 Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill once said, healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have. Guys, welcome to the Advocate. Today we're going to be sharing with you top-provoking topics as usual. It's going to be an exciting conversation. We basically call a spade by its name. Guess what? The deplorable state of Nigerian's healthcare system is at the top of our list. And I'll be sharing with you some thoughts on what I think a Nigerian life should mean. We're also going to be taking a look at unemployment crisis in Nigeria. And just imagine the number of unemployed people today. Uche will be here to share thoughts on that. Toye will be advocating for the representation of Nigerian and African books. And finally, our very own friend Kunle Lawal would open up a can of worms. And guess what? Middle-class circumverts the Nigerian democracy is going to be his topic. Guys, sit back. After this break, we'll be back to dissect this topic. Stay with us. My story is about the story of a young girl, Anastasia Okocha, a 15-year-old girl who was standing in front of her house when she was run over by a drunk Okada driver. A drunk Okada driver. Now, after excessive delay, she was finally taken to the hospital. By the time they arrived at Lute, it was 48 hours after. And guess what? Her family faced a grim reality. They lost her on Sunday 20th, 2001. When they arrived Lute, a lot of things unfolded. First of all, there was a lack of beds. The syringes and the glows and everything else that you had to use in the hospital. The family was asked to pay for them. Imagine buying the syringe your daughter would be used. But guess what? Everything they spoke about mirrored an extortion than a healthcare facility. And this is the reality of many Nigerians. The story of the coaches is one that reminds us of every Nigerian is one crisis away from death. The state of healthcare in Nigeria is very deplorable. About 3.2 million out of the 200 million Nigerians today are covered under the national health insurance scheme. Just imagine that number far less than 10%. Access to quality health is still a nightmare for many Nigerians. While our educated officials have the luxury of student wealth to fly abroad for expensive medical treatments, our underfunded healthcare sector continues to decay. Now with health sector only receiving 4.6% of our national budgets every year. You can imagine if you break it down, that's somewhere around 2.9 billion is allocated to medical care every year in Nigeria with a population of 70% under 35. Countless efforts have been made by the African Union and the World Health Organization and many others to persuade the federal government to increase healthcare budgets. But yet nothing has been done. What has it cost to put a primary healthcare center in every local government? What has it cost to put a special hospital in every sanitary district? The lives of our people have to matter. Quality healthcare is not just a benefit reserved for the privileged few, but rather a fundamental right for every Nigerian and every citizen. We therefore urge the Nigerian government to emulate its foreign counterparts and make concerted efforts to offer comprehensive universal healthcare to its citizens. We also cannot forget to hold accountable the custodians of our healthcare sector, to our doctors and our nurses. We urge you to remember the sanctity of your profession and the fact that you hold someone's life in your hands. The level of dedication and diligence that you show is very important would determine life or death. For a healthcare professional in any capacity to lose empathy is to undermine the very virtue upon which your profession is built. Medicine without empathy is no medicine at all. Every healthcare worker who owes you owe your patients a duty of care and if the quality of service given falls below the standard of care, it amounts to a medical negligence that can also be persecuted. But if we continue to undermine the lives of our people, we are going to be breaking the act of 2004 medical and dental practitioners and it has been passed into law. We cannot continue to ignore the rising polls of avoidable deaths in the stratvestical healthcare sector. Remember the lady that what we lost her to, I think prime medical center the other time. You remember the other guy that was rushed to hospital and they asked him to get a police report and he passed before they could get one. Why would you delay a victim to healthcare because you need a police report? I mean put him on the chain, he's not running away. However, we can, for the protection of the lives of every Nigerian child, continue to advocate that we have to make healthcare work in this country. The lives of Nigerians are not ours to waste, it's ours to protect. I open the floor. Well, Fadi, one of the key things I find interesting was when COVID occurred and our VIPs couldn't leave the country again. So COVID was kind of like a blessing or a pointer for us to decide to look into our health sector and start to ask the real questions. We lost some VIPs on the way during COVID, not like we do not commiserate with the families, but it put them in the exact position the common man in Nigeria has had to face. But then it's ironic because we missed the perfect opportunity to fix the healthcare sector at that time. A lot of the states, we saw pictures of many of the states who were put in tents when they could have used that as a chance to roll out community healthcare centres or even one super mega hospital in these locations and in these regions. So it leads me to wonder, what exactly is the problem? Is it the lack of funding? Is it just the strategic outlook on how these things are supposed to be done or is it that we've just lost our conscience completely? Well, I think I can speak to it in that I have a child with a medical condition. So I deal with the healthcare system on a weekly basis in Nigeria and recently I've had to deal with the public healthcare system due to her diagnosis and due to the fact that the best endocrinologist in Africa consults at Luther. And it's a daunting experience. It's a depressing experience. The first time that we went, the first week that we went, we were literally all in tears when we left. So, you know, there's two ways you can look at it, right? In