 Today on the breakfast, Biodoo Oyye Banji has declared winner of your Progressive Congress governorship primary election in Nekiti State. We look at the issues surrounding the primary and the chances of the party in the forthcoming election. The boys have been separated from the men in the ongoing African Cup of Nations. What should we expect in the upcoming quarterfinals after tournament? We have analysis of the headlines for today's national dailies all these ahead on the breakfast this morning. It's a beautiful Friday morning and it feels very great to be back on your screen this morning and usually some people will say thank god it's Friday. Would you say that? Oh yeah, yeah, mercy you're looking fabulous by the way. Thank you. And you too. Amazing, amazing. Thank you. I feel good already. Alright, so it promises to be a great time, two hours of great conversation and of course it would be delving into Iqiti State where we look at all of the issues surrounding the Iqiti primary elections as Iqiti people would decide calm June the 18th as well would also be looking at the Afghan quarterfinals at this point in time, the teams that have actually made it and what to expect from the game. The entire play so far this would be the crux of the conversation as we proceed but as always we will start off with top trending. I am Messi Boko by the way. And I'm Kofi Battels. Let's go straight to the United Arab Emirates and of course, mercy, the aviation issues between the UAE and Nigeria have been on well documented for some time now, Nigerians and Africans generally love to visit the United Arab Emirates. It's a destination for business, a destination for leisure, families love to go there for vacations and since the coronavirus came, you know, countries have been banned from visiting some countries from visiting the UAE. Before that we had the ongoing issue with air peace, the then issue rather with the air peace airline. Well, the recent one is that that travel ban on people who had recently visited South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and eight other countries they news filtered in that the United Arab Emirates is set or was set to lift that ban. We got some information from the National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Emergency Management Authority announcing on Wednesday that's from UAE, announcing on Wednesday that it was lifting the ban initially imposed on in light of the American variant of the COVID-19. A lot of Nigerians went on social media to express, you know, happiness that this has been affected, you know, because the criticism was that, you know, there was some sort of disparity between African countries and you have the European countries and other countries from other parts of the world when it comes to the ban on traveling to countries like UAE, you know, saying what we've seen, some of us, you know, what we've seen in Africa, in Nigeria in particular, it's not as bad as what we've seen in countries like the UK, Spain, Italy and so on and so Nigerians should not be stopped from going to Dubai, you know. We love to go to Dubai, don't we? No, why not? We love to go to Dubai. Why not? So, but as always, Africa would always be the market. Africa has always been the market. Yesterday, there was a conversation on the micro-blogging platform. I don't know if you actually, you know, try to engage, you know, the space on Twitter. It got a lot of conversation going on with the... Is it a secure tribe? No, yes, secure the tribe. Secure the tribe. No, so it brings us to the fact that, you know, Africa has always been the market. Now, it is a fact that the reason for the, you know, the restriction of African countries, including Nigeria, it wasn't scientific. There were no scientific bases or reason for all of that restriction. If you talk about the Omicron variant, of course, when South Africa actually alerted the international community the entire world about discovery of this, because it originally did not start from South Africa. It's just that they discovered it there. Now, the fact that they put that out, at the end of the day, it called for a lot of conversation, because you find that there were a lot of countries who had cases. There were cases, they had several cases. But they were not placed on that red list or red flag as they put it. And then you had almost the entire continent putting on the red flag. So, but for me, is that the reason for changing of the action towards these African countries has not been really stated. And so it calls for a lot of consent. So you begin to ask yourself, so what's the reason right now? And let's not forget that the UAE is also involved with, you know, some kind of international activity, especially with the world, the missiles and what have you. But like I always say, Africa has always been the market. Some people say that, you know, February is always here. Nigerians are very flamboyant people. Whether you're not, you want to take it. And, you know, February is a period where a lot of people would want to go celebrate. So, yes. You know, for Valentine's Day, right? You know, when Ineq said they would have the election on February 18, some men went like, no, no, it should have been 14. And then Hosh Papu is dizzy. I was what she said, you know, it was also said that his sentence and whatever surrounding his case would also be on January 14. Oh my, my. But you know, interestingly, the choice of countries, you know, that we're the focus of this UAE ban, you know, you have Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, you have Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, and these are African countries, you know. And Africans who always raise the issue of marginalization, why us? You know, we're not, we're not even near the figures from the other parts of the world like us, you know. But as to, as to, and these COVID people would travel to those countries. So even if you're not a citizen of those countries and you traveled there, you were prevented from entering the UAE. But the reasons, of course, and well, maybe we can just hazard a guess that in Nigeria with Lagos State declaring the end of the fourth wave and the spike may be