 objetivo స dictionary మ్చ౉త్త్ instrumental అకారంలొప౏ ప్మీప్నుటెఖకవిెఙరప్సక função �ography మౄటిమ Natural More మాదిు మ్నంథారాతియెెరంవాచాటిరంసరితాటి. మనేమాರినికోనూచిసికాస్మారాాయాటెచా. terror be likes to make the point that when you combine India's 1.4 and China's 1.4, billion people in a more poor in Nigeria than in those countries, combine. Now, that's your frightening place to be as an economy. Now that's your frightening place to be as an economy. I like to sit on the left side of the aeroplane window seat, hopefully, when I'm flying to Potarkot. And from that I just look at the coastline from Lagos, just look at these white beaches and look as we're going. I'm saying what kind of people can have this kind of gift and before. The blue economy. I mean if you just imagine that if we just took ourselves seriously and did something about the blue economy. The resources that come from the ocean, we can have full employment in this country. We can have income per capita that will go into the 15,000 very easily, you know. But yeah, they are resources wasting. Forbes magazine published an article that helped me very much in May, May 28, 2019, I believe it was. It was called Nigeria Africa's Money Losing Machine. You want to lose money? Go into Nigeria. Because institutions are so weak, regulatory, risk so high that in the end, you're likely to lose money in Nigeria so most investors are not coming. In a time when capital is so available to the world that I continually go back to the French economists. So I must think at who essentially has written the book on capital in this century. And capital and inequality. There's never been more capital available in the world in the history of human race as it is today. In fact just a couple of people, less than 20 people in California own more capital than the entire continent of Africa. And we can't dress ourselves up nice enough for that capital to flow into our country. There's so many hurting things about the economy. Prof, not to, we are privileged to have Prof. Bunga Adi here. Prof of Economics, Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University. You've heard, Prof, talk about these things. Where do you think the UbiDati campaign can do things differently considering the millions of problems that exist? Thank you very much. Let me bear off from what Prof said about capital being superabundant up until very recently. And with the current changes we've seen in the global economy brought about by the pandemic 2019 through 2020. And then the world economy started to show signs of recovery by 2021 leading up to 2022. Then Russia inverted Ukraine. So that again brought another phase of shock in the global economy. So today the world economy is struggling with high inflation as central banks all over the world trying to run in this rampaging inflation using very hawkish macroeconomic policy of raising interest rates. So what that means is that global interest rate has gone up very high. So capital is no longer going to be available to countries such as Nigeria. So that means that we're going to be constrained to seek for capital locally, domestically. Because internationally they will be requiring so much of us in terms of interest rates. It's no longer accessible and no longer viable as an option. And then it is as a result that Moody's rated us recently below junk status. So that means our prospects to raise money from outside this economy is going to be very tough. Now what is implication? Government will have to compete with private firms for the sparsely available capital locally. And that is what economies will refer to as crowding out. So government will probably sector will crowd out private sector. So what will be the implication? We're going to see large scale insolvency of corporations as they will be hard pressed to find the capital for working capital will be a serious challenge. So it will have implication for jobs, jobs for economic growth. And these are all indicators that are already in Nigeria at a very high level. But there is hope. So it's important to dress the background so that we now know where we will be that he comes in. Now the other day I was on a rise TV the same day I was also on CNBC Africa on similar conversation. Now the IMF just concluded last week the article for visitation to Nigeria which is simply a kind of rounding up of the member countries studying the macroeconomic conditions having palaces with the macroeconomic managers to know the direction the economy is headed and looking at the key indicators. So that's what it concluded last week in Nigeria and then they came up with the report. We should spend a very negative picture in the near term. But the recommendation they gave seems to have been lifted straight from would be that manifesto. That is heart warming. Also when Afrinvest published kind of a summary of the same Moody's rating in terms of the way out again the response came like the lifted lifted out of will be that manifesto. So what is it in the will be that manifesto to address the near term risk. So the talent that we have today as Prof mentioned is that Nigeria is a country that is well watched with opportunities but we keep you know Western all the opportunities that we have. So we've not managed to build a productive economy. We've not managed to build our foreign reserve and our external sector which is the strength of any economy right in every economy you have the consumption. You have investment. You have the government. These are all domestic. But then the standard one the one that is looking outside from where I mean as a family the family has to sell