Sponsored post.
On
Sunday the 1st of March 2015 a little over 200 young Nigerian
professionals, businessmen and entrepreneurs engaged President Dr Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan in the first of its kind youth interactive forum tagged
#MeetThePresident which held at Eko Hotel, Lagos. According to the organisers of the event, PVC
(Participate, Vote, Country), the event was aimed at creating a platform for young Nigerians to
interact and engage with Mr. President and also provide the opportunity to ask
him pertinent questions around matters on elections, economy as well as security,
in a first of its kind ‘uncensored’ manner to enable them hear first hand from
Mr President himself….and ask they did!
The event was aired live on both NTA
and AIT and questions were answered in real time. Find below the full
interview, which was hosted by the duo of GbemiOlateruOlagbegi
of the Beat FM, Lagos alongside Gbemileke Oscar Oyinsan of City FM Lagos.
Gbemi Olateru:
I’m excited because this is the first of its kind event where the president
will get to sit with, interact and ask questions. We are very excited to see
this happen.
Gbemileke Oscar:
Mr. President are you comfortable sir?
Mr. President: I’m
always comfortable when I’m with my children
Gbemi Olateru: We
are happy that you are here and we have a lot of questions. But first I have to
ask you this sir, what is it like being the President of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria? Is it a difficult job? What is it like?
Mr. President: Well,
that is a question that is difficult to explain. It is a challenging job no
doubt about that and is also a job that every Nigerian would love to do because
it has to do with service, its about how do we help the women, the youth, how
do you help to reposition your country so that your country will stand tall.
Gbemileke Oscar:
Let me take the temperature of Mr. President’s Chair, will you confirm that
your chair is very cool?
Mr. President: The
chair is very comfortable (Laughs).
Gbemileke Oscar:
Before you arrived here, every individual here had some snacks. To the best of
my knowledge every President eats and without good healthy eating, you really
can’t do much. So what is your favorite food Mr. President?
Mr. President: One
thing I love Nigerians for is that we love our native food. I’m from a minority
part of this country, there’s a unique food we call it “Onunu” or an
alternative name “Ebobo”, depending on the sub tribe of the Ijaws. The
principal component is Boiled Yam or Ripe Plantain, either you boil it or you
mash it.
Gbemileke Oscar:
Hope you don’t mind a small delegation of this crowd coming over to the Aso
Rock kitchen to eat this delicacy?
Mr. President: You
are invited. (Laughs)
Gbemi: Mr.
President, what is your favorite colour?
Mr. President: Colour?
The colour I wear depends on how I want to appear. If I want to wear Agbada, I
prefer white. If I want to wear the traditional Niger Delta wear, I prefer
Grey.
Gbemileke Oscar:
What’s your Sporting Culture like? What do you do for exercise?
Mr. President: I
exercise regularly
Gbemi: What’s
your favorite Football team?
Mr. President: You
don’t know? You don’t even need to ask me… It is the Super Eagles (Laughter /
Claps).And of course the younger national teams and the (Super) Falcons.
Gbemi: If you
were not the President and you had to pick between being an Actor and a
Musician, which would you be?
Mr. President: Well,
it’s often difficult to differentiate between the two. I love people in the
Entertainment industry. I would have loved to be both, unfortunately I can’t
sing, I croak (Laughter)
Gbemileke Oscar:
On a lighter note, before we begin to take questions from the crowd. The advent
of selfies had become quite rampant and to the best of our knowledge we’ve not
seen you in a selfie so if the crowd permit, can we take the first Presidential
selfie?
Mr. President: (Laughs)
Sure!
Gbemi: One last
thing before the serious questions, you are the President of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria, do you get to sleep?
Mr. President: On the average, I sleep between 1.30am/2am and wake
up 6am, mainly Mondays to Fridays. On Saturday and Sundays, maybe a little
more, you can add about 30 minutes. (Laughter)
Gbemileke Oscar: A number of us are very curious to find out what
type of books you read and what inspires you to govern this great Nation?
