What will you do about NELFUND and reducing student loan debt?

What will you do to create opportunities that encourage young Nigerians to stay and those in the diaspora to return? Answer: To curb brain drain, I will prioritize macroeconomic stabilization, business-friendly regulatory reforms, tax incentives for returnee-led businesses, and dedicated diaspora investment channels, and comprehensive security reforms to make living and investing in Nigeria safe and rewarding. Q5: Food is becoming unaffordable for many families. What will you do to bring down the prices of basic foods such as rice, beans and garri? Answer: My plan targets immediate yield expansion for local food staples by eliminating import duties on farm inputs, replenishing national strategic grain reserves to buffer prices during shortages, and lowering transport costs by subsidizing local fuel refining inputs.

I congratulate Nigerians, and I celebrate the vision, foresight and determination of Alhaji Aliko Dangote, @AlikoDangote, and the @DangoteGroup on the commissioning of the Dangote Refinery. Coming at a time when our Govt-owned refineries have remained moribund for years, it again confirms the stance I have taken over the years that business persons best do business while government maintain their role in providing an enabling environment and as a regulator to harness the benefits for the good of all citizens. The benefits of this effort in terms of jobs, fuel supply and availability, foreign exchange earnings and savings, and tax revenue are immense. Hence, my congratulations to Nigerians. Our country must look more towards the private sector as partners in nation-building for the growth of our country, and in this regard, Aliko Dangote has distinguished himself remarkably. -AA

I stand with NARD. Pay what you owe. Honour what you signed. Or explain to 200 million Nigerians why their hospitals will go dark on Tuesday. -AA

It is fundamentally different from allowing living costs to explode, watching Nigerians struggle with hunger and unaffordable healthcare, and then arriving close to an election with another round of emergency handouts. And, Bola, your attempt to use NELFUND as a shield against Atiku’s cost-of-living proposal is even more dishonest. You now want Nigerians to believe that making fuel cheaper will somehow threaten student loans, workers’ salaries and the minimum wage. That is fearmongering dressed up as economics. Celebrating NELFUND as proof that education has become affordable under your government is like setting school fees on fire and then boasting that you lent students a bucket of water. What exactly is the wisdom in presiding over dramatic increases in school fees in some institutions, only to turn around and celebrate loans as the solution? You make education more expensive, lend students money to survive the increase, and then demand applause for the rescue. That is not affordability. It is witchcraft economics: create the burden with one hand, offer debt with the other, and demand applause for the intervention.

The good news for Nigerian students is that Atiku has reviewed the current student-loan policy and believes education should not begin with a mountain of debt hanging over a young Nigerian’s future. His approach will reduce the underlying cost of education and, after review, provide forgiveness for qualifying student debts so that young Nigerians can graduate with hope rather than repayment burdens. Education should open doors, not mortgage the future. A student loan is not a scholarship. It is a liability. The proper test of an education policy is whether ordinary families can educate their children without being pushed into debt merely to keep them in school. When students increasingly require loans because the underlying cost of education has become prohibitive, government should not parade the loan itself as evidence that the system is working. And your attempt to frighten students and workers by claiming that Atiku’s targeted and capped production support will somehow destroy NELFUND, reduce salaries or reverse the minimum wage is a fallacious claim without a ledger behind it. If your government has the arithmetic, Bola, publish it. Show Nigerians, line by line, how a transparently budgeted subsidy tied to Nigerian crude and domestic refining suddenly empties NELFUND or workers’ pay packets.

1. Establish a National Environmental Resilience Framework (NERF) to drive economic growth by protecting productive assets, boosting agricultural output, creating green jobs, and reducing the cost of environmental shocks on businesses and government. ● Enhance investor confidence by establishing clear environmental standards and enforcement mechanisms, reducing regulatory uncertainty and positioning Nigeria as a more attractive destination for long-term infrastructure and industrial investment. ● Reduce economic losses from environmental disasters by strengthening flood control systems and early warning mechanisms, minimizing damage to homes, roads, farms, and businesses, and shifting government spending from emergency response to proactive investment. ● Unlock new value chains in recycling, agroforestry, and clean energy services. 33