that, yes, healthcare professionals are maybe neglecting their role. But they're also existing within a structure that is not set up for them to succeed. So there are people there who really want to do their job, but they don't have the ability to do it. So let me set an example. We are due to go to Luth to sleep over. I told them, I'm not going to sleep over. There's no week. We have transport. We'll get there as early as we need to get there. Because there was, in one of our visits, I lost my way. Luth is massive and ended up entering the ward, the general ward. And I wept at what I was seeing, like leakages, just filth. I mean, people on top of each other, and it was terrible. And then I got the report saying, okay, we're going to be sleeping over. This is what we need. I need to go to the lab and pick up the tubes, pick up the injections. I need to go to the pharmacy, go and get the drug that they're going to inject her with. And I was confused. I'm like, what do you mean? Because me, I'm coming from private healthcare. What do you mean? I have to go and do those things. Oh, yes, because we don't have those things here. You have to buy them. You have to buy them. We spent two days looking for the drug. I called pharmacists. I knew I called so many pharmacists. I called everywhere. And I had anxiety in my throat for like two days. So just imagine someone who doesn't have any other choice. My friend who lost her sister said, my sister did not die from the accident. She died from negligence. If the response had been quick enough, she would have survived. So just imagine, and then they had money, even at the end of the day, before they could take her to the mall, they had to pay. At every point in time, it was about bills, bills, bills, bills, bills. Just imagine that not very many Nigerians can afford three square meals and you're not having to pay exorbitant bills. We understand that the private hospitals are also there to make profits as well as to run. But I think when there is a medical emergency and there has to be a way that they have to put the life of the person above, pay for your card, pay for this, those things can happen along the line. And I really want to see persecution if you ask me. Negligence, criminal negligence is something we've taken to another level. Medicine is something you have to look for and have hope. And people go to hospital and they'll come back. You could go for headache and you're dead, right? Because somewhere along the line, someone is exploiting the gaps. We know corruption is there. You spoke about corruption, you spoke about the negligence and most people were even good at running away. We're talking about people living in the country. A lot of Nigerians are living in a country that are going abroad. Canada has benefited immensely from our healthcare, our doctors. Saudi Arabia has also benefited. And the Minister of Labour said it's okay for doctors to live because there is still enough here for us, but that's not the way to process this. To lose your talent, to lose talented people, whether they are doctors or not, is to have a brain drain. And the quality of development of every economy is dependent on the quality of the minds that is driving the economy. If you lose the best talent, regardless of where we're going, it's a global world and the competition is global. You would have to suffer for it. So we have to make medicine attractive. We have to treat our doctors right. I'm also advocating for pay review if that's what's going to take. I don't even know if reform is the word we must use. We use reform and reform has lost its meaning. But I really think there is a drastic and urgent need for us to strip it down, build it up, whatever we need to do. It needs to be done fast. We don't know who's next. But Ferdi, you know, you get the real position of a country when the country actually decides to only spend 4.16 of its entire budget on health. It has told you clearly that it is not... That's more than what they spend on renovation of their national assembly. I was going to ask what are the comparisons... Less than. Was it raining inside? Less than. And the man was complaining that it's raining because they've not... Refuse to approve that. You know, growing up, I remember local hospitals, you know, when the local government was still functional, under military regime. So I don't understand why during the democracy, we've decided to bring in the national primary healthcare development agency, NPHDCA or whatever the call themselves, to interfere in the local government's autonomy in handling primary healthcare. In 2019, I was around a bit and I went to a primary healthcare center, 15 minutes from the center of Abuja. And I got there. I entered a delivery ward and I'm slim. For me, I couldn't stretch out my hand, you know, which is sad. And the only thing they had in that room was iodine and panadol extract. And this is 15 minutes from Abuja. That's the city center. And about three or four minutes drive from the train station. So, Nigeria, well, we hope this talks bring up something. Well, guys, which is next after this break? Stay with us. The crisis of unemployment. The average age of graduation from a Nigerian institution of higher learning is 26. A potential employee would get admission in university at 20. Maybe lose a year or two due to prolonged strikes, graduate at 25. Then there's almost a composite gap here between graduation and NYSC because of our inefficiencies in our systems. And by the time the graduate is ready, you are competing for employment with previously employed workers who have lost their jobs due to economic downturn, recession, or cost efficiency restructuring across organizations. Now, jobs in certain institutions in the country have both an age and grid limitation that becomes an impediment to every new entrant. Now, graduate training programs have become almost extinct, right? With employers now requiring experience that is just not possible for a fresh graduate. Recent statistics from statistic predicts that by the end of 2021, the unemployment rate in Nigeria is estimated to reach 32.5%. That's almost a third of the employable market. This figure is projected to increase further by the time we get to 2022 and data has shown that it has continued to rise year in, year out, right? This means that it is