 You're welcome back. Just before we returned, we saw Harry talking about raising leaders of tomorrow. And leaders of tomorrow, when you hear that, you think about the youth. And the youth in Nigeria is the solution to let them jack by to another place, or it's Nigerian climate, or environment suitable for the success of its youth. And don't ask me the age range of youths. I'm talking about young men and women. I'm not talking about political youth leaders who are 70 years old. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about the real youths as defined by every dictionary in the world. And I'm going to be talking with Oluwa Tomisin at Debukola, who is an author and broadcast journalist. And let me just say good morning and welcome to the program. Good morning and good to be here with you. Yes. It's a good thing that I'm talking to you about youths and the environment, because you are an author and you talked about the youths. We'll get into that as we go on. But first of all, let's just have a peek into what you term success. Let's see success through your eyes. All right, so good morning viewers and good to be here once again. Success for me is a fulfillment of your personal dreams and your personal expectations. What do you expect of yourself? If your ultimate dream from when you were maybe a teenager is to be a bread seller and at some point in life, maybe 35, 40, 45, you're able to achieve that. That's your term successful by your personal standards. I think what the problem is is society's expectation of success, not personal expectation of success. People tend to measure themselves against what the society expects of them. But if what you expect of yourself is what you are achieving or have achieved so far, then you can tell yourself you're successful. But then the society looks at you and says, judging by our personal standard, this man, this woman is not successful yet. If you turn it around and you look at it the other way, it's what you feel that matters. It really has nothing to do with what they think, what you think or what I think. The little boy who goes to school and adds six credits or maybe just five credits and maybe four D's in his work tells himself, I did well by his personal standards. And the little girl who went to the same school adds seven A's and one D. Seals the servers, I didn't do well enough. Because I had a D. Personal standards. So success must be measured by what you feel about yourself. Your dreams, your plan and your goals for yourself. When you begin to achieve them and you get to every milestone you've set for yourself, then you tell yourself you're successful. You see the interesting thing about what Adépo Collage has said now is she didn't mention money. You didn't define success as how much money you had. Excuse me, is money a matter of success? Good. A lot of people now measure success by the kind of money that you have, forgetting that it doesn't always bring happiness. And from what you said, fulfillment is just another word for happiness, what makes you happy, what you have achieved so far. This is my dream and I got to my dream. Now, the thing is, a lot of parents that take out their children say there are more opportunities outside for their children to thrive than in Nigeria. So in your assessment of the Nigerian environment as it is, can a child achieve this success story, the way they should achieve it, or you need some external achievements to add to what you can get in Nigeria before you can term your service a successful person? Okay, so I think that's where our society is a little bit faulty. So we already have an enabling environment. However, suffering from some very important factors, which are not in place in most cases. Will you still call that enabling when this factor set out? It is enabling because you're thriving, I'm thriving, and I still look at so many other young people around me thriving, who are not even in the broadcast business. So I'm looking at young people. I mean, Bomi Tsujiojo was just made minister and young person, Nigeria. Better. Better, I do. Young person, Nigeria, thriving or not. She's not the only person in our set who's a medical doctor, and she studied in Nigeria. Coincidentally, in the South South, where you come from. So you're looking at measures, societal measures. But I said enabling because sometimes the environment where you grew up conditions you to see things as not enough. The kind of friends you roll with, you communicate with, see things as not enough. And so you believe, you know, some people grow up believing until I step out of the shores of Nigeria, I cannot achieve these dreams that I have. And so they condition themselves to seeing the only option as Jaqwa. So they're in school, they're thinking Jaqwa. The secondary school, they get to the university, one strike, they're like, oh, I just have to go. And they're willing, now this is where the desperation comes in, they're willing to do practically anything to get to that point and to do the Jaqwa. They don't get abroad. And then they now find out that it's not as easy as it seems. Then they now go on social media and they're saying, ah, is Nigeria's fault we left? Is because the environment was not good enough? I mean, there are 200 plus million Nigerians. If we spill over into every country in the world, they would tear apart because Nigerians are very gifted at something, having children and multiplying themselves wherever they find themselves. We're gifted like crazy. So you go outside the shores of this country. It's really funny you're calling that a gift. It's a gift. I mean, I've been one of the advocates for saying we need population control in this country. And I've not heard that. I'm still looking for to this present administration talking about it. We need population control. A poor man, his grandfather was poor, went to school, maybe secondary school and had a trade. His father stepped up a little bit. Maybe school starts plus a college of education and see how they trade. The man grew up in that environment, felt like, okay, the best I can achieve is you don't just go a little bit higher. So he just dreams tiny little bit above that level. And you're talking to him and that's a dream, you know? A little bit higher than that level. He finishes and he starts working doing a craft or whatever. He's earning about 50,000 Naira. His wife is a trader down the street. They have four children. Does that make sense? That's why I say it's a gift. I mean, a set of people that do not think about things from consequences point of view. We think about things from the Bible says we should have children and multiply. Increase and multiply. We see it as a gift. And because we see it as a gift, we complicate our own problem. The Oyebo man has money. He has a social security network that guarantees that his children, whatever age he gives back to them, will get some stipend from the government. And he still has only one or two in that environment. A Nigerian man is here, he's suffering. He can barely put three meals on the table. But every other year his wife is pregnant. And you say there's a problem with... They don't have a problem. We're the ones with a problem. You can manage what you have with proper planning and get to where... I'm not saying going abroad is bad. I'm not saying Jack Mayen is bad. But what I'm saying is, if you see yourself succeeding in Nigeria, like the rest of the 200 million plus people that are here, you will succeed. But if you