 As we anticipate the commencement of a new leadership in Nigeria, tonight we'll take a look at the changing political environment and the effects on the insurance industry. And Labour Party condemns invasion and occupation of party secretariat in Oweri. We will be discussing with members of the party in a more state and we'll be talking on the crisis and plans for the primaries. This is Plus Politics. My name is Nyam Gul Aghaji. As Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria prepares for the commencement of a new administration. The changing political atmosphere may have affected various sectors of the economy, coupled with ethnicity, tension, religion and quest for validity of various parties. One sector which may have been notably affected is the insurance industry. One of the most notable highlights of the industry in 2022 was the increase in third party motor insurance policy rates by the National Insurance Commission, NICOM, the Apex regulator on 22nd of December 2022. Now joining us to discuss this live, the effects of the changing environment we'll have on Nigerian insurance is Mr. Ebose Augustin Osega, CEO of Angkor Insurance and the Insurance Man of the Year. Good evening and welcome to the program. Yeah, what does that even mean? Insurance Man of the Year. Tell us a little bit. Why do you think you got to these Apex? You got to these points where you were recognized by the body of this award-giving body. You were in the same room with the governor receiving awards on the same day and all that. So how does it feel and how did you get here? Well, first of foremost, I want to thank you very sincerely for inviting me this evening. You see, when you are working and you're trying to do the best you can in life, we don't know people are watching you. We have started our, I came to the insurance from the beginning, and we'll try to see what we can do to any living. We're never looking at going to the Apex or the ladder. But just for survival. But when you do that, you find out that this is something you could do. And the interests come to come, especially when you see that you are any living and the life is becoming very, and the opportunities are there for the take. Then what you do is to grab opportunity. So that's how we find ourselves. And they all work in them. People are recognizing you and see what you are doing and say, this might be really something differently. But sometimes you ask yourself, what am I doing differently? I said, yeah, what is just coming in? I was at home and somebody called me and said, I saw your name on the internet that you nominated as the CEO of the year on insurance category. I said, really? I thought it was fake until I got a call and that was it. They would thank God for that. And I also thank my organization for giving me the opportunity to do so. Okay. Well, everything we do in life is tied to some kind of politics because there is policy that needs to be made by the policy makers who eventually are politicians most of the time and all that. And so we are really concerned. When we think about revamping the Nigerian spirit, the Nigerian nation, the people of Nigeria, we think about all the sectors. Today, eventually, we're talking to the insurance company CEO of the year, insurance CEO of the year. Now, my concern is, and I've had this concern for some time now, in a country like ours where everything is not my portion, you know what I mean? You tell someone to do insurance for the car, not my portion. You are telling me I will get accident? It will not happen to me and all that. They seem over the years to be this attitude of our people to drag their feet when it comes to insurance. They just want to survive by God's mercy and all that. So how are you finding our society, you know, how is the response to having insurance policies, joining the train of people who recognize the importance of insurance and all that in Nigeria? Well, sometimes it's not what we talk about culture. The Nigerians, as it takes, are the Nigerian people. These countries are, we are Nigerians. The Nigerian insurance industry is in Nigeria. We are not different from ourselves. The attitude of insurance has to do with the way our economy evolved. If you go to countries like Botswana, Namibia, you find out that the rate and the penetration of insurance there is higher than in Nigeria. Meanwhile, we have a higher population. We have more resources. We have more awareness in terms of human capacity. Or you find out that the insurance penetration in this country is very low. I think that's what we government legislation. If you want anything in the country, just within our family cycle, because there's a tendency, you want your family. This is how I want my children to look when they grow up. Then your insurance tends to be that aspect of development. I want my kids to be medical doctors when they grow up. I wanted to have this kind of discipline. But the Nigerian government, when this insurance came, or when the insurance was introduced to this country, we didn't accept it like we accepted banking. Or even look at banking, for example, you find out that a lot of people are not even putting money in the bank, keeping their money safe in the bank. The reason is that you find out that when the cashless last time, about a month ago, you find out that a lot of people have more money outside of the banking system. That is our insurance. It's our culture. And the government should do more by making the delivery plan too. See, we must have insurance. Okay, we'll come to what the government will do. But what is the insurance sector itself? What are the insurance companies doing to carry this awareness to the people? Because there's been this argument that the insurance companies like the ignorance of the people. For instance, a lot of people who even have this insurance don't know what they need to do in the case where they should go claim their rights and all that. I give you an instance, on the streets