 Permit me to express my very deep appreciation to the Governing Council and Senate of the University of Lagos for this honor of the invitation to deliver the convocation lecture at the 50th anniversary of our university. We must of course congratulate the university, its management, its staff, students and alumni on this special season of the celebration of our golden jubilee. The university has in the past 50 years become undoubtedly the premier institution of higher education in Nigeria by far, by far the first amongst equals. For this we owe a debt of gratitude to the excellent academics, the administrators, students whose talents and innovation and commitment to learning through the years have put this place on the enviable pedestal on which it stands today. Being here for me is doubly pleasurable. Aside from the privilege of being invited to speak at this historic ceremony, it's also as you've heard a homecoming for me. I graduated here in 1975 and I was engaged as a lecturer in the Faculty of Law in November 1981 about 38 years or so ago. It was here that my world view was birthed and whole, my positions on public and social justice, my skepticism about some of the purest and allegedly sacrosanct economic ideologies. My belief that the dynamizing and the immeasurable potential of humankind informs that the most crucial pillar of government's economic policies must be on how to improve the quality of human resources. I suspect that the choice of the subject of this lecture, Nigeria Rising, The Path to Prosperity, was informed by the curiosity of the university about what to expect from the Buhari administration in the next four years or what is the meaning of that expression that for some is cryptic the next level. I will speak to this in several parts and convince you that it was not just an electronic slogan. Perhaps I may begin by affirming the belief of the Buhari administration that Nigeria's prosperity means a decent existence for all. Second, that that prosperity so defined will be attained if we are able to address the issues of extreme poverty, productivity, corruption, the rule of law, the deficiencies in the quality of human resources caused by poor education and healthcare. The last point is possibly the most fundamental, how to ensure that we maximize the potential of the abundant human resources that we have. This implies that we must have a robust enough healthcare system that ensures that the average person is in good health. An educational system that guarantees education capable of preparing children for the opportunities and challenges of a knowledge economy. A thriving private sector which leads the economic activities of the country supported by a business friendly environment. A system of world creation, especially world creation options and safety nets capable of taking millions out of poverty and providing for those who cannot work. The world creation options must include access to cheap credit for small holder farmers, for traders and artisans. The safety nets must include government created schemes for the unemployed and cash transfers for the poorest and the most vulnerable. In planning the path to prosperity, we also took into account and I speak now about our plans especially in the economic recovery and growth plan. We took into account the age old weaknesses of the Nigerian economy and the illusion of prosperity that frequently distorts our understanding of the actual fragility of our economy. First is the focus on GDP growth figures. Without a clear understanding of the underlying dynamic 60% of GDP growth is dependent on all revenues. 60% of the GDP figures that we see is actually dependent on all revenues. How? While the oil sector itself contributes just 8 to 12% of the total GDP the non-oil sector contributes something in a range of 80 to 90% of GDP. However, between 50 and 53% of the non-oil sector is actually dependent on the fortunes of the oil sector. In other words, despite the fact that the oil sector contributes so little to GDP because it creates very few jobs, it actually controls the rest of the size of the GDP because everything practically depends on our revenues from oil. This means that our economy rests on a tripod where two of the three legs are dependent on highly volatile oil prices and production. Now, this shaky economic structure enabled Nigeria to keep growing as long as oil revenues and foreign reserves were high enough. And of course, we frequently celebrated this fragile growth structure. But the very nature of extractive industries, high oil revenues does not mean more jobs or even better human development indices. Jobs are only created where some value is added. So for example, when we had the highest oil figures, the highest figures from oil revenues, the highest figures from oil production, we at the same time had the highest levels of poverty, at the same time the highest levels of debt, at the same time high levels of unemployment because the oil industry by itself without adding value does not create jobs and doesn't even create opportunities. So a thriving petrochemical industry, for example, would have created jobs, would create jobs directly from oil and gas. The economy, our economy, had also been running on a consumption growth model which is only advantageous if consumption is being met by domestic production of goods and services. However, our structure was based on consumption of large portions of imports as long as there was plenty of oil-based foreign exchange in our reserves to import and fuel consumption, our economy kept growing in GDP terms but few jobs were being created and more people were actually going into poverty. The majority of the affluent, those who are considered affluent in this economic scenario, are the professionals, the financial services intermediaries, banks and bank employees and directors, etc. contractors and others who are able to plug into the rent-seeking opportunities that are created when the biggest business is government-owned. And just to explain that very quickly, those who benefit when there is high oil revenues and there is no real productivity are essentially the service sector and of course contractors and persons who can find themselves into the rent-seeking opportunities presented by high oil prices. Very few other people can profit, so the rich in that situation are persons who have the advantage of knowing people in government who can get contracts because government of course is always the biggest supplier of the contracts and of all the opportunities. And that's why at a point in time somebody commented that we were doing very well as an economy