 Welcome to The Advocate, your Sunday reminder that important conversations are among the necessary tools for a Sena society. I will be talking about the strength for adversity. May Nigeria not happen to you. Usenke Olariwaju will be talking about the real reasons behind the redesigning of the Naira Notes. Titi Lokwe Bilola will be talking about how to teach your kids about earning, saving and investing while Tulumoya will be talking about urgently needed a government for the people. We will be back after the break. Strength for adversity. May Nigeria not happen to you. My name is Eni Tonwoteju Ibirunke and what do I do? I build. I grow. I am light. And that's why today in the midst of Nigeria's looming adversity, I'm advocating for something strength in adversity. All around us everything looks bleak. Very bleak right now. No light. No fuel. No cash. No ATM cards. And if your card unfortunately expires, not that it matters though, when you can't even withdraw funds with a card, even invalid. But in the process of preparing for today, I came across a Forbes article. And because I am determined that in adversity there must be more to do than just lament and cry doom doom all over social media and further blacken the mood and atmosphere. The article mentioned that resilience is a person's ability to bounce back from adversity and grow from the challenge. And I say, does this apply to Nigerians? That's a good question. As we approach an epic turn in our history, a time of decision making that can affect the next 4 to 8 years of our lives and the lives of generations yet unborn. We as a people have become more discerning, more circumspect and suddenly boom, adversity like we have never seen before hits us. And what does this have the ability to do and is in fact doing? People are losing their equilibrium and suddenly only survival matters. Let me take us on a short journey down memory lane to talk about a man who has shown me that in spite and despite, your best strategy in adversity is strength. I am going to talk about a man that I know personally. He grew up dead poor, poor as in P-O-O-R, poor, like on a staple diet of Gary and then Gary again. He would stand on the shorelines of Ikorodutown back in the day and look across the waters and say to himself, there's life and wealth in Iko, Iko referring to Lagos, I must make it to Iko. And indeed he made it to Iko and not only did he make it to Iko, he became a lawyer, raised 16 children to university level and beyond, traveled around the world and built a legacy that's still living on even in his death. But remember, all the odds were stacked against him, but it kept one thing going, his mindset of strength in adversity. In September 2015, mental health was included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In this historic step, the United Nations acknowledged the budding of disease of mental illness and defined mental health as a priority for global development for the next 15 years. Now according to the World Health Organization, health in itself is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. So today, as I and it will stand on SDG3, good health and well-being. And while I also realize that I do not absolve the government of Nigeria of its responsibilities to its citizens, I advocate that you as a citizen of this country take your life and health into your own hands. And as said by Oluwakamu, President and Co-CEO of Nigeria, there may be situations of adversity pushing at the boundaries of change and unless you have a good depth of inner strength to draw inspiration from within yourself, you may be unable to overcome the adversity and fulfill your purpose in the time and place. As long as you allow external forces to affect your mental and social well-being, you are unwell and how can you rationally reason? You will be more susceptible to the layers of enticement. My fellow Nigerians, don't break at this time. Stand strong in adversity. Find positive mental coping mechanisms. These two shall surely pass. May God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Amen. Amen. You left out PVC. You didn't talk about the PVC. Thank you. Because it would mean that I would not lie to you, like I was tested like by today at some point after going into three banks just trying to renew my ATM card, I was like, you know what, maybe that strength adversity is a myth. Should I just abandon the whole theory? But I said to myself, no way. We're going to come through because I really, I mean, there was a man in the banking hall. He was losing his, he was really, that guy was going to go mad. Like he literally asked up and just said, you know what, let me leave this banking hall in case they turn it into a crisis right here. And it's just, I mean, I feel for me it's a bit crazy, but I still believe that that mental state of being, if we're not careful, we're going to just totally lose it. Why at this time? Why at this time is everything totally upside down when we need to make life-changing decisions? You know? I had this, I asked you this question like, are they trying to test something? I don't know. Are they trying to push us to the limit to see what's going to happen because everything that's happening is not making any sense. No, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't. And honestly. I think, I mean, so, I mean, there are a lot of gems in your, I mean, in your, your advocacy, you know. For instance, I talked about resilience. And Nigerians have been set to be some of the most resilient people on Earth. Right. So that's a good path. We're very resilient people. You know, like you said, maybe they're trying to push. They've heard, they've seen the statistics and they say, you know what? I'm a resident