something you know you sell your level to earn income. So as an economy which is economy is Greek for household. So as an economy we are selling something outside and then we have to get income. The income we earn comes from the standard sector and that is where we haven't prioritized. Now the bidati manifesto you know is focused on the standard sector of the Nigerian economy. But before that could happen. So we have to address the macroeconomic imbalances that we have. Now what is the first one is the way the central bank has operated over the past few years. Now we've seen also Prof mentioned you know this multi-dimensional poverty. How we have overtaken India as the poorest country in the world. Or the country that has well that's it's almost the same thing. The country that has the largest concentration of poor people. That didn't just happen overnight. I think it's a combination of policies of government. So the people didn't become poor by themselves. But it's simply because policies that have been implemented over the years have not worked. So in the last seven years going to eight years now we've seen this you know direct targeting of poverty through different schemes by the central bank and by so many government agencies. We created agencies for social whatever you know yet none of those have succeeded in defending the people against poverty. Poverty has so much decimated our people showing that we cannot continue on the same track. So what is the the the the response of will be that to that. One is that you know the central bank will be made to focus on is common that which is simply you know managing the money supply you know controlling inflation in the system. OK. So all these other intervention is policies development trade letter. Those are not the common that of the of the central bank central bank should focus on macroeconomic policy alone. And then whereas the competent authorities will take responsibility for all this in a transparent and accountable manner. Now the next thing that the word I mean the IMF and Moody's referred to was also the will I say the exploitation of the ways and means advances. OK. Which we have seen. OK. Abuse printing money reckless printing of money that turned the central bank into a piggy bank of the federal government. That shouldn't be the IMF pointed to that in violation of laws in violation of the laws. It shouldn't be more than two percent of the budget deficit of the budget of the year. And it should be fully amortized at the end of the budget cycle. It's not something you carry over to the next day. And then there is no way we can even stop right now in the near term. We still need to continue. But it has to stop somewhere along the line. So the IMF recommended the secretization that the CBN recommended should happen as soon as possible as soon as possible. But then that is not even a solution because it carries its own drawback when India tries something like that. It actually was in the inflation situation. So what does it be that you plan to do when they come in. So that is the first thing. So you know we have to build a fiscal buffer stop the leakages. That's the first thing that needs to happen. Then another one which is a very strong which is strong because it resonates with people has to do with the first subsidy. OK. Much of that printing of money has gone into for subsidy. That has to go as well. Which Mr. Obi has referred to as plain stealing. That's what it is. So we cannot continue on that track. Subsidy has to go. But it's important to explain this to people because it's always coming up. Oh if it moves, subsidy people will die. No. We have on the manifesto if you read the manifesto carefully there are commitments to social safety nets. That will be rolled out on a transparently targeted basis that will address the socially challenged in the system. So because whenever you have this kind of problem and then you try to target the poor people. There is always the danger of mis-targeting. Those who are not poor will lay claim to it. Because they have exactly. So we also we need to put in place schemes to ensure that the right people are targeted under privilege. Those are the people. So these are clearly mapped on a strategy paper that's been developed for the Obi that administration to address the drawbacks that will come from the removal of the subsidy. So that is one. Then another one is exchange rates. Now that is a longer term not in the near term but in about 12 months there is need to harmonize the exchange rates. That is another will I say stealing going on in the government run tripping and all of that. Will we ever see in Nigeria without dual exchange rates? Where you don't have black market. Well you know the thing is that unlike now so many people we agree so many economies will tell you that Nigeria's economy is on kind of an autopilot. But that doesn't mean that we will have to run a strictly competitive market economy. That is a long term project. It will happen. But in order to get there there is need to direct the economy. So it will be a guided policy. Yes we will have the unification of exchange rate at some point. But then at this point in time remember the government has accumulated huge debt. Even if we go direct and liberalize fully which will definitely happen. We need to know that you know we have to have an eye on our debt burden currently. I think Mungo is important to go to the history of this. In the 1980s it was thought that Nigeria was in a hopeless situation. The divergence between the exchange rate, the nominal exchange rate and what is generally the purchasing power