 Stabilize Naira and end corruption to unlock Nigeria's success as Treasury's Deputy Secretary Adeyamu and Nigerians to expect another hike in the price of petrol. This is PlusPolitics and I am Mary-Anna Cohen. As President Bala Ahmed Tinibu is set to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York today on listed financial flows, asset return, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wale Adeyamu on Monday advised President Bala Tinibu-led government to stabilize the Naira and fight corruption to unblock Nigeria's potential. Adeyamu, who is in Lagos to improve U.S.-Nigeria economic ties, praised Tinibu for pursuing difficult and bold reforms and listed steps needed for the type of growth that Nigerians need to create economic opportunity for the Nigerian people. Adeyamu also called for steps to shore up the integrity of the Nigerian banks and to reduce the ability of criminals, terrorists and others to london money through Nigeria's financial system. And he says that Washington stands ready to help Tinibu's government tackle challenges in this area. Well joining us to discuss this is Babashala Adeyamu. He is a political analyst and also Judge Ashiru, who is the chairman of the Africa Democratic Congress A.D.C. in Lagos. Thank you so much gentlemen for joining us and good evening. Good evening. It's a pleasure to be here once again. Good evening Mr. Ashiru. Glad to be here again. Great. Let me start with you Mr. Ashiru, let's talk about where Nigeria's economy stands today. What has happened post the subsidy removal era? We've seen that the cost of living has gone up. We've seen that many companies are gradually looking at having to downsize transportation cost has more than doubled. Literally everything has hit the roof because of one statement. But then many have also said that this is where we're virtually going to whether we liked it or not. But then how have we handled the post subsidy era? And how badly hit do you think the economy is? I think if I were a strategist advising the new administration I would have said that immediately after taking office usually there's a period that you may have disruption because of new policies, new ideas and you don't have a cabinet yet. What I would have expected the president to do is to get the existing stakeholders in the economy. That is the big players and the big industries and ask them look I need to take certain decisions. How will it affect your industry? If I increase the few price, your strategic plan from January, how will it affect it in June? Will it increase your employment when you reduce employment? Will it increase your cost and therefore you pay less taxes? It is this lack of engagement that is actually the bigger problem. Policies come every time. But usually these are reactive policies. These are political decisions based on hearsay, based on different political analysis given different information over time. But engagement needs to come directly from those who are making those policies with the people affected. Because the economy, 70% of the economy is in the hands of the private sector. So when you go to make a decision such as increase that will need to increase in forex and in exchange rate, therefore increase the price of PMS and therefore of course inflation you have to ask yourself. You know for sure that taxation is going to reduce in the second half of the year because a lot more organizations are going to make less profit. So it is a matter of making a decision within the context for the ecosystem of should I do what I believe to be politically right? Or should I do what I believe to be economically right? And I think where we are right now is that the medium is not very profitable for Nigerians. Let me come to you Baba Shala. The visit by Adeyemul obviously is to strengthen both our political bilateral ties with the US. And of course Nigeria's president has been travelling all over to try to see how he can bring more investments into the country. And just like Mr. Ashiri is saying, there seems to not be like an agenda, a strategy in dealing with what the economy has turned into. Many people would even blame Mr. President for where the economy is. But there are also those who say he inherited it. It's just that he got worse under him. Does the Singapore administration have a plan from what you see? Or let's talk about body language. We always talk about body language in this part of the world. Does the body language of Mr. President and his administration seem like there is a strategic plan in terms of managing the economy? What's the deal I want to say? Thank you. Based on the tie between the US and the Nigerian government in respect of bilateral ties, I would say it's something that is not new. It has always been there. And everything economy problem, it has always been there. And from that time, I've always known Nigeria to be Nigeria. So the coming of the president president, actually killing it, ushered in a lot of hope. But unfortunately, on the day he was inaugurated as a president, everything changed. For me, if you are calling yourself a president, you don't just come out and say something. You need to watch what you say. Now, two variables that determine the economy of Nigeria, two variables that is the fuel and the exchange