because on one occasion 35 Nigerians flew in jets into Kenya for a particular ceremony in Kenya because people had jets, because many people had jets. There was a suggestion up there, there was some impression created that indeed our country is an affluent country. But the truth of the matter is that underlying the jets of course is no productivity whatsoever because the owners of the jets are contractors and government, friends of those in government and you could not really tie the ownership of the jets and ownership of these kinds of luxury assets to any kind of productivity. The productive sector, the real manufacturers, the value-adding businesses have always been relatively few. The source of the income coming to this class of individuals and I refer now to not the manufacturers but for the contractors is from oil revenues. When oil revenues fall, not only does GDP growth fall but this most affluent but unproductive sector suffers. Also in understanding some of the problems of the Nigerian economy the place of corruption, especially grand corruption is also crucial. The same oil earnings which are meant to develop infrastructure to fund education and healthcare end up in private pockets. The feeding frenzy is worse in times of high oil earnings. A combination of theft of public revenues and the consequent failure to invest in infrastructure as well as a largely rentier or rent seeking business class is what accounts for Nigeria's economic quagmire. The other problem is a problem of extreme poverty and I think it's important to continue to underscore the fact that our major problem has always been grand corruption. The direct stealing of government resources. I keep emphasizing, every time I emphasize it there's a headline in the newspaper Yemi or Shibaju blames previous governments. It's always a headline but I do not mind repeating it ad nauseam because it's the truth and we must not allow it to happen again and we must not allow it to happen again because there are very few people who understand how badly the fact that somebody can sign a cheque and take money out of the treasury, any amount of money how that affects our capacity to do even the most basic things to provide the most basic services to our people. The kind of high level corruption, corruption of the size that diminishes the public revenue so substantially that you're almost unable to do anything is what we have experienced in our country. It must never happen again. It was clear to us that we needed to devise an economic plan which would one prioritize the building of infrastructure especially rail, roads, power and ports to productivity. Productivity had to be our guiding principle as we diversify the economy from oil and gas. Three, the fight against corruption, especially public sector corruption for developing a new educational curriculum that emphasizes science, technology, engineering, arts and maths and also emphasizes some of those critical skills needed for the jobs of the 21st century. Five, a new approach to resourcing healthcare. Six, a social investment program that deals with issues of extreme poverty and unemployment. The economic recovery and growth plan effectively addressed many of these issues that I've mentioned. So the question is so far, how far have we gone and what is the next level? We believe that creating an environment for productive investment for productivity and investment is extremely important and that environment is one which is both in terms of hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure. Soft infrastructure covers the whole gamut of the regulatory environment for business. Hard infrastructure is where we focus on economically strategic roads, rail, power, ports across the country. Roads and rail, linking important commercial centers are prioritized. As of today in two budget cycles, we have spent an aggregate of 2.7 trillion Naira on capital, which is the highest ever in the history of the country. We have recently commissioned, and I'm sure many would have followed that, the Lagos-Abekuta-Hibata end of the new standard gauge Lagos-Kano railway. That rail originates from their Papa port, which means that very soon cargo will be moving from the port by rail out to the hinterland and of course out all the way to the north. This will significantly ameliorate the congestion that we're experiencing in the port. Expanding the facilities of the ports was always going to be a very important issue. Port has the capacity for 34 million metric tons of cargo, but today it does 86 million metric tons of cargo. Several times higher than its capacity. And so we're currently dredging the worry port as part of the effort to reduce the congestion at the Lagos port. In Lagos, we're also working on the private sector-led port, the lecky port, and also the badaki port, has attracted significant foreign capital and interest. In Abuja, after almost 15 years, we've completed and commissioned the Abuja light rail project, starting from the airport to the city center. Similarly, we've completed and commissioned the Abuja cardinal railway. The Itaqwari railway has also been completed, linking the iron ore deposits to the worry port. Here in the southwest of Nigeria, work is going on, as many would know, on the Lagos Ibadon Expressway, the Lagos Ota Abekuta Expressway, the Ikurodu-Shagama Road, and the Ubu-Mashore-Lauri Road. The contract for the Lagos Expressway, the Lagos Badagi Expressway, was awarded about two months ago, and work should begin very shortly. On power, we've moved generation from 4,000 to 8,100 megawatts of power. But the effect of this increase in generation has not translated significantly to better service to the consumer. Now, this is mainly due to two factors. The first is transmission challenges. The second is distribution. Over 2,000 megawatts of power is not today been taken up by the discourse for distribution to consumers, largely because of the problems they experience in collection of tariffs. One of the reasons for this is that the discourse themselves are invested in metric, which is why you get estimated billings and those kinds of things. The truth is that when the privatization was done, the privatization of the power sector was done, a lot of those who invested in the discourse, in particular, thought that this would be one of the more generous experiences like the telcos, where money was made very quickly. As it turned out, the money wasn't forthcoming and many of them are heavily indebted and have been unable to provide, as they should, meters and other distribution assets. These have significantly delayed the production of power, the supply of