 I am to speak for a few minutes on reflections on the President Muhammad Buhari administration, the journey so far. And I think that what the Zanua retreat offers is an opportunity to reflect on some of the issues that made a difference in our administration. And what I intend to do is to spend time not listing our many achievements. There is a detailed monograph that is titled The Achievements of the Buhari administration, which I'm sure we all have in our parks, which does this excellently. And I wanted to show a copy of that, but I'm sure we all have it. So I'd rather focus on four of what I think are the fundamental ways in which policies and programs have contributed to Nigeria's transformational journey. And to point to three challenges that I believe must be confronted, and then perhaps end with the recommendation. I begin with the development of infrastructure, and especially the creativity which we have brought to infrastructure financing. Clearly there is no administration to date that has invested anywhere close to our investment in infrastructure, from roads, rail, to power, and broadband infrastructure. The financing menu which we adopted include the road infrastructure development and refurbishment investment tax credit policy. This has incentivized the construction of almost 1,500 kilometers of critical roads in the economic corridors. Under the scheme, the Dengote group has substantially completed the reconstruction of the 34 kilometer Apapa, Oro and Shoki, or Jota Expressway in Lagos, and the 43 kilometer of Bajano, Kaba Road. Similarly, the Nigeria LNG Limited is on track to complete the 38 kilometer Bodo Bonny Bridge and roads project by the end of 2023. And recently, the president gave approval to MTN to construct a 202 billion Enugu Onisha Road. The second on the menu is the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund, PIDF, which is managed by our Sovereign Wealth Authority, where we have leveraged more than a billion dollars in financing to facilitate the accelerated completion of the second Niger Bridge, the Lagos Ibadno Expressway, and the Abuja Kano Road. The third is the Cook Funds. The fourth is the Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria, or InfraCoas, we call it, established in 2021, with a seat capital of one trillion Naira from the Central Bank of Nigeria, our Sovereign Wealth Authority, and the Africa Finance Corporation. So all of these are the innovative ways by which we've been able to fund infrastructure outside of budget. The power sector is an area where there has been game-changing progress. But the situation is rather like building a skyscraper. The foundation is several floors into the ground and no one sees the work while the critical component of the building is being done. And this is where we are in the power sector. A lot of foundational stuff is going on. First is the improvement in generating capacity today. More than 4,000 megawatts of additional power-generating assets will be completed under the life of this administration. These include the Zungeru Hydro, Kashambila Hydro, the Afam-3 Fast Power, the Kudenda Kaduna Power Plant, or Pi Phase II Gas Power Plant, and then the Dangote Refinery Power Plant, and many others. Recently, KPMG concluded a study showing that while the figure of 4,000 megawatts is the average used daily on the grid, electricity delivered by our electricity industry, which includes grid, captive power, and embedded power, is in excess of 8,000 megawatts daily, not 4,000 megawatts, and also that installed capacity is in excess of 18,000 megawatts and not 13,000 megawatts. Much of the improvement to the 8,000 megawatts that we are talking about has occurred under our administration, and they include one of the 28 grid power plants with installed capacity of about 13,000 megawatts and operational daily capacity of around 5,000 megawatts. These include our power plants in Egbeen, Ueli, Gerigu, Kainji, and others. Then there's the 266 captive power plants with installed capacities of about 4,000 megawatts and daily operational capacities of about 2,500 megawatts. These include the Dangote Semen capacities in Obajano, Ibeche. That's 400 megawatts of power, and LNG's 240 megawatts of power on the Bonilla Island Power Plant. These are never captured in the statistics, but are part of the stock of our Nigerian electricity supply industry. In the future, many of these plants will integrate into the grid. In fact, some of them supply power to the communities where they are already. Then there is the 16 embedded power plants with about 549 megawatts of installed capacity and 190 megawatts of daily operational capacity. So there is a whole range of generating capacity. Most of them that are not currently under the grid, they are captive or embedded depending on which ones they are. But all of them contribute to our generating capacity and power supply on a regular basis. Our renewable energy program has attained great momentum. The Solar Power Niger, which is a program introduced by the Economic Sustainability Plan, will help us to achieve 5 million solar connections impacting over 12 million Nigerians. The Ministry of Power is also driving an additional 49 billion in off-grid funding through the Solar Power Niger loans via the Central Bank of Nigeria. There are also ongoing projects under the Solar Power Niger. The NDPHC is doing 7 billion in solar projects. NNPC is doing 22 billion in solar projects and NSI is doing 10 billion. Infra-credits is doing another 10 billion, and this is NIRAM. An important component of our power program is the national mass metering program. And I think that it's important to bear in mind that this program is one that has helped greatly in advancing the fortunes of our electricity industry. It is financed by the CBN. One million meters have been installed so far, and there is now a structure to meter and additional six million households and also to provide a way of sustainably eliminating the metering gap. One of the major complaints of our discourse and major complaints of the electricity industry is that there isn't adequate metering. And so many times, discourse have to give estimated billings. And this, of course, is a tremendous irritation to consumers. But now, with the metering program, we're heading for at least six million by the end of this administration. 