Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:31well is the 10th day, yeah, that's it's the 10th day in the
00:00:3510th month the year 2026
00:00:44week in its own right, the
00:00:46of high point of which was the yes, i'm so happy,
00:00:50i'm very happy this morning, why the NYC,
00:00:54of the abducted NYSA um, prospective
00:00:58call members, they have,
00:01:00a been released or they're back at home, they're back at home, full stop,
00:01:04yes, even though
00:01:06you know there's a conversation around how did they get out, um,
00:01:11of did was ransom paid,
00:01:13of um, but government said no ransom was paid, parents say
00:01:16ransom, it was paid fine, but they are back at
00:01:20home, that's the one that is very, very cheering and we're
00:01:24happy and we're hoping that
00:01:26um, we will not have to go to... this
00:01:30again, we are really hoping, yeah, um, i really
00:01:34don't know, there's there's an argument in my head, and
00:01:38that argument is uh, and i'm sorry, it's
00:01:41like some governors must really hate me right now, but we can't
00:01:45but talk about it, there's only so much as one
00:01:49um agency of government can do, hear this talk about uh,
00:01:53the federal government is in charge of security and all,
00:01:57a i agree, but i'm the ch charge
00:02:00of the security of my compound right, I
00:02:04have to make sure that the gate is locked when it's supposed to be locked, and the gate is not
00:02:08lock,
00:02:08it is the people in my house that have to be held
00:02:10responsible, so why everyone understands
00:02:14what the challenge is in the country is, what are the proactive
00:02:17action that the the house the land, the
00:02:21house owner or the land owner or the resident
00:02:24of the house is doing to ensure that there is
00:02:26security, I all security. or
00:02:30lack of it is local, and so I would want again want to
00:02:34appeal, particularly now that we are building to up
00:02:37towards state police, that
00:02:40of means that the authority for policing their individual
00:02:44of states will be will rest squarely on the shoulders of governors.
00:02:48By now, good thinking or well meaning governors
00:02:52or state governments should be thinking about
00:02:56the structures that will sustain that state police initiative, should we have to...
00:03:00wait for the law to be in place uh, i think that's
00:03:03why some
00:03:05of the state governments they have um, like
00:03:08of we have the amotek um in lagos state, i think is is
00:03:11called the neighborhood, there are levels, there are various
00:03:15me levels of security and as far as the
00:03:19constitution would allow for now, yes, but
00:03:22um, we we there are several of those initiatives, you know, legos
00:03:26has neighborhood watch,
00:03:40of the gaps, we haven't had any report about the states, the areas in which insecurity has
00:03:43infiltrated so to speak, we need to have an
00:03:47idea so that when eventually the constitution
00:03:51allows state governments to set up state
00:03:54police, there is a structure in place, you just legalize it, i will give the
00:03:58example of legos, in lagus and I see all the various
00:04:02caders of policing that Lagos already has for different
00:04:06different things, policing, transportation, policing, neighborhood watch and all
00:04:10those things, those are those are state
00:04:12of police structures in my opinion, maybe putting it
00:04:15loosely, what other, I
00:04:17of mean we know that his cano has his bar and all of
00:04:20of th, of what structures to states all the states themselves have,
00:04:24certainly they have role to play in terms of preparing ahead of time,
00:04:28another thing, another leg to that, sorry you mean is the
00:04:32collaboration among
00:04:33in states because the
00:04:36abducted call members happened along did not, it
00:04:40didn't happen from where they took off, it happened along
00:04:44of the line, what kind of collaboration is happening you
00:04:47know for you among the states or between the states to ensure that these
00:04:51things don't happen, we have heard stories, you are aware of stories
00:04:55where they
00:04:56of were chased away from northeast, they moved to the northwest, we're not hearing.
00:05:00much about those things anymore, why is it happening all of sudden
00:05:02again?
00:05:04of for me those are the issues, yeah, it's it's it's something that you
00:05:07know every level of government would have to look into, security is not
00:05:11me about um just... the federal government of course
00:05:13it will tell you that
00:05:14you know police you know is under the
00:05:18federal government you can't move anything
00:05:20said governor
00:05:24said um i'm chief security
00:05:27officer but i can't even control a fly for me you mean
00:05:31that's that for me for me that is political talk i just give
00:05:35the example simple example now in my
00:05:38compound back in the day there were no fences now
00:05:42we have fences for almost every compound, even your estate will have
00:05:46gates, will have fences and all those things, will the people, president of
00:05:49that estate or chairman the state say because the state
00:05:53government is not providing security that i can only do as much as i can,
00:05:57well they do as much as they can, and that is why people move into estates,
00:06:01they move into estate because they feel that there's a little more security, so
00:06:05the states should be the same, let's not overthink this thing,
00:06:08beg, it should be, it should be, but we are warming.
