 You're welcome back. Now there are complaints from importers over 200 percent surge in duty amid Naira flock tuitions. That's what we're discussing right now. And Nick Agouli, a public affairs analyst, is here with us. Nick, good morning and welcome to the program. Yes, good morning. Nick, your audio doesn't seem to be friendly this morning. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you now. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay. So good morning to our viewers. Okay. Okay, now let's just begin. They say importers are groaning over 200 percent surge in duty amid Naira flock tuitions. But let's leave importers first and talk about the Naira flock tuitions. What comments do you have? Naira now is 1,030 Naira per dollar, at least in the black market, which was not supposed to exist anymore because of the present government's policies and all that. Ahmed Feli is in under lock and key, as it were, because I know that there are remote courses that they have said are making them to prosecute him. But now we have the immediate courses, which were policies that he made like the redesigning of the Naira and some other things that people complained about. But right now we have a new sheriff in town and we are still seeing this one dollar selling for 1,030 Naira. Please say something about it. Okay, thank you very much. Let me use an analogy to explain what is happening. Okay. The unification, the so-called unification of the market. I say so-called because the markets have not been unified. As you are saying that the Naira is 1,000 plus to one single dollar in the so-called official market. It is not up to that, maybe 700, 800. So there is still some 200 Naira arbitrage that the boys who are connected are still eating from. Yeah. So there is no unification yet. But let us just say that government announcing the unification of the H.J. rate was like a doctor trying to understand the extent of the sickness of a patient. Because immediately government floated the H.J. rate. We now saw the re-value of the dollar. It told us that we must give 1,000 units of our currency to get one dollar. That was the re-market-driven value of our dollar. So this is a doctor who now sees the extent of theiness of the patient. Is there expected that this doctor is now to begin to apply medication now that they know the extent of theiness they begin to apply medication so that the patient will start getting better. Safe patient will start getting better. Unfortunately in Nigeria after we floated and we saw the extent of the sickness that oh we need a thousand plus units of our currency to buy one dollar. There has been no single medication that the current government has applied to help the situation. The single medication. There is any single medication that the current government has applied. I would like somebody to put it forward to me now and to those who are viewing us. Because now that we understand that we need a thousand units and more of our currency to get one dollar. There are only two medications, two medications that are needed to help the Nigerians to begin to recover. Medication number one, to increase the inflow of the dollar into the Nigerian economy. We need to increase the supply of the dollar because the more the supply of the commodity, the less the price. That is medication number one. Medication number two, we need to reduce the demand for dollars. Because the less the demand for a product, the less the price. I would like anybody to tell me that since the assumption of office on May 29, 2023, the tenable government has implemented policy that increases the supply of dollars to the Nigerian economy or reduces the demand for dollars in the Nigerian economy. I think there has been any such policy. I would like to be educated about it. As far as I'm concerned, with my interest in public affairs, there has not been any single policy direction or execution or implementation in either of those two areas. So if that is not happening, how do we expect the patient to get better? If we now saw that the patient is having this serious illness and there is no medication that has been applied to the patient, the only result is that the patient will only get worse. And that is why the Naira... Nick, I don't know what's happening. I can't hear you any more. We do hope... So I've seen that. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you now. We lost your audio for a moment there. Yes. So the government is not doing anything to help the Naira. Instead, the government is actually taking steps to make the patient worse. The doctor is making the patient worse. And how do I mean, number one, to help the supply of the dollar, the government needs to calm insecurity in the Niger Delta so that those who are still in our crude oil will no longer steal our crude oil. That way, we will sell more barrels of crude oil and there will be increase in supply. Has this government done anything about this? Absolutely not. You know, our Navy, our Army, our Air Force, our police, our DSA, all the security agencies are carrying on as before, giving room to people to steal. The other day, they sent and said, oh, we are going to investigate Nigerian security forces for not providing security in the Niger Delta. But we have a chief executive who appoints the security chiefs, who should call them, some of them, that if they steal our, has been sent for stealing Nigerian crude oil, for allowing the room for Nigerian crude oil to be stolen. That is on the supply side. On the demand side, the president is junketing around the world. His vice president is junketing around the world. And for them to go about around the world, they are demanding the dollar. So instead of reducing the demand for dollar, we are increasing the demand for dollar to pay extra code, to pay all the cost of junketing around the world. Not only that, a few years ago, this government went and lifted a ban on the importation of 43 items. Once you lift that ban, it means people are not going to approach the central bank to demand for dollar to bring in two pigs. That was on that ban list. So that is not going to hurt the Naira. Instead, it's going to pressure the Naira more because I tell that with a ban that I don't demand the dollar for, don't bring them in, have not been on ban by the government. So for me, it just appears that this government is totally bereft of ideas. They don't have a solution or they have solutions. They don't have the political courage to implement it. There is no direction. There is nothing that is coming on the table to give us the confidence that they know what is the problem with Naira and they are ready to solve it. Unfortunately, if no medication is applied, we are