 Given the challenges with getting palliatives to the last man in Nigeria, is the government already considering any adjustments to the national identity or any other scheme to ensure that all Nigerians can be accounted for going forward? Yes. First, thank you very much, Mr. Pasopojuan. Let me say again how deeply honored I am to be back here again at the platform and to commend you again for giving up this very important platform for national compensations like this year after year at great cost. Thank you very much. To the question, I think that something that's, of course, one of the great silver linings in this pandemic cloud is really the fact that we must do something about data and it was ramp up what we're doing already, but we are a little further up than maybe imagined. If you recall, when we were instituting the social investment program, especially the trader money, market money and all that, one thing that we did then was the enumeration of petty traders, street side traders and artisans, etc. And we did so with the assistance of Nigerian startups, young Nigerians who did the enumeration, the verification, install the payment systems and did an excellent job. We enumerated over four million of these informal traders and one of the very important things with that is that we are now at a point where it has been demonstrated that by using local resources, local technology, locally developed technology, etc., it is possible for us to enumerate accurately, practically every Nigerian. This four million feet was achieved in a period of under three months and we're 200 million. So it's entirely possible for us to get the digital data, the thumbprint data, the facial capture, practically everything that we need to do. So I think that this is something that has shown the tremendous possibilities and we're certainly ramping that up now. The Honourable Minister for Humanitarian Affairs has been doing quite a bit of work in that respect. A lot of the things I think that she's been doing is in trying to ramp up enumeration all over the country with the assistance of NIMS and also with the assistance of the Ministry of Communications and Digital Technology. So I think there's a great opportunity here and I believe very strongly that something comparable to the Aadha scheme in India where over 1.2 billion people enumerated technology has made it possible and I'm entirely certain that we can do so. And we have the local capacity to do so which is the more exciting part of this economy. All right, I want to ask this question. Given the financial impact of unexpected risks like pandemics and the oil shocks, are there any thoughts on how this will be approached going forward in terms of restructuring Nigerians' economy to be able to thrive even when things like this are called? Well, first let me say that there is no way of over-emphasizing the difficult economic situation that we're in if we assume that oil will be at 57 or at least that's up 60 somewhere. And we suddenly find ourselves selling oil at $13 and sometimes slightly lower. Obviously, that presents a significant challenge. It also means of course pressure on external risk. Pressure on funding and financing of infrastructure projects that all of our capital projects are currently threatened. It of course also means that support for states is also, I mean, or even state allocation from the integration account is addressed. So there are a lot of significant challenges today. But again, I must emphasize that these challenges also present to us significant opportunities for doing something that could permanently turn around our economic fortunes as a nation. And I think that part of what we're trying to do and Mr. President, I'm sure, as you've noticed, has done a number of things. The first thing, of course, was to constitute a meeting of the principal minister of the economy and thereafter he set up the economic sustainability committee, which was meant to look at what to do during and post-COVID and what sorts of economic plans may be required in order to weather the storm. And I think that some of what has transpired and some of what we're seeing is that we need to do two crucial things, just speaking broadly. One is focusing on the use of our local resources, focusing on the use of our local resources. The second is in the creation of jobs, of jobs, of decent jobs that would make a difference in the lives of people. Now, let's just talk about focusing on local resources as part of the thinking through the planning for this period. Look at road building, for example. We usually have to import food. Now, we may not have that, we may not have that space to import, but we are a major limestone resource country. We have, we are net exporters of cement. We've seen that the country can be built. So rather than use bitumen, import bitumen, we can focus on the use of limestone. And these are some of the studies that the Under Minister of Works is doing at the moment, and his team and ministry of works. So we think that by the use of local resources, we even see a concrete road being built already. The road that Dangot is building all the way to the toll gate in Lagos. That's a concrete road. We think that we can actually build cheaper roads using concrete. And that's just one example. The other, in using local resources, is in our focus on mass housing. Now, today, you know, we have a major housing deficit, but a lot of what we use even in building is important. But we know that we can build, we can build using local resources. So one of the plans that the is being thought through at the moment, and I've been put together for the president's subsequent approval, is a mass housing scheme where you have the states giving land up for purposes of building low cost housing. So for example, let us say that a state like Carnot State gives 10,000 hectares of land for housing. So what we do is that we ask that the artisans in Carnot, the local artisans in Carnot who make windows, who make doors, who mold blocks, and all other components of building, we engage them on the sites. In some cases, they will actually be on site using local materials to produce the components, including doors and windows and other components