 We're glad to know you're still there and watching the breakfast. We're now going to look at the first hot topic. President Tino Booth sets out fiscal policies to tackle economic realities in his speech. That's what we're going to be looking at, the speech of President Buhari. And to talk with us on that, we have a public affairs analyst, Nick Aghule. Good morning and welcome to the program, Nick. Good morning and good morning to our viewers. I like the way you look. Very patriotic this morning. Yes. Very good. Since I can only see Victoria, I hope you're not changing the name of Nigeria to Victoria. It ends the rear-rear, the same thing. It's not a matter of that. Not at all, not at all. You listened to the speech of Mr. President and he spoke about a lot of issues. Let me get your takeaways from that speech that he delivered before we take them specifically. First of all, I want to thank Mr. President for speaking to us. Because given what we experienced in the last administration, we always heard from the presidency. We're not hearing from our president. We're hearing from the presidency. It is a refreshing departure from that tradition that we had in the last administration that the president would address us directly by himself. So I want to say thank you, Mr. President, and please do more of these speeches to us. One other thing was that I actually thought that speech was going to be on security because Mr. President, together with leaders of ECOWAS, have committed our troops to battle, committed our troops to war. So it is a tradition as well that any time a president is about to send troops of the country into war, he addresses the nations. So that he would tell the nation the reason why our military would be put in harm's way. So I actually thought that was what he was going to talk about, the fact that we heard the outcome of this meeting, ECOWAS meeting, that if the junta in Niger don't step down and restore democracy in one week, that there will be military action. But if that didn't happen, instead, the president spoke on the economy. But either way, please let the president speak to us more often. Okay. Well, so now some of the things, the highlights that that speech brought to us are very clear to us now. And I would like you to comment on each and every one of them if you have the, if we have the time. He is to spend 75 billion naira between July 2023 and March 2024 to strengthen the manufacturing sector, increase its capacity to expand and create good paying jobs. And he's to also fund 75 enterprises with great potential to kickstart a sustainable economic growth, accelerate structural transformation and improve productivity. Each of the 75 manufacturing enterprises to access one billion naira or 9% PA with, let me wear my glasses, with maximum of 16 months repayment for long-term loans and 12 months for working capital. He is also going to energize the micro, small and medium-sized enterprises and informal sector with 125 billion naira. He will spend 50 billion naira on conditional grants to 1 million nanobusinesses between now and March 2024. He will give 50,000 naira each to 1,300 nanobusiness owners in each of the 774 local government areas. He will fund 100,000 MSME and startups with 75 billion. Like you said, everything was about the economy and there are so many other things that I might just continue mentioning to you. But let's just take what you feel about this specifics that we have mentioned. Beginning from the first one of spending 75 billion between July 2023 and March 2024. We are in August. I don't know if this expenditure has started in July because the time frame is from July to next year. Thank you very much for that question. My overall view of the package as announced by the President is that I don't believe in it. And the reason why I don't believe in it is that it's not because the President is being generous to offer packages to the business sector, especially small businesses. But I am worried about the implementation. You see, we have a civil service that is perfectly corrupt. This is the same civil service that the organized private sector gave them palliatives during the COVID era to distribute to Nigerians and the palliatives were looted. This is the same civil service that is looting the budget. And so every year we have budgets, budgets, budgets, but you can't see any economic development. And you actually say, where is the money going? I don't know if our viewers can recall. In the aftermath of COVID, there was a group of scientists in court that were put on television where the Central Bank of Nigeria was giving them money to conduct research into COVID vaccine. As anybody heard about those COVID vaccines since then, not at all, that money has gone. So the whole idea of government giving money to businesses to do X, Y, or Z is not effective because we have tried this several times in the past. There have been schemes like this and they haven't shown any success. What government needs to do is to create a neighboring environment for these businesses to thrive. For instance, we speak about power supply. If you give money, like now they are talking about, we will give 1 billion each to 75 companies. Which are those companies? Who is going to select those companies? What is going to be the spread of those companies? As Nigerians, how do we even know that these companies have collected 1 billion each? What is the guarantee that these companies are not fund by civil servants and public servants? They are all companies that they have funded and collected the money and spread it. So government should not go that direction. Government should create a neighboring environment. 70% of the problems of businesses in Nigeria is lack of electricity. And we keep talking about this thing. We used to have factories that have closed and gone this way. Because we are not giving them enough public power supply. Mr. President, he needs to understand that as we speak today, Nigeria is generating and supplying 3,000 MW of electricity, 3,000. 3,000 MW is what some industrial parts, I'm not talking about his city. I'm saying industrial parts as we get as part. If Mr. President takes his eyes and looks at a place like Brazil, we are there generating and supplying 150,000 MW per day. You ask yourself, if one country is giving 150,000 MW to their businesses and I'm giving them 3,000, why explain my businesses to survive? They cannot survive. So regardless of the money he's giving them, they still can survive because they don't have the necessary energy to survive. And there are other things, for instance, the borders are porous. Businesses try to produce and the stuff are coming in. Enter coming from abroad and being dumped in Nigeria. Enter any supermarket in Nigeria. It will surprise you the range of products that are not made in Nigeria. I was in a supermarket in Abuja here two days ago. I wanted to buy oats. And on the whole range of oats that are sold on that shelf, 90% of them carry Dubai, Malaysia, as the place where they were made. Oats is made from cereal that we should be producing in Bantifu here in Nigeria. Businesses are facing a lot of taxation. Too many taxes, multiple taxes by all the tires of government. Businesses are facing high interest costs. If the interest rate on borrowing is topping 30% or more, how do you expect businesses to survive? Mr. President identified that very clearly in his inaugural speech. And he said that, look, he's going to bring down the interest rate. But under his regime, the central bank also had a monetary