 Welcome to the Advocate. Yosonde reminded that important conversations are among the necessary tools for a Sena society. I'll be talking about the beauty in Nigeria and foreign influences. Titi Lokwe Ibilola will be talking about the negative effects of debt. Tolimoyo will be talking about new things law of polities. Each one must move one to end voter apathy. Today, expect interesting and educational conversations will be right back after the break. The beauty in Nigeria and foreign influences. Without doubt, Nigeria is one of the most blessed nations in the world, with the area of human capital and natural resources spread across each part of the country. It is safe to say that Nigeria has the potential to be self-sufficient, compete favorably with the biggest nations and assume the true position of being the giant of Africa. However, the reality we have today simply shows a great extent of under-utilization of our God-given resources. It is crystal clear that we lack the necessary leadership and system that can help us adequately manage our debt resources. The will power or lack of it in people at the hands of affairs shows a deliberate negligence with situations deteriorating year after year. Social and mainstream media have also contributed to image damage affecting the country's expected development. Nigerians are now being judged by what foreigners see and read through the media. Today, media has eased the means of communication which should be of an advantage to us, promoting our values and culture. However, what trends most immediate today are things that shouldn't. We talk too much with our acting and most times we project ourselves in bad light. We are currently under-utilizing the comparative economic advantages in our diversity. We are allowing sentiments of tribe and religion to reshape our thinking and decision making. Politicians are taking advantage of these lines of sentiments why most business capitalists in Nigeria today are only focused on using people other than developing them. We need to start seeing beauty in ourselves, promoted by acting in each direction by then we recover from our lost glory. What do you think? So the part of projecting ourselves out there in the wrong light is so true. There should be a lot of time, some things that should not end up on social media. And there's nothing, there's no check. There's no one checking to say should this even go to the public space. I don't know how we're going to curb that. I don't know what kind of advocacy we need to do to advocate against that. But it's something we need to look at. About 15 or 20 years ago I read a book called The Burden of Freedom. Basically what they were saying is sometimes, not sometimes, actually freedom is responsibility. We many times feel like freedom gives us the power to do less. It actually gives the power to do more. And it's supposed to actually make you reflect more. So think about the man in jail and the man on the street. The man in jail is told when to eat, when to drink, when to sleep, when to wake up, when to go out. But the guy outside has the right to make a thousand decisions. That's the exact problem that we have. Problem is we have not seen our freedom as a responsibility. Because if we did, then many of the things that we are doing, probably won't do. And you know, there's that proverb that unto the antelope tells the story. The story always favors the hunter. Right? It's problematic. So should we say it's more like a knowledge gap space where people don't even know what it takes to be free. The importance of freedom. Because when you look at it compared to some developed countries, like the United States of America, that we all want to go to, it's a lot of crime, a lot of mass shooting, but it doesn't meet the media. So my concern is, beyond the social media as well, our media heart feeds, we've seen them promoting, deteriorating messages that actually affect our brand. I can give you an example. For example, we have a transportation system. You agree with me that there are a lot of people who live in Kaduna and work in Abuja. And they go seamlessly. You can see the same thing in Lagos Ibadon. But there is not much media about it. But when you see a force like the attack, it goes for weeks, for months. That's exactly what I'm talking about. So when I was saying that the anti-loop lens always favoured the hunter, let me give you a practical example, real life example. A few months ago, about ten or eleven months ago, I was invited by a set of people to help with some of their media work. One of the issues they had was insecurity. So clearly I wanted to do some research. And I did some research. So what I tried to do is to benchmark where people have insecurity issues before, what do they do with it. I found that in America if you google insecurity in America you will not find anything. Yes, you can try it. They made sure they were so deliberate so you will see public safety instead instead of insecurity. If you google a hundred times insecurity in America, you will find public safety. What does that tell you? The anti-loop has learnt to tell the story. They decided by themselves. They decided by themselves that they will not be associated with that word. And guess what, the same thing. Insecurity, public safety, the