an employer's market and as it responds to the law of demand and supply. So basically, there are more people looking for employment that there are jobs. Now, with an abundance of experienced workers losing their jobs and remaining unemployed or underemployed due to the devastating effects of recession and the economy, we have on our hands a national crisis with the potential to implode with both economic and social impact for our nation. They say, and I don't mind this devil's workshop, right? And employment can and will create the following ripple effects. Increase in crime rates. Underutilized capacity becomes available for civic unrest. Armed robbery. Financial crimes, a.k.a. Yahoo! Yahoo! Boys, as boys have to survive. Economic migration and a corresponding increase in mental health challenges due to resorting to mood enhancing drugs leading to drug abuse because the mind is truly the devil's workshop. Now, in the last two years, despite the lockdown due to the global pandemic, Nigeria has become the fourth leading source of immigration to Canada's skilled worker program. Nigerians remain favorites for acceptance due to a high level of education and our lingua franca being English making it easy to score the points required for entry. So basically, we are smart people. We know how to get the work done, which is why they're going to continue to take us. We are on the verge of a brain drain. So how do we change this? The time has come for us to begin to change the curriculum of our institutions to become more entrepreneurial with a focus on work readiness skills instead of theoretical context and frameworks that don't translate to real-life skills. It's time to introduce the concept of ideation and creativity to allow for broad-based thinking to come up with solutions for some of the Nigerians' biggest problems by creating jobs. We must start to create alternative pathways to wealth and sustainability through funding of business incubators and accelerator programs to increase the survival rates of startups and support the entrepreneurial process. This government-funded but privately-run incubators can be created as private public partnerships, initiatives that would provide business advisory, co-working spaces and frameworks and network for entrepreneurs for easier paths to market. So basically, we want an entrepreneur to survive in this market. The Ministry of Labor must start to sanction organizations that have put discriminatory age limits for graduate roles to give everyone a fair playing field. So the Ministry of Interior and Labor should start to enforce the requirements of knowledge transfer from our expatriate community to ensure that the Nigerian workforce remains skilled and knowledgeable and employable to remain relevant for the future of work. Perhaps with this, we can start to drive the numbers down and truly provide an opportunity for full and productive employment and decent work for all in line with the Sustainable Development Goals 8. Wow. Which I must say, what I find most scary when you said 32.5% is if you put that across Nigeria's 200 million population, you're talking of approximately 65 million people unemployed. Yes. That's more than the population of Syria alone, Ghana and Togo put together. You see, and the thing about it is people want to work, right? People deserve to end a decent living. But when you've already put so many barriers, right, for them, how do they get on the job market? We're talking earlier about how, you know, the average age right now, to be honest, is actually around 28. And I remember the first time, you know, I became aware of that. I was dealing with a youth population and many of them had just graduated or were still in university and I'll ask how old are you? And they'll say 26. What year are you in? You're telling me you're in third year of university. So my brain is already calculating. You still have one year to go. You're still going to be at home for one year. Then you're going to graduate. How do you compete in the market, right? No one would employ you at that age because they'll say you're not young. You don't have youth on your side. People want you to work with your, one of the things that youth brings is energy. But if you're already 30, maybe you're married. You already have two children. And then they want to employ you as a fresh graduate. Your priorities are different. You're thinking about your daughter, your son. You can't bring the best of you to the workplace. And then we then, there's, we don't have a conducive environment for entrepreneurship. Anyone who has tried to do any entrepreneur of venture in this country can tell you the drama that comes with it. You can't access funding, right? You can't pay the right people to work for you, right? And the cost of training are retraining because sometimes you're finding skills that are suboptimal. Now, you know, just even taking back on what you just said about the people in school, you made a recommendation about reviewing what is the curriculum of today. I still think what we call education is a curriculum that was designed for the last century. I agree. A lot of what is being studied today can get you a job. Anywhere in the world. And if the individuals have to figure it out. Now, if you look at the other side, they said about 13.5 million Nigerian youths are out of education. So when you have people out of education, out of employment, you have the recipe for insecurity. I was actually very shocked when the president said, young Nigerians, if you want jobs, behave yourselves. And I think that, I really think that he's not actually seen the cost and effects. The young people are agitated and you're seen unrest because there is nothing to do. So you don't speak to the symptom when you haven't dealt with the cost. For you to say it's not my responsibility, they should behave themselves because we can't get foreign direct investment. There are more things than just attracting foreign direct investment. Foreign direct investment will not fix your policy. In fact, a policy that has not, you haven't addressed, are you expecting me to bring my money to your company? A lot of foreign direct investors today cannot get their money out of the economy because of dollar scum. The biggest racket is the dollar racket. And quite frankly, a lot of people are cutting