 A business and financial expert, the CEO of Vestlem Ltd, Kanesha Kootenamani joins me now in this discourse. Thanks for joining me, Kanes. Alright, first, let's start by looking on the suspension of the fuel subsidy removal, which was to take effect two months from now. The federal government has said that it will continue with consultation before going on with it. Is this tenable or just what do you think? Is the federal government just stalling? To be honest, I just think this is the right thing for them to do to actually put it on hold because removal of fuel subsidy already planned by the current administration. It's almost like they are trying to put that in motion for the next administration before they come in. So I think it's something that the economic team of the new incoming administration needs to take a look at, first of all, before they can decide if they want to carry on with the fuel subsidy. And I think there's a whole lot that needs to be done first before they can even consider the removal because removing the fuel subsidy, just like we discussed here on this channel before, at this particular critical point in time, it's not a good decision because what alternative are you making available for people who cannot afford to pay for petrol or PMS at the current price is going to be after the removal? All right. But then again, the federal government before now, before NEC announced the suspension yesterday, it talked about the grants that it received from the federal, sorry, from the old ban to cushion the effect of this removal that was supposed to take place in June. And of course it also announced a 40% salary raise for Nigerian workers. Do you think those steps were actually in the right direction towards a cushioning effect of the removal that was supposed to be in June? Well, in the past, we've seen different kinds of funds created to cushion the effect of some policies that have been created by the government. For example, we saw in the recent case of COVID-19 where we had some sort of a fund that was going to use to cushion the effect of COVID-19 on Nigerians. But then we realized that so many people confirmed that they did not get those funds. So I think instead of getting grants to cushion the effect of removal of fuel subsidy, we should work towards creating a way to make sure that we have alternative sources, for example. If you remember, the vice president also had a time that he mentioned that there was a whole lot of energy being put into diversification. For example, the use of LPG and harnessing what we had with LPG. And then they went down to creating models where we can convert our cars from petrol to LPG or for it to be dual energy consumption sort of. But then we've seen that they've made this plan and then they said that it's something that is going to actually kick off immediately. But in the past few years, we've not seen anything happen with that. So I'm trying to understand how it's possible for them to transition or how they see it possible that getting grants to cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal is in the right direction. I think it's more of whatever strategy they had with LPG but make it a bit more private sector driven. I think that is the only way we can successfully move from this current subsidy policy to remove a lot of fuel subsidy. Yes, I know you have said that there should be some sort of meeting between this outgoing administration plus the one that is incoming. But then again, if we are stalling with the removal of fuel subsidy because eventually the federal government says it will remove it, what can make an impact really of not removing subsidy at this particular time? To be honest, I think anybody that is thinking of stalling or stopping the removal of fuel subsidy at the moment or pushing that conversation is probably looking at not just the economic impact but the security impact. A whole lot of Nigerian see fuel subsidy as a way where there are some sort of taking their own national cake from the government. So when you sort of take that away from them and then with this whole thing happening after we are just coming out from this election, people will feel like they are being shortchanged some sort of and a new government will not want to get into government and the first thing they experience is some sort of national security issue because of fuel subsidy removal because taking it or leaving it is most likely going to happen because people are going to kick back. So I think apart from the economic challenge is going to have, for example, the cost of production is going to increase because we don't have 24 hours power. The cost of transportation is going to increase. The cost of production, for example, manufacturing, even the cost of healthcare is definitely going to increase because how many hospitals are going to be able to afford to actually either go green or probably pay more for however they are going to power their facilities. So these are the things that we need to critically look at before even the new administration things of removing the fuel subsidy. I strongly believe the first thing to do first is to create an alternative. Getting grants to cushion the effect is just a temporary fix, but it's not going to have any major positive impact. Alright, I'll just hang on again and I'll be back with you in a moment. I'm going to take a quick break. We'll leave the fuel subsidy. We'll come back and look at the Agora report, our policy report in a moment. Just stand by. Don't go away. I will be right back. Business Insights continues in a moment.