 President Mohammed Buhari has approved the establishment of a 22-member presidential transition council ahead of the 2019, or rather May 29, handover to the next administration. The presidential transition council is to be headed by the Secretary General of the Federation, who will coordinate the 2023 handover activities to ensure smooth transition of power from the current administration to the next. Members of the council include the Head of Service of the Federation, Solicitor General of the Federation, and Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice. The council will be inaugurated on the 14th of February, as the president will exit office on the 29th of May after two terms in office. Joining us to discuss and break this down is Akin Brathways. He is the governorship candidate of the National Rescue Movement NR. Thank you so much for joining us, Akin. Thank you for helping me. It's interesting that for the first time we're having to see a constituted panel or committee this early in the life of an election year, because of course the elections are yet to happen. But we know that Mr President has mentioned it over and over again every time he gets the opportunity to say he cannot wait to live, he's done his best. Is this also Mr President trying to show us that he will leave office when it's May 29th? So whatever assumptions or let's say propaganda that's out there that Mr President might not want to hand over power on May 29th, could this be a signal that he's ready? I think we have to applaud Mr President this time around. He has made a lot of statements about how he intends to make sure that he hands over a fair election. And I think these kind of actions also, if any of his inner circle are in doubt, this kind of puts that to rest to say, hey, look, listen guys, I don't care what you're thinking, but this is the way I'm going and making that very, very transparently obvious that in order to have a transition, everybody needs to know what is expected to happen. So just like the Americans have it, you know, you know that once an election has taken place, these are the steps that happen post the election. I think it's a very, very good move and should be applauded. Many have questioned all of the things that are happening now leading up to the election, the fuel scarcity which Anak has complained about that he might hinder logistics and movement on election day. The lack of cash and, you know, the cost of leaving rising high and the Nigerians not even catching a break. And many people are saying this might one way or the other, you know, stop the elections from happening. In fact, people have come up with all kinds of propaganda. So why the hurry? I mean, because it's supposed to be post-election, that's when you say, OK, it's time for us to clean house and, you know, usher these other guys in. What's the hurry? We're yet to even have the elections and many are worried that the elections are actually going to hold come February 25. Well, you could argue that if he just remained silent and just let things run up to the election, you could always keep saying there's that is the election going to happen like a lot of people, you know, are saying. But if Mr. President through his action now puts in play a lot of the including his people, you know, saying, hey, look, guys, now you've got to do this. So everybody's taking a role in terms of now ensuring that the incoming president really has a smooth, you know, transition has a welcome, you know, to be able to come in. There are signs out there. I don't think it's in a hurry because let's face it, the elections are only a couple of weeks away. A couple of days. They're right here. So perhaps this should even have happened right at the beginning of the year, you know. So I think it's the timing is OK. As to the issues around scarcity of petrol, around the cash, it's, yeah, it's reading like a thriller. But I think there's a lot of conspiracy theory around this. Care to share something? Yeah, I think that the idea that, oh, some people, you know, went into a dark corner and some woman just said to listen, let's, let's change the currency and then let's make sure that the currency isn't available. I think that runs counterintuitive and it's rather illogical. But if you look at the fact that some of the banks have been complicit in hoarding the money. If you look at the issue of people having the money and spraying it at parties and all that, you know that it comes. I bring it right back to the whole issue of, you know, the corruption that has pervaded society. But then a bank manager, you know, in fact, not one, not too many of them have complained live on radio to say each one of us with this bank was given 100,000. That bank was given 150,000. How much money are we supposed to dispense? So when they say a certain bank was hoarding monies, who do we believe? Who do we believe? How true is the CBN? What truth is the CBN telling us? Because it's between the CBN and commercial banks. And I mean, I'm trying to understand why a bank would rather have that you break the windows and destroy the things in their banks, as opposed to giving up monies if these monies were actually available. So, I mean, he said, she said, we really don't know who to believe. You know, if you take the culture of our country, and I think the last time we spoke, I really mentioned that we have to get ourselves into an ethical state of mind. We have to decide if we truly want to be a modern society. And that cuts across, you know, to every aspect of our lives. I've seen clips where inspectors have gone into certain banks and you've seen the pile of new money. You know, that's there, which actually should have been dispensed. So yes, he said, she said, you know, all of that, and the truth is somewhere in the middle, right? But at the end of the day, I believe that we all have to sort of come to terms with a simple thing like changing currency. I find it difficult in my mind to imagine that, you know, the regulatory authority will say, we're changing the currency and then decide not to fund the currency. You know, again, yes, the conspiracy theory is that, yeah, they did that only to cause mayhem and pandemonium. And then in causing the pandemonium, you won't be able to have, you know, elections. To me, I think that that is too much of a far-fetched drama, you know, at the end of