 Like Abacha Lutz, we will recover stolen crude on the Bihari, says presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, Prince Adioli Adebayo. Tonight we discuss the 2023 elections and his presidential race. This is Plus Politics, I'm Mary Anacor. The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Prince Adioli Adebayo, has declared that the twin menace of insurgency and banditry in the country will be eradicated within 100 days if he is elected president in the 2023 election. He also said if given the opportunity, stolen crude under the Bihari-led administration will be recovered, giving instances of zero remittance from the NNPC and oil-producing states borrowing to pay salaries. According to him, the elites have abandoned Nigerians to the people and the people should not abandon themselves. Now they should vote right. Well joining us live this evening to discuss his 2023 presidential race and the state of the nation is Prince Adioli Adebayo, presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party. So good to have you join us in the studio. It's a pleasure. All right, I hope that you didn't have to cross mountains to get here. Even if we have to do more, we'll do it. A lot is at stake. Interesting. I think the question that you get asked most often is why do you want to be president? Because I hear people saying it's a tumultuous task to lead any country, let alone a multi-ethnic and multicultural country with diverse needs as Nigeria. So again, I ask why would you want to be president? Well, I appreciate the enormity of the office, but if the job is actually done, Nigeria is one of the lokiest countries to govern because the people want what is good. The people want positive things in life. The materialism about Nigeria that we criticize is actually a Philip for hard work. It's a Philip for people actually trying to improve their lot. So if you have 200 million people individually trying to improve their lot, it's the job of the leader to ensure that while they're trying to improve their lot, that they actually are helping the country that way. So what is hard in Nigeria or what makes it look hard is that people who are in offices are not actually performing the functions of the office. And you don't need too much evidence to know. You can start from your neighborhood. You will see that the sanitation officer doesn't show up. So it's not that sanitation is difficult to do, but it just won't show up. The traffic warden sometimes doesn't show up. So it's not that it's so difficult to be a traffic warden. It just won't show up for diverse reasons. It's not difficult to post letters, for example. But if you try to post a letter in Nigeria, it's quite difficult. So with these little things, you will know that that's why the big things don't get done. So just basic that. So if you come and people who are in government don't understand that they are there to render services. They just think that they are lucky to have privileges or they need to assert the privileges. So if you have traffic on the road, they will not clear the traffic, but they will bring their own vehicles and security guards to let them have a quick passage. But they will not remember and say, well, there are people still live in traffic. So if there is no security in the country, they will just increase the number of policemen attached to VIPs and so on and so forth. So if there is no electricity, even in the electricity minister's office, energy minister, he will just go by generator. So if assholes are strike, they just send their children abroad. So that's that's just the problem. So if you shift in my sense and we try to repair the collective, then you rise the beautiful countries. This sounds all fine and dandy because this is almost what every presidential candidate says. They come and talk beautiful and talk, you know, sometimes even tough and sometimes tell us what they will do. But then at the end of the day, I mean, let's say, for example, in 2015 Nigerians wanted anybody else but the sitting president. And here we are in 2023. It's almost it's almost feeling like it's the same thing. But why should Nigerians take you seriously? What is that track record that we can point to? What can we hold on to to say, well, this man is an honorable person and he will, you know, live up to the expectations or the responsibility that might be handed to you. First, before Nigerians take me seriously, they should first take them seriously. Which means that if someone comes before you, you should try to analyze what they are saying. What they are saying is not enough because when you say what are they saying, what they are saying should be in the context of what they have been doing and the context of what is happening around their campaign. In 2015 that you refer to, it was obvious to many people including me, I was saying it, it was obvious that people did not care who was saying those things because the person who said he was going to develop the economy he was going to do this and that, has been a colossal failure in previous administration. Number two, he said he was going to fight corruption and he was going to do a number of things. The people to his right, people to his left, were people who were causing the things he said he was going to oppose. So you knew that it was impossible. Thirdly, he was assessing a lot of people's resources and he was spending almost as much money as the incumbent government at the time and with that amount of stray money into your politics, you can't make changes. Thirdly, people did not go into the nitty gritty because do not vote based on politicians promises. Promises mean nothing. You vote based on the plan of the politician. How are we supposed to know the plan of the politician if he doesn't speak to us and tell us, because I mean the promise is all as a result of the plan that