 Alright, thanks for staying with us now. Young people have always played a pivotal role in Nigerian politics, especially in the struggle for independence. Many of the leaders of independence movement were young students when they began their activism. Now, I mean, such as if you want to list names, Namdia Zikwi, Abafemi Awolawol, and Antonia Nahoros about that time. Now, Nahoros was just 21 years old, for instance, when he moved the motion for Niger's independence in 1953. Even after independence, young people have continued to play a pivotal role in Nigerian politics. For the examples, Yakubo Gowan, who was only 29 years old when he became head of state in 1966, and Isaac Adaka Boru, who fought for the emancipation of the Niger Delta people, was in his early thirties when he founded the Niger Delta Volunteer Force. In essence, Niger's political history would be incomplete without the significant contributions of young people. And now that Nigeria has turned 63, we want to discuss the fate of her youth. That's the conversation for today. Now, please, let's hear what you have to say. Remember, you can join the conversation. Then there's an SMS or WhatsApp is very one, 803-463. I don't want to talk too much. I wanted to bring up that video and tell us, if they can quickly just play that video, then I'll bring in our guest. So the point I'm making is that I would like young people, and that's why you find that young people today in Nigeria are concentrated in the creative arts. Society is rigged against young people. So they've got to be very careful in this environment. If you look at it, most things have been, rules have been put in place, things have been, measures have been put in place. It makes it very difficult for young people to succeed. When I was young, it was not like that. It's almost as if some Nigerians, as they got older, kept on redefining, pulling the rug along with themselves. And the environment that enabled them to come in and succeed, they withdrew it so that today's young people cannot repeat what they did. I am sad that today, no young Nigerian at age 33 can begin a bank the way I did, because the rules won't even let him. You understand me? If you have 10 years experience and you come back for a bank, they'll throw you out. So the point I'm making is that I would like young people, and that's why you find that young people today, in Nigeria, are concentrated in the creative arts, in music. All right, so Alakoum E Sharia is a mentor and executive coach for leaders across the globe, as Chief Knowledge Officer of Kenneth Sharia Research and ideas LLC. His work invigorates leaders to embrace what sets them apart in order to maintain personal and professional relevance. And it is always a pleasure to have you from the sharia on our set. Thank you for always honoring our invitation. I enjoy myself every time. We do not take you for granted. I enjoy myself. But there was nobody else to have this conversation because again, first of all, I see you, even though you are not particularly youth, you know, but your ministry, right? Who you are embodies that you are called to the younger generation. Right. And it's such an apt conversation because I mean, I remember having a conversation with you last week, and we're talking about, you know, how a lot of young people are moving towards the creative sector. Nobody wants to go to school anymore. Everyone just wants to probably sing, act and blow. You know, that's it, right? I mean, so when I found this video from a Tedo Peter site, he said things around that the society is rigged against young people. It is very difficult for young people to succeed. He founded a bank at 33. Any third year old cannot find it. You can't find anything not to talk about the bank. Right. Now it's almost like as people grew older in his generation, they made it a lot more difficult, right, stifling the growth of young people. So, I mean, Nigeria is 63. Right. And I was just wondering with everything that is going on, what truly is the faith of her youth? You know, do you see any form of, you know, anything that can really, really happen for young people in Nigeria and meets all of these things? Yes, I do see. Yeah. First of all, thank you for inviting me again. So it's a pleasure to be here. I enjoy myself every time. I see a lot of hope. But a critical part of that, that, that which I see is existential. It's not that I am confident that anybody will give youth room, but that I understand the clock of the decade that we are in. And my conferences as a futurist are predicted in 2018 that the new decade will be about the fading of powers and voices as we have known. And about the rise of powers and voices as we are yet to know. The rise of underdogs, mainly young people, non-name boys and girls rising to new levels of prominence and authority and influence in the way unprecedented. And we're going to see a lot of that. Essentially, when you look at it, what is really wrong is with the current generation of Nigeria's leaders. And it is. And when I say that, I do not mean the fact of leadership, because I don't belong to that school of thought that everything starts and ends on the leadership, right? The followership is key on many levels, particularly when it comes to nation building. At the micro level, it's easier to put everything on leadership. At the macro level, it's too expanded to put everything on less than 1%, less than 1% of the population, right? So