 Okay, it's time for After Press, and we want to take a look at those headlines. I made it to the front pages of some national dailies. And I've been joined by my guest, Jida Johnson, Chief Lecturer at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism here in Lagos. Good morning to you, Mr. Johnson. Good morning and good morning to our viewers. All over the world, it's a pleasure to be with you. Thank God it's Friday. Pleasure to have you. Thank God it's Friday. Let's begin with the punch newspaper. And it relates with indefinite strike. Labour protests as FG threatens union leaders with contempt charge. The writers there threat won't deter us. We are no coward, says TUCVP. Governors ask NLC to share of strike. AG have said strike could be contempt of court. Let's begin with that. So NLC is set for the murder of all strikes on the 3rd of October. Well, what an independence gift that both the government and the NLC would be giving to Nigeria on our 63rd day as an independent country. The question is actually, are we truly independent? That's another conversation, another discussion for another day. However, on the issue of this strike, I think that government and liberal should be able to find a common ground. I've said it, this is my position and this is my argument. Look, strike has never solved any problem at the end of the day. Both war and parties usually come to the negotiating table to resolve whatever differences they have. At the end of the day, no matter how long strikes take. However, it would be better for them to come to the table in the short run and resolve the issue. But the challenge we have is that those in authority assume, particularly in government, assume a role of people that cannot be questioned. Before they start negotiating with people and my advice for liberal is that they should understand the government they are dealing with. The Lagos State Civil Service Union used to be the most active, the most vibrant. In actual fact, the strike was not successful in the past, particularly under military regime. With that Lagos playing, even when the federal capital was in Lagos, with that Lagos playing a prominent role. Now Lagos State Civil Service Union is the most moribund you can ever think of in Nigeria. The death knell of Lagos State Civil Service happened when the president was the governor of Lagos State. If you recall, if you're a student of history, you remember Akele of blessed memory, who happens to be the leader of Lagos State Civil Service. We knew what happened. So the Nigerian Liberal Congress should understand that they are dealing with an old fox and they should know that if they are dealing with an old fox, they should know how to go about the strike. Secondly, the other parties that try to be successful, the student union, the student union bodies, they are no longer in existence. All student union bodies are an extension of the office of the vice-counselor. What has happened to organized civil society? Majority of the members of the organized civil society either have become ministers or have become commissioners or have become consulters to government. This time, Mr. Johnson, this time TUC is joining NLC. So it looks like it's going to be stronger this time than the one in strikes and all that's happened in recent times with NLC. If you understand the attempt of government to create TUC, in the past you used to have NLC. Now you have the further division of the umbrella budget for NLC being divided into two. As far as I'm concerned, I don't think strikes are a problem, that's my take. Because number four, who are those that will benefit more from strikes? Is the civil servants, what is the percentage of the number of civil servants you have in the country? Majority of Nigerians are self-employed. So at the end of the civil servants that go on strike would get their money in terms of their outstanding treatment which would be paid at the end of the strike. But what happens to that woman operating at a small stall that survives on dealing with subsistence? What happens to that person that operates his own private business? It does not get any leave packet from government. So strike for me is not the way of dealing with Nigerian leaders that do not respect public opinion, that you don't care about public perception. Okay, so I hear you on that. I hear you on that. I hear your argument. So what would you suggest to NLC and TUC? If they don't go on strike, which is what they seem to know, and they are saying the negotiations, the dialogues they've had with government has not been productive. In fact, they are accusing the government of insensitivity. What would you advise them to do so that they don't go on strike and yet achieve what they need from the government? For example, you saw a drama that took place at the office of the minister of works yesterday where the staff went down tools and then they locked the minister himself. In the office, we call out those that are operating in a sensitive position to go to work and not to do anything that you can down tools without going on strike. You can down tools, you rent them, you shut down the government, you shut down the government, all your staff in various offices that are strategic and important. You ask them not to go to work up here in Europe, you just down tools and you ensure that these