of Lagos, most times we see traffic, not because of anything, but because somebody somewhere has crashed someone, a thing that they could have just put a call through, maybe, to an insurance company, give evidence and do all the things that they're supposed to do and claim whatever they need to claim. I don't know so much about insurance, but I think there is insurance that if you are in a tight situation, the insurance company bills you out. That's a layman's way of explaining it. But people do not even know, even when they have this insurance. So people have argued that the insurance companies are happy that if you are supposed to cash out, permit the word and you are not able to go because you don't know your rights, they make the money and you stay ignorant. So what are you doing to debunk that? What are you doing to educate the people so that people will not see you as people who are comfortable with us being ignorant? How does the ignorance benefit insurance companies? Their money will still remain in your coffers. If the people live in ignorance, how do you even develop the economy? Insurance is supposed to be the subsetter that will prepare the growth of an economy in the country. So why are we going to show ignorance to people that are you sure those people who had their car, who had that accident, the cars were insured? You know, sometimes we just believe that the insurance company, the workability of insurance company, or the functionality of insurance company is a mere word. The people just say them because they don't face reality. I'm going to show you that he's talking to me, whether you have insurance policies that you have that, you have me turned down when you have claims. Ignorance, because if the word lives in ignorance, what the essence of what I was going to school is to cure ignorance. So why do you not want to get educated or go to school to study insurance or set up an insurance company? But do you do anything deliberately to educate the people? No, what comes first? Is it the claim? Someone doesn't even know he needs to claim that. On the most serious note, we have the insurance company in the last five years, or last 10 years, I would say, has over a way in terms of trying to educate the Nigerian populace to take up insurance policies. I'm very sure you see a lot of media attention, even the NHIS, especially in the time of the passage of government. When it raises up the standard of work, every household in this country should have an insurance policy. Even legacy government, that any building that has a copilot ability, that has a story building of the floor, must have insurance. And if you want to build, if you want to have any property construction, you must have a CR, which is called construction or risk, before you can even commence those policies. Those things are in practice, but just that the English one you talk about, nobody has gone to say, how does this work? And you see most educated people, because insurance policy, you talked about people saying, oh, God, our life is in the hands of God. They don't do anything about it. But when issues come up, the blame insurance company, oh, I'm not aware, I don't want to do this, I don't want to do that. Believing, not believing that the policies of insurance is for the benefit of the few, of the few. You don't expect to put insurance policy. Let me tell you something very, very important. Somebody came to me one day and said, look, I show a car, my policy expired in the next few days. I have no hard claim. Can I have my money back? It's part of the ignorance you talked about. People don't look at policies. People don't take time to look at issues. Is the cultural awareness or the tradition of our country that we're always believing that things do not matter? And it's always a problem. You know, it's also akin to the theory of Socrates where he said, man, don't die self. Once you recognize your environment, even medical checkup, a lot of people don't go for it. Yeah, okay. I needed to get that out because when we begin to talk about what the government needs to do, we need also to know what we have done or what we plan to do. And in this case that we were talking about is the insurance companies, the insurance sector. So we needed to know that. Now we are going to have a new government come May 29. And we need to shape the policies that make our people behave the way they behave and change a direction of doing things. Now in the past, insurance companies, insurance sector, how do I call it, may have suffered a few things because of policies of government. We'd like to know what kind of policies you look forward to being put by the next administration that will make the insurance sector to thrive and the people of Nigeria to benefit. Yeah, thank you very much. Before I answer your question, let me go to, because you asked a question, what the insurance company has been doing in terms of trying to have this penetration. We, the insurance company, as a matter of, we've gone to the National Assembly to make sure that there is legislation, the liberal tone, to make sure that every person in this country have one form of insurance or the other. And we have also, as either individually or togetherly, gone out to see, look, there's advert on radio, Jingo, newspaper advert, like what I'm doing here today. It's part of creating our awareness within the insurance space. Personally, I call insurance, we go to CNN and other stations. You find out that we have a lot of commercial, all for people to get our awareness to understand the insurance part. Yes, because you have not decided to insure your office. It's a do me or do you think, right? So it's a do me or do you think. Then we talk about that at this time. Okay, go ahead. So these are some of the things that we are doing. The insurance company, especially the President, Commissioner of Insurance, has really done so much. And especially the Chairman of the President's one, we are doing a whole