parity was so huge. It was a big laugh. It was thought not possible. How can we ever systematically work at building a foreign exchange market was developed. We went to a two tier foreign exchange market. We kept working at this and a market evolved. And we had exchange rates that did not diverge for a long time. And then suddenly bad behavior crept in. In the last couple of years we've nearly ruined that market. And that's why we are where we are. Fixing that is critical. But amongst the critical issues important here is the infrastructure that will facilitate production. That will enable us to go from consumption to that production for exports to end foreign exchange that will make that easy. Now Dr. Peter Agada has led a team in the big tent that has focused on infrastructure that made the input into the UBI that manifesto. I think it's important that we give a sense for the big picture of infrastructure thrust that will help facilitate this move to production. And how this will contribute in many other ways. I mean Bongo was talking really about the circular flows of income in society. Jobs will come from all of those things. So households are contributing all these other sectors are growing in the private sector. What's the nature of that plan? Point number five of the seven point agenda of the UBI that precedence by the special grace of God. Is to build expansive world-class infrastructure for effective power supply. Railroads, air transportation pipeline network through integrated public-private partnership and entrepreneurship public sector governance. I just took it off the document. So what we did in our team was to study this nation 923,000 square kilometers as a human being. Like the body of a human being. And what does it take this body to live basically to be productive, to live and to exist. We see infrastructure, infrastructure development as the arteries, nerves and the vein system that enables this body to exist. To consume, to excrete, to have life built up on a daily basis. We have just come to a simple summary based on backgrounds of policies that government has developed over the years. Government has developed several policies over the years. We've looked at them, we've studied the pitfalls, we've taken the best parts of these policies. And we have arrived at one point. Now for the OBDATI program. What we will immediately do is to hit the ground running with a, our tag for that program is called optimization. Haven't listened to Professor Bongo's here. You've seen the conditions around being able to go for debts. Being able to borrow from international and all of that. Yes, that has guided the background of what we call optimization of what is already on ground. Okay, let's keep it at optimization Dr. Gadda. Now it's called optimization of Nigeria national assets infrastructure corridor and grid development by a label and logistic optimization system. What does this really mean? In summary, Nigeria has developed about 55,000 kilometers of arterial routes, several ports, power plants, several infrastructure for national development stationed in different parts of our country. Between these infrastructures and road, we have vast expanse of lands buried natural resources that haven't been touched. Remember I said, we're treating infrastructure like the basin. Just imagine your body being sick deprived of food, minerals, but you have what the body does. It goes into systems for healing and several things on its own. It's programmed that way. So we think Nigeria should go into a form of autophagy, for example. What do we have in power plants? What do we have in road network? What's wrong with them? How can we get them functioning? How can we get all of these things functioning in an optimal form? What's wrong with them? Do we need to cover the roads again with another layer of asphalt? Do we need to construct new roads? Do we need to go off grids for power in certain areas of the country? All of that has been analyzed in detail. So what we've done is that we have now come up with a solution in a nutshell that we call C2P parks in different parts of the country. Consumption to production parks located in different parts of the country. And these parks are endowment based. For example, the construction to production parks is a solid mineral driven. It's a one stop location where industry, housing, infrastructure, logistics and all of this happen together to make that one's location a life of its own. Give it a life of its own. And that place is located close to an existing national grid. You don't have to go construct a new road. A road passes there. The roadway already passes there. So we put it there so that production happens there and immediately gets into the system and moves out for a sport. The one in Benway, for example, is agro-industrial driven. Now in my personal experience in housing development in this country, housing has been a big challenge for several reasons. But one of the biggest reasons in housing development, I've had national awards on housing. During the times of Mrs. Amapepu. One big problem. Even people with regular paying jobs, civil servants could not afford, after having gone through the analysis of what it takes to pay back for housing. Even government officials that were given to us then with their salaries confirmed. They gave us 100 people, for example, only 16 qualified for housing. Now what we're doing with the C2P parks is that we will tie production job employment to your housing at the same location. Just imagine one big place where you have industries, you have housing, you have production, you have logistics. And