government offices do not function properly. That's one way of dealing with that. For example, if your staff prevents the minister from assessing the office, if they present the ministers from assessing the office and wait for MDAs from assessing the office, that should be the starting point, rather than asking us to go on a full-blown strike which affects people that lose on the release of assistance and make their money from release of assistance. That's my view. It might not be right in the eyes of some people, but I think that usually in the long run, it is the people in the informal sector that suffers most from the strike, people in the informal sector don't actually suffer too much like we do in the informal sector. The informal sector is immediate employers of labor for a lot of Nigerians. Indeed. Alright, so let's move on to this story which you already alluded to, what happened yesterday with the minister of labor. You have the picture there on front of the point in his paper where you have the workers who were locked out and who eventually locked the minister in. He's received knocks and commendations. What are you giving him, knocks or commendations? He got to the office at 9.30. He got to the office at 9.30 and discovered that many people hadn't come to work and said, okay, this is in discipline, this should no longer go on and shuts the gate. Some are saying he should have done it differently and some are saying no, it's time for discipline to begin to be seen to come to play. Well, it's not the military regime and their civil service process and procedure. I'm sure he must have observed that over time and what did he do concerning that? Did he ask the permanent secretary or the director of admin to issue query or to issue a memo to that effect that subsequently anybody that comes late, discipline and action will be taken against them. If you understand that it's no longer a government that rules by fear, you know we have it on record that allegedly that staff in a born state who came late at one point in time were whipped with king by something for coming late and this is not a born state. This is the federal capital territory. So at this level, it's not an improv, it's not a dictator, it's not a military administrator. There are processes and procedures. The fact that they come late, what steps are you taking internally before you take that action? I think that you should have left that for the DFA. Probably all those that came late, their names should have been taken and they should have been given query to answer query and we take discipline and measures to address other than going for these photo ops that has created a negative image good for himself and good for the workers. I think that those who are given responsibility of authority should understand the leadership that comes with whatever responsibility you have given to them. As far as I'm concerned, I'm against locking workers out. You could deal with it better. You give them query or you send the memo before you take this drastic, drastic, drastic, drastic, drastic action and then they start themselves also locking in. So two wrongs are not making right. If I were to be the minister, I wouldn't adopt that approach in the first instance. I would have called the management meeting. In the management meeting, we discussed that issue and when we discussed that issue, we issued memo to that effect. The memo is yielded to all departments within the ministry and anybody that falls foul, this is what I measure will be said and that person will be tried other than locking them out and creating impact optics for himself, for the ministry. Some work with other disability boards. You don't use two wrongs. You don't use another wrong to correct your wrong. They are processes and they are procedural to deal with that matter. In fact, it believes the minister to be the one giving their directive. What are his directors doing to that effect? It means for me, if I were to be in this position, the person I would query would be the director of administration. I would query the director of the administration. I would query the minister, the permanent secretary because I would say these are the things that are happening in the ministry and you are there, you are not doing your job. And he said that we will even achieve more effect than for the minister to consider himself to the level of being a janitor. The role he played was the role of a janitor and not the role of a minister. Okay, let's look at some other headlines on, let's go to above the masthead. There you have academic record, article as called to overrule Chinubu's objection. You have telcos plan different tariffs for calls, data in states. Then you have CBN will spend $3 billion loan to stabilize economy. Let's start with the story that has to do with the president and the opposition. Former president Artico Abubaka, what's your take on that? Well, it's good for you to explore all means to get to the truth or to get to the bottom of whatever matter they are interested in. And he was an interested party in the presidential election and he's exploring whatever means to gain an advantage over someone that has been declared as the winner of the election by the electoral body and by the first by the first court of instance, which is the appeal. As far as I'm concerned, if you