IDEAS MODERATOR2

Democracy Day and IDEAS, Episode 78 (12/6/20)

the truth is that between the President-elect Olusegun Obasanjo and the outgoing military dictator General Abdulsalami Abubakar, they went out of their way to make sure that there was no handover on June 12th, which they could have done, I mean, it was just going to be about a couple of weeks’ difference, and they could have made June 12th the handover day and then we wouldn’t have to have this sort of discrepancy between the two things. I think that … generally, we are … as I say, our democracy is very much a work in progress.

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NDoM, Mass Atrocities and IDEAS, Episode 77 (29/5/20)

Well, Aghogho, the first thing is to remind ourselves as you said, that some of the context … the … the components of IDEAS are Integrity and Accountability, and certainly, obviously if there are atrocities perpetrated by our own government’s security agencies, definitely they have to … there has to be Accountability for that; it’s not a matter of the Police or the Army being accused of atrocities such as killings or torture and so on, and then nobody is held to account.

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Reopening the Economy post-COVID19 , Episode 76 (22/5/20).”

Well I think in this case there are actually at least three of them: the Integrity of the decisions that are being made, the Ethics that are being brought to bear, and the Accountability. Now Ethics of course, it’s always about finding the balance, because we all know that … minds are increasingly focused on the economic impact of COVID-19, and that’s why you see this growing push for places of work to reopen. And in fact, if you will recall that yesterday the National Economic Council, which is chaired by the Vice President, set up a committee … chaired I think by the Delta State Governor and the Governors also of Lagos, Kano, Bauchi, Anambra, Plateau and the Federal Capital Territory’s Minister,

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State Governors, COVID-19 and IDEAS, Episode 75 (15/5/20).

As I always say, IDEAS is about Integrity, Democracy, Ethics and Accountability. And what we’ve seen from our State Governments and the Governors who head the executive there, has been the range. I mean there’s the range from those who started off and said: “We have to take it seriously”. Obviously you have Lagos State – where we are – the response of the State Government, the Governor, the Commissioner for Health, they have all been commended,

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The Oronsaye Report and IDEAS, Episode 74 (8/5/20)

I think that we have to look at the context in which this is occurring Aghogho, and the fact is that … we’ve seen that apart from the actual physical and clinical impact of the COVID-19 virus, the economic impact has been even worse. In fact in Nigeria’s case – I was going to call it a ‘double whammy’, but actually, if we look at the fact that first of all, the first whammy is the simple shut down of the economy. Economic activities ground to a halt during Lockdown, and even though the whole country was not locked down, by the time you take Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory

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