 We're glad to know you're still there. The Finance Ministry gets $5.6 million world bank loan for stationery and others. That's the topic of discussion here. And we're glad to be joined by Nick Agouli, a public affairs commentator. Good morning and welcome to the program, Nick. Good morning. Good morning to you all. Merry Christmas. Yeah, okay. We are looking at this headline, Finance Ministry gets $5.6 million world bank loan for stationery's orders. Let's just take your comment on this headline, what it tells you. This is a sad that we are taking loans for consumption. And I mean, even if we look at a personal economy like our old household economies, if a father and mother who are both pending for a family are now having to take loans to finance basic things for the family like maybe giving, providing for food for the family to pay their rent or mortgages and fees and other costs or running the family like utilities, like electricity bills and all of that, if a father and mother have to borrow to be able to fund that for the basic unit of an economy, which is a family, you will know that that family is in problem. That family is in a financial crisis. And that has been a serious burden for quite a number of years now. Where the monies that we need to service the loans that we have taken is almost 100% of the revenue that we earn. So the money is used for servicing loans is more than our capital expenditure in our budgets, you know, is almost the same monies where any so if a father or a mother or both of them who are ending for a family as they receive their salaries before they leave their offices, they have to give away almost 100% of the salaries that they have received. And then when they arrive home, they now start sourcing for loans to be able to fend for the family. It's a show this situation, a situation that shows that this family is in financial crisis. And for me, the more worrying aspect of this is that the World Bank is involved. One would expect that the World Bank as a multilateral financial institution with experts on economy, finance, and all of those kind of areas will be able to see Nigeria's debt burden. And we stop this whole idea of opening their vote to grant us loans. You know, the other time we heard that they granted us a loan of 800 million dollars. What's it for palliative? I can't remember what was it, you know, at the advent of the current dispensation there was this eight, sorry? Palliative, yes palliative. Exactly. How can the World Bank, you know, as an organized institution, be happy the Nigeria economy go deeper and deeper into crisis? What would you offer a loan of 800 million dollars for palliative? The World Bank is meant to be a development bank. You give such a loan and make sure that it is invested in agriculture or in power supply or in manufacturing, you know, in state development, either in building the railways to ease transportation or water projects or electricity projects, you know, those kind of projects that we have value to the Nigeria economy and grow our GDP and boost employment and then consequently government revenues. You know, you can be opening a vote and giving a country that is already against who's backed against the war in terms of struggling with debt problems. So I think the World Bank itself who is granting these loans has the greater guilt here. That's my personal opinion about this. Well, are you also of the school of thought that says that it's a deliberate policy or it's a deliberate strategy to keep Nigeria where it is because they don't want Nigeria to develop? Because a lot of people have said that because you know that these people are deep in debt, like you're saying, and you're still giving them. So it's another form of enslavement. Even though this thing was initiated in 2018 or thereabouts, it has arrived now and it is for the procurement of stationary furniture and so many other things that for me, the simple man, I don't see as being so necessary. I mean, if an office has existed for more than one year, what kind of furniture are you bringing in at this kind of time that people are finding it difficult to even feed and then your office gets a humongous amount of 5.6 million dollars and then you're using it for stationary and furniture and some other things. But why I cannot categorically say that the World Bank policies in Nigeria, especially the granting of these consumption-related loans is a deliberate policy by the federal government. The actions of the federal government give them out as in terms of their intentions not being noble because I mean, if I give the analogy, I started with the analogy of a family whose total income earned by the father and mother is given a way to service loans. My solution to that family's problem will not be to give them additional loans. Instead, my solution to that family will be either help them to increase their incomes or also help them to reduce their expenditure. If I am able to get them to do both, then I've actually lifted that family out of the quagmire they have found them because if their family incomes are rising and their expenditure is on the decline, then that family is going to quickly recover from where they are. So the World Bank, who have all the experts in their employment about economies, about fiscal policies, about