategic plan of execution of the bar that he set by himself. It's like identifying a destination without having a roadmap of how to get to that destination. That was what happened to the minister of power. So I, and of course, as my colleague said, you know, he made a plan on ground, discarded it and started to begin to reinvent the wheel. I am aware that a few professionals submitted a robust plan of action to him, which he just ingested. I know this very well because these professionals, these experts are my friends. A total job submitted it to him and he got it, he tanked them and discarded it. He never did anything about it. So meanwhile, the one he met on ground, he refused to implement. So that is one of his biggest of doings. And I think when you set a bar for yourself, it's like setting the question for, if you set the question for yourself, you know, when the university, just for the sake of maybe for the fun of it or to discipline students who are not in class, you know, the national comes into class and says, write the question for yourself and answer by yourself. You know, he comes, looks at the class, see that less than 50% of the students are there. He didn't plan to give you a question before, but he just said, okay, write the question by yourself and answer. It happened to me like twice or so when I was in the university. But if you, how do you now feel a question that you have asked yourself? That is what has happened to the minister of power. You know, he set the bar for himself, he set the standard which he was unable to achieve and that is not good for us. Everybody, look, I, my son had to put on generator now because there's no power here. That's not, because he also looked at, we may be having maybe 4,000 or 5,000 megawatt has been generated. What about the distribution? The distribution level itself is still abysmal. It's still abysmal. We have generated like 4,000 also, but it is not, how many communities even benefit from that? There are thousands of communities in this country. I read the material, the distribution in this country. I see that the distribution level is abysmal. All right. It's abysmal. So, let's bring, yeah, let's bring back Ayodele Adio. And, you know, I want us to go to, you know, back, you know, all the way back to the, you know, foundation of all of this. Mr. Mark Adebayo had mentioned other ministries that he believed needed to feel the same effect, you know, and have, you know, replacements done. But Mr. Adio, I want you to go back to the initial selection of ministers and share your thoughts on the persons that were placed in these, you know, capacities. Do you feel like the current administration had done a thorough job or had made the best selection of persons to handle these ministries? And also, are there other ministries that you feel you would rate pretty much the same way you've rated the power and agriculture and these ministers that have been replaced? Okay, so if I get the question correctly, you're not talking about this election of these new ministers. You're talking about the old ministers, right? Yeah, talking about, yeah, the initial selection, you know, of ministers, you know, for the current administration. And, you know, are there other ministries you've also looked at and thought to yourself, you know, this person needs also to go. Or these three also need to go. Yeah, quite frankly, we haven't put square pegs and square holes in many ministries. In fact, it's easier to count, you know, the amount of ministers, you know, that are really performing because they won't go past your first hand. And that's the sad reality. We can go all and all. And you see, it's so bad that there are so many ministers that you can't even remember their name. You know, you don't even know who they are in this particular administration. And it's quite a shame, the Minister of Interior, for instance, who is supposed to be in charge of internal security, I think can do a lot more better. I think that the Minister of Labour has been quite shocking in many of the things that he has said and many of the things that he has done and the way he's handled Labour disputes over time. I mean, the list is just endless because that's why we seem to be where we are, you know, as a country because there's too many square pegs in round hole. And the process for really many ministers were giving offices. I think it was more a reward for political loyalty as against competitors in a particular role, you know, responsibility that they were given. And that's a sad situation that we find ourselves in. Yes, Mr Adio, that point you just mentioned is what I was going to bring up. When we take a look at how appointments are made, especially regarding the Cabinet, doesn't it seem to you that this is something about politics more than competence and professionalism? Because I took a look at the profiles of these, you know, new ministers that have replaced the old ones, and it really doesn't seem to match up with the professions and disciplines of these ministers and where they're coming to. For example, we know that the new Minister, Abubakar Aliou, former Minister of State for Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, is a professional engineer. You know, he's now been brought into the power space. Also, we're seeing that Mahmoud Abubakar specialized in microbiology and, you know, a mass degrees in resources management is now coming into agriculture. So are we still having the same mistakes or are there, you know, lessons that they can, you know, bring over to their new ministries to make it work? Mr Adio, and then Mr Adibayo please. Okay, I saw there are two things with people that you are pointing to here, very big governments, agencies, organizations. So it's either they have the technical expertise or