Mr. President: Most Presidents read Biographies and Governance
issues but governing Nigeria is quite challenging and it’s not easy to find the
time to read a book beginning to end. But somehow, you find time to read some
excerpts of books. Since I became a President, the only book I’ve been able to
read beginning to end is Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” and that’s because I
had a long flight journey. I love to read and there’s not enough time. Mostly
like books on Biographies.
Questions from the
Audience:
Questionnaire 1: My name isDayo Israel ,I am one of the
biggest fans of your administration and even people who are not here, who are
either supporting the opposition have been fans of your administration. I think
a lot of the issues they are concerned about is why didn’t Mr. President take (military)
action? And I think if you can answer that question to all the Nigerians who
are watching here it might actually help you win hearts and minds. They are
wondering why now you are just going to Baga? They are wondering why the
military are just entering Sambisa forest? Why couldn’t we do that six months
ago, they are wondering why you chose to go to Paris when you could have gone
to Chibok that you just did recently. So the question Mr. President is why now?
Mr. President: First
let me use this opportunity to congratulate the Army and what they are doing
now. And let me use this opportunity to call on Nigerians to encourage
them. Some days back, Cameroun took the
streets to commend and appreciate their Armed Forces. The challenges we are
facing are much more than that of Cameroun.
But here in Nigeria, sometimes we even admonish unnecessarily the Armed
Forces. If you’ve been listening to us, you will know that we’ve been trying to
get the appropriate equipment to confront the challenges we have. Fighting
Terror or Terrorist, they are not conventional fighters. If we are facing a war
with another country, both countries obey international best practices when it
comes to fighting. We are controlled by the kind of equipment we use, you must
not use chemical weapons you must not use biological weapons you must know the
caliber of weapons for offences and so on. But criminals don’t obey these laws
so to tackle them, you must get some specific weapons that you require if you
use certain weapon or aggression you are not supposed to use, the international
community will be after you. They have even started accusing us of human right
abuses, meanwhile Nigerians are been killed, which means that there are some
categories of weapons you need to prosecute such fights and over the period
we’ve been trying to get. At the beginning we thought we were going to crush
Boko Haram with what we had but it proved abortive so we have to recalibrate
our security architecture and that is what we’ve done up to this moment and
we’ve not yet gotten all we’ve paid for. But at least we’ve gotten about 65 to
70% and that is why the prosecution of the war is getting better every day. It
is not that I waited. It is wrong to say that we waited until elections. These
elections would have been held on the 14th of February. In that
case, this would have been done before that 14th of February. It has
nothing to do with Elections. I feel sad that as a Nation, we play Politics
with serious National issues. People must separate serious issues that affect
all Nigerians from the Politics.
Jonathan is President today, some other person will be President
tomorrow. Nigeria is our own country. We must have a country before we have a
President.
Questionnaire 2: I’m
a consultant and a Policy analyst. They say in Nation building, that it takes
the wisdom of the Elders and the energy of the Youths; we want to know after
May 29th, what are the plans you have for the young people?
Mr. President: If
you look at the history of the nation, though you are young people but the good
thing is that you are well educated.
From 1960 when we gained Independence, very few people went to school so
a number of young people were involved in Governance because very few people
were educated. When we had the military
coup that led to Gowon becoming Head of State, Gowon became the Head of Government
at the age of 32. In my State, former Old Rivers State, Diette Spiff was our
first Military Governor at the age of 28+. Today if you say that a 30 yr old
person should be a Governor, people will shout that he is too young but you can
see Spiff and Gowon were essentially Leaders as youth. But after that, more
people secured Education and University degrees and it became and issue of the
same older people running things. But within this period, we have a number of
programs. We have increased the number of Universities in the country to create
opportunities for young people to get degrees. We are also training people
within the country and outside the country in Technical areas.
But one area we are passionate about is that we want
creating more young Millionaires and Billionaires in through our YouWin
Programme and the Agropreneur, the Agriculture programme. Globally, the average
age of millionaire is 35 years old. And this is also influenced by the
Technology and ICT. The people like Dangotes and Jim Ovias are not growing
younger. So you must breed younger people that must take over. And we give
grants to young people to venture into Manufacturing and other areas of Commerce
and Industry. It’s like Venture Capital. Normally in Venture Capital, you have
more than 50% failure rate but the YouWin programme is less than 10%. It’s very
successful. We are also encouraging younger people in Entertainment industry,
in Sports. Our commitment is that in any area that a young person has the
skills and the talent, they will be encouraged.
