 Time for a hot topic of the day effective December 2026. The federal government will discontinue budgetary allocations to professional bodies and councils. And I've been joined by Frank Eliana, News Editor, Business Day, and Bola O'Logity, Public Affairs Analyst to take a look at this very important topic. Good morning, gentlemen. Okay, so the federal government, in a bid to cut down on costs, has taken this step, and at least 25 professional bodies and councils under the Ministry of Trade and Investment, the ministry of different ministries being affected by this decision. Let's start with your take on this, Bola O. Okay, I believe this is a step in the right direction. In the first system, while should the government be passing some pension on to professional associations, the right way for professional associations to be funded is by the members of the association. That is the best way to fund a professional association and keep them professional. If, at all, the government is going to support them, government might be supporting a specific initiative that a particular association is projecting because government has an interest in furthering that particular initiative, not a specific situation, but a situation in which, as a matter of appropriation, we allocate fund to professional bodies and councils is inappropriate. So it's good time. It's right about that time that the DG of that institution, I know it has a number of initiatives it has wanted to push across. This is probably just the first one that we have seen on the table and it's a step in. Yes, Ben Akubese, the DG Budget Office of the Federation, made that known. Frank, let's take your take on this before we push further. We'll move further with this discussion. All right. I think perhaps the government somewhat had the good intention when they started it in the first place. Maybe they felt like this was one of the ways to get Nigerians engaged in some of these bodies and also to improve a skills opposition at the time that they started it. But having said that, I agree with you that this is a step in the right direction. In the sense that we've already started it. There should have come a time when we would have said, okay, we have achieved to the aim that it was this intervention or this funding was supposed to have achieved and then these bodies were supposed to stand on their own and fund themselves. But continuing to fund it infinitum was never supposed to be the way to go. So I feel like this was the right call. Yes, perhaps maybe the urgency for me isn't a concern. I don't see why they are giving them 2026 before they finally end the funding. I was rather thinking if you're going to do this, do it already. Just like you did the subsidy, just like you did the Naira devaluation, do it already. Why wait to 2024? Why wait to 2026? This is obviously a deep into our budgets and at the moment we don't seem to have the revenue to continue to fund some of these projects. This is not particularly going to yield much result. I just spoke with Mr. Zikanya, who believes that this is just a little fish in the pond. They should be looking at some other bigger fishes in their bid to get more funds and cut costs. That this is just not a significant move. Do you share that thought? Yes, I agree with you. For me, I think that yes, the government is going to reach out to the ministry departments and have them reduce some of their costs. But importantly, I was expecting the government to have made a major announcement in its own courts, in its own salaries. We haven't seen that. I was particularly disappointed yesterday when the president came into the legal state with a very long convoy, which just tells me that they're not ready yet to make the sacrifices that they are asking the rest of Nigerians to make. One of the things that some of us have advocated for is the sale of the private jets that the presidency continues to occupy or to use. So some of those things and then the salaries of some of these people that run around government that are supposed to be government officials and all that. I think a little bit more transparency in how much they are paid and what the government is doing to ensure that some of those things, appendages or monies that come to them are no longer coming, you know, is what I would like to see. I like to see the sacrifice the government itself is making in terms of reducing its own costs because much of that cost is coming from what the government is spending on. So yeah, the ministry department will reduce some of the salaries. Yes, we expect that. But then what exactly is the government itself doing concerning its own humongous costs? That for me is the key. Well, can you hear me? Okay, well, you've heard Frank, but perhaps you talk to us about what have been the effect of budgetary allocations on the prevalence of corruption in Nigeria. Well, let me start from where my brother has talked. There is the issue of policy direction, which is beneficial in itself. So somebody might say, okay, how much is the total allocation that has gone to this council in the past? But that is not the issue. If we focus on that, we'll miss it. Of course, that will be some amount. We should focus more on what that pertains for issues around the Eurasia report because that is a good start. Of