going down, it may have contributed. Because they're watching these things. No, no, so, so we can just jump and go to the end. That's the point. First of all, the reason you put out that restriction on Nigeria and all the countries, there was no justification for all of that. And that's why the outcry was loud. Because if you look at, you know, the restriction, it somehow felt like it was becoming, you know, a marginalization issue, a issue of, you know, race and all of that. Because at the time we could see that there were countries that had more cases of COVID-19, the European countries. And they were not put on that lease. And that's why the question came up. At that time, Nigeria was talking about two cases or they were about, so it really didn't make a lot of sense to a lot of people. There was no justification scientifically and otherwise. And that's why the question is there. And I am asking, so what is the rationale because there hasn't been stated that you lift the band, what has changed? Because prior to this time, it wasn't that, you know, there was a boss, however, before you took the decision. And so if the, you know, the Lagos State government, Lagos is just one state out of the entire country. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if you get it. The figures from the NCDC are published online and are accessible to anyone anywhere in the world, as far as you have an internet connection. So the figures generally in the country have been steadily declining. So maybe I'm just hazarding a guess. Maybe, you know, they might look at this and say, okay, we can now relax. I don't know, we don't know. So I'm also thinking that it could also come from, you know, the fact that you have Boris Johnson with all of that policy, the de-liberality with COVID-19 protocols in the United Kingdom. So that might also be it. But however, I always know that Africa is the market and Nigeria is a very big market. Okay, okay, interesting. Well, if you also want to travel to the UAE, you can now start making, packing your bags, basically. Let's move on. Yesterday, from a governor, about to the Raji fasher of Lagos State, who is now the works and housing minister, was training as well as a training story, where he is said to have claimed that President Buahari has done more than the United States government has done in terms of infrastructure since 2015. And he had not even put his mic down. You know, they said, off the mic. He had not even put his microphone down and Nigerians jumped on this matter. Oh my God. No, no, no, no, no. Nigerians jumped on it. Someone says that, you know, since fasher went into the administration, he has lost focus, you know, a lot of things like that. But what the minister was saying was that, you know, President Buahari has done what the U.S. is trying to do in terms of infrastructure. He was at an APC event. This was in Karno State. It's a series, you know, a series of the party, an initiative to create awareness on its achievements in the last seven years. So it was a speaker there. He said, and I quote, let's just take a quote from him. I tell people that infrastructure is the most legitimate way to distribute money in the economy from the top to the bottom. From six years ago, this government led by President Buahari, as far as infrastructure is concerned, has been doing what the United States government is still trying to do. They in the U.S. are still trying to pass their infrastructure bill, and they are still fighting. So he said, as of December 2021, the federal government completed 941 kilometers of roads across all the states and the geopolitical zone. So people need to, you know, understand the context of what the person is saying and look at the text of what the person said before jumping on their back. It's clear from the quote that he says, let me go back. He didn't say the America has done more or has more infrastructure than Nigeria has more infrastructure than America or that Buahari has built more infrastructure. But what he said is that what the Americans are trying to do in terms of infrastructure, they've been trying to, for the past few years, Buahari has been doing it consistently in America. So people jumped on it and said, you know, you can't just compare. Yes, because, you know, the law of comparison does not allow you to compare things that are not on the same pole. And so it would just be okay to compare things on the same pole, which is just natural. If you wanna compare, the same pole would mean you compare, if you say Nigeria and Ghana, it's fair. We are in the same region. We are Africans, that's actually fair. Because you also want to look at the issue of how, you know, the kind of system of government that they practice. A lot of road infrastructure and all of the infrastructures within the poor view of the states and city government. And not necessarily on the, I don't need, so you have the states having a serious control. Now you also want to talk about the maintenance culture. The maintenance culture is not what we have here. So even with that compare, I'm sure that that probably would be the reason a lot of Nigerians are jumping on the bike and they don't even wanna pay attention because you say, you know, President Muhammad, that Buahari has built more infrastructure than the US government. That's a lot, you know, to begin to decipher us. Because when you talk about critical infrastructure, you ask yourself, we want to look at the roads across the entire, to today, what's it talking about, the Kalaba'i to road, which is under the poor view of the federal government. That's the Trunk A road. And what has happened? We remember in 2015, there were a lot of pictures that were online showing that that road has been, you know, was budgeted for, you know, what has done, go to Kalaba'i to road. If you are supposed to travel from Kalaba'i to Uyo, it's not supposed to take about one hour. Prior to this time, an hour should take you to Uyo, one hour, 30 minutes. But that's not the case. People spend four hours, five hours, six hours. So it doesn't really add up. So even if you have in the books that government has made budgets, we want to look at the reality. That's what we're