power, especially to the last mile to the consumers. What we've done is that we've embarked now on a major metering initiative, the Metering Assets Program, which involves private metering asset providers. We are no longer relying on the discourse to meter. We have now aggregated a group of meter providers who will provide meters as their own business. In addition, the federal government has, in the past 18 months, taken on the deficiencies in transmission through the TCN and the Niger Delta Power Holdings Company, where completing transmission projects all over the country. But the more important strategy is to decentralize power production. So we've adopted an off-grid program, which means that we're encouraging private investors to collaborate with government, to build IPPs, those are independent power plants, and supply power to willing buyers. This was made possible by what is called an eligible customer declaration by the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. By this collaboration, we have been providing power through private sector providers, especially solar power, to economic clusters such as markets across the country, including the area market in Aba, where over 31,993 shops have been provided with power. There's both a solar power plant there and a thermal power plant, and these are privately provided parts, privately provided parts. Subungari market in Kano as well, 13,598 shops in that market, that's also privately provided. Surah market in Lagos, over 1,000 old shops. Isiko market, NEPA 1 and 2 in Undo, and Baggy market in New York State, about under 8,000 shops or so. UMBC, about 2,000 shops. And it totaled so far of almost, I think, when you total the number of shops, something in the order of about 150,000 or so. Now, this is experimental, in the sense that we are working on a situation where private sector power providers can take over portions of territory and provide power to those who are willing to pay for such power. Now, practically everybody would be willing to pay for the power if they are metered, and of course if these meters are prepaid meters, and we think that the next iteration of the power sector reform would involve several more power providers, especially discos, taking on territory across the country while we improve supply from the grid. In Lagos, as I said, we recently commissioned the Sura Solar Project. The businesses there now have power around the clock, from printers to commercial tailors to small shop businesses. Everyone is employing more and making more profit. The next level, of course, is to ensure completion of the major infrastructure projects. The main drawback is funding, and so we established recently the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund. This infrastructure development fund is both a private sector and a public sector fund. So we're paying funds from the World Bank, from the AFDB, from private fund operators, and we are also contributing to the federal government. And this is what we're using to fund the Second Niger Bridge, Lagos, Ibadun Expressway, and the Mambila Hydro Project, the Abuja Kano Expressway, and the East-West Road. These are all projects that are funded by the Presidential Infrastructure Fund. All the major problems with a lot of our infrastructure projects and why they remain abandoned is because we simply don't have the resources starting out. And so after some budget funding has been provided, many of those projects shall remain idle for years. This is why the Presidential Infrastructure Fund initiative is a very important one because we provide the funding before the projects begin. If we stick to this agenda, my view is that in the next two years we will see the most significant improvements in our power sector in particular in our history. I'm quite convinced that we're well on the path to doing so. Industrial infrastructure is a major component of our economic transformation plan. We have what is called project MINE, made in Nigeria for export. This is the major plank of our industrial policy. The idea is to build special economic zones which accommodate industries for local manufacture of goods for which Nigeria has a comparative advantage. These include cotton, garments, leatherware, etc. We set up the Nigerian EZ Investment Company that's the Nigerian Economic Zones Investment Company, a public-private partnership which, and this is the delivery vehicle for the project. The objectives are to boost manufacturing share of GDP to 20% and make Nigeria the leading regional manufacturing hub for sub-Saharan Africa to create about 1.5 million new jobs in manufacturing and to generate about $30 billion in non-oil export earnings annually to improve the utilization of Nigeria's resources and comparative advantage while creating a strong domestic value chain. We also want to create local models of global best practice in industrial infrastructure and the enabling business environment. Already work has begun in three locations for these special economic zones. The first is the EIMBA Economic City in ABBA. This covers over 9,500 hectares just outside ABBA in Abia State. There are planning, feasibility studies and detailed design has been completed for phase one. Three international anchor tenants have been secured and the city will be served by an already existing IPP for power which will create about 62,000 625,000 jobs when fully built. There's also the LEKI model industrial park of the state government. It is set on a thousand hectares in the northeast cluster of the LEKI Free Zone. It has already attracted world-class anchor tenants for textile, garments, agri-processing and light manufacturing including the number one Chinese and the number nine global textile and garment group. They are the anchor tenants for that LEKI project with the state government. The community of that project to the petrochemical feedstock from the Dangotir refinery for synthetic textiles and garment manufacturing makes the park really attractive for investors. We expect that just as the Dangotir refinery is going on a pace, of course we know that the refinery also has a fertilizer plant attached to it, the largest single line fertilizer plant in the world. That makes it very attractive for those who of course need the petrochemical products in the industrial park. The third project is in its early stages. This is the Fontour cotton cluster in Katsina state. Fontour has the largest aggregation of cotton generis in Nigeria and the cluster will aggregate cotton from 800,000 farmers in northern Nigeria and it will be the largest cotton gening, spinning and weaving complex in sub-Saharan