 Organized labor suspends strike in Kaduna following the intervention of the federal government. But the Kaduna State government isn't convinced. Senate Debates Bill prescribing a 15-year prison sentence to persons who facilitate ransom payment. And cryptocurrencies continue freefall after China places new restrictions on digital currencies. Good morning to you and welcome to the breakfast here on Plus TV Africa. Beautiful Thursday morning as we always like to describe it. And thank you so much for waking up with us. I am Osaugier Ogban. And I am Annette Felix. Good morning. Good morning to you. How are you? I'm doing alright. You came very pretty in red this morning. Thank you. All the lips anyway. Good morning anyway. So let's get straight into some of the things we were discussing this morning. For the next two hours we're going to be having very, very interesting conversations and some of the biggest topics across Nigeria today. Yes, inter-curity and the analysis strike in particular. Absolutely. Yesterday we spoke with Ayuba Waba and of course he seemed very adamant that the strike was going to continue regardless of whatever tactics the Kaduna State government was going to use. But apparently a couple of hours later the strike was called off because of a proposed meeting that they have with the Minister of Labor today and of course to create a space for dialogue. We'll get into that sometime during the show this morning. Besides that some of the things that is making headlines across the country and across the world is the free fall of cryptocurrencies across the world. A lot of people have had many heart attacks. Some people of course have lost a lot of money and it doesn't seem to be changing. Bitcoin which used to be as much as I think it got to a $50,000 at some point or even higher dropped to as low as $38,000 yesterday. I heard this morning it's climbed up to $39,000 for Bitcoin. But there's been others, Ethereum and the other names that you can imagine. People have blamed China as the reason because China of course declared its own stance with regards to cryptocurrencies and wasn't interested in the cryptocurrency market. And of course Elon Musk also who they have accused of playing Kalu Kalu with cryptocurrency. So these are some of the reasons why a lot of people are shedding tears across Nigeria today. I personally have never been interested in it because funny enough I remember that there was a time back I think maybe like 2016 that I had a radio interview and some people came to market cryptocurrency and as early as that I still wasn't interested. Like I don't know about this. I'm not going to put my $100 into any currency that I really don't know anything about. But first for a couple of years later it became the currency everyone wanted to trade in. Yes and for people who are wondering why is Nigeria or Nigerians so particular about this. I mean cryptocurrency is traded globally right? Well the fact remains as part of its 2020 survey or reports. We found out that more cryptocurrency trading goes on in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world. About 1.1 million Nigerians involved in cryptocurrency trading. Millions of cryptocurrency trading goes on every day in the country. Many young Nigerians who are unemployed even those who even have jobs have found cryptocurrency as sort of a new way to cash and cash out. So it's just we know that it's this digital currency that you can't actually touch you can't actually see but this is basically a system using blockchain technology where every transaction basically is anonymous so to speak and we know how the cryptocurrency was used to pull funds on the entire process how in February 2021 the federal government intervened and said banks are restricted from trading or trading in cryptocurrency and all of that. It's just been a lot of controversy. But regarding cryptocurrencies there was this major diptyp where we're sitting now in 2021. It was the same thing in 2017 and you see lots of people giving their opinion on this. We know first of all Elon Musk CEO of Tesla talked about how actually Tesla as a company put out a statement some weeks ago saying they would no longer accept cryptocurrency as a means of payment for their cars and that single statement sends cryptocurrency dipping and I saw people commenting on Twitter saying they would never invest in something that just one switch from a man can just you know turn around and you see people complaining saying they put their dad's pension, their life savings into cryptocurrency and now it's crashed. But for me when I think about investments like this I like to be strategic in the way that I like to buy the dip meaning you buy low and you sell high right because if you're buying when it's all the craze is all about this particular thing or it's all about cryptocurrency all about Bitcoin you are likely likely to experience what's happening now the crypto crash. Everyone's speaking about buying low and expecting it to go high what if you buy low and it continues to go low and I've seen people joke about it. It will go low but it will definitely come back high. I mean as crypto currency expert they will tell you this crypto like it will definitely definitely come back up. Well you know that is the fate