 ව කර යහඅaloneප පාප්කිකික්ස clanstrom් වන්සේකිකිකක්සමඣෙ ඔමත්ාකිස Ashuma AC Shooting voz grund se Applicants adaptations the English out it one తి఺్టి. స౜కరీకవానానిషికిస౹, అదిమాఖ్వదో్టఝరి. మసందా ఎదరైలి, వుపనుపె మస్� మఁపను స్పదయ్భఆ dry మమణసవ pleasure Carolyn ఇ మహస్ంభారాల౥సటుా better. the effect of the economic crunch, the policies sparked debate on social media, with many criticizing it. Defending the scheme to Numbu said, it believes in the, quote, efficacy of the cash transfer initiatives, adding that it will assist, quote, the most vulnerable segments of our population, on, quote. Meanwhile, for my deputy national publicity secretary of the All Progressive Congress, APC Timmy Frank has decried the worsening socioeconomic conditions of Nigerians under President Bola Numbu. Frank, in a statement issued on Monday, said Nigerians have faced the worst forms of economic hardships, pains, neglect and hunger in the last six months of Numbu's administration under any other time in the history of the nation. Joining us are economists, Shay Gushoputru and Mukhtar Mohamed. Gentlemen, welcome to Plus Politics. The pleasure. Thank you for having us. Let me start with you, Mukhtar. Mukhtar, somebody told me that if I thought things are scorching, down south, that I need to go to the north, where a liter of petrol is averaging about 720, 730, 900 per liter, where insecurity has literally put the productive machinery of the state into comatose. What would you want to tell us about the situation in the northern part of Nigeria as we speak? We know it is humongous, very big swats of territory, but at least you probably have a more functional understanding of the situation there than some of us in Lagos. Yes, definitely. I lived all my life in the north, half people in the north, my family house is in the north. So definitely I can rightly talk about what is happening in the north. The north has always been the poverty capital of Nigeria, no matter how anybody sees it. They must have benefited in terms of producing the president of Nigeria, or in terms of prosperity, the north has been backward, education, the backward. Out of the 20 million Nigerians that are added to poverty this year, I can tell you if you go to breaking down those data, or 15 million will come from the north. So it's not a good situation when you look at the north and the crisis that we faced here in northern Nigeria. But then again, it has to do with the political class and also lack of education, are all contributing factor that has well the north down. But again, you mentioned some of those things that you just mentioned insecurity. The north used to be the food basket of Nigeria. And today farmers can go to their farm because of insecurity. Even if you struggle to have children go to school now, they don't even want to go to school and their parents don't even want them to go to school. You remember the Alimagiri situation. It's not just Alimagiri situation. The number of children out of schools, even those that want to go to school, they can go to school because of insecurity. So when they talk about multi-dimensional poverty, I think that freeze is more common in the north than any other part of Nigeria. Thank you. Mr. Shokuto, the president using leveraging one of the most powerful tools of a presidency in any liberal democracy, preaching at Nigerian entrepreneurs not to exploit their fellow citizens because they want to over-profit here. How would you respond to that hesitation or that word of encouragement from the president? Well, there are several ways to provide leadership, especially economic leadership at a national level. And to be fair, moral situation is not necessarily an unheard of approach or an unheard of method. But it would always remain only that. It would always remain merely moral situation. It's one of the least effective ways that you could try to affect human behavior just to appeal to the sense of morality and appeal to the sense of right and wrong, maybe some sense of altruism that might exist somewhere within that balance. Very, very few human beings take decisions based on morality, especially when it comes to business. Businesses are run based on hard facts, economic considerations, economic factors, business considerations, business factors, financial considerations, financial factors. Things that would determine how much profit a business would make versus how much losses it would potentially make. Those are the things that most organizations would consider. In fact, if you take, if you then step beyond that, usually that would be the first layer of a decision criteria that people tend to follow when they want to make business decisions. Maybe you will then scale down a bit lower and say sometimes businesses may look at some social responsibility considerations and you find organizations on paying significant amounts of money into social corporate responsibility projects, all of that just to continue to show the world that their businesses have a human face. But when it comes to pricing of their products which have a direct bearing on the profitability of their businesses and therefore the long-term sustainability of those businesses, you will rarely find businesses listening to moral words, sermons if you like, from political leaders. It just won't happen. So the president asking businesses, business concerns, business people to not take advantage of the current situation and by overpricing their products and all of that. I'm sorry, it would always be nothing more than a sermon. People will do what they can do. People will believe they will do what they believe they need to do to survive one and they will then go ahead and do what they believe they can get away with even if it is beyond what they need to do to survive. And that's where the issue of regulation consumer protection, competition management would come in. The role of the president and the role of the presidency and the federal government cannot be in this very dire times cannot be to appeal to the morality of the business world. It has to be to provide a mixed balance of policy instruments, policy framework, legislation and regulation to manage how these businesses behave in these situations to ensure that they do not try to exploit citizens. You have to regulate. Let me go to your colleague now. Muqa, as a business person I filled my stock I got my stock when the Naira was $650-680 I am selling now and I can see that I can see that