Africa. It will establish a cotton value chain from seed cotton to finish fabric and provide feedstock for domestic and export-oriented garment manufacturing. We believe that the future for job creation and efficient and profitable businesses lie in innovation and technology. Innovation and technology is completely crucial, especially when we look at the future and not just at the number of young men and women coming out of school, the share numbers of those who need to be employed and the share number of those who need to be fed. We've partnered with local and international tech companies and innovators in the building of tech hubs and promoting innovation. Our aim is to completely democratize access to innovation and cyber commerce and create jobs. We've established hubs in collaboration with the World Bank and the Legal Business School. We have the Climate Change Innovation Hub now at the Legal Business School. In YOLA, we have the Northeast Humanitarian Hub which was established also last year. We also have in collaboration with Civic Hub. We promoted a technology and innovation hub in technology and innovation in several universities. The students' challenge we launched one here. We launched one of the students' challenges here and in six other geopolitical zones. Now, just this morning I inspected the technology hub which is being built in partnership with the Bank of Industry the Civic Hub and the Federal Government and we expect that in the next two months a new technology hub should be ready for the use of University of Lagos innovators and tech seniors. The Bank of Industry in response to the direction set by the government has launched a 10 billion Mara tech fund and I personally visited several technology hubs across the country and several new technology businesses. It's very obvious that there's a lot of excitement there's a lot of innovation in technology in Nigeria and one of the major requirements of course is funding which is why we are leveraging on what the Bank of Industry is doing and we're also creating the Nigerian Enterprise Bank with the CBN with the Central Bank of Nigeria. We believe that the Nigerian Enterprise Bank is an important addition to what the Bank of Industry is doing but it will focus the Enterprise Bank or the Entrepreneur Bank will focus on start-ups on new businesses and the idea will be to fund these new businesses from start-up to the point where they're able to go on their own. It's very clear that already so much is going on and so many technology businesses in Nigeria are able to attract even funding not just locally but internationally. Just to give you a few examples PACE-TAC because I've heard of PACE-TAC in a safe payment system which offers similar money transactions between businesses and their customers was established in 2016 by two young Nigerians alumni of Babcock University and within the first three months of 2018 they processed over 3 billion Nair and they already generate about 40 billion annually for Nigerian businesses. A company that company alone is today powering over 9,000 businesses that did not exist two years ago creating over 25,000 jobs. PACE-TAC PACE-TAC that one company has by itself just 50 employees all of them are under 35 years old all of the employees are under 35. There's also I'm sure some of us have heard of Andela a multinational company specializes in training software developers again co-founded by a Nigerian, a young Nigerian who is, I believe him now under 30 in a voyage. The company estimates that in the next 10 years there will be 1.3 million software development jobs 1.3 million software development jobs available in this country and only 40,000 40,000 computer science graduates to fill them. In other words we'll actually have a situation where we have far too many jobs in that sector and very few individuals to fill them. So their vision is to ensure that they're able to train the number of software developers that will be able to fill in that gap. So today the company has over a thousand employees worldwide and it's very clear that this is the direction that several more come down. There's so many of them and I had the opportunity of visiting several of them here in Lagos. Some in Inuguang practically all across the country. A technology agenda is premised on our new education curriculum and I might speak briefly about it before I round this up. This new education curriculum is one which emphasizes science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. We are currently developing that curriculum with the support of global players like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cisco, IBM and Oracle. A nationwide curriculum, this curriculum we expect is one that will incorporate 21st century STEM thinking. We call it STEAM because we've added arts to it. Coding, design skills, digital arts, robotics, machine learning and so on. The curriculum will cover primary to secondary education with the skills that will be relevant for the sorts of jobs that will be created that are being created today and that will be created in the future. The arts component of that vision is extremely important. Visual arts, dance, music, film and theatre, comedy and literature. These and many more fields in which Nigeria has proved to the world that we have the talent, the originality and the ambition. So today opportunities have been created practically all around in entertainment and in the arts and it is of course the business of government to see that we support that in every way. And this is why the president asked that we constitute a technology and entertainment advisory group. The technology and entertainment advisory group is part of our industrial and competitiveness council. So we have a large number of very young people who are involved in entertainment and who are involved in technology who now support us and who give advice on the new policies that we should adopt for entertainment and technology. And the advice is particularly important because for example we've discovered that a lot of the banks who are jittery about fintech companies and many of these fintech companies of course are the very forward looking companies set up by young men and women, Pace, Park and Co. are these fintech companies and the banks are jittery. But these people were able to do financial transactions without banking licenses and were able to do so across the world. So there was a need for us to rethink our policy especially with the granting of licenses or banking licenses and what sorts of licenses to grant to fintech companies. And it's to the credit of the technology advisory group of these young men