rates. We don't, in any economy sense, touch the two at once. Even if we are going to touch one at all, then you must do it gradually, not at once. Now it's telling on everybody. The issue of grand now, looking at the president, I will tell you, it's just promises. I have not seen anything to give me hope. Apart from, oh, maybe the appointment of the technocrats. And don't forget, technocrats, when they get there, they get oriented. And what you believe in them to say or to do, we totally be different from what we see in them. As the finance minister saying that this is one of the best picks. I don't have any issue with that. The whole human being is the whole Nigeria. So as long as the Nigerian blood is running in the veins, just expect anything. But I will tell you, if we are to go back to the profile of the people that have been appointed by the president as ministers, as special advisers, I would say it has a good thing. But the question is, how will the president be ready to execute every recommendation from this day, from all these people? Because whether you like it or not, they are also being affected by what is happening in Nigeria today. So that's number two. What is the plan of the president to solve the issue of the fuel price that is circulating every day? Now, I think the code that is about, it's now over $100 if I'm right, definitely it's good to tell all the fuel prices in Nigeria. Very soon, maybe we start buying fuel for $6,500 because of this reason. Now, what are those factors that the government has on ground for this to stabilize this? Number two, I have not seen the blueprint of the president. As far as I'm concerned, one thing I believe, once you are inaugurated as a president and you know the economic problem of this country, the first thing you need to do is to constitute a team that will look into the issues even before you announce or you execute anything. Let them give you a recommendation. The only reason why you can tell me that that has been done is to tell me that, oh, you've already done that even before the inauguration. But if you listen to the question very well, he said that it was not included in the inaugural speech that he included by himself. In other words, he did not care. He's always, I must do it and let it go. And from the rumor we had, we said, we had that said, the subsidy was removed as a result of dengote refinery that will start or kickstart sometimes in July. And as a result of that, they have to remove it. Now the question is, has dengote refinery started? Although it's a private. The president has also promised, the president has promised that refineries will be, our own refineries would, one of them, at least maybe for Harcots, would be up and running by December. December 31st, 2023. Well, I remember when the Ibekashiko, Ibekashiko was the Minister of Petroleum, Minister of State for Petroleum. I remember the people, the subsequent Minister of Petroleum, they all gave a timeline on when all the refineries in the country will start working. We know the amount of money that has been allocated to these refineries. We know how the money has been allocated and nothing has come out, whereas we have staff there that have been paid. Some people are retiring from refineries that are not working and they have been paid their pension or whatever they got to at the end of the day, gaining from what is not producing. So if they don't tell me December 31st, 2023, the protocol to refineries will start working, I will not say yes, I will go to the city and I will be looking at them and let us see what will happen. I will tell you nothing will happen by December this year. Many will call you a pessimist, but let me come back to Bawashara to Mr. Jodashiru. Let me quote Adeyamo on the Naira. He said firstly, Nigeria needs a stable Naira. Unifying Nigeria's foreign exchange rate will also create the kind of microeconomic stability that is essential to attracting foreign investments. That investment that Mr. President is running after, he's saying we first need to stabilize the Naira. I know that you don't work for the presidency, but this question is, does this administration have what it takes to stabilize the Naira? Where do we even start from to begin with? Today in the open market, the Naira goes for about 950 something, if not more. Where do we even begin to deal with this issue? Mr. Jodashiru, can you hear me? Okay, go ahead. Yes, you don't have to be an economist to come to the conclusion that multinationals and big businesses make the business plans based on expected income from different operations all over the world. So when you have a foreign investor in Nigeria, who makes a one-year plan for his business on the expectation that you'll be able to repatriate so much based on for everyone being the Naira, what is revenue or profit, is going to be able to get so much. And then you have at the end of the day because of the disparities in the plan and then the policies of government, he's just taking away a quarter of what he planned in the beginning of the year. Of course, no other investor is going to come back to Nigeria knowing that these are the indices we're experiencing in the country. So when Adeyem says that belies the forex policy, he knows that businesses in America that want to