ask me about my own academic record, they are there in the public domain. The moment you offer yourself a public service, your academic record should be in the public domain. I don't see any drama around it. If I were to be the president or if I were to be one of the minders of the president, I would just tell them, let's leave this goes to rest. This thing has been ongoing since 1999, 1999 to 2022, it's 24 years, 24 years. So let's leave this goes to rest once and for all. There's no need for us to raise any objection. If indeed our records are clean, we just throw it out in the public domain and you leave this particular goes to rest other than be subjecting Nigeria to ridicule whether you like it or not. But this has created a negative impression about the totality of the credentials of Nigerians, regardless of whichever works of life you belong to, because if someone is questioning the credentials, the authenticity of the credentials of the president, who happens to be the number one image maker of the country, then what happens to every Nigerian? So whatever any Nigerian is facing with respect to his credentials, he or she should understand that this is a fallout of us not being transparent and not being open with our credentials. And if you go ahead, the president, in my opinion, she just would use this record and once and for all, clear his name and all this cloud around his identity, around his gender and all of this would be cleared once and for all. And then he can focus on governance. Indeed. And then, it's a major distraction. If you think it's not, they're not being distracted. It's a lot. If you have ever faced any crisis in your life, you understand what major distraction it has on you in terms of the everybody that places on you emotionally, physically, psychologically, and mentally, not to add the financial implication of all of this. Indeed, it has been quite distracting, not just for the president, but for Nigerians. You know, it's been a huge distraction. And no doubt, Atiku Abubaka is aiming for something. He knows what he's looking for. We don't know. We're just waiting to see how the court is going to rule on it and what's going to come out of it. And as you have said, the president is most likely very, very distracted by this whole thing. And we want to see an end to it so that we can move to more important and serious issues. Telcos are planning different tariffs for calls and data in states. It's unfortunate that I was in a fall last week. And then when we go to the premises of federal police technical fire, we don't have service. I was talking to my friend and I said, you know what? The telcos industry have become so far that they are not even extending their services to other parts of the country, like they used to do, like they were doing when the money came into the country, that they had more than enough. You have yourself this question, how much do we spend on data on monthly basis? If you look at the amount of money we spend on data compared to the amount of money we spend on calls, you discover that the amount of money we are using to buy data is a lot. We have been ripped off. And then the regulatory body, the NCC, and then the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, whatever name they call the ministry now, they are not doing enough in terms of oversight function. They are doing the National Assembly that is meant to do an oversight function to ensure that Nigerians are protected from exploitation. They are not doing that. And it's very, very clear that we have been exploited. I must tell you for a fact, how do you justify the amount of money you used to buy gigabytes of data? And then before you know it, it's like there's a spirit that wipes out the data. I recall one of my putuji travel to United Kingdom just this month and then he got to United Kingdom and we got on the sets. I bought about five gigabytes of data and I've been using the five gigabytes of data since, what is the difference between the five gigabytes of data in United Kingdom with the five gigabytes of data in Nigeria? I said I don't know. He said I've watched movies, I've downloaded a lot of things which I can do within the drinkable of a night. Those gigabytes of data will be exhausted in Nigeria. So I think that the government, you see all of this body, you are imposing on Nigerians, you are increasing electricity, you have removed subsidy on petroleum products, you have introduced new forms of taxation and then you are now bringing in the credit goes to looking for opportunities to add to the bodies that Nigerians are going to work. What we have was if at the end of the day you stifle Nigerians, you morsel the ox, I don't know what productivity you get from Nigerians that you have rendered useless by taxing them with whichever opportunity you have. Okay, so I just want to add the other ones but we won't discuss them. We'll just go to the next newspaper. But still on the punch newspaper you have Ongo MPC PDP Confident as Tribunal Rules on Saturday, Oshun Accident, five Lautec students driver burnt to death, very sad story there, and FG targets welding Nigerians in new tax drive. Let's move to the nation newspaper. The nation newspaper is leading with. Government, TUC, NLC, respect, court order, baron strike, AGF, rights unions, Falana, DSS, IGNSA, it's judicial