he thinks he has that can bring some form of change for us. So again, how do we know the plan if it's not... Maybe the greatest thing, maybe the best thing people will learn tonight is that it's a difference between a plan and a promise. If I promised to build a house, that's a promise. But if I show you the land and I show you a drawing and I show you a costume and I tell you the source of funding for that project and I show you the engineer who's going to build it and I give you a timeline, that's a plan. But you may say, I'm going to build your house. Anyone can say so, but you should ask, where's the land? How long will it take? How many bricks will it take? Where's the iron rod? Who is the engineer? Where's the design? So if we keep asking that question in 2023, it will be an improvement over the situation in 2015. Because right now everyone is saying I'm going to build your houses. But people, because of the noise, don't ask the question, how? What are you going to do? So for every plan that I put on the table, people should not trust me, they should trust their own judgment by asking salient questions. And in the course of the campaign, when it starts and the course of your question in this night, if there is any of my plans that you look at, you can ask me to the minutest detail, miniscule what I want to do, where the funding is coming from, who is going to be the person that I will give it to you. Or you would say that not only me, any reasonable person, honest person who takes that office, if they follow that plan, the plan must work. The good thing about the plan is that it should not work for only one person. There is not a plan. A plan is a scheme of directions that you give, that anyone who follows that scheme of direction and that discipline and that sequence will succeed. So there is just basic, basic planning. But if it's just do a poll of what people will like, you know, people hate corruption, especially corruption of other people, not their own. So people hate corruption. So if I go there and say I'm going to fight corruption, then people are going to like me because that's a promise. People should say, well, you are going to fight corruption, but you are spending so much money on your campaign. And the amount to your right, the amount to your left is actually engrossing corruption. And if I look at how much you spend on your campaign, flying from all over the place to all over the place, with all the aircraft you hired, with governors of oil rich states, spending a lot of money, you should know that that government is not going to fight corruption because how you roll your campaign is an indication of how you're going to govern. So for those who come, getting a lot of trolls, bots online to create artificial noise, it means that they are going to run a government propaganda. Those who come and tell a lot of lies because of their campaign on forced lies, unnecessary lies, exaggerations, you know, they are going to run a government of deceit. Those who support us intimidate opponents in the course of campaign, you know that when they come to government, it will be a fascist, intolerant government. Those who run sectional campaign based on religion and ethnicity and fault lines, you know that when they are in government, that's how they are going to govern. So if you want to see how a politician is going to govern, see how they are managing their campaign now, then you will know. That's why in 2015, it was a surrogate campaign. The candidate himself will not speak. So people who will speak on his behalf, they will be making speeches that he too was struggling to understand. So you knew at that time that it was going to be a government run by a cabal. So that's how you plan. And that's how you predict to avoid errors. Let's go into things that you want to do for Nigeria. You were quoted to say that you will restore hope and unite Nigeria. So let's talk about the divisions that we have. I started by talking about the fact that we are a very diverse nation. And over the years, especially under this administration, the lines have continued to broaden, whether it be religious, ethnic and now political lines. How easy would it be for you to address that again? We already are seeing it, like you said, propaganda unrest, people being unable to condone others and their positions or opinions. How easy a task do you think this will be for you, especially for the first time at this office if you were to get it? There is a missing ingredient. And if we have that ingredient, it's quite bitter. If we have that ingredient, it's called the truth. The leader must be able to say the truth, starting from the campaign. So you don't go and tell people things that they like to hear, which you are never going to do. And if you try to do, it's impossible to do. So we have to have the truth. The truth in this country is that there is no justice. How do you mean there is no justice? There is no justice if you look at it. For example, if you look at regional justice, there is no justice. The part of the country that supplies most of the income that we depend upon that makes us to say we are an oil-rich state or a resource-rich state, we marginalize the people who are involved in that. There is no class justice. The typist, security guard, the driver to the president of Nigeria, whom he interacts with every day, he knows, if he cares to know, that their salaries cannot take them home. But they work for the most powerful person in the country. But he knows that their salaries cannot take them home. There is gender injustice. If you look at the situation, how we run the country. There is generational injustice. Because generation that went to school on free education, free boarding, free feeding, travel overseas for research and on pleasure, are the generation now saying there is no enough money to pay