 Thank you for joining us this morning on Off The Press and we have Tunde Kola Walee who joins us this morning to bring great insight on the headlines on the front pages of our National Dailies. Tunde Kola Walee, thank you for joining us. Good morning my sister. All right then. Thanks for having me. All right, so Kofi is also here. Good morning Tunde Kola Walee, it's a privilege and a great one to have you join us again this morning. Nice to hear your voice too. Okay, let's start off with the punch newspaper this morning. The punch says, 10 billion dollar nomination fee scandal. IU chairs Tommy Mitten, others National Working Council members pro. That's very interesting. Underneath National Deputy Chair, five orders may face a disciplinary panel of a 122 million have refund. PDP chairs should also be investigated over controversial housing allowance, NEC members. And Dramas, BOT, Reavis Governor meeting ends in deadlock. IU's eight tackles candidates forum. It's a lot that's going on. Some people think that the PDP has sorted out their issues and their houses is together. NNPC grows profit to 674 billion Naira asset hits in 16 trillion Naira. Federal government sues meta over illegal ads and demands 30 billion Naira. We're talking about Facebook here just in case you have forgotten. ASO knocks in giga over factional groups registration. Three scientists win Nobel Prize for breakthrough in quantum physics just before we move away. Canomers die in detention. I take that again. Canomersen die in detention. Zacharme rides. Buhari and 150% skill during a co-prison attack according to the witness. Hoodlums attack APC rally in Ibadan, injures supporters. NDA convocation. Vice President Yemio Cibadro advocates local manufacturing of AMS and ammunition. That's the much we can take this morning on the punch. All right, let's take the next paper that happens to be the nation. And the interesting headlines coming on the front page of the nation news. The big one, the people is focusing on the PDP situation. The headline there, PDP crisis. BOT's move to unite Atiku Wike collapses. It's quite an interesting one going out there at the People's Democratic Party. The writer to that headline, Wabara takes a reverse governance position to PDP leadership. I wanted live coverage of Pali. I'm sure that is what they say, Wabara, the new BOT chairman, which was a move to try and switch the feelings of the southern members of the PDP. Federal government registers ASUS breakaway faction Kona. We'll look at that in a major discussion this morning. World Bank predicts 1% reduction in Nigeria's growth. Nigeria O's NNPCL 1.3 trillion Naira carry alleges. Right in NNPCL with that is not so limited in terms of the way it behaves. Police commission or case dismissal of seven officers. Pay rise coming for Lagos workers. So, I'm sure this will be template. Maybe we ever get it in the last days to no color will tell us more. 2023 budget. Federal government projects 3.7% GDP, 17% inflation. Some of the headlines on the front page of foundation looking at a picture of a Lagos state governor. When he paid a visit to civil servants, courtesy call to the head of the civil service in Lagos state. Of course, taking a selfie with civil servants in Lagos state. Amazing. Also, a picture of the Lagos state governor. The man that Bola be called Elie. In a picture with champion, world champion, 100 meter hurdles, Tobi and Musa. These are the stories on the front page of the nation. We'll move away from the nation. We have the Guardian newspaper strike. Federal government weekends ASUS registers rival union. I mean, the way the Guardian captions it. It's interesting that several riders present ASUS recommendation to Buhari. Another meeting tomorrow for final outcome. That's the first rider you find. Nasu Sanu members receive September salaries. Federal government silent understanding wages. Government may pay outstanding salaries of new union. That's what the new faction is quoted to say. We are committed to advancement of varsity education. I will not dignify the C-O-N-U-A. That's the new faction with a response as ASUS president. Buhari ASUS complicit in varsity's corruption. There's a ride as you find underneath the bold headline. NMPC announces second profit of 674 billion Naira as asset hits. 16.27 trillion. Again, PDP-BOT meeting with Wike ends in deadlock. Three killed, 20 trucks burned to soldiers' attack during protests. Protesting Delta youths. Three killed and 20 trucks burned to soldiers' attack protesting Delta youths. That's what you find. Youths take over a reverse community. Banished chief or purportedly taken bribe from shell. That's the company. Sung-Woo Liu announces salary increase for workers. The picture shows a lot of celebration, gibberish right there. That's it on the Guardian newspaper. Last week before this morning, we have this day and some interesting headlines are on the front page of the paper. Immortally, rise in disruptive banking technology is disturbing, he says. Rise in disruptive banking technologies disturbing. I wonder how that statement will affect the markets. Because the statement of people like him, if they don't speak anyhow, he says the deposit taking fintechs must be capitalized with 25 billion Naira, curtail potential threats from financial technology companies, otherwise, others rather, admit charges regulators. Banking crisis may have contagion effects. NDIC warns World Bank. Nigeria's economic growth continues to suffer from underperforming oil sector. Hales, countries, apex banks, interventions, lowest GDP projection to 33%, was it 3.3%? Okay. LNPCL, oil theft, vandalism, putting Nigeria in terrible situation, advocates capital punishment for offenders, justifies engagement of non-state actors in pipeline surveillance contract. And the paper has some headlines that we've already talked about. Buhari accuses us of corruption. SFG registers two new varsity-based unions. Aisha Buhari, my husband, suffered from PTSD for many years. She's been talking since she was given that position in campaign of APC. For the second time in 45 years, NNPCL