and you really be. Let's push this thing before that. Maybe it's a social experiment. Who knows, right? There's a very serious social experiment. They don't have a good plan. They don't take time. They don't end well for them. But the challenge is these things are avoidable. There's nothing here. I mean, like I always say, most of Nigeria's problems are thinking problems. What are you just thinking? There's nothing. There's no brain, surgery or rockets are required in changing the currency. Nothing. There is the countries that don't produce oil. That don't have fuel scarcity. So there's nothing that is happening to us. That is, that is a massive mind boggling. You know, you need some, some out of space solution for. These are everyday common problems. The problem is just that people that are responsible for some of these problems are not thinking. And it's rather unfortunate because what happens is, that's what happens when people get to positions of leadership authority without being merited for it. You know, that's why I'm not, I'm not really a big advocate of this thing. They say, oh, you know, this is forgotten what it's called, where you have to come from certain tribes. Quotas. Quotas. I don't care about that. Just find people that are, you know, that are competent. And let them do it. Okay. Quotas system when things are not working. You know, if you're about, sorry, like you're saying, if you're about to die on the third Milan bridge and they brought you a doctor, will your first question be where are you from? No. Because we're at that point where it looks like this, this, you know, construct called Nigeria, it's losing its life. You just need to first get on life support. And it doesn't really matter who gets us there. Well, I mean, I really think that at this point in time, I do believe that strongly as a people, it has gotten to a point where we're going to have to intentionally find our inner strength somehow. From my own end, I think, just like you said, I want to come in for the inner strength, you know. You see, everybody has said that I'm not angry. So, yeah, we don't think, we don't, we don't exercise the power we possess. I'm looking at all of them. We know we have issues with the leadership. We have issue of leadership in Nigeria. Right. But I give an example. The story of editors, editors discover, okay, they had a skill that they have inherited from their parents. But during the, it was human and I got stuck in war. And a lot of people were at this place. So just need, you know, their shoes were half and stuff like that. So you have people who are actually working their footprint. And so let us pick these pieces. These people need this and they begin to make money out of it. And today, Adidas found the attribute of war. They discover their potential and turn it to an advantage. So I believe when we look in world, we actually have the potential to turn around a lot of things in Nigeria. But we are just lazy to think one. We are also really easy to read because we are narrowing design notes of what are we that we are looking at now. If you look at Boariz Tenno, back when he was the military head of state in Diabo, they did it. So there are things we should at least follow the history. But we are lazy to study the history and we are quick to react. It's a lot of think. That's what we said. And I think we, everything is our laziness. If we just bring in that in ourselves and push a little bit, we'll be better of a country. Thank you. Even though, I mean, I do agree with some points of what you said, but I also think that while you may think that there's some laziness, I also think that those of us, people like you, that do know history, what exactly have we actually done in terms of educating? A lot of people do not actually, where's the access to the history? We don't have our history written down. We don't have documents, books reauthored by Nigerians on what has gone on. Have we even taken any steps to say to those of our parents or our parents for them that Kai will allow us to document our history and then be able to circulate it? So maybe laziness may not be, in my opinion, one of the best ways to put that challenge, it may just simply be a function of are we ourselves that actually know not doing enough? Yeah, absolutely I agree. And I was going to say, I mean, I actually echo your thoughts that, you know, yes, there's a question of laziness, but beyond that, there's something you'd rather call a for offer. I think that most of our problems are self-inflicted. Most of our wounds are self-inflicted. Like you're going to war and you're shooting yourself rather than shooting the enemy. Most of the problems we're dealing with today are problems of nepotism, lack of competence, and just plain foolishness. And that's very far from laziness. And I said, I mean, there's nothing we have mentioned here today that is not stuff that even a Gen Z, just give them two or three days to crack this thing. They will give you a solution to it. I mean, it's currency. You know how many Nigerians you have data? I mean, it's talking about history. Or what do you use history that you don't learn from? Exactly. And that's the biggest problem that we have. We don't learn from history. History continues to teach lessons, but we refuse to learn from it. So we'll make the same mistakes again. Okay, well, I believe that we have taken away something from this particular session. I mean, at the end of the day, there's adversity in Nigeria. We need that strength because we don't know what Nigeria has to happen to us. And we don't, if we want the calamity that the city has just spoken about and has, you know, said could get us. You're saying K or Larry Waju is next after the break.