00:06:12up to what may be another strike um
00:06:15in uh Nigerian workers,
00:06:19well the i would say the take home is no longer even
00:06:22taking to to the bus stop, he's even taking you out the
00:06:26office, so I know we will be having
00:06:30some conversations around that as well, but um
00:06:34my own um issue of thoughts about
00:06:38what the NLC is doing is the conversation, first of all I've always had
00:06:41this... why is it that government does not
00:06:45communicate? and when i say communicate,
00:06:48they is sometimes mistaken to be, government is not
00:06:52giving out more information. let's
00:06:54be clear, and i've said this countless times, information is not
00:06:57communication, information is not communication, the fact that
00:07:01you're giving out information does not mean that you're communicating with the people
00:07:05that are involved in this matter, so the fact that government is given out information, for
00:07:08instance, look at the backlash or whatever
00:07:12it is. that the um the finance
00:07:15minister is getting now, good
00:07:18intention, put out there, some people are already calling it subsidy, some
00:07:22people are already calling it um political move and all those
00:07:26things today that you know uh people would make what of of
00:07:30whatever it is that they want to make of any situation so exact exactly so
00:07:34but they have given out that information this is what it is for
00:07:37the government and you know you can make
00:07:40out grateful to god for about the finance
00:07:44minister, even before he became finance minister, he that he will go anywhere to
00:07:48explain and explain and explain after the whole conversation, he
00:07:52still got on uh politics today to give some you know clarification
00:07:56about some these things and all and all of that is good, so but then I
00:08:00would also want to say that there are opportunities in this country, NLC
00:08:04has its job cut out, but it seems and I've always been
00:08:07challenged about this, it seems that the only time we hear about
00:08:11NLC is when we need more money and then I'll ask one
00:08:15question, has since I have
00:08:19been, once I was young, now I'm old, I do not
00:08:23know a time when more money solved the problem
00:08:27of cost of living, because the more your money
00:08:30increases, the more your needs increase, the more the prices increase,
00:08:34there was someone who was talking about, we will have that conversation,
00:08:38okay, okay,
00:08:40yes, we would have that conversation, something that
00:08:43you know all Nigerians are interested in uh whether you are
00:08:47in um formal work setting or formal informal
00:08:51because everything cascades into each
00:08:55other you know that if this happens here there's
00:08:59the riple effect on another side so it's something that
00:09:02um I guess that to be our first topic this morning uh
00:09:06our first topic is around this for matter so we want
00:09:10to um price modulation.
00:09:15of course the the minister
00:09:17has said what he said, yeah, so that's the first topic, death, price
00:09:20modulation or subsidy return, next we'll be talking about
00:09:24reforms, elections and nigeria's future, especially now
00:09:27that the we are looking at the 2027
00:09:31election, yes and the campaigns have
00:09:34started, yes, and we hear that the APC says they are flagging
00:09:38off October 24, everyone is getting up, everyone is... of
00:09:42course posters and banners all over the place, so that's our
00:09:46second topic, yes, and then of course we will not miss out on
00:09:50lifestyle, um, human skin and living
00:09:53identity, yes, we have to
00:09:56you know unpack that, yes, is is it about
00:10:00changing the skin or is it about, i hear that
00:10:03your skin reveals who you are, we find out about that one,
00:10:07and then they will also tell us about those who change their
00:10:11skin when the other that I don't want to say now before I'm sorping
00:10:15that and the artist the week is also our
00:10:18last topic this morning and you will find out who that is in
00:10:22the
00:14:25decode that music, we'll talk about that one later, but it
00:14:29sounds very you notice that that lady received
00:14:32alert, sometimes those alerts might be
00:14:36um, some the things that can affect that alert is what we are talking about first this
00:14:40morning, minister of finance and coordinating minister the
00:14:42economy um taiw idi said
00:14:46returning to a blanket petrol subsidy could push pump
00:14:50prices to at least 2ira per liter and weaken the
00:14:54na going as high as 3 3ira per
00:14:58dollar while defending new relief interventions as
00:15:01targeted price modulation rather than subsidy
00:15:05comeback um of
00:15:07course there has been a lot
00:15:09of um ping pong back and forth
00:15:13about some people feel oh it's the election time let's throwing
00:15:17something that the people would follow oters feel that no it
00:15:21is really something that is biting nigerians and absolutely.