the middle here. So what I think is important because we are joking with this, is very, very important. I went to the really, really far part of town yesterday living like he's a bubble. You might not even know that you and I are living in this pseudo conducive environment. Going that far, you get to realize that we are only as safe as these people as engaged. And if we don't do what is needed to get them to jobs, we're losing the time. And there's cyclical employment, which means that as innovation is coming, more skills are going to become redundant. And if our curriculum is not going to upgrade people, we're preparing people for a world that has passed and they're graduating more, they're dated or you're graduating outdated. So currently right now you can actually say is it really worth people going to university? Is it worth it? It's not worth it. It's not worth it at all. You're actually better off learning a vocational skill. You are actually better off learning a vocational skill. I run an animation company and half the people I work with I haven't seen their degrees. In fact, if you have interest, passion, you're in. And it's not about whether you have a degree. Our degree is when we prepare people for certification, but not for industries. And if we don't solve entrepreneurial problems, it's going to really, really hit us hard. The average Nigerian is actually an entrepreneur by design, by hustle, but it's always about the quick book. The thinking of entrepreneurship should be about value creation, not just about making the margin. But how can you think about value creation if you can't eat? So it's easy to say, you know, they should be thinking a long term. And but if you think on the small scale that you see these guys who want to work, they decide, okay, I'm going to set up my cart on the road to sell food. And they have their clients. I'm one of them. But one day the local government come, they clear them up. What are they meant to do? They're actually making an honorable living. You're not supplying any support for them. They have decided, you know what, rather than steal, rather than be a nuisance, let me actually do something on which I can feed my family. And even that is taken away from them. So really there's just so little hope. You shouldn't go to university. Okay. I want to do a vocational skill. I want to work. I want to become an entrepreneur. But again, the system is not designed for entrepreneurs. And you might spend 10 years doing a four year course. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that is that side of the time. You know, for me, I think what's most, it was most the problem with the situation is even for entrepreneurship. We have double digit interest rates. Yeah. They're not, they're not conducive for entrepreneurship at all. If you look at the amount of money used to buy, okay, let's look at Nigeria's budget. We buy laptops and computers every year. Every Parastata, Nigeria has more than 1,500 ministries, departments and agencies. And everybody buys computers every year. If that money was taken just to as soft loans given to people to go into entrepreneurship, we're actually be doing a lot better than our so-called computerized remote access to government agencies, which don't even exist in the beginning. I actually think even the civil service as it is, it's actually a place where most of what you find are duplications of roles and many people sitting down there doing nothing. So that in itself, it's a place that cannot drive an economy. When have you tried to get a license? You see for weeks, it will take you two years, right? And then you spoke about access to credit and loans. Every time the government puts a face that there's access to credit and they collateralize it, they fail to understand what they're called the country is. That's the things called matching capital. In other countries, if you're an entrepreneur, you have 50%, they'll meet it. But to put a collateral in front of an entrepreneur that's trying to start, you should be giving them tax haven, telling them half three years tax break. So you can actually scale because the reality is that the future of job creation is in the hands of the entrepreneurs. The government cannot create jobs. They only create the climate for jobs and creating that climate is actually creating this funding, access to funding, access to enabling environment, access to skill, right on a level, let education work and feed the economy. There's a disconnect between economy and education. And even the tech industry, see what the fintech space has done. We have unicorns now that have emerged in the last few years. But guess what the government is doing? They're not having to use regulations, stifle people bringing all those draconian regulatory laws. Regulation is not meant to kill businesses. It's meant to empower and make them thrive. If our regulation is about getting them out of the space, you're going to be reducing job. And I hope they understand that. I don't think they do. I think their business is to regulate and their business is to control and their business is to stifle. It's not to create an environment. Not even with conversation or negotiation. They throw the laws at you without first understanding the premise upon which those laws are made. You know, but you know, there's something you said about the, if only they can look at the big picture. In most developed and developing economies, actually most economies, including Nigeria, right? The SME represents more than 80% of the GDP, 70% of GDP and 80% of employment. So that means really, you should be focusing on driving and growing small to medium, even micro, micro small to medium enterprise. Because that company hiring 10 people here, 20 people here, 50 people here has a knock on effect across the entire economy. How many jobs really can be created at that time? Microfinance banks, ideally in Bangladesh, microfinance banks were very helpful in helping all those local farmers and SMEs assess certain kind of capital. And in fact, they function like companies where they were doing their risk assessment was very detailed. Now we have a situation where our banks are only good for deposit collection. That's it. All they want is bring your money less. So our banks are not specialized. So banks are actually all, it's all