 All right, welcome back. It's time for Off the Press, and I have Professor Kamilu Sani Fagi, a public affairs analyst joining us this morning for that. Good morning to you, Professor. Good morning. Thank you. OK, so Prof, let's go straight and start with the punch newspaper. So the punch newspaper leads with subsidy pain, labor talks tough. ASU, protesters, condemn relief plans. And the writers there, Sanu ASU, say fuel subsidy unintelligently removed, NLC meets today. TUC rejects 5% telecom tax, plant tuition hike, acquire a Ogun roll out palliatives. And right in front there, you see a picture of protesters, civil society groups protesting in a state against the high cost of living, specifically the recent hike in palm price of petrol. And that happened yesterday in Benin City. Prof, let's start with this. Nigerians are groaning. The organized private sector is struggling to stay afloat. Yes, Nigerians are groaning. I think the paper up till the catch was what is happening, which I think shouldn't have been unnoticed. Leaders should look into it and do something urgently. Because like the paper said, it is not only the organized labor that is to groaning, which is a result of this increase, but majority of Nigerians are also groaning and complaining silently. Silently. Professor, I think the only people who are not groaning and complaining at this point are the politicians. All Nigerians across the country, and even those abroad who are feeling our pains are complaining loudly at this point. No, what I'm saying, the ordinary people who don't have the means, the avenue to bend their own views are doing it and not to the leaders. But if what happened was the organized labor, the leaders will look at it as a collection of the views of Nigerians, even those who are white. Because even they have the avenue to bend their own anger and their own views, I think it will be as we have started seeing with the Edo civil society organizations. And the thing is, these organized ones are the best way. Because if you allow it to be unorganized, if you allow the ordinary people to come out and do it without an organization, it is going to be chaotic and anarchic for the country. Indeed. And then you have the fact that the FEDG, the federal government recently, got an injunction stopping organized labor from protesting against the removal of failed subsidy. How do you see this move by the federal government trying to gag labor? I think that is dangerous. Because, like I said, organized labor, the government will have the control. They know who are the leaders. But if they allow it to be spontaneous without any leadership, then it is going to be dangerous for the country. So I think that is one. Secondly, it is highly undemocratic. The leaders remember that they are representative of the people. They are elected by the people. So they should not gag any views. Because by doing that, they will become more militaristic than the military. So I think it is wrong. It is dangerous. And it is undemocratic for the government to go to court in order to stop the organized labor from venting the views of the people. All right, let's go above the must-have of the Punch newspaper. You have most Nigerian leader's knowledge of development, Shalo. And that's former president, Olu Shalo Ambassador. Making that statement there yesterday when he gave a keynote address in Abuja. Yes, you see, given this one experience, I think this is an upstatement that what we have now, most of the leaders don't have an inkling, an idea of what development is, what politics is about, and so on. I think this is one of the irony and shortcomings of democracy. Because in democracy, you elect people based on what the electorate want. Not because necessarily they are the most competent one. So any person who the people want, I like whether he or she is a knowledgeable, competent owner. That is the one that you have. So that is why you see from the lawmakers, the local government up to the national, from the chairman up to the presidency, you find out many of them are popular with the people. But they don't have the basic knowledge of what governance is about. And another irony of it is that they don't care if they are in office. We don't have to have philosopher kings. But if we elect people, then there are constitutional prohibitions, which make them now get competent people as their advisors and their ministers and so on, so that at least they can run the system effectively. Because that is what is happening. A leader doesn't have to know everything. But if he surrounds himself with experts, I think he has a high chance of delivering who are the mandate of the people. Yeah, former president Lushego Ambassador has spoken a lot about the state of the nation since he left office. And part of what he said yesterday is that Nigeria has failed Africa and that policy by governments have pushed Nigerians into poverty. Now, when you look at that statement, that Nigeria has failed Africa, coming from him who has been former president not once, how do you see that statement? How do you see that statement coming from someone like former president Lushego Ambassador? It is true, really. You know, Africa and the world expect Nigeria to provide positive leadership. To me, I think Nigeria has not only have failed Africa, but Nigeria has failed Nigeria. Because with our endowment and the high expectation from Africa, from all over the rest of the world that we are expected to provide a leadership that I think we have failed in that regard. And this expectation is not only today, you know. It has been with us right before our independence. And even after our independence, there was such