 In the latest inflation report released by the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria's inflation rate for January 2024 surged 29.90 percent, marking a significant increase from the 28.92 percent recorded in the preceding month. The data reveals a notable uptake in the headline inflation rate for January 2024 by 0.98 percent points when juxtaposed with the December 2023 figures. Doving into a year-on-year comparison, the inflation rate for January 2023 stood at 21.82 percent, showcasing a considerable leap of 8.08 percent points by January this year, on the scoring an escalated headline inflation rate over the same period in the preceding year. This increment elucidates a heightened rise in the average price level for January, relative to the increase noted in December last year, highlighting the growing inflationary pressures within the nation's economy. And President Balak Tinibu has ordered the National Security Advisor Noho Rebadi, the Inspector General of Police, IGP Kayo De Egbertoku, and the Director General of the Department of State Services, Yusuf Bici, to work with governors and go after those holding foodstuff. The Central Bank of Nigeria has also stopped international oil companies from repatriating 100 percent foreign exchange proceeds through their mother companies overseas at once. The Apex Bank said international oil companies can repatriate 50 percent of their proceeds in the first instance and then the other half after 90 days. We will look at all of these on the show this morning. Welcome on board to Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Akadone, youth development and of course career building. Also coming up right now, the increase in economic hardship in Nigeria is driving more individuals to seek loans from digital apps, leading to a surge in unrecovered loans as borrowers struggle to repay debts. Lenders, particularly registered ones, are facing significant challenges with non-performing loans, prompting calls for improved regulation and real-time credit, registries to curb fraud and borrowing practices. Now my guest international finance and economic analyst, Mokhtar Muhammad, joins me now as we look at the latest happenings in the nation's economy. Many thanks for joining me, Mokhtar, on Business Insight. Thank you, Justin. I'm glad you are still smiling this morning. Most Nigerians are not smiling. That's why you're among the few that are still smiling. No, Mokhtar, you must understand that with all the issues that we have, the economic challenges, the fuel costs, and people not even being able to buy food. If you keep on feeling gloomy and so sad, you just end up developing high blood pressure. And before you know it, there's nothing you can do, and you are the one that would suffer. So somehow you just have to find a way to encourage yourself. And the medical, the hospitals are not there, and they are telling you that drugs are even very expensive. Inflations that we're talking about over 29 percent, Mokhtar, what's happening? As of this time last year, we were on inflation of about 21. So year on year, it has grown by 8 percent, over 8 percent. What is really happening? And particularly, like we had just mentioned, people cannot even afford food. Justin, I think the saddest thing of all this problem is, seems that the government seems to be on a different page from the people. When you look at the policies, you look at statements that are coming from them, it's very disappointing, especially from a government that people expect so much economically from them through the economic reforms. When you have a president saying that you should allow the CBN and other people that struggle with this possibility, you cannot prove a solution. So you just think they are there, do they have the knowledge? Are they an island of knowledge? So they cannot listen to other people and see that, look, this is what is happening. The former MIA of Kano is crying, the MIA of, the present MIA of Kano is crying, the Sultan of Tsuktu is crying. The rulers, even some of the rulers in Lagos also are crying. The people are crying, and yet it seems to be, as usual, they had an economic summit meeting yesterday, the National Economic Council with the governor. I didn't see anything that comes up from that meeting. What they come out of will not come from trouble. Governors should go back and employ youth, or we should think about creating post-tourists. How does that put food in the tables of ordinary Nigeria? It's very, very sad that they seem to talk and there's no action. And that has been the pain of APC, their propaganda is they came to say everything, and they do differently. It seems to tell us things are all right, but the more you see, the least you understand. For inflation, I'm not surprised that Justin, who said it before, that is even almost 30. I think that is the official rate. You and I know that if you go to the market, you think inflation have hit over 40 percent. When you look at some of the goods that you bought last week and you go to buy them this week, they are already high by more than 20 percent. So if you look at that inflation, that is more than that. That's the official inflation figure. I keep saying inflation is higher than what they are doing. And then you look at those inflation to know that the lower area is 28 percent. For me, that is a sad thing because these people rarely even have any means of income. And here where they are having 28 percent. Now we know the cost of this inflation. Number one is the hiking in the removal of forest subsidy. Whether partially or whatever, it has moved from a low of almost a low of about 100 to a high of about 610. So it definitely has a big impact on the people. Then that's on the cost of transportation as well for the rural areas to move their goods from point A to point B. Floating of the Naira. You didn't have the liquidity. You have floated the Naira. The Naira has moved from a low at when you came out of 450, black market rate of 510 to a high of black market rate of 1,600 and then officially the 1,515. So those are what are fueling inflation. Now what are you doing about it? It seems that you are running out of idea. You don't even know what to do about it. So as I'm concerned, it's very disheartening. I mean, for you to wake up in the morning and you look at your fellow Nigerians, they seem to know how full to eat. Even if you have food to eat, as he's saying, if you are the richest in the midst of the poor, that means you are the poorest among the poor. So I mean, we need to, the government need to step up. It's not just making pronouncement. We release green into the silver. Yet you are not releasing anything. We are not seeing. Sometimes maybe we told us they are going to release some bags of rice into the economy, even when they