the Naira is well over 1000 Naira to a dollar and I will need to refill my stock. Should I still be selling at the price of I was selling when I brought in the goods at $680-680 and a friend of mine was actually telling me he said, well you know what all these platitudes he called it he said all these platitudes are not necessary because it is a reality out there that because of the poverty level of Nigerians there is even what that an average entrepreneur an average entrepreneur now is contending with what he called price resistance that even when the reality is slapping you in the face that you need to increase your price you just know that the market your customers may not be able to afford some of them are now selling our prices that we even take them out of the market because they may not be able to restore how would you respond to on the one hand the president's hesitation and the other hand the remark by this friend of mine whose name I don't want to disclose Muqta Thank you sir again I think Mr. Shergou have already said my mind and you also say it's an hesitation from the president economic does no answer to preaching economic's answer to policies we do the right policy you don't need to preach is garbage in garbage house demand and supply that's what you need to do so all these issues talking about market forces you came to power you made market forces to be very powerful you say you want to run capitalism and so market forces need to have the financing and they are having the financing and so what you need to do is to come up with policy that will make market forces begin to think about what they have in their financing then you decide the financing for them based on your policy so all what the president is saying and the president is a businessman he's been in business before he's been he worked in the business company issue no better no business will not take advantage of every situation like he said I buy a product at 600 and I know if I sell and I want to restock about 1000 so why should I continue to sell at 600 when I know that when I want to restock I want to maximize profit capitalism in business all about profit so if you see any loophole to maximize profit that's why you're in business so when people talk about morality in business morality in business is related is related because morality could be that I'm providing employment for a lot of Nigerians so that's my moral that's my moral standard so I need to make money to provide them to pay them good salaries so I don't believe in all these issues that say the businessmen are immoral that they create the jobs they know what they go through to create the jobs so you come up with your own policy to make them drive down prices it's only in Nigeria you get to hear something like price control price regulation you just get to do the right policies and everything with standard you get the right policy on there's regulation you need to regulate and in regulating you need to look at market forces you need to look at market demands you need to look at economic trends you need to look at microeconomy stability like in the estate that I said I stay at the point they said oh the low market people should not increase their charges and this and that but here the estate themselves were also increasing their own charges to landlords and tenants that are staying here so and now you are saying somebody else should not increase you know it doesn't work like that they say in the economic reality that you are going to that's what they are going to government has not been prudent and I expected a lot of prudency with the economic situation we are having in this country with the president but I am not seeing that yet where a country will go up with about four hundred four hundred and something delegates and you have to pounce up for a conference in Dubai that at the end of the day you will not be able to implement some of the policies that they are saying because you lack the technology you lack everything to make it work so when people begin to talk about morality or immorality in the business when they begin to ask them where is the morality there the morality for me is to provide you the morality for me is to make that you put food on somebody because government have not been able to do that and government all over the world do not do that either so I don't understand where the president is coming to say optality is all about taking advantage that is the truth that is the whole idea of capitalism every businessman that is why you see they will say it is tax-efficient every businessman don't want to pay the right tax if he has the means so he looked at other loopholes I am not able to pay so that is how it is globally that is the beauty of capitalism so as a government I think you need to put the right policy down you need to be market forces then in terms of market forces what policy are you putting to restrict market forces I don't think we should be covering ourselves about the exhortation of Mr President he needs to do the right Mr President let's get into some specifics now the president I want to believe maybe my summation my summary of the two opinions I am hearing from you may be wrong but I am hearing to gentlemen who are politely and respectfully saying that the president's enrichment or exhortation amounts to a kind of economics to profility that is not useful in economics in basic economics that you should be looking at policies and when you say you should be looking at policies one who is reporting like me or one who is where I am would say some economists those of you economists who are professionals they are celebrating some of these policies removal of subsidy deregulation or liberalization of the five window forex market but these are the policies that are now precipitating these circumstances that people find themselves Mr Shokutun how would you want to respond to that well you know this thing that you talk about will not go away anytime soon it's just the reality there is a divide amongst even policy experts as to the proprietary of these policies whether one whether they were necessary and two even if they were whether the timing was right three even if the timing was right whether the approach was right and you know you find people of very well respected members of different professions falling on either side of this conversation for me I have been very open very vocal about my opposition to the removal of subsidy