teachers. So there is generational injustice. So the billionaires in Nigeria are likely to be quite old or the bag carriers for old people. If you look at the life of politicians, vis-à-vis the life of people they represent, there is no justice. If you look at it, you will see that it's like the people who are in the governing classes are living in a country within a country. So that the problems facing the country does not touch them. I was speaking earlier in a different place that I said, look, Elizabeth II from a late Queen of England, or in all her youth, she was in her country. Her education in her country. She joined the army of her country. As a youth, she was given responsibility to lead the country. And in the course of her old age, sickness and everything, she never left England and she died in her country. Can you say so of Nigeria presidency? No, we've had our president die in Saudi Arabia because he's looking for medical care. Most Nigerians cannot go to Saudi Arabia to look for medical care. Our own president, who is there now, looks for every excuse to go versus medical training. His children are trained abroad. Some of those who are competing with me who want to come and say they want to serve the country or rule the country, whichever they want to do. When they have a little pain or some problem somewhere, they go versus for treatment. Even one of them, who served eight years as vice president, immediately took the money he got and went to live in the UAE, living in a life of luxury, 24-hour electricity, whatever he liked there. And when he now had a second epiphany, he came back here to look for more power. And I believe he got the power. He would finish everything he needs to do and go back there again. So this is a case of injustice. If you look at the legal profession, if you have a case in court, whatever the case, you work in a place where you're not paid, something happens to you, somebody in Georgia, somebody stole your land, you could be in court for 20 years. But if you contest the election, and you want to be a governor or president, the court will say, well, the case has to be finished in 60 days. So anything that touches the elite, case better treatment. So a country in a multi-dimensional analysis that you want to do, that is not funded on truth and justice, that makes people angry. There is a part of this country, the people who go out on Mondays, because the people feel fairly treated. Whether they are right or wrong, the country hasn't stopped to say, how can a portion of this country be having this protest? Remember, in a country like Japan, when people come, a group, whether they are workers, whether they are community people, if they want to protest, they can just get a black ribbon or red ribbon and wrap it around their hand. And the authorities will go to them, why do you have this ribbon written around your hand? Are you not happy? It is the government that is going to go and ask them, what are you protesting? What are you happy about? But here we had answers, and you know what happened. So this is a kind of thing, and I'm saying, if you do that in a country, irrespective of the wealth of that country, if people don't feel cheated, they are going to be a happy people and they are going to contribute to the country. 30 years ago, 60 years ago, 90 years ago, Nigeria was poorer than now, but people were fairer. So if it were there was a one lane highway, there was only one university in the country, and one polytechnic at Yabba Tech, and just less than 100 secondary schools in this country, people were happier because the system was fairer. So that's what I'm saying. Even if OPEC allows Nigeria to triple, quantify our oil production, Nigerian people will be poorer, even with more money because there's no justice. I'm going to go back to my question. How do you intend to unite Nigerians? You've told me how many of the problems, how do you, you're one person, don't forget, you're one person, and who knows, the National Assembly would be a mixed national assembly as usual, but the onus is on you to carry out the promises that you have made. How do you intend to really practicals, practical plans, what actions, what plans will you put in place to bring this unity to bear? Don't forget, like you have said, what are all the problems around the country, the north, the south, the east, everywhere has a problem. How do you intend to, and where do you start from? I start from what I'm doing now, which is to say the truth. That's how our company is different, to tell people where the problem lies and what I'm bringing. What I'm bringing is that I'm going to bring that truth. And at level of, for example, inter-ethnic, inter-religious relationship, you start by making sure that people who have their resources in every part of Nigeria, where they find themselves, have control of their resources. People who have learned, have control of their land, even the land use act, I'm going to ensure the National Assembly abrogates it. If you get to Abuja, you will see the Bahia people whose land that we took to create a federal capital for ourselves, a beautiful, relatively beautiful federal capital. Many of them are still driving rickshaws, pulling rickshaws in the market. Many of them are living in shanties, but people like us who went to settle there have become land speculators, collecting one billion, two billion. For land of people's ancestral land, there is no compensation done for them. That is a follow-up for what we were doing to people in Nigeria Delta. They are oil and gas. Go to Uganda. They have taken a different approach. If you find oil in your community, the oil company goes to you. You license them. You have cooperation with them. Then the federal government contacts the operation, whether you or your partner. I'm going to do the same thing for the gold in Saffara. I'm