 Welcome back to the breakfast in Plastivia, Africa. We head straight to our second conversation where we have G.D. Johnson, who's in standby, and of course he will be part of this conversation. We're looking at nation building. Now the overall goal of nation building is to ensure that there's growth, development, and unity amongst the people via government policies. We'll also be looking at, you know, how far we have fed as a country, I mean, 1999, up until this point, with emphasis on the president of Mohamed Buhari's led administration. G.D. Johnson, it's good to have you join us this morning. Let's see. And good morning to us, and good morning to our viewers. Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you. Good morning, Mr. Johnson. So let's head straight to the crux of it. Now, looking at our country, the way we are, the policies of government across board, do you think that government policies as regards the economy, maybe we'll start with the economy, all right? Government policies as regards to economy, it's fostering unity, it's encouraging growth amongst the Nigerian people. Now, public policies are the trust that you used to build a nation in still confidence in the people and then encourage foreign direct investment in your economy. And if, as a nation, you don't have a consistent, coherent public policies with respect to your economy, with respect to your education sector, with respect to your infrastructure, with respect to your tourism, with respect to the way you structure your entire society, then there's no way you can build your nation. And that has been one of the challenges of the present administration and has been one of the major challenges facing us as a nation across that state of the Federation, including the federal capital and territory, because we don't have continuity in policy. That's one. Then two, we don't have a national trust. If I ask you, what is the national trust of our economy? What is the national trust of our policy? And then nobody seems to have an idea with respect to what are we building our economy and our economy on? For example, in the 1960s, our economy was built on agriculture. That's why you have the groundwork pyramids in the north, and you have the cookwals in the southwest, then you have the palm kernel and the rest of it in the south, in the south, in the southeast. So then we discovered oil in the early 60s, and then that formed the base upon which we build our economy. And we have seen a global trend in when there's a diversification to renewable energy. The price of oil products are falling, and people are no longer interested in making good oil. And you ask yourself this question, what are we building our economy on? Because it is the economy that shifts the totality of what your public policy is. If you don't have the resources to run your government, to run your nation, then you just be planning on people without having any resources for execution. Now, others have diversified their economy. They have moved from product-based economy to... And if they are tweet types of economy, which has existed in the world, you have commodity-based economy. When people are beginning to exchange commodities, you sell your farm produce, I say my farm produce, then we have the industrial age, which was based on product-based economy. Now, we are operating in an information-based economy. And that's why companies like Twitter, Google, and the rest of it, they will be richer than even most African countries because the trust of the economy presently is information-based. How have we equipped ourselves to meet up with the challenges and realities of current times? So that's just the challenge we have with our public policy. If I ask you, I'll put a stop to each other. You can ask your next question. What is our public policy concerning education? What is our public policy concerning technology? What is our public policy concerning the medical industry? All right, Mr. Johnson, I'm glad we started with the economy. Let's stay with that for a bit, because right now, when we talk about the economy, the average man on the street, what he is concerned about is being able to go to the market with a little that he earns and being able to afford them the basic necessity, the staples, and then, of course, go back home and make sure that his household gets something to eat. But right now, that is similarly not the case in Nigeria, with the bighted inflation. And, of course, it's actually food-based inflation right now, double digits. That's what we find ourselves grappling with. Is it a thing of bad economic managers or a thing of how we don't even know just how to... What direction to move so that we can ensure that Nigerians don't suffer from food insecurity? There are a lot of factors that are responsive for that. Don't forget the destruction of COVID-19. The destruction of COVID-19. Globally, virtually every nation in the world is facing inflation, no doubt about that. As a result of that destruction, everything was collapsed for six, seven, eight, nine months. Nobody was going. Productions were not taking place. The economy was only shut down because there was a lockdown. That itself has its own implication. But the question you ask is, what are the policies that we put in place to address the destruction of COVID-19 as a nation, as a state? Well, that's another issue for another term. And so when you look at that at the global level, that's the factor. But at the national level, don't forget the disruptions we have had with dealing with the issue of security, dealing with the issue of security, dealing with the issue of health as farmers' class. Which government has not been able to address and the issue of kidnapping and the issue of mandatory. Now, you know, Nigeria is still a good-pissed economy. Over 60% of people that are employed in Nigeria are employed in the agricultural sector of the Nigerian economy. Most of the people living in the rural area, in fact, there are no industries in Nigeria. We are the industries. All the industries have gone. All the entrants have gone to neighboring countries. They've gone to Ghana. They've gone to Rwanda. They've gone to countries where you have constant power supply to 247 power supply. Because you cannot sustain an industrial-based economy without having constant power supply. So as an agro-based economy, you have this disruption caused by insecurity, banditry, kidnapping and the rest of it. And then the farmers' edas clashes over the land and the