 President Waumadubwari gives a hint that he might be going tough on his ministers. The cabinet has been on a retreat and will be reviewing the minister's performances this morning. Nigeria's record-setting female basketball team. The Tigris releases video accusing sport ministry and National Basketball Federation of form. That video is coming up shortly. And the Kaduna State Governor Nasser El Rufai, SAC's Chief of Staff, not long after he referred to Senusi Lamedu as Fama Emma. Any connection? We'll talk about it this morning. And of course, glad to have you on the breakfast this morning. Wednesday morning, the 13th of October 2021. Thanks for joining us and we hope that we have a very interesting run on the breakfast this morning. I am Osao Gye, Ogbawan. And I am Messi Bopu. Good morning. How are you? Very well, thank you. We have a lot of things to talk about this morning. We're going to start, as always, with our top trending stories. Where, of course, we have a video clip to, first of all, share with you. And then we get right into that conversation. Alright, just before that comes up, let's move to Kaduna State where there is some controversy brewing. Apparently, you know, the Chief of Staff to the Kaduna State Governor was sacked. But that's not unusual. The only challenge here is that it seems to have happened not long after he referred to the... Well, San Ushila Mido as a former MRI of Kano while addressing, you know, a delegation in public. And that's really where the challenge is. And of course, immediately after he left the podium, the San Ushila Mido then stepped forward and said, well, since you referred to me as the former MRI of Kano, I'm going to refer to you as the former Chief of Staff and you know why shortly, not long after that, the Chief of Staff to the Kaduna State government was sacked. And that has, you know, created some controversy, of course, across Nigeria. The same thing that I referred to yesterday when I made mention of Raymond Dockbessy, you know, pledging his support for Bola Mettinubu and not long after that, the Federal High Court then asked the EFCC to take him off their watch list. And yesterday I said it might just be a little bit of coincidence. But this one doesn't seem to be or to have a lot of coincidences. It seems to have been pre-planned or seems to have been, you know, the effect of seeming disrespect to the MRI of Kano. I'm sure you must have seen that clip. Yes, I have actually seen the clip. And for me, I just think that we're very big with, you know, titles in Nigeria. That's a very, very serious one. So for instance, you just have the fact that if your name is apparently traveled to Jerusalem, you would probably have your name as Messi, Jeppe at the end of the day. But the truth is, over time, we've actually addressed several governors as former governor. You say former governor of Lagos State, former governor of Cross River State, former governor of River State. So I'm asking if, you know, we still refer, we still address these governors because if they come for a functional event, you get to address them as former governors. Why is that not a big deal? So why is this really, really a big deal? So I'm going to talk about it after the video, please. We're going to share the clip with you and then we'll talk a little bit more about it and some of the angles that Messi just brought up after this. So quickly enjoy this. Hello, I'm Harinez. I'm the owner of this zone. I'm from Karno. And to be honest, when I look through the plan and when I listen to the, I'll call him the former chief of staff and we'll understand why later. Next time you call me former Amier. Well, you know, that's exactly how it played out. And, you know, of course, the next news that broke was that the chief of staff had been sacked. And so, you know, like one of the things that you mentioned, yes, you know, people, you know, who are no longer in certain positions, you know, of course, we'll be called former. But of course, Nigerians are very big on titles, very big on, you know, on respect. Same way, sometimes we have guests via Zoom on the program. If you don't address them as professor of this or professor of that, you know, he may not even answer your question. You know, because the truth is, let's be very realistic. I mean, these are titles. That's not how this is not who you are. I mean, it is. I mean, some people would say, well, I mean, this is who I am. I've worked hard to end this title. And so I want to be addressed as this. The only challenge here is that Sanusi used to be the MI of Canada and the only one until sometime in 2020, when he fell out with the Karno state government, you know, they accused him of disrespecting the government and disrespecting the emirate. And, you know, there was also some little corruption charges here and there. And then the Karno state governor, Abdullaikand Jayden, you know, set up four new MI's of Karno. And so, you know, the idea was to whittle down his powers. You know, and this, I think, was in March 2020. The idea was to whittle down the powers of Sanusi and, of course, make him not the only MI of Karno. And so there has to