41-meter factories are now functional in Nigeria, and they've created 10,000 jobs as part of the metering program. So going forward in the electricity industry, and of course there's so much that is going on there, but going forward, it is proposed that the TCN be separated into two entities under the direct oversight of the Ministry of Power. And the two constraint parts would be the transmission company of Nigeria to serve as a transmission service provider responsible for the provision of infrastructure for transporting electric energy across the whole of Nigeria. And then the independent system operator to provide systems operations, which mainly is about management of power, dispatch, and grid security. And then the market operator function, which is market settlement administration. So this arrangement will create independence between the TCN as a regulator and participant, and certainly will improve the confidence of market participants. The second game-changing achievement in our administration, in my view, is digital economy. First is the rapid expansion of broadband access. In August 2019, the broadband coverage was 33.7%, and today it is 44.65%, representing close to 13 million new broadband users. There were 13,823 4G-based stations, and we now have 36,751, representing a 165% increase. The percentage 4G coverage across the country has increased from 23% to 77.52%. The expansion has been greatly helped by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy directly engaging the states on the right-of-way policy, with a view to persuading them to reduce the rates charged for lane fiber optic cables to as low as 140 nir per meter. Many states have complied, and some states have even completely removed the charges. But what I believe will become the biggest contribution of the digital economy to the Nigerian economic growth is the deployment of 5G technology. We now have presidential approval for the 5G policy. In terms of density, 4G allows connections to about 1 million devices within 500 square kilometers, while 5G will allow the same number of devices in just one square kilometer. There's also, of course, the very fast data rates of the 5G are more efficient energy usage. Of course, the cost of data has also crashed from 1,200 per GB in 2019 to about 360 nir today, making it easier for Nigerians to connect to the Internet. Now, the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy has embarked on the National Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure Backbone 2, which is called NICTIB-2 for short, to connect 20 states with fiber optics that had not been connected under NICTIB-1. We've also made tremendous progress with expanding the digital identity database. From less than 40 million people who had national identification numbers in 2020, we now have 90,000 to 90 million, beg your pardon, 268,742 NIN records, as at the end of September 2022. So digital identity is profoundly important for the entire economy, because first it assures democratized access to basic services like health, education, banking, and enables the inclusion of millions in the digital economy. Another key strand of Nigeria's digital journey is the stellar performance of our FinTech companies, the growth of which was supported very actively by the central bank in terms of granting new categories of licenses and providing clear regulatory guidelines for payment service providers. And this has led to an explosion in participation with the value of digital transactions in Nigeria rising to 286 trillion Naira, that is 690 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. In the midst of two recessions since 2015, Nigeria now has six unicorns. These are digital companies valued at over $1 billion each. One of them is in fact valued at $3 billion, bigger than most Nigerian banks. This includes the companies Flutterwave, OPE, and Della, InterSwitch, Jumea, Pigivest, and Paystack. Many of these companies were founded or co-founded by Nigerians. When they founded them, most of them were under 30 years old. The third game-changing achievement, in my view, are the ease of doing business reforms, PERBEC. And I think PERBEC has since 2016 implemented 160 reforms. PERBEC is our Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council. These include the digitization of company registration, tax payment, and the visa on arrival process. All of these are digitized processes. Of course, there are hitches here and there, and we're not going to go into all of that detail. Then there are legislative reforms with a very active collaboration of the National Assembly. We're able to pass the secure transactions in movable assets Act of 2017 and the Credit Reporting Act of 2017 as well. These two acts enable MSMEs to enjoy financial inclusion and facilitate access to credit by legalizing the use of movable assets as collateral. In the past, of course, movable assets were not used effectively as collateral. So no one would want to accept your car as collateral. No one would want to accept any movable asset. But now under this law, movable assets are used and can be used as collateral. And these laws have improved