declares profit, rakes in 674 billion Naira after tax revenues. Right, hooray. Should we say hooray to that? Anyway, let's bring Tunakola Wale at this point without wasting too much time. I think, as usual, customarily, we'll start off with what's going on in the People's Democratic Party. Tunakola Wale, good morning once again. Your thoughts on this alleged collapse of the talks between the Board of Trustees led by Senator Dofus and Wahabara. He has gone back to Abuja with nothing in his hand except BK's position. Over to you, sir. It should give all his people in Nigeria, sir, a lot of concern. A breakdown of the attempt to really bring peace for the PDP. Because, like I've always said, when the PDP, which appears to be the most viable alternative to the APC, is having this kind of challenge, what we have seen will be said to be that come 2023. Nigeria is essentially a state accomplice. And we get only one single or two political parties from which to choose from. And I think a good democracy should not be too reliant on just one or two viable political parties. So I would appeal to the PDP people to please bury their assets, bury their personal ambitions and their high goals and solve the problems within them. For Governor Wike, I keep saying this each time and for as long as Wike continues to drag this issue with the PDP, he is in a way undermining his own political future. Governor Wike is a young man who has a lot in front of him. He could see the vice president. He could see if it's a president of this country. If he places a card right. But this is a dual-dial affair. This attempt to pull down the roof over the head of everybody simply because of a personal ambition does not demonstrate that the man is a statesman. Again, too, I want to talk to Elijah Tupapaka. The elections are very coming too close. If Governor Wike is not going to see more, is not going to surrender, is not going to work with the majority of people in the PDP. For God's sake, just abandon Wike and concentrate on your campaigns. With just one state, and with Ocowa by the articles aside, I still believe that with the right campaign, with the right strategy, it is still possible for the PDP and article to win the presidency without Governor Wike. I will not realize one thing. Governor Wike cannot take this. So the rule of the river states that 100% of whoever comes out in there must vote for one person or the other. He doesn't have such powers. There are other politicians in there. It's a mere waste of time. Time to appease a wicket with regards to whatever ambitions, the world or whatever grievances may be having. The time is too short for this petty squabble that is happening within the PDP. Well, let's take a look at the Guardian newspaper. The increment, I think that's been reflected on all of the papers this morning, but the Guardian, we take it from there. Sung-Woo Liu announces salary increase for workers. What are your thoughts? Some people say that this is a political strategy. I mean, what a time, what is campaigning and what a view. And so this is what it is. As far as I'm concerned, I hope that it's not a Greek gift. Why do I say so? Election is just a few months away, and then the governor is deciding to increase the salaries and wages of civil servants. Whereas, you and I do know all the civil servants are multiple in Nigeria have been crying about the inflationary trends in the country. The rising prices of goods and services, the collapse of infrastructure, and what a view. So if this has been done with good intentions, why has it not been done before now? And more importantly too, you will remember, and it was in the paper not too long ago, that the monthly contributions of civil servants into their cooperative account, that the governor of Lagos State has gone to confiscate the money and is now using it to service his government. For God's sake, the cooperative is a private affair of the workers in the civil service, or wherever they may be. And the cooperative is governed by law. It is not a federal law. It is not a law that is made by the House of Assembly of the Lagos State. So it has no power whatsoever to tamper with whatever funds is in the account of the cooperatives of the Lagos State. And Lagos State, again, is the most highly indebted state in the country today. They are set to be only as much as $799 billion, all they are about. If a state is only that kind of a huge amount of money, you begin to wonder where it will get the resources or the money to pay the increases that it's putting on top of the salaries of the civil servants. Something to me does not care there. This would appear to me to be a great gift because of the election that is coming. Where we won't ask the civil servants to reject it. We will encourage them to accept it. But we still call on them to vote for their conscience when the 300 billion nation is being conducted. Thank you for that one. Another one that is of interest and attracting attention also happens to be the situation with the Nigerian economy. You have, for instance, the central bank governor talking about the rise in disruptive banking technologies. These are the companies who are using technology to make banking easier and more accessible to most people out there. He is saying that the deposit taking financial technology companies we call Fintechs must be capitalized with 25 billion. I know that these companies are really quite not too big. That space, if you look at the cryptocurrency and everything, they have been at the receiving end of some very harsh policies by the central bank of Nigerian governments in general. But he is saying they need 25 billion there to be capitalized. Do you feel that some of the things that are being said maybe are necessary to protect Nigerians funds? Or do you go with the thought that maybe this is more of the harshness of the CBN and the federal government and some of these financial technology companies that are just coming up and trying to make a headway? Well, it is in the nature of human beings to resist the change. Most times, human beings have a phobia of new