going to do it for all other things. People have to have control over their land for agriculture. That is across the country. When you see your fellow compatriots, if your fellow citizen coming to your land, you don't feel threatened. You don't feel at all they have come to take over anything belonging to you. You feel like, well, I'm in control of my situation. These are my fellow country people coming to me to interact with me, but I don't have a sense of losing what I have. When it comes to the ruling classes versus the working classes and the general populace, you ensure that no person who is in charge of public affairs goes to enjoy private bypass. So if you are in public service, your children attend public schools. If you go to public hospitals, you live in public housing. There is no official car for minister or prior anybody because we are going to take public transport. If you use your own money to buy for yourself an official car, no problem. I'm not going to worry you, but there must be because if I'm a minister, I'm a minister of justice. Now the secretary is in my office and the cleaner is in my office. I have an official car taking me to work. We're supposed to start work at the same time, but this other person is having to face terrible public transport together. It wasn't like that in the past. So then you take intergenerational. I have to ensure that number one, we stop spending oil money because the oil does not belong to this generation alone. So we have to create an intergenerational fund in which we store the oil money. If we don't spend oil money, let's be realistic here, but this is all sounds. Nigeria's major sauce is the oil. Of course, we always pay the service to other things like agriculture. We're going to do this and that. We're looking at technology, which is also budding. But if we don't spend oil money, what do we spend? A lot of money on the economy. A lot of money. Number one, I have a bid 101 for you. For the last several months, UNNPC has not returned any money to the federation account. So what happened? It shows to you that it is possible to live with that oil. This time around, it was because we have stolen the money. I can say that clearly, but... Who's they and who stole the money? Okay, now, two things. We're talking of oil now. Forget about all other things you knew before. Those ones are still happening. Bursting pipeline, wrong entry, inflation contracts. Those ones are going low key. But the major, the new pestilence that has come now is that 80% of the crude oil being produced is stolen outright. And it's not stolen by bandits or local people, because they can't afford it. It's been stolen by international oil operators with the connivance of Nigerian security and governmental officials. And these vessels are feasible. They are traceable. As I'm talking to you now, not more than 80, 180 nautical miles from your studio they are stealing Nigerian crude oil as I'm talking to you now. And they are stealing on the highway and international maritime organization. You're still yet to tell me who they are. Unless you want to mention their names. Who they, I mean... I am saying government officials, people who are surviving on your salary, people whom you will see pay pension to when they retire. These people, starting with the minister of petroleum, who is the president of Nigeria, down was to everybody who is involved in it. So you're calling my president a thief? No, the actions calling them so. I wish they were not, but it is the case. For example, I'm not a noise maker until I start making noise. So when you are in charge of public resources and you are supposed to be accountable to it and defend the country against enemies foreign and domestic because it takes an enemy to do economic sabotage to come and steal all your crude oil. 80% take it to ports all over the world where we know where they are. Take it to refineries in the world. Remember that if you are setting up a refinery to define your refinery, including the one we are doing around here, you have to have a catalytic cracking system that store these different typologies of oil all over the world and ensure that you can. So if you take a bottle of Coke a random take like a crate of empty crate of Coca Cola or whatever you want to use and you go to different parts of Nigeria and you take crude oil and you don't label them or you take them to a laboratory. I can tell you, they would tell you this one is from Kwaibu terminal. This one is from Bunny. This one is from Escafos. This they would tell you where they come from because they all have their molecular signature. In fact, when I used to, we loyal to the oil industry because I run it for election, I have people who just would take a sample and put in the amount like why, we have wine taste that they would tell you, oh, this is a jam crude. So the safari content is different. Everything is there. So these people who are refining this crude, they know it's stolen from Nigeria. The people who allow them to steal it know that they still need to go and sell. Even if you, on your birthday, somebody gave you a ship load of oil, crude oil, you don't know what to do with it. You have to look for an oil dealer in Europe, preferably in Switzerland, to help you sell it. There are other people playing in other places. You can get them in Holland as well. So these things are feasible. And if you see these vessels, you can get their name from Lloyd Register, you can get it from all the maritime reporting. So that's why I said, Nigeria, don't worry. Just let us get in. We will calmly and naturally recover your crude for you because it's an international criminal gang with the connivance of our people. Why I'm racing this, it's not because I like to be a crime buster. Why I'm racing is because all other lies have to follow because they are still in us blind. In order to cover that lie, they have to now tell us one that there's global recession, that's not true, that there is a COVID affecting something that's not true. There is global recession on the other opposite side of our market. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, those who are on our side of the market. This is not our own recession. And why I'm highly alarmed is that this is the period of boon for us if you studied the biblical dream of Joseph, seven years of farming and seven years of surplus. This is supposed to be our several years of surplus. And if we were already expressing farming because of this theft, what happens when the oil cycle changes and oil price comes down to 38? So you will now have aggravated farming at that point. That's the number one. Number two, why I will not spend this oil money anymore and I'll put in the future's fund is that if you look at ginger, for example, I'm sure you're familiar with ginger. Kaduna State is a loan, can be the world number one power in ginger. And there are other states in Nigeria that grow ginger equally. As at present, because of the way we do it, we do it anyhow, nobody's, there's no program supporting them. They can make sometimes a year, 20 million dollars. I've seen that as a year, they went as close as 80 to 120 million dollars. But if you get these women in the market who grind pepper, who grind melons, are you improved on what they do? Are you grind the ginger? Are you produce ginger oil? You will take you from 20 million to 1.2, 1.4 billion dollars of ginger oil. If you further process it into center ginger and all of that, you will see the same thing for cocoa. So I can easily replace in a short order. And I've done that personally for me. You know, I'm an oil-plum-platition owner. At the height of oil price during President Jonathan's regime, it was good to 1.20, 1.14 there about. And everybody was trying to work in NNPC. At that time, I was selling my own palm oil at 660 dollars per barrel. So I didn't drive in past NNPC office. I didn't look at them as pure beans. I looked at them like inferior beans because I could make 660 dollars per barrel. And it's still happening to me now. So I think that if we follow what the Eastern region government did under Michael Opera when he created other palm, I believe that we will do very well and we can do that within a short order. We have the agricultural ministry. We have, you know, it sounds to me like these ideas are always very novel when it comes to election time. And not just about the Bahá'í administration. We have successive governments who have said they were going to deal with agriculture. They were going to improve agricultural system but that always finds a way to take a back seat. So again, why do we have these ministries, these departments, these agencies, if that is not their core duty? We have investment promotion viewers all over the country. Why is that not front and center in a sentence? Because the productivity of the ministry is not based on what's written on the signboard. So you can say it's ministerial agriculture but they will not do agriculture. They will just be doing fertilizer, racketeering. So you can call it ministry of entertainment but if you are doing farming, the crop will grow. So let's just forget about the label. That's number one. Number two, popularity is an asset in politics but it doesn't necessarily come with intelligence. So you have to study the vision that the person has. I will say- We've had one of the best ministers for agriculture who is now in charge of the AFDB at the time he was here heading agriculture. So again- He was one of the best for the regime that he served and because it doesn't mean he's one of the best in his hometown. So there are a lot of talent in Nigeria but even at that short period Akim Umi Adishina was able to improve food supply. I disagree with him on many issues especially in terms of sustainability of agriculture but at least he faced the job. What I'm letting you know is that politicians, policymakers are bound to disagree on issues but if each one were to sit down and implement what they believe in the country will gain by it. What we are calling governments here is a bunch of incumbents full of politicians who just go there to receive reward. So what I'm letting you know is don't say that Nigeria problems are difficult to solve. They have not been solving them. That's why I started with the pedestrian examples that it is not difficult to claim a drainage. It is not difficult to patch potholes. There's no science that is difficult there but you actually need people who are in that department who wake up every day trying to do their best. So if the president because of the system we have created for ourselves we've put the executive powers in one person. It's not like Britain or United Kingdom generally where or in Europe where the power is dispersed in an executive of equals. No. We wrote our constitution and said that the executive powers of the Federation, all of them will be vested in one person. So if you get one person wrong the rest are going to be people who are going to be assisting him to explain his failures. So you need to make sure that the person has a vision assessed in a similar show that I have not been government before but I personally have created more jobs than the president who is there now his vice president, senate president, speaker, secretary of government, chief of staff all of them combined. I have created more jobs than all of them combined in their entire life. So what does that tell you? It tells you that they are not experienced in the things we need but they are experienced in the things we have been suffering. But being an interpreter and you are being a business person creating job opportunities totally different from leading the country but we'll take a