transparency and enhanced risk management in credit transactions. To date, over $700 billion worth of assets have been listed on our National Collateral Registry. And this is important because now we have a register of collateral. So if you've used your movable asset as collateral, it is listed somewhere. And you can check that on the website. You can be sure that a person does not use a car twice or thrice for collateral because there is now an established register. Also, there's the new Companies Analyzed Matters Act which contains extensive business facilitation provisions and we have the omnibus bill which is still before the National Assembly, which is to codify executive order 001 on transparency and efficiency. Then we have justice sector reforms along the business lines as well. The establishment of small claims courts for settlement of commercial disputes that are under $5 million naira. Lagos State was the first to establish this in 2018 with the collaboration of Pebeck. And since 2018, they have looked over at 4,000 different cases. And these have been heard in 19 courts across the state. And this, of course, has reduced cost and time of commercial litigation for many MSMEs. Kano Ogung, Edo, Ekiti, Nassarawa, Jigawa have also started their own operations by Elsa, Kaduna, and Sokoto and the FCT on the verge of launching their own small claims courts in the very, very near future. Between 2016 and 2019, Nigeria moved up 39 places in the World Bank Dream Business Rankings and was twice named as one of the top 10 most improved economies in the world. The fourth game changing achievement of our government is a social investment program. And the president dwells considerably on this. This is an important ideological and policy statement of our party and our government. We took the view from the very inception of the government that countries, a country, especially where there are large numbers of poor people, must provide a well thought out social safety net for the poorest and the most vulnerable. And there must be interventions for the young unemployed. So this led to the deployment of the largest social investment program in sub-Saharan Africa with a budgetary provision of 500 billion Naira and at the time that was close to $2 billion. Since 2016, we've included that almost 500 billion Naira in every one of our budgets and now is closer, I believe, to one trillion Naira. It includes conditional cash transfers to over 2 million of the poorest benefiting from a bimonthly stipend of 10,000 Naira. The National Social Register now contains 46 million persons in over 11 million poor and vulnerable households from across the Federation. We have a school-feeding program for public primary schools, now feeding close to 10 million schoolchildren across the country. We have an award-winning micro-credit scheme for informal traders under the government enterprises and empowerment program. So the likes of trader money, farmer money, market money, et cetera. Then we have interventions for young unemployed, the young and employed population, the MPAR program. We began with employment of our 500,000 young people and now we have presidential approval for a million to be employed under the scheme. So aside from the obvious benefits to millions, the program also is an opportunity to build local digital capacity and expand the financial inclusion base for millions. For the G program, for example, we give the management to the Bank of Industry who builds the platform that eventually serviced over 4 million beneficiaries, disbursing and handling repayment of credit for this number of people. Today, the Bank of Industry's growth platform is Africa's largest infrastructure for interventions to MSMEs. The growth platform's command center now has 22,000 agents living across all local government areas in Nigeria, equipped with proprietary mobile technologies. They receive mandates to capture and digitize businesses that are eligible for its growing suite of programs. The MPAR program also led to the building of a robust digital platform for recruiting, for paying and engaging beneficiaries. The largest of its kind in Africa. The homegrown school feeding has shown multiple returns on investment. It has raised enrollment in schools by as high as 40%, significantly improving nutrition and health outcomes for children in public schools, improving revenues for farmers who service the scheme and jobs for aggregators, cooks, and others in the value chain. One key lesson that our experience has shown is that it is quite possible to run large-scale programs for the benefit of ordinary Nigerians in a fair and transparent manner. Using technology reduces the problems of human agency and discretion. Running such large programs fairly goes a long way in encouraging ordinary Nigerians to believe and trust in the government that they have voted into power. Permit me to mention three challenges that we must confront going forward. The first is the synergy between fiscal and monetary policy. Wherever that synergy fails, it leads to unnecessary drawbacks in our economic performance and planning. What imports are eligible for foreign exchange must agree with the fiscal ambitions for manufacturing and industry. Whatever we agree as fiscal and monetary policy of both sides must agree on what should be eligible and what should not be eligible. It cannot be the province of monetary policy alone. Neither should it be the province of fiscal policy alone. The second is our exchange rate management and this continues to be an issue. The exchange rates of the Naira to convertible currencies continues to face significant downward pressures because demand substantially outstrips supply and that's just the reality. On one hand, we