 Royal Dutch Shell agrees to pay 49 billion naira for oil spills in the Niger Delta. We'll be talking to an activist from Muguni land while the impact this will make. And the all-progressive Congress governors await President Muhammad Abouhari's decision on the legitimacy of the party's caretaker committee. A lawyer will join us in the studio to explore this. And we'll also talk about the position and future of the Nigerian youth in the face of the country's full ranking on the Global Youth Index. Welcome to the breakfast and plus TV Africa. It's a very beautiful Thursday morning. Thank God it's Thursday. Just one more day to the end of the week. And I'm sure you're all excited about that as we are. Musaugi. Absolutely. I'm looking for clear weather this morning. It looks a little cloudy. Just a little bit cloudy this morning. So hopefully it doesn't get too bad or the rains don't come too early. Okay. Good morning. And anyway, I am Musaugi Ogbama. Thanks for joining us. Yeah. So I would like us to begin with the good news this morning. This is a judgment I was delivered about 10 years ago, right? There's a court in Lagos that delivered a judgment in favor of Oguni communities. And that's to say that they were going to receive the sum of 45.9 billion Naira. And that's in compensation for oil spills in those regions due to activities of this oil company. And that was never obeyed. 10 years later, when I was saying that back and forth, which legal teams from both end, the SP DCN, lawyer Aham Ejelamo, as well as the lawyer of the Oguni communities, saying that they have now agreed to go ahead to pay those compensation. And fantastic news. Even though this is one of the reasons, one of the agreements that they had was that the interest created on that compensation over the years would not be paid just as one of the agreements. But the fact is that this court judgment of 10 years ago would now be obeyed and that it would get to receive 45.9 billion Naira. Is this the latest justice denied? Because when you look at people that need this money to make sure that they clean up their communities, the impact this has had over time, you wonder, is this not coming too late? At the other end, you could also consider, oh, good news at the end of the day. And these communities can begin to utilize this fund to clean up their communities and fix one or two things that are lacking in game infrastructure. Well, as always, I'm going to play devil's advocate. Well, for you, you've described it as good news in some quarters. Some other people also have their reasons to not necessarily celebrate this. And I'm going to point out the reasons why this may not be good news. First of all, yes, it's coming 11 years after the judgment was given. That's one. And then the second one would be the fact that if you convert 45 billion Naira to dollars, it's just 90 million dollars with today's exchange rate. And if you put that side by side with what Shell has made of Ogoni land in the last 10 years or in the last couple of decades, it is less than 0.1 percent of the amount of money that has been made from those communities, drilling oil in their communities. And so if you're compensating them with 90 million dollars, it almost feels like 200 Naira from someone's back pocket that they're just throwing at the Ogoni people. That's one. Another one would be questions regarding how this money will actually be beneficial to the people for too long. Really, we've spoken about fixing Ogoni land, the cleanup of Ogoni land. Shell, I think, made some commitment some time ago from financial commitment. The federal government was also meant to also play its part. But if we have been honest with ourselves, we've not really seen any actual cleanup of Ogoni land in the last decade or even more. The promises that have been made have not been fulfilled with regards to cleaning up Ogoni land and making those communities better for the people who live there. Cleaning up their farmland, cleaning up their waters so that they can fish and they can have healthy water to drink and to also live with. So that is also a part of it that I must point out and say, that yes, you want to throw for the 5 billion Naira at them. But the major challenge, the thing that the Ogoni people have been complaining about really is the degradation of their land and the pollution that has happened in the last couple of decades in Ogoni land. And sharing money to these families wouldn't necessarily answer any of those problems if these funds or if the government has not taken it seriously to actually fix the land degradation that has happened in Ogoni for the longest time. And then also, there will be questions with how this money would be given, how many communities, how many families would be beneficiaries of this for 5 billion? How much are they going to get each? How effective will it be to really answer the cries of the Ogoni people? And then what next after that money is paid? Does the land still remain that way? Do we have better laws with regards? I know that there's something in petrol industry bill that is talking about 3% or 5% of funds from oil companies that are given back to communities. So those ones are also part of the things that might fix Ogoni land. But for everyone who might see this as good news, I personally see that there's so much more that seems to be not in this conversation. And I don't think that 45 billion for me in any way would be proper payment for the damage that has happened in Ogoni land for the last couple of decades. You do have points there. And I always like to look at the bigger picture. One would take a step back and compare what happens in other countries and here. If this was in the US, things like this would never even happen in the first place. For a company owned by private individuals to go ahead and establish this hold on communities, local communities. And it's obviously to the detriment of those communities hurting their land and just hurting the people in general. It will not happen. You have environmental right groups that would have shut down that company, shut down their operations, and forced them to make sure that all their processes are clean. But when you come here, this is a place where people just dump things and do things as they please. Whether the government have beneficiaries or not, the question is, do they really care about the people? So in the first place, in other parts of the world, this would never even happen. Like, there would have been no basis for these oil speeds and things like that. I'm not saying that there are no environmental pollution in those places. There definitely are environmental pollution. But I'm saying at this scale and for this long, nah, it's not been shut down long ago. It's not necessarily also. The company is not being forced to check the numbers. It's not necessarily also Shell's responsibility or 100% Shell's responsibility or any