break. We're still talking with the social democratic party presidential candidates Prince Adeola Adebayo will be right back after this break. Stay with us. It's still plus politics and we're still being joined in the studio by the presidential candidate of the social democratic party Prince Adeola Adebayo. Now before we went on the break I was making a point about running a business as opposed to running a nation as I'd like to underline the word diverse as Nigeria and of course all the problems that we have on every side. First, running a country and running a business have a lot in common because you have to have targets that have vision and that's why what I'm doing is a way of talking about Nigeria the same way if you have a business proposal. So the only difference is that public service a lot of the powers are diverse. If you own your own business you can make your own decision or your own. Even at that you have stakeholders there are banks who will ask you whether you're making a good sense or otherwise they won't give you their money. Their employees will not be happy with you if you don't take care of them or motivate them you know. There are other regulators in the industry who are going to ensure that you comply with the law. Besides that there are competitors who are going to take the market from you. So it shouldn't be too difficult to convert from business to government provided that you understand that in business the aim is profit. Whereas in the public life the aim is human happiness when you're dealing with public life. But what people say about Nigeria diversity and all Nigeria is not as diverse as Brazil, India more diverse countries than us. And despite our diversity we have a lot of things in common. And those things that we have in common is that for example we don't like poverty. And so our parties say fair way to poverty. 30 years ago every Nigerian believed that we don't want insecurity. Nobody wants to be kidnapped. There's no ethnic or religious groups who say well kidnapping is okay. With people who don't want to be hungry children don't want to be out of school. So things that the government is dealing with there are things that we believe in common. There is no ethnicity or diversity in Nigeria that says that people want potable water some don't want it. So the issue of diversity is overplayed. And the issue of diversity where they want to steal money people of different ethnic and religious background somehow manage to forget their differences. So when you see FCC charge them to cause you will see that all religions are present ethnicity present. So I think that it just a way to excuse lack of visionary leadership. However, diversity in the workplace you remember in many countries I worked in a number of years in America and diversity in the workplace is part of what they will ask you to do. So diversity is not limited only to politics. Diversity just means that everyone has a voice and everyone's value is reflected and everyone sees themselves in the government and you could see that that's not difficult to do. What is difficult to do is to run a government based on three C's character, competence and courage. Like I said, I learned before I go to my next question it's sometimes very easy to say things you know talk about Nigeria and how to steer the ship when you're looking from the outside in as opposed to when you're sitting on that seat. But let's talk about the situations that we're facing now. Let's talk first about the fact that students are still home seven plus months gone and the government is yet to come to a negotiation proper with the NLC. Resident doctors, for example in Abiyastis have been on strike for a year. And of course as we speak right now TUC is threatening to go on strike. There seems to be a long list of people who are going on strike. I think no no it wasn't TUC-Pengasin. As we speak also the health sector is in some form of comatose and we see doctors running away to other parts of the country. Why do you think that we're dealing with all of this all at once? Some people say it's political even the government has said that NLC is somewhat political. But can we do better and why aren't we doing better? Yeah you see it's a very simple problem. We need the government. But we do have a government. We don't. Yes we do. We elected that government in 2019. You can pay for a dress or what they send a dress to you doesn't fit you. So you can pay an estate agent to get your accommodation you may not be able to sleep in it. You can buy a vehicle that doesn't work. So you can even buy a flight and the airline doesn't show up. So we voted an absentee government. There are people occupying those offices but they're not doing governmental functions. And you don't need me to say it. You just need to ask yourself anything that surrounds you that is the responsibility of the government. You will see immediately that it doesn't work. So that's why neighborhoods are coming up with their own gates to prevent robbers from robbing them. That's why people have security guards in their houses. That's why I suspect that you have a generator in your house. You look like someone who has a generator at home. So that have a generator at home is your own say I don't have a government because in countries where they have government they don't have generators at home. The fact that you are thinking or you know somebody in your family who has children in private school not because they particularly like that private school because there's no alternative. That's you saying there is no government. If I ask you to come and pay me a visit to my hometown as you leave Lagos by midnight you will say no I'm not doing it. That's you saying you don't have a government. So you don't wait until the person has resigned. Some people have abdicated duty. So why I'm raising all of