EP 7. What Is Nigeria To You I African News Review 🌍

Summary
I am joined on Adesoji Speaks knowledge by three Nigerians - Jesse Adeniji, Aya Fubara Eneli and Jude Ukato to answer the question above, give their take on the situation in Nigeria and proffer their solutions to some of the issues facing the country.
The conversation begins with an introduction and welcome to the guests. The discussion then moves to Nigeria's expectations and its status as the 'giant of Africa.' The economic turmoil in Nigeria is highlighted, and the concept of what Nigeria means to the guests is explored. 
The conversation delves into the structure of Nigeria and its impact on the economy. The issue of money and spending in Nigeria is discussed, along with the lack of organized ideas in the country. 
The legacy of colonialism and exploitation is also examined. The conversation explores the need for restructuring in Nigeria and the importance of regional governance. It highlights the benefits of decentralization and empowering local communities. Examples from other countries, such as the United States and Scotland, demonstrate the advantages of local decision-making and control over natural resources. 
The ineffectiveness of relying solely on prayer to solve economic problems is discussed, emphasizing the need for practical solutions. 
The influence of religion and tribalism on societal development is examined, along with the importance of controlling one's mind and embracing cultural diversity. The conversation concludes by emphasizing the need for a well-organized and inclusive system to move Nigeria forward. 
The conversation explores the power of ethnic identity and the need for local policing. It discusses the process of separation and provides examples of successful separations in other countries. The importance of preserving and embracing cultural differences is emphasized, along with the need for teaching history. The lack of structure and regulation in Nigeria is highlighted, as well as the economic potential of collaboration. The impact of poverty and inequality is discussed, along with the elitism and lack of assistance from the government. The potential of retired Nigerians and the importance of structure and data are also explored. 
The conversation concludes with the power of local contributions to community development. The conversation delves into various themes, including the impact of legislation and foreign capital injection, the need for local structure and accountability, the consequences of foreign loans and conditionalities, the challenges of managing investments and financial systems, the crisis of leadership, the ideal leadership qualities of self-acquaintability and local awareness, going back to our roots, the importance of local structures in leadership, and the preservation of cultural heritage and history.

Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:09.922)
Okay, yes, good evening, good evening everyone, good evening, welcome to Adesoji Speaks. And today I am going to be joined by three eminent Nigerians. I've got Jude, Emmanuel Ukato and Jesse Adeniji, who, and also will be joined by Aya Fubera Eneli, who is due to join us shortly.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (00:14.613)
Good evening.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (00:24.21)
Okay.

Adesoji Iginla (00:38.198)
But before we start, Adesoji Speaks, as you know, is a platform for bringing discussion about Africa and where better to start this week than the giant of Africa itself, at least that's what it wishes to be known as. By population, it's the largest country on the continent, but to a larger extent, people would...

uh, tend to agree that it has not lived up to expectation. But before I begin, um, I need to extend, uh, happy anniversary greetings to Ghana, who marked, uh, 67 years of independence today, and, um, led by the great, uh, Kwame Nkrumah, who said, um, Ghana's independence is not complete without the complete liberation of Africa.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:23.378)
Thanks for watching!

Adesoji Iginla (01:36.414)
And liberation doesn't just stop with having a flag. It also goes to the minds of the people. And part of that liberation is having a broad concept of what it is to be an African, a Nigerian, and a global citizen.

But in this case now where Nigeria has been going through some economic turmoil for the last couple of weeks, it's made a lot of headlines. So I thought it best to bring it onto the platform and discourse or add our voice to the voices on all things Nigeria. And so with me today, as I said earlier, is Jude Piccato.

Jesse Adeniji, and I'll allow them to introduce themselves before we get into the discussion. Jude, if you do the honors.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (02:43.791)
Hi, thank you. My name is Jude. I'm on social media. I'm known as Jude speaks the God. I've been known by different names. As it is with life, you got to update or upgrade and all of that. So I've been moving with the times, you know, I live in London, I'm a social worker by day, I'm a poet, author of children's books, father with children. I tried to keep out of trouble.

Trouble keep pulling me closer. And trouble in this sense is Nigeria. Ha ha ha.

