 President Mohamed Buhari begs Nigerians for forgiveness as his eight-year tenure comes to an end. And Nigerians lament as tout take over Lagos State. This is Plus Politics. I'm Mary Anacol. At an occasion to mark his final outing as president on a Saturday, before handing over, President Mohamed Buhari thanked Nigerians for the honour to serve for two terms, 2015 to 2023. He's asking for pardon from those he might have hurt while discharging his duties. But less than 37 days left in office, the president recounted his leadership roles in the country for more than 40 years, serving variously as a military officer, a military governor, a minister and head of state in returning as a democratically elected president in 2015. Recall that the president lauded his efforts, retracing that he has done his best. In the last seven and a half years, noting that Nigeria is a big country confronted with numerous challenges. Joining us to discuss this tonight, of course, the president's strides is Babashala Debouy. He's a political analyst and Choma Ezenwafoshi is the head of news, the cool Wazubia info in Pothaka. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us. Alright, thank you. Choma, we're going to start with you until we're able to get Babashala to join us. Let's start by looking at the president's comment over Salah. Now, he obviously had given himself a pat on the back, and this is not the first time the president has done that. He's been quoted severally to say that he has done his best for Nigerians. He has kept his promises and he had delivered on all of them. But you are obviously a broadcaster unless you are covering these stories every now and again, every single day. And you would obviously know if the president has, you know, kept his promises. But on the surface, how well has the president done so far? Okay, now when you look at good governance, I mean democracy, where we're not the first one to practice democracy in the area, we have the United States and most democracies are modeled towards. So when you look at the tenets of democracy or what we call the dividends of democracy and the fact that they are still absent in Nigeria, the leadership will be held responsible and if the leadership will be held responsible, that simply means that the current leadership has not done well. And when you look at it that way, it's devoid of the sentiment that is being shared by whatever divide like this in Nigeria. Of course, you know, we're just out of the last elections and there's been some, you know, lots of arguments that they, so many, I mean, we've become even more polarized than we even when we've gotten to the elections. And so it's important that at this time that we look at things based on facts. We look at one of the basic dividends of democracy being good governance. We do not have good governance at any level of government in Nigeria. And so who will be held responsible? It is the president who has responsible. And so when you're looking at it that way, no, the president has not done well. The government administration has not done well. We've not gone from one to two or two to three or three to four or four to five or five to six. No, we haven't made progress economically. We haven't made progress at any, at any scale, whatever index. The country, so much has been left for Nigeria to desire and it just continues actually. Let's talk about some of the, you know, promises that the president had made back in the day. In fact, I remember that back in the day, the president talked about three things. In fact, they rode into power on three major key issues. They did talk about putting an end to Boko Haram, ending terrorism. The president talked about fighting corruption so that his government is going to have zero tolerance for corruption. He also talked about dealing with unemployment and unemployment. Let's start with the issue of Boko Haram. Now, many would tell you that the Boko Haram situation has been pushed to the fringes and you barely have the issue of Boko Haram. But then, of course, we have had a hydro-headed monster which is the issue of kidnapping, banditry. And of course, these things have metamorphosed into different kinds of, you know, terrorist activities that have plagued us on every side. And it's not just, you know, not just in the north. It's spread to the middle belt and several other places. As we speak right now, Burnway Stage is still dealing with the issue of cattle rustlers and, of course, militancy. And that's also one of the pointers as well. Before, one of the promises the foreign administration made was it didn't attack Boko Haram. And like you said, it's evolved since then and spread into other states. At some point, they were concerned that it was going to get down to the south and not just the north. Within the eight years of this administration, in those states saw Koreans, like it's never been recorded in the south, in the Gafferan war, as mentioned. And a lot of that has still gone unexplained. No one has been held responsible. No one has been indicted, persecuted, or even arrested before we talk about persecution. So, yes, we cannot say that the war against terrorism or kidnapping or the key criminalities that we saw in the build-up to the inception of this administration, we have not seen that tackle. And while the government, the current government is okay for these handlers to look at it the way they look at it as these handlers, when you look at it from what it is to Nigerians feel safe, that question remains a big no. Nigerians do not feel safe and it remains an issue to be tackled even for the incoming government. Let me come to you. Let's talk about fuel subsidy here. One of the people who were the frontliners for Occupy in Nigeria obviously is President Bahari. We also had several others who make up his government today, as some of those who supported the Occupy in Nigeria situation, and we all know what it was, fuel subsidy. They protested against the then President Goodlock Jonathan in 2012. They protested against the issue of fuel subsidy, which would have pushed the price of fuel from 65 Naira to 141 Naira per litre. Now, those demonstrations, as we all remember, was across the Federation. And then