 Surging inflation leaves millions of Nigerians below poverty, says World Bank. And a Senate spokesman at Jubala Bashiru says President Buhari needs to avoid tension, as there is no federal prison law. This is plus politics, and I am Mary Ann upon. According to the World Bank, surging inflation and rising prices pushed an estimated 7 million Nigerians below the poverty line in 2020 alone. In its Nigeria Development Update released on Tuesday, the Washington-based lender added that Nigeria's economic growth is being hindered by food inflation, heightened insecurity, unemployment and stalled reforms. Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Budget Offers of the Federation, Ben Akabwezi, has said cutting budget allocations to federal government agencies would not be a significant impact on Nigeria's revenue. He stated that allocations to the legislature account for less than 1% of the total budget for the year, and as such, reductions would not solve any revenue problems. Now, the question is, how do you fight poverty side-by-side in security? Well, joining us to have this conversation is an economist, Gospel of Bele and business journalist Ignatius Chukru. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for joining us. Thank you for having me, Mary Ann. Alright, great. I'm going to start with you, Gospel. I mean, the World Bank has actually said that Nigeria's economy growth is being hindered by inflation, unemployment, insecurity, stalled reforms. So I want to break it down. Let's just piece it, you know, take it piece by piece. Let's start with food inflation, which is a big deal right now. The prices of commodities have gone to the roof. Our spending power is still the same. We have not had an increase in our, you know, salaries or anything. It's the same thing. The Naira is taking a 3-4, and of course, you know, the market prices keep going up because of the situation of insecurity. So let's talk about that food inflation and the impact that it has on, you know, the economy. So why are things the same, but of course, there is a price inflation for food? Alright, so it's kind of fortunate that things are worsening. We clearly saw this position coming in. If you understand how the figures are playing out now, you realize that it's going to be a slow but heavily cautioned recovery. So meaning that the Nigerian economy is slowly, is recovering at a slower rate compared to the 16-17 recession and all. Part of what we've seen are the fact that deep structural issues are now coming to the limelight. And then we've also seen this challenge where inflation has become more cost-push than just, you know, increasing prices of goods and services. And we've also seen that inflation has become, you don't know where you find that there have been transferred costs. Moving from the productive side of the value chain to the consumption side of the value chain. So goods and services are increasing primarily because there are structural issues on our supply chain, there are insecurity challenges and all that. And the producer has to be able to retain a cost margin to remain in business. So as such, the prices of these items are heated to the final consumer. We have said this several times in our outlook reports that anything that hits on the Nigerian economy directly affects the pockets of consumers. And that's quite the story. If you talk about electricity tariffs, you talk about pump price and all these dynamics, it hits back at the pockets of the consumer. That means a fair consumer spending. And you realize that things are going high, not necessarily because consumers want to spend more, they're any way more, but because the structural dynamics have led to what we call transferred costs across the value chain, which is currently impacting on consumer spending. Let's talk about unemployment. Before I go to Mr. Chuku, unemployment is at 33% right now. For Nigeria, from the facts that we have, Nigeria has a large population which is mostly used, which is supposedly a plus. It should be a plus for us. But the reverse is the case because at least 80% of these young people are highly unemployed. And so I'm wondering, how does this help us as a country? Because let's look at countries like China, Japan, India, if they use the largeness of their population to their own benefits. So we have cheap labor in those parts. And that's why big designers in Italy, in New York, go to those places in Bangladesh to get cheap labor. It might not necessarily be that the people are in slavery, but of course they use that population to their own benefit. What is the benefit of our young people to our population or our government or even the economy if almost all of them are unemployed? To be very honest with you, I think that the numbers are quite higher than that. First of all, secondly, there's also a big monster in the room called under-employment. Even if we get to solve the unemployment issue, the question again is how many young Nigerians are getting into productive labor. But then again, going back to your question, there are deeper dynamics that are impacting the unemployment numbers. For instance, when you talk about China and all that, the reason why China can do what they've done, whether you look at it from cheap labor or not, you realize that they have structural enablers that facilitate for global manufacturing and competitive production in the sense on a global scale. So you find big brands going to