see that the only opportunity available for you is outside there, that's the only thing you work towards. So when opportunities in Nigeria come staring you in the face, you won't see it. The only thing you will see is Jack Ma. Jack Ma. I need to go. Let me use this opportunity and Jack Ma. That's it. So people see traveling abroad as an opportunity. I beg to differ. A man left the shores of this country. I was watching a show on, I think this is our big boss now in the business. I'm a yellow boss now. There's always on Instagram. Oh my God, I apologize. For getting you in Daddy Freeze. Now, the man was talking on Daddy Freeze's live a couple of days ago. And he said he left a banking job in Nigeria where it was paid 750,000 a month. I've never earned that in my life on a job. But I've made that in business. Now, you're saying he was earning 750,000 a day, a month. And he said to himself, the better thing that can happen is for me to get abroad. The environment was frustrating for maybe the traffic, maybe the light issues. And he decided to go abroad. So he went abroad and he became a security man. And he was saying it without pride. And he said, now he did that for a while. He didn't get idle and then now he runs a business, a care business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Think what it is that he's doing now. And that is his mentality. He was telling people, don't judge us by what we ended up doing when we get abroad. But I'm asking the question, do you think from my perspective, it wasn't a right decision. I mean, you earn 750,000 a month. The highest you can do, go and live in Ikeja. I've seen people who sold their ancestral lands as it is. They get like 20 million and travel abroad. To become a security man. I'm just asking myself, 20 million? Do you have any kind of reasoning that you cannot use 20 million to succeed? So a lesson somebody gave me a couple of years ago. I think it was about three years ago. I was planning to travel abroad. I wasn't planning to relocate. I just wanted to go do a degree, an extra degree over there. And somebody said to me, he said, what is the fees? How much are you paying? And it was about 21,000 pounds. Because I had to travel my son. He said to me, he said, so if somebody gives you 10,000 pounds right now you're in Nigeria, are you telling me you would not go to a private university at the most? Do this degree you want to do and make something concrete and become an employer of labor with the rest of the money and thrive in this country. Are you saying the possibilities don't abound? I said to him, I said the possibilities are there. So I looked beyond the money. So I thought to myself, I now did a conversion. You know when they say 10,000, 20,000, it seems like I was 20,000. I now did a conversion. And I saw that I was going to spend about 16 million dollars to go and study in the UK. So I said to myself, I said to me, you should come up and behave. 16 million dollars to go and spend. Advertise yourself, like we say. I did a quick now, quick, quick, quick. I did a calculation. I said, what would it cost me to do the same degree in Nigeria? Less than 3 million dollars. Why would I spend 16? Enriching their economy and then impoverishing myself and my generation. And then I would get there possibly doing a security job or working in a bar just to be able to keep body and soul together. I won't be able to say because everybody travels are brought to build good credit so they can borrow money and do things in Nigeria that they will end up not paying back to that government. What is wrong with us as a people? I'm not saying don't go. But go if you have money. Go and do all the day. See their environment, bring their ideas back home and let's transform our country together. Okay, Thomas. We have like two minutes left now to wrap up. So let me just quickly go to your book. I'm just interested. The Alchemy of Hair. So two minutes. Tell us about the book and what inspired you because it's not part of this discussion but it's related. You're talking about youths and all that. Let me get to here. What is about and what inspired you to write this book? Okay, so quite a number of people do not like talking about their past experiences and their lives because they feel I'll be judged by telling my secrets. It looks like it's my secret. I don't want anybody to know about it. Let me hide my pain. But I found that one of the things that therapists would tell us is to tell it. Speak it out. Speak up when you go through anything. Every incident in our lives culminating to now has contributed into becoming the individual that we are today. So when we hide that you suppress the lessons that you were supposed to garner from those experiences. So I said to myself, put pen to paper. I cannot just continue to go to schools to speak to young people. I do that a lot. I mentor about 45 young people in Lagos as we speak. I said to myself, put pen to paper and write some of this experience. So it wasn't like my life story. There were just specifics about school, about lessons. I talked about growing up. I talked about experiencing loss at a young age. I talked about spiritual abuse. The kind of things that we go through in the hands of so-called pastors and imams and Afars in the name of religion. I talked about that. I talked about marriage. I talked about miscarriage, loss. I talked about pain. I talked about quite a number of issues. I mean I have about 22 chapters or 23. I talked about celebrating friendship, mentorship. Our young people do not want to learn from others. They do not think that there needs to be a ladder and somebody above the ladder picking you up and dragging you by the hand. So I spoke about all of this and I put lessons at the end of every chapter to make sure that every person that picks up the book can pick the lesson and transform their own personality. So the alchemy of her is just me expressing and saying, I went through this but I came out of it. And then I went through this again and I go, so life is a roller coaster and it never really stops. You just keep going through it learning, picking yourself up, falling. And you keep going and going and growing and getting better. It's a journey. And that journey you must acknowledge the pain, the lessons, the intrigues and you must accumulate and become a better person. Okay, you've heard it from the author and broadcast journalist Oluwa Thompson at Debukola are talking to us about, you know, the possibilities of flourishing in Nigeria if your mindset is just put to it. It's like someone who has no fiance but already planning how to fight the mother-in-law when she finally gets married. When you get there you are going to get the mother-in-law that you need to fight with. Don't worry. Mother-in-law will fight you fast. She'll come with a kid. I'm a positive mindset that is what it is and it will flourish anywhere. The grass is not always greener on the other side, you know. I'm sorry. I'd like to thank you, Tomi Sain for coming on the program this morning. It's my absolute pleasure. All right. We hope to catch you again another time. No problem. I still do this talking. You just give me a little bit of notice. Yeah, so that's how it's been on the show this morning. We do hope that you had a wonderful time watching us and we're going to return tomorrow with another edition of the program until then on behalf of the entire crew of The Breakfast and Plus TV Africa, my name is Nyam Gul Aghaji. Thanks for being there.