course, I disagree with what you said. I don't know why 2020. But we need to revisit something like the Eurasia report and be able to have a total reform. If you look at our budget, you can see where the money is going now. We can see the chunk that goes to personnel costs. Some departments, some NDAs were actually established were meant to be more or less temporary or to address a situation that existed maybe 40 years ago when they were created. Those situations do not exist anymore, but the departments have persisted and we have continued to send money to those departments. Despite the fact that the reason for the accretion no longer exists. We need to deal with that. And of course, corruption issues that you mentioned. So you take the former accountant general who is still accounting for 89 billion Naira that is set to be missing somehow. You have the former minister of power who has also been here to account for about 22 billion Naira, which has not been explained as this. We must assume that if there is something that the former president said that I agree with him on, whether he did it or not is another story. It's when he said, if we don't kill corruption, corruption will kill us. And it is a reality. 89 billion Naira states in Nigeria that the entire net revenue of those states is not up to 80 billion in a year. So you are when a man can sit down by himself and misappropriate that amount is a cause for worry for us as Nigeria. And it's some area that the government must also look at. Frank, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Yes, let's to pursue this question on the effect of budgetary allocations on the prevalence of corruption in Nigeria from where he stopped. Where Boulangon stopped. Okay, so we have seen the first move of the president in order for the suspension of the U.S. C.C. chairman. Some words, you know, looking like they want to reposition the U.S. C.C. And then, of course, the appointment, the new appointment of the police inspector general of police. And, of course, some other moves that the government has made. Well, be that as it may, Boulangon is very, very much on point about outstanding corruption cases that has not been dealt with. We still have the statistician general corruption that we don't know what has become of that case. We still have several other corruption cases that are pending. And not just that we have several government officials currently occupying positions of power now that have been fingered in the past with corruption cases. We haven't seen any move towards how to recoup some of those funding of some of those monies that were diverted into personnel accounts. You know, and yeah, the government is looking for money. But then right on that is nose. The monies are buried there in the ministry department in some of the political leaders that it has appointed in the past. All it just needs to do is go back, look at all the names of the people that it has appointed and look into the accounts, what they have earned over the period that they were in government. It is easy to get these monies back and it is easy to hold these people accountable. Again, it boils down to the issue of accountability and the issue of transparency, which I don't think the new government has lived up to. So they seem to be making a lot of moves towards other things, how to make more money with the economy. But about keeping accounts, about being transparent. This is what we are doing. This is how much we're spending. The president is here to declare his assets. Several of his appointees, we don't know how much they are earning. This vice president is here to declare his assets. So those things are fundamental if you're going to talk about issues around corruption. So you don't just go after people and try to get money that they have stolen. But you too, you seem to be accountable. You seem to be holding up your own part of the bargain to say, I come to equity with clean hands. So those are issues for me that will really encourage people to say, OK, this government is serious about fighting corruption. And I've said it before to someone that if we are able to tackle corruption, or if we're able to just recoup, say, 50% of the monies that have been stolen from this economy. First, I think you're sorry to take what's from your mouth. Your notification button is, it's interference. Can you just do something about it? The point is, if we're able to recoup at least 50% of the monies that have been stolen from this economy, we will be able to fund the budget at least in the next five years without having to borrow money. Because all of these monies have been stolen and they need to be brought back into the economy. And that's what we're expecting that the new administration will do in the coming days. Maybe they're still trying to boot because they are just like, well, a month in office, but we're expecting to see a lot of transparency, a lot of accountability. Yeah, the DMO recently found its voice and wanted its present administration against further borrowings. And we know that President Tanubu is targeting 6%, 6% annual GDP growth. First of all, the fact that the DMO is just now raising the alarm over borrowing, even though Nigerians cried a lot against the borrowings of the last administration, saying, look, this is too