come to Nigeria, they're holding on to that. They're holding on. They're saying, look, as long as there is no consistency in the policy rate, I can make plans in my country. I can make plans in terms of every hundred million dollars I want to send to Nigeria. I can get that five million dollars at the end of every year. So promises are promises. It doesn't change the fact that you're going to get less for the amount you originally put in for as long as the extended goes up. That is why you put business people in government. Technocrats should not be politicians who have been playing policies for 20, 25, 30 years and you expect them to come with business ideas and sense directly in government. We don't want people because they're popular. We don't want people because we have known it 20, 30 years ago. They were there when things were going wrong. I do expect people that were there when things were going wrong to come and fix it because there's a new government. You should be looking at the likes of Lumelu to be government. You should be looking at people who drive employment. Who drive, you know. Sidebar, Mr. Ashu, Tony Lumelu was approached by some people and recommended to be the CBN governor and he said, God forbid. I mean, I don't expect him to... He's got everything he wants in life. I don't expect him to put all that in a political matter. But the point is I'm making a comparison. Now, of course, patriotism is another issue. We have a lot of Nigerians that are not patriotic enough to want to serve. They are afraid to serve because of what they have in their kitties. In the United States of America and also other countries who have a lot of billionaires who have a lot of private business people serving their countries. They bring what they have. They can't go to war. So they bring their intellectual capacity into government. But the point I'm trying to make is that it is common sense for those who are in business. Some of the things we're expecting from political actors. And we're not getting those answers because the relationship between the businesses and the governance is still a stretch. There should be a non-stop town hall, non-stop meeting, non-stop. It should never be, oh, we're making the political decision. Labour wants to go into, they want to go into strike. So let's talk to them. You should be engaging Labour before it ever gets to the point where they want to go to strike. You should be talking to the actors. Now, the impact of it is this. The people who directly employed the majority of Nigerians are the ones affected by the policies. Government does not employ the majority of Nigerians. The private sector does. So if the private sector is hurt, the majority of Nigerians are hurt. And that's not politically wise. And it's not economically sound. And these things is what I call common sense. It's not politics. It's common sense. So what I think the president is doing wrong is that he's still focusing on making sure that, look, I'm pleasing everybody. I'm putting everything in the mix. There is no, he has a strategic plan that is on paper. But the implementation of it is different. You see how you run the state is not how you run the federal government. It's a different beast on his own. And I said that in one or two fora. I said, look, you cannot run. It's the legal state, for example, is the worst example of how you can say, oh, I run legal, so therefore I run the country where. No, legal state is self-sustaining. Legal state will always be self-sustaining. Regardless of who, even if you put a monkey as a governor of legal state, because they generate enough of these resources to be self-sustaining. Fifth largest economy in Africa. So what do you use as an example is ocean states. You look at states in the northeast. You look at states in the south-south. And you say, how are they sustaining? How are they paying their salaries? How business is surviving there? Because they are failing, that's why the population of legal state is going to soar for 50 million in the next few years. Because everybody wants to come to where it's happening. Now, what we have to ask the president to do is this. Go back and start engaging normal people. And not just having technical sitting with you every time. Engaging ordinary people. Engage them state by state. And make sure that the policies that you are participating, that they are participating with you on, is something they are carried along with. Once they're carried along, the chances are they will help you to implement it. Now, there's no way you can go back. Once you liberalize products, it's going to affect every single part of the Nigerian economy because we are not a productive economy. We're a trading economy. And most of what we trade, we buy from abroad. Let me come back to you, Baba Shala. He's touched on something that is very interesting. Mr. President had said, before he became president, he said that he would continue from where his predecessors stopped. And again, that is a very daunting task. We've seen that Mr. President has also nominated a new CBN governor. And Adey Moe here also talked about the fact that government needs to articulate and implement a credible fiscal strategy that will provide the resources to make critical investment. That honors us on the