Adesoji Iginla (03:18.071)
Hehe

Adesoji Iginla (03:21.878)
Thank you very much. Brother Jesse.

Jesse (03:25.7)
So, Jude is a tougher to follow. So, I'm much more gentler. So, my name is Jesse Adeniji and I'm a researcher at the moment. I work with a research company. So, we do global research across the world. And the difference between us and mainstream research companies is because we look at things from the prism of different ethnic groups.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (03:29.891)
You flatter me.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (03:34.354)
Hehehe

Jesse (03:55.048)
so that all our research is not just Eurocentric. And I also run GSM consulting, because I've been in marketing communications for the last 22 to 25 years. So that's it, I run GSM consulting London as well. So I currently live in Kent, we moved away from London, from the maddening crowd. And I'm enjoying the quiet, you know, here. So yeah, I'm on Facebook.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (04:17.908)
No.

Jesse (04:23.972)
I do my thing right about Nigeria. Just like you and the rest of our 200 million people come from that region. So that's it.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (04:30.25)
Hahaha

Adesoji Iginla (04:34.246)
Okay. And driving hopefully not frantically is Sister Aya Fubara Eneli. Thank you for joining us while you're commuting. And do you mind adding your voice to the conversation?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (04:40.161)
Hehe

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:55.236)
Yes, I missed the introductions. Good afternoon, brothers. I'm excited to be with you. Literally, his got out of court. Should be in a more stable environment in the next four minutes here. But definitely, this is an incredible opportunity to speak about our country, a land that I love so much and there is so much suffering. My name is Aruku Karinelli. I am what Nigerians will call Japa.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (05:00.319)
Good afternoon.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:24.316)
Hi, hi, hello.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:28.9)
I was born in this country, went back and was raised in Nigeria, went to Mikulu Primary School, FGC Nuku, and then returned to the United States for my university. I am currently an attorney, a writer, a life coach, a mom, a wife, but very invested in Nigeria. We started a library two years ago in Opobo Town.

of you may have heard of King Jaja of Opobo and we're also looking to hopefully partner with a school and really get into the nitty-gritty of helping to educate about 200 young people in Opobo on an annual basis. So still very much involved in my country and funnily enough, maybe not funny, but I think it's worth noting.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (06:00.408)
Yes, yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:26.548)
seven children at one point, all of us lived here in the US. And over the last decade plus, some of my siblings have moved back to Nigeria. My parents moved back to Nigeria because we want to be part of the solution. Although, Nigeria is a very tough place to navigate. But ultimately, for many of us, it is still where we call home, even though we are.

Jesse (06:48.501)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:54.012)
may have dual citizenship or anything else. And so, Adesoji, thank you very much for this opportunity to have this conversation.

Adesoji Iginla (07:02.01)
You're welcome, you're welcome. The more the better. And so, yes, the first question to you guys would be in no specific order, you can decide which way to go. What is Nigeria to you guys?

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:04.928)
Thanks for watching!

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (07:23.499)
Hmm. I'll go. Okay. Nigeria. Huh. Nigeria is home first and foremost though. That's where I was born. Lived my first 25 years in Nigeria. Like I said earlier, when I was introducing myself, I said, I try to keep myself away from trouble. Trouble being Nigeria and it keeps pulling me in. People ask me, yeah, why do you even care? Why do you talk about the country so much?

Adesoji Iginla (07:26.294)
Hehe

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (07:53.455)
And the reason I do is because I so much believe in that country and its people. I always tell people that Nigeria is the best country on earth to exist. And I said, in the present circumstances, the only country that could have rival Nigeria would have been America, the way we set up, the way our different states is our weather and people, the creativity and the hustle and bustle. I thought America would be the only country to rival us, although we got a long way to go, but I know why I said this is because.