they have strong administrative competence. And so the real problem happens when they lack both, when they do not have the technical expertise that is required to supervise the ministry and when they lack administrative competence. Now, if you talk about the two ministers who have just been sworn in or who have just been appointed, I really can't speak for the Minister of Environment because I really do not know this background. I really not followed anything. But to the to the former Minister for State for Housing, which I have followed for quite some time. Incidentally, I met him in 2009 when he was the head of the Yobi State Housing Agency. The truth is the civil is I think is a civil engineer. Yes. So it might not directly in terms of technical expertise, marks the requirement that is required for the power sector. But he's been a seasoned administrator for the past 12, 13, 14 years. And he spends his entire career in government bureaucracies, heading various government agencies at the state level, became deputy governor for about 10 years. And of course, and then Minister of the State for Housing and Works and Ministry. So I think that to that extent, and from the few things that I've learned about him over the years, he seems to be a hard worker, is quite a seasoned administrator would bring is likely, let me choose my words carefully, is likely to bring stability to the power sector. And I have the confidence of the fact that because he's worked with the former power Minister for Power, who had set up a roadmap for the power ministry before he was relieved of his duties in 2019, he may he may be more open and willing to continue to pursue the plan or the roadmap that was left behind by the former minister and see that to completion. So if there's anything that gives me gives me confidence is the slight, the slight antecedent of the fact that he's quite a seasoned administrator and might just be willing to follow the laid down plan and procedures on ground. So fundamentally, you just need two things. I think you need a technical expertise. The perfect scenario will be someone who has the technical expertise and the administrative competence. But once you find one of the two, you may just be able to model through. But if you have none of the two, then you're going to have yourself in a real, real, real part of soon. Okay. Mr. Debayo, I want you to wait on this, because when we take a look at the cabinet of other countries, for example, the Joe Biden cabinet, when he announced it, we saw people that he put in people who are young, vibrant, and people who have ownership and authority of the different sectors that he would have plugged in. But it doesn't seem exactly so in Nigeria. How do you react to this regarding professionalism and basically politics? Well, you see, the country will not be able to get it right if all we do is the qualifications and considerations to appoint people into office is political or ethno-religious. And that is what has been happening since the inception of this country, that there is no deliberate attempt to bring in people with expertise, except in the very few circumstances that we have been able to get this right, like former minister of finance in Nigeria, this is a great woman who was brought in and was able to do wonderfully well. You cannot say that for many people. Late Dr. Professor Akuyili, look at what he did at the area of drug management and administration in the country. Except for a few occasions like that, we have not been lucky. People come in through political consideration ethno-religious sentiments for which this government is the most notorious, you understand me? Now, if I were the president, the minister of finance of defense will go because of the state of insecurity, the minister of health will go because of the health crisis that is not being able to manage well, the minister... All right, seems we may have lost Makadibayo there. Mr. Ayodele Adio, can you hear us? Yes. Yes, I can hear you. Okay, well, just before we get Makadibayo back. Okay, all right. Just before we get Makadibayo back, I want you to quickly just start with setting agenda for the new ministers. They have about two years until a new government comes in, so there's possibility they might remain or not. But what would you describe as hitting the ground running in the time that they have? In what ways can they achieve the most with the time that they have left? Okay, I think they actually even have less than two years and realistically, realistically, I really don't know how much time they have to implement anything meaningful because after 9, 10 months, it's going to be politics all the ways. I'm not sure they have enough time to implement or achieve anything meaningful. For the power sector, like I said, all the new ministers need to do is to follow the roadmap that was already laid down, which is the power sector recovery plan, and to see to the implementation of some of the areas that have lacked behind over the last two, three years, to see that the counterpart funding from the World Bank, like I said, $2.5 billion comes through. And so many other reforms that were targeted at expanding the power sector and opening it up to investment, increasing power supply, making the sector more financially viable. Those things need to be done. I mean, he might not be able to get carried over the line because it's going to be a short period, but I think it's important for them to begin to implement many of those ideas and initiatives for the agricultural sector. I would argue that the challenges they are quite robust. I'm not even sure where he's going to start from. There hasn't been a clear-cut plan or agenda the last two, three years. I'm more confused as to what to even recommend where he starts from, because it's a