technology. But the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of disruptive technologies out in there that we as human beings must find ways and means to cope with. Look at the robotics. You have all sorts of robots now that can watch this, that can serve people in their hotel rooms and all that such that the work of waiters in the hotel is at the receiving end now is dwindling. Furthermore, artificial intelligence is also there. For me, I don't see the arrival of this technology as something to start grudging about. Rather, we should find ways and means by which we can marry them with the old technologies to be able to serve man for the comfort of man. Anybody who is making laws, who is putting politics in place to restrict the invasive nature or the passive nature of all these new technologies is mainly wasting time. Nothing is there against the world. If Nigeria will not go into the election of the new technology, the rest of the world will go into that election and will also be left behind. So the CTM people, rather than trying to cripple the effect and the intuition of all these new technologies into the banking system, they should find ways and means to incorporate them into our financial sector. That is the way to go because more and more technologies will still be coming on board. Let's give this hypothetical example. Initially, what we used to have was a radio. And then when television came, a lot of people were apprehensive that radio would die off, television would not make the kind of empire it's used to have. But now I'm the old. Both are sit side by side. I suspect that these new technologies, like Karmak that predicted a long time ago, nobody can stop it. All right. What we can only do is to adapt it with the old technology and make it to serve man, serve humanity for the better. Okay, Tunde Kolowale, please allow me to just add to that the fact that the paper is also saying the World Bank is reducing its projections for Nigeria's GDP growth. Also talking about slowing down of the Nigerian economy. Particularly, the reason the World Bank is giving, the papers have carried this story today, happens to be the underperforming oil sector of the nation's economy. Underperforming oil sector of the nation's economy. What are your thoughts on this? Because we have people in charge of the oil sector who were there before. Timmy Pressilva, he's been in the minister of petroleum before he even became governor of Bayosa State. Muhammad Buhari president, who is the de facto minister of petroleum resources, was before now in charge of a particular section of the oil and gas industry as far as the government regulatory agency is concerned. But we are faced with an underperforming, we're not even able to fulfill the potential to start with. In the time when Nigeria needs the resources the most. That is the target deal to Nigeria nation. Here I now don't know. Nigeria is a mono economy. It is a rentier economy. Once we are unable to decoil and sell the national market, our economy suffers for it. A simple technology of refining of petroleum products. We also have not been able to martyre. Such are the little money that we have. Sending crude petroleum products, we again use it to import refined products, which run into three lands of Naira. All these are damages on the nation's economy. The solution for the Nigerian economy is really to catalyze the productive base of that economy and also to diversify the economy into so many areas. This money we have mentioned, artificial intelligence we have mentioned, robotics and water. Nigeria is coming to and slipping in that area. Also look at the alternative energy sources. Clean energy sources. Nothing is also happening in that area. We are depending on gas. We are depending on hydro technology. We are depending on gas to fire all our energy plants. In other countries of the world, so many revolutionary technologies are being injected into that area. So again, even more world is some. The less sickness in the Niger data has made it difficult for most of the oil companies to perform to their maximum capacity. If most of them are pulling out of Nigeria because drilling oil in Nigeria today is not a too profitable thing. You have the local community to contend with. You have the pirate schools to contend with. You have the corruption in the government circles to contend with. And of course, the cost of producing this oil in Nigeria when compared to what is happening in the other parts of the world is on an astronomical level. Most people, when they invest, they are looking towards making profit. You cannot make that profit in Nigeria with the way situations are today. Ultimately, we should be smiling to the bank today because of what is happening between Ukraine and Russia. So oil is in the high demand in the international market and we should be taking advantage of that. But because we are not organized at home because of the destructive nature of our oil sector, we cannot take advantage of some of this. You look at this situation. A jumbo contract of I think about four billion has just been awarded to Mr. Tumpolo and a few other persons in the Niger data. What does that tell you? The Nigerian army, the Nigerian Navy, the Nigerian Civil Defense, the Nigerian Police cannot secure the oil sector of the Nigerian economy such that we have to give it to an individual. The implication of that is that that small state actor is more powerful, is more organized, is in better command of the means of violence than even the conventional or the regular state actors. So everything is just not working fine for Nigeria and the reasons are not perfect. When the nation is corrupt, every part of this body will be sick or diseased. Tunde, let's talk about the concerns of the vice president on the punch newspaper, the NDA convocation. The vice president is advocating or advocates local manufacturing of arms and ammunition and you have mentioned the issue of the failure of the Navy and what have you to secure the pipelines. But I'd like to ask you, don't you think that this is putting the cats before the hosts now in