 Integrity. Who cares? One thing that I remember clearly when growing up is that telling a lie was a crime in the home. Mom would turn into an unrecognizable creature once she discovered that a lie had been told. It was just a no-no. It was about the need to be honest, tell the truth and do the right thing. It was emphasized that it was part of character building. Who people would identify you as in life going forward? In fact, one major warning was that liars are thieves. It was so emphatic that there was no room for compromise in its application. But this seems such a long time ago. When this was taught, it was part of instrumental to character building. Integrity. There was a time this meant something. A vendor is given a sample to provide a number of items. An agreement and a timeline later, the day of the event arrives and at that event, it is then realized that the vendor has not supplied what had been agreed upon. An employee sells items and declares to the employer an amount less than received. After all, now where person they work, you go chop. A civil servant sits on a file, does not attend to a file or participates in the inflation of contract figures. A parent pays for the child's exam. A driver drives on the wrong side of the road, beats the traffic light and insults you to cap it off. Or when you are asked to give an accurate account of something, you buckle and would rather compromise than to tell the truth or be just. I can go on and on, but I'm sure we get the point. The consequences of having a generation, a people, a tribe that have no gumption about being dishonest, no morals or a low value system is a systematic breakdown of the fabric of society that could lead to anarchy. Wanted. A critical mass of people with integrity. Reward. A livable society. Where? Right here in Nigeria. Can you be counted on to be a person of integrity when no one is watching? Because that is when it counts the most. When you say the liar is a thief and the thief is a liar, that was our mantra then in primary school. When you are caught lying, they will tell you a thief. If you keep lying, you end up being a thief, but now you have white lies and you have thieves that claim they don't tell lies. Exactly. So I think we should also narrow it down to upbringing. Then when we are coming up, we have good parenting. Right now you have parents who care about making more money and give their children to nannies, maids and what have you. And they accuse the school. Now before the school even teaches this, you should have a basic home training that can kind of fear in you to know that if I can take this in school, I can take this at home. So integrative start from home. And I think we should question that process back. Because right now you can see a lot of diversity outside there and you can see a lot of children. If you look at people who are doing courtesan, address and stuff like that, they are well to do children. They are from well to do homes. And you begin to imagine where those things go wrong. So when I was writing this piece on integrity, I just realised that there was a time when if you said I'm going to be here at social time, nobody had to think about it. They knew you would be because your word was your bond. You didn't have to swear, put your hand here, or do like this in the air. You know that thing that you... It doesn't work. No, but it's so sad that every single facet of everything we do in our society is tinted with dishonesty. I mean, I don't want to talk about what happened at the Bar Association, but honestly it was a deficiency of trust that led to that because people just didn't believe that what was said was going to happen. About that, I'm going to say something. We should not look at integrity alone as someone telling lies or someone not delivering. When you don't live up to expectation, you lack integrity. I was very disappointed. Here we are... When they started the Nigerian Bar Association, everybody that came on board to speak, they said, they are speaking to one of the finest minds in Nigeria. I got jealous because I was not a lawyer, but I believe I was the fine mind myself. Now what are they referring to lawyers as finest minds? All of a sudden... Some lawyers acted as dude who had doubts. So that's why I say those people are not lawyers. They are not living up to expectation. And it's such a shame. And we're not disagreeing with you there. But what I'm saying is that what now led to it, because if we had been living as people with integrity and that when the president came and said, this is what has happened and we are going to get the facts, should there have been an ambush? No. Exactly. So you look at it now. Were people doing it just to... Let me grab my own because I don't believe what they're saying. Exactly. So where the question now comes from is, we don't have a collective goal. We have individual goals. Correct. So the same thing goes to your candidacy. You don't have candidacy that has a collective goal should be told. You see they're talking about person. They're not talking about what the society wants, what they're doing for the society. So in such cases when people are trying to, you know, protect their own interests, protect what they think is right, not listen, their integrity will be a stick. There is no two-way to it. Because you cannot be a man, a tree cannot make a forest. So how do we get back now to even, as you said, that was such a powerful lesson in the home. There was zero tolerance to it. But now we leave it, we leave it, we embrace it. We went to the grounds today and we needed to park our car. So these traders had blocked parking space, walked up to them very nicely. They wanted to, you know, give us way. Immediately this security guard just comes up and says, no, no, no, I spoke to them. I had already told them that I was going to get a car in there. So the two of them, the husband and wife that had moved towards, were looking in shock like, ah, but they didn't say it, but you could see on their face. And at that point it was an issue of integrity. Should they agree with him? Because he looked, he was in uniform and we were visitors. Or should they actually open up and say, but you didn't speak to us. And I was impressed because you could see with the fear in them and the assumption and all that they said, you didn't speak to us. I mean, I was impressed. These are people who you wouldn't, you know, they're struggling for their daily living, but I was impressed to see that, you know, they could actually speak the truth. And I hope that, you know, we would, what will, I hope we will get back to that. The other rigs being kicked out when you guys leave. So that's to tell you that integrity, we have people that are, we have Nigerians that have high level of integrity. They're out there. Unfortunately, what you see, you know, the negatives grows very fast. And let me remind, we fellow Nigerians, this from now to 2023, the whole world is watching us with their public lens of scrutiny. You know why? We are preparing for election. Kenya has done this. This is us. So this is an opportunity for us to tell the world that Nigeria, we can do better. They should not see us as just Nigerians corruption, you know, the Americans. Let's do better. Let's do better. Let's do better. Let's do better. We thank you for your attention while the program lasted. We hope our conversations resonated with you. Little drops of water, they say, make a mighty ocean. Don't forget, the advocacy continues on our social media platforms. On Facebook, plus TV Africa, hash the advocate NG, and on Instagram, at plus TV Africa, hash the advocate NG. To catch up with previous broadcasts, go to plus TV Africa dot com, forward slash the advocate NG. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, plus TV Africa. Join us next week, same time on this station. Let's keep advocating for a better society. See you next time.