lot in terms of trying to educate our people to understand that the insurance is all that we need. And it's even more reasonable to have insurance than even bank. Because when you have issues, it's insurance that comes to, that puts you back to the state where before your loss. They're coming to the new government that is coming to power or what we expect to see. Everybody in this country is, what is the essence of government? It's to provide security and happiness. But for me, happiness is much more of it. Because if you are happy, that means there's security, the environment is okay, the process or the administration or that same economy is okay, the culture of the people is evolving. I think about everything around is, there's functionality of the state and functionality of the system. The, this president government, for me, to them, is, the coming government is, first, it must create that a broad economic base where every economy functionalities are working. The banking, the agricultural sector, the oil and gas, there should be more openness and transparency in terms of how we deal with the people. You cannot, and the exchange rate for us, for example, if I tell you the losses we have made in terms of insurance, how much money we have spent. In terms of trying to do our security in terms of insurance abroad. Imagine what the exchange rate is and what you have here. The dollar exchange, you have to insure abroad with the lowest and other companies abroad because some of the policies we cannot keep here. All but that we seem not having much of that in terms of being those heavy risks when they come. You have to take them abroad and imagine what that would cost us. If you have a policy that is about $3,000, for example, and how much money will you translate to have that? And if you come back to say you talk about the third party increment, the claims that comes from third party, if I tell you we want to know, why are you saying that the insurance company, that the populace are not aware about insurance policy? It's like people like you that are not aware or who refuse to know because you refuse to benefit from insurance. But I am telling you Nigerians are actually coming now to understand that insurance workability, not just workability is functional. So we take it that those people who resort to fisticuffs on the road are people who may not have insurance policies. They may not have insurance policies or even when they have insurance policies, you know, no matter how educated you are, you maybe you go in some way and there are hydrances, you also come to the, there is a normal human reaction to say, oh, you hit my car, I have to park, we have to exchange addresses and other. It's a bad civility to understand that look, if I have a policy, I don't know to quarrel about anything or you need to call a insurance company. We pay claims every day. Every day we pay claims. During the cashless issue that we have in the country, the claims are entered from the, even the estimated value is over 20 billion. Interesting. You mentioned about interaction with the National Assembly. Regarding some policies that need to be put in place and all that, how far is that and how far do you intend to take this advocacy to them, especially the 10th Assembly that is coming? Well, the outgoing Assembly, I know that has passed second reading. I don't know where it is at the moment, but it has passed second reading. Maybe when it reconvies to be passed, but it's our hope that this night assembly, we pass that to law, we do it with it so that the president can sign to law before they leave the office. But if that doesn't happen, the incoming president is somebody who has also introduced policies of assurance in Lagos State, even when it was the governor of Lagos State, which the administration of Lagos State is carrying on. I hope that also extends to the federal states so that we can have this robust assurance policies, where there are policies deliberately by government to ensure that assurance policy, like what is done to banking, Libyan, we can't hope that, even if you must all sound like a broken record, that these policies are things that must be hearing. Because what you give is what you get. If you do not insure, you do not have anything to fall back on. Assurance is something that bring ultimate happiness, even when you make losses. Even when you lose your loved ones, your life doesn't have to stop. And when you have life policies, your life doesn't have to stop. If you have an educational plan for your children, even when you go, the assurance will come very handy. And this is what has brought happiness to many homes. But not to a lot of persons, they just feel that assurance is not something that works. But I'll tell you, my brother, it's something that works so much that even me as an insurance person, I have benefits. Recently, I had my car accedented and it was fixed without any question. And these are some of the things we also want to encourage in insurance that this administration that is coming in, should the National Assembly, even the National Assembly, they should come out and talk about insurance, not just talking about it for the sake of insurance. But for me, no, let me tell you something. The National Insurance Company has a way, they have remittances developing the economy because we also contribute. We pay taxes, we do a sort of, imagine all insurance, 240 million insurance, have one form of policy or the other. And for every returns that goes back to governments about 1%, imagine what the government will raise from insurance policies for the development, even taxes that come from insurance company. Now this year, we've crossed about 780 billion premium income for 2022. You can imagine the amount of taxes that VAT or normal taxes are going, additional tax that will come back from insurance policies. The more policies we have, the more robust the economy will be. Insurance sources also be like the like subset of