rest of it. And the government did not take any concrete steps to address it. So we knew quite alright that food supply in 2021 would be under severe outage. And then we know, moving to 2022, we have a situation where you have too much money, learning after fewer goods. So definitely that itself created the inflation which you are talking about. Now, how do we address the information? Is it by giving more money back to the people? Now, government is coming up with the policies. One, they are removing the tariff. They are removing subsidy. I don't even know whether there is subsidy in the first half. And government is saying that, you know what we are going to do? We are going to give money back to the people. We are going to give 40 million for Nigerians, 5,000. The question you ask is, how did they identify those 40 million back in Nigeria? We are taking money from one hand. And they say you don't want to subsidize. And then you are giving back money back to the economy. And the economy has not had enough produce to deal with that. So you have inflation. So we should place ourselves for the challenges of 2022 in the sense that some of the policies of government have not been designed to address some of the dangers that we have seen ahead of time. The price of goods will go up. There is no doubt about that. The price of goods will go up. The prices of commodity will go up. The prices of whatever products and services that we need will go up. I've asked several times that all we need to do is to go to the marketplace and do a commodity price index. Just do your survey and do a week-by-week analysis. You will discover that things are getting higher and government is not taking. Let's narrow it down. Who is the economic advisor to this administration? Who is the economic advisor to this administration? How often do we see the economic advisor to this administration coming out to explain government policy to us? Who is the Minister of Economic Planning? About their planning and economic development. Now, I saw two days ago where the Minister of Labor, Festos Kayamu, senior advocate of Nigeria, said that the beneficiaries of December and December before thousand people that have been employed under the National Bureau of Employment. There's an agency for that. I can't record the agency now that they've paid them. And you ask yourself this question. All you need to do is to go to your new board. I'm on top of my own new board. I'm on top of my local government. I knew the actors and players in my local government have not seen any beneficiary of what they have. And that's my own rule as the watch job that all government accountable comes in. The minister said that 774,000 Nigerians are benefitted from this scheme. At 774, give us the testimony. Let's see the testimonials. Let's see the people that are benefitted from it. So this government has known its policy by injecting money into the economy, not by stimulating economic growth, by providing palliatives for people that operate in the industrial sector, for people that operate their business, for small-scale and medium-scale enterprise. But this government believes in sharing money. You recall the Trader Money towards 2019 election. And we said that government does not need to go to the marketplace and start sharing money. Because if you share money, you will create inflation. When you have too much money, pursuing fewer goods, you create inflation. And that's all of us are facing the challenges now of dealing with this inflation that has eaten deep into our pocket. We have the money, but the money cannot buy the goods. Because there are fewer goods and there are too much money. Okay, so let's also still say with the economy. Now one of the major concerns of the Nigerian economy is the fact that we're very dependent on crude oil for earnings. And you want to look at the percentage. It has become a big problem. The issue of diversification of the economy has been a message that we have preached from 1960 up until this moment. We've also had several takeoff for development plans from 1966. And we seem not to be getting it. We're highly dependent on crude oil for our earnings. Are you aware of any policy of government trying to, any policy to ensure that we diversify our economy and not highly dependent on crude for earnings? Well, let's look at it. Even the crude oil, you are exporting to other country and then you are importing back to your own country. You know we export the crude oil. So in the crude form, look at the time, issues that we are creating and thinking, issues that our policies are crude. Issues that those that are managing us are crude in their thinking, are crude in their perspective and are crude in their approach to public governance. We call it crude oil. The oil is not even processed. So we sell the crude oil and then we buy refined products and then we are the producer of the products ourselves and then we sell to foreign countries and they determine the price. They determine the price they buy the crude oil and they determine the price they sell the refined products back to us. Now, one of the trust of this present administration is that they are going to put it in place to put the refinery in place. We are the refinery. Now, even if you want to diversify the economy and we can diversify the economy, you maximize the advantage which you have over a particular product. It is called the law of comparative advantage in international trade. You maximize your own advantage. Have we maximized the advantage we have over the production of crude oil? We have not maximized that advantage because we are not processing the crude oil to produce kerosene, to produce gasoline, to produce diesel, to produce NGOs that they use to fly jets, to get by products from it, petrochemical products like bitumen and the rest of it from it. We have not done that. All we do is to export the crude and import the petroleum products and pay more money. So we are the messy. We are, as we should be, the one dictating the price. Those that are buying the crude oil determines the price they are going to buy the crude oil for us because we are putting our thinking and they also determine the price that they are going to sell the refined products to us. So moving forward, one, we have to maximize our advantage, our comparative advantage. We need to put the refinery in place. These are the challenges we should be putting forward to whoever is aspiring to be the president in 2023. What would be your policy