terrorism, breach of rights, says labor. So we've talked on this. So let's move on to financial reforms ready for unveiling says Cardoso. Are you expectant? Well, for me, one experience that we are concerning commercial bankers. We have had two commercial bankers in the recent time heading. People with commercial bank experience come into a regulatory, you know, central bank is a regulatory agency and not a commercial bank. It's not a profit making agency compared to commercial banks. We have had two, we have had three, actually three. And the three, the two of the three, each will be the third one in recent time under this democratic dispensation. We had the president had crisis with him, with the former emir of emir of Karnu, Sanusil, Lamidu Sanusil, who was also remunerously removed. And now we had another, it's tenor was faced with one form of controversy or the other with other critical stakeholders and particularly with the president. We have also had emir feeling coming in, if with commercial bank experience, and now you are not coming with Cardoso also with, if you follow the senate screening, I want to salute the senator, representing a do not, former emir president for his question and for raising those issues. These are the critical issues which should raise when it comes to other regulatory, having people managing critical sector. You understand that the politicization of the central bank did not really help this country. There was a lot of mess that was created in the last nine years of emir feeling, emir feeling is a governorship of the central bank. And the other thing is, I don't know, I don't know how it came about. I thought that the, in doing the screening, the senators would have asked for the resignation letter of one of emir feeling and other members of his, of his, of his management team, the, nobody, nobody has seen the resignation letter of, of, of the former emir management team of, of the central bank. Everything that is done should be done in public domain, in, in, in, in with transparency. There shouldn't be anything done in, because it's done in the interest of Nigerian. So the circumstances surrounding the screening, the appointment of, of Cardoso is decided, is decided in ministry. And if it's decided in ministry and if that is the foundation, I can tell you that if something is fought with the foundation, the outcome of it will not, will not, will not be good. But let's keep our fingers crossed. Let's hope, let's hope that in this present central bank of now will not, will not be open to political influence and political interference that comes from, from the presidency. However, the removal of the former management team was an interference by the president because the due process was not followed. And his own appointment, too, was as a result of political interference. If you put it in, in proper, in proper perspective, but let's believe that it will end with this appointment and that it will not, it will be independent as required by the Sequoian Act to ensure that we have a better monitoring policy and then to ensure that it does not apply to the tombs, to the tombs of, of, of, of, of, of the presidency and other agencies within the presidency or other, other powerful people within the presidency and subject himself to the kind of influence that, um, immediately subjected himself to. You will recall that the governor of Edusty was pointing out that government was insolvent as far back as 2021 that we are printing money. We are printing money that government is printing money. I hope we will be bought enough to say, to, to resist any attempt of political interference and do the job which is, is meant to do because if, if the circumstances surrounding his, his appointment was based on the fact that the people occupied those offices resigned, the same approach they used to remove those that he succeeded might be used to remove him too. That's just, that's just the reason why as journalists we must ask questions and we must call for transparency and openness in the way things are done. Indeed, the question you've asked about the letter, the resignation letter of Amir Feli is quite on point. Um, we, we should have been shown that letter because you do remember that when he, he and his team were newly announced, people were saying are they acting because they needed the Senate to approve them. All right. All right. We are hearing also from the punch newspaper headline there that the CBN will be spending $3 billion loan to stabilize the economy. That's from neck. So still talking about Cado, so you're saying he should act independently independently. He should, you know, serve Nigeria and not the executive. