 Thank you for staying with us. You're still watching the breakfast on plus TV, Africa Well, it's time to see the national stories Well, it's global stories making headlines in our national dailies and joining me to review the papers is on the phone is G. Dave Jensen is a chief lecturer Nigerian Institute of Generalism is joining us from League of States. Good morning, Mr. G. Dave Jensen. Thank you for joining us Good morning to you always a pleasure Alright, so we're going to go into the papers and we'll be starting with the punch this morning And the first one which is a major headline here serves school attacks Bandits demand one billion Nara for 287 people's issue March 27 Deadline now I'm sure you saw in the news that the president that's talking about ransom payments saying There should be no ransom payments for these people who have been abducted, but now Obviously we're seeing the band is being upset and giving issue in a deadline for March 27 and asking for whooping One billion at Nara. What do you think of this whole thing? First? Let me just read the writers here It says kidnappers called on Tuesday gave us 20 days to raise ransom says community leader Hostages held in difficult location Used as human shield to prove to prevent bombardment and that's been said by the DHQ So I want to get your take on all of this what's happening The way we're seeing the rise in this whole kidnapping in fact It's almost like a business at the moment and then with the president coming and saying there is should be no ransom payment. I want to get your comments on this Of course and we are demanding all three men by us. Then we are no longer a kid, we are a terrorist. They are rising in the community, they are rising in the nation, and they are rising in the people. So as far as I'm concerned, there should be a better approach of being a religious particular for them. How do you think for them to grab plural with the seven people, through this route, and how did they move them? What were the gains of government in terms of security of those specific areas? What were they doing? What was the intelligence community of those particular? What were they doing? And why do they have to respond to bombardment to deal with this particular issue? I'm not looking to develop a better intelligence on how to combat this particular issue. How is special force to deal with this particular issue? We still need to deal with this recurrent problem. Because if we collect in 100,000, we move from 100,000 to millions in time, from millions to hundreds of millions, and we are not able to go through them with their BVM number, with their main number, and even with the currency, we can't even match the currency that they are giving to them. So it's just about quality that we should work on the continuous things. And they are holding sweet, and they take it in case they have not been able to do anything concerning that. So in most cases, when government says, oh, Puneet, I want to negotiate with them, they need the family to research, to set up, because we have your work, or your children being picked up, and then your people are getting, they are communicating with you to the back end. You try to look for means to solve the particular problem. The particular case of OYU on your own, is of the clearance of the people that are looking back. We look for one way or the other to rescue your work. In government, it's the work that they are not doing and so I cannot show you that the clearance of the kidnapped work, if you have been searching for people. So I mean, for me, I'm a little bit torn because some people came out to say that the president's statement was quite insensitive, especially at this time, because like you said, if your ward is there, you would definitely want to pay the ransom. But we've seen the rise of this over time. Does it, my worry is paying off this ransom, doesn't it make them give them more strength, like strengthening them in a way because they know that they would always get the money, right? So if I pay this one billion Naira, which is a huge sum of money, maybe another terrorist group will come as well and kidnap other people and ask for two billion. And so we're seeing this. So in as much as we know that, maybe the statement from the president, there should be a more subtle way to talk about it or address the issue. Don't we think that paying ransom, fine. I mean, I don't hope to be in that situation because your loved one is there and you just want to get them out regardless of the amount of money. But what way can we use to curtail this? And then another question is, what is the, what are the security agencies doing? Because you can't tell me that you have no intelligence. The writer here talks about how the hostages are held in difficult locations. I wonder what that means. What it means to be held in a difficult location. Can't you find them? What, where is the intelligence like that we expect you to have to be able to nab these people and just prosecute them and make sure that this menace that is rising stops. So those are my questions to you now. Well, at first, the president cannot perform his commands. To say that they are negotiating with the government. That's one. So, if you see the responsibility of this because we're business, to allow that where these people are held in difficult areas, where they are trained, they are equipped, and they are trained to do with this support region. Now, it is at that point in the history of America that we are trained, we are trained. We are special forces in the military that are meant to deal with this particular issue. Now, this became a recurring feature more than 10 years ago. Now, in the military or the security agency or the intelligence agencies are not developed a special team to deal with kidnapping. It is much less to be desired. And the conduct of us is to serve them against the need for them to put in a special force, to deal with this particular issue. That's a good answer. As far as this region is concerned, as with the field we have had, it has to do with intelligence. Intelligence is a good thing. But are you telling me that before the super stock, the intelligence community was not able to back and accept the communication standards of me, these people are using. But that was surprising to all Nigerians. And, for example, you can use your phone in Nigeria if you don't have a name. We want to use God knows what to ensure that our phone, our name was linked to that phone. And all of that. So, our data being helpful in identifying criminal elements in this society. When the communities with these people ask you that they use their criminal elements, what have you done to gather