have tried demand management and rationing which has not really worked because fixing the price while the parallel market reveals a massive arbitrage merely creates the opportunity for massive rents. It will also compound the backlog of remittances for foreign businesses who want to repatriate their earnings. The discussion that we now must have and going forward is how to manage the situation by finding a mechanism for increasing supply and moderating demand which will be transparent and will boost confidence. I think that a more market-driven approach will be best. Some price discovery within the context of a managed float is certainly what is required. Some efforts at controlled price discovery that had been made in the past and the CBN has a history of several of these efforts. They include the foreign exchange market FEM, the interbank foreign exchange market IFEM and then various iterations of the Dutch auction system, whole Dutch auction system, retail Dutch auction system. All of these were price discovery mechanisms which I believe can still be applied. While they may not be perfect, there as if at least the rules were clear and there was relative stability. When people know how they can access foreign exchange competitively, this will boost confidence and inward flows will increase. My third issue is that we must focus on value, addition and productivity in our economy. This happily is well articulated in our medium-term economic plan 2021 to 2025. We must in doing so losing the generalized restrictions on trade. Blanket import restrictions are a dampener on economic activity because a lot of items that might be needed in manufacturing might be affected with a consequent negative impact on value addition in the economy. Importation itself is not the problem. It is what you import and what you do with importation. It is value added that matters and this is how in my view jobs and wealth are created. Many countries who manufacture are actually huge importers and they import far more than Nigeria. Let's take for example, government manufacturing in Bangladesh, the world's leading government manufacturer. The world's leading government manufacturer does not produce most of the cotton it uses. As a matter of fact, it grows only 2% of its annual cotton requirement. In 2019, Bangladesh imported 11.8 billion dollars worth of textiles and apparels while it exported 37.94 billion US dollars worth of garments in the same year. So it's clear that there's nothing wrong with importation if you're going to add value and you're going to export and I think that we should focus on doing that. Finally, a valuable lesson that we must draw from our efforts over the life of this administration is that coherence and coordination are essential for effective policy implementation. It's important for government policies to be coherent otherwise different parts of government could end up adopting diametrically opposed policies and I think that one of the very important issues one of the very important steps that Mr. President has taken is the establishment of the delivery unit in the presidency. This I think is effective and greatly helps in ensuring coherence and coordination of policy. I believe we've done well with regard to using planning as a form of promoting coherence in policy making and implementation and this is reflected by the adoption of the economic recovery and growth plan, the economic sustainability plan in response to COVID-19 and then of course the national development plan 2021 to 2025 and the ongoing work on the Nigeria agenda 2050. I think that what the broad consultative process that is involved in drawing up these plans does is that it helps to improve understanding of government intentions and direction even by public servants but certainly also by the private sector and the general populace. Planning also means that there is a process by which incompatible policies are realigned and repositioned. Closely related to coherence is coordination. It's important to coordinate the implementation of government policy very closely. Apart from the benefits of several viewpoints being taken into account the coordination of economic activity enables key economic managers to know how to help their colleagues to achieve common objectives. The truth of course is that working in silos or going it alone can often have very harmful effects on policy implementation. Very closely tied to coordination is strong public sector capacity and I think it's pleasing to note that the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation has been proceeding at pace with the Federal Civil Service Strategy and implementation plan. I think that one of the very important steps Mr. President which you took in 2016 and I believe I would not be accused of being self-serving here because we have only a few months to go. As you constituted the economic management team under the Office of the Vice President and I think that that was a very administratively sound and wise decision indeed because constitutionally the Office of the Vice President is chair of the National Economic Council, chair of the National Planning Commission and also chair of the National Council on Privatization which of course is the Bureau of Public Enterprises. Because of the strong economic position that the Office of the Vice President has been placed constitutionally makes perfect sense for the Office of the Vice President to be the coordinator, the interim ministerial coordinator of the economic management team and I believe that your Excellency acted very wisely and rightly indeed and I commend this to future administrations and to the incoming President and Vice President. I'd like to thank you very much for your kind attention. Thank you.