 Welcome back to the breakfast here on PLOS TV Africa. It's now time to go through the papers and see what major stories we can share with you this morning. We're joined this morning by Mr. Ambrose Ibuki. Good morning. Thanks for joining us, sir. Good morning. Great to have you on the breakfast. Let's start with the punch newspapers. It should be on your screen in just a few seconds and share with you the big ones that the major one you can see. Yes, you have it. It says, Buhari is set to represent Loretta Onoche. PDP Senators differ over rejection. Nomination viable. Buhari hasn't withdrawn confidence in her. The President says the presidency source. Onoche not rejected because of political affiliation, says INAQ Committee Chair. And the ruling party desperate to hang onto power by all means alleges opposition PDP. Also on the Pontius Morning. High unemployment threatening Buhari's poverty reduction plans, says AFDB. Crisis looms in APC over registered members and consensus agreement. Delta variant rapid spread fear rises as Nigerians abandon COVID-19 rules. Still on the Pontius Morning, EFCC breaks into a Lagos Hotel arrest 30 over fraud. And three killed as military officers clash with Lagos traders. APC rebukes fractional youths demanding Abdul Razak's removal. And also Kaduna bandits slaughtered 222 kidnapped 774 in three months. Says Commissioner. CCT Chair tackles Senate in court. National Assembly threatens judges arrest. And these are the ones on the Pontius Morning. On the nation, 41.2 million vaccine doses come in this month. Government ops COVID-19 battle. Media bill on hold at House of Representatives. Sponsor backs down. Nigeria lucky to remain despite challenges says Buhari. Kaduna 222 killed 774 kidnapped in three months. AKT, confiscate house used for rape. Oyetola picks Omorare as liaison officer. INEC job on a chair's rejection good for democracy. House asks Buhari to fight insurgency with mercenaries. Three fed killed as soldiers, louts clash at Laddipo market. Governors lot to know book for refurbishing Arawa House Library. Those are the stories on the nation. All right, and now to the Daily Sun. We can see here INEC, Senate dams Buhari, rejects Omorare. PDP, northern youths, CTA, hail decision. Igbo, who stand by Kanu or Neze insists on the Daily Sun also. Senate goes tough on electoral violence. Nigeria lucky to remain united despite challenges says President Buhari. As he receives a security report. Senate proposes minimum 18 years of age for UTME candidates. And also anti-open grazing bill passes first reading in Delta assembly. Anti-media bills, sponsors, surrenders, killed the bill. PDP, Fennifere or Neze, NUJ, NGE and others tell reps. And also a QT to seize house and hotel used for rape. More interesting stories on the Daily Independent newspaper. Senate OK's 20 year jail term for ballot box snatching. 10 year imprisonment for vote buying. 20 million Naira fine for hate speech. Five years sentence for forced information against public officers. Passes bill to establish national electoral offences commission. MBF, Pandef, PDP, IPSS, Lorde, Senates for rejecting honor chase nomination. PIB, TUC marketers rejects limiting fuel importation to refiners. Senate's mere men law establishing jam over age limit of candidates. NBC, NPC bills suspended, that's according to the sponsor. Reps condemn police handling of Chile Massapot TV boss case. Buhari says, I wonder why Nigerians accept me, despite not being rich. Again, reps urge use of mercenaries to combat insurgency. Money laundering charged. DOPSE ask courts to unfreeze his account, release documents. All right, on the Guardian, I think we can quickly just squeeze in a few. Lawmakers buckle, suspend the media censorship bill, reject honor chair. Senate OK's electoral offences commission. 20-year jail for offenders. IGP exempts vehicles with factory-fitted tinted glasses from permit ban. And bandits kill eight, raise Anguay's house on others in a fresh Zangong Kataf attack. Four feared dead in Ladi Port traders, soldiers clash. I think we can stop here. Good morning, once again, Mr. Ikebuki. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, good morning. All right. Yes, there's one story that I believe makes headlines across the papers, and that is the rejection of Loretta Honor Chair. What are your thoughts on that one? Do you think that the National Assembly did the right thing? The National Assembly actually did the right thing for rejecting that nomination. That nomination should not have happened in the first place. It was too, you know, confrontational to be our collective sense of equity and good conscience. Loretta Honor Chair has been very, is not just a member of the ruling party. She has been somebody who has been vociferous in defending her principle. That is her job. I love what it is against her. She did her job very well by always being the forefront of defending her principle, her political party, and even in that, she created a lot of headlines for the kind of outbursts she uses during those counters years. And all of a sudden, she denies being a member of that same political party she has vehemently fought for. So it doesn't end up. The president has been advised right from the time