 Man down. There is a man down on your street this evening. He got knocked down. No, not by a drunk driver or hit and run. He got run down by you. He is the man you told to man up yesterday. There is a man down in your church, in your mosque, in your office, in your neighborhood, in your cities, in your country, yes, under your very nose. You just shot a man down. You just shot him down with your unreasonable standards and your inhuman requests and your honest feedback when you told him to man up. Man up, man, man up. Why are you so emotional? Why are you talking like a woman? Nobody cares about your feelings. Do these old fans familiar? I'm sure they do. All of us at some point or the other have obviously said this to a man who exhibited the behavior that in our estimation was less than manly. This begs the question, who is a man or what is man? It's a question that has begged answers for centuries and produces as many answers almost as there are men. Hunter, gatherer, provider, fighter, no, no, these are the most earliest definitions. But hey, thank God, man has evolved, right? We have upgraded to macho, head of the home, alpha male, protector, buff, but have we really evolved? Well, the man has evolved from the half-decade hide-wearing club-wielding caveman to the alpha male, gentle man in blue blazers and khaki pants. But he want this thought for a minute. Today's man is actually dying under more pressure and takes his life out of these weights more than any time in history, ironically. So I know what you're thinking, are there no badly behaved men? Is this a case for bad behavior, abuse or male chauvinism? No, no, no, no, absolutely not. I'm not that naive. Let me try and put this in perspective. Some statistics might help us. Globally, male suicide rate is almost three times the female. Suicide rate in men can be as much as 10 times higher than for women in some countries. Nigeria has the highest rate of suicide in Africa, with men leading the numbers. In England, around one in eight men has a common mental health problem, such as depression, anxiety, panic disorder, or OCD, what we call obsessive-compulsive disorder. Men aged 40 to 49 have the highest suicide rates. Men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women, according to the government's national well-being survey. Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women. It's 7% of rough sleepers are men. Does your husband know? Men are nearly three times as likely as women to become dependent on alcohol and three times as likely to report frequent drug use. Men make up the vast majority of the prison population. There are higher rates of mental health problems and increasing rates of self-harm in prisons. Why don't men talk about mental health? Societal expectations and traditional gender roles play a role in why men are less likely to discuss or seek help in their mental health problems. It's important to understand that men can be damaged by stereotypes and expectations as well. So what do we do? I say catch them young. You must immediately begin to ask the question, what kind of boys are we raising today? These boys will soon become men and the success and or failure will be determined by what will teach them today, actually what will teach them now. Many boys grew up today with a wrong composition. They're just products of conflicting and contradictory information from fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, and his friends. It was like many men today grew up with the wrong composition years ago without even knowing it. So what about the older men, you say? We must start getting rid of our stereotypes right away and start giving them a chance to speak. So basically be an heir or be a shoulder to a man, encouragement to open up. By doing so you might just save the life of another man down. All right. What scary statistics. I know, right? Do you know that four in five men that I know and this is not even pulling numbers from the sky. I mean, it's not even going down BP medication, right? Because everything is suppressed. You're not allowed to speak out. You're not allowed to show emotions. And for me, the scary part is there's actually a knock on effect in the home because you've raised men that are emotionally bankrupt. So they're not able to feel the emotions that their home requires. Love, empathy, support, kindness, because they're supposed to be stoic and strong. So it doesn't even benefit anyone at the end of the day. The man is depressed. The man is very stressed. He ends up on medication, right? Then he takes it out on his family and repeats the cycle all over again. It is scary. It's not attractive. I think it's so old school. It's not attractive to say that men should not show emotions. Why not? You've lost someone. It's okay to cry. It doesn't make you any less of who you are. You know, yes, you show emotions and then you move to action because ultimately there's a problem that needs to be solved. It doesn't make you any less of who you are. And we really need to stop the stereotype, you know, which is actually sometimes coming from women, right? The expectations from women that he's a sissy because he showed emotion. We see that all the time, you know, even on TV, it's like, why is he crying? Act like a man. And you're like, right, that's man down. That's a man down, absolutely. And like I even say, it even goes beyond the emotion. I mean, like seeing the women's bits, some say, oh, he's not man enough. How much does he have? How much does he earn? And this man is already working like 10 hours in a day. I mean, and the thing is, he doesn't have the support that will mold them to discover a better him. You know, some men will marry women that will tell them, oh, what are you doing? You could do it this way, that way, that way. And the man changes and is making more