 killings, kidnappings and ethnic divisions, what is the fate of the average Nigerian under the Bukhari administration? And the Nigerian media is urged to express its freedom responsibly. What does that mean? Well, this is plus politics and I am Mary Anacor. The Catholic Archbishop of Sakato diocese Matthew Kuka is in the news again and this time he has again spoken about the rising security situation in the country. The bishop commended or rather condemned the government's attitude to the death of fellow citizens murdered by bandits, kidnappers, armed men and other agents of deaths in Nigeria. And speaking about calls for secession, the national leader of the all-progressive Congress Bola Med Tinibu has said the country is yet to recover from the consequences of a civil war. Therefore, they cannot afford to experience another one. He urged those clamoring for secession to abandon the idea that the country is better together than being separated. Well joining us to have this conversation is Ofi HMB. He is a broadcast journalist. We have Kwanum Terence. He's a security expert and Gospel of Bailey is an economist. Thank you very much gentlemen for joining us. Great. All right. I'm going to start with Kwanum because you are a security person. Reverend Kuka has always been in the news, obviously criticizing governments, either its security or bad governance. He always is very outspoken. But in this instance, he's querying the response of governments in cases of these killings, banditry, the fact that many people are dying and government's response is somewhat relaxed. In fact, he says that the government seems to not be there for the people, especially with the fact that people are dying every day and the people themselves are bearing their dead without any word or any form of message from the government to give them sucker. Why do you think that Reverend Kuka is always harping on the government when it comes to the number of people that are dead? If the government seems to empathize with us, will that feel the void of losing a family member to these bandits or these abductors? And because Kuka is one of the few protective voices that we've had in the midst of this crisis, because we found ourselves in a situation where our country is involved in crisis and the leadership of this country has embarked on a playing game, rather than offering solutions issues that are bothering us. And it's where you get such attractive calls from people like Kuka that some citizens have a little bit more hope for this country that some great patrice might end up coming together to fight this cause for Nigeria, because our leadership has completely failed us. They have not given us direction on how we're going to end this crisis in the near future. And it's quite worrisome. So I commend people like Kuka when they come out to be able to provoke government from their slumber, to be able to shut up and address the very serious strategic challenges that we've had that have involved the entire country, that people are even seeking participation away from this addressing unity cause there seems to be more hope when there's no leadership in that crisis. Well, he also seems to talk about the fact that we're afraid that there's a fear that Nigeria might lose its path of glory. I'd like to quote him. He said that there's a collective fear for Nigeria and that Nigeria might just lose its way. Now you're a security person and the feelers that you're getting every day, I'm sure that you get all kinds of information. As we speak, yesterday another person was killed in Cross River State and abandoned on the wayside, stabbed in the back of his head. And a week before now or two weeks before then, seven persons were beheaded in a state where there's always relative peace. And this is detailed for what's happening all across the country. There's always one report or the other of either banditry or threats by Boko Haram. The feelers that you're getting, is there fear in the hearts of the average Nigerian as to how bad the situation can be? And what should the government be doing instead of what they're doing right now? Well, I don't like to, everybody's on the numbers that we're losing every day because it is today alone. Reports that we've got across the country before five years. We've had groups about a hundred already. So I don't like bringing all those to us again because it's quite the trouble. And we have to save it on and on and on again for what the government is supposed to do. And in my opinion, I say that we need to immediately call for a council of citizens where the president needs to devolve his power of commander in chief, his governor, so that I think the security commands that are within the state should commanded by governor. So that if there's some emergency call that the governor would direct a security team within the state to go there, he won't need to speak directly from a brother again. And we might have a more proactive measure. We had the situation yesterday that was very terrible that there was an attack less than a kilometer from where the military had become in general state. But they were unable to go and confront the aggressors because they had not gotten a guarantee from above to go and engage the people. So we have such situations across the country in the south, south-west and in the north and when we don't have the commander closer to the people that are working in the state, in the control district, the council of state has the power to be able to devolve such powers to the state. And then the police are to reach a more robust community policy where they will be able to gather inside the door at the moment, even if the use of personnel