Adesoji Iginla (07:57.431)
Mm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (08:23.419)
You, you, people will see seed on the floor and say, that seed is dead, nothing good will come out of it. But I see Nigeria has that many seeds and they say, look, it's dead now, but if you put a, if you put a bit of water, put it in a very good environment, not sure it proper, put proper caretakers to look over it. Nigeria could blossom into the best and most beautiful flower on earth. That's why I'm passionate about it. But recently, to be honest, I've given hope and thought, I don't think I would ever see a better Nigeria in my time.

and maybe my grandchildren won't actually even get to witness that. And the reason for that is just because of the tragedy of things. It seems like we're moving four steps forward and we take 40 backwards with the things that we see. Again, whether we like it or not, politics and politicians control the affairs of Nigerians. And when we see what is happening in the political terrain, it's not easy to continue to believe that it will happen. So your hope is

lifted higher at this moment and before you know it comes crashing with the utterances of people in Nigeria. So Nigeria to me is just I don't know it's mixed bed right now man. It's delicate, for me it's delicate, it's home, it's everything. I cry most nights that I want to be back in that place. No matter how difficult it is like my sister just said they want to be part of the solution but I also have to balance the other side of things like the rift to my life.

Because I know Nigerians mostly respect dead heroes. No one cares about the ones who are alive. So do I want to sacrifice myself? Still a big question. So let me clear the stage for all this.

Adesoji Iginla (10:04.122)
and brother Jesse.

Jesse (10:07.076)
I wish I'm very confident like dudes you know speak their gut but I honestly I think that question is really difficult. I don't know what Nigeria is.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (10:11.91)
I'm sorry.

Jesse (10:24.16)
and I'll be 50 this year. I don't know what Nigeria is. What I know from years of study is that it's a contraption the British used to take resources and to take it out of Africa just like the rest of the African, you know, states. And since we said we got independence, you know, I've never...

really seen any framework or anything that says, this is these people. But from my house where I grew up, I knew that I'm Yoruba. And I've read the works of Chief A'ulel, who said that first and foremost, you must be something before you are a Nigerian.

And I tend to agree with him because historically we know that not all the tribes and nations that are here today made it. Some have been erased. So if you are Yoruba, if you are Hausa, if you are Igbo, if you are anything on this earth, that means your race is among the lucky ones that made it to where we are. So there are some values and there are some identities that are inherent in that.

you know, in that race. So bringing everything together in what is called Nigeria is a different ballgame because judging by 60 years of independence, I really don't know what Nigeria is, to be honest. You can bring anybody, you can bring people together in the middle of nowhere and give them a different identity, give them a land mass and they will go to the Olympics, they will create a culture that they can rally around, they will make use of technology and they can do everything that Nigeria is doing.

But we know what makes up a country is far, far deeper than the projected identity that they've got. So really, I know what Nigeria is, but I do I know who Nigeria is. But I don't know what Nigeria is. If you go if you go, I'll let my sister do what I'm talking.

Adesoji Iginla (12:33.218)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (12:33.321)
yet.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (12:39.311)
Added City, can you repeat the question, please?

Adesoji Iginla (12:42.754)
What is Nigeria to you?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (12:47.271)
You're coming out the gate swinging hard. Wow. So I like to say I am my people I am from that place that is currently called Nigeria, right, because we weren't always called that. And we are still trying to figure out identity. And Jesse when you said 60 years of independence. I'm like,

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (12:51.493)
Hehehehe.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (13:15.115)
Where are you getting that from? Cause I don't recall that we've ever been independent. We're still wearing our needs. I went to school there. All of our nursery rhymes, not all, but you know, the nursery rhymes in the schools, we're from Europe, we're from England specifically. The Bible.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (13:24.961)
Wow.

Jesse (13:36.608)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (13:41.255)
anthem for years. The very name itself. As an attorney, every time I see Nigerians with that damn wig on their head, it's just like, it just eats me up on the inside. You know, our laws are based on what they put together. WIEC, everything is still based on their educational system. So brother,

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (13:44.008)
Yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (13:56.619)
Hello.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (14:06.115)
We have zero days of independence in my book. So what does, getting back to the question, what does Nigeria mean to me? It's a place of my ancestors. It's a place of fantastic memories and deep traditions.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (14:33.195)
a resilient people, but it's also a place where people are increasingly, I think, losing hope. It's a place where we are pretty much pawns for imperialists.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (14:53.176)
It's a powder keg.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (14:57.733)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (14:59.662)
Wow. OK. I should have.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (15:05.15)
You didn't expect that, eh?

