 Welcome back, your soul, watching the breakfast and plus TV Africa. President Mahon Ruhari, on Tuesday, commissioned the newly built International Terminal of the Motala Muhammad International Airport, Lagos. Mr. Ruhari, who took a tour around the project terminal, said the facility was built on a land mass of approximately 56,000 square meters with 66 check-in counters and has a capacity to process 14 million passengers every year. The new terminal is equipped with censored conveyor belt, seven jet bridges, 10 ultra modern cooling systems, a heat extraction in the baggage hall, ample space for duty-free shops and banks, recreational areas for children, and very importantly, a 22-room hotel for stopovers among others, and these are passengers who are just sleeping in the airport before moving elsewhere. Now, the president also commissioned the Dangote Fertilizer Plant in the Ibeju lekkie area of Lagos. He inaugurated the multi-billion dollar facility at that event, well attended by many political, traditional, and religious leaders, as well as key members of private sector from various parts of the country. The Dangote Fertilizer Plant is Africa's largest granulated urea fertilizer complex. It occupies 500 hectares of land in the lekkie free trade zone and was built at about $2.5 billion. It is expected to help Nigeria retain $125 million in import substitution and provide $625 million from exports of products from the Fertilizer Plant. Now, to help us analyze these developments and the impact on the economy of Lagos State and Nigeria in general, let's welcome a public affairs analyst who joins us from Lagos, Mark Adebayo. Good morning to you, Mark, and thank you very much for your time. Thank you for having me. Good morning. The new international terminal at the Mutala Muhammad Airport has been a long time coming, and finally, the president has commissioned it. What are your thoughts, a beautiful air phase I might add, a far cry from what we had before at the international wing of the Mutala Muhammad Airport? What are your thoughts on this one? It's quite beautiful. Yeah, yeah. It's so beautiful. It's so commendable. It's so fulfilling. You know, when you travel as often as some of us do, the kind of frustration that you experience at the old airport, the embarrassment of it all, you know, was something that I saw. But this one now, it tells you what, every airport tells you what the country you are going to look like. So it's a gateway. The first analysis of a visit to your country is how your airport looks like, you know, the beauty of it, the aesthetics of it, the effectiveness of it, the functioning of it. You know, in my mind, tell the visitor what your country looks like. And honestly, I'm so happy about this. I can't even wait for my next trip to come. Honestly. So it's so beautiful. It's something that I really am proud of. You know, we have always, look at countries, every country like Ethiopia, look at their airport. Look at the international airport. Look at Kenya. Look at Ghana. You know, wonderful airports. But ours, it used to be a nice, a kind of attic that would not be light. So it's so beautiful. It's so nice. It's a good image for Nigeria. I wish the 22 rooms would have been made like 200 rooms. You know, 14 million people, 22 rooms can hardly be built. So that's it. But it's commendable. I mean, Nigeria and I love it. It's so beautiful. You know, when I want to travel, I like to be comfortable. When I look at international travel, I like to be comfortable in the airport. I don't want an airport where there will be no light, where there will be no community system, where the public address system is a nightmare. I don't want to see that. But now this one, I think, has very few role from that embarrassment. And put those to the federal government. All right. Fantastic. Indeed, that's a pointer to something that could be improved on. Talking about the number of beds in that layover, or stay-over hotel, twin-terms, with more like 200 with the volume of traffic passing through the airport. Let's go back to the old, what is now the old international wing of the Murtala Muhammad Airport. I'm sure that at some point it was an okay airport of good international standard for its time, which, you know, should not have been as dilapidated as it is today. And I'm sure you can share some of your experiences at the airport. But let me share a few that some have complained about both Nigerians and non-Nigerians. The conveyor belt is not working. We've heard of that before. The light has gone off at the Murtala Muhammad International Airport. We've heard of that before. The vice president saw a rat dangling from the ceiling. We've heard of that before. Oh, I got down from the aircraft, got into the airport, and the restroom was stinking. I could smell urine coming from there. We've got the cooling is not working. We've got that before. What happened? Why did we have to have an airport that, you know, was in such a sorry state? Well, first, let me apologize for the noise you are hearing. The drumming. I am directly opposite to my place. It's opposite to the school. So the children are