and women that were able to develop a policy that enabled the fintech companies to be given licenses that are not quite banking licenses but enable them to do their work without hindrance. Nigeria has also made appreciable progress in improving our business environment. We improved our position in the world bank's ease of doing business rankings by 24 places over a three-year period and were judged one of the 10 best reforming economies in the world. And that when I said so at a gathering where a lot of my political opponents in the PDP were, they didn't know whether to clap or to frown you know. But you know I'm told you know even today there is of course an increased presence of foreign companies coming into the country. I think that Nigeria has always remained a and has always been and remains an attractive place for foreign investment. Of course the better a more business friendly environment means that will attract more foreign investment in the country. Today there are definitely more Japanese companies and we have confirmation of that and that has increased by at least 25% over the past three years. From Norway then the number of companies have also doubled. Alion's the largest insurance company in the world has started operations in Nigeria after buying into a local firm. While Coca-Cola I'm sure we all know has bought up the remaining shares of the energy industry that it did not own. For those of us who are watching the environment we know that smart money always follows what appears to be good news in the business environment. But what kind of reforms are expected in the business sector in the next four years and in which sectors. The first is that we will complete the concessioning of our airports for increased efficiency with global standards. It is very clear that the public sector should not run airports. As a model of the public sector the government should not run any business at all. It should be left to the private sector. The second is to establish a national trading platform to encompass a more sophisticated single window platform. Now the national trading platform is very important because this really is part of our import and export the movement of goods and services across our borders, across our ports. Now we want to have a single platform through which all of this happens. This is what we call the national trading platform and it will include a port community portal for goods being imported and exported out of the country. The third is that the national assembly will make history with a passage and repeal of the document on the Companies and Allied Matters Act which is the biggest business reform bill in Nigeria in the past 28 years. This government bill introduces new provisions for single member companies for limited liability partnerships for company rescue provisions for optional use of common seals introduction of e-signatures for business registration etc. It is going to be a revolutionary amendment of the Companies and Allied Matters Act. The fourth is that we are positioning our regulatory agencies to serve as business facilitators as opposed to obstacles to business. We will broaden the current pilot regulatory reforms the national food and drug administration and control NAFDAQ and the national insurance company and other regulatory agencies. What has happened in the past is that the regulatory agencies have found them to be more obstacles than actual facilitators of business. With what we have called MSME clinics where we have taken the regulators to meet with the MSMEs themselves we are trying to reform the way that our regulators operate so that they see themselves as facilitators of the businesses that they regulate as opposed to obstacles to those businesses. We are working on the omnibus bill on business facilitation as the first of its kind in Nigeria. This bill is aimed at being a single and compassing bill to institutionalize some of the business climate reforms already achieved by PEPEC that's the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council. We are implementing some provisions of the present legislative framework that have been identified as bottlenecks to the business climate reforms and we are introducing new reforms that will accentuate the business climate. So what we have seen here is one single law a single legislation which will address a lot of the concerns that many have in the business environment. So rather than several different laws we are doing one omnibus bill that will take into account several of the different problems that people have expressed in the environment. At the culture and I'm going to go very quickly because I see that people are getting a bit sleepy and culture has been a major success story or I see that you are all awake and culture has been a major success story for us and of course there are several constraints but with increased projectory allocation from 2015 where the entire budget allocation for our culture was 8.8 billion to 46.2 billion in 2016 and 103.8 billion in 2018. So our culture has grown by 14.27% especially in 2018. Through what we call the anchor boroughs program we have been able to give credit directly to small holder farmers and this is done through the CBN and 13 participating banks. So far credit totaling about 120.6 billion has been given to almost a million small holder farms cultivating 12 commodities including rice, wheat, cotton soybeans, cassava poultry and ground nuts across the 36 states of the federation. In addition we launched a fertilizer program to improve local blending capacity in collaboration with Morocco. Today we have 11 fertilizer blending plants with a capacity of 2.1 million. Price of fertilizers for those who farm has dropped from about 13,000 for the 50 kg bag to now between 5,500 and 6,000. The importance of the fertilizer program is that we are now in a position where we are able to produce as much fertilizer as we need and what is more we are also able to use the type of fertilizer that is applicable to the type of soil that requires it. So we are not just using one fertilizer fits all we actually do the test to be sure that the type of soil that is at the type of fertilizer is required for the type of soil is what we use. The anchor boros program itself is now digitalized. With all farm lands GPRS mapped biometric data of farmers is captured electronic cards issued and biometric inputs are checked. This has enhanced traceability and also enhanced productivity and yield. Today but for a few drawbacks we are confidently approaching self-sufficiency in rice production from importing 5 million dollars of rice daily official imports are