Adesoji Iginla (15:07.274)
No, well, powder kegs, which means the next question, which brings us to economics, would probably, hopefully not ignite the country as we speak.

Jesse (15:07.382)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:19.783)
I'm out.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (15:20.095)
That's a good one.

Adesoji Iginla (15:25.59)
General Yakubu Gowon in 1973, at the height of the Oil boom, said, and I quote, money is not the problem of Nigeria, but how to spend it.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (15:38.251)
Hey, wow, that's written.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:39.733)
It's high!

Adesoji Iginla (15:42.946)
So, in light of 1973...

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:44.247)
What? What year was that again? Chey. Hehehe.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (15:48.083)
And what was I in response to?

Jesse (15:51.256)
I think I know a little bit about that and he did say that. I think he was you know a journalist. I think it was a is that American or a UK journalist that he was talking to but basically the reason why I said I don't know what Nigeria is it's my sister Fubara Eneli

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (15:55.207)
Okay.

Adesoji Iginla (15:55.467)
Go on. Go on.

Jesse (16:20.532)
touching that a little bit. We said we got independence in 1960 and we had quite a few people who were trying to build the country. They called them the founding fathers, right? And the war happened. And who are the guys in the military? Go one was out when we fought the civil war. It was 27 or so. Most of the military guys, I think, Ojukwu was the...

Adesoji Iginla (16:26.839)
Mm-hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (16:35.188)
Mm-hmm.

Jesse (16:50.724)
um oldest among them right and he was in his 30s now imagine when you were in your 30s what were you thinking about what was your responsibility and what was your foresight about the country and what you're going to do so much of what these guys did the responsibilities they had the kind of capacity they were supposed to master to build a country it was not their donors fool ourselves so

Adesoji Iginla (16:52.33)
Yeah, yeah, correct.

Jesse (17:20.456)
That's why I always, you know, go back to what is the structure. So we are the structure that was working. The founding fathers, so to say, they were really honest. They all said we're not one people. Do you get me? Not one people. And that was the reason why they chose a particular type of model to govern Nigeria. And it was much more like, OK, guys, it's going to be a truly fiscal federation.

uh union and that is for that short period that we had the first republic it was working okay i can give a quick example um we had ui and in the west it was seen as a federal uh institution so our lower who led the western region said okay we're going to build something better and it went for oh you right the eastern government did not the eastern government did not sit back

Adesoji Iginla (18:14.742)
Mm-hmm. University of IFE. The way you guys. Mm-hmm.

Jesse (18:20.224)
They built UNN. And the Northern government said, oh, OK, we need to compete. OK, let's have ABU. You know that sort of thing. And then after the war, we just saw someone who came up and said, oh.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (18:28.637)
Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (18:28.671)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (18:32.103)
For those listening, ABU, Ahmadu Bello University, UNN, University of Nigeria.

Jesse (18:35.208)
Oh, sorry. So it was working, but what have we got now with this unitary system that Aguiyi Ironsi imposed on the system that was sustained by the Northern military hegemony? It is about exploiting people, the underclass in Nigeria, for the benefit of a few, less than 1% of people from different ethnic groups. So for instance, I have a jail friend.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (18:36.271)
Zaria.

Adesoji Iginla (18:37.456)
Yeah, no.

Adesoji Iginla (18:55.99)
Mm.

Jesse (19:05.004)
and people who came from the Niger Delta. And I always say to them, you know what? If you can understand what is going on, you'll be at war with everyone you see because we're taking advantage of you. Do you understand? And it's the same feeling that is now.