CBN. We've also seen a directive by Mr. President that all the backlog of money is in foreign exchange, that we owe all these international airlines. We should start paying them. Do you see the CBN governor taking a U-turn of sorts? Because it's one thing to put somebody at the helm of affairs, but then the system in itself, if it's already rotting, then that man there will probably not be able to change anything. But what are your thoughts? The CBN governor, the team actually has a lot of work to do in respect of the Naira value. And for them to get this done, they need to have a serious meeting with the key government officials, especially those in charge of the monetary policies in the government, because the truth is the fiscal policy actually determines the monetary policy. If the fiscal policy is not favorable and is not attractive enough for investors, then definitely it will affect the monetary policy. So the CBN governor looking at this, the guy has worked in different places and I think he retired from Citibank in Nigeria. To an extent, I can say he would have had one or two relationships with the former CBN governors before him becoming then definitely, he must have also had our understanding of how the CBN works. So he needs to see that they need to think of how to make things better and advise the president in the best way possible, because that is one of his job. He must advise the president. For every decision the president is taking that will affect the economy, because whatever the CBN governor does in respect of the Naira value, whatever it does in respect of the monetary policy, will definitely affect everybody. So for Cadoso, one of the things he needs to do is to first of all check where did all these things go wrong. Where did they go wrong? Okay, how are we going to address this? Okay, then the next thing is how can we use the president policy that we have on ground? How can we use to attract investors into the country? Because if these policies that are not reviewed, definitely we are going to have a lot of setback in strengthening our Naira value. So they need to sit down and look at this and they need not to be a political in anything. They need not to be political in anything. And every loopholes, every loopholes that are underlined that should be addressed because those are one of the things that is actually affecting the economy. For example, in December, was it December? Yeah, December last year, when the former president CBN governor announced that we should stop spending the old Naira and all of a sudden the trucks of Naira were coming into banks to dump. What did they do? How were they addressed? What did they do to those that actually brought in those Naira? So all those things has to be looked into because for those guys to have such a catch at home, definitely they have none of that somewhere else. That's something that we've forgotten. So how are you addressing that? How many people have been arrested? That's part of the fact that there is a policy in all banks that nobody should depose more than 10 million Naira a day. Not in cash, 10 million Naira a day as a corporate organization as of that time. People individually were bringing cash into the bank and nothing was done. Look at all those mutilated cash. What happened? How many people have been arrested? How many people have been questioned? Nothing. So we need to look at all this. It's not a matter of changing the Naira notes. I even learned that the Naira note by December is going to end. We stopped spending the old Naira. We stopped with the Naira and nothing has been done because for me, between January this year and now, I can count the number of Naira not to have set my heights to the top place of the world that touched my hand. So if that is going to be another issue this December, it has to be addressed because if it is not addressed now, it's going to cause a lot of economic issues by the end of December. So a lot of things have to be done. Yes, improve on the online payments or the Vashar payment. Improve on it. It's going to help. That's number two. Then you need to work hand in hand with all the commercial banks. And on the forex listing, we have a lot of work to do. We need to learn on the 41 items that the bank has further going to assess. Once you learn that, I can tell you and once you make the dollar easily available, I can tell you a lot of things will happen. It will crash the market. It will crash the market. But if you are making it difficult for a lot of people to get access to it, I can tell you it will be more difficult to get it. It's going to be at the high rates to get the dollar. So a lot of people need money to do a lot of things outside. That's number two. If you are licensing BDC, for now, I will say we drop the license. We drop the license. How will you do that? They have their dollar. They have all those things. No, but buy our Naira from there. Keep our Naira. Let them add the dollar. If people are not getting the dollar to buy, I can tell you they will bring it down. How do you do it? Banks mandate the commercial banks. To buy all those things from there at lower price. They will sell at lower price. You get. And for them, for people outside, as in the banks we sell at lower price, I mean to individual. People, yes. Yes. And