were not enough. We didn't see those bags of rice today. So why do you keep making statement, taking us for granted? I'm moving a bit about himself, Mokta, because speaking of grains, releasing bags of rice, I don't, like you said, we've not seen that. I wonder how far that can go if due to not be short-circuited in a way and actually being hijacked. Right now, year on year, food inflation rates officially, like we would say, is about at 5.41%. And from the meeting of yesterday, the federal government is asking the National Security Advisor and Inspector General of Police to go after food hoarders. In your opinion, do you really think that is realistic and do you really think that is the issue? Or are people actually hoarding food as it were? I think, I don't want to say that thing. They seem to be on a different page. If people are hoarding food, I think the enemy of Kano would have said it. The Sultan of Sokoto would have said it. He would have talked to a subject. You remember what the Sultan said? Yes, I did. He said, tell Mr. President, we have been trying to cook. We have been, we have been the one telling our subject to be patient, that things will get better. But it will come a point that we will not be able to talk to them again, because there is hunger in the land. They are not saying they are hoarding foods. There is no even food to hoard. Is it in the north, in the north east, whether it's insecurity, making the farmers not to go to find that they are hoarding food? Where are the, where have you heard this food? How many of these food are being hoarded? And if these food are being hoarded, who are the bigger cultural companies that are hoarding these food? Who owns these companies? You see, government has just not been sincere. I mean, they need to do things before things get out of hand. Systems now, in the patient limit of the online agenda is beginning to drag too much. Government need to do something. You don't just see things without having any fact to pack it. So do you mean that the farmer that is, that has to cultivate his crop during dry season, making sure he save it because he knows, so he's hoarding food? He's thinking to maximize profit because of cost of production. And how, what are you doing to reduce the cost of production so that he will bring out this for your nursing and he should go after them? I think it's just like you are trying to build a short term major. We have done this before. You say they should go after food, those are hoarding food. And then in the other end, you are saying that you will not support control board. So what are you doing in one hand and what are you saying in the other hand? Remember this happened in the FF issue, the former CBM management team. The EFC went after foreign exchange dealers, they brewed the change. And it stabilized the currency for about one week after that, where are we today? So the government seems not too late. Government seems to do the same thing all over and over again and they think they will have a different result. I think they should think twice before doing what they're trying to do. Look, Dustin, as we are saying today, the MD of Boa Food came up today to say that we cannot even plan because from February, the customers have increased in 6 times from a low of 920 in the beginning of February to a high of 515. And is that government that knows that most of what we consume, even if what we consume is not directly imported, what are the machinery for those consumption? And they are not being imported. So the government is insensitive. Let's talk about this FF issue because practically everything is tied to the inflationary pressures, the food inflation, because even those that don't buy in dollars still complain about dollar. And just yesterday, the central bank brought out some new policies stopping international oil companies from repatriating 100 percent of the foreign exchange proceeds to the moderate companies overseas at once. Now it's going to be done in two phases. How do you see this recent development? Because like you said, we've been having misplaced priority and that we come up with policies some or sort over time. So is this, or is there a who just around the corner or something in our forexam regime? You know, I've said it at least on your program. I said the CBN government is a policy man. All they think about is policy, administrative policy, no monetary policies. What they are doing is all administrative, administrative policies for the short term, you cannot be sustained. There must be a synergy between administrative policy, monetary policy and physical policies for you to get the results you want. You can do, you are saying they should not repatriate them for more than 50 percent. Then after 90 days they should repatriate it. So what, did you even tell them that, okay, when you repatriate 50 percent of those funds, the other 50 percent must be invested in the next 90 days. So if I repatriate 50 percent of the fund and I leave 50 percent hanging there, what does it do into my economy? Does that boost liquidity? And you are trying to say, okay, you want to attract investors. You need to create a two way system. The president goes about telling investors that if you come to invest in our country you'll be able to repatriate your money back to your country at any time you want to. And here you are telling investors you cannot repatriate your money immediately. So you are talking with two sides of the mouse. The president seems to be in a different page, the CBM seems to be on a different page. That is why we say that the policy, the physical side in a different place, the monetary policy side on a different page. That cannot work sincerely. I don't think it will work. It will only have to get the current challenges we have in effects. They should begin to think what we need is how do you tell them to invest some of these effects into our economy? How do you tell the CBM to be the sole custody of effects? How do these banks also go to begin to create all these multinationals, begin to create accounts whereby these effects are being put in the bank? When the bank can begin to circuit, we want to begin to invest in dollars or pay them some certain percentage, fix deposit, fix effects rate. Like we have in Naira, we do fix deposit in Naira, can then begin to have fixed deposit in effects with this investment be better than what they will have if they repatriate this money to their country. That is how we should be thinking. Because the market as it stands now is thinking of liquidity. We need injection of liquidity, not in the short term, in the long term. What has happened in this country is that we have always not had challenges stabilizing the short term. Our major challenges have been always been how do we improve in the long term? When