Adesoji Iginla (19:17.184)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (19:20.955)
But we tried now and they killed Ken Saro Wiwa

Jesse (19:23.836)
I know, but I'm just looking at the system that we had, that it was an honest system, and the system we're running now. And we know that economic success depends on political structure. It is not anywhere around. So if you go to the Nordic countries, Norway, for instance, if you look through their political history,

you'll find out that they had capitalism at the beginning. And they find out this social inequality was what's going to ensue. So the next thing was the socialist parties actually pick up arms and went to war. They won and said, look, this is how we're going to manage the resources of this country. We're going to save up some. We're going to use some for now.

because we see, so I talk about organizing idea. So they see all resources within Norway as something that does not belong to them alone. Do you see how organizing idea begins to form what your political idea is? So we're gonna use what we need to use and we're gonna keep 30% for people who are coming behind us. So when we are NNPC, for instance, they are the start oil and.

Adesoji Iginla (20:37.032)
Mm-mm.

Jesse (20:50.632)
Now, I think the investment they've got, if you go to London, you go to Oxford Circus and Regent street, at one point they owed 60% of all the property in that area. That is the Norway sovereign fund. Now, what do we get with Nigeria? We still all these oil from the people who own the oil money. And then we go with some people go get out of Puget and they say, oh, let's share the money. I need to leave now, but I'll give you a example. When I served up North.

Adesoji Iginla (21:02.19)
Hmm

Jesse (21:20.476)
in Gombe state. I traveled all the way to Gombe. It took me like 16 hours. And when I got to Gombe, they said you have to travel 27 more miles inland to get to where you're going to do your service. Do you know the largest billboard that I saw when we got there is the Federal Government Allocation Sharing Committee. Do you get what I'm saying? That's all that gets done in Nigeria. So...

Adesoji Iginla (21:32.663)
service.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (21:44.196)
Hmm. That's telling.

Adesoji Iginla (21:46.422)
I'm sorry.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (21:49.704)
It's about sharing.

Jesse (21:51.481)
If we don't have a structure that gives the people who own their own land the right to exploit what they've got and share it with the rest, I don't see how we're going to build any nation or any cohesive union for a startup. Please let me leave the floor to my other friend.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (22:13.579)
Hehehe

Adesoji Iginla (22:15.426)
But I do.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (22:17.699)
Fantastic. See, you touched on so many things. Talk about the organized ideas. It's one thing that's always been lacking in the whole Nigeria since the days of Aulu and the others, because I've read a few books of Aulu. I was opportune to meet him, to see him one time when he came to my area. I was very young then, anyway. These were people we read about. We, quotations that they, things that they said became quotations that people would run with.

So there was some sort of ideology around that. And as Jesse rightly said, when you have that, that's what then drive, it's an idea, and tiny idea like that from a meeting can be that or what the whole nation need, the spark that they need to drive behind. Like I rightly mentioned Ken Saro Wiwa. So like we've not had people who with this sort of ideas and spark, but what the political elder does is they kill them quick because they know.

Adesoji Iginla (22:58.37)
what!

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (23:14.431)
the power behind all of that. Once it spreads, it spreads like a white fire and people will be gingered in our Nigeria way, so to speak, to act upon that. That's why I said society needs its engineers, its orators, its architects, its carpenter, but mostly needs the orators. Cause those are the one who kind of, how do you call it? Marinade those words and use them. Cause it's all about storytelling.

It's not enough to just have those ideas. You have those ideas, you marinate those ideas, you put them out there. Wolesho Yinka speaks very well, but sometimes when he comes out and he opens his mouth, people curse him because they don't understand what he's saying. He doesn't get down to the, yeah, he doesn't get down to the person at the bottom. So one who's able to speak, and the Abuja people were here, and that person at my local market in New Benin, in Benin, will understand and run with it. They say, I know which is that man they talk, and they carry my stick where they go.

Adesoji Iginla (23:55.694)
I'm sorry.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (24:12.511)
Those are the kind of firebrand, but we don't have that. And that is not what pushes our politics forward. Our politics is all about come share. If I open my mouth to be talking about stories here about come share, you'll be like, huh, it's all about come share. It is so bad, it's so endemic. That's why I say, I gave up hope that it's not gonna work. I met a young woman recently, cause I'm training her. And she was telling me about her dad,

I think the dad was into accounting. You'll be surprised, things that existed in Nigeria those days that we do here in England. So he managed accounts for organizations like for tax return and stuff and auditing. And he used to manage a Nigeria labor congress account where this lady found out what the dad told her was during when Osomule was a chairman, said the dad said, Nigeria no go ever better. Let me speak it that way. Said why dad? Said, these people you see,