manufacture in China and probably assemble in Vietnam and all that. And that's because the infrastructure or the core enablers to help young people get jobs and playing that global productive value chain is in place. So for Nigeria, we don't have that. So even if you want to solve unemployment, if you don't come back to the core structural issues, then unemployment cannot be resolved. What we're trying to do is we're trying to patch these problems with policies. And I can mention several times that the state of the Nigerian economy is right. And when you look at it from unemployment of poverty, we need to find structural solutions to structural issues, not policy solutions. So trying to use end power and all of this social innovation works and even by past administration, right? Trying to use policy to solve a big monster that has to have a structural enablers first of all, all right? We will not go along, we will not take us fast. So you realize that the unemployment number keeps rising, all right? In the face of the pandemic's slow economic pickup and all of that, it keeps worsening, all right? And this is what we find ourselves in until extractive institutions ensure that, until extractive institutions enable the economy bounce back structurally. Then we may not be able to see any significant drop in unemployment. Okay. I want to push you harder on the issue of unemployment. Let me go to Mr. Chuku. Mr. Chuku, the president spoke to us for June 12 and he more like put out his scorecard as to what he's done since he came into office. And one of the things that he spoke on was the fact that he's been able to lift at least 10.5 million people out from poverty. Now, we want to be able to look at it realistically. What's the impact of the 10.5 or a plus 200 million people where 33% of those people are unemployed and then the rest of them are living under a dollar per day? What impact has that made with all of the schemes that the presidency has pushed out? Has it impacted on our economy in any way positively or is it a scratch, barely a scratch on the surface? In a country as large as Nigeria with over 200 million persons, the impact of 10.5 million having been moved out of poverty line will not easily be felt. One, nobody has evidence that where the 10.5 million people are, only government has the figure. So that if you come to a family of five, only one person is working. So it should be difficult for the family to relate with the figure the government announced. So it should be difficult to relate to that figure because of the high number of those around you that are unemployed. Number two, most of those persons who are getting stipends from N-Power and some of those rescue programs. You see them also hustling and doing other things to make ends meet. So you don't hardly see the impact of that program to give somebody quality life, to live above poverty line, so to say. But as the other speaker has said, tackling unemployment requires a robust action. And it has to do a lot with manufacturing, productive results. Nigeria often is a rent economy. You export to your jobs because most of the things we export go outside to grant the cost job. If you export crude oil, it is when they take it abroad and process it, that the jobs will come. If you export a gas under the precondition, they will now go and use it to feed the industries in Europe and Asia where the real jobs are being created. So how many goods do you need to gasify, to solidify gas and take it out? Few persons. But when you now gasify, it's reported to gas, it's now this massive employment. So it means that the treatment population of school-level young persons, the job they need to do. What you have is a service industry. Service industry. Why do you need two services in your office? Why production requires a high number of people? So the government does not require many services, and therefore it does not create massive jobs. If anybody wants to create jobs in Nigeria, it should be beyond this rescue, this pan-native job. The job creation will be far beyond that. But before you do it, there is pressure on government to rescue people right now today. It does not give them the breathing space to create mass-impact, big-impact projects that are actually impactful. But when you say it does not give them space to create these projects that would make impact, is it the problem of the people or is it that the government is making the wrong choices? Because we have an economic council that is chaired by the vice president. And I'm thinking, I'm not sure, correct me if I'm wrong, we should have the best brains sitting on that economic council looking at the best opportunities and the best strategies on how to re-jig the economy, reposition it and deal with the loopholes that we have plugged them and come up with the best ways to especially get our economy back on track. But what exactly is that economic council doing? Because I haven't really heard of the economic council and any strategies that they put out recently. Let me tell you where we are coming from. We have a short history. After independence, the economic plan was government should create jobs by running various ventures. Commercialization was the order of the day for over 20 years, commercialization. So government established various, various industries, jobs and making industries which were to fulfill the promise, the naturalist promise, the Nigerians when they were part of the independence. So