from day one before now even the 2012 conversation I said subsidy was not a problem I still do not believe it it has been a problem I do not believe it I solved the problem and we can actually see the evidence seven months down the line almost seven months now down the line we can see that there hasn't been any savings in reality except if we just want to lie to ourselves what we have seen is that there has been an increase in FAC allocations as a result of the devaluation of the Nair and that gain for government unfortunately will not translate or percolate down to the population who are suffering from that very gain the other side of that sort who are suffering the effect of the other side of that sort so while the government is gaining in revenue let's even assume there is a savings in the subsidies right the populace who the subsidies who the subsidies were supposed to who the subsidy remover were supposed to help were supposed to create an environment and an economics environment where there can be development and progress and it can be better for them they are not seeing that and the reality is that those types of policies cannot result in the you know cannot achieve the result you expect them in the short term there are long term solutions to long term problems so when you implement policies like that you have to be prepared for the downside or the flip side and those flip sides come immediately the benefits come later so how do you transit your people from the immediate problems such that they will be around to benefit from the long term benefits that is where there is a cataclysmic failure on the part of government so far so look at the effect on inflation for example before the subsidy removal before the unification of the exchange rate and all of that inflation was already running out of control right and this was on the back of things that really were not local to Nigeria so if you look at inflation in the United States and the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, India even China over the last 2 years it had been rising but if you look at what has happened to inflation in the United States for example as of last year it was 8 points it got as high as 10 10% per annum guess how much inflation is today in the US 4.1 in the United Kingdom it's the same thing it was 8.7, 8.9 or there about last year were down to 5 and you can go across all the major developed economies around the world the inflation has been curtailed with the instrumentation of the instrumentality of very very clear policy initiatives that have curtailed this thing put it under control and it can continue with the economic development and economic growth programs that has not been the case in Nigeria so we were part of that entire global problem up until when the subsidy came up instead of us being able to curtail our inflation it's gone further out of control and when we hit 30 according to analysts we hit 30% before the end of this year so you can clearly see that the policies themselves may have been good the jury is still out we don't know but the immediate effect we obviously did not prepare for we did not think of how to manage those immediate effects to limit the damage it was going to have on the population who are already very very deeply impoverished and here we are today it's clear that the okay Mokta hello Mokta yes I'm here okay we have a situation where the president says it's very confident that the the palliative distribution of 15,000 to 15 million about you know about 11 to 12% of the multidimensionally poor Nigerians that it will go a long way to alleviate their circumstance or ameliorate their condition I see you smile I see you almost telling me politely that you this gentleman is this let me let you it's your question however seemingly saddening and funny it may seem how would you want to respond to that well cash transfer is the new way of addressing poverty but not the new way of addressing multidimensional poverty and then when you are looking at cash transfer cash transfer need to be done with data we need to ask ourselves where did we get this policy of cash and cash transfer that happened during the Asia economic especially in Bangladesh where they came up with this process of cash transfer and that work because of data that worked also in America also during the COVID-19 pandemics and you saw that you know people that collected wire fraud through all those processes that have been arrested because there is a system there is a structure in a country where you don't even know the number of poor people you don't even know the number of citizens you have population sensors have not been taking and in a country whereby the national bill of statistics came up with a new process of aligning poverty to mean that poverty is all about if you have a job for one day then for one hour you get a job that mean you have a job you could imagine what that means that mean every Nigerian that go to his site to work for one hour and that is not paid one hourly or day they say it's not employed so they calculate that under employment and by doing that it's only 3% of Nigerians are not employed so you can see a lot of things that happen because we don't have data now this policy have been hijacked by politicians all you need to do is to also think back about the trader money that was being distributed by the previous administration whereby the prime president went all around to give trader money how what has happened to that money it became a conduit for corruption it became a conduit to buy food for people to put for them so I don't actually believe in a cash transfer policy because we don't have the data to support that and again who is poor who is the poor of the poor because they said now in Nigeria we have a poor we show before the poor we have the poor of the poor before the poor so who is the poor of the poor and if you are transferring about $10,000, $15,000 how much will they be able to do that means it's not even up it's not even up to like $20 if you look at today's exchange rate so that's what you are transferring to individuals to make their living so I don't think that policy have worked I remember when the current minister came up and bet he said about it that the register was bad they have to clean up the register so they finish cleaning up the register and this thing normally get politicized because sometimes they say you are a member of APC you get the cash transfer