They all just go to Abuja to collect their share of legos at the time. Look at the account. Look at what they're declaring. If Nigerians know, they will hang Osomoli. They were all just common thieves. They'll come out and make noise and go there and share the resources. So it was just sharing committee all around. And you can't build a nation based on that. A few people will rise up and enjoy from that and benefit from that. But the majority, well, like you rightly said, earlier, we was having our own little chat.

the majority were never part of the equation, it was always about a few elites.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (25:44.755)
And I think that that's a great point to make, because again, when we go back to the creation of Nigeria, the amalgamation of these areas and how the Berlin Conference and...

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (25:47.579)
This is...

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (25:53.748)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:00.983)
you know, Arab and European traders, none of this colonial system that we have in place was ever created for the benefit of the people, of the masses, of the indigenous people. And when we got our so-called independence, which Frantz Fanon will argue, that if you didn't have to fight for your freedom, you don't have any freedom. Okay, so.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (26:23.335)
I was gonna come to that, I like that a lot. Woo!

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:26.635)
If someone can just write paper or whatever and you're like, oh, now I'm free. I'm independent. You kept every single structure. We still have the government reserved areas. We still have the boys quarters. We still have how they, you know, yes, we've divided more from three, you know, regions to 12 states to 19 to, I don't know, what did we go to after that? Yeah, we've done all of those things so that there are more people who can share.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (26:38.273)
Oh

Adesoji Iginla (26:48.718)
27 to 36

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:55.631)
But essentially, when you look at our ports, when you look at our trading routes, they are still based on the colonial trading routes. America was set up to prosper Europe and the West. Now they understand that they need some middle managers, which is why they educated a few of us. And so the 1% that Jesse alluded to are still the 1%.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (27:04.158)
Ever since.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (27:17.099)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:22.883)
That are running things keeping a certain amount and then making sure that things continue to flow To to the imperialists we have not in any dramatic way changed that and then this whole focus if you look at the economic crisis in nigeria now of um You know how we are devaluing the naira in how we're hoping for foreign investments and And it's like if you just look at what you have

How you're spending what you have we may not be so dependent on these so-called foreign investments And I'm just gonna throw this out here because I they said you I don't know if you're gonna ask a question related to this I was speaking to a client who is a senior You know, she's pretty high up in her company in Nigeria where she's been for over 20 years And she told me that she is the only senior person Nigerian person left there

What they've done is, and I'm not sure if they made these changes because Tinibu came up with this, let's see, this expatriate employment levy. But what she said has happened in her company is they have fired pretty much all the Nigerians, and they now have the jobs the Nigerians were doing being done by people in the US.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (28:34.492)
Yes, yes.

Adesoji Iginla (28:51.854)
What?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:51.919)
But as a Nigerian where she is, she's been cut off from most of the meaningful work. She's basically just twiddling her thumbs and she was actually meeting me as a coach to figure out what her next move should be because she is a little older, she's more mature, but she's like, I see the writing on the wall.

and like almost the last one standing. So when you look at what we've set up in Nigeria, you have these multinational companies, many of them either hiring quote unquote expert trades who come and make way more money than our own Nigerian people make there.

All of this money is being siphoned and taken back to their countries. Of course the few elitist africans We also want to go on vacation in spain and dubai and the uk and all of that We're not also spending our money where we are. So when you look at let me just wrap up by saying that Again starting with our genesis as a quote-unquote country We never gained independence. I don't think we ever really sat down and defined who we wanted to be for ourselves

When Nkrumah came with the concept of a united Africa, people like Nnamdi Azikiwe opposed it. Again, small-minded thinking where it's like, no, I can be prime minister of my country versus if we come together, the continent, I may not have such a lofty position. But these decisions made by our, now many of them, ancestors, 60 plus years ago,

Are still haunting us today and let me also say one last thing jesse talked about I think it was jesse who talked about our founding fathers Hey, y'all should have had mothers included but

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (30:38.107)
Yeah. It's true. True.