much. And we're told by the DMO, the finance departments and all of them that were still within the borrowing window. So it was okay. Then suddenly we're hearing, don't borrow anymore. It's become unhealthy for the economy. Talk to us on that. And the fact that President Tanubu is targeting 6% annual GDP. Do you think that's been overambitious on his part? Yeah, I think it's been overambitious. But then there's nothing wrong with setting your standards a little higher than would be expected. But then what we expect is that when you're setting a big dream or when you're setting a bigger vision, it should be matched with the appropriate action. So you're saying you want to achieve 6% before you leave office. The question is what have you put in place presently to make sure that that happens. That in itself is not a crime. It's perfectly legal and it's perfectly expected for economies to want to borrow money to fund some of his projects. But in the past and what we have experienced is that the government borrows money and often these monies are borrowed for targeted projects. But in the end, you don't see that money being utilized for the projects for which they were borrowed for. The Lagos about an espresso, for instance, a lot of money have been borrowed for that route. Up until now, it is not near completion. Every year we were told how it is almost 70% completion, but at the end of the day, nothing happens, nothing concrete happens. So for the past over 10 years, we have been building one single road and been borrowing money over that. We have borrowed money for railways that have not been completed. We have also borrowed money for railways that we linked from Nigeria to other countries that we have no business linking to. We have borrowed money for projects that doesn't make any sense. Sometimes I ask myself, is it that the institutions that are borrowing these monies don't do their duty before giving it? But maybe also they are thinking, OK, this is a sovereign but this is a country on its own. So whatever happens, it will always find a way to pay us back the money. So they go ahead and borrow you the money. But then it becomes incumbent on you as the person who is collecting the loan to use it judiciously. But that has never been the case in the Nigerian arms system, which is why we have about 51 trillion debt now. And we can't account for what it has been used for because we still have fundamental development issues. Infrastructures not in place. We have several things missing. And right now we are looking, there's no way really that we're not going to borrow again. We have to still borrow. So the DMO has over the years gone ahead with the government maybe because they want to keep their job, maybe because of the politics around power that they want to continue to maintain. But for whatever reason, they have continued to advise the government, oh yeah, we are still within the limit for you to keep borrowing. But this time around it's like, OK, let's pick up. I don't know what the intentions are now, but then I know that they know that their advice now seems to be too late because the money that have been borrowed in the past were not used for what they were supposed to be used for. So the government now has to borrow again to fund the same projects that we have borrowed in the past. And which goes back to what we have said before, that there needs to be accountability, transparency. The government, this government now needs to go back and look for the loans that we have collected in the past before it came into office and ask questions. What did you use this money for? The times when we tell ourselves that one president cannot prove another president should be in the past. If a president, if a past president did not do what he was supposed to do and is found to have maybe misappropriated funds or his ministers have misappropriated funds, if you need to call him to come and answer for it, you should do that. It is not with hunting, it is just service to the people because people are paying for the fact that we are using all our money to pay for deficits on these loans. So it is not kind of the people, so why should we be kind on the past president? So that's what I'm expecting to happen. If we're talking about corruption, finding corruption, then we need to do it robustly. It needs to be everyone that has a hand in whatever went wrong with the economy. Bala Olajade, 6% annual GDP targeted by President Tanubu, very okay or overambitious. That's one. And two, do you see President Tanubu having the political will to investigate former President Mohammad Ibohari? There are Nigerians who are saying you cannot hold a mere philly without questioning former President Ibohari. Okay, I'll start from the GDP stuff. There's nothing that says Tanubu would not be able to achieve that GDP target I have said for itself, or that the growth rate is overambitious. This economy has too many distortions. We've continually spoke about fuel subsidy. Several other subsidies, apart from fuel. And with that fuel subsidy came a lot of corruption. I worked at a very senior level in the oil and gas sector before, and I know precisely what I'm talking about. It is if they open that can and you see 5% of what is going on in that space, you will watch your hand clean of it and say