 Welcome back from that quick break. Now at the center for the promotion of private enterprise CPPE, I search the Nigerian government to introduce politics to mitigate the effect of fuel subsidy removal, particularly on food and transportation costs for citizens. The CPPE suggests reducing import tariffs for intermediate product used by food processing companies and eliminating taxes and levies on agricultural impute to boost food production. But just how far can that go? Well joining me right now to discuss further is Prince Wale O'Yikoya, an experienced and practicing farmer and consultant. He is the former chairman agricultural and non oil group Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI, and he is the CEO of Bama Farms Limited. Many thanks for joining me on business inside Prince O'Yikoya. It is indeed our pleasure. Okay let's just get right into this fuel subsidy removal aside from the fact that transport prices or fares have actually gone up and food prices have actually gone up too even before the subsidy removal. It's not really been a very wonderful time for Nigerians to put food on their tables and in their stomachs but what can really be done right now because a lot of people are calling for palliatives and some people are also saying that there should be subsidies on agricultural sector. How do you react really? First of all we have to look at the genesis of subsidy, how it came to effect and how the successful government have not been able to remove the subsidy because of the powerful people behind it. We call them cabas because if you could remember from the former Minister for Finance, Okonjewala, when Hama was kidnapped because of this subsidy issue he said that 147 people were behind this payment of 1.6 trillion every month and at that time that how is the country going to survive? So to me no matter how we look at it we have to give credit to the new president for taking the boot initiatives because this is a subsidy that the previous head of states, President, right from Abdu Salam, Bashar, Babangida, Iwo Abbasokyo, Iwo Bahari have not been able to remove it. Remember in 2011, one generation wanted to remove the subsidy. What happened? Everybody got to the weight that they shouldn't remove the subsidy. Had they been able to remove the subsidy we would not have found out where we are today because if we have given the refineries to the private sectors we have a lot of people, especially with the modular refineries that they are talking about, look at Dango Tena, within four years he was able to put all sorts of gigantic refineries. So had he been able to do this, the price of Okua have come down. Definitely we just have to be patient with this president. They are just one week today. He has not even set up his ministeria appointment yet. So let's give him time. Let's see what is going to happen. Will we like it or not? This subsidy is not favouring the large populace. I get all of that, Prince, but the thing is that right now, whenever there's an increment in fuel price, a pump price, the entire sector is affected in one way or the other. But the thing is that Labour right now is calling for an increment in salary. They're asking for about 200,000 from 30,000. I don't know how feasible that is. Aside from that, even with that, if salaries are increased, of course, prices of food would also increase. So what do we really have in our hands? Well, just like what the president has said, they are talking about the palliatives, to cushion the effects, actually in terms of transportations, how to be able... He's trying to work where we use this petrol, so that doesn't have too much dominance on our consumptions. Like the power sector. If the power sector can be increased, most of these small businesses will not have any need to buy petrol to power their generators. And at the same time, we have to understand that this man just... It's what he promised during the election, that he's going to remove the sausage just like any other presidential candidate, including the Labour Party, PDP, NNPP, that they are going to remove the sausage. So what you have done is just a promise that you have made, that he made that he's trying to fulfill it. So it's going to be hard. Let us all prepare in mind for that. And the only option for now, if we are going to have more money for other sectors, for other ministries, to do other things like infrastructure, like the agriculture we are talking about, because most of the farms we have today, they already went on there. Because there's no equipment to do the value change, which is the processing of some of these farm produce. And importation have taken the whole stage of thinking that almost 80% of the food we eat today are still being imported. So some of these money can be challenged into agricultural improvement in transformations. That way we could be able to bring some of these small, small tractors and equipments to cushion the effect. Okay, so let's talk about food security, which is our main discussion for right now. Because as it is right now, even before the fuel subsidy removal, we've had issues with getting enough food supply for the cities and the effect of the security challenges that we have and that farmers are not actually going to the farms to actually farm this and produce this. So how do we begin to tackle all of that? Well, it's very simple. If you get an honest right that let's go back to the farm. I'm always an advocacy of people going to the back to the farm. That is where we belong initially before we discover oil anyway. Look at the granite pyramids in the north. Everything has been comatose. Look at the rubber plantations, cocoa plantations. We need to go back to the drain border. This oil has caused so many crises. There's only few people are benefiting. Look at Venezuela today. Most of the refineries in Venezuela is the hands of most of the private sectors paying taxes to the federal government. The same thing in the U.S., other in Texas and Oklahoma. It's