Those interested in taking us to the moon, because I believe within the
next 15 to 20 years, we should also be on the Moon. And we are training the
young people also, that is why we have special scholarships selected from
amongst first-class students. First you must get First class in the Technical
Areas, including Economics and then you are selected and sent to Best
universities in the world, that is to get the top level of brains that can take
us to the moon or in areas of Molecular Biology or Genetics. We are doing
everything to make sure that the Nigerian youth will be at the top globally.
Gbemileke Oscar:
My colleague Gbemi and I were discussing when she sent a tweet that people
should tune in and watch this interview and some of the young Nigerians tweeted
back at us that there was no light to watch this live broadcast so I want us to
focus on the issue of power. Is there anyone out there who can ask a question
on Power (Electricity)?
Mr. President: (interjects) "You have already asked the
question." (Laughter)
Mr. President: (continues)To
be fair to the young people. What they want is power. Before my time, the
Federal Government had absolute control of the power sector, 100% control. Even states are not allowed to generate power
for commercial purposes and so we are now moving away from a Federal
Government-100%-or-absolute control of the total value chain in the power
sector to a Private-sector-control of the value chain; from generation to
transmission to distribution. We’ve done the privatization successfully and at
least that is a process that key players from all over the world participated
and all of them agreed that it was transparent, conducted professionally like
it would have been anywhere in the world. And the one thing remaining is
managing the interface between the transition from Federal Government control
to the private-sector control. And we
promise that we are already on it, in the next 12 or probably 18months, we will
be able to transit completely. Already
some Power companies have doubled their Production. So I plead with Nigerians
that we are almost at the end of Epileptic power supply. I believe in the next 12 to 18 months, Power
will be reasonably stable that our young men and women can watch this kind of
programme from wherever they are.
Questionnaire 3:
My name is Barrister Ivie Omoregie
I’m a Barrister with Templars. I wanted to ask you, in light of the recent
increase in Importation duties on Motor Vehicles to encourage Manufacturers in Nigeria,
especially Nigerian-made cars. At what point do you intend to change your
convoy to Nigerian-made vehicles?
Mr. President: That
is a very good question. I totally agree with you. When I grew up, when Peugeot
(PAN) manufactured cars in Nigeria, all Government vehicles were Peugeot cars.
But now what has happened because of the Security challenges, at least back
then, the country was a bit calm. I even
remember as Deputy Governor, the first car I used after elections was a Peugeot
Car. The Governors were using Peugeot cars. Now that we have stimulated the
Auto Industry, we will make sure that they produced the caliber that is needed.
We believe in the next few months, up to a year, they will be able to provide
cars that all Government officials, from the President down, will use. I will
definitely prefer to ride in a car produced in this country.
Questionnaire 4: My
name is Tomi Adeoye, I’m a
Production Manager in the Entertainment Industry – First I would like to commend
your administration in Health care, especially the Ebola Virus, the Polio Virus
and also Life Expectancy rates in Nigeria have increased. My question is what
are your plans for the Health sector come May 2015.
Mr. President: One
area that is key to all of us is Health. It is when you are sick that you
really appreciate the value of good health and there is no Government that will
not take the Health sector seriously. The Health sector is divided into two
components – the Primary Health sector that is the basic health of all of us. And
then the Tertiary ones, for example the issues of Kidney transplant, Heart
Operations, Neurosurgery, etc. In fact those
are the areas that a number of Nigerians go outside this country for, what is
regarded as health tourism, where Nigerians go to India, Egypt, Europe, etc. On
both fronts, we are addressing it aggressively. At the level of the basic
health issues, presently, we have completely eradicated Guinea worm, which was
a problem in some parts of the country. Also Polio, I remember in 2011 at the
Commonwealth Head of States in Australia. The commonwealth had a special
session on Polio because the world was wondering why should we still have
deformed children for a disease condition that was controllable. At that time
only 5 countries incubated Polio and unfortunately Nigeria was among. And I
promised that Nigeria must get out of polio.