monetary policies, about everything should know that Nigeria does not need loans for consumption. Nigeria needs loans for development so that we can build the economy and it is not economy that will not generate the income for government to do their own businesses. And you know, I keep giving people the example. I know a lot of people who think that the Chinese have come to Nigeria or Africa generally to take over Africa and have become the new colonial masters and all of that. But I disagree with that opinion. I disagree with the viewpoint. The reason is this. You know, like we started at the introductory aspect of this program, I am looking to you currently here in Makodi, the capital of Benio State. If you look at the roads that the Chinese have built from Kefi to Makodi, it is the best road in Nigeria as of today. I have not been on many other roads in Nigeria, but as far as I have been driving on Nigeria roads, these roads that the Chinese have constructed from Kefi to Makodi, they have dualized the road. And it used to be one of the most dangerous roads in Nigeria. Some of our viewers would have heard about the notorious Akwanga hills where a lot of accidents, especially with trucks, you have trucks, because the hills were so steep that when trucks are climbing them, often they lose energy, lose their brakes and start descending down, crashing into other vehicles. And even when they were descending again, they had to descend so slowly on their brakes. And then you find that the accidents were very common. The Chinese came, what did they do? Instead of building a road up the hill, as the former engineers did, they stood through the hill and built a flat road. So these days when you are passing Akwanga hills, you are passing on level ground and you only be looking at the old road which was up there on the hill. That is the kind of development that we expect the West to be bringing to Africa. And not this whole issue of bringing loads and these loads, they will take it back through because I can assure you that this load has been given. If you go to the World Bank, a chunk of the loads will be used for professional services, that is their own staff who have like advice us to the loads. Sometimes they bring their own people in, in the country to do one or two things. All their pay is going to come off on that same load. There's nothing on the ground to show that the World Bank is here to help us. So as far as I'm concerned, if people don't agree with me, I am saying that the model adopted by the Chinese is a better model for us because now we have the load on the ground and that load is a load of which the Chinese are now building tow gates along the road so that they can recover their money. I am more than happy to even pay 10,000 Naira tow each time I pass on that road than what was there before, a death trap that was there before. Before now, if I traveled on that road with my car, I was going to change the shocks, I was going to change the bushings, I was going to do some work on my exhaust, all sorts of things because the road was very bad. And the Chinese have got us infrastructure in place. This to me is the model at the central, I mean, the World Bank should adopt. And if the World Bank cannot adopt this, the Nigerian government should not be patronizing them. Let us go to those who are ready and willing to come and help us to build this economy. But you know also that, this is an aside, you know also that if the Chinese are coming to build the roads, some cutouts will not go to some people as when the loans are taken. We hear that this loan is a grant to the states, but a loan to the federal government. I don't know how that works, but let's see how it goes. Now, you've just given one solution to the alternative to taking loans from the World Bank. What other alternatives do we have? Chinese have come, they're building infrastructure and tolling the infrastructure or finding ways to get their money out of the infrastructure they have built for us. What other alternatives do we have if we cannot take loans from the World Bank to do whatever we need to do? The main alternative as a solution to the Nigerian economy is what we did to telecoms. And keep giving this example of telecoms. Telecoms as a group, as a child to becoming a younger adult and undergraduate and all of that. Telephone in Nigeria came with so much pain. So much pain. You have to go to the night care office, queue up at night to be able to push a call through. And to get a phone line, you will not get a phone line. And if night care gave you a phone line, even if they had landlines, wired landlines, they would put this wire through to your building. Then they would divert that line at the box to a business center nearby. And the business center will be using your line to make calls and calling money from members of the public and transferring bills to you. The government solution to it was then was that they would set up tax forces on business centers headed by young majors all over Nigeria. So they said the young majors provided security for all, which is this thing. They will now be the heads of tax forces that will carry army trucks with army people. They will go around beating up a business center. Nigeria was spending billions in the budget for night care. And night care was only