now down to 2% we have opened up opportunities for greater entrepreneurial activity in value-added services value-added services in the last three years more young entrepreneurs have taken to agriculture and have taken advantage of the massive market for food and agric for food and agricultural commodities and they are doing well at it. I just give one or two examples there is a company called Farm Crowdy a company established by two young Nigerians is a digital agricultural portal that crowd sources funding for farms across Nigeria was founded by Onyeka Akuma in 2016 and three other young Nigerians it actually works like a mutual fund so what they do is that they pull together money for multiple investors to establish farms and to hire smallholder farmers and they hire smallholder farms to cultivate those farms and then they pay their investors dividends from the harvest from these farms in December 2017 they raised a million dollars in funding and they have also raised since then they've raised some more local funding and I believe now they have clientele in excess of 100,000 investors Farm Crowdy and that's Farm Crowdy but in 2012 another company like that was founded I think no I think sorry I said 2016 another company like that was founded Soutre the name of the company is Soutre founded by a lady called YMSI in Raleway this is a cassava what she did is a cassava processing company in the town of Aduawa in southern Nigeria more than 200 kilometers from Lagos the first assembly plant amongst a total of six to operate is to assemble tractors and implements and to be located in Bouchi state in an already existing facility owned by a private operator it is projected that almost 5,000 tractors will be assembled every year now there will also be service centers there will be a total of 780 service centers spread out across the local government areas of the states and the federal capital territory what the service center will offer is a technology package consisting of machinery and equipment and the machinery of course will be agricultural mechanization of course it can be rented, rental tractors etc there will also be quality inputs improved seedlings fertilizers and pesticides in each of those service centers there will also be technical assistance and training for small holder farmers in order to ensure consistent results in productivity and the quality of agricultural produce the service center will also perform an important market function it will be able to aggregate primary produce for processing and haul it to markets so this establishes a means for monetizing the entire process and for loan repayment based on the percentage of agricultural production 109 of these service centers will be located in the 109 senatorial districts as process service centers and the process service centers will in addition to already mentioned services have processes which serve as a throughput from which value can be added to their cultural produce brought in by local farmers service centers will be based on the comparative and complementary advantage of each location now the most important aspect of this particular project is that it is a comprehensive project for transforming Nigeria from the type of farming which we have seen to a thoroughly mechanized system of agriculture and we are working with the Brazilian government who are investing a billion US dollars over the period of the project in bringing in equipment which as I said will be locally assembled and the equipment will be in various service centers farmers will be able to hire tractors will be able to hire mechanized equipment from these service centers and of course will not need to buy them but the most important part of it is that the entire value chain will be covered grains and cereal livestock poultry fruits tubers practically everything the entire value chain we are also going to be using young technicians from the MPA agro program they will join the technical staff of the service centers and of course they will be involved in extension planning etc we think that this project is particularly important especially for the next phase of our agricultural program so I would skip the impact I think I've already made the point about the impact but agriculture as I've said is extremely important going forward now I think that I should just very briefly talk about our social investment program just to underscore some of the very important issues that underscore our planning that under guard for bringing many out of poverty and for ensuring that we are able to provide a decent existence for as many Nigerians as possible our social investment program is the largest and most ambitious social program possibly in the history in our history certainly but we've seen that aspects of it as some of the largest anywhere on the continent we provided 500 billion for the social investment project in 2016 and 2017 but the total spend is closer to possibly about 200, 250 billion from both budgets the program has four components the first is the EMPAR program our graduate employment scheme where we employ 500,000 graduates many of these graduates have been recruited as teachers as cultural extension workers and as public health workers each of these volunteers the first 250,000 of them have been provided with an electronic tablet such as the one that I have here and it contains relevant training materials including some materials which are used to train on an ongoing basis so they have on those they have in those tablets they have entrepreneurial training some computer skills training coding some digital literacy training and all of that these are meant to be materials that would help the volunteers or the beneficiaries of the scheme to develop themselves even as they work and earn some money the device also empowers them to participate in the digital economy as data collectors and as analysts one of the reasons why we thought that this program is very important is because every year 1.7 new entrance coming to the job market every single year 1.7 million in order to prevent a situation where we simply have a major crisis on our hands of course government must provide some jobs to fill in the gap now we expect that it is industry we expect that it is business we expect to provide the jobs that will sustain that will sustain our economy going forward but it is impossible to deal with the numbers if we are expecting industry to provide all of those jobs because it will take a while for industry to provide the jobs that is the reason why the empire program was created to fill in that gap so we employ 500,000 for a start and we are looking at employing