of these oil companies to ensure that the communities are in the best possible situation. A lot of people would say that if we have been serious, that the whole of the Niger Delta should look better than Dubai if we've been serious with regards to the amount of money that has been made of that region in the last decade, since the 60s. But obviously, that's not it. It really is the Nigerian government, both the federal and the state government and local government responsibility to ensure that these things didn't happen. But going back to the Abacha era and the Kensa Ruiwa hanging, those were some of the concerns that they had pointed out. But obviously, they didn't play out. There's theories of what the role that Shell, supposedly, allegedly played with regards to Kensa Ruiwa's death back then. But it is what it is, I guess. Moving on to our next uptrending story. It's about roads. If you're a road user in Nigeria, get ready to pay about 200 nara for your vehicle, plane roads in the country. And trucks will have to go ahead and pay about 500 nara. This is a new policy that the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatinde Fashala, announced on Wednesday yesterday. He says that it's a new policy approved by the Federal Executive Council for tollgates across the country. And he basically explained that this is part of concessionaires' policy to recoup investments. And that's under a new arrangement with the Highways Development and Management Initiative. And remember, we spoke about this a few weeks ago, maybe with Tagule, I'm talking about boring loans from China and these other countries to help us build our rail and road infrastructure. And how these monies will be recouped and talked about basically making sure that people pay tolls on these roads. That's the issue here, the fact that at the end of the day, it is Nigerians who seem to now bear the brunt of this, you now ensure that the federal government pays back and people also express concerns, how safe really are the roads? When you look at the road infrastructure across the country, which roads do you see have been constructed in recent time? Well, some roads have been constructed and then one small rain falls and everything just dilapidates, everything just gets destroyed by the flood. So it makes you want to ask questions about the longevity, the durability of these roads, what kind of materials are they using, you know, the skills of these road workers. And really, if these roads have been built to the best quality, I don't feel that Nigerians would have any course to complain about these roads infrastructure or saying they're not going to pay the toll gates. But the fact that we've seen time and time again that these roads are not durable, the roads get bad in just a few months, a few years and then you have to pay tolls on these roads, I feel that's really where the grievance of Nigerians are coming from. The good thing with this story is at the end of it, it says that the ministers noted that the toll in wouldn't start until the roads are fully motorable. And I like that you've pointed out the fact that we never really have proper auditing with regards to quality of infrastructure that is built every now and then. People have questioned the type of trains that have been built out of, you know, Abujakaduna and the rest that keep breaking down every now and then. One flood made, you know, the railway just clogged up and a rail that should be light speed became slippery. So people have questioned that, you know, and I've always mentioned the fact that we don't have that level of quality control. When you hear that a government has, you know, awarded a contract, you know, for, you know, a school, for example, you know, nobody really looks closely at the contract details and what were the requirements in that contract, you know, to compare that with the quality of school that was built. I'm just using school as an example. So it's pretty much the same thing with roads. When, you know, a governor, what's a contract, you know, to build roads and the roads are built and they, you know, get damaged in eight months or in one year, there's no questions are actually and nobody needs, nobody, you know, gets to actually answer, you know, deep questions about why, you know, it was that quality. So there is that angle. But I've always agreed with the fact that we need some level of public-private partnerships in order to build infrastructure in Nigeria. If the government cannot fully fund certain, you know, types of infrastructure, structural development, then of course we need PPPM agreements to get that done. So yes, with roads, yes, with transportation, yes, with healthcare, with every other thing. And if we get to that point where these things are properly and, you know, were very well built, I don't think Nigerians, like you mentioned, would have any challenge paying 200 nair to pass, you know, a toll gate or 500 nair for a truck, that's what it says. But once again, according to the minister, these, you know, tolls are not going to start until the roads are motorable. We just hope that they will actually go through with fixing all these very, very important roads for transit, for traveling across Nigeria. And before, of course, you ask people to pay for them. All right, so finally on top trending, if you're a supporter of former Lagos governor, well, I'm a tunable for presidents in 2023. Chiefs of the People's Democratic Party, PPP body George says something is wrong with you. I mean, that's a statement he made yesterday, saying that all supporters of tunable need to get their head checked and that, you know, he's not fit to be, tunable is not fit to be president and if tunable becomes president, he will leave the country because he can never be a citizen of Nigeria under tunable. That really is the story there. Oh, well, there's always that narrative that there's no permanent friend or foe in politics. When these two people, of course, have their issues, you know, it's best to just stay out of it because eventually the Nigerian people have gotten to realize that, you know, it's not really about them. You know, it's about personal relationships and political gains, you know, from one place or the other. But the George himself, I think I remember him saying that he was going to leave Nigeria if, you know, a particular person won the election, he's still in Nigeria. No place like Nigeria. But, you know, it's actually a genuine concern when people say, you know, how much did you gain, you know, how much did you give, did Lagos benefit from, you know, tunable's time as governor and if he is currently outside Nigeria receiving medical care, does it mean that there was no hospital built in Lagos at the time that he was governor to ensure that every other person can benefit from, you know, proper health care? All right. All right. We'll take a break here and return, shortly, stay with us.