he muted the nomination to withdraw that, that he didn't. And it went all the way to the screening at the caucus level. And then when it was also presented at the plenary, they said that no. But what is also intriguing is the fact that the senators said that not being cleared was not her affiliation. All the jobs she has done as a spokesperson of a political party are of a principle who is actively politicized. But because there was already a nomination from her state, the Delta State, she disputed that during the screening period because she said that the nominee that the senator said is from Delta State is actually nominated for another state where the president was married to. So the Delta State should come up to clear the air on this. Whether the president that the senator is nominated was nominated for Delta State or for a horseback state, so that Delta State can have its own slot. And then we are hearing also that the president said that if Phyllis from the president said she would be resubmitted for screening. I think if we advise the presidency to let it lie, it is taken that a lawyer needs to be rewarded. So there are several other positions in Nigeria that she can be rewarded with. I mean, there are a lot of board appointments, a lot of chief executive positions that are available and a lot of other, you know, pecs of office that are built in Nigeria. So if you are pushing for her to be an electoral commissioner, people, of course, will rightly think that there is a hidden agenda because our electoral process has to be respected. The integrity of that process has to be intact. And when somebody like Loretta Noche gets into as a candidate commissioner, then we can start questioning the candidate itself and it should be a very dangerous change for democracy. Okay, so on the daily independent newspaper, we saw a story here that the Senate has allocated a 20-year jail term for ballot box snatching amongst many other recommendations here. And a $40 million fine, our imprisonment of at least 20 years for people who basically get involved in electoral misconduct. This basically follows a passage of a bill based on a report by the Committee on INEC. There's been lots of talk regarding election prep for 2023. Do you see this as appropriate? First of all, I would say that the Nigerian Senates can be very wonderful in some of the submissions they make. One, I try to think sometimes whether these things are thought through before they come to announce it to us. You are making the ballot box snatching, that's very, very tough. But at the same time, we have some governors, we have some senators saying that they don't want to embrace the electronic voting. When electronic voting is in full gear and it is really, really complicated into electoral process, then there will be less of ballot box snatching. Because why ballot box snatching is very, very relevant now is because we are still using manual systems of voting where ballot papers are stopped in ballot boxes and then they are snatched to be authored. But if the electoral results are transmitted electronically, then there will be less incidence of ballot boxes. So the politicians across all the bite, both the North and the South, because I heard the governor from the North saying last time that the North cannot do an E-voting. How can we have the same election in Nigeria and we are trying to create a dichotomy saying that one part of the country will do manual and the other part of the country will do E-voting or E-collision. Therefore, everybody who is saying that they cannot embrace the collection or transmission of results, we have to question the person's sincerity about our electoral process. Okay, Mr Aiboki. I think updates on that is that they have let that stand, the electronic transmission of results. But regarding this very stringent punishments for ballot box snatching, vote buying and all of that, I think where many people might be concerned will be the area of prosecution because we know that Nigeria does not lack laws. It's prosecution that becomes the challenge, isn't it? I think the synapse is just playing to the gallery because those laws are not timable. You talk about the punishment. Let's say the Nigerian synapse should concentrate more on corruption. We want to see laws that have to deal with corruption. These laws on ballot box snatching is not very, very timable. We should make it rather more stringent for ballot box to be irrelevant in our electoral process. And in that way, we don't need to prosecute anybody because we will not make it possible. But this, I think, is just playing to the gallery because ballot box snatchers are mostly sometimes faceless people and most of them are also working for some of these politicians. So I'm not excited by that. Right now, we should make up systems that make ballot box snatching very, very unattractive. All right. Let's move to the punch now. There's a story in the punch that says 222 people killed and about 700 plus kidnapped in Kaduna state in about three months. React to that also because in any other place in the world, 200 people being killed by bandits or whoever else should be enough to place a state of emergency. Well, first of all, I believe that the figure