if you consider that every person, the people we call leaders today who are aged, old, and we say they should give young people power, they were, yes, they're young people. As at 1960, there was no old person in power. The old people of 1960, 1950 something were already defeated by colonialism. It was young people who saw the vistas, who believed in the promise of a new nation, who understood that there are certain rights that our individuality, our collective individuality deserves as a people. And they began to fight for that. And they got the independence. So everyone in Nigeria's leadership, primarily over 90% of them were extremely young people. This is what young people did to Nigeria. This is not what old people did to Nigeria. Wow. So let's be clear that it was young people who made this Nigeria, right? It was young people who took control of Nigeria. So there were no old people resisting them. It was white people resisting them, right? And then they fought the white people and won. The old people of the time could not fight. There were very few who understood the fight. When the majority of young people began to come into the stage to fight, right? And they were winning. It was predominantly a lot of youth energy. And it took charge. The civilian government that took over from the from the colonial masters were young. The military junta that followed were young. And every leadership we have experienced from that time were young. Except that these young people then grew to build an organized system and they just never let power. It's not that they put their children there because I've also noticed that the children of politicians in Nigeria don't come into the system. Somehow they find another place. It's produce and mentees. And some find their ways there. But that structure has continued. And so what you have is young people who became old, remain in power, build their own produce and mentees and give power to them. And they were also young and then old and the contemporaries as we have old people today. The concern therefore is that old people have now become the white people of 1960. So oppression now changed color from white to black. What we wanted in 1960 is what we still want now. You call opportunities for people. The attention and resources are individuality desires. The freedom to dream. The assurance that if you are willing and ready to do the work, there is positive outcome at the end of your efforts. That's what they call the American dreams of other countries. Those rights are not supposed to be gifts from human beings to human beings. They're supposed to be existential. Every human being should have the right to dream, the freedom to win. That if I play by the rules and I assert myself at a level intelligently, in a way that doesn't break any law, I should have reward for my imputes. So that is what we still want now. We call people like Fela, people like, we call them prophets, because they saw it to the future. I don't think they saw it to the future. Something African China who sang another song. They say, oh, this guy saw it to the future. No, they sang about what was happening then. What has happened is that what is sang about has not changed. As a matter of fact, it has gone worse. So looking back, it looks like they saw it to the future. No, they saw their present, complained about their present. And the present still stays there. And got more complex. So they now look like prophets who saw the future. So that's where we are. So young people today who now desire to be in charge and lead transformation or some form of renaissance are not going to experience that because the people in power just wish you well and give it to you. We now know the color of power across the globe. Nobody gives you what you deserve. You get what you negotiate and what you negotiate intentionally. So young people need education. They need education about their dignity, about their honor. The fact that tomorrow is as good as the responsibility we deploy today that wishes don't turn to good just because human beings, it lives in human beings, that people have to show up at a level of responsibility, think at a level of responsibility, and then take responsibility for the outcomes they prefer, right? That will require that to begin to take a second look at the things that we have accepted as normal. So you find, there's something that I teach out there that the lifespan of a crisis, particularly in Nigeria, is 90 days. I said no matter what you have done, no matter how much gossip is going on, you just need a big border to start happening and everybody will forget about whatever it is you have done, right? It's so easy to get the attention of young people, seize their energy, seize their thoughts, you know. There are a lot of things we can be protesting about. There's a lot of conversation we can be having. Young people themselves, you know, respond to some type of the discomfort organized by a few young people themselves, right? One of the biggest problems with ESSAS was it was a cry without direction, and you keep finding that all over the place at different times. You call it MOBAD or you call it, you know, everywhere you go you just see youth energy that is completely directionless, almost lost. So I think education is needed, some form of ideological construct that is intentional, right? I'm not sure tonight is the night you can break that down, or maybe it's a