talking about. How does that, so it's okay to begin to say, yes, this is what we budgeted for it has made. How can you travel from Lagos to Abuja via road and confess that that's a smooth tour? You're talking about the reality, the impact. No, we're looking at the reality now. And that's what Nigerians will always talk about. So it goes beyond the books. It's time for, I think it's time for the fact checkers to get to work, you know, and to try and do some analysis and see, you know, what is the truth and not the truth. But I have a chart in front of me here. I don't know if we can display that. It shows like you said, Merci, that the local governments and the state governments spend more than the federal government of the United States of America. They run a similar system to the Nigerian system of governance, but they run what Nigerians will call true federalism. Even though some would argue that there's nothing like true federalism because federalism is federalism. But if you look at a chart, I have a chart if I'm just gonna look at that, you have the spending on local operation and maintenance. You have, you know, when they build these infrastructures, how they operate this infrastructure, sorry, and how they maintain this infrastructure, they spend on that. You have the capital spending by the local governments, that is local governments in America and the state governments in America. Now that for the past, since from 2007 to 2017 was higher than what the federal government spent as far as capital spending is concerned on infrastructure in America. So whilst the state governments, let's, we're talking about 2015 to 2021, from 2015 to 2017 in America, there was a steady decline in government spending on infrastructure. In fact, the Americans, the story has been that the, so we're looking at this, if you look at the screen, the chart in front of you, you can see that from 2017 backwards, the American federal government spent less on infrastructure. This is in transportation, the one in green. Whilst the one in blue is the state and local government spending on infrastructure, that is from 2007 to 2017. You can see that it is significantly higher than what the federal government spent. So it just says that, you know, in America, you have the state spending and you have the local government spending and you can't just take what the states with the local federal government spending and say, oh, this is what the entire country is spending. You can see the spending on water, for instance, water infrastructure, you can see in blue, those are the local governments and the state governments very higher than what the federal government in America is spending in green, which is below. So if we take, the minister takes what's been happening on the federal scale, you understand, on the federal scale alone in America, it will not be correct. You can see that the local government spending, the state government spending way higher than the federal government. And the next one, you can see the two green lines are the real spending in terms of capital expenditure for the federal and then the state governments. The one in green, rather, the one in green is federal capital spending in the middle, in the middle. The one in blue in the middle is a local capital spending. You can see it's lower. From 2015, 2019, 2017, it's an average of 70 billion dollars spent by the federal government, okay? 70 billion dollars. Now if you look at, if you look at 70 billion dollars spent between 2015 and 2017, what has Nigeria, that what has Nigeria spent, you know, coming from the federal government in terms of capital expenditure. This is expenditure on infrastructure. We go to the budget figures from 2015, which by the way was not a Buhari budget, but from 2015, it was Okonji Wela who signed, who presented up, you know, signed up, who superintended over that budget. From 2015, Nigeria's capital expenditure has been this. 633 billion Naira in 2015. In 2016, Nigeria spent 1.59 trillion. That was the budget that was passed. 1.59 trillion in capital expenditure. In 2017, the budget passed had a capital expenditure figure of 2.1 trillion Naira, significant increase. In 2018, it was 2.87 trillion Naira. In 2019, it was 2.09 trillion Naira. In 2020, it was 2.47 trillion Naira. And in 2021, it was 4.125 trillion Naira. Now if you compare all these amounts of money, for all these years, let's just take one here. It out 2015, between 2012 and 2015, sorry, 2015 and 2017 in America, they had an average of 70 billion Naira from the chart we showed, 70 billion dollars. Okay, what does that 70 billion dollars amount to Naira? We're looking at 29.084 trillion Naira. 29.084 trillion Naira, spending each year 2015, 2016, 2017 average, which means that for 2018, 2019, 2020 to be around that figure. If you look at the yearly capital expenditure on infrastructure by the US federal government, not state now, not local federal government, average of 29 billion Naira, you can see that it trumps what America and Nigeria has. It trumps what Nigeria has. If you add all the years, since we already came into power, together, it still will not meet up to one year of US federal spending on capital expenditure. So Kofi, you and I are saying the same thing, but maybe in different languages, that's what we're saying. I mentioned earlier on that the principle of comparison says that you should have to compare things that are like polls, and that's number one. I also talked about the system of government. If you talk about the United States, there practice a system where all of this infrastructure, you have the state, and you have actually shown that, you have the state previewing, having control over that. So your state and local cities, local kind of government system, and that's not what's very common with Nigeria. So even if you want to even say that the Nigerian government is spending so much as against the United States government, let's talk about the reality. Let's also talk about some of the practices. And we're not saying that- I'm saying that they're not spending even as much. If you add all the capital expenditure from 2015 to 2019, we'll add amount to what America spent in one year. That's