such as that. So we're able to provide jobs for the large artisan communities in those states. We're also able to provide opportunities for builders, architects, civil engineers and all of that. We already have the capacity to even just using our online resources alone, we're able to engage 500,000 young men and women into our empire scheme. So we can use the same platforms and expand those platforms to ask for young Nigerians who set up little companies, little construction companies, small construction companies, composed of engineers, of architects, and all of that, who can now build for those houses, who can now build the houses. So in Carnot State, for example, we may have 100 small companies bidding to build those houses. Of course, we're going to have to look at police control issues and all of that. But one thing that that will provide is several hundred thousands of jobs. We now look at how the government can become the purchaser of last resort in that kind of arrangement. In other words, how will those houses be off-taken, who will the off-takers be? One of the major problems with mass housing, of course, is the fact that you have a situation where mortgages, you are not able to write mortgages in order to ensure that the pipeline remains uninterrupted. In other words, from building to purchase. But we have thought through the possibility of government being, as I said, the purchaser of last resort. In other words, government actually takes the role of buying up some of those houses through the mortgage banks and all of that, and then we write mortgages from there. So you can have the police taking up several thousand houses. You can have the cooperative groups of civil servants, of private sector individuals taking several thousands of those houses. So that's an example of using local resources, using local industries, creating jobs and creating opportunities. Another, of course, is in agriculture and the value chain, the entire agriculture value chain. That, again, is a significant opportunity. We have seen that not only do we reduce our dependence on imported food, and that means dependence on foreign exchange or purchase of food when we ramp up local agriculture. It also means that we're able to provide local jobs rather than exporting those jobs to the countries that are supplying rice and supplying all of the basic food items that we have. So we believe that agriculture, again, using a mass agriculture scheme, which is being designed in consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture, the CBN, NISTAL and several of the important government agencies and the private sector. So we think that by ramping up agriculture, and this is small holder agriculture, each state providing heritage that can be used for agriculture, and the federal government working with the private sector, providing inputs, providing seedlings, improved seedlings, providing fertilizer for each of these small holder farms. The small holder farms themselves working with private out growers. Many of these private out growers have shown tremendous success with their farms. They have farms like Bukangbuna that have shown tremendous success with out growers schemes. We have several others that have shown tremendous success just using these out growers schemes. So what we intend to do is to leverage on those successes, create even around those private sector successes more heritage with the collaboration of the states and the private sector. So we can bring in hundreds or thousands of more individuals into farming. We must also, of course, improve the violent chain. One of the critical problems we have is with processing. So for example, we find that storage is a problem, but these are problems that we're also thinking through to resolve. Processing is another area where we require a lot of investments and we can do a lot of private small investments and large investments in processing as well. So I think we have found ourselves in a situation where we realize that the way to go is to ensure that we leverage on agriculture, provide the jobs in agriculture, reduce food imports and already our food imports, as you know, have dramatically dropped. At some point we're spending something in the order of about 16 billion dollars as of 2016, 2017. As of 2018, that had dropped about 10.9 or so billion US dollars has dropped even further in the past one and half years and it is bound to drop in the next in the next problem. So local food production, building up the value chain, developing rural roads for transportation, using stone this time and again, this is another use of local resources to develop our rural roads. We really think that we can achieve significant improvement in our facilities, in our ability to cope also with the pandemic. But I think also a point that I should also make is the development of the NSME sector. Now, there are so many initiatives around that as well and we believe that very many young Nigerian business can benefit in this time from some of what the federal government is looking at doing in collaboration with the states and the private sector, especially with respect to funding, to providing easier to access funds for MSMEs and through this period also in looking at rural support for MSMEs and also trying to see how we can create fresh opportunities for MSMEs and especially even small businesses. So there's quite a bit that can be done in this season, there's quite a bit that can be done at this time and I think that this opportunity is one that we mustn't pass on. We must ensure that we do as much as we can to change the narratives of the Nigerian economy, provide more jobs, provide more opportunities for people and I'm sure that this is something that we can do with the support of all of the different sectors, the private sector and the government. Last question and one of the reasons why we held this platform even though it was in the midst of I mean very difficult situations was because two things we wanted to bring government closer to the people and let leaders have direct conversation with the people to reassure them of things that were happening and also to make people understand that there is light at the end of this tunnel. So there's