 Welcome back in now to our interview segment. In December last year, President Mohamed Bouharis said the government is edging forward in promoting sustainable development by creating a digital application, IMAC, that enables citizens to monitor and evaluate capital projects in real time. IMAC is an application that provides unimpeded access to information on stakeholders, including contract terms and contractors. The President said the innovation would have to restore the practice of abandoning project as all stakeholders, such as the communities, civil society organizations, contractors, ministries, departments and agencies that these MDAs and citizens would continually interact one-on-one on the platform. I have joined me right now project manager of IMAC, Iyoke, to look at citizens engagement in budgeting, tracking. Many thanks for joining me on set. Yes, it's good to be here, Justin. All right, so it's been like five months, IMAC application was launched sometime in December 2022 by President Mohamed Bouharis. Can you tell us more about the application and the stakeholders that are involved? Okay, so IMAC enables every citizen to be able to discover government projects around them, give feedback on these projects, and be able to engage with the industry and the contractors implementing the project. And the IMAC system has four major stakeholders, the governing body, which is the federal governments and these agencies that own the projects. IMAC also has the contractors, that's a dashboard for the contractors for implementing the project to be able to give project updates. And IMAC has a platform for citizens and CSOs to be able to review government projects, let the government know the progress of these projects. So yeah, the citizens and CSOs are able to like service underserved communities. So those are the main stakeholders on IMAC. Justin mentioned something, I just want you to react to that. The President said that IMAC is an innovation that would help to forestall the practice of abandoning project as all stakeholders would be directly interacting on one platform. So far, how has that been in terms of the interactions on that particular platform? Yes, so far it's been fairly good. One is that I would like to applaud the governments, which is the Ministry of Finance, the National Planning, they have been very, very critical to making this a success. They have been able to upload a lot of project information in terms of like images, project status and pictures. And citizens on the other hand have been getting engaged or reaching out on how they can get engaged. So I would say it's fairly good. That's the reaction and the engagement on IMAC, but definitely it could be better. Are the feedbacks that you have gotten so far from the interactions that have or maybe the traffic that you have seen on that particular platform? Yes, so the feedback shows us the need for citizens to get involved because a lot of times people do not understand government processes or why projects take too long, why projects have an abandonment in the first place. So you get people asking questions like, OK, we have a 160 billion dollar road. Why is only 1 billion or 500 million, sorry, 16 billion dollar road? Why is only 300 million appropriated in this year? So we get people asking questions, trying to understand who is in charge of this project, who is a constancy project, who is my House of Reps member. So yes, we're getting people asking the right questions and we're also getting the ministries in charge being able to reply to those questions. Fine, it's been like I said, it's been five months since the presidential launch until now. Aside from the feedback that you have gotten and the people actually showing interest in the government project, would you really say in any way or how has it been able to reduce the issue of abandonment of projects that we have had, the president actually mentioned during the launch? Yes, so it's getting citizens more involved and letting citizens have ownership. So before you hear, citizens mostly get involved when it's time for like politics or election cycles, which happens once in four years. But now people are able to get involved on a day-to-day basis. So I see a road in front of me that's in front of my street and I'm able to check that, just go over what are the projects around me. And then I see this road is being done by this ministry. It's meant to start this date and this date. I, because I'm a very, very major stakeholder, I want to see the road in front of me. So I get involved and I'm able to ask questions. I follow up. Now I'm in the knowledge of it. But like before, a lot of people didn't know. They might say, oh, is government doing it? They might even make assumptions, is it the state government or is the local government? But now we're able to give them the information, they know who the contractor is and they're able to get involved and we haven't seen massive fruits of labor yet because it's still a short period of time. But we believe that over time, over a longer period of time, we're able to see because of this involvement by citizens, there will be more accountability in the system. OK, now so what is next for IMAQ after these five months? What's the next line of action or process for you guys soon? Yes, so right now we are trying to push for citizens engagement. We have ways that we're trying to come up to incentivize citizens because a lot of times people don't have so much faith in the system. So we're trying to find incentives, educating people, trying to find incentives for them to review projects and give their feedback. I'm also working with the ministries who have been quite collaborative in being able to respond to these citizens and provide relevant data. So from now to let's say the next six months, what we're going to be doing, we have a bounty program where we get to give people points or some small cash to be able to review projects or give project data. So we think that will form some form of incentive for people to get involved. But other than that, we are also working hand to hand with ministries and also CSOs to be able to review projects and ministries to be able to update project data and reply to citizen queries. So for the next six months or till the end of the year, I'll say a lot of focus is citizens engagement. Some other focus would be also partnering with the states because right now we're partnering with the federal government. But a lot of projects that affect the people are state government projects. So we're also working to get state government on board on IMAG to advertise their