about, it's not about sitting down. Let's make some quick money. No, the products are not differentiated. Every product is similar. It's just about women account, children account, bravo. Tony is up next after the break. Stay tuned. Hashtag are books matter. It's a push to get Nigerian and African children's books by Nigerian and African authors into our retail outlets. These days in Nigeria, we have a fair number of bookstores that carry children's books, as well as medium to large retail outlets such as supermarkets, grocery stores that have a book section on their premises that also have a selection of children's books. This sounds good, right? Yeah, very wrong. Unfortunately, when you look closer, there is a glaring problem. A majority of retailers A, do not carry children's books with black characters. B, do not carry children's books by Nigerian or African authors. C, if they do have children's books by Nigerian and African authors, the selection is limited. Lastly, if they do have children's books by Nigerian and African authors, the positioning in store is terrible because they're placed in the least desirable location within the outlet, making it hard for shoppers to find. When it comes to children's books, it is probably not so surprising that foreign retailers aren't quick to represent the Nigerian market in which they operate. However, this lack of representation also extends to many local retailers too. When asking retailers why there is so little effort to include children's books featuring black characters and those by Nigerian and African authors, this is the response. Their policy is to only carry foreign books for children. The very matter-of-fact way this is presented as a reason by some retailers reveals a climate in which they can operate without being held accountable. Imagine this scenario. You visit a retail outlet in the UK which has a book section. You are Caucasian. I want to purchase a children's book for your child. When you get there, you realize there are no books for your child with Caucasian characters and none by British authors. You bring this issue up to management and the response is, our policy is to carry only foreign books. Nigerian and locally made books are of poor quality. That's another reason that's given which is ridiculous in this age of internet and social media. Therefore, this can be easily disputed with minimal effort by just googling or searching on social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook for Nigerian children's books or Nigerian children's book authors. It really doesn't make take much effort or time. So why this reluctance still? Another reason given is that customers don't want or bi-locally made books. This puts the blame on the consumer. But on closer look reveals consumers have not been surveyed in regards to this topic matter and that customers are not even aware of these items in store due to example, bad positioning. So therefore, they're not being placed to sell. So who is to blame? Is it retailers? Is it parents? Can we expect retailers to hold themselves accountable? Isn't it up to parents to ensure representation and access? Who is accountable? How do we ensure representation because our books matter, our stories matter and our lives matter? I opened up the floor. Okay, so I think it's something that was taught to us before we even started understanding things. The truth is we need to understand this. The first university was in Africa, somewhere in Mali, I'm right. And Egypt invented the mathematics. But what the Caucasians and others did was take our knowledge, go back, recreate it and sell it back to us. And in selling it back to us, they sold us that a culture was more preferable to another one. Disregarding the deep history and culture the African continent sits in. So on this parameter, it's kind of cool in quotes to have an accent or the sound bougie. Well, I think that would be the word. It would be bougie to read foreign books and they sell this idea across generation to generation and it's affected our bookstores. You know, for me, this thing just runs across every single thing. It's the whole concept of local content, right? We are such an important nation and even in our mindset, I asked someone the other day, if you had this particular product made here locally matches the same standard, what would you buy? And they said they'll buy the international one. So you can imagine that it's that same mindset that has perpetrated itself across everything. If we don't understand how important it is for us to actually patronize us locally, right? Our books, our stories, our culture, there's nothing as beautiful as being able to articulate our history through books, you know, to engage our children through things that they see, that they can relate to, they can connect to. It's the same thing with our clothes, right? We have organizations that will tell you you have to dress in a certain way and that's regarded as formal. Meanwhile, our prints are there, our local designers are there. It's just, it's the same mindset. Do you know, Uche, it's so warped that we will steal money from this country with corrupt means and we can't even invest in this country. Invest the money back on here. Imagine if this stolen money was invested in Nigeria. Right back in here. We would at least feel a little plus from it. In Dubai, I actually saw empty houses and they would point and say, those are not Nigerians, they belong to Nigerians. They don't live there. But you know, speaking about local authors, I think that we saw that it's been a trend but it's changing. At first, if you look at music, I remember growing up, I had a diet of foreign artists. That is changing. If you go to our clubs today, which Kulebis is quite of. If you go there, you realize that they play our local artists back-to-back You only get to here one or two. Now, if even our movies, the cinema used to be dominated heavily by a lot of foreign titles. Now, well, I may not know how far that has moved but I can say that I see a lot more Nigerians now getting prime spot. Usually, they used to put Nigerians 4 o'clock when people are at work. But right now, it's moving up. I was seeing that some movies are doing well and the box office, 500 million Naira, 300 million Naira because they are getting that. But what happened was a group of