it's chance to use that as a tool to win elections and opposition that are in opposition in the state but they are the ruling party in the centers also use that I can assure you that that will happen very soon in the due election you see that most of the cash transfer will be done during those periods so it's all about politicizing every good policy that we have in Nigeria and it's so so bad but again this policy has not worked because we don't have the data to back up what we are doing okay let me see Mr Shukutun is back now I shall go back okay okay Mukta as we speak apart from the cash transfer immediately after the subsidy removal we were hearing about the federal government are putting in place a very articulate policy to help in the conversion of vehicles especially mass transit vehicles here you go again here you go again we are turning this program to a comedy show that putting policies in place to help in the articulation of conversion especially of commercial vehicles from using 34 CFO PMS and diesel to using relatively lighter 4 CFO but still dirty but relatively cleaner CNG in particular because a litre equivalent of CNG is under 200 Naira and a litre of diesel is now 1,051,350 depending on location what's your take of how well the government has gone about implementing this policy have you seen any of those buses not quite maybe because maybe because I drive I don't take public transport I wouldn't know if those buses are if those buses are around the government would have made the noise I would have displayed it even in plus TV they would have made a paid atmosphere because that those buses are around it's only legal state government and it's a PPP policy whereby I think some of the vehicles some of the BLT buses were supposed to be by these and it was a PPP issue between the legal state government and the cooperation so those buses cannot come earlier than first quarter of next year so what it means is that the people will keep suffering until then we see when we talk about when you come up with policies when you have an impact on the people you come up with structural palliative you don't come up with a palliative and that is where I have an issue with labour I think labour should go for structural palliative such a palliative has to do with if you end more you have to pay us more now as we stand now the state, the federal government and the local government have collected more revenue than they have ever collected before and most of the states are still struggling to pay a living with 18000 naira minimum wage up to this moment if not they refuse to negotiate with labour and the federal government have been playing politics also with negotiating with labour to come up with a firm national minimum wage so that shows you that most of the issues that we are trying to do in terms of addressing the issues that brought about multi-dimensional providing we are paying this service to it if you talk about those buses we all know and they know that those buses cannot come in any time soon it takes a lot to get about a thousand of those buses to Nigeria so we have to wait and in our waiting what are the people enjoying outside of where the government telling us that today that they have about 250 they have about 250 billion subsidy of electricity we from is fantastic that is when you spend money like that it's also good because you are not just spending it to a few that benefited in the subsidy scheme but he is touching every Nigerian because every Nigerian that has power at a particular time is enjoying subsidy comparable to the subsidy that was being enjoyed by the few that had a cabal in the oil industry so I was a good advocate of the removal of subsidy and I see standard subsidy was a scam and that we can go on and on and talk about that like make you give you a lot of reason why I think subsidy was a scam now that the government policies they come up with why have we not seen those impacts like Mr. Shaykipont said to talk before he went on some of these policies are long-term driven but in the long-term what are you doing in the short-term you need to when you are trying to address policy you need to have the short-term in the long-term the middle-term and the short-term let's also give him the opportunity to catch up with some of the some of the things we have discussed in the lessons your colleague Shaykipont is of the belief that he has not seen any serious minded policy articulation to address especially the short-term short-term punitive effects of some of the policies of like subsidy removal like like forex liberalization of the how would you want to respond to that I did quite much a question especially the policy I said in your absence your colleague Mokta was saying that he agreed with you that the short-term plans to ameliorate the conditions of the citizenry have been so so lacking that even in these things we work in the long-term in the short-term is that the people have been thrown to the sharks so and I'm saying okay what are some of the ideas we shouldn't just be finger pointing now what are some of the ideas that somebody like you would read like to see I spoke with him concerning CNG and he asked me a frank question if I had seen those vehicles running on our streets probably would have not seen any and I don't even know where they will refuel if they put those buses on the streets but I would want to respond to the fact that I will also give some suggestions well the reality if we are being honest with ourselves that we can never we can't have a short-term response to a long-term problem a policy that is trying to provide a long-term short-term or long-term benefits to the entire country and the entire economy you can't have short-term measures that can ameliorate the effects it's practically impossible I have thought about this you can run all the models you want to run and you will find that in the end if you try whatever short-term measures you want to put in place to deal with the impact of this supposedly good policies the cost implications would rubbish the need to have taken those decisions in the first place the amount of money that you will need to spend to push in the impact of subsidy removal will be so high that removing the subsidies might have then become completely unnecessary if the argument from other quarters might be no that might not be true because you can spend if I'm saving 4 trillion naira per annum for example in subsidies and I