 I'm honored to be in your midst today. Creatives are probably the only occupational group that still have their reputation left in our world today. And the simple reason is that they don't really allow anyone to put them in a box. So they can always escape. They can be anything they like at any time. Lawyers, for example, my profession are the most maligned. Descriptions ranging from scorpions to sharks and all that. And of course, politicians are the scum of the earth. So what sort of image would a lawyer politician like myself have? I really, frankly, blame no one for my loss. Except probably my mom. And I really might have been a modestly successful poet. But for the most traumatic incident that happened when I was about 10 years old, there was a girl in my class who I was quite certain at the time that I could give my life for. So I wrote her a lovely poem over a weekend. I wrote the poem on Friday and finished it. And it was, if I may say so myself, a work of shared genius. It ended with the dramatic words, your warm embrace may be the last desire of my heart before I die. Well, of course, there are those here whom I think that there isn't much rhythm in that. But anyway, I talked to my school bag and looked forward with a heart filled with love for Monday to present it to the object of my affections. My mom, while cleaning out the bag, found the letter and all hell broke loose. And it has to say she bit the poetic genius out of me like terrible, like terrible, terrible afternoon. But that's not the end of the story. True love, as you know, provides even the worst brutality. So I bore my injuries as a worthy suffering for my beloved. On Monday morning, I found the best opportunity to give her a freshly written version of the poem. I walked away and turned away as she read it. I didn't want to behold the sheer pleasure that this poem would give her. But as I turned around, I noticed that she had actually handed the poem over to the teacher. And she was pointing at me. While my physical bruises have healed from that experience, from as you can imagine, what happened to the teacher, my capacity for writing romantic poetry has been greatly diminished. Fantastical futures is the auditiously inspirational theme of this iteration of the AK Book Festival. Why do we in today's world dare to hope for a future so fantastic that it can be described as fantastical? The reason is, if I may offer one, that there is, for those who have cast this great vision, Lola and her friends and collaborators, they have not allowed their vision to be be clouded by the cataracts of discouragement that so easily beset us. Two of those cataracts to our vision are worthy of mention. The first is a disdain for introspection, which has just come over time. That capacity for deep thought and making that the basis of planning and action. It's a disdain for introspection that causes our elite to spend or embezzle all the cash and opportunities of the present and make it the burden of a leaner future to pay for our corruption and carelessness. A failure to interrogate the past, coupled with their reluctance to explain the benefit of deferring gratification. It's a creative, also sometimes, unable to stick to a cause, because it may no longer be popular. Niyo Shundari, a poet I'm sure that we're all familiar with, Niyo Shundari, captures this elite inability to defer gratification in a provocative poem entitled, Eating Tomorrow's Young. And I quote a portion of it. He said, there is only one left in the village barn. The prodigal calls for a knife. What shall we eat tomorrow? The people ask. If we finish all the yam today, just how shall we feel when the downhill has released stomachs of their improbable burden? And says the prodigal. Quote, tomorrow will take care of itself. How can we know the next day if we die of hunger today? The recursive one step forward, two step backwards of our history, especially in Africa, has caused Professor Tanuri Ojairide, and I'm sure you're all familiar with him, in his angry style to ask, what poets do our leaders read? Again, Ojairide in his poem, No Longer Our Country, Remonstrates, and I quote, we have lost it. The country we were born into, we are now seeing dirges of the commonwealth only of yesterday. We have a country that is no longer our own. But even he, that is Ojairide, will agree that societies are built by men and women, not spirits. Would listen to the second caterer that blurs our vision. And that is a failure to recognize the responsibility of the individual, especially the gifted individual. Does the artist have a responsibility to society? Beyond that of the ordinary citizen, is there a civic tax, a civic tax, payable on talent? Does the fact of your genius place upon you a moral burden to attempt to use the powerful voice of your art to fight for the soul of the land, especially, to fight for the soul of the land from whence you came? To take moral positions. Are you by virtue of your intellect and creativity a moral agent, or are you not? Can you afford to be neutral? Can you be politically neutral? Can you, in the face of so much that needs to be done, poverty, deprivation, injustice, stay politically neutral? Can Africa afford to have its best talents, wearing halos of political innocence, and saying, let us lead politics to the scoundrels? There is a growing impatience of the deprived millions of our people with the elite, which includes all of us in this room. The bombs tied to the 11-year-old body of Safiatu, a man-nourished girl, who has never been to school, cannot distinguish between a lawyer like Yemi or Shiba or a writer like Valara Wood. The bombs will not discriminate. But two things before I take my seat. And one is in response to Lala who asked for some kind of policy group for creatives. Earlier this year, the government established the technology and creativity sector working group, a policy committee of federal government ministers and heads of agencies with creatives, tech and entertainment business owners. The group meets to work on policy, including rules and regulations regularly. So we do have now a policy group which takes into account the sorts of views that creatives may want, especially in formulating policy. And that is so for technology, persons in technology as well. So I think that there is plenty of room for expression, especially the way that we want to see policies shaped that could affect creatives that could affect those involved in technology. The last before I say it, is that did you enjoy the story I told earlier? It was fiction. I wish you all a fantastic, good future. Thank you.