photographing, which is 29 trillion naira, or about 70 billion naira by the- A city like California will be spending currently on her project twice more than what Nigeria is spending. At the time you also want to- Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying you also want to agree with me that at the time you also have the Donald Trump $1 trillion infrastructure project at the time when he was president. And you want to compare that with how much? Now we're looking at $400, I mean, $1 trillion is over 4 trillion naira. Nigeria's budget from 2022 to date is half of that. So it still brings us- I'm just saying that first of all, that comparison was not necessary. I feel like sometimes we need to just do what we have to do without necessarily making all of those comparisons. It is really totally because at the end of the day, you begin to just pitch yourself against yourself. That's what it is. You begin to look at all of those- The system of government that they practice, you have mentioned, we say in Nigeria that we're talking about true federalism. That's what they're practicing. But there's really nothing in the lexicon like true federalism. We're talking about true federalism because Nigeria's not practicing that system. A system where state government has some kind of control, the spending and expenditure is quite different. And this is at the federal level. Then you want to ask yourself, I am asking typical of the federal trunk a road, which I'm not going to talk about what I don't know. I will talk about what I know. The Kalabai to road. Since 2015, we saw a lot of pictures on the internet. We saw, you know, at that 2015, all the routes were commissioned and all of that. Please, practically, anyone can tell me, I stand to be corrected here. Tell me what the state of the Kalabai to road is as at this point in time. So before we just wake up and begin to make some of this statement because we want to appraise ourselves. I mean, we were talking about facts here. When we say that Nigeria had recovered from recession, we're saying how does that translate to the standard of living of the people? The people need to feel it. So it goes beyond the papers and all of that. You made an important point. You talked about one trillion dollars. One trillion dollars, sorry. And I think Minister Fascial has been watching in a lot of TV and he's been seeing a lot of what's been happening on CNN and other channels, maybe even plus CV Africa as we report these things on World News. But that issue with the federal infrastructure plan or bill, the Democrats and Republicans finally came to an agreement and the bill was passed in November 2021. One trillion dollars. It's a landmark spending over the next few years. So he's not right when he says they are still trying to fight or they are fighting and still trying to pass the bill. They have already passed that bill and it's one trillion dollars rather in Nigeria. Doesn't spend even half of that. And I'm just saying that if you also look at the culture of maintenance, it's just real, go to the roads. Let's not talk about the roads that are within the purview of the state. Let's talk about the trunk a roads. How far they're faring? It's a question. Tell me. But before we move on, we must also understand him in a way that President Buhari has spent not about 8.9 trillion Naira over the past few years in infrastructure and a lot of things we don't have time to talk about. But we'll look for another day to talk about this one. Mercy, the rumors of reports of police helicopter crash somewhere in Bauchi state and of course the police public relations officer, force public relations officer coming out to deny that there was a crash of a police helicopter saying that what happened was there was a controlled landing with a rotor blade of the helicopter being damaged. When the police having helicopter was trying to land in Bauchi state, they realized, the pilot realized that there was a problem with the landing lights at the airport and so they had to do what you call a controlled landing. So it brings into light the way people or we in the media rush to share stories. You understand? For instance, this one now of Fashella. Fashella didn't say Nigeria spends more than the United States. It was saying that we were doing what the United States was trying to do over these years. We should have reported it rightly. But I'm just saying that. I'm just saying that. The same way with this helicopter crash as well or alleged helicopter crash, we should have reported it properly that it was a controlled landing which is what the force public relations officer said and not a crash. And it's just simple, if we still have to go back to the issue of the Fashella case. I really do not see any news in the fact that the police debunked helicopter crash in Bauchi. So if the helicopter actually, the police helicopter crash in Bauchi, is there anything wrong with that? It happens. We have seen several crashes anywhere. I mean, who is going to hold your account? These things happen. Even if there was an imminent attack. So I just kind of feel like we have boxed ourselves to a situation where we constantly feel like there has to be some sort of perfection. And now when we talk about making reference to all of that, talking about Fashella and the statement that he made. I'm just saying that when you begin to pitch yourself against what you're not supposed to pitch yourself, it puts you out there because you begin to consider the system of government. You consider other factors. Now the police, this is not the first time. I mean, over time you hear that if a report is being given out, for instance, the corruption index that we talked about, the Nigerian government will come out to say, oh no, that's not the case. And so what is wrong if that's the case? It's okay. I mean, you're not the only country in that particular spot. So for me, the helicopter didn't crash. What if the helicopter crashed? All I'm saying is that the media should report adequately, but we have to move on. Let's go on. We have analysis of the latest from the National Dailys up next right here on Plus TV Africa. Please stay with us, we'll be right back.