then somewhere around there you have nice affordable housing for creating new cities. Creating new cities. Creating new cities. It's creating a new economy, creating a new city system. And we have made sure of this that these C2P parks are located at least 15 to 20 kilometers from existing city center deliberately. So that the new Nigeria itself can come from that. It can expand and expand and expand. Before it merges with existing cities, we have moved to the next dimension of the industrial revolution. And by so do you even create the congestion of those cities? Exactly. In addition, it also has what economists refer to as agglomeration effects. So you are bringing in the productive capabilities of different industries together. So which is, you know, they say that a hole that is larger than the sum of this part. Exactly. Synergy. Yeah, because yeah, you know, it makes no sense sometimes when, you know, I discuss with friends from Wuhan in the importation business. And they tell you, you know, they bring their goods through niggers. Yes. And some of them operate close to the Niger Delta area where you already have an existing seaport. And people begin to wonder what is wrong with our country? Why do we have, we have long coastal line and the seaport and everything is congested. The failure of trade policy through the years that has made everything come to niggers. Now it's a burden on niggers. Look at our papa, how it is a nightmare. But if we had had development that was sensitive to this, all of the production facilities around the Midwest part of the country are serviced from Boree, new ports coming up in Aqaibom, Potakot is there, all of the service. But somehow, portrait policy allowed everything to be focused on niggers. Now this is a burden on niggers and it has prevented the development of those parts of the country. So you've got to have special development that keys into infrastructure. Almost like the way Lagos itself developed. It creates dormitory towns. Every morning, everybody wakes up and starts heading into Lagos Island. It's a nightmare. We ought to be able to have places of work close to places of residence in. So you can live around Festak and never unless you want to come and watch a show at TBS, never you can spend 10 years and not get to Lagos Island. You have a complete life. But that needs to be read. So that means there's so much talked about Lagos Blueprint is not really a blueprint. Because I mean, if I am in the entertainment business for instance and I understand what you're saying. If there was an intentional very good blueprint, the entertainment industry Lagos would have exploded. Because the reason no artist in Lagos with a population of almost 20, something million people can do a concert and have up to 6000 people in attendance. It's because the venue is on the island. The population is on the mainland. And in between the island and the mainland is gridlock that you can navigate. Then when you come for a concert, you can go home. You raise a very, very important point in all this conversation about economy. Nigeria does not have a 24 hour economy. At 7 o'clock everybody is rushing to get home. Most economies that thrive in rotation. The people who work from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. The people who work from... Entertainment is going on all the time at night. Look, I once stayed in downtown New York, in Hilton. I came out at 2 a.m. I'm not kidding. And I thought I was at noon. We were pushing each other at 2 a.m. And this was not a Saturday night. So we need to create a night economy in this country. It would do so much for employment, for all kinds of things. And these special developments have direct bearing to it. And in agreement with what you just said, because even a 24 hour economy as practiced in other parts of the world is what gives rise to youth labour. What it means is that undergrads in the university can go to their lectures in the daytime and still have back jobs in the evenings. Because our children, those of us who have kids abroad will go to school and combine it with little jobs here. That is what they depend on to make extra money that sustains them. Bongo, you want to come in a little bit. This is just a matter of incentive. When Prof mentioned having people move to maybe raise the issue of your friends who do business in the Niger Delta and they still have to wait for their containers to arrive from Lagos and all of that. Meanwhile, there are ports there. So it's just a matter of incentive. So we can use tax policies to decongest Lagos and all these congested cities. We don't even have too many cities in Nigeria, so to speak, that fit the bill of cities. In Lagos, if you've been following the indicators, Lagos appears as one of the most unlivable cities in the world. So policies, we need incentive, we need tax policy for instance to incentivize activities in other sectors. But again, it's one thing to say, tax policy, incentives, it requires political will. It's just about political will. And then that is why I think UbiDati is different from the other competitors, from the other candidates. So when you see him talk, you can see someone who is deliberate, who is intentional. And again, the economic policy that works is not a fit and start thing. It's something that you start, you see it through, follow it through. So there is always that feedback loop in the system. That is exactly what we do not have in Nigeria. I have mentioned something earlier when I was listening outside. He was talking about Salai Martin and Subramanian and all of that. There is this other economic