symposium discussion of some sort, but people need to understand that, you know, nobody gives you what you deserve. Well, not just young people are not just going to show up, right? And just get everything. There will be resistance. That's just the way it works, right? So the young people of 1960 faced resistance from the colonial master of 1960. The young people of today will face their own resistance. They will face their own resistance. The new face of colonialism. Yes, and by that I'm not making a call to any form of violence, it's mental weaponry. Human beings have the capacity to imagine anything and to bear it. And if we stay intelligent enough and stay true to the outcomes you want to see, right, we will close the gap with strategy and thinking. That's how things are created. Okay, so you know what, all right, thanks for staying with us now. If you just tuned in, we're discussing Niger at 63, we're asking what the face of her youth, and we have a lot to make sure of. Please, let's hear what you have to say. Remember, you can join this conversation send us an SMS over to episode 1 80384663. I am really, really hoping I can understand what an ideology would look like for the time that we're in around the young people. But let me come to you, Sansi. Yeah, well for me, I'll take, there was something you said the last time that I was one of the co-hosts that you were a guest. You talked about the Nigerian dream, that one of the challenges we're experiencing is the fact that there is no, like how do you know what you want if there is no model or if there is no like a vision that unites, and you talked about the American dream, how we know that one life is worth a lot, the American government, and they believe America is a land of where dreams come true and whatnot. So in Nigeria, we are obviously lacking that Nigerian dream, right, and so I think that no matter how much we, like part of the challenges we had in NSAS was, okay, we want SARS to go, we want this to go, but then there was still a sort of division that, you know, we didn't have. So a sort of division or thereabout that we had, so I would like to ask you, right, and maybe this might be a question that will stretch into other things, but if you can just make it brief for the sake of the show, if you were in a place to plan or give an idea or a picture of the ideal Nigerian dream that all of us can align with and pursue this future of a better Nigeria, what would that dream look like? You see, it's something that I think about a lot, and there are words that play my spirit at different times, hope, pioneering spirit, you know, unity. They are not lost on us, but I don't think that we're going to sit in a room and craft a dream for Nigeria or some type of ideology. I think we're going to be bold about the pain that we feel and begin to respond to that. You know how they say that it is the present that is well that can donate blood, you know. I don't see my house and say you are. If you are sick, your blood won't be accepted for donation. It's called capacity. You have to be well. Nigeria is sick, and you can't get a lawsuit to what you can build on that sickness, like when the foundation is faulty, what can a building do? You know, but it's really expensive, but collapses in a matter of time. So I think that we can begin to pay attention to our pain points. I'll tell you some of them. One of them, for example, is the mass ignorance of the people. Nigerian people are chronically ignorant of the issues. Please. Ignorance is not the absence of academics. It's the absence of education. Education is not academics. Nigerians are going to love, there's a lot of schooling going on. There's a lot of classroom energy going on, but it's need to education. When you are educated, you can do four things. One, you can experience your world. You can experience it deep enough to find, to question it, what you're experiencing. To question it deep enough to find the options that exist in that environment, and to know which of those options to embrace as a matter of supreme urgency. If you can do one, two, three, as not as you can do four, the whole four, you are not educated. Even at a PhD, if you cannot read your environment, you cannot question what you are reading, you cannot bet options. You see the difference between a lion in the jungle and a human being is that we can bet options. You know, if the lion can bet options, it will have shape. It's not that he can't shape. It's not that he can't think of that genius. It's that the capacity to live away from his design is not available to him. So the lion is going to have a lot of beard still dies because he can't serve question. He can't say, why do I have this? We can do that as human beings. We can question the experience we are having. The lion cannot. That is why we're all in the jungle before. We moved from the jungle. We performed villages. Civilization. We built cities, mega cities, because we could always question and then from those questioning, we can bet options. And from those options, we can choose the one that is most supreme to focus on because we will not always have all the resources to do all that we want to do or that we need to do. So we need to address that. That, for me, is not about sending more people into the schools. It's about, so you find that a lot of Americans are not necessarily educated in college. In fact, you have a lot of Americans who did not make it to