something that I think has disturbing the hearts of a lot of Nigerians in business and it's the fact that the Naira is taking a beating in the parallel market due to the oil price fall combined with the economic impact of COVID. Does the government have any plan to help slow down the anticipated inflation that they come? Okay well with respect to inflation I think of course you'd appreciate that there is always that tension between inflation and growth and in thinking through economic policy at this time we must also admit that if we're going to spur growth especially by increased spending, local expenditure, domestic expenditure, we must make room for some for some inflation but I think that the critical thing is how to respond to that inflation and one of the things that we would use of course there are several tools there are fiscal tools, there are supply side tools and all that but I just want to focus a bit on the supply side tools that we use. It's important in my view to increase productivity in Nigeria it's not important because we have the resources, we have the human resources, we have the material resources that we can use so improving productivity, increasing the stock of goods is an important part of ensuring that you have the goods so you don't have too much money as I say you know chasing too few goods. So productivity is an important part of what we are of our focus and I just pointed out what we intend to do in ramping up food production. If you can ramp up food production food is of course one of the major items that baskets like that is used in considering inflation. If we can ramp up food production, ramp up the logistics of bringing food especially to the urban areas we will be able, we will be able to significantly control inflation at the same time if we're able to provide people with jobs, if we're able to provide jobs and we've looked at some of the ways by which jobs that can be provided we will also because of productivity because people are rendering services and creating money we will in many senses be able to reduce the inflationary trends so those are some of the supply side type steps that can be taken. Of course you know we're also very conscious of how to ensure that we do not lapse into a situation where because of the fall in value of the Naira we find ourselves we find ourselves with projects that remain uncompleted or finished because of the foreign exchange component of those projects. Let me just say that one of the important things that we are doing is looking at how to ensure that our funding especially the foreign exchange component of our funding is as much as possible protected but this is funding for specific infrastructure so despite the fall in value of the Naira we insist that we must continue and the President has said this repeatedly that we must complete our infrastructure projects so there's a sense in which this also means our restricting the use of our foreign exchange to the very productive purpose of completing infrastructure projects that is absolutely important we must ensure that we do not either we complete rail rail roads power sector some of some of the investments in power sector especially in renewable energy etc so those are some of the very important things that in allocating our resources in such a way that we do not jeopardize any of our infrastructure projects so for purposes of the fall in Naira I think another point which can be made is that if we are careful enough in what we're doing and I think that that is the way that we tend to see especially with respect to some of the fiscal measures that we're taking we see ourselves being able to ramp up foreign exchange foreign exchange earnings especially in exports for food items and there is tremendous opportunity out there to export food items many countries of the world the UAE the Arab countries are asking for several different things they're asking for several different food items there is a great deal of demand of food a great deal of demand while we're thinking of local production there is also significant opportunity for export so we think that we can ramp up our earnings there we think that also in the mine in the mining sector we are reforming our seasonal mining processes we are looking at and of course we now have gold refining where we have a mega gold refining facility there are one or two others coming we think that we can also with the export of some of our solid minerals we can also ramp up we can also ramp up foreign exchange earnings so there are significant opportunities for rounding up foreign exchange earnings but aside from that you know of course that we are also looking and we have made a few attempts at concessional borrowing and some of that concessional borrowing will of course help the deficits that we have at the moment in our foreign exchange earnings we've heard of course of the IMF concessional borrowing and there is also a world-bound concessional borrowing AFDBA a few cheap loans that we are looking and taking these of course will also in the short to medium term show up foreign exchange reserves and show up our earnings so that we are able to to some extent control all right sir I want to say thank you very much once again for lending us some of your time for to hold this discussion with us on the platform and to let you know that we also acknowledge the work that the government is doing in this pushback against the pandemic thank you very much thank you very much it's always a special privilege and an honor and a pleasure to be on the platform and thank you so much for the great work that you're doing and also to say that in this pandemic we're all in it together and we must all just cooperate with each other cooperate with the government try and see how we can adopting a whole of society approach get involved in taking responsibility for ourselves for our neighbors and for our nation I think that we'll get through this much stronger we'll get through this much stronger economically much stronger as a people and I'm very confident that Nigerians will with our resilience our strength and innovation that will see that we'll go through this in great shape thank you very much all right sir thank you so much