terms of priority? Well, it should be. The vice president has been sending a lot of beautiful things with regards to local manufacture and what ordinary things should be happening in the sectors of the Nigerian economy. But you ask yourself, these government has just about six months or they are about to leave office. What have they been doing with all these beautiful ideas that they have not been implementing them? They've got the power about seven and a half years ago. For me, whatever they say now, is mess of the slogan nearly. Something to bring the vote, or to rally the voters. Behind them come 2013 elections. Unfortunately, that is already too late. A nation that was talking about research will not be doing what it's doing to the university system and to the academician in those universities. A nation that wants to develop and that wants to see good things happening with R&D that is research and development will have been investing money in all the research institutes in the country. But I challenge you to go and check all the research institutes in Nigeria today, they are comatose. They are not being fined. In fact, they embarked on strike before us. But nobody is listening to them. Most of them are still on strike today. So for me, the vice president was also by the constitution put in charge of the Nigerian economy. And he has been put in charge of the Nigerian economy and the economy is wobbling and fumbling the way it is doing today. And really, like the world bank has said, I don't think it lies in the heart of the vice president. So we can consider some of the things that he's saying. He has better say that to the man in. I see all this with due respect and apology. I have been totally disappointed that the president has mismanaged the Nigerian economy because they only have the possibility of giving to them under the Nigerian constitution. If blames are going to be mentioned or are going to be a question in the future, especially with regard to the performance of the Nigerian economy, it's not impossible that the vice president will get a very big stick. So one would be thinking, I mean, in all of this that you are saying, there's a lot of thoughts around whether or not we understand that there are security consents in the country. But what if we focus our attention in producing the economy and manufacturing, for instance, let's start with food and the things that we consume. And just maybe if we're able to solve a certain problem, it would just go away to address a little bit of the security consents that we're faced with at the time. So you say we'll pay attention in manufacturing our foods, what we're consuming and less importation and less see what happens if crime and criminality will not reduce, I'm not saying would vanish, but maybe reduce. Well, that's where that question came from. But I'm sure that the relevant stakeholders are paying attention to this. Well, it's too late for them to pay attention to it. You and I do know most countries of the world, they don't joke with their food and security. I'll give you one example. A friend of mine in India told me that on an annual basis the Indian government has a strategic reserve of foods that can last the whole country for six months. If the old farmers in India, for one reason or the other, are unable to farm, they have a strategic reserve. If there is war, that will last the whole population of India for at least six months. What efforts have we made in that direction to make sure that we have adequate strategic food reserve that we are unable to feed our people? And that whatever we also produce in the farms, like tomato, like onion, like peppers and all that, we process them, we can them, we put them in containers and sell them, not just in Nigeria, but also in the international market. The truth is that because manufacturing is not a tea party, it's a studio process, our allies are not disposed to produce anything in Nigeria. Now that they all want to remain a trader, import things from China, from Turkey and World Avenue and quickly sell in the market, put the money in the bank and go another round. But that doesn't provide jobs for people in the country. Furthermore, you have mentioned this morning the banditry that we have in the country, especially in the rural areas, have given away most farmers from their farms. So how do you produce when the farmers cannot access their land? Furthermore, in the past, especially during the military, there is a conscious policy of the federal government at that period in time, which ensures that the local government invests a percentage of their money on acquiring family tractors and other family equipment. Which farmers within the envelope go to those local governments to hire, to till their soils? To till their soils. Since they return to this Iguru, how much percentage of the local government's revenue are being invested in getting agricultural employment seeds and seedlings to the farmers? So the best of my knowledge, no. When we had the windfall in the earth sector and some money was made available to the local government, what they did was to start acquiring the Iguru and increasing the allowances, the allowances of the wife of the local government, in fact, if the local government was to be working, as it should be working, because the local government is the closest government to the people. It is also a problem for insecurity. Most of the insecurity that we have in the country today is as severe as it is today. But we have the gatekeepers of the local government have abandoned their responsibility, not just in terms of food production, but also in terms of ensuring that we have adequate security at the grassroots level. Well, thank you so much. Tunde Kola Wili for sharing your thoughts this morning on summer's national issues that's been raised on our papers. Thanks for having me. All right, we'll take a break now and we'll return and look at what happened today in history, of course, today being the 5th of October 2022. And after that, when we return, we dive straight into our first major conversations. Deal with us.