people took ownership of that industry or that segment and came together and started to negotiate where their books are placed and even finding the authors. Sitting down here now, I don't know too many children authors, but I know black authors. I mean, I read a lot of them when I find them. I grew up on a diet of African literature, right, the African writer series. And my mind is very African and it helped me get into storytelling. But we do need to address this because if the identities of our children are still being shaped by imperialist lens, we're not making that much progress. We can be free from colonialism when our literature is not empowering us to be who we are in our authentic way. We're still falling back on their movies and their books to identify who we are and interpret our identity through their lens. Not good enough. But I want to bring it to the day-to-day level. All this is good and well said, right? Because there's organizations or people with their own companies doing this. I'm talking on the everyday level at home with families who goes and does the purchasing at home. The power is with you, the purchaser. So, you know, I get frustrated with the responses that I get as the children's books offers from outlets. But at the end of the day, I make that annoyance known to them. What are other parents doing? Because I get parents all the time and they'll complain that, oh, the girl, you know, the daughter prefers, you know, wants to be light or white or, for example, my son, he wanted to get Ronaldo hair to explain to him. Oh, but yeah, that's true, you know, get Ronaldo hair. Yeah, but mommy wear whites. I said, no, we're not whites. And that's in our home where we're kind of conscious about this and make an effort. But I get people who complain about this, about their children and I ask them, what are you doing about this? What are you doing? I did a poll about go and look at the library you have for your children at home, the books. Put the ones with black characters on one side, put the ones on white characters on the other side and then almost 70%, more than 70%, had more Caucasian characters than black. As soon as you said it, I just did a mental scan and your spot is actually more than, it's actually more like 80 or 90%. So that means we're all guilty. Exactly, so it's not about thinking about this huge level. What is actually happening in our homes? What are your children consuming? When you go out to buy, to purchase for them, pay attention to those things and if you don't see what you want, make a demand and our problem is this apathy that we have and sometimes I feel like I'm the mad person in the room screaming about this, but you can't as a parent because these days I'm leaning more to blame the parents than the outlets because they're going to operate their business. It's us that are there to make them accountable. So I lean on the point of I blame the parents because you're saying you have this problem, but you're not doing anything about it. You want someone else to come and fix your child or fix the problem in your home. You are the one with the buying power. You make that difference, you make that change and once you get a chain of parents doing that and the change that comes over the long term because the youngest mind is the most impressionable mind and it's the mind where we can make these changes happen. Like I've lost hope in adults. My focus is now on children because this country is going this, it's not going here where we should be and it's really important that our children that they understand who they are, that they understand their worth, they understand the value, they understand the value of local content but that happens from an early age and we have to kind of reprogram our minds as parents to say, hey, actually you know what, my mind has been colonized and decolonizing it for you but we have to just get off our behinds and do something and stop complaining. The good part is that you are even aware that there is a level of colonization that we have to deal with but not very many people are aware or even bothered and that's where the problem is that we're not even awake to the fact that there is a problem losing cultural identity and helping our kids to know. I remember looking at, watching a video where the lady was saying, when you tell me A for apple and I haven't seen an apple in my father's compound I'm at a loss as to how that identified it. Why didn't we go with A for Akara? Right, I love it. Everyone understands that so there is a sense that we adopt sometimes we don't even contextualize or localize so our education is more conceptual than it's actually a practical reality that we're working. But you know what, there's something that this has triggered in my mind. You know the earlier conversation about our educational system because a lot of things I hear from parents especially those with older children is that they are preparing their children for the future of work. They are preparing their children for to be able to compete internationally, right? So could it be that they don't pay attention to this because they're like, of what use would it be to my child to know that A is for Akara? They need to be able to go and understand that A is for apple. Well, I think that's a great point and we could answer the fact, a whole different topic in that the laziness of parents in this our country because that's another topic in itself. So we'll save that for another time. Coming up next is Kunle and there's view on the middle class after the break. How the middle class circumvents democracy in Nigeria? Before I proceed, I would first like to define what the middle class is in this conversation and the middle class of course would be anyone whose literate above secondary school level. So it's not an economic definition. It is a political definition. Nigeria is a very complex nation politically. We all know that nothing seems to work normally. What is democratic landscape is made of a massive politically illiterate group known as this middle class. Though the most literal group in the country, which of course can be fought, it's sad to know that they are the hunters in Nigeria's democratic landscape, planting booby traps for a young democracy. Here are some clear cut parameters to portray this uncommon point or unpopular