when the President came into power, he promised to reduce premium motor spirit, that's PMS, to 40 Naira per litre. But he took Nigerians by surprise by increasing it to 145 Naira in 2015. Recently, he just announced the removal of fuel subsidy that he protested against in 2012. And presently, fuel is sold at about 162 Naira. And of course, as we also know, the price changes wherever you go. How well can we say that this Bahari administration is done in terms of fuel subsidy, and not to forget the issue of our petroleum products being stolen on a daily basis, as that 2022 had remitted zero into the nation's coffers? What are your thoughts? Yeah, thank you once again for inviting me for political analysis today. Based on your question, I think it's one of the reasons why our price incident is tendering apology to some Nigerians. Because according to what you said, I know I've bought some Nigerians. When the truth is, the man has not bought some Nigerians, he has actually bought majority of most of us in the country because it totally failed in delivering its promises based on the reasons we voted in as the President of Nigeria in 2015. On the first subsidy you talked about, I remember how he started talking about how he started NNPC, built for the panelist when he was the military government, when he had the country. In the country, how they were able to do this and that. Immediately, a lot of promises that subsidy is not real. In the crime, we are going to reduce the fuel price to 40 something Naira. At the end of the day, we can all see what the price is now. I'm very sure the price now is not regulated because I believe the police stations are the ones now fixing the price. Now, we cannot deceive ourselves if truly the government is actually subsidizing the fuel and is actually gupping three laws of Naira that subsidy has to stop in a day, whether we like it or not. Three laws of Naira is huge amounts of money that can turn over, transform the country, if judiciously used for the country, for the development of the country and the economy. If judiciously used, if not, we are still going to come back to the square one. We need to look at how subsidy started actually. The subsidy started in Kerosene, not on fuel. I'll remember that was when the government took place. It started in Kerosene by selling Kerosene for 15 Naira and some powerful Nigerians felt that they cannot be enjoying the fuel subsidy. Why only on Kerosene? Let us take it out of Kerosene. Let everyone of us be benefitting from the subsidy. So whether the subsidy is real or not, the truth is I can tell you that we are not filling it because wanting to come to realize that any time they announce the removal of subsidy, they are telling you invariably that they want to increase the quip from price. That is exactly what they are telling you. And immediately they said that prices of goods in Nigeria will start rising. So the government of Naira has totally failed in this aspect of quip and subsidy. The government has, because I remember all the problems are licensing private individuals in the country. Up to now we are only hearing of Dangoti, which of course has not even started. And we also learned of all these modular refineries. Up to now we don't know any more. So what has actually happened under the government of Naira in the last eight years that the man has governed this country, that we cannot even be bold enough to say this is what this government has achieved in this particular sector, apart from changing the names of the petroleum power standards. Apart from those words, I don't know of anything that the government, the mountains of Nigeria have not actually enjoyed this government in respect of the oil sector. And that is what it puts. I'm so sorry to talk over you, but let me just come in there. You're talking about, of course, we're all aware of, if not many of us, are aware of the situation in the oil sector of this country, which supposedly is our mainstay. And the fact that Zerunaira was accrued into the coffers of the federal government as of 2022 and right in 2023 and nothing has been said about it. The allegations that thousands of barrels are stolen and they make their way out of this country every single day. Of course, the army also found by magic, of course, a particular, let's say, they found a shipment that was taking our oil out. But I'm wondering how many of us as Nigerians have asked questions as to who's supposed to be held responsible? Why are heads not rolling? Why is the NNPC quiet about this? Why is Mr. President, who is the number one person in charge of the petroleum sector, not telling us anything? And why are we quiet? Why are we not asking questions? Because you're telling us the obvious. But why are we not pushing? And the government is about to hand over come May 29 and we still are not able to find out what's happened. The National Assembly recently called the Attorney General and the Finance Minister to come and give a count of $200 million still in the oil and gas sector that's not been accounted for. And we are still mom and I'm wondering why? Well, unfortunately, the President of Nigeria also double has the Minister of Petroleum. And the Minister of State is just like a deputy to the Minister of Petroleum. So the unfortunately demand that's supposed to provide the answer to this question will tell you it does not know anything because that is him. For me, I need to let us on the front side continue the respect of this, of the transformation that they had last year in changing of name, in production of different things. I need to let us know that NNPC now is not a more like a commercial organization. It is no longer, it is left in the courts no longer in control of the government. It's been around as if you're running an individual organization. So what that means is this NNPC has no obligation to be remitting to the federal government again. The only thing that is expected of NNPC to be doing now is to be giving the government its own shares. Based on the 10% like I think the federal government still had 90% and 10% to want some individuals. Now, another thing is that what government is expected of NNPC now is to pay its tax and some other duties or