policy committee meeting and increased the interest rate. So it appears Mr. President is not even falling up on his promises to us. But he will bring interest rate to single digits. How do we expect businesses to survive? And why are you bringing interest rate to single digits? It shouldn't be on loans that you say you are giving to 75 companies. It should be for the entirety of businesses in Nigeria who should go and assess cheap credit so that they can expand their operations. We have issues with infrastructure. A business produces their goods in Lagos to carry those goods to Camel. Either the truck is going to fall off on the road or bandits are going to seize the truck. You know, so all of those are the kind of things Mr. President should deal with. Once he deals with those kind of things, the businesses will survive on their own. They will swim on their own. They will not even need these handouts that Mr. President is offering. So my view is that Mr. President is failing to deal with the fundamental issues. He's going to deal with symptoms. There is something that is making the businesses not to try. Let him go and deal with it. Okay. Can you just mention them? I know that you've talked about them. Okay, let me leave that. Let's just say, does it worry you that Mr. President is still not very deliberate talking about what will be done to stamp out corruption? Yes, the central bank governor has been arrested and I don't know how that relates to fighting corruption. A lot of things that he has done, some people will say that is fighting corruption, but he has not said anything deliberately, anything specifically as to how he's going to fight corruption. And you just mentioned the fact that there is that corruption which gives you no confidence at all that these policies or the things that he reeled out yesterday in his speech will be implemented at all. So how do you feel about the fact that there is no specific pronouncement regarding how to fight corruption? I feel very worried. I feel very, very worried because Mr. President should actually have a single point agenda. And that single point agenda should be the rule of law. Mr. President should ensure that the rule of law reigns supreme in Nigeria. Once the rule of law reigns supreme in Nigeria, corruption will go. Every one of the problems, the ailments that worry us today, they will go. Because, you see, humanity is meant to be run with the law in those places where our people are jackpotting too. Immediately you arrive in those places. You will see clearly that here is a place of law. You can't just behave as you like. You must behave in accordance with the laws of the land. And if you don't behave in accordance with the laws of the land, you'll find yourself in jail. Mr. President, we raise the riot act to all the security agencies and say, look, my government is a government that respects no passes. I want to bring all Nigerians equally before the law. I'm not just saying this. Mr. President begins to carry out the reforms that will make that happen. Because he's not just saying that. He has to put his money where his heart is. The police we have today, given the funding, given the equipment, given everything that they have, they are going to be incapable. They are going to be incapable of enforcing law and order in Nigeria. Because they don't have what it takes. You remember that the Inspector General of Police. And these are the things I explained, Mr. President, to be paying attention to. The Inspector General of Police, immediately he took office. He said, no moral blocks. No blocks are there. Because that becomes the funding mechanism for the police force. So these are the fundamental issues that Mr. President has to be dealing with. The reforms that we bring about the enforcement of law and order in Nigeria. And once he has that singular objective and he faces that objective, tackles that objective, he will see that he's going to have a different set of people. Because that's what we see. When we get on the flight here in Abuja, right there at Abuja Airport or at Lagos Airport, you see her unruly Nigerians are behaving. The same Nigerians get on the flight. When they arrive in London, they start to behave differently. And the reason why they start behaving differently because in London, the leaders have made the rule of law to be supreme. And that is why you are getting the same Nigerian better quality in London, better quality in Nigeria. Mr. President, I have some other standard. OK. Oh, well, let's just take a final word from you to Nigerians, to those in government, and just something to hold on to until things begin to happen. Here in Lagos at least, the governor has said to help in this hard time, in this harsh condition that we are facing because of the fuel subsidy removal, he is slashing the transport of BRT buses or every bus that is run by the Lagos state government. The price of commuting on those buses is going to be half right now. So at least we have some respite. The question I was asking this morning was what about the people who do not need to go on the buses? How does that help them? Because fuel was something that everybody enjoyed. Now that they have been released or removed, they are now giving specific palliatives. So if you are a car owner or you are someone who goes to work, you have the opportunity to enter the bus. But the person who is at home, who is still going to buy from the market, whose prices have gone up because of this thing, will still suffer and all that. I was just asking that question. But I do hope that it will be better. So a comforting word from you, please, as we wrap up the segment. So thank you very much. I wrote an open letter to Mr. President to appraise his speech. And his speech has called him very hard on issue identification because he was worked on the money to identify what the issues are. It has called him very low, in fact, 20% of solutions because Mr. President is not providing us the fundamental solutions that we deal with this matter. Although, Mr. President was totally quiet about refineries in his speech. I was surprised because of this fuel subsidy that he has removed. The fuel subsidy came about because our refineries were dead. So you can only come and just remove fuel subsidy without restoring the refineries. I expected Mr. President to be telling us that he has set up a tax force to sell off the refineries so that the refineries will start producing fuel. He didn't mention anything about that. Mr. President mentioned nothing about electricity, which is pinning down businesses. Mr. President is talking about going to import buses. Why Mr. President should be talking about rail? Because why you have a rail line? You see, those 3,000 buses that Mr. President is talking about importing. He said each bus will carry 20% and then there are 3,000 of them. That is 60,000 people nationwide. Do you know that less than all of those 60,000 people? That is how rail is so important. You know, so Mr. President should actually sit down and look at fundamentals. He's not dealing with the fundamentals. I'm not, he deals with the fundamentals. His cosmetic solutions are not going to do very much. OK. Well, thank you so much, Nika Gule, for being a part of our program today. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you very much. I'm Algerian, where? OK, that was Nika Gule, a public affairs analyst, talking to us from Abuja this morning. We'll take a short break when we come back. We'll be talking about the power of the right communication. Stay with us.