college, that they desired to. That's true. It is that once they are done with high school, they are done. Right? But at that level in high school, they understand GDP. They understand jobs. They understand per capita income. They understand productivity. They understand all the basic things and from there, they can run anything. They can run any business. They can sit on the bank. They can produce anything. They can build capacity. They can create jobs. From that point on, so we are not producing that. That type of education is not by studying mathematics or English language. Right? It's about keeping ideas practical and really checking if there's a transfer of clarity. Right? Our schools need to think about that so that when people actually go to school, they are actually educated. You see what I'm saying? So that when somebody comes to campaign and is telling you about jobs, you know what he's saying. The average American when he's listening to you, campaigning, and you talk about veterans, and you say it the wrong way, you're not going to win that election. You talk about jobs, and you don't say it the right way. You are not going to win that election. And the guys that are voting for you are not B.S.C. Older. They're not particular degree elders. They are not, they are not, you know, master's degree elders. They are just people who understand everyday issues of contemporary life. Enough for them to use the only asset that they have to make that contribution, which is their votes, to do that. So you can have two foolish candidates here in Nigeria, and we will still vote proudly for them. The idea is that we miss a lot of, so that even if there's no rigging, the chances of involving the right candidate is still almost zero. Because people don't even have the clarity to make a choice between good and better. Right? The best of people that I know, some of the best people, I know not all of them, but some of the best people I know will make choices between good and bad. That's easy energy. Let's be clear. Where do you want to work? Al-Qaeda camp, Boko Alam camp, or GT Bank? Easy call. It's obvious. If you want to marry a normal worker or a pastor, easy call. Yeah. But let's upgrade that to that's good and bad. Let's move that to good and better. Where do you want to work? Access Bank or GT Bank? Now you have to think. Who do you want to marry? Accountant or lawyer? Now you have to think. Because it's a more complex decision. Yes. Right? So it's easier to choose between two fools or to choose between a fool and a wise person. It's more difficult to choose between two wise people. Right? What is even worse is to- Because then you now dig deep. You now have to have something inside you. You have to think critically. Tell me something must be resident inside of you to make that choice. Yes. Right? But what is even more complex is how the alternatives evolve. So if you don't create a system that evolves the right candidates for you, assuming candidacy is your problem. Right? What is the power of your vote if you have to choose between four fools. Right? So the candidates come from from- A basket of fools. From a political system. Right? So the system, which is the primaries, the political party administration that evolves the candidate. It's more powerful than the vote. Because once the role candidate evolves from the primary election, your vote is already arrested. Right. It doesn't matter who you are now voting for. And if I am really wise power broker, I would take a stake in the two candidates. I would take a stake in all the four candidates so that whichever one you choose you are choosing me. Because your vote is limited and it's as strong as the candidates available. So what about participation then? You find people are big on voting. They are not big on participating in the electoral process, in the political process itself where the candidates evolve from. You are taking it from the second base because by the time you are not ready to vote you are only ready to vote for something that is happening probably too late for you. Which is that the candidates are choosing already. Already on the power. So that's a different ball game. Right? Then we have to look at the idea of when you talk about ideology, indigenization is a big problem here. Right? It's a big problem because in America that we want to model two brothers from the same father and mother are governors in two different states. That is the Bush brother. One was governor in Texas. The other was governor in Florida. That can happen here. It can happen here. Yeah, you are from Medus. You can't be governor here. You can't be governor in Lagos. Your brother can't be governor of Lagos state. It can happen here. Because of indigenization. In America you are either an American or you shut up. Well in the military sector, Yes. Interestingly it happened. Because I have a friend that her father and his brother, they were governors but on two different states. Yes, because it was by decree. It was by decree. Right? The military works by decree. So they could superimpose that. It's not the will of the people. Yeah. If it led to the people, they would not allow somebody from the east to come and be leader over somebody in the west. They would not allow somebody from the west to come and be leader over somebody in the east. But how do you realize about this idea of this? Because I mean, so I was at a, I was at a what's it called Twitter space