 2023 elections. I'll be wiser now. Nigerians have a dysfunctional relationship with their political leaders. Election seasons are the only periods we get to hear from them or they get to listen to us. We have another season upon us. On Monday, ex-governor Bola Meptinambo declared his intention to run for presidency in the upcoming 2020 elections. Anyway, it's no news to many as we've been bombarded with posters and covert campaigns throughout last years. Ex-president Goodluck Junotan may also indicate interests to run as we've seen also in the media. These are two of many candidates that would review their intentions in the coming weeks to run for any form of political position. In the next month, we expect to see many campaign promises that give us or tell us that they're going to give us heaven on earth. Some would say they would change the economy in 12 months. Others would come up with first 100-day plans, which eventually we know will be forgotten once they get in. Some would show up with rice and beans and all manner of foodstuffs and money to layer on suspecting, on thinking and already victimized citizens. Gradually, partisan camps will begin to be formed even in our neighborhoods and even families. The media will be bombarded with every form of articles and programs promoting a candidate otherwise. Eventually, we will get a leader who may be a repeat of our past mistakes. Before we get there, let's take a step back in time and learn. Let's ask ourselves real and difficult questions such as why do we keep getting the same crop of leaders? What can we do differently? What political office matters most? Is it the senatorial office, the presidential office, government office, governor's office, or even the local government offices? What do we want from the next leaders? And so on. There's so many more questions to ask. Let's have these conversations in our homes. Let's have them in our neighborhoods, in our estates, communities, churches, mocks, offices, and every gathering you can think of, even at parties. We can't think, we can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Let's ask ourselves the right questions. Afterwards, we can then ask the politicians the right questions. But let's not stop at questioning. Let the responses we get from these questions inform our selection of leaders in the upcoming elections. For every political office, remember that we have only this time to get you right. Let's not waste it. When I was in there, one thing came to mind that a lot of times we don't apply the same structure or methodology that we apply to our life to politics. We tend to give a lot of excuses in politics. Now, what do I mean? If a woman comes to you, a young lady comes to you and tells you that she's dated five guys who's promised a marriage. They've bought a lot of the rings or they've made a lot of the rings and she's kept the ring for two, three years. And each time, after two or three years, after a while, these guys break our hearts. What would you tell the lady? Something's wrong with you. Exactly. So we bring about the same kind of leaders every year and we blame leaders. Exactly. Not ourselves. What are we doing or what are we not doing that is making this kind of ideology faster? Those are questions and I'm talking about the questions you've asked us to ask. Those are questions we are not asking. We see people, I've heard people say, you see, we can't make it because the leaders are not giving out, they're making it difficult for us. And I say, I agree. It's a foolish person, I'm sorry to say, that will tell you everything is okay. No. So when you're saying let's make a move, not that, oh, everything is easy. No. What I'm saying is, a lot of times when someone tells you, okay, she's a thought leader in addition to being a lawyer, and you hear motivational leaders say that the fact that you're back, you were born on the ground or as that thing said, doesn't mean you're back on the ground. Because you're back on the ground, you don't have a good background in all those kind of things. The fact that the father didn't send you to school doesn't mean you cannot make it. Look at other people that are making it. Listen, the fact that our leaders are not giving us what we want, they're not encouraging us to fight, does not mean we should not fight. And I tell people that, listen, all this, I don't, I'm sorry, I don't join people to blame Bolatino Buu. I don't. Not because he's a perfect man, no. But you see someone like him, I believe, should be studied in the university. This is a man that fought during the Nadeco era, came in 1999, and he's been able to hold on to a party date in a state like Lega states, where you have so many mad people. Crazy. What does he do right? So when people are saying, is one of the, no, no, no, there's no, I was asking someone recently that which state in Nigeria has reached its full potential? No states. Yeah. Whether it's one man leading or multiple men leading, they're all failing. So when I'm saying that I'm coming back to where I'm saying that, at the end of it all, it is time for us to ask the right questions and not give excuses of they will not allow us. These people were not, there are people today, someone was talking