 Let me begin this by first thanking His Royal Majesty, and you have already heard of my title, I'm sure you have all heard, if you are jealous of my title then don't clap, but if you are happy for me then thank you. I want to commend His Royal Majesty for the very kind gesture of conferring on me just this morning the special privilege of the title of Majubu Jiha Nasarawa. Thank you very much, Your Royal Majesty. As you know, Your Royal Majesty and those who do not know know that in our profession we tend to be partial to each other as one of the most distinguished justices of our Supreme Court. I practiced before His Royal Majesty many times, and so sometimes I call him my Lord instead of His Royal Majesty, but I think he's both His Royal Majesty and my Lord. Let me commend the dynamic governor of the state engineer Abdulai Sule and his team for the excellent innovation of this job fair for employability and entrepreneurship. Your state is also one of the few that has a human capital development office. This definitely shows your concern for what is most important in any nation or any community of people, and that is the people themselves. It scales the talents of the people, the potential of the people, their health, their prosperity, their education. All of these is what is represented by the office of the human capital development, and I want to really commend you for this office, for that innovation and for not just setting up the office, but for ensuring that the office is ably, very ably managed by Habiba Ballerabi Suleman, senior special assistant to the governor on human capital development and the focal person for human capital development. And also that that office has been able to do this, not just setting this up, but also ensuring that we are able to see actual results. And this afternoon we are celebrating those actual results. The 80 participants drawn, I am told, from 13 local government areas of the state who have undergone three weeks intensive training. I am told on communication, on social etiquette, on business writing, on selling skills, work ethics, excellence in customer service, initiative and proactive thinking, team building, problem solving, creative thinking. Frankly, I think that you are probably one of the very best equipped group of people that we can find anywhere in the country today. What this I note is to enable all these participants, all of you, to acquire the skills that you need to commence the process of being the best employees you can be or the best entrepreneurs. But just as I sat down, I thought that what would be useful for me to do today for a few minutes is to share a few thoughts with you about what I think you ought to do, how I think you ought to be thinking and what I think you ought to do. There are a few things you mustn't ever forget. The first is that you must always keep learning, always keep learning, always be ready for the next opportunity. The second way is by being ready to learn and to keep learning. Many times we are very ambitious, you know, all of us, I mean I remember when I was about your age, very very ambitious thinking about so many different things. But I always found that the only people who ever got ahead were people who were ready when the opportunity struck. I'll tell you something that happened to me many years ago. I was at the time serving as a head of a department and there was a lady who was also in that department, a lawyer. And she came to me several times to tell me that her ambition was to study, to get a master's degree in law from a foreign university. As a matter of fact she told me she wanted to go to the US, or she had no money. Or she wanted to go abroad, she wanted to go to the US to study, to get a master. And she was a very prayerful person, she prayed a lot. And she would tell me every time she would say God is going to answer, God is going to answer this, my prayer. One day the US Embassy then, this was many years ago, sent me a request to nominate two people to do a master's program in the US. One of the courses that they offered was exactly what this lady was looking for. Well they gave me 48 hours, they said well we are sorry it's late but these people must come to us in 48 hours because the whole exercise closes in 48 hours. So very joyfully I called the lady and there was a gentleman, one man and this lady and said this is it, she shouted God has answered my prayers. And we were all very excited. So I said to her okay go and bring your passport so that we can send it to the embassy. She said no, I have no passport. So we started trying to get a passport anyway, caught a long story short. The passport didn't come out in the 48 hours, she couldn't attend the program, she missed the opportunity. The man who, the other man I don't know, he at least had a passport and he was able to make it. But he taught me an important lesson and I hope he taught her a lesson too. That with all the prayers, with all the ambition, with all the great thoughts in the world, if you are not ready when the opportunity comes, you are going to miss it. And it will be your fault, you won't be able to blame anyone. That is why constant learning, constant learning, constant exposure to learning and today the opportunities are many. The second thing I want you to remember is that integrity is key, integrity is key. Now when you tell people about integrity, they think oh just people are advising you to be honest, maybe it's nice to be honest, maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's a godly thing. But let me tell you what, the truth is that integrity pays. In other words, if you happen to be a person who can be trusted, if you can be trusted, you will go places. Because everybody in the world, even thieves are looking for honest people to keep their money with. Do you know that? Everybody in the world is looking for an honest person. So if you can be honest, if you can show those who employ you that you can be an honest person, trust me, you will go places. I have far too many examples, I won't waste your time with that. Third thing I want you to take note of is that the richest people, the most successful people are those who add value. They are those who add value, those who solve problems, they add value. So a farmer who is farming cocoa for instance, a cocoa farmer or a cassava farmer, he will be okay but he won't be the most prosperous person. The person who will be most prosperous is the one who can process that cocoa and make it into chocolate or who can process that cassava into the various things and sell it. Those are the most prosperous people. So you find that the richest countries in the world are not the countries that have the produce, they are the countries that process the produce, they are the countries that solve the problems. So transpose that yourself. It's not enough to just have ideas. It's not enough to just support. It's important for you to look for a way of adding value, look for a way of solving a problem. The fourth thing that I'd like to tell you is that, you know, there are some people who keep talking about the good old days, the good old days. There are some people who will tell you that in our own days it was so easy to find employment, so easy to do everything, so they keep telling you about the good old days. Let me tell you something about such people. They have a bad memory, bad memory. Their problem is that they have a bad memory. They don't remember. Anybody who remembers well will know that there is no such thing as a good old days. Every generation has its challenges. But your own generation is the best generation, is the most advanced generation in human history. No, no, no. And I'm not saying this, and I'm not saying this to flatter you. No, this generation is the most advanced in human history. There is no generation that is as advanced as this one that you are in, in human history. How many of you have smartphones? How many of you have phones? How many people here of the participants have phones? Let me tell you something about the smartphone that you are carrying. In 2012, a gentleman called Farid Zakaria, Farid Zakaria is a CNN journalist and he comes on very frequently. He was speaking at a Harvard dinner and he said that the smartphones that people were carrying then in 2012 had more computing power than the Apollo 11, that Apollo spacecraft that carried people to the moon. That was in 2012. I met Farid again in 2018 or 2019. I told him, I reminded him of what he said. He said now the smartphones even have a hundred times more computing power than that Apollo spacecraft that landed people on the moon. So what you even have in your hands alone is more technology than took people all the way to the moon. And you have that in your hands today. And somebody wants to remind you of the days of black and white television and tell you that those were the good old days, the days when we didn't have social media, the days when we didn't have them. Let me tell you what, there are people who are here of my age or possibly older who when they heard a phone ring, when they heard a phone ring they would dance, they would dance because they thought it was a song. They didn't know that it was a phone ringing. They had never seen a phone before. But you have phones. You have all sorts of things. Technology is available for you. Your generation is the smartest that has ever lived. And we are holding our breath. All of us are holding our breath for what you will achieve. So for all of you who are here today, I think that with all the training that you've got, this is the beginning of an incredible journey in success for you. And I pray that you will excel and exceed all of our expectations for you. And I pray that God will bless you. Whenever we hear about you, we must always hear the best news. Today we are here at the infectious diseases hospital where we saw state of the art equipment. The very best infectious diseases hospital in West Africa is right here in Nassar Hospital. So the possibilities are limitless. I want to challenge you to do the very best you can. Go beyond the skies, go beyond everything. Make sure that you do achieve all the best that you can. God bless you.