money. But some women would just run them down. Well, it even goes beyond that again. I think we are not facing the realities of our time. We're still applying what was given in the days, like years ago, in the olden days, we are applying it to this modern time where everything has changed. Back then, the needs were less. The expectation was just for you to get married, go to the farm, come back home. But now there's so much that has been demanded of you. You have the bad economy, you have so many things to grapple with. And to even add salt to injury, if you are a fan of Arsenal, that's the only love present you have. You haven't won any cup in the long term. You know, so yes, I think you're very right. These little things we do have an effect, a ripple effect on every other aspect of life, from work to home, even to religion. Because a pastor now that is depressed will get to the pulpit and tell everybody, better believe God or you die and will preach some kind of sermons or an imam who acts in a way. So yes, man down is something we all need to look at. These things usually start from when children are really little. So I have a son and when maybe he falls or something, I remember we had in Nani then and she would say, why you crying? Stop crying, man, man. And I told her, no, stop, please. Let him cry. He's hurt. Let him express how he feels. He's still a child. Let him cry. He's allowed to. The fact that he's a boy does not make him not feel pain. He has to feel pain and express that. His arms won't grow back when you cut them off. There's blood. He needs to express that, oh, this is. So I think it starts from how little they are. I wouldn't tell the child, don't cry. You need to cry, especially for boys. Cry, it's okay to cry. Let them understand that they have these emotions and it's very important for them to express it. If they have something, you see some who say, ah, this man talks too much. That's his way of expressing himself. If he doesn't talk, he's going to suppress things and he's going to come out in a completely different way that you don't like or appreciate. So the earlier we begin to have that conversation and encourage our men, our brothers, our husbands, our uncles, our dads, if there's an issue, if you notice something and they are shielded, their way of dealing with it is just to be on their own. You can reach out to them and learn their voices to them. What's possible. Yeah, allow them to speak up. Absolutely. You know, you just nailed it. You just nailed on the head by saying expression because an emotion, and you just said emotion, expression, you know, the same thing, more or less, same size of a coin. Because you see, one of the things that separates a human really from an animal is emotion and expression. Some of the things that makes us different and we're built, humans were built for expression and emotion. So from that little age, I mean, for most young boys, the first thing they ever hear growing up is, why are you crying? Be a boy, be a man, are you a girl, right? And the moment you start to do that, you're starting to stifle his expression from when he's that young. And he takes, and he said, the thing with humans is, the humans will express themselves. It's the nature of humans to express themselves. So that expression will come out. You just need to ask yourself, do you want it positively or negatively? And comfort, how are you expressing yourself from a boujee? In a conflicted, I'm conflicted about this one. Exactly. I mean, I would like to see my man take charge, I'm sorry, I don't want to sit here. You can't do that in saddance. Oh, come on. I mean, I'm a bit conflicted about this, but I agree with you absolutely that the man now is also in a very precarious position currently. But I think that both the females and the males are culprits here. So you have women now who have more power, more ability to express themselves, more desires, more wants, more vanity. And then you have men who determine their self-worth by their sexual poise and by their financial ability. So you have this woman on this side who has this power, this man who wants to meet up also. So there's also the pressure within and we're not being honest anymore, we're not being honest. So at this point, especially with the current situation, there would need to be a lot of unlearning, even for the adult male population now that, look, you can't kill yourself because your woman wants to wear 250K per week, just so that you, the man, can fit into a certain social circle. But you see, if the man has to go down that route, he needs to assume a certain position. But the current narrative on the side of the woman is that she's not supposed to be listening to any man, she's not supposed to express herself. So we're messing with other things, then there's the continual conflict. And so both parties just keep on doing what they want to do, trying to find a middle ground for peace. I had a male follower reach out to me and say, when he was getting married, he needed to talk to men. Just any older man, like the way women do, you know women have, that's what helps us. We like to gossip. So we have groups of friends that we gossip, we tell everything. So in a manner of speaking, we're unburden ourselves and then we're able to do it. But men don't do that. What they do when they meet in their gatherings, it's usually to talk about Asinam, as you said, Chelsea and the new drinking town or the new baby town, not the core issues. So I think that's another part that guys have to, when you come together, it's not about the superficial issues, but talk to yourselves. We may talk to themselves. Comfort, absolutely agree with you, yes. Yeah, but I mean, we're almost out of time now. Thank you Comfort, fantastic feedback right there. So Uche is next after the break. Please don't go anywhere.