let's remove this need like yesterday. That is one reality. That's a distortion. Another distortion is the multiple rate. There is even a rate for people who are going to give Jerusalem a mecca. Who runs an economy in that kind of a manner? So if we begin to take more right steps in the right direction, we will start to retune the economy, and it is possible to step it on the right pedestal for the kind of growth that we want. It is achievable. In my opinion, if we do those reforms, yes, it probably will get worse before it gets better. But that is the reality. My take, however, is that in implementing some of this reform, number one, we must pay close attention especially to the most vulnerable in the society and see what we can do to tackle the boarding, the disproportionate boarding that they may carry in implementing or that we must carry them alone and communicate properly with that. What was the second thing you wanted me to speak? The DMO office? Oh, the DMO office. Yes, some of the previous comments from the DMO office might have been political because the DMO has technical people who understand that space very well. What I said is political is that the emphasis of the DMO in the past has been on issues of debt to GDP ratio. When you look at our debt to GDP ratio, it is beautiful. It is fine. We are profitable. But the reality is that nobody repays debt from GDP. You repair the debt from your revenue. So if your revenue is poor, you need to match the breaks as far as debt is concerned. And we saw how that played out in 2022. According to the World Bank, in 2022, we use 96% of our revenue to service debt. Who does that? So that is the balancing side that DMO was not emphasizing before. And that balancing side is that while our debt to GDP ratio is fine, our debt to revenue is obviously not good enough. So one other thing that we must fix to address debt issues is to ensure that we address the revenue issue as well. That is very important. Okay, Frank. Having looked at some of the policies that this present administration has taken in the last few weeks that it came on board, how would you assess the way the government is going about it and how Nigerians are feeling the impact? Okay. For me, I will speak to that from two perspectives. Number one is that are those reforms, policies, policies in the right direction? And my answer would be, in fact, yes. Those are the directions we need to go. Do I agree perfectly with the approach? No. I probably would have approached it in a different manner. For example, the removal of some subsidy or the multiple, the crashing of the multiple grades, they have to happen. But then some other things that I believe we needed to have done before we hit that thing, in my opinion, were not done. Apparently, like some people would say, there are several ways to skin a cat. So that is the way the government has chosen to approach it. Now that it has gone that route, it must now take the necessary step to address the things we felt that you have addressed before implementing, before putting off those matters. So for first subsidy issues around palliative, minimum wage, and other things that will lessen the burden for the people to find. For things around foreign exchange policy, how do we level our supply issues to match up to the kind of pressure that is being seen on that window? Those are the kind of things that government would now need to work on to ensure that we can get the full benefit of these reforms while at the same time we take care to a certain extent the heavy burden that these policies will unleash on a segment of the society. Thank you, Leanya. Yeah, so to just chip in there, I think that we could have gone about it a different way. For me, it was the same Nigerian thing of putting the cuts before the, putting the horse before the cut, or putting the cut before the horse, sorry about that. We tend to, first of all, go and look at the problem from the top and then leave what fundamentally costs the issues or leave them unaddressed. What we have found or what we have seen so far is a recurrent failure of a past administration. They've been unable to put in the right infrastructure. They've been unable to follow the process to the latter, is what brought us to where we are. Yes, this administration had to do what it had to do because we are at a desperate time. And of course, what is there about desperate times calling for desperate measures, you know. But then again, I will reiterate that this government needs to make the same sacrifices that it is asking a lot of Nigerians to make. Nigerians can be buying fuel at 490, 500, 600 Naira and then you are still wallowing or walking around with a ridiculously long convoy jetting out and in with several written new personnel. Those times should be over. This is a time for prudence. This is a time that we need to see our president walking the talk. You say we should cut down. You say we should make sacrifices. The question is what sacrifices are you making? Because it's about trust. It's governance and governance is about trust. The people need to trust that you are with them in the same boat. You put them in a shoe in a boat that is very difficult for them. The price of goods in the market are very high. A lot of things are going wrong. School fees are very high. And