really chaotic situation. Food prices are growing up across the entire country, and farmers can't access their farms, which is largely due to security, produced and not getting to markets. The value chain is completely broken. People are suffering from exporting some agricultural products. And investment in the mechanized agriculture also, we don't seem to have had a lot of that. Oh, yes, yes. So that's why I said the challenges in the agricultural sector is huge because it's largely, it's still largely holes and cutleries and not mechanized farming, you know, which doesn't create the kind of jobs and wages that are important to lift people out of poverty. And it has to be a gamut of policies of course, to actually drive the agricultural sector to tide, to interest the legislation, to tide to exports and all of that. I don't think that can be done in a one-year period. So he has my sympathies, actually, the agricultural sector, because I don't know what he's going to be in the next one year. I really don't know. He has my sympathies. Really, I am just reminded of statements that Nigerian food exports, you know, have basically been banned because of, you know, they found agrochemicals and them, you know, talking about the fact that farmers haven't been properly trained on how to use these chemicals, because they have standards when it comes to food that gets important to their countries, you know. But when they're subjected to checks, they don't pass those checks, food live in Nigeria, cannot make it into other countries. And it really got me wondering what then has been the quality of the food that we're consuming here, because nobody's really putting any check on these food items. We just consume them without knowing exactly what's contained in those food items regarding chemicals and harmful substances. But I want us to look at, you know, this situation with our agricultural sector to consider the irony of the fact that we're coming from, you know, when you look at, you know, pre-colonial era, how we're coming from, you know, an agriculture-based economy to one that has now become dependent on oil and how much agriculture seemed to be regressing in Nigeria, despite our huge agricultural potential. And what really the new administration, let's even look forward to 2023 and beyond, what the new administration need to do to, you know, to shake that up in the agricultural sector. Okay. Listen, there's a whole lot of work that needs to go in the entire value chain of the agricultural sector. And you need probably like a 10-year, 15-year roadmap for you to begin to see some sort of tangible results. First of all, you have to realize that we are a cultural market, some sort of a global market, wearing, if you rely on the primary products, which is the yams or the cocos that you produce, and you're going to leave your farmers in an inadvertently poor, because those prices are controlled by the international market, wearing you now have countries in the European Union and United States that used to be our biggest markets, also subsidizing their farmers or their local farmers for political reasons. And so once you subsidize the farmers in the international market, it becomes impossible for local producers to be able to compete in that kind of global environment. And then they end up, you know, getting poorer and poorer over the years. So what we have experienced in the agricultural sector is that what about 11 million people are presently operating in that sector. Many of them are operating at the subsistence level, and many of them are extremely poor. So for me, what needs to happen is for us to be able to tie the agricultural sector first to mechanize it, support it with robust research and development, and then critically tie it down to an industrialization policy that moves us not from the primary product into more processing of these primary products, and into industrialization process where we can create meaningful jobs with better wages, better opportunities. We also need to support our export industries. We're the hegemon in the West African region. And rather than importing from, and countries in the sub region, the Nigerian government should actually be exporting and dominating the markets in the West African region. But for us to do that, we need a set of policy objectives that makes exporting agricultural products or value added agricultural products easier, cheaper, efficient, and effective. And that has to do with choosing policies wisely and smacking by first having a clear road plan and a clear agenda. And I hope that from 2023 we can have a clear roadmap to fundamentally move the agricultural sector away from the subsistence level into a more mechanized level tied down to an industrialization policy, and support it with the robust research and development industry from universities and institutes of agriculture so that we can begin to make sensible progress in that particular sector. All right. Ms. Aya DeLea, I also want you to speak on this. One of the things that you mentioned earlier is not even knowing a lot of these ministers and who they are. And I saw a couple of the reactions to this news online. There's a lot of people saying, oh, I've never ever heard about Salim Amman before, or the Nanono name. They're not familiar because they don't seem to have made a lot of impact. And so talking about impact, do you think or would you say that these two ministries were the most urgent for the current administration? The newspapers say that it's maybe a start, and there's other ministries that would also be touched. But do you think that power and agriculture were the most urgent for President Amman to take action with? Or are there others that he probably would have also added to this list or started his reshuffle with? I'll