yesterday and they asked me if I had one thing that I could change, you know. I said, let us expunge this state of origin, you know, from any, any documentary or film because again, I think again it's, it's one of the biggest thing that divides us as a people. It keeps, you know, dividing us. But Piquet, because, you know, with you, time is always not our friend. You touched on something around educating as in mass ignorance. If you want to solve the problem of mass ignorance, what is the best tool? What's the best mediums? We're able to communicate that, you know, probably start to educate people on the mass level. I'm not sure you will appreciate some of my thoughts. But I think English language is a big problem. Then that's where the problem is. English language, I say, determinant of progress for people that are not English themselves. No, but we're sorry to cut you, but we are not English. However, we have over 300 ethnic groups. So how else do we unify ourselves? If not through that English language? No, you can use English language. Let's be clear. I didn't say we should not use English language. It should not be a determinant of progress in a country of people. Over 300 people are not English men. In other words, if we say Ligua Franca is the goal, we need something to unify us. Right? If we say so, do I need to be a master of it for us to communicate? So a chap, and this is a true life story, sought for WIEC, the school certificate examination. He passed commerce, he passed government, and I think he passed economics. He failed English. Now that looks like ordinary thing. Except that that English that he failed is what he used to pass the three other subjects. He used English language to pass economics, to pass government, to pass commerce. So how come he couldn't pass the English language that he used to pass the other subjects? Because when the examiner is testing his paper in English, no matter how much he can speak, no matter how much he can communicate, if he cannot write the difference between a clause and a phrase, or between an adjective or a pronoun, it's not going to pass. Right? Now, what is the goal of Ligua Franca? Is it communication or sophistication? No, I'm asking. It's communication. I believe it's effective communication. Effective communication, right? Okay, good. So our boy can communicate enough to pass three other subjects. But now you're going to fail him in that subject because he cannot pass the test of technicality. All right, I see your point. So if I tell you now that I'm good to Ligua's tomorrow, don't you understand me? You understand me, right? If you throw any Nigerian, in any market, anywhere in Nigeria, any Nigerian, they will buy and they will leave. How do they communicate? If you throw a Chinese man in any market in Nigeria, the Chinese man, he will come here, he will buy, he will sell, and he will leave. If you throw an American in any market in Nigeria, he will buy and he will leave, right? How are they communicating? Tomorrow I'll come to you, next week I'll go and then I'll come and then I'll call you. You get me? Don't you get me? Pigeon is not an embarrassment to any people. Pigeon is a proof of a people's struggle with an original language, right? So there's Pigeon French, there's Pigeon Spanish, there's Pigeon English, there's Pigeon Yoruba, there's Pigeon Igbo, there's Pigeon in every language. Even the Pigeons have their own Pigeons. They have their own Pigeons. Cocktail. Cocktail, yeah. Yeah, so the moment we start communicating, we're going to evolve some type of Pigeon and it has happened already. The Yorubas have their own Pigeon English. The Igbos have. The people in the Delta have their own. The Nodanas have their own Pigeon English. The Chinese man who comes to Nigeria has his own Pigeon English. But all of us are speaking a form of it where we meet on the altar of English language and we all communicate and we sell. The problem is that while that is happening in the informal sector and in areas that doesn't matter, the areas that matter are not legislated. So if I cannot say I'm go, you will not give me a job. If I cannot say I am going, you can't give me a job. If I say, please, I'm in charge of the situation, if I come to your house as your daughter's boyfriend and I say, where are you going to say, we are going to shush tomorrow. You can lose hope instantly in that reality, right? The promise of that engagement can end for you. Wait, wait, shush. Accept you're also a shush-speaking parent. So it's a pathetic resonance. You can have hope in the guy. So I can't even marry the girl of my dreams. Shush does not change the quality of my thinking. It doesn't change the strength of my character. Just because I can't say shush, you won't give me a job. I can't say church. You won't give me a job. You won't honor me as I deserve. You won't give me the attention my individuality deserves. There's so much you will take away from me. I am not saying we should drop in this language. I'm saying let us reduce its power as the governance of progress. Then we have to legislate some things, right? Where is it in the world? Some of the most successful people in the world don't speak English at all. Some of them don't even speak good English for those who try to do so. French people struggle with this. Mandarin, Chinese, Korean. They struggle with it, right? Once you can speak enough to be understood, that's Liguafranca. Liguafranca is not