is difficult because they don't have enough personnel. But if there's a robust community policy where in terms of becoming right from the neighborhood, I think it will help them better in being more proactive to either form the situation before after or be there on time to be able to save from reasonable families that would have lost to certain communities. So I think there's a lot the government needs to do, the government needs to pick up, the government needs to be in the streets, involve citizens of new countries with issues of privilege so that inters will be easier for them to be able to handle these issues. And then the issue of technology needs to come in because all these kidnapped and headmen of bandits, they have their cells within the forest and the bushes of this country. With the use of technology, you can be able to pick them wherever they can and we can be able to deport them. We don't understand what the government is doing that. They are solutions for them to make their hands on and they are refusing to accept such solutions and end to this crisis. So it's quite a war situation and with the calls of people, I think it gives a little hope that there's a level of concern for certain circumstances. All right, let me let me go to Offi. Offi, you're a journalist and of course, even if you're not here in Nigeria, you obviously are following the stories, you comment on these things and I guess that a lot of people put you on the hot seat to ask questions as to what's happening in your country. Now from what Mr. Terrence is telling us, it seems like the bureaucracy in the military and the system in general is also not allowing for us to be able to win this war against insecurity. But I want to ask you, is it right for us to say at this point, Offi, that the government does not really understand the pain of the people, what we're experiencing? Is it that their hands are tied or are they bereft of ideas? Because Terrence is saying that there are so many ideas that they can literally place their hands on. Or is it that the government is overwhelmed and they do not know what to do? I think it's a little bit of both. On one front, there's a lot about our security apparatus, just as Mr. Terrence has pointed out, that is simply our cake. It just simply cannot work. Even with the best of politicians, even with the best of leaders, with the most adept persons in governance, it just cannot work. There's no need to have a centralized command for both the military and for policing. There's no need that we should not have state policing, not the informal apparatus that we have working right now. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about state policing at state and local levels. We simply do not have that. I remember in 2017, when I was still in Nigeria, this present administration had asked Baba Gana Kingibe to lead a committee to actually go ahead and look at the security and intelligence apparatus of the nation. The APC-led committee came up with its findings and said that the security and intelligence apparatus of this nation had to be overhauled from ground up. Still today, that white paper, of course, is sitting gathering dust and nothing's actually been done about it. So just right from ground zero, there's really nothing that can happen. For one, we do not have an identity management system. Of course with Pantami and with the whole circles that's been going around the national identity number and registration, that's actually a force that needs to be addressed. Without that, you need to have a database. You need to have CCTV coverage. You need to have so many things that would run on the back of that to make sure that you're actually policing and providing security. But we do have a database of it. I mean, we literally do bio-data for everything. I mean, we do it back to back. It's not centralized. It's not centralized. It's not centralized. You have it for the bank. Where are they stored? What are they taking this bio-data and this information for if they cannot be used at times like this? That's the definite question that we need to be asking. The immigration services have our passports and our bio-data. The Federal Road Safety Commission has our bio-data for our driver's licenses. Banks have theirs because of what we did with back registering with banks. So it's not centralized. There's no cohesion. It's not seamless. They're held in pockets and silos. They need to be centralized and we're not seeing that commitment from this administration or any before. However, you now come to the realm of the fact that we have leaders who are absolutely not interested in providing leadership and governance that is stipulated in our Constitution. The welfare and security of citizens is the primary job of any person that has signed on the dotted line to get into governance. Now, the problem with Nigeria is that we have politicians who do not want to stop being politicians and go into governance. Of course, politics is the necessary vehicle that takes citizens into governance. But once in governance, politics has to stop and the business, the grind of governance, must commence. But that is what we have seen, that we just do not have people have that commitment to go ahead and do this. And so we're seeing a situation where we thought that it was bad in 2015 or back in 2010. And right now, we're seeing every single region, not just the South-South with militancy, not just the Northeast with insurgency. We're seeing it spread all the way from Sokoto to Sapele from Portiscombe down to all parts of the country. So we have come to the point where we have to ask ourselves, as a nation, where do we want to go to? And can the people