same thing. But they decided you do not use negative words on them. They do not use negative in lexicon. So that's exactly what I'm saying. So you have those issues. But the way you even portray those issues goes a lot in determining yourself. I think from what you said is a bit cultural Americans don't actually ask what does the country have for me. They think of what do I have for the country. So if you have that mindset of say what I want to do, yes. Errors has been made, mistakes has been done as has been done. But what's the way forward? How do we solve it? I think if we engineering our thinking to an aspect of how do we solve this problem? Yes, there is a noise that's also happened. How can we in this community come together and say what can we do instead of throwing blame games? Your blame doesn't actually change anything. You understand? So let us start thinking of what do we have for Nigeria. What do we have because Nigeria is I can say the richest country in the world. Because when it comes to human resources we are number one. Natural resources we are having the best population. When you want to have any good business before investment you are coming to Nigeria it can turn around your investment over time. Nigeria is actually a good country. One of the problems you have is what I call the PhD syndrome. The pulling down syndrome. The average Nigerian does not want the average Nigerian to succeed. It's unfortunate what is the truth. It's the PhD syndrome. Everybody just wants to pull everybody down. Is that if you put crabs 50 crabs in a bucket none of them will get out. Because every other crab will pull the other crab down. We are actually doing ourselves. And we need to start a serious cultural and mental orientation for people to realize that the fact that you have there is something called the common wealth. Go and google what the common wealth is. What it means is the richer you get the richer you get. Go and ask the Jews how they did it. Exactly. It's the same thing that South Africans did with the Ubuntu. Yes. If we are looking at glats it also boils back to capitalists where I think we have to have our capitalists re-engineering their thinking of using people. Because if you my money can get me anything I want. I think we need to start getting ourselves out from their shackles. The same way that the Gen Zs have changed the workplace now where they don't take bullying in the workplace how our mothers, our fathers took it they have now liberated themselves from that. It's the same way we as Nigerians need to do that. If the capitalists, how many capitalists are there in Nigeria? We need to liberate ourselves and take charge and say we're not going to continue to toe the line of these people. We're not going to continue to do what they want us to do. Let's change it. Which is what we're hoping to hear more. I hope we can do that. The truth is that hunger is real. Right. Hunger is real. So you say to someone don't go to work for one week. Boys aren't what I'm going to talk about as well. When you talk about boycotts, how to actually cause social change. It will require boycotts, sittings, all those things. Somebody sits for one week. I mean look at ASU for instance. This is the longest event on strike for a long time. But they're sticking to it and I support them. Inasmuch as I'm not very happy about training at home. At some point we must get this thing by force. We must decide that you're wasting so much money on the legislature. Wasting so much money on the house of reps, the house of assembly. But the trainer at home. Maybe not their children. Exactly. On the aspect of ASU I might a little bit have a different sentiment to that because when we look into the NUC those who are consistent in the NUC the same ASU people who are lecturers. Who are the one formulating laws of accreditation of courses and stuff like that. The same set of people. But they are creating fake details like say you have equipment that are not existing that are borrowed. And you're still requesting for N and R ones for those extra that you know it is not justifiable to look at the reality that we have on the table. But not less I think there is a need for a complete overall of the system and the government also has a role to play to ensure that. But for me I like to be on the balance. In the scheme of things I agree with you. When the scheme of things these things you are referring to is all the way. It's from ASU Rock to this today we are sitting in. There is no place to think. Do you know how much they used to cut grass in ASU Rock? Yes they know how much they used to buy medicine in the hospital. It goes to cut the grass. So just to go I think we need to start believing ourselves and portray ourselves in a good image even when we are outside the country because you are people who are talking bad when you land on the airport they say you are Nigerian they say all the sort of things you should be able to stand for your own country and say you are a decent person because I committed someone committed crime doesn't stigmatize me to be a bad person. There are laws and order please if someone does bad please exercise your law but don't use that one to penalize others. Thank you. We will be talking about the negative effects of deaths. Stay with us.