 Sunday Iguho arrested in Kota Nuu. And an assassination attempt at the interim leader of Mali. And off the press very soon with our guest. Welcome to the Breakfast on Pots TV Africa. Good morning. Thank you for joining us this bright and beautiful Wednesday, the 21st of July 2021. I am Annette Felix. And I am Usaogi Ogbon. Welcome to the breakfast this morning. It's the second day of public holidays across Nigeria. And we would say happy salad once again to all the Muslim faithful and everyone across the country. And join these two days of rest and celebration. Indeed. And let's go straight into our top trending story. I am very excited for this one because we've been talking in recent time regarding sports. And the sports in focus has been basketball. And about how Nigerians in diaspora have been doing us proud with all their achievements. Now the person in focus today is Giannis Adito-Kumbo. At least that's the original name before he went to Greece and had to change it. Because you know the people couldn't pronounce it and they made fun of that name. So Giannis Adito-Kumbo has scored 50 points in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Now he plays for the Milwaukee Box. And now this has represented the Milwaukee Box first NBA title since 1971. I mean this is just amazing what this young man has done. He was fresh off being drafted 15th overall by the Milwaukee Box in the 2013 NBA draft. And on Tuesday nights there were more than 80,000 people crammed in that stadium. And you know he put on a spectacular show. A spot analyst and I'll call it a legendary performance. That before now only Abdul-Jabbar and Robertson had ever done this. He basically led the box to an NBA title. And I have a couple of fantastic points that would definitely spin your heads regarding Giannis. Right now we know that he's the only player in NBA history with five all-star selections. He's the second season player born outside the US to win the MVP and finals MVP. He now joins Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon as the only players to win MVP finals. And he's the fifth player born outside the US and that's in Nigeria to win the finals MVP. He's the ninth player to win multiple MVPs and the laurels go on and on and on. So we say congratulations to Adito-Kumbo. Well I'm not sure why it's now pronounced Adito-Kumbo. Well it's got to help us understand that because Adito-Kumbo and Teo... I get that explanation. You know when he relocated people couldn't pronounce that. So I guess maybe it's a way of representation of the characters in Greece. They had to modify that to suit the times and to make people pronounce it easily. Because see believe it or not this racism thing is real and you have situations where Nigerians have to modify their names so that people can pronounce it better in the countries where they go. We've been pronouncing Arnold Schwarzenegger. However that is for as long as I've been aware. And nobody had a problem with it. So I'm sure they can pronounce that. That's the racism we're talking about. Well anyway moving away from his name congratulations to him and Milwaukee Box. We spoke about basketball yesterday and how much we probably need to... Move away from the focus of football. See what we can actually achieve with basketball. We're talking about him today and I'm sure that this is all because of people like Akim Olajuan who paved the way for Nigerians in the NBA. People that even... What's his name? The guy who unfortunately passed last year. The basketball player Kobe Bryant even mentioned how much he looked up to him. So yes we do have Nigerians blazing trails across centers. Absolutely. Akim I think played for me before 2002. And he was one person that a lot of people were proud of back here in Nigeria. We didn't watch that much basketball. But anytime that the NBA was mentioned there was always a reminder that there is an Nigerian called Akim Plain. So congratulations to him. He still has a pretty long career to go. He has broken a couple of records with regards to signing. He currently ends one of the highest in the NBA. And he's taking away the spotlight from the likes of LeBron James and the other light-skinned guy. So congratulations to him and their family. I'm proud of what they've been able to achieve. And this really once again is the level of success that you will achieve when you have a system that supports you. A sports ministry that supports you. And an environment that really supports your dream and your goals and all of that. I'm sure that there's going to be more Nigerian parents thinking now maybe my child isn't good for football. Let's look into basketball. Maybe my child isn't meant to be a doctor or lawyer or engineer after all. A broadcaster. Maybe they should be footballers. Maybe they should be basketballers. Just sportsmen generally. Yes, absolutely. The good thing about Gianna Di Tocumbo right now is that he's the most outstanding player of the just-ended NBA season and he's one of the Nigerians who would also be playing for Nigeria at the Olympics. Fantastic, fantastic. But the sad thing about the Olympics, I mentioned this yesterday, the organizers of the Olympic Games have not ruled out cancelling the games last minutes because I told you about a young American who came down with COVID-19 and how that might affect the game. So we just might get a surprise. It wouldn't be a surprise to me because it's something I've expected and they have said it too that you should not rule out any last-minute changes that they could just cancel because they are taking health precautions very seriously and are putting the health and lives of all athletes and possibly fans first before even the games. But what would then happen to all the sponsors, people who have bought broadcast rights and all that? And a money amount of billions of dollars. We'll see how it goes. If it has to be postponed, it will be postponed. If it has to be canceled, then it will be canceled. But I doubt that that will happen. I think they're going to consider a lot of things and rather they would put in more precautions. They would maybe reduce the amount of people