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, um, what, what, um, that's what he should do because we need, we need, we need, we need, we need a better monetary policy and then central bank has a critical role to play in stabilizing the value of the era in ensuring you see when it becomes a regulatory role properly and that role is played properly. You can have control over the commercial banks. You can have control over the interest rates. Now if you have interest rates at single digit, not modern, not at single digit, then it, it means it easier for people running business to get credit. When you get credit, you are able to create better opportunities, job opportunities and you are able to, to, to build the economy and strengthen the network. But it's usually about people don't have access to credit and the inflation is, it's double digit. But then you have the challenges which you are having. It's because a monetary policy and a fiscal policy was not in, in alignment with one another under various administration and that's where we have found ourselves. We require money, we have found ourselves. It must, the central bank government must work in tandem with the minister of finance and both of them must be on the same page and work in a coordinated manner to ensure that both the fiscal policy and the monetary policy is running towards the same goal, not at cross purposes like we have under a various administration. And then we are going to talk about improvement in our economy. You can have, you can have economic good and not have economic development. Well, we've seen that under various economic growth without economic development. There is no basic thing you can point out to that actually had affected the human development index of Anabina and Nigeria in terms of their capital income and in terms of their standard of living because the standard of living under various administration has been taken to a big small loop because of the cost, cost of living. And if you look at the present situation of Anabina and Nigeria and you look at the various reforms, this new government is even bringing in, I can assure you that our standard of living is dropping lower and lower because the cost of living rises, the standard of living drops. That's reality. Indeed. Okay, let's move on to the next newspaper, The Guardian. The Guardian has the big story and details of it you find on pages four and five. Independence and vestry, tales of war, mixed opportunities, unmet expectations, 63 years on. You have a picture of former heads and presidents of this country and the map of Nigeria's turn to pieces and just being held by threat. Does this capture the Nigeria that you see? There's no doubt that we have enough freedom and potential. Nigeria has a lot of potential. There are a lot of opportunities in this country. The challenge we have heard is with leadership and if you look across the land and place, it's a... And that's why a lot of Nigerians think it's a no-place situation but I still believe that at the end of the day, once you go down in this place, you can't go down beyond down and if you stay down too long, after a while you begin to rise again. Some of us believe strongly, it might not be in our lifetime, it might be in the twilight of our lifetime, the Nigeria will surely be great. Because if you look at it, in actual sense, if you look at those pictures, it's the same set of people that have been ruling this country. We have been unfortunate with leadership and we have been unfortunate with the dash. That's the reality. And then if anybody is thinking about having an hope concerning the present arrangement, when we hope that God in his infinite minds will intervene because the same actors, let's take 24 years out of 63. The same actors that are at the national level now were actors at the state level in 1999. Majority of them were actors at the state level. They played critical role in national life. And after 24 years of democracy, we have started the journey of the 2050 year and we still find a no-place situation. That itself must have informed the president to have tied to his campaign as we need to go. But if you look at the policies that have been put in place and various revolutions that are coming here and there, I'm not to show the Nigerians have renewed withdrawals. But if you look at the story we read, retail cost trying to increase their drive across the states. As far as I'm concerned, a lot of things, every independence is a time for reflection. Could we have been better for us as a country as Nigerians? If you look at the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, look at the critical infrastructures that we have and look at, look, I see this. Majority of the infrastructure that you pointed out to in Lagos, for example, if you talk about Third Mellon Bridge, if you talk about National Theater, most of the infrastructure that I've done to monuments were built by the military regime. You are built by the military regime and then if you look at what is here in the last 24 years, what they've done with the resources we have had in the last 24 years, we begin to work for this country that if this trend should continue, definitely Nigeria will not be great. But we pray and hope that the present couple of leaders will have a change of heart. It's not too late. At 75 years, Ibrahim caught a new vision and then the vision was fulfilled in his lifetime, even though it took 25 years. So I still believe that the present leadership can cut a vision. We need a visionary leader, a selfless leader, a leader that is not interested in making money for himself. I've said it. You really want to develop this country. Look at the present group of leadership. How rich were they in 1999? If you look at everyone of them, what was their asset in 1990? And you compare the asset in 2023. Majority of them are wealthy people with no enterprise. In the 60s, in the 70s, in the 80s, it was commodity farmers that were rich in Nigeria. And those that