fines or whatever they are obligated to do. So they are not under obligation again to remit. Maybe that is one of the reasons why they will tell you that they did not remit anything to the government last year. But the truth is according to the Petroleum Income Tax Law, that is Petroleum Income Tax Law, at this year they will now have that obligation to make a payment of tax fees because you have the window of six months from here for last ten now is going to be from January 1 to June 20 that is expected of NNPC to pay taxes into the government coffers. If that is not done then the NNPC managing director of the group managing director should be irresponsible for that. That's number two. What has happened to all the money that has been remitted to the government before the transformation into a limited company? What has happened? What has happened to all the revenue that the government has generated between 2015 and 2022? What has happened to them? Has anybody given account of what the government has been able to do with those money? With the funds, with the revenue, not only from the whole sector, from all sectors? But who's asking? We, the market is actually benefiting from the revenue that has been generated, that the government has claimed, including the loans that have been obtained from foreign institutions. Can we actually feel it? It says the inflation of the country is growing, I think it's 22% now, growing every day and everybody is shouting. We don't call ourselves Nigerians and we say, oh, Nigeria is a very rich country, it's a wealthy country, whereas those of us that are Nigerians that are representing Nigeria is not reflecting on house. So for NNPC, the government has claimed zero. I believe it's a result of limited company that the NNPC has transformed into last year. Let's see what will happen between January this year and June 30th this year. Let me come back to you, let's talk about the economy. Now we all know that under the former president, good luck to Jonathan Niger, the economy was the largest and the fastest growing on the continent. But President Buhari pledged at the time that he was going to establish a market-based economy. Buhari also told us that that economy would run with a clear definite regulatory framework and effective enforcement mechanism. It took the president six months, if we all remember, to pick his cabinet at the time. He also promised us that this economy was going to be participatory and Nigerians were going to benefit from that sector. As we speak, more and more Nigerians are running away from here because of course most of them who own businesses have shut down and decided to seek greener pastures elsewhere. What do you think has been the major blow to the Nigerian economy outside of Covid which has affected every other country across the world? Don't forget Mary, before the Covid we suffered two recessions. In those recessions we had to make certain decisions that obviously affected the economy. And so recovering from Covid was like we already had a globe where we didn't eat as a nation and then recovering from that and then having to deal with the Naira policy there was no time the economy had to have any sort of breathe out. There's always been something for us to deal with. And don't forget when you fit it into the global inflation that the country also had to deal with then you obviously see that we never had food good in the past eight years. I mean it's been a very difficult time for Nigerians and there's usually no support. I mean at the time that you hear in other countries that people were getting some sort of government support usually would not hear of any sort in Nigeria. Okay yeah there were programs that we mentioned and the question remains who are the people that have benefited from these programs? Of all the numerous programs even the one rolled out by CBN themselves we still cannot say that oh these are the people that benefited from them. So today we still have, it's still a story to be done for Germany to actually track the people that have benefited from any form of scheme or programs of the federal government, any form of poverty alleviation program because I mean the last time I checked Nigeria is still regarded as the world poverty capital. We do not position, we do not spend, I mean our government does not spend like we are the world poverty capital. You still see monies pushed into projects we thought would not be prioritized for a country like Nigeria. So yeah our economy was always staggering and then the COVID-19 that hit every other person came and left us with nothing and the economic recovery pathway that was supposed to be created we're not very sure how many people could follow that pathway we're not very sure how much, oh yeah maybe a nation sector got some sort of relief or some sort of support for the government but that's just basically it. We forget that the informal sector with some sort of the backbone of our economy we are not aware of any tangible, tangible I say Mary and any tangible measures that were put out to support the informal sector who as a backbone obviously also took the biggest hit of what happened to our economy and then came the Naira policy that I mean it's good that I don't know, the last time I checked on said oh the Naira thing the cash crunch is gone and done but then is it because by the time December comes when has this been new loads and that's that question I'm not sure a lot of people are still citing the new loads we still have a lot of people dealing with old loads what's being done exactly to ensure that by December 30 that's all of this we do not go back to where we found ourselves just before the election started so yeah our economy is still in a very bad shape and we do not see, we just see borrowings I mean literally you're playing into my next question because I was going to go there but before I go there under the Jonathan administration and I think under the Obasanja administration we know that every economic council is presided over by the vice president of the country and under the Goodluck-Johnson administration we did see an economic recovery plan a policy, a strategy, a strategy that was clearly put out to help the economy and