we have a short term solution, immediately things stabilize. We remember where we are instead of thinking of the future. So today we are crying for there's no effects in the economy. At the time we start attracting effects, all the diversification top you are hearing about will cease and we'll go back to business as usual. Yes, it's really, really, really heart wrenching. When we look at them, the fact that we seem to be misplaced in terms of the policies that we are taking and that they think that we should really be doing. I want to take you back to the issue of food inflation. Because I'm trying to understand really why food is really so expensive, even the ones that we seemingly produce locally. Is it that our farmers are not really producing anymore or that the issue of insecurity is affecting them? Or is it the dollar itself, the FX issue that is affecting food production and food security in the country? I really want to have a bit of an understanding as regards that Mokta. Just, you know, I said something, cost of production is high. What is influencing cost of production in the rural area? Where did only we have machines? Transportation? Transportation has gone up by over 100% driven in the rural area. True. That is one. Where do the dollar come in? I just made mention of something. One of the spare parts that some of these cars we need to buy, their tires, whatever, maybe engine oil, all those things, the price have gone up. So they have an impact on cost of production. You don't expect them to produce and they sell at a loss. Demand is high. Production is low because of insecurity also play part. And cost of production is high. Demand is high. But production is low due to insecurity. So the economy table demand and supply comes to play. So the price will definitely go up. Is it not the same government that told us they were bringing CMG buses to reduce the cost of production so that cost of food price will go down? Have they done that? No, they haven't. We have not seen it. So they have been playing leaf service to a lot of things. They said the policy comes on and everybody rejoices over it and everybody go back to start school. So the problem as it stands now is worked with the physical side and the monetary side unfortunately. You know before now we say the monetary side is intruding into the physical side. Professionally it does what the physical is supposed to do. Now what we are saying is that the monetary side seems to be doing nothing and splitting is all the physical side seems to be confused. Okay. Mugta another thing that we want us to talk about is how people coping mechanisms and the adverse effect also on the economy per se. Over time since last year we've been talking about minimum wage review salaries have not increased over time and inflation is over almost 30 percent. Officially food inflation about 35.41 percent. People need to cope and right now they are resorting to loan apps you know and some people actually take those loans with the intent of not even paying back or not even knowing how to pay back. They just want to be able to meet up with those gaps as they come. What do we have with our hands because we have lots of unperforming loans right now? Just in you know coping mechanism I think Nigerians are coming up with coping mechanism. One of those coping mechanism that have worked for them is JAPA and it's the middle class. You see when you don't have the middle class your economy cannot be productive. The people that are living the show of this country are not the very poor because the very poor does not even have the means of how to get this out at all. So it's the middle class. The middle class that are the engine room of the economy are the one living the skew sector. So we will not see the impact of this now in the short term but in the long term we'll begin to see shortage of skin even when the economy recover. Now you're talking about loan app. Remember that the CBN have come out to say these loans are illegal. Yes. So how much have we been able to regulate this loan app? The CBN came up and said that they were going to ban some of this loan app from operating in this country. These loans are not spirits. They have addresses. You see the bad thing about the loan app Justin is that they go out deforming people character. They send you a message to say this person is a criminal. He has done this, he has done that. I'll give you an example of a message I got which is very very very very very I mean it's it's it's degrading if I must use that word. I got a message somebody must have collected money from the loan app and the loan app was sending me a message to tell me that that person slept with dog that he ran away from the center where he's having treatment and that and that and so should be careful wherever anybody sees that should report that to the nearest police station. Wow. Can you imagine deformation of character? I have to call the person and say this he doesn't even know. So that means they are not operating professionally. They are not not at all. The CBN have said even said they send it to the bank that no bank should should take any action on default app unless they must have contacted them. Yes. So by this loan app what are their means of collecting and sometimes yes you said there are two sets of people. There are people that have collated with the intention of not paying. You are very right. But there are people that have collected by time they pay what they paid. They've paid finished paying even with interest or yet this was the one them to pay to the last couple. Imagine somebody borrowing 20,000 and you have paid over 40,000. They are saying you have to pay 100,000. And again that's what we talked about. If government is really serious with social investments then Nigerians will not be part of the loan app. If somebody can come up with the loan app and be able to give people money and monitor them that means the government could sit down also and come up with social investment and be able to reach every Nigerian if they want to. All right. So we need to begin to look and not support them by the loan app. You know it's about those that collect money and don't want to pay. But the loan app also not operating professionally. All right. Mokhtar we must say our thank yous to you because we're completely out of time but then we just hope we are able to just turn the tide around and do what is need for because Nigerians are actually suffering by the day. Mokhtar Mohamed is an international finance and economic analyst. Many thanks for being a part of the show. Thank you Mohamed. Thank you. It's indeed our pleasure. That's as much as we have time for on the show for today. Business insights will return to your screen at the same time. My name is Justin Acadone. Thanks for being there.