 More Nigerians may join the JAPA train as hardship worsens in the country amid fuel subsidy removal. Monthly fuel consumption drops by 18.5 million litres after deregulation. And on the programme as usual, we're going to take what the national dailies, some of the national dailies are saying as their headlines. Very good morning to you and thanks for joining us on the breakfast. My name is Nyam Ghul Aghaji. Today is Tuesday and we call it Technophile Tuesday. We think tech when it comes to a day like this. How much are you letting technology into your life and how much positive impact is it having in your life? As we explore all the avenues that technology can help us as a people and as individuals, then we should know that life should be better rather than worse now that we have all this technology. So we've told you the topics that we're going to be talking about today. But before we go into that, as usual, we have our trending topics that we'd like to talk about. Now there's an aggrieved officer. That's the first one here on our list. An aggrieved officer has written to President Tinobu about corruption amongst Nigerian prisons officials. An officer of the Nigerian Correctional Service, NCS, formerly Nigerian Prison Service, has written to President Paula Tinobu to complain about alleged corruption and poor remuneration in the service. According to the aggrieved official, the NCS personnel were being poorly paid and treated unfairly unlike their colleagues in other departments at the Ministry of Interior. He said some of the personnel now depend on inmates to feed their families. So that has been a complaint by one of the workers in the Correctional Service and if you've ever been close to the prisons, close to how it works, this didn't start today. I do not know the difference between their salary, their pay and the salaries of the people who also work in the Ministry of Interior that they are talking about. And I do not know what they expect of the government to do and all that. But I also know what they do as individuals within the prison system, at least in the experience that I've had working closely with inmates in religious capacity, so to speak, and having access into the prisons to minister to the people and talk to them, encourage them and do other things. And if you see the rot that is within the system, you will be appalled. You will know for a fact that the government is trying its best to make sure that the people that go into the Correctional Services or the institutions come out better. They provide things that will help them to become maybe tailors, maybe capentas, maybe same stresses as the case may be for the women, hairdressers and all that. And those things are provided. The government also provides soap, they provide toothpaste, to provide money for their feeding and all that. But you'll be shocked that when you go to the prisons, at least the ones that I know, these things are not available. All the things that were supposed to be in the workshop are not there. Not that they have gone bad, but they are not there. Sewing machines are not there. Carpentry tools are not there. They used to be there. Some of the prisoners saw them and they just disappeared. Some of the warder's wives have stores that they sell soap, they sell toothpaste, they sell other things that supposedly are to go to the prisoners and all that. So it is you who is visiting the prisoner that will now be the one to bring them soap, to bring them toothpaste and a lot of other things that the government has provided for them. And if you talk about borrowing money from the inmates, how do the inmates get the money that they borrow to warders and all that? So is that not reporting themselves that they allow a lot of things to happen within the prison system? In the experience I had, I saw a situation where prisoners were allowed to go out and work, get the money, when they come back, so long as they settle at the gate, they are allowed every day to go out. Most ones who have served their prison term and maybe are left with six months or so out of the maybe ten years or five years that they are supposed to serve. So they let them go out. Some of them have shops outside. Some of them go and do manual labor. Some of them do a lot of things and they come back with money and they settle at the gate and they come in. At the time I knew it, it was 115 era at the gate. So long as you don't come beyond six o'clock, you are good. So you go out early in the morning, do whatever you want to do, travel if you want to travel if you can, and then come back at six o'clock, settle at the gate and go back in. So who is monitoring them? So as they complain about what the government is failing to do, they should also look in what and see what some of their personnel are doing. You see when they are cooking for the prisoners themselves, a prison yard that will have up to like 100 people or 200 people, they are eating from one pot that looks like a drum, no fish, no crayfish even, nothing in that thing. And one of the days I was there ministering to the people and talking with them and I saw that in a very, very big party pot as I would like to call it, that there was one mackerel inside, what we call iced fish, one that was inside. And when it was cooked, they had to remove this, this same one, put it in a smaller pot and then cook it for the chief water on that day. Everybody else ate that soup without the fish but with just the smell. We have all these experiences. So who is monitoring them? That's one thing. And then if a lot of money has been voted for prisons to correct these people so that they come out into the society better rather than worse, who has been taking the money, we have to ask all those questions. The thing in Nigeria that is giving us the conniptions that we are experiencing is monitoring, the lack of monitoring in every of our government life as it were, our public life as it were. So nobody monitors the prisons, nobody monitors the schools, nobody monitors the contractors, nobody monitors anybody. So anybody can just do whatever they want to do. That's why we hear of ships in yester-years coming to our shores empty even when money was voted for those things to be, for fuel to be bought or for petrol to be bought and it will come empty. And nobody will say anything. Nobody monitors anything. So the roads are constructed. It was supposed to be let's say 10 feet thick and it is done. It's just 2 feet thick. Nobody monitors. Nobody cares what happens. And so in 2 years, 3 years it's dilapidated again. And possibly that is why the legacy burden expressway has been under construction from like Zebraia would say Taimi Moriva. So we will keep doing it and doing it and doing it because nobody's monitoring and everything just goes the way it goes. So as the prison warders complain, which is maybe possibly a very valid one, maybe their salaries are not good enough. They are at risk when they are taking care of prisoners and all that. So they should look into them and all the other security agencies, security personnel that we have should be taken care of really, really well. So if there's something that needs to be done, let it be done. But also as something is being done for them, they should look inwards and see how they can have a human face. Maybe it's because their salary is small. That's why they sell off all the things that government provides for the prisoners. I don't know. But whatever it is, as my people will say, when the hand washes the motor, the motor washes the hand. So while the government is trying to do all their complaining that the government should do something