expectation. Initially, we started on good footing. The leaders then were doing something positive which happened to put Nigeria's name on the world map. But somehow, after the military coup, and then now we say the kind of leadership that we have with Pample. And so that is why I said what he said is true. But to me, it's even short because of reality because it is true we fail Africa. It is also true that we fail ourselves. That we have failed to put ourselves, you know, according to the expectation of others and according to our own expectation. And this with Lua, you can relate it directly to the leadership that we have. And that is what I think is the truth of the statement. All right, right beside that statement by former president of Basinger, how few crisis, I mean, forex crisis, beg your pardon. Passengers grown as foreign airlines hike fares. Details of that is on page 19. This is a major issue right now, professor. Flight tickets. Yes, it is. Up the roof. You see, it is not only a flight ticket, it's everything. I assume one of the papers yesterday, correct the news, even road transport has been so high that people are not patronizing it. And you don't expect like airlines, you don't expect business people to be good Samaritans and now they sell their own products at loss because with the way we have full price going up and the Naira value depreciating is suspected that seems up to be very expensive because after all, if they had to go with the normal price, they will lose. And you know business people will not want to a place where they will lose. So I think eventually it's either they raise the price or they close shop and leave Nigeria and whichever way it is not going to be good for the country. And the Naira right now, today is 860 Naira per dollar and it keeps rising. Hello, professor. Yes. You're talking about the dollar. So it keeps rising, meaning that this is going to go on. It's going to go on until God knows when. And then when you also consider the trapped funds, the airlines trapped funds that's been ongoing for some time as well. You wonder when will we get respite from this? You see with the policy of this and control the regulation. You don't expect the Naira to appreciate because one, we are not a producing country. We are a consumer country. And so we think what producing countries or developed countries do like China when they do value their currency and that we can replicate it and get the same miracle of our magic. They have produced a country. So by the time they devalue their currency, their products will be cheaper and people will patronize it and then they will have more market turned around employment, their bio factories will work. But here we are a consuming country. So we now devalue our currency, which literally means that whatever we are going to buy, we are going to buy it more expensive. It will be more expensive than this. And so by the time you bring them in, you bring such things that now you sell yourself a product at a very cheap rate, then inevitably the Naira will be falling and it will continue to fall. And like you say, only God knows when and where it is going to stop. So I think these are some of the things which the advocate of this always called, we call it in the academic line, the neoliberals, failed to look into, okay? They seem by the time you devalue your currency, you deregulate, you open your market, then perhaps the miracle will happen. But because like I said, we are a consumer country, they didn't factor this part into their own analysis. And now see, within two months, everything has gone haywire, which we don't know where it will stop. All right, right beside that headline on steel on the punch newspaper, you have Navy won't stop burning vessels, fairing, stolen, crude. Page 12 is where details of that is, Nigerians have often kicked against the burning of vessels, fairing, stolen, crude. Because Nigerians believe that these vessels should be investigated so that the owners, those who are stealing it can be caught and persecuted. But here you have Navy saying, Navy won't stop burning vessels, fairing, stolen, crude. Yes, burning it is a double jeopardy. One, you see, we lost the resources which could have confiscate and use it for our own benefit. Second, and the most importantly, it covers the trunk of who and who are involved in the issue. So that is why you see, we said perhaps burning it is a deliberate policy to cover the truck of those who are involved. You know, corruption, as you fight it, it bites back. So when it sees that it is about to lose, then it will take measures in order to be on top, I mean to remain on top. So that is why this burning is there. I think the thing that should have happened is that the president being the commander in chief, I should stop his feet and come out and say that they should not burn anything that is caught. So that at least rule of law shall prevail. And by doing that, we are going to achieve at least the rulings. I mean at least rulings. One, we can restore what has been stolen. That is restitution. Two, we can punish who are involved in it. And three, that will deter other people from doing it in the future. But by burning it, we lose all these three elements. And like I said, we cover the truck of who and who are involved. We give them real shelter and that they are not exposed and that they are not punished. And at the end of it, we cannot deter others from doing it. And indeed, and also add pollution to that. Yeah, that's also the first element, that is pollution. And the fifth element is which is that we are giving the world, we are denting the image of Nigeria that we are not civilized in doing things