a further 500,000 to make that a million in order to be able to bridge that gap as much as possible for a 2 year period and then of course it can be extended as we go further but we believe that government must provide some employment opportunities that it pays for and of course as it provides that opportunity we also train those that we provide the opportunities for in order to ensure that we don't have a situation where far too many people are out there on the job market there is also the government enterprise and empowerment program these are interest free loans ranging from 50,000 to 350,000 disbursed so far to more than 400,000 market women traders, artisans, farmers across the 36 states of the country and the FCT 56% of the loans have gone to women now aside from that program we have the trader money program an important component of giving micro credit to the bottom of the trading pyramid the smallest businesses the one table trader the bread seller, the plantain seller the meshai or mesuya and all of those kinds of people whose inventory is usually no more than about 1,500,000 Nair this is the largest segment of our trading population in Nigeria is there the largest number they are an important part of the value chain for most goods they sell the single sashes of soap, of sugar spices to the largest numbers of our people but they are forgotten and they are ignored in the economic plans and budgets and they are considered too unwieldy and too risky for micro credit loans under that scheme we have been able to give micro credit on petty traders across the country so far and how it works is that of course the scheme run by the bank of industry the bank of industry enumerates those who get the loans and they are given 10,000 Nair in the first place when they pay back within a 6 month period they are given 15,000 when they pay back they are given 20 and it goes all the way up to 100,000 Nair now sometimes you hear people ask you what can 10,000 Nair do obviously such people haven't seen the things that some of us have seen very clear that if you look at the average petty trader most of them if you look at somebody who is selling plantae the inventory is not even up to 2,000, 3,000 Nair somebody who is selling ground nuts or selling some small stuff usually the inventory is so small I was at Nair market in Abuja I was speaking to a woman who was selling her pommon in a bucket she had all her pommon in one bucket water of course there was water in it so she put her pommon in it I asked her how much is all of this about 3,500 so I said how do you make money from this she didn't even answer she just pointed to the woman standing next to her whose pommon was in a little bowl you know so what she was telling me is that look look look I am a big player here look I was and that is the story and that is the story across the country we need to there is no way that we can take people out of poverty without giving them the resources to come out of poverty we must give them resources so that they can improve on their inventory sell more, make more money for themselves and be able to climb up that ladder the examples we have seen of the countries across the world that have taken their people out of poverty these are the same methods India is one good example today where India has outstripped us India used to have the largest number of poor people now we have the largest number because India has been able to move ahead of us it is not because and it is not because we do not know what to do it is because we haven't done what we need to do when in 2012 we had 12 million poor people India at the time started this sort of program the social investment programs that we are doing now they started giving credit conditional cash transfers and credit to the poorest and gradually these people came in fact what they are giving is much less than what we are giving it is much less than 10,000 at some point they were giving something in the order of about $20 or $15 or so and yet people were coming out of poverty so that we must address the questions of poverty because this is what affects the largest numbers of our people so this program has led to one of the most successful financial outcomes financial inclusion outcomes the opening of several new bank accounts wallets for beneficiaries intending beneficiaries etc again we have as part of our social investment program our school feeding program is an important part of our human development agenda by tackling the broader issues of eradication of poverty food and nutrition security and increasing school enrollment the homegrown school feeding program has proved to be one of the most important social investment programs that we have what we do is that everyday we provide lunch for 9.2 million children in 26 states of the federation every single day now these children these children are in 49,237 public schools across the country in the 26 states and so far we have point about 95,422 cooks and over 100,000 smallholder farms are linked to the program supplying locally sourced ingredients now some of the figures per week some of the figures per week so it means that we kill and that's across the country 594 cows every week 138,000 chickens 6.8 million eggs and 83 metric tons of fish every single week now of course we have supply implications and we haven't and we have not covered 36 states so far we've gone only we've only covered 26 states but we still have 10 states to go before we cover the entire country as you can imagine the quantity of starch vegetables required for the program on a weekly basis is also very high dietary energy and nutrients you know very important issues that are associated with this program we also have a deworming program as part of the homegrown school feeding program one of the key things I will try to address with our homegrown school feeding program is really the whole question of manual nutrition and many of us of course who are familiar with this know that this is one of the major problems that extreme poverty has brought upon us and has brought upon countries like ours very poor what it means for many young children especially those between the ages of 0 and 6 or so is that where they are malnourished in that age bracket they become stunted in their growth their mental growth and it usually is irreversible so unless we are able to provide some food for them good nutrition for them especially in that age bracket we will lose practically millions of young Nigerians who will be stunted in their mental growth and who will remain stunted for the rest of their lives so this program is particularly important for us and we