making promises to phones. We're not seeing phones. And tell people, and this is a practical example, that when I married my wife, she was living in Abuja. She had a not nine not phone, as it used to be called. It took my wife to worry where I was, I was working and not nine not service was not in worry. So in one of my trips back to Abuja, my wife gave me her not nine not phone. I came and sold it in Abuja for 150,000. So this phone not to the end user, but to a middle man who was going to let it off at 200,000, 250,000. And that is why the minister of communication as at that time David Max said, the phone was not for the poor. That is immediately we let the private sector run that business. The NKS, the HTS and the gross and all came in and they have given us phones from about a 100,000 lines that we had in Nigeria then. Today Nigeria has 200 million or 200 million active lines. If you want a million SIM cards now, these providers are going to give it to you. The tax forces have suddenly disappeared. There is no racketeering of phone again. Instead of telephone being a cost item on the budget of Nigeria, it is not a revenue item because the telecom companies are putting money into government coffers, through taxes and other means. That is the solution for the Nigeria economy. If we let go electricity, the railways, the water project, roads, everything in Nigeria, if we let it go in the private sector in the same way we have let telecoms go, the Nigeria economy will boom because you see the MTS and Co. didn't come with loans. They came with their monies and they invested these monies in Nigeria's economy. As at the last time I checked, they had invested more than 100 billion dollars building the infrastructure to provide telecommunications services to Nigeria. It is not a loan on the balance sheet of Nigeria. It is a foreign direct investment. If we open up this economy to global capital, they are going to come in with foreign direct investment. We will not even be talking about loans because nobody ignores an economy of 200 million people. Nobody ignores that economy. So it is just for the government to be sincere in their policymaking, to be sincere in their government execution of activities and allow all the other sectors to also receive foreign direct investment the way the telecoms have received. This to me is the main solution that we have to prosecute. Okay. Well, it will be a wonderful way to end the program this morning. Would like to say thank you to you. But first of all, your new year message to Nigerians before we wrap it up. My new year message to Nigerians is that there are four arms of government, the presidency, the judiciary, the legislature and the people. Let us in 2024 become very active in the people and more government. Any country where the people and more government is docile, uninterested, not engaged, not hand-holding and going along with the governance process with the other three arms of government suffered. It is the people and more government that put pressure on the other three arms of government to deliver good governance. All the places are people are jacqueline too. That is what is happening there. The people are the one putting pressure. Nigeria let us learn to put pressure on our leaders as I'm sitting here I am guilty because if you ask me who is the member of the House of Assembly in Buenos Aires representing my constituency, I don't know his name. So in 2024 let us know his name. Let us be calling him, writing him letter, going to visit him, if it may protest so that he will know that this is our mind on setting policies of government. We should do the same to members of a national assembly. We do the same to the governors and to the president and his team. It's the only way that we can enjoy the dividends of democracy. Thank you very much Mr. Nika Gule for your thoughts this morning and we wish you a very, very prosperous new year 2024. Thank you so very much and Merry Christmas once again to our viewers and a happy new year 2024 coming up. Thank you very much. We've been talking with Nika Gule, Public Affairs Analyst. He joined us from Benway State and this is where we draw the curtain forward today. We hope that you had a wonderful time. Tomorrow is yet another day. It's going to be the 28th day of December 2023. 2023 is gradually winding off and we hope that you wouldn't beat yourself too much in case all the list of things that you wanted to achieve you couldn't achieve. It's just another day and another year that will come up. So make your plan. Do what you can do. Be practical. Be realistic in whatever plan that you are doing and 2024 will be a year that you are going to be very grateful for. But before you end this year sit down look at how your life has been in 2023 and count the things that God has done for you like they say in the song count your blessings name them one by one. You'll be amazed at the kind of things that God has done for you even though they are not the ones that you put on your list for you to achieve in 2023 but God has blessed you in ways that you cannot even describe. We hope that 2024 like I said will be better than 2023. In the meantime tomorrow is another day. Until then on behalf of the entire team of breakfast on Plus TV Africa, my name is Nyam Gul Aghaji. Have a wonderful day.