thinker, Rodin Rodin. The big push policy. The man who proposed the big push. Now in an economy, we need to understand what we have latent comparative advantages. And then we have so much of this. We don't need to activate all our latent comparative advantages. One is even enough. So let's look for those ones that have, we've identified them, that have huge multiplier impact. So once you do that, then you now have, because it connects to what Dr. mentioned. Once you activate it, now it begins to have that multiplier impact on other sectors and pull everything together. You're going to have jobs. You're going to have industrialization. So you don't even need to begin to give companies money, comprehensive money and all of that. These things will happen by themselves automatically. You want to add something to it. In anchoring to that, we've already found the locations where the C2P parks will be. Even right now. Based on endowment and located on very, very important existing trunk infrastructure that will be optimized. We'll just fix them and all of that and get them functioning again. Now, we have already planned what will happen there. So as soon as he hits the office, we are hitting the ground running with immediate site and services for these places. You know when you produce site and services in a raw piece of land, what will happen? So immediately that is done. We've already taken that as a document. A title with investment. Before you know what's happening, we're already building the power plant, the off grids, the logistics plant, the water system. Before you know what's happening, once you put infrastructure on a piece of land, everybody wants to come there and be part of what that future will be like. So it's a system with that site and services. It's a park. Autocatalized park. You know talking about this and the example that I was given about flying to Potakot every time I'm feeling so pained. You know, Professor Kulia Luxford is one of the leading authorities in this whole new area of Usham facing cities. He gave the Sibia annual lecture here in Lagos in 2017. The then governor of Lagos was listening to him and was so excited by the things he was talking about Usham facing cities that he invited him back to give the 50th anniversary lecture for Lagos in 2017. One of the things that Kulia says which I keep thinking about the possibilities of Usham facing cities where you look at that long coastline we just go down a little to Undo. Undo has the longest coastline in our country. You build one port in Undo create one new city there you know you are amazed that what we fail to see in our country and we allow poverty because of lack of... if you go to Seoul for instance you will see Hyundai, LG all the big South Korean conglomerates they are all lined up on the coast now you know the interesting thing about South Korea you do not have independent custom that is somewhere the customs are nested within these companies so when Hyundai for instance produces they do not have to wait to ferry their products to another port from there is a spot yes so we had the World Bank presented their stuff the other day the reports they recently completed at Albus and then there was this conversation talking about Indonesia when Indonesia has all the features like Nigeria today but in just 10 years in a decade Indonesia has transformed their destiny has become a sustainable middle class, middle income economy this happened in 10 years 10 years ago we actually had better statistics than Indonesia I'm just talking about 10 years ago that's 2013 2012 but within that period now don't forget about Indonesia when you talk about whatever Korean capitalism Indonesia is a poster chart Suhato now when they decided to transform the economy they now started to drive market driven competitive policies in the system just something similar to what you are talking about now the other thing they did was to liberalize the customs customs now it was privatized and was that happened the Indonesian economy even before this happened Peter Lewis friend of mine was a company of Nigeria and Indonesia 40 years ago we used to say to Indonesia would you just be like Nigeria today they say to Nigeria can't you be like Indonesia inclusive doctor I want to just add that this C2P parks will be built on innovation will be at the center of it it's a theme of the youth of tomorrow and then around concentric rings around innovation will be this development and then at the back of it will be the ability to export from the sport there you don't have to ferry your goods to Lagos or to Protakot right there there's a logistics system that puts you international right on the sport you sell your goods on all international markets and location has been picked as soon as Mr. Peter gets into office thank you thank you very much that's the export driven economy that is it there is no economy today that growing in the world China, Singapore India either the exporting services or the exporting goods or combination thereof basically you must be selling something moving from consumption to export driven production thank you very much thank you very much Dr. Peter Gadda of course you are still here with me you are not going anywhere that's the economy is it not exciting to hear the team that put together parts of the manifesto hearing from them knowing what is to come I'm getting excited already because we know how many million youths are out of job and with the ideas that I'm hearing thank you very much gentlemen for contributing don't go anywhere we take a break and when we come back we come back with something different