Adesoji Iginla (30:39.035)
You're right.

Jesse (30:43.924)
No, you're right. You're right. Actually, if you trace the trajectory of history regarding the women, I think they did quite a lot more work than some of the men did ever. So if you look at the

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (30:55.336)
Yeah, they did.

Adesoji Iginla (30:57.814)
Mm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (30:58.205)
Yes.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (31:01.467)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:03.847)
29 29.

Adesoji Iginla (31:04.75)
in 1929.

Jesse (31:08.244)
It was a woman, they just said enough is enough. We don't care what you do. We don't fear your guns. We don't fear your police. We're going to just do what we want to do. The same thing with what happened with the market uprising in Yoruba and in Lagos as well. So the, yeah, so we never, you can rest assured that we know what you guys did. So without you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:24.623)
You're overland. It's a family cat, a ransom cookie.

Adesoji Iginla (31:25.907)
Yeah.

Jesse (31:36.736)
there's not going to be Nigeria. But I've always said, if when, at every point that we discuss Nigeria, I've always gone back to structure. Because I do believe that the first republic was the window of opportunity that we missed and it still remains a snapshot for how we should have proceeded, you know. For instance, take Western Nigeria.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (31:37.995)
flat.

Jesse (32:05.164)
Do you know that in Western Nigeria, at the regional levels, they were speaking Yoruba language in parliament? And when they will go out to engage with the people, it has to do with speaking Yoruba. And the system of governance that a true Fiscal or Federal, you know, list system give you actually allows the ordinary people

Adesoji Iginla (32:32.669)
to engage.

Jesse (32:33.288)
take part in the process of governance. Now what has happened with this structure that Aguyin Rousey imposed? Because look, we must be honest with ourselves. One thing that I see lacking in any Nigerian discussion is honesty. The founding fathers knew we are not one people and we must develop at the pace that we can sustain individually.

Adesoji Iginla (32:35.374)
Mm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (32:35.984)
It does.

Adesoji Iginla (32:51.629)
Mm.

Jesse (33:02.652)
as a people. Now,

What is happening to that lady you talk about is happening to my sister, right? She works in one of the oil companies and for like the last 15 years, she's been performing a role at the management level that she's not been paid for. No, she's been paid but not paid at the rates that they would bring the least, the least qualified um, expat trade.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (33:22.994)
Oh, wow.

Yeah, another red, yeah.

Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (33:31.356)
X-MATCH RATE.

Jesse (33:32.944)
into the business and because it's a subsidiary of the NNPC as they said, they're now saying they're collapsing the organizations, you know, what anybody is currently doing. Right now she doesn't know where she stands and she's at the crossroads. So many people are like that. What has happened in that case is not diverse from the structure of governance and the structure of politics that I'm talking about. When you aggregate things at the top,

What happens is you kind of like decimate the lower ranks. And the kind of high-level decisions you take will affect people, but it will never affect the people at the top. So that is what is going on there. So if we are going to go forward in Nigeria, like they say in Yoruba land, when they say if an adult falls on the ground, it looks forward.

No, sorry, if a kid, you know, trips and falls, it's gonna look forward. I need to get to where I'm going. I'm in a rush. I need to get to where I'm going. But if an adult trips and falls, it's gonna look back. It's gonna look around him. What happened? What tripped me? When I'm going next, when I proceed, I need to watch out for, you know, things like that, you know, obstructions. That's exactly where we are in Nigeria, and that's exactly what we need to do.

Adesoji Iginla (34:43.746)
They have to look backwards. Yeah. What treats me over?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (34:45.226)
Yeah.

Jesse (35:00.684)
There's something about, okay, let's take America. IIS in America, for instance. They had a clear idea of what they were doing. So all these states were the constituent units. So they have their powers. And the powers they had allowed, that's why you have, let's just take law enforcement, for instance, and security. The governor says I'm the chief security officer of my state. It's got...

It's got the resources to be the chief security officer because it's got the state police. And even the local councils, we use local council. What do they use in the counties that you use in the US? You have counties. The counties they have, they are police units. Do you get me? So now, if you are taking decisions in your own state, you are naturally thinking about that state to say,

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (35:42.255)
Yeah, we have counties, yes.