00:15:25so what is it uh from should i say the
00:15:29w from the lived experience perspective as opposed to the political
00:15:33or whatever perspective whatever other perspective there is
00:15:37we have. with us Dr. Genga ady who is president
00:15:40economic summit, he is a lawyer and a charter accountant, he is joining
00:15:44us from our Abuja studio, good morning and thank you for joining us this morning
00:15:47sir, good morning, it's a
00:15:51pleasure to be here again today, thank you sir, we also have
00:15:55uh joe mwakwe who is petroleum
00:15:59engineer uh his also joined us this morning, thank you
00:16:03so much for joining us sir, thank
00:16:07you
00:16:07uh pleased to be here, yeah, let's uh begin with you
00:16:11uh uh, Mr. Wakwe, what do you make
00:16:15of this? I mean, sometimes, I mean, having worked with uh, a
00:16:19minister in the petroleum sector before, you would have an idea
00:16:23of why some these um initiatives come out,
00:16:27the readings that come with it, whether or not the communication
00:16:31of it the initiative is enough, what do you make of first the
00:16:35initiative and then the feedback that?
00:16:37has been coming as result of
00:16:39it. Okay,
00:16:42um, I will start by saying that um, the primary
00:16:46purpose of government is the welfare the people,
00:16:49so so I'm not surprised that this
00:16:53conversation has come, these are very difficult
00:16:56times, um, these are external
00:17:00shocks to the market and seeing the impact on
00:17:03consumers, so the government is, if you will rightly.
00:17:08looking at how to minimize the pain of this
00:17:11shock
00:17:12on on the populist, so it's not
00:17:15is not out of order for
00:17:19the government to want to come up with something
00:17:23to help reduce the the impact of this external shock
00:17:26uh on not just the consuming public but the economy as
00:17:30well, because this has much wider implications, so from
00:17:34that perspective, I'm not surprised - realize that
00:17:38this is a political season, so these conversations are
00:17:41difficult to separate from the political temperature in the
00:17:45country, so that that's what complicates it, so it's not just purely
00:17:49economic or policy conversation anymore,
00:17:53it's it's more far reaching than that, so i
00:17:57surprised, yeah, should we have this conversation,
00:18:01yes, because people's welfare
00:18:04and are involved, well It's a
00:18:07little tricky uh Mr. Because when we look at the
00:18:11difference that's that this uh intervention of
00:18:15governments is um what it
00:18:19amounts to is pretty much there are those who say it's just
00:18:22pitans um in some areas right now we understand fiel is
00:18:26selling for something in the region of 1500 in
00:18:30Lagos is selling for a little close to
00:18:3314 as at yesterday uh my my
00:18:36colleagues. said that the fuel was selling for something in the region of
00:18:401,400 and the the minister is suggesting that
00:18:44the price will be peged at
00:18:451,350 um
00:18:49so of what significance would that be anyway let
00:18:53ask um dr that question of what significance do
00:18:57you see this intervention being because those
00:19:00who say it's just so marginal it's
00:19:04almost unlikely to affect the price of anything in
00:19:08the market?
00:19:11okay, um, before we can go into that
00:19:15conversation, we need to lay foundation, and you know
00:19:19in law, the judge will not listen to you when you are presenting an
00:19:23evidence without foundation. um,
00:19:27there are two foundation that i would like to lay, one is to
00:19:31say that um, there is no government anywhere in
00:19:35the world that will be happy. that they have a
00:19:38policy that inflict pains on the
00:19:41citizen, no government, and I don't think there is any
00:19:45father that we do that, and I have empirical evidence in
00:19:49Daniel chapter 6, darius was
00:19:52persuaded uh to make a law,
00:19:56and he didn't know uh that Daniel
00:20:00will fall victim of it, and then they came to him and said, this
00:20:04guy pray to somebody within 30 days said nobody should pray to
00:20:08anybody except Darius and so when they
00:20:11reported that somebody has done something said yes, I remember signing
00:20:15the law, so when they told him he was Daniel, and this was the
00:20:19guy he wanted to put in charge the whole province,
00:20:23so the 120 princes and two other president gathered
00:20:27against him, the king was so displaced and he made
00:20:31all effort to see how to save Daniel, they insisted,
00:20:34no, this is your law, That
00:20:38night the king could not eat, he was fasting, and Daniel
00:20:42was thrown into the lion's dend, early in the morning, the
00:20:45king was the first person to go to the lions then to start.