at the helm of affairs take us to this place? And I think that's one of the biggest issues we need to ask, whether we know where we want to go to and whether the people can take us there. Because apparently, this administration is really making all others that we thought were bad prior look like they deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Interesting. One last question before we talk about the economics of this all and how this is affecting us. But this question is for you again, Offi. You just mentioned if we really know where we're going to and if our leaders are capable. And what would point to a President Bahari as a person who's run for this office of the President for four times? He didn't do it once and go to rest. He did it four times, back to back. One would have said that this is pointing to a person who is really armed with the ideas to take or steer Niger in the right direction. But it seems to not be the same, you know, six years down the line. And people are wondering, why was he so interested in running for this office if this is where we found ourselves today? So is it just about wanting to run for this offices or maybe sometimes we need to probe a bit more than just taking monies and taking wrappers? Very, very correct. We need to probe more. I think the biggest problem we have as the Nigerian society is that our leadership paradigm is not about service, but about self. We have people who run for office not because they want to provide answers to the teaming questions that Nigerians face, but they want access to resources, they want access to power. And actually, just like I said, it's a leadership paradigm. And you can look at it all across any place where you have leadership. Whether you look at secondary schools, why did you want to become a senior student in secondary school? Was this so that you could help younger students with tutorials, mathematics or any of the top subjects? No. You wanted to avoid punishment or be the punisher. Why do people want to be PTA chairman, estate association chairman and presidents? Why do people want to be entrepreneurs and CEOs? Is it because they want to provide world-class solutions like Twitter, Facebook or Uber? No, it's because they won't have access to money. They don't want to work for somebody. So we have to come to the point where we ask ourselves, look ourselves. Like the philosopher said that we have encountered the enemy and they are us. The Nigerian society has to come to the point where we begin to ask ourselves whether our leadership paradigm is enough to take us into the place where we should be. Like you pointed out, lots of people ask me here in the United States about our country. Nigeria is the most populous black nation. One in eight black people on God's green earth is a Nigerian. One in five Africans is a Nigerian. Just like Nelson Mandela said that when Nigeria gets it right, then the rest of the black nation will get it right. We need to come to this point where we ask ourselves beyond the rhetoric, beyond complaining about the Buharis and the Jonathan's, the Wikis and the El Rufans. We need to come to the point where we ask ourselves whether we are ready to vote for people that will not give us rappers. Just like you said, Maria, who will not give us gala, who will not give us drinks in line, who will not promise us contracts or just come up with empty promises because the standards are so low. When you look at the average, the typical campaign slogan, it really should not be things that were discussed in the 21st century. We need to come to the point where the next time somebody wants to run for office, we actually go through their file. We actually go through their track record and see whether they have the character and the competence. Because whether the two legs that leadership stands on, character and competence, whether they have that and whether they can take us into the glorious picture that Nigerians deserve. Let me come to you, Gospel. Let's talk about the economic impacts that all of this, the killings, the kidnappings, the banditry and just the free for all that we're experiencing right now in the country. Couple with the fact that look, I mean, there are a lot of people who have left the country, a lot of people have decided that you know what, we need to go in search of greener pastures, there's mass migration, doctors are where on strike, nurses are leaving. I mean, a couple of days ago the NLC was, in fact on Mayday, they were protesting in some states. How has all of these things affected the state of the economy? It's not like the economy was really great previously, but all of this must have an impact of sorts and Nigerians will be suffering for it. So run us through that. All right, thank you once again for having me. It's really a very bad situation and it's as though we are in a state of emergency. We can also see all of these events reflect on the economic indicators, the GDP, the inflation and the likes. The worsening state of the Nigerian economy has eaten so deep that it has become structural. And if you take that to a step higher, it has also become cultural. All right, then just trying to single out individual elements. So these elements have come together to further worsen or enable the current situation that we're in right now. So yes, in terms of the implication on the economy, it's very severe. And we can also see that inflation has gone high, food inflation has gone high. And it's quite an irony that the same food that should be readily made available at the basic necessity, all right, at the highest pressure point of cost impacts on the economy. And these are largely structural issues that just policy