is grossly inadequate. It's underreported because these are figures that the state government knows about. There are several other killings that have been going on quietly in that part of the country and not a part of the country as well. So it's underreported. There are so many others. Sometimes React community has been sad and over 100 bodies counted, but these things are downplayed. So 200 or something is grossly inadequate representation of the actual case on ground. And that is the value placed on human life in Nigeria. We don't place premium on human life of Nigerian citizens. Therefore, we just start. Like the other time, you see people report to you, oh, they say 50%. They say, oh, no, only 10 people died. A country that says only 10 people died, therefore does not have premium on the lives of the citizens. Therefore, we, Nigeria's are taking it in strides at the cons because it is very clear that it seems the federal government is not tackling this issue the way it's supposed to be tackled. It's a pity that we are losing our fellow citizens in this way and nothing is being done. Audently, I think the security apparatus of Nigeria should wake up and ensure that this thing stops immediately. Okay, so another story here that we've seen across the papers, it's on the Daily Independent as well. And it's about the NBCNPC bills that has been suspended. And we know that the sponsor put out this bill and it had very stringent punishment for members of the press who offend public office holders with lots of jail term and fines, but now it's been suspended. But while we think that's good news, he's explaining that it's just been suspended for a while so they can consider it and just deliberate over the matter more thoroughly. We know that Nigerian press councils, bodies association put out statements in the past few days basically saying that the aim of this bill is to cause an information blackout. It's to gag the press and that it was draconian. So do you think that this suspension should be permanent and that we don't need a bill in Nigeria space that basically gives strict, very strict punishment for freely passing out information? I think a clear signal for all those who try to want to gag the Nigerian press or the media space in Nigeria is maybe they should dig up a label about the past. During the Abacha era, what happened? Maybe they should go back then when we did guerrilla journalism. They cannot gag the Nigerian press. Nigerian press is one of the most vibrant press in the world. You cannot gag it. So they should stop trying and rather concentrate on, you know, you made a particular point which is valid, which is persecution is the matter. There are all relevant laws in Nigeria to prosecute those who abuse press freedom. There is the law of defamation. There is the law of treason. There are laws of that, different kinds of laws that actually, you know, take care of abuse of press freedom. And with press freedom and fundamental rights to free speech, it's encoded in our constitution. It's a constitutional right. In fact, it's a fundamental human right that's declared by United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, people should not just wake up and think they want to gag the Nigerian press. We moved forward some years back when we passed the Freedom of Information Act. We are thinking that we are going ahead. But it seems some people want to take us back to the infamous decrease that operated between 1984 and 1985. Nigeria has gone past that era. But I agree also that there have to be some form of control, especially with social media. Those controls, we cannot bring out our salient laws like the laws we used to have, and the laws that we hate speech can be concreted into some of the laws we have. And then we treat them to identify and resonate with modern realities. That is what we need to do. For some people bringing laws to criminalize opinions and facts or revelation of things that happen around us and turn it criminal or determination of character or quality to hate speech, then we cannot allow that to stand as a people. Otherwise, we are gone. All right, Mr. Ibuke, two stories. I want you to quickly share your thoughts on. They are both on the president. The first one is on the Daily Sun. It says Nigeria, lucky to remain united despite challenges. And of course that's when President Buhari has received a security report. And then on the punch this morning, the AFDB says, high unemployment, threatening Buhari's poverty reduction plan. All right, so I want your thoughts on both of them. You know, and of course it's basically rates or is rating the performance of President Muhammad Buhari in two different directions. Well, inflation has increased. Things are going up. I noticed something in the past four weeks that a lot of them, when you go to mega shopping malls and shops, you find out that some parts of the malls are getting locked up. Others, you find that the shelves are getting empty and that the shelves are getting empty and I started asking them, what is the problem? They said they're finding it difficult to import. They're finding it difficult to restock. Therefore, we are gradually going back to high-pride inflation period where people