going to see a 2000 Naira to one dollar in due time. Yeah, I know you've mentioned some things, but like you said, using your words, medication one is to make sure that the dollar is not in short supply into the country. Now, how do you think the government should go about that? How much more do you think the government should go about that? Okay, so we can tackle the medication one, which is increase the supply of dollars in the economy. The lowest-hanging fruit, the lowest-hanging fruit for that is stopping the stealing of Nigeria's crude oil. The government itself concedes that about the barest of our crude oil is being stolen, the barest per day. You stop that. It then means that Nigeria will be able to sell a million barrels more of crude oil. Crude oil is about $88 now. They just have transmitted to $90 for the purpose of analysis. If we now sell one million barrels of crude oil at $90 each, that is going to be $90 million per day times 30 days will be $2.7 billion every month. For 10 months, it will be $270 billion coming into the country. The question is, is it doable? It's doable because the crude oil is being produced and people are stealing it. I mean, the crude oil is there. The government only needs to tighten security in the Niger Delta, and that will stop. That is number one. Number two, as we speak today, the NNPC, once they say the crude oil has not been stolen and we succeed in selling it, they turn instead of bringing those dollars that they sold crude oil. So now that crude oil is $88, $90, we should have been very happy because our crude oil will not be generating a lot more dollars for us and we'll be bringing the dollars into Nigeria, helping with the supply and education. But those dollars are not coming back to Nigeria because immediately the NNPC sells the crude oil. They turn the entire dollars that we have earned, billions of dollars that we have earned to refineries abroad so that we will not import petroleum products. If this government that came into office, actually this government got certificate of return in February of 2023, so if you look at February, you have March, you have April, you have May, you have June, July, August, September, we are into October now. This government is into the eighth month, that they know that they are going to take power. And they are into office in the fifth month since they actually took power. Have you heard this government talk about refineries? Anything? Is there anything that is being done? The group managing director of the NNPC or CEO as they call him now, he's still in place. The man that couldn't swap our refineries for the whole years that has been in office, he's still in office. This government has not raised any tax costs but are you with me? Yes. Are you with me? Yes, please. Are you with me? Yes, go ahead. Yes, this government has done nothing. Increase the dollar supply because we will no longer use our crude oil shares in dollars and give them to refineries abroad. We'll be refining here, so we'll bring the dollars in. Again, this government is doing nothing about power supply as we speak today. Nothing. And it is power supply that will enable the manufacturing sector in Nigeria to boom so that we will not start exporting products that were manufacturing. When we export products, we get dollars to come into this country. Even food, we can export raw food all over the world. People are sucking oranges, eating bananas, water, melon and all of that in their raw state. But we cannot even do agriculture because bandits, kidnappers and all sorts of terror stories have driven farmers away from their farm lands. Has this government done anything concrete in the almost six months they have been in office to address the insecurity in the farming areas of our country? And by now, ADPs would have started returning to their farms so that they can start food production, which we can export and bring in more money. Still like that. So you can see that the government is doing nothing about the supply medication. And if we go to the demand medication, it will be the same thing. Let me pause. Otherwise, I can go to the demand medication and also describe what is not happening, nothing that is happening by this government. We will revisit it if we have the time to do so. But now the immediate thing that made us bring this topic is the fact that duty has had a 200% increase and the importers are groaning now. We do not even know how to marry these two. On the one hand, they have been given free hands to get the dollar and do the importation. But when the goods that they have been asked to bring where they should get to to be cleared, their duties have risen to 200% from what it used to be. And how will these things come into the country if the duties have gone as high as that? So I don't know what you think. Well, it only means that the misery index, the misery index by suffer by Nigerians is only intensifying. Because what happens here is that as the duty has skyrocketed by over 200%, importers, they are not into business to make losses. They are going to transfer the entirety of the extra cost of duty and place it into the prices of the goods and services that Nigerians will have to pay for. So it's only going to bring more pain and misery to Nigerians. And the question here is that, first and foremost, if the government really wants to help Nigerians, government should not be collecting duty in dollars. Because government is benchmarking duty in dollars as that the foreign exchange rate is impacting on the duty. If the government says if you bring it in a 40-foot container, we are going to take 100,000 from you for the container and then we are going to take maybe one, two, three percent on the value of the goods from you, then it wouldn't matter what the foreign exchange is. The government will continue to take the same Naira from the importers so that the inflationary pressure in Nigeria will be reduced. But this government is charging the duty in dollars. And if they charge duty of $1,000 on a container, when the Naira was $150 to $1,000, that would be $150,000 Naira. Today the government is charging the same $1,000 on that container because they have not allowed that container to be priced as the existing exchange rate. That is going to be over a million. So this is what is happening. So governments all over the world, they make policies to help their people because the duty of the government is to provide welfare and security to the people. So a government that knows its own yours, we're not through the citizens under the boss and say that container must be $1,000 regardless of what the exchange rate is. You must give us equivalent to $1,000 to bring that container in. No, the