like I said in my opening about the sector we saw a boost under the administration there are many who would also argue that there was an oil boost under the Jonathan administration and then there are those who would also argue that we also had some under the Buhari administration but what did we make of it again the economic council under the Buhari administration what has been their policy framework what has been their thrust, their main thrust many have also queried the CBN governor for usurping some of the responsibilities and duties of not just the agricultural sector but even the finance sector making there be a blur in some of the lines as to their responsibility and maybe that could have been and I'm asking could that also have played a role in how directionless our economy and the strategy that we have implored to deal with it yeah absolutely the roles what happened before the election because a lot of it was used on it was like a political move for a lot of people they saw it as a political move considering the timing a lot of that would have been left after the elections but then again it was part of what was said to be plans to deal with both buying whether I start both buying the conversation for another day but yes the CBN governor's role in where we are today cannot be overlooked the CBN governor I mean so many experts who have criticised his actions and the way he's acted not just him yet on a general operation as well these two government officials have left many wondering whether the president is still the president or they are the one now running the country so yes we've had them take action that I mean even to the extent of ignoring Supreme Court directives and Supreme Court judgments and Supreme Court others that alone wasn't a good one for Nigeria where we say that we for an administration that say that the rule of law and they are very particular about upholding the rule of law that really was a dent for this administration as well and not just that one not to the administration following these Supreme Court judgments when they come out they are basically ignored and so seeing it play out when it comes to the decisions that are taking around the economy of the nation didn't also go so well for this administration Mabashala let me come back to you let's talk about one of the things again that the Bahá'í administration harped upon that they were going to put an end to medical trips abroad but that seemed to have been the order of the day under this administration and many who were keeping count had complained about Mr. President's medical trips abroad and that's one of also the questions that many are asking about the incoming government if it's going to continue with the use of tax payers monies to treat our presidents all abroad Mabashala can you hear me before yes I can hear you can you hear me please can you hear me yeah okay I remember very well before the 2015 2020 of the president's government the president elected after a little bit of also put an end to medical tourism abroad and unfortunately it happened to be the first person to bring that particular so we have seen a lot of this happen in the health sector even we discovered that every year that's already project to the hospital clinic and at the end of the day not common is found in the hospital clinic we found the situation whereby the medical doctors have been inscribed on it for different reasons including welfare including getting modern tools to help the health sector and at the government promise to deliver health and at the end of the day we discovered that they are just promises and nothing is being done most of our government officials travel abroad for medical because they know that they have killed the medical sector in Nigeria in the national assembly they are now seeing that before any medical student travel out of the country must have spent 5 years 5 years after obtaining license they are telling you even what they are saying is this we run away from you Nigeria I want to go and meet you again abroad God forbid that will not happen that is exactly what the message they are passing on the government has totally failed in the health sector as long as we do not have a single medical center in Nigeria that belongs to the government for the government that we can say is a specialist hospital for a particular ailment or sickness we don't it is totally below the worth of the organization best match we are not there anywhere at all we know the number of patients who are visited and are going to abroad on medical medical attention after the HTS we can say the government as the president has gone for about 2 or 3 years we have to accumulate everything this government has no interest in anything the only thing I can say about this government who wants to occupy and we must ensure that we root for HTS and this they have done and that is our all sector all the sectors in Nigeria this particular government I cannot be found to have improved not a single one it is not only the head sector every sector in this country totally failed under the president of president Muhammad and finally you guys because we are out of time in one sentence each how deserving of our forgiveness is Mr. President and what will history remember him for for me posterity will remember go ahead go ahead Papa Shalaz okay this posterity will always remember for this so that is just the truth we always remember that during the government of president Muhammad as you remember when he was the head of the military general then we are going to remember again that the worst president in Nigeria since 1999 is government of the Mohammed because nothing under his government can say we can say actually some posterity is always going down we can see the difference I said a sentence Papa Shalaz I said a sentence trauma quickly we have to go trauma are you still there oh I think that we lost trauma but well I want to say thank you and trauma is the head of news call was to be a info thank you so much ladies and gentlemen for being part of the conversation alright well up next we turn our attention to the menace of touts and thugs in Lagos state and how the go's are crying out for help stay with us we'll be right back