were trading, those that were trading, they were the richest people in Nigeria. They were not politicians. But first of all, from 1990 to 2024, majority of the rich people in Nigeria are politicians. And those that enjoy political prudence. I think we need to have a rating. What was working for us at the dawn of our independence in the 50s and in the 60s and in the early 60s? What were we doing that was better than make Snider to compete favorably with foreign currency? What were the things that we were doing? Sometimes going forward and me going backward. No matter how long you are going, no matter how far you have traveled on the wrong journey, going forward is actually not making progress. Sometimes making progress on the wrong journey is going back. And probably we need to retrace our step and go back to do things that we used to do in the past. That really works for this country. Do you see this country moving forward without constitutional reform? Yeah, that costs for a proper restructuring. It costs for a proper restructuring. It costs for a proper restructuring. Do we need to go back to the parliamentary system of government? Do we need to go back to the parliamentary system of government? Do we need to go back to regional government? Let's say we have eight regions and not 36 states in the federation. And then we have centers. We have federal centers, unique legal centers and federal centers. And then probably you have western region. You have a region in the south south and then the north east. You know, I think there's a problem. There's a need for us to have a conversation. But I'm going to tell you this. And I'll say this without any apology. I think that what the lies we've been told lies by the progressive arm of the Nigerian politics over time. The Nigerian progressive politics have been doing for power since 1960. And then they discovered the best way for them to get power is for them to align with the conservative element of the north. I have seen that arrangement in 1999 with the formation of PDP. And we see the further reinforcement of that alignment in 2014 with the formation of ABC. And I tell you all the ideas that the progressive arm of the Nigerian politics have propagated since 1960. That they have propagated since 1980. That they have propagated in the fight for democracy. After the death of Abiola, they've not fulfilled one of it. They've not. Look, for example, let's talk about let's talk about true federalism. True federalism talks about the revolution of power to the local government. Who are those that killed that when Abiola was trying to do during the constitutional amendment in the night assembly? It was the progressive arm of the Nigerian politics. In the 21st century, the political state voted against it. The political state voted against it. Although the state voted against it. And you have 31 state voting points. The political state voted against it. The political state voted against it. And although Abiola had voted for even Nikiti had voted for local government reforms. That gives autonomy to local government. I will tell you that local government will have got their independence. They will have become a part and parcel of the 1999 constitution. But it is the progressive arm of Nigerian politics that led to the death. I'm waiting for the president. Because the president took Obasanjo to court when he was governor of the state. Over the creation of local government development council here. I'm waiting for the president to follow the bill that will give autonomy to the local government. Because he fought Obasanjo administration to a standstill. And he got his free judgment concerning that. I'm waiting for the president. And he actually says what he had expected of the president in his first 100 days in Obasanjo is for him to have put forward an executive bill giving autonomy to the local government. So we can't have the development without having any restructuring. Because you build on structure. If it is a structure of governance that determines, we have a unity structure now. And there can't be meaningful development. Because for anybody to get anything done, you have to get to Abuja. Oh wow. Happy independence in advance by the way. Happy independence. Oh God of creation. Direct and noble cause. Guide our leaders right. F, are you the true to know? You know why? The second standard is very very interesting. He said guide our leaders right. You need right leadership. Right leadership talks about vision. Vision. F, are you the true to know? Because you need you to to have a clear understanding and knowledge for them to do the right thing. And not an honesty to go. What do the political class do? Because the vision through ethnicity, through religion amongst us. So if you look at the second standard, which they don't actually recite in any case, they are always in a hurry because the second standard of Nigerian national is an indictment of the political class from local government to the federal government. It's an indictment. Well, thank you Jide Johnson for your time. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. Have a wonderful weekend. I wish you the same. Jide Johnson, chief lecturer and address to the journalism leg of state has been my guest on the press. We'll take a break now and come back with our first hot topic. Stay with us.