cannot even see things to eat. Right now, people are losing jobs because companies, SMEs are folding up UF, Brighton Center. Therefore, the inflation increases and the risk also increases. So, we should rather slow down or any effort we made by government for economic advancement. Then when it comes to the issue of Nigeria being lucky to be united, I think that is not conciliatory enough. That does not make me feel good. I should feel good because Nigerian citizens should feel good because they're in a united country that cares for them. They're in a united country that is not enough to just say we are united. We should be united in poverty or united in what? We should be united in prosperity. Therefore, it is time for the government to just wake up to the reality of our diversity and how to use this diversity to advance our prosperity. If we don't do that, then this is a system of we are lucky citizens don't care about the political device or the religious device or the ethnic device in the country. The next modern and since the next eastern or southern as his brother when they are on their own once you have given them food, give them job opportunities, give them security of life and property and then they'll be happy living in a country that is united. But I mean, these things they just tell us we are lucky to be united. We should be not lucky to be united. We should be happily united and not lucky to be united. Okay. I want to ask you a question that really affects lots of Nigerian students. This almost affected me when I was trying to get into school many years ago and it says, Senate proposes minimum 18 years of age for UTME candidates and basically they're saying that the current minimum age of 16, they need to up that up to 18 and Nigerians are very concerned about this saying is age the determinant of learning ability? What does the age have to do with that? When you check other countries you find out people there's a 13-year-old he had a PhD at the age of 13 there's been people who have graduated college at far, far younger because they were very intelligent and they had the national you know, there was an enablement in the country for them to be able to thrive and do that regardless of how young they were. So do you think Nigerian lawmakers are making laws in the right direction or do you think that we need to actually up the age? Well, the teachers there's a terminology that is called psychomotor which is the psychological readiness of a child or a particular person to be in a particular class and then the issue you just mentioned are cases of child prodigies these are not ordinary children that have got PhD at the age of 13 they are whiskies, okay? So those one cannot be used as a paradigm for comparison. Now, if you go to a lot of countries in Europe and even in the United States of America who would copy our educational system most of the children actually go to undergraduate school at 18, most of them and then there's this craze in Nigeria now for children to be pushed beyond their classes their age limits it's not fair on the development of the child you see a child that is 9 years old and is not already in secondary school reading JS 3 it's not fair I think the National Assembly is doing the right thing children should not be found in universities or higher institutions and when you are not hitting your child higher institutions should be for adults for young adults because they enjoy for some high level of freedom so most of the cases over the years we are having about autism and the rest of the 8 children just get cut loose from their parents at 15 and 14 16 and 20 universities and then they are psychologically imbalanced and they cannot be socially responsible about it. You're point of valid but then do we then need to start making amendments to laws when it comes to employment because when they are taking this up to 18 the minimum you want to get the job you find the requirements say you must be less than 25 you must have 5 years of experience so how would you have been able to graduate a mass 5 years of experience at the age of 25 so do we also need to make laws in that regard? We don't need laws the problem we are having is that because we have lack of employment we are focused on white collar jobs their industries have died off we don't have technical education we are not diversified in terms of job creation and that is why companies or the corporate entities are giving those rules those rules are just meant to order people and to streamline applications and then some of them are just not realistic but when we create jobs when we create technical education when we create opportunities for SMEs and startups many people will not be able to apply for these jobs in the best place therefore I start with the National Assembly to state that we need to set a standard of maturity for people who are going to our institutions to have some help Thank you very much Mr. Ambrose Bokeh public affairs analyst we did enjoy your analysis on all the stories on the papers this morning Thank you very much Thank you for having me Absolutely alright short break and when we come back we are going back in history to tell you certain things that happened on this day many years ago