the day. Again, we're crediting these guys with genius mentality. You know, there's no way that they can line up all the different things that can happen, you know, along the way. So I think it's a mix of everything, you know, incompetence, a mix of some people, you know, taking advantage of that. If you look at the petrol scarcity as well, you will find in some petrol stations that the petrol is there. But they're just, you know, not selling and then they're selling at the premium. So again, all that is a mixture of people deciding at some point to take their own, you know, share of the pie, regardless of the problems it's creating for fellow Nigerians. There are a lot of questions that need answers. I had the presidential candidate of the, I think, the SDP here yesterday, and he was talking about the fact that changing up the Naira shouldn't be a big of a deal as it is right now, because he made mention, and I'd like to quote him directly, that under the now governor of Anambar State, Charles Saludo, we did have, you know, we changed a polymath from, and it was very seamless. Why is this particular one? You know, because I'm guessing nobody would have talked about the timing or anything if he was seamless as it should be. So again, you talked about the issue of incompetence. Now we heard this morning that the federal government has given a directive to, you know, patrolling marketers or pump price of people who are filling stations to make sure that they take transfers or POS, point of sale, you know, payment. And I asked the question, if bank platforms are not working, transfers are hanging in the air, why not deal with that before giving this directive? It's like pouring water in the back of the chicken. So are we really helping the situation or are we feeling, you know, the fear and the anger that people already have? You know, it's interesting that sometimes in life, there are coincidences that are unplanned. Now, about two months ago or thereabouts, I did come across an article that talked about the jacquard. And to the extent that it pointed out that we were going to really experience a lot of problems in terms of in the banking sector, fintechs and whatever, because a lot of the brains were, you know, leaving. And to that extent, that was even before all this catastrophe started. And when this started happening, I thought, hmm, you know, quite interesting. Someone had kind of preempted me. Yes, and talked about the problems that, you see, there is an impact. And I think there's a consequence to, you know, in some of these institutions and not just the banks, you have whole departments leaving, you know, just up and going and not even with your normal notice and what have you. So there's a lot and then you compound that. Remember that there was a notice period of 90 days given for us to go through all these changes and what have you. So I think that there was abundant time for, again, you know, it depends. I don't know how much you had stashed at home. But I think the average person that probably maybe had 200K or something, you know, lying in the safe to maybe somebody who had 10 million. I'm not sure it would take that long to move 10 million out of your home safe into the bank. Yeah, the challenge I don't think is moving the money. The challenge is getting money back because there are a lot of people who are not into 21st century banking who rather keep their monies at home because of the excessive charges, the transfer. I mean, it's so much, especially now, I send somebody money, they take my money. The person who receives the money, money is taken from him. So, again, why would people want to put their monies in banks if there are no incentives? That's the first question. Now, you're making me bring my money to the bank and you're promising me that you give me the new money. Now, I have given you my money. I need my money to eat. I need my money to do stuff. I cannot get access to that money. This is where the problem is not necessarily with people putting their monies in. They want money back because now the average person who sells something on the streets is not taking the old money. That's because the CBN has said, oh, we're taking in the old money and giving you new money. But where is the new money? That's the question. You know, that's the difficult one to figure out. And I think that if we put it down to the conspiracy theory, that means somebody, maybe the person who wrote the article, had seen this and had seen it to the point where he also felt and knew that people were not going to accept anything. And he also knew that the banks were not going to be able to, their machines were not going to work and all of that. I think the combination of everything now culminating at this stage, you could say that perhaps with the election just on the corner, but remember this was meant to have been over by this January sometime. I put it down to a combination of perhaps the inability of people to execute properly. The whole idea of trying to become a digital and cashless system, a cashless environment without maybe necessarily carrying the people along sufficiently. But I think that Nigerians in their ingenious ways do find ways around. Some are cashing in on it, sadly, by charging, you know, now we have a black market. And unfortunately some are cashing in on that. But I suspect that this is going to settle down. We will find ingenious ways of, you know, trade by barter. And perhaps I think what a lot of the angst too is about the politics of it relating to how do you now, how do you carry on the whole process of giving people money to vote. So we might now see people taking credit for voting. So you vote on credit. I'd love to see how that works. But let's just come back to President Bahari and taking a look back at the... I always ask people what posterity would remember President Bahari for a presidency that rolled into office on the wings of fighting corruption, putting an end to Boko Haram and terrorism, under-employment and unemployment. Have we really seen, you know, these things walked on under this administration? And how well can you say that President Bahari has done in terms of communicating with the people, the state, and delivering on the dividends of democracy? I think that he's going to have a hard time with introspection. I think when he has his quiet moment away from the maddening