projects and have better and better evaluation insights. All right, Osir, as we let you go now, I still need to understand why Nigerians have not really been so so so well involved when it comes to monitoring and of course tracking the government project and government the project that on government's budget. Why is it important that we get involved? I know sometime last week or so you were at a workshop specifically with the young people and the whole essence was to carry young people along. But over time we have found that that Nigerians are not really so involved directly when it comes to monitoring of a project in the national budget. Yes, so you're asking why and citizens involved just to get that question correct. Yes, I mean why citizens should be involved and why have they not been involved over time? Yes, so a big reason why we believe citizens haven't been involved is one, maybe lack of trust. Maybe over time, citizens have had a certain view of the government and whatever like they don't even want to get involved. But over time, since 2020, we found people getting more involved in politics, voting and governance. And it's a good trend, especially like the turnout in the last election and the youths movement. So we believe that there's an up and trend of people getting more involved. And it's very critical because we need to take ownership. This is our taxes. Government money belongs to the people. So if there's a road being in front of you, you need to be able to have that ownership to know, OK, who is doing this road and when is it being completed? Because like I said earlier, politics is about eight months, once in four years. But governance happens every day. After you elect people or your people or your person doesn't win, how can you make sure that the next person is doing the things that he should or she should? All right, thank you so much. Go ahead, I thought you were done. Go ahead, just conclude with your thoughts. Yes, so the main reason why citizens should get involved is because governance happens every day. We can't just stay and focus our energy on politics. We have to keep the people that we elected accountable. All right, thank you so much. We have been speaking with them or say, OK, we'll be looking at budget tracking in Nigeria and of course the need for citizens involvement and participation. And of course, we have been evaluating AIMAC since the past five months. It was launched by President Mohammad Bahari. We do appreciate your time or say. Thank you very much, Justin. All right, away from budget tracking, we'll move on next now to aviation matters. Now, the federal government has explained why it is a proven contract worth billions of nair with less than 20 days to a change path. Minister of Transportation, Ma'azo Sambos, said the current administration would continue to perform its duties until May the 28th as constitutionally required. Sambos spoke with state house correspondent after the weekly federal executive council meeting on Wednesday. The council approved 449.9 million there for the engagement of consultants for the development of a master plan for 17 airports. Proved 449.9 million for the engagement of consultants for the development of airport master plan for 17 airports in Nigeria. Approval was also given for the award for the contract for the remediation of newly identified hydrocarbon impacted sites along the shoreline of Ogoni land. And this is for about 107 billion nair. It's a big one indeed. These things, we do not control the process, but when it's completed and we're still in office, we are duty bound to bring these memos to council for council to approve. Government is a continuum. There are still a lot of memos. I can assure you a lot of contract that will not see the light of day in the next one week. We have continued since 2015 to implement projects and we are confident that the incoming administration will do the same. All right, as we go on the show, are you having challenges getting your international passport as a result of what they tell you at the office, mainly scarcity of booklet? Well, here is some explanation for you. The Nigerian immigration service and the firm contracted by the federal government for the production of Nigerian passport, Iris Smart Technologies Limited, have blamed the central bank of Nigeria's foreign exchange policy for the scarcity of booklet. They made the allegation when they both appeared before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating the proposed domestication and processing of Nigerian international passport. The firm also accused the Nigerian security printing and minting company PLC of sabotaging its efforts after failing to secure the contract for the production of the passport. I'll leave you with details of that report. I am Justin at Cadone Business Insight. Returned again tomorrow. Bye for now. Since 2015, thousands of Nigerians in Darspray and at home have applied, paid and been captured, but are yet to issue their international passport booklet. The House is concerned about the ugly development of why Nigeria does not produce its own passport booklet despite owning a minting and printing company. The firm contracted for the production of the passport to the committee that vowed to the engagement by the government. The country had a shabby passport administration. The government discarded those booklets because they were substandard and didn't meet IKOW standards and then decided to have an international tender for the production and embedding of chips. The iris bid was found to be technically competent and price competitive. So out of that international bid, the award was given to iris to produce the passports. The other committee also agree with the comptroller general of the Nigerian immigration service, Idris Jere, at its investigative hearing. Idris declares that NIS does not have access to the forex it generated while attributing the shortage of booklets to its unavailability by the CBN to aid production outside the country. When the comptroller was signed, there was a caveat that ISEA should set up a factory in Nigeria to produce booklets. I have the command to submit to this committee. Have they now produced? To production of Nigerian passport booklets, I heavily depend on foreign exchange. Out of the seven components that make up passport booklets, I solve in foreign markets where booklet assemblies and production are done in Malaysia. The other committee is expected to meet with the CBN on issues raised as more Nigerians continue to apply for their passports, comfortable in the knowledge that they may not get it any time.