that a lot of people had this one that you have now that put you know a lot of them in trouble today because they've lost a lot of money people have lost millions of nair dollars and pounds even you know but I'm thinking mostly because of Nigerians a lot of people have lost money because of you know not understanding the market and you know the instability that could you know exist in that market like you said for one person to be able to tweet and you know the value of cryptocurrency just continues to you know drop deep lower than you know crude oil then it's a very very unstable place to trust you know that your money will be safe do you have faith that it would come back up did you have plans for the money that you used to buy earlier hoping that maybe by May or by April or by June you've able to use that money how long are they gonna wait for you to climb back up before they you know might sell again and when it starts to rise at what point do you think okay I think I've taken enough risk let me you know sell you know you're gonna wait till it gets to 50,000 or 60 or 70 do you think it might get to 80,000 or maybe not like every other thing cryptocurrency investment is an investment and for any other investment it's a risk no risk no reward so they say yeah but it's a lot easier when you can when you have a clear picture of what type of risk you're taking you know you cannot risk people are aware of the risk that Bitcoin can the price of Bitcoin can't go down today nobody expected it can go up so this is what I'm talking about it's just like the stock market really it depends on the volume of volume of trade and that's that really depends on how the market but nobody would expect that a statement from China or from Elon Musk would affect it that fast that's the difference so yes there's a risk in every you know business but it should take some time there should be some level of some leverage before a business starts to shake and then you can say okay maybe this was a bad investment not just one tweet in one day and everything just that's why I said he uses to play Kalo Kalo because he can wake up tomorrow morning and say oh I think we had a rethink we didn't you know observe this thing well enough that statement you just made no cryptocurrency enthusiast would ever agree that cryptocurrency is a bad investment no matter how low it dips see let me pull out some tweets here from Twitter there's a statement here this one's not really a statement just a single line saying dips equals discount so if you want to invest in cryptocurrency according to what the market is saying now is like the perfect time because you know it's low and don't take this as financial advice between my thoughts oh come on hold me on Twitter I say I better ask me to you know I'm not asking you to invest so you know basically people just talking about how you know the cryptocurrency deep right now the crash is really affecting their pockets you know but anyway that's that's what it is definitely it will come back up it's also it also shows you know a lot of Nigerians and their interest in or their lack of faith in the Nigerian currency and so we've spoken many times about you know the likes of MMM and you know any other you know promise of money doubling Nigerians don't play with things like that once you have any idea you know that maybe if you put your money here it might triple it might double it might get a couple of percentage higher in a couple of months they go straight into it and everyone wants to make everybody that's simply the concept of savings you put a little you put a little and money keeps multiplying but anyway let's move on now to from cryptocurrencies and financial transactions to some other certain type of transaction that we're not exactly sure of because this happened in Katzena state I believe where a gunman allegedly abducted a Sharia court judge in Katzena so when I talked about transactions we have no idea if you know ransom demands would be made or has been made but as far as we know this occurred on Tuesday in a residence a gunman suspected to be banded allegedly swooped on the judge's court which is located at a village called Bahrain Zakat in the village council and they swooped him away so when I read the police statement you know I had mixed feelings about it because the police statement here we saw that the spokesman for the Katzena state police command Gambo Issa he confirmed that incident he said investigations are already underway but he basically said this court judge should have requested police protection he should have requested police escorts and I'm like okay as an ordinary Nigerian who don't even have the financial means to go to the police station or put a call through to the police chief or whoever it is and demand for police escort that means I am just on my own right so it caught judge should demand police escort before going to certain places in Nigeria and he's basically saying here that he added that judiciary workers are on strike and he has no idea what the man is doing in court oh wow that's cold but anyway I always say that we need to realize what our true reality is as Nigerians if a judge can be taken from his court then any person can be taken there is some people who are pretty much higher class