this is not to be saucy on it. It's to let you know that the functions are not being performed. As a result of that, let me give you. The people who are in charge of paying teachers pay university lecturers, for example, are supposed to be the governing council of the university. That's why you have a governing council. And the president is just a visitor, representative of the minister of education or whoever I do enough to go and represent him. So what has happened? What has happened is that they don't let the governing councils operate. So the money for tertiary education is housed in the ministry of education. That's why you see many people during campaign who gum themselves to the body of the president tend to be minister of petroleum, minister of works, minister of education. They put them according to how much money there is in those places. But if you go around the world, the Department of Education in America does not have education money. It only has research and all of that. And when we come in, what we are going to ensure is that there is no money slush fund. Tertiary education, suburb, all of those things, they are not supposed to be. They're supposed to be where they're supposed to be used. But isn't that what the government is trying to do with the IPPIS? No. What the government is trying to do with the IPPIS is one, trying to hold the money and constrain the remuneration of lecturers. There is the aspect where they say they are looking for ghost workers and all the rest of it, but that can be done at level of the governing council of the university itself. But what they are trying to do, or you have seen it, that part of the money which the government accuses its own account or general of stealing is part of the IPPIS money. So what they are doing is just money grab. When I was in the university, in those days in the 90s, I spent seven years to do a four-year course from diverse reason, most of which has to do with ASU going on strike. Why? Education means at that time, Professor Aminu said, there was no money. ASU was right, but the government had no money to pay ASU. So ASU went, I said, okay, if you don't have money, we can find you the money. So ASU went and created the tertiary education trust fund. That education trust fund, which is now a tertiary education trust fund, is not government money. It's money taken directly from corporate taxpayers to fund education especially. And it was supposed to have trustees that are independent of the government. People you respect in society, they will be trustees on their account to be audited, and that money will be given to the universities and there will be no strike for life. What did the government do? When the money accumulated to about 75 billion, and they saw that there was so much money there, more than the regular budget in the ministry, they went overnight and amended the education trust fund decree and said the money now should be with the executive secretary under the minister. Do you see government coming to some agreement quickly with NLC, rather with ASU and of course all these other bodies who are going on strike before the elections happen? I've advised them to do so, but I have no good record of them listening to advice. I've told them one, get rid of Boko Haram now. I've given them a formula to get rid of Boko Haram. They're not following it. I've asked them to stop stealing of crude oil. If they stop it, more money will flow into the country. I've asked them to stop this nonsense. Over the name of the ceremony, they give to NNPC. That's nonsense. Three, I've asked them to stop lying that subsidy is taking six trillion. Subsidy is not taking six trillion. No, subsidy is taking about 900 billion to 1.1 trillion. Government people are stealing the rest. Ah, they're stealing the rest. A vessel that is 2,000 miles outside Nigeria is being recorded as offloading at Atlas Cove. So our consumption metrics, they don't look at, I can put on every pump, every pump in Nigeria, a meter that will aggregate how much we consume. They know. You could see the debate between, or the storyline between customs head. Both of them are lying. Just that one is embarrassed by the deeper lie of the other. So I don't know the day, this government can solve most problems before we are elected. My prayer is that problems get solved before we are elected. But they are not in the habit of doing so. Why? Because the people gang up together to put the government in place, want to make as much money as possible in the remaining months. So they're not going to do anything. Because we're almost out of time. I want to ask you something about the politics that you are in. You obviously are running on the platform of the SDP. And many people would wonder how much structure the SDP has in terms of across the country. That's one. Secondly, do you stand a chance against the two major political parties, especially the Pitao beef phenomenon? What's your take on that? Number one, we have structures everywhere. I have the largest number of delegates nationwide of all the presidential aspirants. I have more delegates. But the votes of your delegates is not what you're looking for, is it? No, I'm telling you that these two big parties could not get delegates from every word. I got delegates from every word. I have 1,708 delegates. Vote for me and I have the highest number of votes. So that puts pay to the issue of structure. That's number one. We had a election in Echiti, my party. They were buying votes. We were not buying votes. So if you have structure, why are you buying votes? Three, these big parties as they are called, they can't solve big problems. They are even the big problems of Nigeria. So I'm happy that they are big, but the dinosaurs were going to defeat them. Do you stand a chance against the Pitao beef phenomenon? Lastly, Pitao beef is my good