the economy where people don't return their way. If you go to that part of the country, even Togo here, if you do not have insurance, you don't have to offer. In terms of your driving, in terms of your policies, even going to the bank. Okay, well, to say our economy is in bad shape, we wouldn't know, some of us who are not economists know that, but we do know that life is not very easy with us. So we're attributing that to the economy. Now the incoming administration will have to do a little bit of a shake here and there for the economy to thrive if you were to advise saying incoming government, what would you say? Well, for me, as an insurance practitioner, insurance should be encouraged because let me tell you what the issue is. Most of the issues we have is the recurrent expenditures that comes things that you have done. You go back redoing them after the other, not opening a salary, I'm not opening a bar. Imagine the house of a government government and you have to go to another budgetary location to put it again. When you can push your hand to your insurance companies and ask them for claims. I don't want to mention these things. I traveled one time, I went to, I got to a state and saw the government building very dilapidated and I was asking why it was fire outbreak that happened sometimes in January. And I asked why I was in office. Luckily enough, I was going to have a meeting with the assailancy of the state, the governor of the state and when I met him I said, I'm here to discuss insurance with you but I'm coming, something touched me that I feel so bad. And the governor is very educated who understands insurance even some of them read abroad who understand the police of insurance that even before you go to an university you must have insurance policy for you to study, for you to add up life policy within the school domain. And I asked the assailancy I said why is that building lying fallow? He said because the national assembly they have to come out to make budget, supplementary budget for them to appeal by the police. I said that was wrong. The policy what you spend to do that is going to be much more higher than the amount of money that was used to build it because the building was there a long time ago. But it's something that you just insured and placed on a certain amount of money. All insurance companies needs to all you need to do is to inform your insurance company my house is on fire. In three weeks or four weeks you will see that house standing back interesting. Well you've heard it Nigerians the next government is coming in and we're talking about our economy one of the things that is very worrisome is the way the economy is. We talk about security we talk economy we talk education and so many other things that bother us. And one of the aspects of this economy that needs to be touched according to Mr. Osega is insurance and everybody who is coming back coming to be at the helm of affairs you take it really seriously so that our economy can grow. So let's just assume that you are having this meeting with all the governors and the president or that is coming in the people that are coming in just tell them as a final word what they need to do specifics of things that they need to do in as long as or as short as two minutes. For me they need to look at the culture of the society. Look at the initiative process of the country restructuring in terms of restructuring the economic indices and also be very keen to look at to look at the geography the geography when I mean geography I mean places if you have the nut you have more agriculture if you come to the south a lot of crops go in but we are so blessed in this country that there is so much resources. Then we talk about economic homogeneity what I'm talking about the cage analysis that that should be the basis of this government my advice they should operate so that we can have this economic homogeneity because if that happens there's improvement economic insecurity development for sure development all those things we take place we should look in world and do away with the idea that I don't want to build on world or other government there are many things this government have done that are very beautiful that you have to look in the cell okay no matter how it is there's only to set up in another foundation that when you not complete foundation you already have so this is better you look at where we're coming from where we are where we are going you see the the most intriguing things about about life itself is that you must ask some certain question where how when these are basic questions this government should ask before the for the coming to taking some decisions that will affect the populace if we have places in Nigeria that has to do with diversification of the economy it's also very very important because we can only put all our eggs in one basket as a people and begin to look at that whatever encourage other place of education and more so education infrastructure development education is very important our team use out of school children those issues are something we need to also address the more development the more infrastructure the more education the more insurance and more policies we want to write so at the end of the day we are concerned about those in this so grow all in this is this will be functionality of the economy not one set about a 30 the economy so that the populace can have peace and we cannot live enjoy this okay all right we've been talking with Mr Eboce Augustin Osega CEO uncle insurance and the insurance man of the year giving us pointers how economy can be revamped and Nigeria can move from strength to strength we'd like to thank you so much sir for coming on the program and once again congratulations for the award that you won thank you very much thank you for having me I really appreciate this opportunity we'll take a short break and when we return we will be looking at the political embryo in emo states stay with us