people can afford a lot of things that they used to afford before. So we also need to see that the government itself is making some of these changes for itself. That for me also will lend itself to what we have always said which is about the kind of people that they employ, the kind of quality that they bring to the table and the type of policies that they pursue. Yes, we have seen some of the moves that seem a bit positive. But then what exactly is the government itself doing? Inside, I need to see some automation around government processes. We need to see an end to the days when ghost workers were an issue. In 2023, we shouldn't be talking about ghost workers again because there's technology that ensures that these people don't continue in office. So for me, those are things I need to see. The government needs to work its talk at this moment. At least 25 professional bodies and councils under the Ministry of Trade and Investment, the Ministry of Information and Communication, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Mines and Steel, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Works and Housing and the Ministry of Environment will all be affected by this new development which includes the Teachers Registration Council in Nigeria, the Computer Registration Council, a whole lot of them. So what will change with this new policy? What's going to change after now? After 2026, when they will stop giving them these allocations, what should change with these ministries? Okay, apparently that must have been why some time is allocated for them to make that transition. Because what it means is that a gap will be created in the funding of these bodies and these bodies now need to redesign their revenue model. How do we get the money to fund our mandate, our mission? So over the last couple of years or there about three years, 2026, these are the things that those associations and councils will work on so that they can transit from this spoon feeding situation to some sort of autonomy where they run their own numbers and they can make their own revenues and run their circuitry, pay their own bills as is required of professional bodies. And where the government will lend a hand if there is a sink in certain agenda of this institution and what the government seek to drive. Of course the government can support, but that is a support, not a mandatory appropriation from the budget of the federal government of Nigeria. I hope it doesn't aggravate issues of job losses and the rest of it but rather would drive efficiency in how those organizations operate. There is something about just sitting down there and money is thrown at you continuously. You don't necessarily become good because money has just been dropped on your lap where you can actually go out there and make some of this money by yourself. Frank? I think if this had been done a long time ago we would have seen a lot more productivity from some of these councils. I was reading some of the lists I saw, that of literacy and I just couldn't reconcile what they do with the number of illiterate Nigerians that we currently have. Some of them in health, some of them in agriculture. Perhaps maybe many of them have become a lot redundant and a lot like a desical towards their functions because they didn't have to go out and get their money. The government just throws money at them every year so they use it and do whatever it is that they are used for. So there was no productivity somewhat in some of these councils. So I would shake them up. Kind of like wake them up to say it's time for work. It's time for you to do something. It's time for you to go out there and be more productive. So what I am looking at or what I'm seeing is that going forward because they now have to make their money they cannot be more accountable. They can now, the boards of this... Frank Elania. Frank Elania, News Editor, Business Day and Bolaho Olojo Day, Public Affairs Analyst. Mr. Olojo, can you hear me though? Even though Frank cannot. I'm right here. Alright. So let's have your final words as we wrap up this discussion. Hoping that Frank will find his voice and join us and give us his final words. Okay. My take would be that I believe this is the step in the right direction and that governments should pursue it and extend it beyond the professional bodies into several other MDAs of government that we need to revisit and question all over again what exactly is this institution doing? What exactly is this other one? If there are institutions we need to merge, let's merge them. If there are those we need to scrap, let's scrap them and get a more robust and efficient civil service in this country. It is doable if we have the political way to go ahead and the Orocai Report is a good place to start. Frank, have you found your voice? Well, sadly there we couldn't reconnect with Frank. Well, Frank Elania, News Editor, Business Day and Bolaho Olojo Day, Public Affairs Analyst have joined us this morning on the breakfast for our very first topic of FG Stopping the Budgetary Allocation to Professional Bodies and Councils come December 2026. Thank you so much for your time and that's the much we can take on the breakfast this morning. Thanks for joining us. I am Maureen Menong. Join us again tomorrow for another episode of the program.