they created massive employment opportunities everywhere. Over time, government ran those ventures aground, almost all of them crashed and crumbled. After the 18th, government said okay, government is not a good businessman. Let government get out of business and pass it over to the private sector. And that action or pass it over to the private sector, what did government do? Or we are not going to create jobs, let the private sector create jobs. So the private sector could not create the massive jobs that the government ventures were supposed to create. So it created unemployment. Was it really that the private sector could not create these jobs that these assets that were supposed to be privatized were sold back to politicians? No, privatization came. The privatization came in the conduction of labor. Remember that privatization was closer to over 35 years. So all those ventures that were listed, they have been privatizing them from the IDD times to now. Well, I'd like to say that the growth of job growth does not match in with the graduation of the youth into the unemployment market. So the number of cases entering the unemployment market over 1.5 million every year we move into the unemployment market. Why the rate of employment is fast, we don't have 500,000. And therefore the surplus continues together until now it is a very big number. So the government cannot create enough jobs now because government does not open companies. Private sector cannot open enough. The planet that is required is massive. It is not only connected to your creation efforts. Massive efforts, robust efforts have to be made. The number of unemployed is far more than just being created in every year. Alright, let me go back to Gospel. Gospel insecurity was also listed as one of the problems that the economy is facing. I was talking on a forum yesterday where a sudden person from Germany said that they were bringing a service industry into the country and he had concerns because a sudden person asked him, would you take your business to a country that is rife with insecurity? And I asked, the whole country is not rife with insecurity. Yes, we have pockets of violence across the country, but of course these are the scenarios that will be painted to foreign direct investments or people who are trying to bring businesses into Nigeria. If we do not deal with the issue of insecurity as we should, don't forget that these issues are multifaceted and some of them are highly politicized. Nigeria seems to also be losing a lot of businesses. Some of them have left years before now to Ghana and other neighbouring countries. How do we deal with the issue of insecurity because that is what creates an enabling environment? Is the government from the body language of the government, both at state and federal levels, is the body language telling you that we're going to be able to conquer this anytime soon or are we still going to be going around in circles and losing more and more businesses? Thank you very much for that question, Mary-Anne. Clearly there's a very wide difference between policy and politics and a lot of times closing that gap would require so much of compromise and all that. That's why I see that despite a lot of policies around the place, we still cannot achieve basic developmental outcomes. Now speaking directly to the insecurity question, first of all we need to note that the way the Nigerian economy and the social fabric is designed, it's such that a little crack somewhere in the country, in one state of the tradition brings about a fall in our national reputation which, on the other hand, we're not actively seeking to build or we're not being intentional about the national brand and all that. So primarily, yes, there are no genuine political will to help the current insecurity situation in the country. Secondly, the constitutional and institutional framework around delivering security and delivering social contracts are not clearly enforced. And even if they're enforced, what's the level of collaboration among the three tiers of government to ensure that these things are properly executed and that the nation is better and safe on a daily basis? Because if you think about security, you think about just the executive power and the executive arm of government, but there's also the judiciary arm and the executive arm. So there's a question around the political economy, the core readiness and willingness of the political economy, and the question around governance. How do we govern for improved security? There's also a question around economic management. How do we govern for security enough that the economy is properly managed and the economy benefits from that proper governance or public leadership in the sense that we need a collection of properly thought-out, well-designed policies that speak to the different facets of the problem, not just from the politics and now, but a good fusion of politics and policy, to find critical solutions to different pockets of the problems, where they exist and to what extent they exist. Until then, we may not be able to see active improvement in economic indicators to a large extent. Gospel, it sounds to me, I might be wrong again, it sounds to me that you're saying that every single person campaigning to us, whether they be on the floor of the National Assembly or members of the executive or even at our local levels, you're sounding to me as if these people have no deal, no