00:20:50calling Daniel out, as the Lord your God saved
00:20:54you, and finally Daniel came and the man was happy, and he called all the
00:20:58people that accused him and they were thrown into the dead, and
00:21:02the lions crushed their bones. now that foundation
00:21:05is to say that what the government has done two
00:21:09days ago, is clear indication that the
00:21:13government is aware that life is difficult for Nigerians
00:21:17and I do not think that... mover of
00:21:20subsidy and floating of den was
00:21:24intended by the government to make people suffer or
00:21:27poor, so i've established that, so we are not
00:21:31to criticize government pers, but to now find
00:21:35solution to our problem, the second
00:21:38foundation is yorub proverb and
00:21:42i'll try to translate and he says
00:21:46that eni to wa nidiosan ko god mu ki.
00:21:51that is, he that dwell under the orange tree must drink
00:21:55and enjoy sweet orange, the second proverb
00:21:59says osoro, tiye osoro, ni kii
00:22:02jẹ ki ọmọ te lo raso wo lọjọ ọdun, it
00:22:06simply means that your own is not difficult, don't worry, don't worry, i will attend to
00:22:10your case, that's why the daughter or son of a tailor
00:22:14does not have clot to wear a festive day, so
00:22:18that is to the government. Now if you now go back to the
00:22:21effect of this policy,
00:22:25I can tell you um selective
00:22:29discount is not likely to work for
00:22:33us, because you say commercial vehicle
00:22:36drivers, how are we going to determine that this
00:22:40guy that is buying petrol is going to go back to the
00:22:44motor park to convey passengers at reduced
00:22:47price, how are we going to... monitor, for example, i'm
00:22:51from state, are you going to monitor
00:22:54somebody who purchase 100 lit at
00:22:58NNPC that is not the
00:23:01same person that has gone to NNPC at Shagamu to purchase
00:23:05another 100 liters and it's not the same that has gone to
00:23:09legos express way and then arbitrate comes in,
00:23:13so all private vehicle owners, you and I, who do not have
00:23:17access to 1,350, may now down
00:23:20somewhere and begin to purchase at
00:23:231,370 from this transporter so to
00:23:26say and there will be lot of cues most them
00:23:29so will not be at the motor park anymore and when that
00:23:33happens rather than achieve the reduce
00:23:36transport cost
00:23:37the price will increase because they now begin to trade
00:23:41in this uh premium motor spirit so what mechanism do
00:23:45we have to know that io is the same
00:23:49driver. that has purchased at NNPC
00:23:53nabe okuta that has appear at shagam and we say no no go back
00:23:56do we have data to capture that so these are the issues
00:24:00and so the price modulation was
00:24:04not that they say 350 but it's a ceiling
00:24:08saying that at NNPC station it should not go
00:24:12beyond this but
00:24:16uh maybe
00:24:17you know we're just trying introductory aspect of this,
00:24:21then i will explain what happened with the committee that was
00:24:24set up in 1992 on premium
00:24:28motor spirit pricing which we are looking
00:24:32at import parity pricing method
00:24:35and production cost pricing method and i
00:24:39think we can achieve it if we have
00:24:43people and let me say finally before i
00:24:46stop from from my conversation with the people
00:24:51"I think Nigerians will prefer
00:24:54to have thousands of buses that
00:24:58can take 52 passengers at the same time
00:25:02around the country, all the states in the
00:25:05federation and the federal capital territory. Take a
00:25:09look at it, if you
00:25:11have a bus that can
00:25:15take 52 passengers, it goes to and throw, that's
00:25:18104." if it does uh
00:25:2210 times a day that's
00:25:24140 now imagine you
00:25:28now have millions of buses and then we have different
00:25:32painting for those buses and we put a price tag
00:25:35that this bus if you are moving from abuja to legos
00:25:39this is the amount you're going to get now other commercial vehicle owners will
00:25:43drop their prices yes we'll come back to some the ideas that you have
00:25:47that can move
00:25:49you know this conversation. forward and
00:25:51you know interesting analogy about the bible and all of
00:25:55that that you said, but let me go to uh Mr.