We would have gotten out of Polio in 2014 but there was some wrong
interpretation of the vaccines that were used, especially in the Northern part
of the country. Some people, including a Professor, preached that Polio vaccines
reduced the reproductive rate of women. In fact some of the officials of Government
that were doing the immunization were attacked and even killed. So that gave us
some setback. As we speak now, the last
Polio case was recorded in Kano in June last year. God willing, this year
Nigeria will be declared free of Polio.
At the tertiary level, where a lot of Nigerians travel
abroad, what is described as health tourism. When I was a Deputy Governor of
Bayelsa State, my younger sister had some problems with her heart, her neutral
valves. I asked my personal physician where can we go for this and he said the
nearest place was in Ghana. I asked, "Don't we have anything in Nigeria,
do we have to go to Ghana?” He saidyes,
we had to go to Ghana where some Missionaries managed the Hospital.
But now some of our Nigerian Teaching hospitals are handling
Open Heart surgeries, some are handling Kidney transplants; all these were not
there before. In fact University of Benin started good work in the use of stem
cells but just like most teaching Hospitals around the world, suspended the
work due to Human rights issues surrounding Stem cells. So both at the Primary
and Tertiary level, we are doing well and will even improve on that because we
believe that a country like Nigeria should have very good Health facilities
such that Neighboring countries should come and not the other way round.
Questionnaire 5: My name is Raheem Ajayi and I’m a Consultant. Why is it that it is when
elections are fast approaching that Mr. President gathers young men and women
of Nigeria to discuss? What is the plan of Mr. President to have young men and
women as a kind of Committee that will advise because as a president of this
county, there is a big wall around you that people tell you what they want you
to hear, but the second option is having a selected people one at a time maybe
monthly that will tell you the feelings of the people on the street.
Mr. President: Thank
you, there are two branches to the question - First is why is it that it is
only when elections are close that the president starts interacting with people
whether young or old and the second one is the issue of using young people in Government.
First, all over the world, governance is a serious business
that is why people feel that when elections are getting close we spent the
greater part going round and of course if the President or Governor is going
round for campaigns, governance will suffer. That is why after inaugurating a
President, you spend more time governing.
I would have love to go to the six geopolitical zones even quarterly to
have town hall meetings and so on but sometimes it is almost impossible. In
fact for this program, I promised that I was going to be here one hour before
the time so that we will start exactly at 7pm on the dot. But it wasn’t
possible and that is just for today. So if a president will host this kind of forum
regularly the government will suffer in many ways. That is why all over the world,
in most cases when it is getting close to election almost like close the
government down then you start going round to campaign, and of course based on
the control of electoral bodies in Nigeria, that is INEC, if you do this
regularly, Governance will suffer. Of course I agree with you that this could
be done from time to time but not regularly.
The issue of young people, in this administration we have
been using a number of young people in one way or the other. But I think the
issue is to increase the number. As a nation in terms of young people getting
involved in governance, of course a number of young people are involved in
governance at local government level in most states. From the Chairman down are
young people, at the state level in most states more than 80% of the state
assembly members are young people. The commissioners at the state level, a
number of them are very young people. It
is at the federal level that you see that you see that most of the ministers
are fairly elderly. The youngest minister in my cabinet has left to be the
deputy governor of his state, Minister of State (2) for Foreign Affairs, Dr.
Nurudeen from Jigawa State, he’s the youngest member of my cabinet. I think I will increase the number of young
people in my cabinet in the next dispensation. At the advisory level, my Senior
Special Assistant on Youths and Student matters. He just finished his Masters
degree and we brought him in. My assistant on Job creation is also a very young
person from Benue state. So we have young people at that level. But at the
Cabinet level, I believe we will increase the number so young people are
playing significant role in the government.
Gbemileke Oscar:
On a lighter note sir, what is the temperature of your chair right now sir?
Mr. President: It is still comfortable (Laughs)
Gbemileke Oscar:
Thank you very much and on a final note, do not forget that your PVC is your
vote, make sure you get it and Vote.
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