because we tend to do jungle justice. By burning it, at least, this is the image that we are giving to the rest of the world. That we rather we prefer jungle justice than rule of law. Wow. All right, let's move from the punch. Still so many other headlines on the punch newspaper, but we need to touch other newspapers also have. You have the Guardian newspaper now and it's leading with made in Nigeria smartphones fumble as monthly importation heats 50 billion Naira. Now, some people will say to you, Professor, we didn't know that we had made in Nigeria smartphones. Yes, we have. You see, this is part of also our own problem. We have high tests for foreign things. And even before the pressure from the world to bank and I am but now we the thing has been exacerbated because we now don't have the domestic products to compete verbally with the former in any respect. And then there's also the psychological aspect that we prepared that foreign goods are better. So that is why we have this thing. And thirdly, we don't see the dangers of relying on foreign goods. One, by relying, we are destroying our own system. Secondly, we are creating an army of unemployed people. Thirdly, we are spending a lot of our resources on the foreign things. In other words, we are developing their own economy at the expense of our own economy. And we are creating, like I said, a dangerous precedent because when you have people who are unemployed and eventually hunger doesn't discriminate. So by the time you have these problems that is why we are also deliberately creating crimes and criminality in our own country. Indeed, one begins to ask the ministry of commerce and industry what exactly do they do? Sometimes these questions come to mind because if these things are not known, not popular among Nigerians, just as for instance, ABAMI products are not popular, that popular among Nigerians. You begin to ask some silent questions about the relevant agencies that should have helped to push some of these things so that Nigerians would get to know what we have and then promote what we have. As against Nigerians, maybe not knowing enough and then thinking that the foreign ones are better because that's probably the ones they are more familiar with. Right? You see, they say it's part beyond the ministry of commerce or something. It is a deep-rooted structural problem with our system. And it is, even if you have leadership, because we have that mentality of a data-imperiority complex and most importantly is because we are integrated, deeply integrated into the capitalist system and at a very low level. So even if you change the ministry over to ABAMI, where they decide is the ministry in most cases will just be in form of what happened. Even if they want to take step, it will be part beyond the capacity. Yeah, but ministry of orientation. You can also add ministry of orientation to it. I mean, back in the days, we had MAMSA and I think Nigerians have just been left to themselves. To be honest with you, that's some of the things one can peek out of some of these things that we see and we hear. It's as though all facets of our lives have just been on autopilot. Well, a lot of them, I stand to be corrected, but that's part of what we see. Nigerians also need to be sensitized. Nigerians need to be, I mean, why do we have government? You see, if you look at the progression, every country, the world is dynamic. It is not static, but unfortunately for us, we seem to be retrogressing instead of progressing. This issue that you talk about like MAMSA, like Nawa and other things, in the past it was a kind of holistic approach. Okay, the government, various aspect of element, arms and organs of the government in thing. They read from the same page, but now you see there is lack of coordination. And so even if one sector is trying to do something, it is not integrated into the system. Like this campaign of buying Nigeria, patronizing Nigeria thing. Yes. You know, they don't do it. And then they also are producing the Nigerians are not a producing substandard. And the government is not doing anything to protect them, so that from undo and equal competition. And this is one of the condition that is imposed on us that we have to open our market for competition with foreign bubbles. And as we do, you know, they have the technology to have better and cheaper things than we need to. And at the same time here at home, we don't have a good industrial policy that will now help our, you know, producers, I mean, entrepreneurs to now produce quality things. Instead, we make it very cheap for them. Take for example, electricity is where is the engine of development, but it is not, it's also eclectic and it's not, it's unavoidable. And so other sources of energy for the industries are not available and they are not affordable. And yet we expect the bring and make quality products that will compete with the foreign ones. And we didn't have, you know, integrated system where we educate Nigerians or mobilize Nigeria to patronize our own goods. So I think the thing is so much that this is what will be the end result. It will not be surprising for us to see people, you know, going for foreign things with all this and with the psychological inferiority complex that we have. So I think it is not unexpected for us to be where we are now. Indeed, thank you so much, Professor Kamilu Sani-Fagi for your time and insight on, off the press this morning. Time will not permit us to look at the other headlines today. But thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. You're still watching The Breakfast in Plus TV Africa. Take a break and come back and give you a first heart topic. Stay with us.