these criminals expect to have money and he probably is on that level what truly is our reality in Nigeria and I feel like a lot of people there's one thing that we're going to be talking about later on the show and that is the 15 year sentence we'll talk about that later a lot of people have taken advantage of the weak security infrastructure that we currently have in Nigeria or not just have taken advantage of it have seen that this is how poor security infrastructure is maybe they didn't notice before but they've seen it now and they've decided let's take advantage of it if we kidnap somebody we're pretty much confident that they will be able to pay ransom without us getting caught and it's become a booming business across Nigeria I'm not sure if you spoke about this the stories about what's going on in Lagos about people getting kidnapped along the Victoria Island along Lecky and Mirauti way and taking into random cars and this has been confirmed? yeah I've seen stories like that I've seen one person who said she suffered that and they ask them for money take all their valuables and eventually kick them out of the car eventually but it is basically there is a very visibly weak security infrastructure that criminals have taken advantage of we hope that the judge gets back home safe and unhurt regardless of how he has to do it and we hope that there is an answer to kidnapping the NINs don't seem to be working the moves made by the Nigerian government don't seem to be working in any way and so what really is the answer to ending kidnapping in Nigeria do we need to set up a new committee to start to talk about what must be done to end kidnapping in Nigeria does the government need to place a natural ban on payment of ransom I think that in my opinion right, I know we are talking about this in detail in a few seconds but I know that I've read stories about how this particular method worked in other countries I can't remember the name of the country now but they placed a ban on paying ransom and because of that kidnappers knew they could not expect to get ransom because you know the people who they should be getting the ransom from are pretty bitter from doing so so it worked and kidnapping you know it began to decline but here in Nigeria it seems like you're just treating the symptoms of a problem the root cause should be tackling insecurity and for people who think this might not even affect you I mean take a look even in a place like Lagos right you're taking a walk on the street and it just seems like gone are the days when someone could just stop by and say I want to give you a ride or do you need a ride and you just hop in and say oh thank god I have you know a free ride to my destination now everybody is scared nobody can just jump into any car in fact I was taking a walk I did some exercises yesterday I was taking a walk back home and this flashy car stopped by you needed to see the way I ran from that situation I was like don't be me walking up nobody is safe anymore it's just such a sad situation and like I mentioned beyond treating these symptoms of you know putting a ban on paying ransom they should treat this the root cause because you wouldn't tell a parent who sends their most prized possession maybe their only girl whoever it is in their family to school and the person is kidnapped and you say they should fold their arms and watch and not do anything to get their child back they would definitely do anything they would sell their house if they need to just to make sure that their child comes back to them so the main issue should be tackled well it might work but until they make it's an official statement in Nigeria the payment of ransom is banned completely because now there's we're talking about 15 year sentence just a second you place a ban on paying ransom to kidnappers they kidnap your daughter right you pay ransom and they come and arrest you while your daughter still remains in the kidnap I really don't understand how that will work this is the difference between those countries you mentioned I think France or Russia I'm not sure which it is the difference between those places and Nigeria is they also understand their own responsibility as a country and as a system to protect and to rescue those citizens that's the difference so when citizens are not rescued it is seen as a government failure it is not seen as a failure of people to pay ransom or poverty it's a scene they know and understand the value of their life of every single citizen and so there's infrastructure there are systems there are institutions that are put in place to ensure that every citizen that is kidnapped or might be in danger it is their responsibility but the difference here is that the Nigerian government still doesn't understand the value of that Nigerian life and so when you tell a person don't pay ransom the citizen already knows that if I don't pay ransom I don't trust the government to rescue my child or my husband or my wife when the Kajuna State government was quoted as saying we're going to bombard the territory there's going to be a few casualties we're going to rescue some stay with us we'll go on a short break when we come back what major stories are making headlines across Nigeria today we'll share with you we'll be back