making the drums. So, you see, it's not that we have heard about that before. Some of us have experienced it firsthand before. You know, the most embarrassing part is that they like to just go off for like hours and not be light. We have seen situations whereby the airport staff had to be using torch or their phone, their phone torch to process passengers travelling out of the, once there is no light, the cooling system would go off, the heat would come on, and so embarrassing, very embarrassing. You know, the experience was not bad. In the 70s and the 80s, it wasn't like that. The airport was functioning very well in the 80s. You know, but corruption destroyed everything. It was corruption. The same corruption that destroyed Africa's best airline, Nigeria Airways of old. It's the same corruption that dilapidated our international airport. International Amur Talama International Airport. It's the same corruption that killed Nigeria Airways. That was a comprehensive audit of a kind of enquiry of what really transpired, who looted what, what happened. There is that document, but unfortunately the government refused to take action on those who destroyed Nigeria Airways. So it was the same corruption that led to the dilapidation of the old international airport. So that is it. The experiences were nightmarish. They were embarrassing. As in Nigeria, you know, you are flying, you are returning home, and then you are sitting with four expatriates who are coming down, and then they begin to say what kind of country. You know, and if it's a first-time experience for a foreigner, you can see this first impression lasts the longest, they say. They will go back and say Nigeria is a bush. Nigeria is like Kutanoko-shito or all those things. But I believe with these, I believe that that is something that they have put behind us. Hopefully. Because Nigeria also like, Nigerian government like the culture of maintenance. Hopefully this one will be maintained well. I would have preferred that the maintenance of these edifices be given to the private consortium. So let's talk about that. Of course, we know the federal airports and a very important point you've raised at Makadebo, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria. Authority of Nigeria, of course, we have them there and one or two other power statels, National's Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority is there. But as regards to the management of the airports, the one that we can readily talk about is the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria. Yes, the President reminded or urged the Minister of State for Aviation Hadi Sirukadu to urgently fast-track the concession project of the federal government. You know, we've been hearing about this for some years now, a couple of years now that they want to concession the airports. So we hear that this project will not be completed and the concession process will not be completed. The bids, you know, going through the bids and, you know, we're not coming out till maybe the end of this year. Are you concerned about the maintenance of this airport, at least till the end of the year, or do you think we can wing it? Because, I mean, you have escalators, you know, a lot of things there. Sirukadu, I am very much concerned. It will have been proper, it will have been better for the concession to even happen before the commission, you know, so that, you know, this private, public-private, you know, enterprise collaboration between government and private sector will have been able to make it work. You know, private guys handle things better than government. They handle business stores better than government. Like something like this, they will handle it better. I want to know why the delay, why delay the concession. I don't think, I mean, this is part of the thing that will have been completed before the commission, from day one, that concession should have been done so that the partners, the co-partners will have taken over the maintenance, the management, the cleaning up. Look at where you get to talking, you know. I'm trying to mention countries that I don't want to go to, like America, but there are some countries that are probably on the same league with Nigeria that are operating their airports efficiently and perfectly. It's not that somebody will clean, you know, using the, what do you call it, manuality to clean. No, there are machines that clean the airport. 