be some clarity there. You know, if now that there are, you know, four or five of them and no one in, you know, no one in particular is the MI of the whole of Karno, you know, then there are MI's of certain regions in Karno state if he still can be referred to as the MI of Karno, which I don't think. You know, because yesterday, I think that the internet has been buzzing with that particular one. That same, you know, the argument that you're putting up for it right now, you have a lot of Nigerians who think that really, really, should we even address him as the former emirate because at some point he feels like it was really dethroned and all of that. That's, you know, that's also another angle to the particular one. But I'm thinking, could it be that when he said I was going to address you like the former chief of staff, could it be that that was a signal that was sent that led to his being dismissed? Yeah, I also saw some of those comments from people who said that it's possible that he also had heard of, you know, a possible cabinet reshuffle happening in Kaduna state pretty soon. And that's why he made that statement, knowing that, well, knowing beforehand that the chief of staff was going to be taken out, which is just conspiracy theories or people, you know, overthinking. But another question that I would want to ask is, you know, does he really have that much power in Kaduna state? And what really has been the relationship with him and the governor of Kaduna State, Nasser al-Rufai, for him to be able to say, well, this person disrespected me and I would like him sacked. Do those things really happen? Nigeria is not the type of country where, you know, these things can happen and you can sue, you know, for, you know, being fired, you know, for, you know, unlawfully or something like that. And so you have to, of course, you know, live with the consequences of some of these actions. But what would, you know, Sanusi now, let me do Sanusi, want to be referred to as? Would he still want to be referred to as the Emir of Kanu or the Emir of a certain region or the former current, current former Emir of Kanu? I don't, it's a little confusing. These are some of the things that we asked yesterday, you know. What exactly would you like to be referred to as if you're no longer seen as the only Emir of Kanu? Maybe, just maybe there's an opportunity to speak with him and then we'll find out what he would like to be referred to as because it's quite confusing. I mean, I think that if you ask me, if you have to discharge, if you have to let go of someone, fire them, they should be sacked based on the fact that they're not able to, you know, discharge their duties or probably the, that some form of not leaving up to expectation duty-wise and also let's just also talk about maybe rules and regulations of, you know, the engagement of the entire service. That should be the basis of, you know, sacking or letting go of someone. I'm sure there's a rule. I'm sure there's a procedure. Because right now it feels very, it feels very... It feels personal, you know, and these are not the crimes. And, you know, I've also gotten confirmation that they are both very, very good friends. I'm talking about the Cardinal State Governor now and San Uzi. So you can tell that I'm even being careful. I don't want to say former or I want to say or I also don't want to say Emir of Kanu. So I might as well just go ahead and call him, you know, one of the Emirates of Kanu. Not the only one, but one of the Emirates in Kanu and the Cardinal State Governor are really, really good friends. And so it's really the situation, you know, what Nigeria really is. If you have a relationship with somebody, you can really pull those type of favors every now and then if you feel disrespected. Same way people can be driving and, you know, police check and stop them and they say, I will call your boss, you know, and you get themselves out of trouble. For discharging your deeds. Yeah, simple things like that, you know. And it is what it is and that's really how Nigeria is. So I want to just hope, you know, the same way I was saying, you know, let's give a benefit of doubt that maybe yesterday's situation with Ramon Dokwesi and Tinubu, maybe it's the same thing here that it doesn't necessarily mean that he, you know, called El Rafa and, you know, called in that favor. Maybe, you know, El Rafa was always going to suck in the, you know, triple stuff in the first place. Well, even if that's going to happen, I mean, we're just looking at the time again, you know, we're looking at the timing. Timing. You know, timing is really, really, because for me, it feels like that probably would have just been a signal. So I would definitely address you as a former and shortly after that, you know, he lost his job. Anyway, we'll move away from Cardinal State now. And then let's move into sports. And I'm sure Wally's got to be excited to talk about some of these things later. The Tigress, who of course just won the African basketball, female African basketball championship for the third time, I believe they've won it 2017, 2019 and 2021 or 2021 and have done Nigeria