00:25:57Wakwe, what brought us here is
00:26:01about uh whether we should... return for your subsidy or
00:26:04not? what is your own take bearing in
00:26:08mind all that has happened so far since um you
00:26:12know f was uh subsidy was removed and
00:26:15Nigerians have had to pay lot more for the uh
00:26:19price of
00:26:20petrol?
00:26:24yeah
00:26:25I mean the the this conversation subsidy is almost a
00:26:28a bad word right now uh my my position has been that
00:26:33subsidies are not bad in themselves, but they have to be
00:26:36properly designed and implemented.
00:26:40um, if you have any sector or subsector that is
00:26:43challenged, that is struggling, uh, government
00:26:47can take a position that, oh, we need to, we need
00:26:51to help this sector get back its feet, and one way to
00:26:55do it is by subsidizing, you call it incentive, you call it some whatever word,
00:26:59intervention, whatever word you want to use, uh, it is
00:27:02appropriate to do that, so uh,
00:27:05subsidies themselves, I mean,
00:27:07for me, I don't, I don't sh away from using the word, are we at the point
00:27:11where some intervention from government is necessary?
00:27:14yes, uh, and I say this because we seem to focus
00:27:18so much on the transportation fields,
00:27:21right? um, what about manufacturing, how much of our
00:27:25manufacturing base is diesel fire today, are we worried
00:27:29about the cost of diesel and what implication? that
00:27:33has for the prices of end products that
00:27:36comes out of those factories, are we worried about what
00:27:40that does for our national productivity and output,
00:27:44so I think we are the point, now remember this is an
00:27:48external shock, so it is appropriate for the government
00:27:52to interven, however he wants to do it, but like I
00:27:56keep saying all interventions or subsidies must be
00:27:59targeted, in other words they must address that. specific
00:28:03need of that sector, they must have an exit ramp,
00:28:06clearly preferably automatic, something that
00:28:09enables uh, this this need to be
00:28:13sunset without so much hazzles and they
00:28:17they need to be monitored and implemented approp, so those are
00:28:21for me critical elements, i will get back to the
00:28:24issue of had lot of conversations
00:28:28around whether or not we are the point where we need to have
00:28:32some of subsidy - i had argued publicly
00:28:35that certainly we need subsidies, we need to look at the diesel market
00:28:39and see what we can do pricing. gladly is coming
00:28:43down, i understand, but these are the
00:28:46issues. i know pms is very
00:28:49key, central to our lives and that's why it's so
00:28:53topical, but again at 1004,
00:28:571005, what can we do to reduce
00:29:00that? what can government do? and there are few knobs
00:29:04that can be done, maybe along the line as we go through,
00:29:08you
00:29:08can you can just mention one or two them right now, just so that you can be
00:29:12part of this uh conversation now, okay, i believe
00:29:16that are um today we we produce locally and we
00:29:20import the difference, so there are few
00:29:23statutory charges, labies that government
00:29:27agencies uh take uh in that
00:29:31value chain that that we can't look as a government and say, okay, we
00:29:34wave this temporarily for a period, right? uh, that will help
00:29:38reduce the pump price. ultimately. so
00:29:42those are some the enoughs i think they can turn. you
00:29:46know, public transportation mass
00:29:49transportation is obviously another k, i think that
00:29:52government can can turn to minimize, not necessarily the pump
00:29:56price, but the ease of moving around for
00:29:58Nigerians.
00:30:00um, mass transit systems are important. and the uh
00:30:04with CNG buses and all that, I think government could have doubled
00:30:08down uh on that and made sure that at least in
00:30:11interstate travel uh we can we can face that in
00:30:15very quickly to minimize the the impact these
00:30:19high uh prices of petrol so those are some the things
00:30:23and few more notes can be turned um the
00:30:27what has been proposed and I need to make this uh point I
00:30:30looked at the yesterday I listen to the minister of
00:30:34uh finance um, the first thing that I call to me is this
00:30:38is not really the NPC had done this 66 n
00:30:42thing on independence day, so it was something that I'm
00:30:46aware that they have done, it was just to celebrate
00:30:50the so what I hear now is okay we are spending it for a month the whole of October
00:30:53great, but it is not material, it is
00:30:57not material and the other issue.