the mastery of another man's language. It's communication in the language we all accept in the form that can be understood, whether it is excellent or not. So if I say I'm good, people will look down on me. They will despise me. They've not have given the patience to check the strength of my character or the weight of my thinking. They just judge me like that, right? We don't need that. So to ourselves, it must be true, right? To begin to say, how do we begin to build from here? Such that the Garicella. A Garicella in Benin speaks better grammar than a Chinese professor. But the Chinese professor, which is all Mandarin, has made his own shoes. He has built his own plane. He has built his own car, right? So we have to understand that physics, chemistry, biology, maths are the subjects of development. They make everything, right? Those subjects were lent by powerful nations in their languages, the Spanish, the French, the Chinese. You see? So we have to begin to think this way. When we start accepting those kinds of constructs, we give the average Garicella the chance to understand GDP. Now this is the format of education that I also recommend. I think that English language should not be part of our grading in any school. It should be compulsory subjects, not to be part of our grading. Meaning that you can always progress without mastering that language, but speaking a form of it. That's the goal to you to understand. Again, we should have English language centers free. If you force the language on me, you can't tell me to pay to learn it. It's not my fault that I'm a Nigerian woman. It's not my fault. So if you say this is our legal affranca, you have to make it available for me free of charge so that I can learn it at the speed of choice. Tell them to IELTS. You see? And then if you expand that real quick, if we have English language centers in every local government, we can make it compulsory for everybody to pass through that institution, no matter your age. But the goal is not to give you a grade. It's to help classroom hours so that you can speak a form of it. And just to be able to communicate. To communicate and understand. Can you quickly take a comment? Okay, interesting. I could listen to him forever. Good evening, my dear beautiful sisters of what I say in hashtag ways. Nigeria at 63, the fate of the youth. To me, generally, I do not think that there is any cause to celebrate this independence. Nigeria generally has not been doing well, simply because we lack good governance. Since this government took over, this country has not been feeling well. Your guest made mention of Nigeria being sick. And I agree. A youth has no fate and hope in a sick country. There is a saying that says, a fool at 40 is a fool forever. That means Nigeria has been a fool for 23 years? 63 years. 63 years. He said 23. This is sad. Do your calculation. Nigeria has to be well for hope to be restored to the youth. My name is Daniel Illoway's regular faculty. Thank you so much, Daniel. Thank you. So, if a fool at 40 is not a fool forever, first of all, there's always hope. Bread is proof there's something better and greater to conquer, right? I agree. So, Nigerians can do better. I think that we just need to start having the right conversations. We've been trying to do that. People say we've spoken a lot. We've spoken about the wrong things a lot. We're not really having the right conversations. But somehow I believe that the clock of the universe supports this season. Whether we like it or not, change has come. Change will come, definitely. I was just going to say because, I mean, I can't stop thinking about what you said. It is the youth that, you know, face the colonial masters that created what we have today. So, what gives if we, young people, decide to say, okay, we want to face our own, you know, we will not create something worse? So, there has to be a better strategy. Yes. We have to get up the idea that we need young people. People, yeah. You know, because young people have been there, right? We need wisdom. We need wisdom. Whoever is carrying it, young or old. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Absolutely. Achieve the mission. I think that's a fantastic way to wrap up. I shall bring you back. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sanzee. Now, before we go, I want to show you, follow us across all our social media handles that waste your Africa. You can interact with us for the drop of comments. Most importantly, follow us on social media, like share and invite your families and friends to watch and follow the conversation. If you missed our poll for today, someone says, your guests really nailed our Nigerian problem. I just hope our government will pave way for few youth that have passion to improve and glorify our country by creating a enabling environment for them and stop their method of me, myself, and I and that has crumbled our country. This is some Mrs. Adineji from Ajah. Thank you so much. Now, if you missed our poll for today, here it is again. It says our society is rigged against young people. They have got to be very careful in this environment. Most rules have been put in place to make it very difficult for young people to succeed. Ah, Pike didn't have time to touch on this, but you know what? We'll bring him next time to continue the conversation. We'll see you guys tomorrow at 8 p.m. As we bring another great conversation to your screen. Ciao. Bye.