that are going to be allowed to watch games and some of all of that. Instead of outrightly canceling it because it's already been delayed way beyond what we had imagined. You mentioned the word billions of dollars a few minutes ago and it just reminds me of our neck top trending story. It's about Jeff Bezos. The words, richest man, went to space yesterday. It was a Tuesday morning. Some stations are reporting 10 minutes. Some are reporting 11 minutes. But between 10 to 11 minutes, joyride from Earth to the Kamen Line. Now that Kamen Line is the internationally recognized boundary where Earth ends and where space begins. So Jeff Bezos went on a ride out of space. He was there with an 18-year-old German teenager, Oliver Damin. And a bit of a story regarding Oliver. The story is that people had bid to basically follow Jeff Bezos out of space from about 159 countries. Thousands of people put in a bid to go out of space. And we don't really know just how much was paid for this because definitely Oliver's father, what CNN is reporting, definitely paid the ticket. The man is a rich investor. Paid for that spot for his son to be on that flight with Jeff Bezos. There was also Jeff Bezos didn't go alone. He went with his brother as well. He did announce he would be going with his brother. He also went with the 82-year-old pilot. So basically this flight saw the oldest person to go out of space, the 82-year-old pilot, and the youngest person to go out of space. And that's the 18-year-old recent high school graduate, named Oliver Damin. Now you asked me behind the scenes why exactly is Jeff Bezos going to space. And lots of people definitely have that question on their minds. So we know that when Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, this space expedition in the year 2000, just about six, eight years after he founded Amazon, he said he wanted to make space tourism. He wanted to basically break the frontiers of space tourism and make it affordable for people to go out of space, to have tours, to just explore what exactly is out there beyond the world as we know it. So that's exactly what happened yesterday, that 10-minute joy ride to the Kamen Line and back. But Osaragi, would you love to take a tour out of space? Absolutely. Obviously I can't afford it. You can't? It's the same thing with another 6.9 billion people, plus we also can't afford it. But definitely yes, for 11 minutes. I think all of this happened in about 30 minutes and he was back on Earth. There's also been people who laughed at the shape of the space. Yes. And said, oh, what is part of that? So there is that. But other things, first of all, like you mentioned, it's something that he had had as a dream since the year 2000 and continuously worked until he was able to achieve yesterday. There's another part where it seemed like an ego thing with himself and Richard Branson. Branson, yes. He was going to do it first. And Richard Branson did get to achieve that first, going to space and back. There's also been criticism about how much this has cost. The rumors that it may have cost potential passengers, about $30 million more or less. But it cost about more than $1 billion to eventually pull this off. And there has been criticism concerning that from the American people who are saying, that's a lot of Amazon money. That's a lot of taxpayers' money. He went on to thank Amazon buyers and clients and say, oh, you paid for my trip. Thank you. And it would take thousands of Americans to put that together to be able to make that joy ride. And so it seemed like it was just wasting money going to space for absolutely nothing, because I don't know what he has achieved going there and coming back. You didn't bring back water or anything. Another thing people also criticized was the CO2 emissions that went off yesterday simply because of that spacecraft. So the conversations have been in different directions. There's also people who have said, you spend this much money to go to space. And yet you pay the least taxes amongst thousands of Americans who have been working for so, so long and pay heavy taxes simply because you own Amazon. You don't pay taxes and yet you're burning and wasting money like this. But it is his dream. He can afford it. So yes, he can absolutely go to space. He wants to go under the Earth and see what's also beneath there. He can do that. There's still a lot of under what exploration that needs to be done. So maybe somebody should try that next time. I wouldn't see it as wasting money. I wouldn't see it that way because in the world we're in, everything is defined by innovation. If we never had that first trip to space, I don't think a lot of the satellite images, lots of advancements in aviation and all of that, we would begin to talk about that. So I think it's great for people to push the frontiers, see what exactly is out there. If you have the resources to go ahead and make that push, we should support that. After all, it's his money. He didn't steal people's money to do that. So I would never criticize Jeff Bezos for taking that step. Well, Americans have the right to see what they feel. There's those who celebrate him and say, yes, I would like to also do this someday. There's those who would say, why are you wasting money? If it's about discovering what's in space, NASA has been doing that for decades. What are you going to do there? He never went there to discover anything. Like he said, I am not Jeff Bezos's spokesman. What he said is that they're basically trying to do space tourism. And if they go on and make advancements into this, definitely people who can afford it, like Oliver Damon's father, who could afford it, would be able to go to space. You know, people do things. People do skydiving. What exactly did they achieve? It's for the thrill and the fun of it. If they can't afford it, I mean, why not? And if they're not hurting anybody. Way to go. All right, we'll take a short break. When we come back, Demola Kimballa will be joining us this morning. It's a Wednesday, and he will be going through the papers with us to see what major stories have made the headlines this morning. Stay with us.