intelligence from this community, from the local to know what is really happening, to know the manner of the operation. This is the ultimate thing that I know that when we begin to explain, we think that most of the people that are dealing with this possibility are operating in the same sense and not the assistance. Anyways, I mean, it's quite sad that this is something that is, you know, it's very sensitive. It's a very sensitive topic to talk about. And you just expect the government to be able to offer you security. Security is a living. So it's sad that we're in this and we're seeing this happen time and time again. It's almost like every other market day, you hear of people getting kidnapped and abducted and it's really, really heartbreaking. We're hoping that these people will be rescued safely and returned back to their families. And I don't know what the government is doing about this, but we just hope that, you know, they're pulling everything in their arsenal to ensure the safety of these kids that have been abducted. Anyways, I want to move over to another headline, which is at the bottom and it says politics over. It's time for governance. Tinibu tells governors at Iftar. When I saw this, I was a bit, okay, so what has been happening since or what's happening? Is it politics? Because you expect that, you know, these politicians, they come out, they tell you, we want you to vote for us, they campaign, do everything and make so many lots of promises, right? And then when they get there, they're still playing politics. And right now, the president is saying, it's time for governance. I want to get your comment on this statement being made by President Tinibu. The other should be the stand-up process. Exactly. After election. Because we don't need political people. Everything should be about the government. But as far as the politics to us are concerned, every statement of the next generation, the politicians think of the next election. And the group of people we have in government are politicians, they are next to me. And that's why you see someone out there in government who bother to cut out the country and who still be interested in contrasting the election. I think he wants to be the president or governor-general or senator-general of the entire world. Because I now imagine that somebody will be spending quarter of a century public in public office cells. That guy is leader of the politicians. Keeps going on and on and on. Those that are wrong, the less work of the country, are interested in who becomes their successor. You see what leader has been addressed to? You saw what leader, those that are wrong, the first time, will be interested in who will be their successor. You saw what leader almost did last year. I mean, if you believe me, I think you just accept. You saw what happened in Congress Day. Even in Congress Day, some of you are like, you don't know who is the governor. What do I have to do, you know? Who has elected, good or good by the people, who are the legitimate leaders of the former governor. I have been there. So, at first, the president has claimed that what everybody is concerned about is about their political survival. And when you have it through the electoral system, an electoral system that is highly flawed, and an initial system that is customary, there will be this desperation that will give you politically and not governor. Because you don't need governors to win elections. You need politicians to win the elections. So, it's as simple as that. When the power does not come from the votes of the people, what you do is that your sovereignty, the balanced system, and then you can only derive your sovereignty there from the judicial system, or through both of course, an abracadabra electoral system. So, you're not interested in governors, you're interested in politics. And so that's why we have to take it. And it's a solid state, because at the end of the day, it is the populist that suffer. It is the people that suffer. It is the governors that suffer. He didn't give himself for the use of democracy. Look at the government that happened in National Assembly in the course of this week. Yeah. We need our governor, or we have our politics. True. When you allocate resources, you have to align the electoral system, and then the allocation of resources. More and more electoral district. It's more than what you have allocated to other one and each electoral district. Is that governor? Is that equity? Because it doesn't represent the general value of unity and strength. Unity is diversity. So we represent freedom. Well. So that. Yeah, for me, I mean, I would just expect that the moment you're being sworn into office. That's it. That's where governance starts. It's okay to do all of your politics when you're campaigning and you're asking people to vote for you. But the moment you take that oath of office, that's where governance starts. And we can't be, in fact, it's really funny when I hear this because it's almost a year. Like the people who have been elected, they're almost a year in office. And we can't be talking about governance now. I would have expected that since the 29th of May. But anyways, I'm gonna move over to another headline which says, pH refinery. That's protocol refinery gets 450,000 barrels of crude resumes operations in April. So that's on the punch, but it's also on the nation and the nation takes it as carry. Protocol refinery resumed production in two weeks. So we've had all of these promises. We've even heard danglety refinery has received crude. Operations are going to start soon. And well, here now, protocol refinery we're just hoping to see what that would be. But I want to take your comments on this one as well. Well, it's the movie. We are just seeing the trailer. That's the way that the movie is going to be. It's giving us to the headline. And because we've seen the trailers of danglety refinery, we've had a lot of, a lot called refinery before. So we have given us another trailer. So let me continue. What have we moving with the disability? We need to change the slimmer that we are. And we see the production. We take whatever we can as the piece of talk. Because we've had so many promises. So many promises. We've been giving so many hope. That we can improve in hopelessness. So I want to wait for that to be fixed. All right. So another headline on the nation talks about the federal government insists that discourse must recapitalize for efficiency. A few weeks ago, the minister of power, you know, had come out to say subsidy, electricity subsidy is not sustainable. Well, now they are being charged to recapitalize for efficiency. What do you think about this one? Well, I