friend. I don't want to talk about him, but he is campaigning, virtual campaign. It wasn't me. It's the Center for Journalism. What do you mean by virtual campaign? The Center for Journalism came up with reports. Scientific reports that 80% of their so-called supporters are bots, robots online. They are software. But it's their style. I don't want to criticize their style. I don't want robots to be here on my behalf. But maybe in their campaign calculation, they need to create a momentum of some sort. I wish them luck. I like the guy. I think I'm going to be a better president than him, but I wish him luck. But I think that in reality, we have a full study campaign. I want to be an underdog, but on election day, I want people to see that Nigerians can actually vote for someone with a clear thought, with a clear communication, and with the character to prove it. All right, Prince Adio Ali, Adio by your presidential candidates of the SDP has been speaking with us. We want to say thank you so much for being here in the studio. We wish you all the best of luck. Thank you very much. All right, thanks for watching. Well, we have to wrap it up here. But before we go, we will leave you with the major highlights from this week. I am Mary Anna Cohen. See you on Monday and have a great weekend. Don't forget that this whole thing is driven by the frustration of Nigerian businessman, the anger of Nigerians to use, the failure to see the progress Nigeria should make, take any indicator. Nigeria is at the bottom, literally at the bottom of just any indicator you can think. Why? Compared to our peers that don't have the factual endowments that we have, that don't have the human capital we have, it's clearly a leadership challenge. And the center of the problem is that it's leadership that is focused on transaction, tradeoffs. You don't vote for me. I come and scram the road that is in your neighborhood. You do this, you do that. Everything becomes me, myself, and I. Where are the transforming leaders? Because they won't think of today. They think of the future. And what I see happening in Nigeria today, these transactional leaders are dividing Nigeria as much as they can. They are creating fake news. They are trying to dig up some stuff, all kinds of sentiments that prevent Nigeria from going anywhere. Just so they can have power. I think that until we can get people who think long-term and the greater good of all, we're going to find that we're going to be mad in these transactions that ultimately hold us back. Our current status of unemployment in Lagos is extremely high. 66% of Lagosians are living on the poverty line. 20 million people are living on the Lagos transportation. It's a crash. We have a lot of issues in this state. And we think that the method of the current leadership is snail speed and it's focusing on gratification of individuals rather than attacking the problem, rather than facing the problem. And during our time, we are trying to critically analyze not to accept these situations in Lagos, Ukraine, and Senka, and the duty to perpetuate it. Now, and Shia Dibala and Netibubu will show the criminals telling each of the aspirants that traverse the length and breadth of Nigeria, conversing for votes, for delegates, like Shia Dibala and Netibubu, and every and all three of the people here, they are saying, he was here. He couldn't move. And he was moving all over the country. He was traveling. Even younger humans didn't have the same stamina. And tell me, even after the parties, when he became the candidate, tell me another person that's been moving around, consulting with all categories of people, these first groups, voters, and all that. And apart from all of these, these are things open to the public. Let me not tell you what's not open to the public. Which some of us are privileged to have, mainly for delegates within. If you work with a Shia Dibala, that's when you will know the man's style of working in early sleeps. And please, go and do a content analysis for the others of Europe, all the people that are close proximity to him that have been working with him. Ask them, you either go to him, or go to him, or have bars under your eyes, develop your inputs. Because of the brilliant nature of his working style in early sleeps. He's always pouring out books, meetings, developing ideas, thinking, looking at issues for all angles to early sleeps. He is an unworthy person. He cannot keep up that schedule of work for the last 30 years that I've been in. I will say the same thing tomorrow. After I've been in the fluke, is the fluke. How do you mean? And I'm in the fluke, and I'm saying that you don't sense of responsibility. Apart from not having structure or anything, the women in Nigeria's closely scrutinize everybody's antecedents and records of performance. You will see that people are being very, very significant. He moved a number for eight years. He will do these levels for eight years. Put their achievements on the table, on the vision in man like he in college. Put everything on it. You will see that people are being very, very significant. People are being very special to the women as the largely ignorant section of the populace. One. Two. The anti-communist leaders treat the lack of a section of the youth that really don't have a sense of history. That did not know when people were in office or when people who was in office and they don't know about their records to do a comparative analysis. These are the issues. And this all, as we go along, is confusing. We have seen such before in the past. And then we've now come to the little gritty of the dynamics of electionary and pattern of voting across the nation. Go and study it. You will see that it does not want the youth and cry on social media. Social media doesn't win elections because that's not why you vote. You vote in the telling books.