 Very good morning to you and thanks for joining us on the run-up. My name is Nyam Gul Aghaji. And today I'm not going to say someone is on standby or somewhere else. You are here to talk for yourself. Good morning viewers. It's nice to be here in the studio live and not to be on standby. Or somewhere else. Yeah, it's nice to be here. It always feels like we have a brother in the diaspora and we're talking to him from the diaspora. But today it's good to have you here in the studio. And I'm just wondering how you managed it because these are really perilous times in Nigeria. Maybe not much about the insecurity but there are other things that are biting Nigerians more than even the insecurity we've been talking about all these years. I wonder how you managed to get to the studio early enough to do it. Well, I did. The situation is the same basically. You have the same traffic problems. People queuing for fuel. People queuing to get the new Naira notes through ATM machines. They don't cost traffic. It's people queuing for fuel who are causing the traffic. And then of course it's like most of Lagos is shut down because there's either one rehabilitation or one reconstruction that is happening. But one point which one perhaps would like to emphasize and which is probably exacerbating the problem of movement is the fact that it does appear, some of these constructions or rehabilitation works have been seemingly jettisoned. You don't find people they are working. We don't know why. And I think I know some time ago the state government said all the projects are ongoing but there are some where you don't find people working or the tempo of activity has significantly reduced and I think the government needs to address that so that people don't have the impression that because elections are around the corner then all the government apparatus has gone to sleep. If the contractors are not doing what they are supposed to be doing or are taking advantage that maybe they might not be under such scrutiny as before I think the authority should wake up and make sure that contractors are actually working full time to reduce all this gridlock and traffic jams and things. There could also be another theory if the government wants to guard against theories that may not be true because sometimes you just want someone to feel that you're really working. You take your tools, drop them there and leave. So maybe it's not the contractors trying to play hanky-panky just because people will not monitor them well and government should never give the people a reason to doubt whatever they're doing because they can also say is it because election is coming they want to just show us that they are working so that when we vote them in they carry the tools back home and nothing happens because opportunity for talk brings doubts into the minds of the people and government should always be playing enough so that if they run into challenges people will understand that they have been trying their best. Right now we were hoping that after the launch of the Blue Rail or something the train services within Lagos the traffic will go down a little bit the lock jam we've been finding every now and then will go down a little bit but I don't even know if there has been any impact on the traffic because it's still happening the way it used to happen in fact now it's looking like all the time we had enjoyed all the freedom, all the space we had enjoyed during the Christmas period is like they're coming back with more anger let's do it, let's use up the time that we had we had lost that period of Christmas and it's really killing and it tells on the economy of Lagos for me I don't think that is how a mega city should ever be at all. No I mean definitely I remember many many years ago there was the late Professor Ayodelia Wujobi he was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Lagos he was undeniably a genius he was a genius okay but he was also involved, he was concerned about the socio-economic environment and things that were happening and he made his statement, he said the whole of Nigeria depends on what happens within a 45 kilometer radius in Lagos okay, so everybody comes into this 45 kilometer radius whatever it is you want to do, maybe physically or somehow it passes through, but of course more physically because everyone is coming and that's why we have the gridlock and the federal government left Lagos simply because Lagos was serving as the capital of the Lagos state and the federal government and that's why the Muitala administration decided to leave Lagos and to see maybe because they had tried everything in the Go Won era, flyovers all over the place it didn't solve the problem, so the federal government left and then Lagos state took its own capital away from Lagos and brought it to Keja okay, but it hasn't changed anything so I think the solution is what the state government is trying to do but I think they need to attach more urgency which is rail I don't think that road construction will solve the problem of Lagos I think it's going to be solved by rail I think that the rail has to be private sector led not government because then the government starts taking loans the government can make money from tickets can make money from acquiring right of way for the private sector consortium that will build the rail and that right of way that the government acquires can actually be converted into shares for Lagos state government in the private entity to carry that project through and I think we can see faster development of the rail system because we saw how long it took the state government to just build Mile 2 to Marina about 16 years that's already a warning right, so I feel that as well-intentioned as the state is government has no business building this rail it should be concession to the private sector and across all the sectors of Lagos that's what I feel personally will solve this problem so even if you're giving us bosses let them be so attractive that people will be encouraged to leave their cars at home because if 50 people get into their cars that will be 50 people, 50 cars on the road but if those same 50 people can enter a BRT bus for instance and be comfortable in it then there will be less cars on our roads like the AC inside, the people who are standing even more than the people who are sitting and so many other things, sometimes you get into that place and it has not been wiped, so a lot of dust and then you have to look for your own rag and well there are so many problems, but we have guests standing by and there are so many things that we want to talk with them about fuel scarcity, may hamper movement of materials personnel according to INEG according to the general election the independent national electoral commission has said that the scarcity of the premium motor spirit popularly called petrol may affect the movement of election materials and election personnel also we have the new Naira racketeering EFCC to raid Lagos, Kaduna, Potahakot currency hawkers because there are indications that the economic and financial crimes commission is said to raid the Naira note racketeers including the commercial cities including Lagos, Potahakot and Kaduna, the United Nations chief advice has advised Nigerian judges to be neutral in the adjudication of electoral disputes that may arise from the forthcoming 2023 general elections the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations Amin Amohamed gave this advice because the 2023 election is what everybody is saying maybe the defining factor in the life or the political life of Nigeria well this and more will be discussed with our guests when we return from this short break stay with us