crowd and the choir, he's going to be thinking, I didn't do as well as I could have done or should have done. I listened to the wrong people. And I think that for anybody who is in a position of leadership and power, that's something that you have to think about very, very hard. Who are you going to have surrounding you? Certainly the nepotistic aspect of the whole thing, you know, stinks. The idea that you have people who are your service chiefs and everything, all coming from the same neck of the woods. When the Constitution speaks around me against that and doing it with reckless abandon, you know, with that cavalier I don't care attitude. I certainly think that that's something that there's no way you can communicate that. It's just wrong. And that inability to really do the right thing because it's right and don't do the wrong thing because it's wrong. He didn't really provide a good example. A leader of a country is also kind of like almost a spiritual barometer of the country. He sets the moral compass of where the country needs to go and people watch and they follow after. So there are some things that he obviously has done well. But, you know, when you do something well, but you have something that is really terrible, it clouds over, you know, those good elements. So I think that the very fact that the currency has nosedived in relation to the reference currency really has been bad for the economy. I think the fact that, you know, the statistics are showing very, very negative numbers, the multi-dimensional people living in poverty, the high rate of unemployment. If you have a 4%, 5%, 6% rate of unemployment, that's you have to take that very seriously and it raises concerns, not to talk about getting to 33%, 40%. I mean, we have 12 plus million children out of school. I mean, let's talk about the indebtedness. Now, we're owing, I think, about $77 trillion in debt. I mean, that means that each Nigerian owes about $348,864 by the end of President Bahrain's tenure. A good mathematician. It means that somebody had to work that out for me. So we obviously owe so much. And don't forget there was another one that the president asked the National Assembly to quickly approve because the longer that we wait, the more money that we have to borrow. For that also, a lot of Nigerians are worried because the economy is, you know, facing a huge downturn. Our investments are not as great. Our oil is being stolen, I mean, in the open and Mr. President sits as Minister of Petroleum and has sat there for the whole of his tenure. And before 2022 came to a close, the NNPC had not remitted any money into the National Coffers. What do you have to say about that? About the non-remittance or about everything. And everything that we owe. Well, that debt is going to increase. I think that this year, 2023 budget, they're asking for another, there's a deficit of about $11 trillion. So that's going to go on top of what exists already. And how we're paying it back isn't yet clear to observers. So we're digging further into the gutter. Now, what makes that sad is that budget came out with an analysis that said that some of the budgetary items, there are over 400 repeated items. Now, that is crazy. Then you then have a national assembly that is actually meant to be your and my representatives who are really meant to scrutinize all of this and say, hey, hold on, Mr. President. We're not going to approve this. But instead of that, you even have the opposite happening where they say, oh, look, listen, this budget isn't really as high as it should be. Let's put in some more. So there's a whole lot going on that is wrong in the executive and in the legislative arm who is meant to be that check and balance. Once the check isn't working, then the other is going to do whatever it likes and on what have you. So you have the NNPC, as you mentioned, in a typical organization. If that organization isn't doing right, then you don't just sit there and let it continue. There have to be some remedial actions. But then the NNPC has been christened and rechristened and window-dressed it over and over again and maybe that's not working either. Yeah, it's really not what you call it that matters, but it's really about what actions, who is it accountable to? And therefore, if it's accountable to the executive, then it's either the head of that agency or company or whatever has to roll or it's given some kind of ultimatum and then when it then sort of picks up. Interesting. Finally, because my guy is the same, we have to go. Everybody is angling, campaigning, asking for votes. You're also asking for votes because you want to be governor of Lagos. But then the city power, which is also the presidency, there are many people who are running for it. Some say it's a two-host race, some say it's a three-host race, four-host race. We have at least 16 people who are running for that office. But all of the problems that you and I have been discussing, how easy is it going to be for the first four years whoever decides, whoever emerges, come February 25, in closing? Well, you know, when you want to take up a job like that of presidency, you already know the problems that are there. If you're incapable of being a problem solver, then you shouldn't go anywhere near it. But that's not the case in Nigeria, is it? Well, it's not the case because we haven't really selected based on the ability of the person to really do the job. I think, at least I'm aware that these last eight years, it really was a question of, look, let's just get the previous ones out and let's just put somebody new in there. But I think we've reached the age of enlightenment that Nigerians this time around, I would be very, very surprised at the outcome because people are asking the question, what's this person done? What's he going to do? And that's why you see it's not an easy race. This thing is tearing everybody inside out. It's not business as usual. Well, Acne Bridges is the governorship candidate of the National Rescue Movement, NRM, and he is running for governor in Lagos. Thank you so much. Always a pleasure to have you. Thank you. Same here. All right. We'll take a quick break when we return. We'll be talking about other issues, of course, matters arising and the situation of, of course, INEX plan to utilize the Lagos Parks and Management Committee for Election Logistics. Stay with us.