government can actually say we are pricing this container in Naira and this is the Naira rate for the containers regardless of what the exchange rate is. That way the citizens will be insulated from the fluctuations in the foreign exchange rate. But this is not what is happening in Nigeria. The point is that, you know, why would a country that is so blessed with the rich, fertile, arable land with a good climate to match with a sufficient amount of rainfall, I'm here in Abuja, it's already raining now, with the rivers around where we can do irrigation, the importing food. Why would a government that built steep plants since the 80s would not have any one of those steep plants functioning so we are having to import vehicles, import machinery, import all sorts of equipment into the country. Why would a government that has refineries allow the refineries to rot so that we are importing every single liter of petroleum products that we are consuming in the country? Why are we importing education? Why are we importing healthcare? Why are we... So the people in government need to understand that those are the fundamentals that they need to deal with. You know, we need to go back to the basics. We need to make a direct productive economy. We are not going to even be importing these things. And if we are not importing, you know, imagine a farmer who is able to pound the yam for the children. The children will have more plentiful panned yams at cheaper rate than if the farmer has to be buying the panned yam from abroad and bringing it to the children. So the job of those who have sought our vote and have taken offices is cut out for them that, look, instead of dealing with symptoms, God, this is 200% hike in impunity. It's a symptom. It's a symptom of a disease. And what is the disease? The disease is our low productive capacity. We have low output rate, which has now resulted in huge unemployment and that is causing big inflation down in the country. Together, that's what we call stagnation. Stagflation, I mean, stagflation. And Nigeria's economy is actually not suffering from inflation. It's suffering from stagflation. So even the policies of the central bank fighting inflation are wrong because our e-ness is not inflation. It is stagflation, of which inflation is just part of it. You know, the others, of course, low output and unemployment. So we just want the people to do. We don't. We just want them to deliver. Okay, so let's wrap it up with going back to Medication 2 that you gave so that we have a full context of what you were saying and then get some solutions that can be applied if the relevant authority are listening to this program. So your Medication 2 is to make sure that, okay, the first one was to bring in more dollar and the other one was to make sure that people don't need the dollar so much. So how are they going to go about that as we wrap up? Exactly. So Medication 2 is to reduce the demand for dollars, bring down the demand for dollars, cut the demand for dollars. And there are low-hanging fruits here and there are medium and long-term solutions. The low-hanging fruit, number one, is the president and his vice-president are traveling too much. Because each time they want to travel, they are going to take Naira from the budget and look for dollars and pay Esterco to these officials that are moving with him. I actually expect the president in the current reality where he wants Nigerians to endure to tighten their bed, to lead by example, I expect the president to actually burn all foreign troops by government officials burn all foreign troops. Let us not let no government official go anywhere. That alone is going to reduce demand for dollars into the billions I can assure you. Because as I speak today, I speak to you today, if you go to any of the foreign airlines that are operating in Nigeria, all the first class and almost all the business class seats are going to be taken up by Nigerian government officials who are going abroad for one reason or the other. They need money, they need dollars to pay the first, they need dollars for Esterco, they need dollars. So just stop that. Stop that for the last six months. Let's see what happens. That will reduce demand. The biggest demand for dollars in Nigeria as we speak, the biggest demand for dollars in Nigeria today is to import petroleum products. Because as we speak today, Nigerians are driving into petrol stations. They are paying Naira to buy petrol, diesel, kerosene, they're going to fuel everything. But all of that Naira must be used to demand the dollar because we must go abroad to buy the petroleum products and bring them in. And the government by now should have sorted out the process of selling over a refurbished. You know how a refurbished was sold before? So there's a template for their sale that is already there. And if President Tinibu set up a tax team and gave them a few weeks, two to three weeks and said, take the template where we sold these refurbished before, update it to current realities and put up these refurbished for sale. But now we will probably sell the refurbished and the investors who have already been in trying to solve that side of the problem, on the demand side. Of course, the other thing is that a constant huge demand is education. So we need to be dealing with our education so that parents will feel comfortable to keep their children in Nigeria and not demand the dollar to send them abroad. The other one is medical. Let's start dealing with our head care so that Nigeria will feel comfortable assessing our head care instead of demanding for the dollar to go to India to go to all those places. Let's all deal with the steel sector so that Nigerians will not have our locally manufactured cast, locally manufactured equipment that we are going to deal with. Let's all deal with power sector. With power sector, our manufacturing will be boosted so we no longer need to demand dollar to go and bring in manufactured goods from across the world into Nigeria. So this is how we are going to apply the second education, which is to reduce the demand for dollars. Okay, thank you so much, Nick Agoule, for your thoughts this morning and coming on the program to share them. Thank you. Thank you very much, Alton. Thank you. Okay, we've been talking with Nick Agoule, a public affairs analyst. We were looking at how importers are growing over 200% surge in duty amid Naira fluctuation and this is where we started cotton on the days breakfast, the days addition of the breakfast. We hope to meet again tomorrow same time, that is from 7 o'clock in the morning till about this time. On behalf of the entire breakfast on plus TV, my name is Nick Agoule, thank you for being there.