to me here, but they judge you as infighting to Nubu. There are people today that till date, they will not be friends with him because he fought. And so many other people like that have fought. What are we doing in this generation? I want him to. I can see him looking at him. I was looking at him. Is that what we do now? That's how we're doing it now. Really, you know, I saw a tweet, someone said that if Nubu is going to come out, if he selects a Muslim, he's going to not be able to deliver on the side of the Christians, and that's going to get him angry. If he selects a Christian, the Northans are going to be angry, he's going to deliver on that end. So someone said, how do we reduce the polity to selecting? You don't see Obama and Joey, but they don't talk about that. So look at what we're looking at. So that tells you that the polity has been reduced to rubbish. So what he's saying, if I select a Muslim or above the truth is, let's not be fooled. You don't win politics by motivation. I mean, this is not me telling you, I mean, I'm just, it's strategy, right? After motivation, you get up and have strategy of execution, right? And just to come back to Annie's comment, what I said earlier, I mean, why are they giving them bags of rice? Bags of beans, all of those things. It's always worked. If a strategy works, I mean, in business, you can't change what works. If bag of beans works every year, I can't change it. If $1,000 works every year. And guess what, the guys that are receiving the bags of beans, they deliver the numbers. We don't deliver the numbers. We are tweeting. So I can't get a bag of beans because I don't need it. But the guys that need it, they are multiple. And that's where the problem really is. So if the kid is in the strategy and is working for many years, they're going to start, you know, frying corn now and all this. And do you know what's happened? It's worked. Do you know what has happened with that strategy? Like, in recent times, without even linking it to elections, we're just looking at, because I've been really curious about how are we actually building the capacity of ourselves as a people. And so that bag of rice strategy is very interesting to observe. Let's go back to colonial days. And we realize that for the same system of giving a handout or something to feed the belly, you get people out. And I look at it very well. So people say that bag of rice and bag of beans and that, oh, they're giving you what do they get out of it. And then we, the people who keep tweeting or who feel we went to school, actually not seeing what is being seen. Have you realized that from that system, from that lower crop of the bag of rice givers, they're building leaders at the local government level. Have you gone to state civil service? Have you seen the people that are being empowered? Have you gone into space and see how that, have you go round outside, forget the AI, go to Moewe, go to Abu Leibah, go to Agege, look at houses, look at the people. Wealth is being created in unprecedented numbers. That bag of rice is not a strategy, it's a strategy that is working because when those people deliver those things, they know that they are short of something. And by the time you need, there was a saying that says when you need something from the leader, go to befriend to those in the kitchen. And when we're sitting down here feeling very fancy, which is why as motivational as the same that my initial advocacy was, the first line that was changed your mindset, we're going to have to, and you mentioned Stratton, I liked the fact that Victor put it there. You see, you cannot take yourself out of a situation without actually thinking, what is the root of this? A lot of our mental work actually breaks you down. If you do proper mental work, you break down to the points where you see your life and say, emotional intelligence, the first one of yourself awareness. For a whole cycle, Dr. Goldman said, the first thing in getting any change is to start to use EI, to change life and nations. And so as Victor then said, honestly, that strategy works. But beyond that, there was something that Ruth said, and I found it interesting. I said, oh, that you know, a lot of people, their high school dropout and couple. I remember there was a time in my study that I realized that informal, negative intelligence is sometimes even more crucial than formal education. So we have formally educated people who cannot think. A lot of the formally educated people did no research. They carried it in droppings. They're not even thinking people, critical thinking skills. So those people that finish a high school alone are probably sometimes more intelligent than those of us with first degree masters, it's education, they do everything together. So maybe the system is for us that are thinking we know to go and study those things. That means something is wrong with all of us. Politics changing our mindset and being able to at least prepare ourselves for the upcoming elections. But like I said at the beginning of my presentation, it's important that we ask ourselves the right questions. Once we do so, then we'll be able to at least make better change into the next year. So up next is Victor. Stay tuned.