247. Whether there are people moving or not, 247, nothing. You can't touch sand. At the Turkey, at the International Airport, you can't see sand. It's been, everything is being cleaned every second, round the clock. You understand? So we need to have that. But if you, all these government people, they don't know, you know, the way Nigeria's government works. Like, there's nobody's father as well. I wish it's very bad. It's unfortunate. It's anti-social. Yeah, let's quickly go to the commissioning of the dango to fertilizer plant. $2.5 billion worth of a plant has capacity to produce 3 million metric tons of euro each year. What's important of having such a facility come on board? Of course, this is the inauguration of this plant. When it fully comes on stream, what should we expect to be the contribution and the impact of this on the Nigerian economy? The immediate economic impact of this wonderful fertilizer company is the fact that, number one, in the next 10, 15 years, nobody is likely to be interested in buying Nigeria's oil again. So we'll have to forward to agriculture. Agriculture will become the mainstay of the economy in the next 10, 15 years. In the next 30, 40 years, even aviation fuel, planes will no longer be using fuel. Cars have been digitized to be environmentally friendly, and they are not using fossil fuel. If fossil fuel will go out of fashion, so Nigeria's economy will no longer be dependent on oil. So we are going to forward to agriculture. Remember that we have been told that more than 80% of variable land in Nigeria are still in follow and exploited for agriculture. So we'll have to forward to agriculture. 3 million tons of fertilizer per year can take care of the whole of West Africa. So it is undefourn for us that our economy now, that we are agro-based economy, this type of fertilizer plant will be able to help us to get better bumper efforts around the year. I don't think it will lead to revolutionization of our agricultural practices. We are by... We are not. We are seasonal farmers. We wait until the rain comes. In some other countries, they plant around 3 months, they plant around the year. So we don't wait until the rain comes and do that. I believe that this fertilizer, 3 million tons per year will be huge, and we are told that it is even going to improve on that. So it can take care adequately the fertilizer market to provide employment it will improve our agriculture it will... it will also help in the area of food security. So these are the wonderful advantages of this and then be the private concern. You will see that there will be proper monitoring, there will be proper discipline, organizational management of the edifice so that it will function perfectly as it was proposed. So there will not be any... Yes. Some people have also pointed... I mean, in 2020 or there about the president of the federal government banned the importation of fertilizer. I saw some... an infographic yesterday online showing the countries that are dependent on Russian fertilizer and with Nigeria having an official ban on importation of fertilizer the countries in the world that had large importation of Russian fertilizer in Africa the dot, the market indicating the country was really quite a bit big the rest of Africa didn't have except maybe North Africa the small one in Southern Africa but this dot indicating where Russian fertilizer was being imported was in Ben-A-Republic and people started laughing because the amount of fertilizer being imported to Ben-A-Republic I wonder if their population is as that of Nigeria. So someone asked the question, are you thinking what I'm thinking which is these guys are importing through Ben-Republic, smuggling into Nigeria. What are the prospects for the survival of dango tape if this importation is going on and the smuggling is going on, on this scale? We would have to apply the same approach that we applied in the area of rice that is now helping home grown rice to try. The importing rice through Ben-Republic as well if they rise the importing you wonder if their population has quadrupled overnight. Ben-A-Republic is about half, the whole of Ben-Republic is not even just a little bit the other half of the state. It probably shows the smuggling the rice as well into Nigeria. Ben-A-Republic is what you can call the Republic especially their port is just the satellite port to Nigeria. It's a satellite port. So 90% of what goes into Ben-A-Republic's port comes to find their way to Nigeria you know fire smuggling that is what happens. When they are bringing things to Ben-A-Republic Ben-A-Republic is not the primary target of the importers. It is Nigeria. Freakus, rice, frozen chicken, turkey dango tape plants suffer as a result of this continued importation or you think this is the right way to solve that problem very quickly. So it is the way to solve the rice issue that is now giving importers to localize production. The Niger customs all the security agencies will have to collaborate to ensure that all the smoke glass are discouraged from bringing fertilizer to Ben-A-Republic. We have done it before. We have to go. You've given us fantastic analysis. We have to let the fertilizer plant to try. We have to do. The government must ensure that it is the right way. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for your time and enjoy the rest of your day. And that's it on the breakfast of Plus TV Africa. It's been a very interesting episode of the program of course with analysis of very interesting topics. Do join us same time tomorrow but do remember also that you can follow us on our social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube you can search for us at Plus TV Africa. Don't forget to watch our live stream simply follow us on YouTube on Plus TV Africa Live Star. My name is Kofi Bartels. Keep watching Plus TV Africa.