in the hands of private sector. If the same thing can be done here, definitely is going to really help us in the terms of the food production. So definitely everybody is going to blaze up for high costs of food supply. You have to bear in mind that it's not only the prices that just go up due to our own money or doing. We have the climate change also that affect us. Recently now we have what we call Ebola disease in tomatoes that make the prices of tomatoes to go up. We have it three, four years ago. If you remember, that was when Dangote wanted to have tomatoes purely in Kano. But that was when this disease set in and we couldn't jump start the factory. So the same things we are having now, but what we are just telling the government is to improve on our R&D, research and development. We have not done any more research. Most of the seed where we have today, the production of these fruit and vegetables are being imported. Why can't we do something of our own that is going to be beneficial to our own climate that will be able to manoeuvre even if there's any crisis, we'll be able to know where the problem come from. Okay, so now as I said in my intro, the Center for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, CPPE, Moda Alawalan, is actually calling for the elimination of taxes and levies on agricultural inputs to boost food production. How has it really been? You are a core farmer. So what's what's been happening in that light in terms of them taxes and, you know, levies and agriculture produces? How has it been before now? Definitely we need tax break. That's number one. Then number two, production have really gone down because of the crisis between the headers and the farmers, kidnapping, you can remember in my home place, so some of the farmers in my area, if that's what they want, we are kidnapped, we have to end up paying 50 million, 80 million, respectively to get their feed up. So how much money is a farmer making for them demanding 50 million in arabes? It had even been that we have no raise the money to have kiddies people. So not only the tax break, the security is the key. Now that the president already tackled the issue of subsidy, the next line now is the security. Because once security and this subsidy can be taken out, the economy of the nation will be able to come alive. So the security aspect is very important. They are funding to the agriculture. It's very important. Most of these palliative or most of the interventions that was rolled out by the CBA and the federal government to the farmers, most of the funds are not getting to the hands of the real farmers. Because most of that particular sector has been incentivized and we've heard of an anchor boroughs, we've heard of other programs and other, you know, to mitigate the effect of all of this. Most of the times, we've had this discussion before, you say they get to the political funds. Yes, up to this moment, in fact, the anchor boroughs thing, it was, in that one time, for and business most, about 20 something billion that's supposed to go to the farmers. So we have so many political and portfolio farmers around the CBA corridor, around the government, federal government corridor that immediately this fund is coming, they will be the first one to tap into it and they will create a ghost farmers that they will collect that, they will come, so many times they have been to my farm that they are collecting data that, oh, there's a fund coming from the federal government that is supposed to be for the farmers, but at the end of the day, we don't even see the light of the day. So how do we tackle this? Shouldn't there be some sort of organization, checks and balances, maybe cooperative, the real farmers are forging a common fund so that these funds can actually go to them directly? As I say, it's policy. Once we have people's oriented policy, people will be part of the policy, but most of the policies we are having today, most of the stakeholders are not carried along. So by the time the funds comes in, it just goes to the same, to the hands of the same people that set up this policy. So until everybody could come to the right table that this is what we wanted to do, and this time we're going to share the money, we have cooperative, we have individual farmer, they have the database, but they never go through that database. So as we were with the Prime Minister, what you require, you are a farmer, you are well enlightened, but not all the farmers, I would say, have the experience and the qualification and of course the education to understand what this whole subsidy removal and the effect would be for them. What sort of encouragement can you pass on to the average farmer in the hinterland who is scared that the field subsidy that they might not really be able to get as much as they used to? What information is key? The federal government needs to pass on the information to the rural farmers and that's why we're talking about technology being introduced into the agriculture in the country and I hope with the new president we have today, we'll be able to introduce technology so that people in the rural areas will know what is going on in the city and what the government have for them so that the money being shunned or the funds being shunned to boost the agriculture we're not going to the hands of the portfolio farmers. All right, thank you to you, I wish we had much time but we'll have to bring you again to look at some of these issues that are really very salient so that Nigerians could actually have food in their stomachs and in as much as there might be issues at least they can have food to eat. A very big thank you to you, Prince Wally or you acquire CEO Bama Fan, thanks for all of the useful insight that you have brought on the show for today. Thank you for having me. All right, that's the size of the show for this morning. Business Insight will return again to your screen same time at 9.30 tomorrow. Many thanks for watching. I am Justin at Kadone, bye for now.