trust? We owe them accountable to that, to put the refinery in place. Once we put the refinery in place, we can refine the product. At least we maximize our own advantage. We save a lot of cost and those costs that we save in the production and the production of petroleum products will be used to diversify the economy. Once we do that, we are on board. Now we are talking about diversifying the economy. I'm coming. Now we need to improve our security as an area in which we can make money. It's tourism. Nigeria is a beautiful country. There's a lot of landscape. All you need to do is to travel through the land and build up Nigeria. Where does Dubai make its money from? United Arab Emirates made their money from tourism. Countries of the world advertise they are country for people to come to tourism. Where does Mauritius make his money from? Sessions and the rest of them. They made their money from tourism and they just took out the landscape, the topography, and the natural environments that we have as a nation. Just imagine if we increase tourism and when people talk about tourism, I'll give you this challenge. All you need to do is to go to an international airport, look at the people that are going up and look at the people that are coming in. If there are no opportunities, you just look at their pigmentation and look at their coloration. You discover that Africans are going up and then people that are light-skinned are coming back to Nigeria. It tells you about their opportunities. But if our eyes are close to our opportunities for us to maximize those opportunities, then we face challenges. So if we don't improve the issue of security, we can never tap into tourism. And it's important for us to tap into tourism because it's a gold mine. Even Saudi Arabia. I listened to a clip on Saudi Arabia. Even Saudi Arabia have opened up their economy and they are targeting making their, getting 10% of their gross domestic product, gross domestic product from tourism because they saw what United Arab Emirates did. They saw what Qatar, the rest of them did in the Middle East. And when people talk about religion, these are Islamic countries. See how they have opened up their countries and they are getting foreign direct investment through tourism to their own economy. So what are we doing as a nation to tap into that? So tourism is an area in which we can explore and we can only explore that if we deal with the issue of security, mandatory kidnapping and the rest. And we provide the basic infrastructure. What are the basic infrastructure? The road network, the railway system, our aviation sector. Not that you want to travel to a Pujar and your flight is delayed for six hours without any explanation. And when you are late for 15 minutes, the same airline that delayed you for six hours will not give you any opportunity to embark on the plane because you got there 30 minutes before takeoff. So there are things that we need, best prices, best practices that we need to embrace in order for us to put this economy. And it has to do with our policies, the policies maker. And if you don't put those policies in place, you can never have good governance. All right, G.D. Johnson, I'm afraid time is never your friend when you have so many salient things to talk about. But then they get, I just want to put a cheaping award in them edgewise. Looking at Nigeria's security, that's what made them the front page of the most headlines. I would see the correctional services attack in Jaws, policemen killed in Erboni state, abducted victims, escaped as navjet raid bandits. But the challenge from me right now is that on a very daily basis, that's what we wake up to here. Just what are we supposed to be doing in the shortest possible time? So at least we can go to bed with both eyes closed. All people accountable. Sack people. Sack the security teams you have put in place at the state level, at the local government level. We have not seen the police commission have been sacked. We have not seen the director of DSS being sacked. We have not seen the services. We must have an holistic approach where you hold people that have been in responsibility to be accountable. What is, what is the responsibility? Responsibility is the ability to respond to issues. So the word responsibility is a combination of the response and ability. Now when you talk about accountability, you talk about account table and ability. Now bring your account to the table. When you bring your account to the table, we'll be able to determine whether you have the ability to handle the responsibility that we have given to you or not. Now you ask yourself, who is the police commissioner for those states that you have those infractions? Have they been sacked? Have they been queried? It is because you don't, you don't hold people accountable. Just, just in our hands it is. Just imagine, you know, coming to the studio to present this program for two, three days or you are coming to it regularly. What will happen to you? Messy and clean it up as well. What will happen to you? Imagine the cameraman not coming. Imagine the follow manager not coming. And this is the situation. When you make this, when it's so simple and not lodging to it, it is the failure of people that have been given responsibility to do and if they fail to do the responsibility that you hold them accountable. But if you live in a society whereby we live, we do hold people accountable. We do things on the basis of sentiment and sentiment cannot lead you to progress. We must do things right. Of us to do things right, we must hold people accountable. All right, thank you so much. Thank you so much. We love you. Thank you so much. It is that Gidey Johnson is the chief lecturer at the Institute of Journalism and we have been looking at the state of the nation and of course the economy security and all of that. Thank you for your imputes this morning Gidey Johnson. Yeah, thank you, Justin and thank you Messy. It's a pleasure to be with you. All right, many thanks. We look forward to having more conversation with you. This is where we call it a wrap. Thank you so much. We hope you had a great time two hours of the conversation. We will definitely come for tomorrow and if you missed out on any part of the conversation, that's all right. To follow us on Facebook and Instagram we're at Plus TV Africa and on YouTube is at Plus TV Africa Lifestyle. I am Messy Boko. To have a great morning. And I'm Justin. I'll cut the news to you again tomorrow. Bye for now.