opinion as some want to think without looking into the mirror. Despite being the channel through which the elite provide stomach infrastructure to the grassroots. Of course, do you see your big politicians in the remote hoods giving stomach infrastructure? No, hardly there. So the middle class is giving that burden to transfer the so-called financial benefits of voting for a candidate to the grassroots. Of course, they would live in self-denial. That's the middle class, that they ain't the conduit for such a bad practice. Now, despite writing and constituting the makeup of the average political party, it is not far-fetched or not uncommon to hear on news media that political parties have no ideology or it's a tune playing to those who don't even know how many political parties exist. Or I registered in Nigeria. Now, this is common within the middle class, but the great question is who actually writes the constitution for these political parties? Of course, there are lawyers, people that are politicians within the middle class and usually at the behest of the ruling elite. On social media, it is so simple to watch the middle class attack corrupt politicians. But guess what? On the same timeline, if I was invited to attend some politician's birthday or his daughter's wedding, the same commentators who were on my timeline to harass the corruption of politicians will see this picture with me in a birthday and say, wow, Kunle has really moved up in life or he has moved up in politics and that is the truth. But we will choose to ignore that part and just say government has generally been bad. Now, with the voter's register of almost 90 million in 2019, guess who has intelligent bear parlor discussions while posting great solutions on social media, on how government could change, on how the local government or state police is better. The arguments are way up. Trust me, I can tell you no parliament in the world will have the kind of discussions we have on social media. But guess what? There were less than 29 million voters in a general election in 2019 and in the recent by-elections in Lagos and other spots all over in Nigeria. Less than 5% of total registered voters participated. To make these numbers more realistic to you, I'll tell you what they really are. We're talking of less than 200,000 voters delivering a senator, less than 100,000 voters delivering a federal House of Rep. I don't want to mention how low local government chairman elections go. Well, we're looking at Lagos. I hope Lagos stands up to his local government elections. But we are on social media forums, arguing and talking and discussing and hating. I don't know whether some people are waiting for air-conditioned units to be brought to polling units in Leki or in Yenegwa or in Guisau. But the truth is, we will always remain so far from democracy and so far from elections till we understand that we, the middle class, are the problem. Elections are not one on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, or on our WhatsApp groups where we hold our conversations but in the polling units. 60 million of the middle class mostly was missing in an election in 2019. If this set of people do not start to participate or actually hold the government accountable and, most of all, actually read the Nigerian constitution, which they call, in quotes, not a constitution. Well, guess what? Most of them haven't read it. The country will continue to dwindle in political thoughts and directions as they will continue to be the grave diggers of political development in Africa's most populous nation. You know, just even listening to you say, it's, quite frankly, was quite thought-provoking, I would say, on a level. But I do think that for a country that is struggling to pay $30,000 as minimum wage to claim to have a middle class, we just might be playing to the fact that it's an illusion of middle class. An educated middle class, as you claim, who is not politically educated or politically literate, is no good to a society. And if you look at the last 20 years or 30 years, we have come through incisant military interregums. We've gone through nascent democracy that we still call nascent, even while it's no longer still that young. But the middle class has not been able to get an understanding of the role of politics. Just a decent enough life, good enough car, they've removed themselves from the harsh realities of society by building taller fences and driving good cars on broken roads. So there is an inherent sense of selfishness that I think is the main disease of the middle class. The circumversion is actually more a consequence of selfishness. That many of them would rather fly out of this country weeks to election because they are afraid of insecurity and all of those things and return after election. They've not been able to make the connection that governance and politics affects all our lives. And unfortunately, it is a game of numbers. And if the educated ones are not crystallizing the knowledge, those who are for sale who have more in numbers will always go for the highest bidder. You know, whenever we make this statement, those who are for sale, who tells the elite or the political ruling class that those people are for sale? The elite and ruling class are too far away to be able to tell who is for sale or not. That job is also done by the middle class. Now, the middle class has built itself a blameless structure. And within that blameless structure, I will say our social media, our so-called gyms, whatever sort of outlet we have to deceive ourselves that we are not part of the problem. Or as usual, let me use what most people will say, what's the matter, just Japan now, which thing they happen? You know, I'll tell you a story. Japan might save you, but I know of someone's uncle who thought he had Japan during structural adjustment program. Well, he died and his children had to come and bury him. One of his children was shot at at 8 a.m. in Nigeria. He hadn't been in Nigeria for 17 years, but Nigeria still gets to you. Where are you? Japan? How far you are? You have beneficiaries here. So, Kunle, during elections, right, you go out to the polling stations. You see the so-called middle class, those who turn up in their fancy cars or they turn up in their umbrellas, they come to look at the queue, noses all up in