just play a very quick joke with you now. Can you in two seconds tell me the Minister of Defense, the name of the Minister of Defense? I was going to say Basham. Oh, I normally wouldn't know. So I mean, there are a lot of ministries that are underperforming, right? The Ministry of Defense is quite an urgent ministry for me because of the rising security across the country. There's too many bloodletting, too many deaths, too many unavoidable kidnappings. Our schools are so vulnerable. It seems like we don't have a tactical response to anything. There was a news yesterday that 70 children were kidnapped somewhere, I think in Zamfara state or so. We just wake up to bad news every day, and we were supposed to have a Minister of Defense. I mean, so really, I can go on and on on all these ministries. I'm Minister of Education. I'm not sure what is happening at the Ministry of Education. I'm not sure what is happening at the Ministry of Police Affairs. It's just a whole lot of ministries that are quite underperforming. And we can have an entire program about that. And it's just sad. So when you say that which other ministries are urgent, I think 80% of the ministries are urgent for a change and fresh legs. You know, there are just less than five, six, seven ministers who are really doing the job. And the change is required in broad scale. Unfortunately, we don't really have enough time. It's just one year to go. And I don't know what impact any new minister coming in is going to have in less than a year. I think we've left it too late. We've let the change too late. We're already on the eighth day of the week. And I'm not sure what real difference changing a minister two, three months from now will really make the scheme of things. Where would you say the President's mindset is, you know, with a move like this? Well, I mean, I don't know. I've never spoken to the President. I don't really, I can't even say how his mind works with things like this, any longer. But I think in these two ministries, I think because the President seems to have a thing for agriculture and he's paid attention to that sector, because every time you hear him speak, he talks about farmers and he talks about the agricultural sector. And so I would imagine that he had paid close attention to that ministry and he hasn't seen the kind of results that he wants to see. And he's probably looked at the big stick. So to that extent, I think he's acted in the ministry that is close to his heart and made a very quick decision, you know, for the power sector. And I don't know. I think he probably felt that the minister wasn't doing as much as he had seen when the previous minister was in charge of power and maybe he needed fresh legs, you know. But it is really hard to tell you what the President thinks on issues like this because he speaks very less on many of these issues and it's hard to predict or comment on what he thinks about many of these issues. So yes, we hear you when you say, you know, it's two years, less than two years, you wonder exactly what you would achieve in less than two years. But the President, he has said that the few cabinet changes, you know, mark the beginning of a total continuous process. So would you, would you finally say better late than never? Yeah, I think the study bio is back. I think I can see him on the screen just to point that out. Yeah, better late than never, obviously better late than never. But I think the truth is, the truth is, I'm not sure what you're not going to be able to reinvent the wheel in one year. You will not be able to set out a new course, set out a new policy plan, implement it and achieve anything meaningful in one year, which is why I said initially that except there is a clear policy agenda on ground and that all the new minister needs to do is to support and implement that plan and putting a lot more energy and vigor in implementing that sensible idea. You're really not going to achieve anything in one year. You just have essentially one year to turn a new ministry around. And I think it's going to possible. It's going to be impossible to do. The People's Democratic Party has also criticized this. They've said that, you know, it's a waste of time and this, you know, really wouldn't achieve much. So you're not the only one with similar thoughts with regards to this. And then there's also people who have said that, you know, this may not really be because of underperformance. It might just be politics being played here and there. Would you, you know, maybe, you know, buy into those sentiments? Well, to be honest with you, politicians are in the trade of play politics, right? So you shouldn't expect anything less from politicians. They are trained to play politics and they make political decisions. They shouldn't surprise us. Neither should it shock us because they are politicians. The only thing is that whatever political decisions that they make, our argument is that it must be in the interest of the Nigerian people or the majority of the Nigerian people. And that's why in the median civil society, you're constantly on your next to make them make the right decisions and sensible decisions. And so that anybody who wants to make political decisions you should appoint competent people in your political party or who have political affiliations to your political party into these positions of authority. So yes, of course it's a political decision, but we can only hope and we can only ensure and continue to demand that that political decision that was made is in the interest of the majority of the Nigerian people. And if they do not perform to the extent that you expect, we should also raise our voices to the rooftop to either demand their resignation or criticize the president because the book essentially stops at the state.