very, very proud are complaining bitterly because of something that is very, very common with regards to Nigeria's athletes. So when they perform exceptionally, they eventually do not get their wages or do not get their payments or not get what, you know, is accrued to them. And so we're going to let you watch this and hear what they had to say. And then we'll talk about it when we come back. Enjoy this. 2019 and 2021, which is historical, but still no invitation has been extended to the team to visit Asura or a presidential handshake. Why? President of MBBF Musakita says that the Federation isn't owning any players, officials or vendors. This is far from the truth. The last time we checked our allowances, stipends, bonuses, training grants and donations made by banks for players, officials and volunteers still have not been paid. We are owed $73,118 from the MBBF, $24,000 from the Ministry for the Tokyo Grant and $100,000 from donations from three banks in Nigeria. Oh, well, I saw that yesterday and, you know, I actually did have a good laugh, mostly because it's not, this is not new. I remember that we've spoken about, you know, something similar with regards to Supergirls Coach Gennad Robin, owned, owed about five months' salary. We've heard of, you know, many, many Nigerian coaches, West Ahof and the one who's late now. There's many of them who, Nigeria's sports industry generally, you know, has had its fair share of numerous times when players are owed allowances, bonuses and some of all of that. I remember, you know, months ago, I also was speaking here and I said that, you know, I feel like we also need to move away or develop our sports industry to a stage where the players are no longer dependent on governments financing. Well, governments should finance definitely, but the benefits of winning, you know, there should be some level of private sponsorship. There should be sporting brands. There should be beverage brands. There should be all those brands who come together to support. And so whenever you win, you know, an athletic championship, basketball, football, short put, whatever, you know, it is, you're sure that you would either be signed by, you know, one agency or the other or once, you know, sporting brand will sign you up and you get millions of Naira simply by doing that instead of waiting for the Nigerians all the time to pay. That's what I said then, but the challenge, I'm just going to quickly say this, that from what they mentioned, they said they are owed $73,000 by the NBBF, $24,000 from the Tokyo grant that was given to them and $100,000 from Nigerian banks that also donated to them. None of them have been paid to the female basketball team. And that tells me that even when private bodies donate to these people, they still don't get it. Now, so let me start from, let's start from the beginning where you talked about the fact that, you know, it should not be left to government alone to actually fund, especially when you have, you know, these persons going out to represent the country at different kind of sports and all of that. There should be some private support. Let's also talk about reportage. Let's talk about patronage. If you look at the way we patronize, you know, the other leagues, the other leagues that are not the Nigerian leagues and other sports and all of that, you find that we don't have so much patronage. How many persons can actually see, I know a lot of people have the Jesse, the Jesse, right, the Nigerian Jesse, but if you want to compare that to the number of persons who own the foreign Jesse's, I mean, or the different clubs, the Mayu, the Liverpool, the Astana, what have you, you find that it's not enough. I'm talking about how many persons are really patronizing the Nigerian, you know. But that's mostly, and you may want... So if we don't have at the individual level people patronizing, how do you then now say you want people to begin to finance to support all of that sponsorship? It might just be very difficult. So I think that, you know, it's high time that we begin to... And that sounds good. Pretty much the same thing with telling Nigerians to buy local brands, you know, and stop buying foreign-made cars, stop buying the Toyota's and the Mercedes. You know, buy Innocent. You know, yeah. You know, it's pretty much the same thing. Support your, you know, your local teams. Go to the stadium, Taslim Balogun Stadium. Go to the stadium in Inugustet and Water Rangers and some of all of that, which I did a few times. But we can also argue and, you know, deny the fact that I don't think that they've also made it attractive enough for Nigerians to find that level of interest. Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to, you know, just go and support because always the picture will take thing to do. It has to be attractive to some level. And that's what they've done outside Nigeria. Look at the South African League. And you see the stadium is full every single time Orlando Pirates is playing because of how attractive they've been able to make their sports. They've invested heavily in their own sports and that's what makes it look that way. I know that ticket prices are, you know, pretty cheap here in Nigeria to go to watch a football game. It's maybe like 500 now, 300 now, I'm not sure. But it still hasn't made it attractive enough and you cannot force patriotism. You can't flog a person and say you must support your local team or your local basketball team. So I'm saying that we need to start from the basics. I mean, it starts from there. So if you see the level of patronage is very low in terms of less support, then how do we now progress from that point to having... Because you only get to support what you're believing and if you don't believe in it, how then do you put your money in it? So that's a very... But it's okay to say yes, let's begin to have, you know, individuals, let's begin to have organizations actually support throwing the weight behind finances and all of that. That's a good one, but like you also mentioned, it's also important to make it attractive because if it's not attractive enough, how then do you want to put out your money, all of that? Then also, it's quite unfortunate if you ask me. It's really, really sad that you find out that those who laid the golden hand are not taken care of and it doesn't really make sense. Yeah, and I said earlier that, you know, it's almost... You should expect these things if you're going to be performing any sport for Nigeria, whatever the sport is. And that includes also the Paralympics. If you are going there, one of the things that you mentioned, if we played that whole clip, you will see that they called out Mosakida, who's the head of the MBV, multiple times and said that he basically doesn't show up for anything that they do. He only shows up when it's time to take pictures with them after they win. If they're going for training, they have conferences, they're having anything useful. He doesn't show up and that's what the girl said in the full length of that video. And he only shows up when it's time to take pictures with the president or when they win a trophy and then he comes to take pictures and carry the trophy with them and some of all of that, which really is very, very indicting on him. Pretty much has been the same thing or was the same thing with Simon Dallon when he was sports minister back then. And so these are very stereotype Nigerian problems, very, very typical Nigerian challenges in every single sector of the country and the sport is not left out. The same failures that we've had in government at every level, education, healthcare, infrastructure, whatever you want to call, affects every single level and that includes sports also. These ones are even lucky that they are outside Nigeria. You can hear the accent. You're not even here in Nigeria. Imagine they were anybody or in Lagos. They wouldn't even have energy to make this video and talk about some of all these things. But apart from the fact that for me, I'm actually laughing at it. It's a very serious thing. Oh, I find it funny. I think that it's high time that we step up the game because we continue like this because something will just definitely wake up and don't have peasants representing us at any level in any sports entirely. It will really, really, really be bad for us. And I hope... Okay, well, I don't want to speak negatively and say I hope that everyone just realizes that you shouldn't expect anything from the Nigerian side when you go to play for Nigeria. And that's why you see many, many of these athletes deciding to play for... to run, to play sports for totally different countries. They'll go to Portugal. They'll go to England. They'll go to Australia. Any country whatsoever that would take them, they would move and leave the Nigerian sports industry simply because they've seen from time and time and time again that there's barely any support coming from the Nigerian side and they mutter the amount of money that is donated or is promised to them. They never get it. Maybe after years and years and years. Look at Chioma Junewa. It was months ago that we started hearing that the current legacy governor gave her house that was promised to her more than 10, 15 years ago when she won the Olympic gold. So it's pretty much the same thing that has happened over time till now, which is very extremely shameful. Very shameful. For everyone who has, of course, any relationship with the Nigerian sports industry. And I hope there's one of the things that we'll be talking about today because sometime later on in the show we'll be talking about the government and, of course, assessing the performances of his ministers. These are some of the things that should be asked. What exactly will the sports ministry be able to say that they have achieved since they've been there? I think all the numerous challenges that we've had in the last couple of years. I look forward to that conversation. It comes up sometime just after 8 a.m. this morning or sometime around 8 a.m. this morning. We'll take a short break. When we come back, we're moving straight to off the press. We have a review of the stories making headlines across Nigeria this morning. And, of course, our guests will be joining us. Good morning once again.