the air, and they're like, I can't stand here. It's too hot. This place is too dirty and off they go. And I would say to them, I always engage in conversation. I'm like, are you coming back? And they're like, I don't know, it depends. I have guests coming over. I have a barbecue in my house. You know, I upwork today. It's a chance for us to keep back. And I'm looking at them and saying, are you serious? This is your country. And they're like, does it really matter? My votes don't really matter. So what's the point? Let me just go. And like you said, I have options. I carry a second passport. If it gets really bad, I'll be gone. You hear people talking and asking themselves, are your visas up to date? People will come and say, I hope your visas are up to date because if anything just happens, oh, you need to consider getting citizenship somewhere else. For someone like me, I only have one passport. I have a Nigerian passport. So I don't have options. So for me, it's important. When I hear excuses like, oh, I don't have my voters card. That's a completely different conversation in itself. I don't have my voters card. That's why I'm like, oh, I tried to get it, but you know, I have work commitments. I went there and I saw a long queue and I just had to leave. And I'm like, are we serious? That is the middle class that we're talking about. So we are responsible for the problems that we have in this country. You know what's sad is that we do not understand that our voter card is more important than your international passport, your diverse license, or anything else. All put together. Well, I think because the understanding of what it means to vote and the understanding of what your actual vote is has been so devalued, right? People think, well, it's corrupt anyway. Why do you try to follow that? No, you know, there's this catchy phrase I think I heard in 2019. It was really very, it was really very funny. And they will say, a vote for a smaller party. It's a wasted vote. It's a wasted vote. Okay. If we accept it's a wasted vote. Now watch how hypothetical it is. Why were the two big parties sending talks to polling units and buying votes? Say it's wasted and you've won now. Don't deceive yourself then. Why are you still going through that? And you know, we can't even pick that. Though if it's time to criticize something that we want to pay attention to, we of course will pick a topic on social media and trash it out. But we never trash out the little lines in politics. Someone tells you a vote doesn't count. Yet he's struggling to buy votes. Or he's telling you that a vote here doesn't matter. Or he's struggling to buy votes. It's actually hypothetical. You know, what should unite the middle class? Should be intellect, education, exposure. But that is not what unites you. No, I told you what unites you. Yeah, Jim's Club membership. Yes, okay. And then on a level, and maybe they might even on a certain level embody the religious and tribal ethnic sentiments that many people vote with. So, you know, because at the end of the day, it's pretty much, I mean, I ran here in Lagos. I paid taxes here. But you want people to say, okay, you're from Delta State. You should go back to Delta State. Really, tell me about that. My point is there are people who are still caught up in those primordial thinking. But a middle class, I mean, they're educated based on your definition. You know, I don't even understand, you know, when the... The whole state of origin thing, right? No, I've always been a proper, I've always been a proper state of residence. But you mentioned something. And this is religion. And this is where religion misses it. I don't understand how religion is comfortable giving widows 10 bags of rice. Instead of repairing the system, repairing governance, which of course will improve and create a welfare system that the church doesn't need or the mosque doesn't need to be giving out rice and peas out. It depends what your goal is for that religion. And unfortunately, we're not talking... That's a topic for another debate. But I think also, because people don't understand the political system, as you said. You know, first, you need to be aware and understand the concept before you value it. Do you understand? People don't value the environment. You go out of your houses, trash all over the place. Oh, next thing you think, they throw pure water out of the car. So why would they value the votes? You know, I've always pushed for this. People say governments corrupt, but I always remind them when last did any of us legally get a driver's license? When last did we wait in a queue when it really mattered? Yeah. When last did you wait for your international passport to come out at the right time? Doing the right thing is an act of patriotism. We don't do it. But look, let me bring this up. Okay, I'm Nigerian, but I also have another option. Right? I'm also British. But during the 2019 elections, well, I know people, as you say, well, go in and vote. Maybe my husband made it a point that we're staying. Why? Because we value our options, our privilege to vote. We are patriots. I love Nigeria. Despite all the badness, it's my country. I love it. Would you say it's the same for your children? Yes. So the key is that we buy local as much as possible. We want to do our fair part. But it's difficult in everyday life. When you're struggling for light, when you're struggling for food, when your car is being destroyed by roads to say, okay, I need to go here to get my voter's card, I need to do that. But people haven't kind of put the two together that going and making that vote can actually impact your everyday life, especially in the local government elections. So there needs to be kind of understanding of this concept of what our politics is and what voting is. We really have to dial it back to the very basics and educate people. Yeah, I think education is key. Well, it's always an interesting conversation on the advocates. There's certainly never enough time, but we make do with what we have. So please don't just listen. Remember what they say. Rome was not built in a day. Play your part even if it's just to share the advocate with your friends and family. The more diverse thoughts we share, the richer the solutions, the wildest inspire. 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