issues. All right, so even on the policy fronts, we are failing woefully with the outright ban of this outright ban of that. And it looks as though the authorities are trying to manipulate the economic system. And also a part of it also shows that the CBN is trying to take more than it can handle technically and also more than it is designed or built to handle as an institution. And that's also because there's a lack of coordination, all right, between the fiscal and monetary institutions. We also see a situation where there's a gross state of fiscal indiscipline. And that has nothing to do with what administration. It's been a consistent drive in the Nigerian economy all through from independence till date. All right, so there's been a long track journey, sorry, long journey of fiscal indiscipline. And that has put the sector back in the position where it feels it needs to do more. And as a result, there will be two sectors that the apex institutions do not have any primary interest in except for development finance and the rest. So the issues are pretty much complex. And going forward into the mid to long term is still going to get more uncertain and dicey. And it's really high time that we do something about this both structurally, culturally and institutionally for things to change. We also see, like I said earlier on, that there's a lot of brain drain. And so people are beginning to shift ground. People are even saying anywhere else but Nigeria. But there are still people who have hope and say, you know what, there's no place like home. So we're just going to slug it out here. And those people invest and start small businesses on top of new ships. And some of these people have ended up clashing in those businesses because of taxation issues. When you say double taxation, people say, oh, it doesn't exist. But there are people, take, for example, a place I used to work in river states, you would have the local government come for its own taxes. A sudden other group of persons will come for their taxes. The state will come. I mean, it's an endless list of people. There's so much frustration for the average person who's trying to make ends meet in Nigeria coupled with the insecurity. And don't forget that if there's any little protest, looting takes place, how do you survive in this kind of atmosphere? So the first thing, I mean, like people would always say that hope without strategy is a waste of time to a very large extent. I don't think, yes, hope is necessary to ignite optimism, but without a system-wide strategy and capacity to execute the later, to be a gross waste of time technically. If you look at all sectors now, you know, you usually have the same experience in every sector. So we have to move beyond hope. We have to move beyond just policies. And like you mentioned, the idea of multiple taxation and all that, that speaks to the institutional challenges I mentioned earlier on. When you talk about budgets and all these things, you realize that it's not just financing. It's also the capacity to deploy financing correctly, all right, to enable all factors of production and economic agent scale at a critical mass, which is where we miss it. So SMEs do not necessarily reduce poverty levels. SMEs do not necessarily reduce unemployment levels. It takes a cluster of thriving, emphasis on the one thriving SMEs, to impact unemployment, or to impact on poverty, and also to enable the country generally move towards shared prosperity and all that. Now, because we do not have all of these enablers moving at the level where they can enable the critical mass, we will continually be on a decline as an economy. So it's really, really bad situation, all right. The institutional bottlenecks, there is the public expenditure conversation. The conversation will just keep going and going and going and going. So aside from every other thing else, all right, political will is important, but political capacity has become much more important than ever before. And I believe just to understand that all the elements and factors of production in a quote and unquote, developing a economy like ours, all right, are currently moving at a complex state, meaning that for instance, for SMEs to access finance, there are so many actors that are coming to play. The banks are there, the monetary institutions are there. SME readiness for finance itself is also there, all right. And the enabling business environment is also a factor. So an SME may have all the finance that they need, but the public lack the understanding of how to access their markets, all right. SMEs, the public lack the understanding around their business environment and all these things. So we are dealing with a system where the issues and the challenges are existing in different pockets. So until we engage the regal to understand and bring them together from an instant point of view, we may not reach inclusion early. Well, it still begs my question. And guys, I want to thank you because we're out of time. It still begs the question, what is the fate of the average Nigerian under this administration, especially for one that rose to power on the wings of giving us on employment, fighting corruption and making sure that this country flourishes. But I don't think we've gotten any of that from all of the statements that you all have given. It looks like we're still going to have to hope up on hope. But thank you very much, Ofir Jambi, Karnam Terence and Gospolo Bailey. Thank you gentlemen for being part of the conversation. Well, we'll take a short break. And when we return, President Bahari has a message to the media on how to express the best freedom. Stay tuned. We'll have the best. Stay with us.