idea, or maybe they have no will whatsoever to want to change the course of things in this country. Maybe they seem to be comfortable with how things are because you keep talking about the lack of political will. And I think that this transcends, I might be wrong again, it transcends whether APC or PDP. They're telling me that our leaders lack sincerity and that they're okay with where we are, they only just pay lip service to us. And until they realize that this is the job that they asked to do and deliver, we might just be in this particular spot for a long time. Is that it? Yes, to a very large extent. That would be the challenge we would have to face very, very, and that's because we don't need institutions that hold public leadership, participants or players accountable. Even our institutions are not effective or they're incapacitated to a large extent in holding political office holders accountable. The citizens are not aware and the citizens do not have an agenda when it comes to citizen participation. And then what is the social contract that binds the Aberdeen, Nigerian and the people in power? We do not have that in view of talking about executing that social contract. We have different pockets of issues around reaching this goals and objective when it comes to security and ensuring that the dividend of democracy in quotes is achieved. Until these things are informed, then not really see any major outcome when it comes to the Nigerian economy. Okay. Let me go back to Mr. Christian as we wrap this conversation up. The World Bank in its report, I'd like to quote it directly, proposes a near-term policy option. In fact, they gave options aimed at restructuring, dealing with inflation and implementing policies that support inclusive and job creation. So inclusive policies and job creation, they're asking that there be a protection of poor households because, of course, let's not forget, Nigeria is the second, if not the third poorest country in the world. On the poverty index, I think in 2019, we were the poverty capital of Nigeria. And now we are number three, so it's not like we got better, it's just that the poverty index reduced in Nigeria. But these policies that the World Bank is proposing, because I'm not sure they're imposing it, they're giving us ideas as to how we can better our economy, and they're saying that we need to prioritize the poor. The presidency, I can hear them saying that, well, we give 5,000 and we give 20,000 to the poorest of the poor. If you were to be seated on that economic council, as a business journalist, as someone who works with figures and you have gone to the length and the breadth of this country recording issues of the economy and businesses, what would you rather that the presidency and the government deal with first in getting us out from under this mud? To me, it's unfortunate that over the years, we keep sliding, Nigeria keeps sliding, and that is produced by one business party. And that is that government is busy with projects, with the position of projects. Government is not so okay, government is not a good manager of businesses, and therefore our job is to provide security and provide safe access to the private sector. The private sector person is coming in for profit. He didn't come in to create jobs. So who is that person creating jobs? The person, this is another one, is doing projects. This one is only, is out there for profit. It's via a citizen, a government policy, a proposal that allows government to do a safe and local. So say, these are many jobs they are supposed to create in one quarter, in one month, in one year. Who creates because it's the number of jobs? What are you going to do to create them? To work with the private sector to create them. If government is not supposed to profit, a private sector person is not supposed to just grab your unemployment. So who has the responsibility to cut your employment, cut job creation as a policy? Then how is your security tied to job creation? When you do projects, what are they supposed to do? How many jobs per day are you supposed to create? Because if you don't create the jobs, you want jobs to be created at this time, then it will not work. A lot of people will be getting into poverty echelon, getting into more unemployment and gradually increase. What you are saying is, those things that we import as a nation, there was a time we said we need to substitute imports. So most of the things we import, we think how we can do this kind of and create jobs. How are we driving them? What percentage do we achieve every month? What are our gains? So until we take job creation as the majority of the government, what are they supposed to do? But to give targets and do policies that we need to do targets, then we will just conclude to fly into a poverty region as it is. Wow, so you are saying set targets to create jobs and make sure that infrastructures are built to help these investors make their monies and costs. And the other, we benefit at the end of the day. Well, Ignatius Choukou is a journalist and he is Forte's business. Gospu le Billy is an economist. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being part of this conversation. Thank you for having me. All right. We will take a short break and when we return, the conversation continues on the controversy surrounding plans by the federal government to start the implementation of the gasset on the old cattle grazing boots. Stay with us.