spend 4 trillion naira this year and I spend 4 trillion naira next year to provide palliative so to speak at least if the implication of that is that in the third year by year three or by year four I am no longer spending that 4 trillion naira per annum then what I've done is that I've converted the subsidy I've converted that line item in my project that says subsidy I've converted it to different programs that are targeting the citizens and trying to push in the impact of the subsidies in the first year and the second year and then by the third year the 4 trillion that I was spending on subsidy or the 4 trillion I will be spending on palliative to be out of my budget entirely so I've spent two years trying to provide some sort of short term solutions to provide some sort of short term solutions while saving money for the fourth year so that is an argument however for me I don't think that there is any short term benefits or short term solutions to this subsidy problem or even to the exchange rate education policy I think what should have happened and this is the answer to your question what should have happened is that we should have taken a medium term outlook to the implementation of these policies and then use that medium term period to prepare for pushing in of the impact of these policies when they are eventually implemented so you give yourself two years for example so the president would have announced on May 29th and said we are planning to remove subsidies this is our target date and then between now and then we are going to deploy 20,000 CNG stations all across the country we are going to provide so so and so amount of money to the government so that people can then install solar panels in their businesses and their homes and offices with help from governments and so on so many other policies the policies you want to roll out give yourself time to buy them you go through the public procurement process buy them go through the public procurement process and then engage put that are going to be running it you know these things will take time it takes maybe let's say a year so you start that process begin to implement those things and then at a particular point you have some sort of hurdle or trigger point in the implementation program then you are ready then you can then announce subsidy is gone you define exchange rates and any other thing you want to do so by the time you are doing that you would have seen without having done those things would have been curtailed to a significant extent so we didn't do this and that's why we are seeing what is going on now we simply went ahead to lost our way through the problem now the argument some people will give is that if the president had made these types of announcements during his speech that would have given a warning to the cartels if it is a scam then there are obviously some scammers behind it so maybe that would have given a warning to these scammers and then they would have also had a counter initiative to sabotage the entire thing and all of that and my response to that has always been look this is all about leadership and will if you really really want to do these things it will do them regardless of whose talks it's bought and I think this is really where the problem is because what we have done is we looked at the lowest hanging in quotes we looked at the part of this resistance in quotes and in this situation the lowest hanging in quotes and the part of this resistance unfortunately is the people are the people of Nigeria who we know can do nothing they are powerless as against a few people who can sabotage the entire process of government let me put this follow up to Muhtar Muhtar you may want to say that you know what but the president made a reality that spoke to the fact that the subsidy budget was literally literally empty was going to be non-existent just about a month so the day he said subsidy was gone so even if you wanted the subsidy regime to continue the reality was such that the budgetary allocation could only last till the end of June when it was being sworn in on the 29th of May how would you respond to that well I think the president said it also in his speech that I mean later after we heard that that was not in his speech he decided to come up with it himself and he said it also he alluded to that he came up with that instead he was not in his original speech and that tells you that the policy makers like Mr. Shton said must have looked at it would have been thinking of coming up with policy on ground before you come up with the policy with the removal of subsidy but I for one like I said I felt that subsidy was not the motor economy in the long run and like he said that also has to do because government were not really in charge of subsidy because we didn't even know how how much subsidy were paying what were paying subsidy for because I remember during the during the pandemic where everybody was at home Nigeria was a consumer movement than like if we are going out everyday so that gives you the fact that subsidy was just being used as a scam to make some other people rich so many Nigerians have become rich because of subsidy or policy of the government those all there is not only the last government so definitely I think and that's where I think why subsidy was hard to go on for me it's one of the best policy now was he the right time to have done that I think well I don't see the right time for the best policies now so if that was going but I totally agree with him that we didn't put measures on ground to tackle some of the challenges that we are going to face with the subsidy to move on or the way that subsidy should have gone I think it should have gone earlier than when he said I remember before the President Borey was going to go late by January when I was spending about 6.7 trillion in subsidy alone I don't think that was before economy economy was bleeding like you said there was no even allocation after June I think the president decided to take the gold by the horn and make that settlement now my own challenge is like what he said was in the floating of the currency in that one it's a straight if you want to float your currency you make sure you have the liberty you don't want to allow your currency to be battered by market forces we really have to wrap it up at this juncture thank you so much so much gentlemen we really appreciate you your contributions have been so so enlightening thank you