 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? You are 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 are 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 not 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 take much effort or time. So why this reluctance still? Another reason given is that customers don't want or buy 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 open 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. 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 the 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. You would be bougie to read foreign books and they sell this idea across generation to generation. And it's affected our bookstores. For me, this thing just runs across every single thing. It's the whole concept of local content. 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 you would buy the international one. And it's that same mindset that has perpetuated itself across everything. If we don't understand how important it is for us to actually patronize us locally, our books, our stories, our culture, there's nothing as beautiful as being able to articulate our history through books, 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. We have organizations that will tell 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 the same mindset. 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 the stolen money was invested in Nigeria, we would at least feel a little plus from it. In Dubai, I actually saw empty houses and they would point and say those belong to Nigerians. They don't live there. But 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 Kulevis is quite awful. I wouldn't know that. If you go there, you realize that they played local artists back to back and you only get to hear one or two. Even movies, the cinema used to be dominated heavily by a lot of foreign titles. Now, 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 four o'clock when people are at work. But right now, it's moving up. I was seeing that some movies are doing well. I don't mean 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 read a lot of them when I find them. I grew up on a diet of African literature, the African writer series. And my mind is very African. 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 an 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 to purchase them. 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 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. But you have that problem. You don't get Ronaldo hair. But mommy, we're white. I said, no, we're not white. 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 like 80% or 90%. So that means we're all guilty. Yes, exactly. So it's not about thinking about this huge level. What is actually happening in our homes? What are your children consuming? You go out 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. I've lost hope in adults. My focus is now on children. Because this country is 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 reprogram our minds as parents to say actually you know what, my mind has been colonized but I'm decolonizing it for you. But we have to just get off our behinds and do something. 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 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 my mother lost as to how they identified it. Why didn't we go with A for Akara? 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 work in. 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're preparing their children for the future of work. They're preparing their children 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 his view on the middle class after the break.