very positive and help them in the plight that they are finding themselves, they too should sit up and do their duty for which they were called. If you cannot do the duty, then leave for someone else who can do it so that they can do it wholeheartedly and make sure that the people who go into the prisons do not come out worse. As we know in the Nigerian prison system, a lot of them, maybe up to 80%, I don't know. I don't have the statistics, but it's really high. At least it should be up to 40% of the people who are in the prisons are just awaiting trial. Some of them, their cases may not even be those cases that they should stay in prison for six months or even be convicted at all. But maybe because they don't have someone to talk to them or someone who is higher than them to brought them there and all that, some people have spent five years, ten years awaiting trial. So the justice system also has to be looked into. So as we look at things about prison, the welfare of the waters is paramount, yes. The welfare of the prisoners even themselves is also paramount. It should be looked into. And everything around that sector should be looked into, not just one aspect of it. Okay, we have another trending issue, which is banks raise ATM cash withdraw a limit to 200,000 naira. So from 10,000 that they said you cannot withdraw above and then 50,000 a bit, 20,000 that they talked about during the cash crunch, now 200,000. You can just go over the counter and withdraw or you go to ATM and withdraw up to 200,000. So months after banks restricted withdrawals on automated teller machines, ATMs to 20,000 naira daily limit, commercial banks in the country are beginning to increase the maximum amount of cash. Not all of them at the same time, but a lot of them are doing that. Customers can withdraw on a daily basis up to 200,000 naira. The limit had been put in place during the naira redesign policy, which we do not know the direction right now. In an emailed notice to customers yesterday, Zenit Bank said customers can now perform cash withdrawals of up to 200,000 per day at its ATM terminals across the country. So this, it said, is irrespective of the bank that issued the cut. However, the 500,000 naira weekly cashless policy withdraw limit for individuals still stands. There are institutions that other banks in the country may follow these parts by allowing their customers to withdraw through ATM terminals large amounts in the region of 200,000 naira, even though they have not made it public. So you go to the bank, you can withdraw so much money. Now I'm just asking myself this question. This is the seventh month of the year and by December, the new, the old notes are supposed to phase out as it were, even though they say in other countries they exist side by side. But we don't seem to see any new notes being printed. So if in the next seven months that deadline is reached, what is going to become of the naira? Will the present administration just say, okay, that policy is a useless policy. It shouldn't continue. And then whatever new notes have been put in circulation will be withdrawn or something. Will it be the new notes taking over from the old notes or the old notes taking over from the new notes? We do not know what it is. So we don't even know the kind of money we are supposed to be saving right now because whether we like it or not, if we want to do online banking, we want to do internet banking, whatever you call it, the E transactions and all that. Our, our equipments, our, whatever we need to be able to do that is not strong enough. We know what happened during the time of the scarcity of funds that everybody was encouraged to do transfers. We know what the POS machines also or operators also charge for every 5,000 or every 10,000 and all that. We even know how much the banks charge. The other day I was doing a transaction of just 10,000 naira and the bank charged me 250 naira for that transaction of 10,000 naira for whatever kind of name they called the charge, but it was 250. So what is the difference between the bank and the POS operator that is charging also 200 naira to trans, to do a transfer of 10,000 or to collect 10,000 from them? So if the bank would be doing this, if you go to neighboring Ghana, not so neighboring, but at least we, we see Ghana as just the next country here, you go to Ghana, transactions like this do not, do not attract any money. But in Nigeria, you end up spending. Okay, if I were to make a transaction to 10 people of 10,000 naira each and they're charging me 250 naira for every transaction, that would be 2,500 naira for that day if I've done to 10 people. If I do more than that, then let's say 20, that would be 5,000 naira. So if you keep losing 5,000 naira because you're doing bank transactions, why would people want to save their money in the bank to do transfers? Why would they not save it or decide to save it inside their pillows or under their mattresses so that they can just take the cash and then pay? There are a lot of things that if we need to change from one thing to the other, we need to put in place. So charges here and there. Now we have 7.5% value added tax for everything. We have fuel subsidy has been removed, which I do not know at this point whether it was a very, very good decision because we are clapping that the government has the political will and they have done this. And but the question is who is gaining after they have done this now that the money has been freed from the hands of the people that they call the cabal. Where is it entering? How much better is my life without the subsidy? So even we're spending trillions of naira to do fuel subsidy and I could still go to work without problems. I could buy food without problems. I could dress myself up without problems. I could still have some luxury without problems. And now the subsidy is removed and I'm clapping. What have I gained? There are some people who are even losing in relationships because a relationship will also be tied to the way of life that you can have, the cost of living that you have. You can't take your girlfriend out anymore. You can't buy your girlfriend a gift at Christmas. Valentine's is coming. A lot of people cannot buy because they're saving the money to even pay transport to workplaces and all that. So some people might end up not getting married. Funny as it is, but it affects every aspect of our life. So who is losing now that the fuel subsidy has been removed? And when the fuel subsidy was removed, we hear that the bill that Nigeria was spending was just something that was a lie all this while. So they found out the real data for the consumption of fuel in the country. So if it was like a trillion naira that they were spending and now it is reduced to maybe 5 million naira, that is manageable, isn't it? So the layman will ask, why not now that you have the data, you just continue doing it because you know that you are not spending too much. You just didn't know the data then. That's why you were spending humongous amounts of money buying nothing and also financing the fuel consumption of other countries and all that. Well, arguments will come from here and there, but at the end of the day the question, the big question is that how much better are we without the fuel subsidy, the supposed fuel subsidy that every government said was a scam? Well, we will have a lot of things from the tab or the newspapers, some of the newspapers that we will be taking this morning. We will see what the headlines are in what we call off the press. In the meantime, let's see what the weather is saying today so that we can plan our day better. Stay with us.