intend to expand it and to take it even to the preschool early education as much as possible now aside from the homegrown school feeding of course I've talked already about conditional cash transfers et cetera and I'm not going to take any more of your time I've already mentioned the education education program national health insurance I don't think I've mentioned that but I hope you'll be able to get copies of that I really think that I mustn't delay you much further because I could really hold you here for next time next time you'll be careful not to invite a professor and a pastor next time you wouldn't do so but I just want to mention just as I close I'll mention the educational system and the plans that we have already talked about it but I think one of the very important issues is that we cannot support there is no prosperity without an educational system that is able to sustain not just not just the jobs that will emerge from that economy or that will be necessary but also it is important that we are able to have an educational system that takes care of practically everyone all of the children that are growing up today we have all sorts of figures well out of school children some say 10 million some say it's increased and all of that but one of the critical things that we are doing as a government is first of all we understand the problem when you talk about out of school children you are talking about mainly primary school children now primary school education is run by states as you know states local government they run primary school education now there is no way by which the federal government by itself can solve the problem of out of school children because each state runs its own primary school system as a matter of fact if you look at the figures you will find that there is such disparity between out of school children say in legal state out of school children in Bauchi state out of school children in a number of states that's a disparity huge disparity in the actual numbers so what we try to do at the level of the national economic council which are the privilege of chairing the governors we meet every month and we looked at each state so there is almost what we call a name and shame so we pick a state and say now how come we do have 100,000 primary school children that are not going to school how come you have 300,000 how come you have 400,000 what can we do to resolve this problem then as I said there is a huge variety in the in the actual numbers but what it is is that we simply have to compel the states provide more resources for education also healthcare because primary healthcare of course as you know is state run so we really have to we have to ensure that the states provide more resources and that we back the states as much as we can for resources for education and healthcare there is no what I have seen is that obviously in the next few years we will resolve the problem but my greater worry is with respect to the quality of education which of course speaks to the question of teacher training the quality of teachers how do you get the best quality of teachers and that is why in one of the big projects that we are doing with the states is the whole question of revamping teacher training how do we revamp teacher training how can we ensure that teachers are not just better trained but trained in the particular skills that are relevant especially digital literacy skills and those skills that are relevant for the immediate future so there is a lot of attention being paid to that at the moment as a matter of fact if you look at our educational program there are three broad pillars of that program and all of them address how to ensure that we are first we adequately resource teacher training and in this respect where the federal government of course is going to back the states give resources add resources to what they have to be able to resource teacher training but also to develop the kinds of classrooms the kinds of accommodation that we need now because if you look at what is required I mean a lot of what is required for digital training you know the classrooms have need special equipment there is a need for us to bring in special equipment but fortunately for us there is a lot there is a lot of help coming from practically everywhere and equipment is getting cheaper and cheaper and not more expensive as a matter of fact what we have seen is that we can using some of the tools that are already available train more train faster than ever before and we think that if we focus on some of the work that has been done elsewhere especially large populations like India and all of that we will be able to do we will be able to move even much faster but the other point with respect to education is girl child education as the education of young women of the education of girls that is a major problem you look at the number of out of school children the most significant portion of that of course is girls who are not going to school and if you look at some of the figures of those who have not gone to school and who are over the age of 15 already it really is quite startling but we must do everything that needs to be done some of it is cultural some of it is you know early marriages and all of that now there is a good there is more attention being paid to ensuring that young girls are going to school a lot of the governors especially in the states where this has proved to be a problem are far more willing than ever before to commit to girl child education and everyone knows that if girls are educated they would not marry as early as they marry that would also affect population already we are all panicking about our population which we are going to be the third or so most populous country in the whole world by 2050 so everybody is panicking about that but if you actually improve girl child education we can reduce our population considerably because all of the studies show that educated women have fewer children than the illiterate or uneducated ones so that at least is one way of ensuring that we are able to also deal with the population issues those are some of the broad questions and issues that we have to address so just to end I would like to say that our country is set for our country is set for progress there is no question at all that our country can prosper we have been ideas our problems have never been planned our problem has always been how to ensure that we implement those plans and that we do what we say we will do and I think that President Muhammad is not an orator but is a well known doer and I think that this one we will do by God's grace thank you very much