that will not, once that is being sold at lower price, that means nobody will approach that looking outside. Very true. Let me quickly, because my time is going, there is something I think Dr. Aldwoghbe said years ago about the continued devaluation of our Naira that some guys from the IMF came and successfully were able to brainwash us to continue devaluing the Naira. Should we be revisiting this issue of how devalued our Naira is in terms of trying to strengthen the Naira? Should we look at how we can maybe re-evaluate that whole devaluing? Because we've devalued the Naira so much so that it's really worthless. I mean, I put it side by side with the Kenyan shielding. It's sometimes embarrassing for me and you know. But can that issue be revisited again? He also talked about the monies that, Adeyama talked about monies that were realized from subsidy since we removed subsidy. He's advising that these monies should go into physical and digital infrastructure education and you know, building the small business environment. But you also know where these monies have gone, five billion for every state, no matter how many people are in these states, no matter how big or small the states is. And you've seen what happened in Oshun state where a certain party chairman was fighting with a commissioner on sharing that same palliative money. So really, subsidy has been removed. Even though we hear it's quasi, but in handling these funds, we really, are we going to see any change whatsoever? As long as we are a country that does not export more than we import, we are going to forever have to power forex higher than it should be. For as long as we don't earn enough foreign exchange in comparison to the amount of foreign exchange we spend, then there will never be, there will never be the parity that everybody's looking for anymore. The demand for forex is because we have a what we call elastic taste in this country. People like to import everything because industries are not encouraged to produce the same things locally. When you produce locally, it will take it, no bank will give you a 20 year loan, 10 year loan until you become profitable. Everybody wants their money. You look at even look at real estate. They want you to buy a 50 million dollar house and pay in one year. You must be a thief to pay 50 million in one year for a new class. I like that part because you see the loopholes that need to be plugged. But go ahead. Sorry, we lost you for a second. Yeah. So those are the reasons why we are constantly having to devalue. It is the economic forces, arbitrage is also there. So we are not producing, but look at China, look at Korea, look at Japan. At some point in their economic lives, they devalue their currencies so that it will make their exports competitive. But we don't have anything to export apart from crude oil. And when we export crude oil, we use much more than we are going to get in paying for subsidy. So we understand the removal of subsidy. But if you do, if you're going to remove subsidy, you should at least stabilize the forex. You don't do the two at the same time. So for the foreseeable future, no matter what this government does, until we are producing and exporting more that we are importing, forex is always going to be high. That's simple economics. Okay. For as long as there's demand, there will always be a demand for foreign goods and services. There will be a demand for forex that the government cannot provide supply for. Well, out of time. So I'll just allow you to wrap it up here. The issue of labor going on strike and several other things that are already on Mr. Tinnable's plate is, like I said earlier, very daunting. But how soon do you think we're going to see any changes whatsoever? Mr. President, for many, he's not celebrating 100 days in office and obviously going about his business, but there are people who are already looking at how well he's fed. How soon down the road will we be seeing maybe the opportunity to breathe in the midst of all of this? Well, let's give the President six months. I will advise, let's give the President six months to be able to assess the performance of the President. But the truth is, the President actually met a lot of political, economic, social issues on ground and he has promised to do something. 100 days is too short to actually do that. So I will say, let's give him six months. Let's see what we do. And for the NLC, NLC adds the right to negotiate for incrementing welfare packages. But it's not a matter of incrementing welfare packages. It's a matter of also fighting for the purchasing power because that matters a lot, than asking for an increment. So let's just give the President six months to be able to assess the President better. All right. Well, Babashala Adegwi is a public affairs analyst and George Asheru is the chairman of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, right here in Lagos State. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for being here and thank you for having this conversation with me. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right. Great evening, everyone. We'll take a quick break. When we return, we'll be talking about the likelihood of an increase in petrol pump price. Stay with us, we'll be right back.