mean, if I look at the past, that we have not had the proper rehabilitation of last year. We are free vanishing. We have the gen course, which are the generating, which are the base of the degenerate. And then we have the discourses at the top of the value to which are the ones with the degenerate electricity, which are coming at the rest of them. And then in the region of the value chain, in the transmission, at the fiscal. So the gen course and the fiscal are to be consumed by the government. What does the government have made for transmission? All of the challenges we have had in the generation, even to what we are generating, is not enough. But when we generate and use the transmission line, that we have installed in 1948, that we have not made investment by the transmission companies to transmit what they have generated. If power they have generated, we have done better. So what we have given to the fiscal is not more than enough. So what government needs to do is to invest in the gen course and the fiscal. Let's have complete, over a complete revolution. And I'm gonna show you what happened in the telco sector, what happened. Initially the prices may go up, but because you have many players, they are completely- No crash. And the ones who said they have put up, so the prices will come down. That's like we have in the telco sector. You will recall how much this thing was sold in 2001. All right. So if you tell someone that it's 21-year-olds, or 22-year-olds, or 22-year-olds, that you see one group of other 100,000, they will believe it. That it happened in 2001. That we need thousands of millers to buy a thing that is just as free as anything. So that's what we need to do. Now why the minister will come, minister will go, you recall when Partula was governor of Lagos, he said any government that cannot provide power for six months, they have no idea. We use one term, we use in Lagos, he called them battalion. But for four years, he was not able to do anything. He was a super battalion. He had to leave power industry. I concentrated on how things are works. So there's a magic point that anybody can bring to stop the problem. Okay. We can go back on. Yeah. This government took off. It's hard to get close and it is good. All right, so I want to take another one, which would just kind of wrap it up because we're a little bit out of time. So this is the major headline on the nation and it says federal government eases access to student loan in new proposal. And it's also on the Guardian as well. So I want to, okay, on the Guardian, it says federal government seeks new student loan act to jail term for offenders. You know, when this came as of last year, the eligibility, the criteria was to ensure that you're not earning your family's income is about 500,000. You have two guarantors who are in level 12 of the national, of the civil service and you need someone who is in like a justice of peace to be able to sign for you as well. So the criteria was a bit steep and there wasn't easy access or people had said there wouldn't be easy access for that. But now we're seeing them drop some of these things. I want to get your comment on this new student loan act. When you see act, don't put it in place. And the requirement, when you say requirement, you make your statement if you call. You have not provided that money for the bureaucracy to benefit from it. But why would you want to get anything done? Everything that you have to do, everything that you have to do, everything that you have to do, everything that you have to do, you look for justice and the rest of it. Does it mean that only a few people with well-being intentions are in government? You are not a person with well-being intentions. You are clear with your pleas of worship. You are traditional ruler. People of good culture in the society, apart from those working in the civil service, who are actually both on coast, the most corrupt set of people, are the ones that will guarantee those that will take the loan. That we all know that that act will not be the life of me. Because the conditions were just too stupid for anybody to meet up with. And because the government was impressed by the calling, the political point, other than getting the policy, just achieving the policy, the policy code, there was a government to be announced and the country was coming up with that act and to do the act, to go and look at the act all over again. As far as I'm concerned, government should make it easier for people to assess loans. To assess this loan, whatever means that this government should not dispute them unless the weather counts above it. And this loan should be put up for... The way it is going, United States of America, I'm not sure they have all these kinds of student requirements that you must get somebody that works in Washington or work with further governments in the United States of America to sign one document or the other for you. What's the social security number? What is our national education number? It's a number for you to guarantee that you know. All right. Well, we hope that, you know, I mean, people can easily assess this loan. So one of the questions I had asked earlier on was, can they pay for it in two years because you have to be able to pay for it two years after your youth service call. So we just... Obama did not pay you a loan. Anyways, we said, you just, Jensen, well, it's a bit of a time we have to go. Let's go. Okay, so before I let you go, right? I mean, I'm just going to say this worthy of note. There is another paper, The Business NG. You don't have to make any comments, but just in case for people who want to read it. So the major headline on this one says, rising food prices stop poor Nigerians from suffering IMF to the federal government. And then there's a smaller headline at the top that says food security, FG signs 995 million euros deal to create a Greek mechanization hubs in 774 local government areas. Well, we hope that, you know, this would just help with the food prices, the food supply. Where is the land? Where is the land for agriculture and the land for dialogue government? Anyways, we cannot dive into this conversation now. We take the local government. Where is the land for agriculture and the land for dialogue government? My friends, we thank you. Have a wonderful weekend. All right, thank you so much. We really appreciate you coming. It's always a pleasure having you on our program. Thank you so much. Okay, we've been speaking with G.D. Johnson as a chief lecturer at Nigerian Institutes of Journalism who joined us from here in Lagos States. We'll go on a short break. One return, we'll be looking at our hot topic. Please stay with us.