Jesse (35:58.26)
This is where I get my political power from and contribute the economic system that works, you know, to further, you know, what is going on. So we can see what is going on in Texas right now versus what is going on in the, in the, you know, national center. It's the same thing in the UK, right? So the different count, the different boroughs and different counties, they've got their own powers. Even within, let's say Great Britain, for instance, we know that if you go to Holyrood,

I think Ollywood is in Wales, you know, they have their own assembly. It's Scotland, it's Scotland. Which one is the one for Wales?

Adesoji Iginla (36:27.239)
Yeah, Hollyroyd is Scotland. Hollyroyd is Scotland. Yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (36:30.155)
It's called that. It's called that, yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (36:33.814)
Wales is climbing... what's it called? Cardiff, Cardiff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Don't even start.

Jesse (36:38.14)
Cymru, Cymru something, yeah, it's a difficult language. Yeah, so you can see that local people are taking local decisions. So if you look at Scotland, for instance, that ability to look out for themselves as to ensure that one of their primary resource is the lakes and the scenic areas. What have they done with that? About 40% of all the best whiskeys.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (36:39.278)
Crime rules. Yeah, flight crime rules or something.

Jesse (37:07.804)
and brandy that is bought around the world comes from Scotland. And it's all linked to their natural environment. So they tell you that the water that they use for this whiskey comes from a particular, you know, lark. And you can get it anywhere else. Now, Scotland has sea, the North Sea What do they do by that? They are fishing salmon. So if you're eating salmon in the UK, you're eating Scottish salmon.

Adesoji Iginla (37:19.158)
Mm-hmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (37:22.289)
like yeah

Hmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (37:36.171)
Mmm.

Jesse (37:37.928)
whether it's pumped or wild. Then, thirdly, they used to take oil from the North Sea. Now, you don't go to the North Sea as Britain and say, I'm going to populate the exploitation of resources in the North Sea with English people and Welsh people. You know automatically that 60% of all the workforce in that area must be Scottish.

Adesoji Iginla (37:38.022)
Yep.

Adesoji Iginla (38:04.878)
Scottish, yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (38:05.682)
Oh.

Jesse (38:06.472)
Because it's their natural resource. That is where they came from. And right now, I think, Northern Sea exploration tailed, you know, tipped down in the last 10 years. But what has Scotland have been doing with the accumulated years of experience that they've got there? They have been exporting talent. Yeah. So if you're talking about most difficult places in the world to tap crude oil, who do you go for? You go for Scottish engineers.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (38:09.619)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (38:16.149)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (38:22.504)
First time in the mouth. Yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (38:24.704)
their work, their work force. Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (38:34.639)
Scottish, yeah, North Sea, yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (38:35.657)
Yeah.

Jesse (38:36.488)
Now flip that idea and go to Nigeria. Dangoate comes to Kogi State It gets given free land. It gets given everything for free. And the cement that is producing in that area pollutes the environment. There's no job for the people who are local. OK. Let's see what you did with the new.

Adesoji Iginla (38:44.903)
Oh, God.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (38:47.476)
Mmm.

Adesoji Iginla (39:04.086)
It was funny.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (39:05.116)
the Refinery

Jesse (39:05.288)
refinery, right? They employed, they have license to employ 40,000 people, skilled workers, whatever you want. I believe every job is skilled anyway. They employed over 25,000 from outside of the country. The Juicy Rose, the Juicy Rose, you know, went to Indians, Pakistanis, you know, English people, I know that. Who get the kind of jobs they were given to Nigerians?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (39:23.275)
So uh.

Adesoji Iginla (39:34.818)
Gateman Gateman.

Jesse (39:34.944)
Cleaners. Cleaners and all of that. I don't know any country, apart from that, is a security risk. I believe in Yorubaland for instance. Giving a single person authority over a port, for me, is criminal. I don't know where that is done. It's like saying that, oh, you took certain aspects of United States and you gave it to an individual. Now, it got all of those factors of production for free.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (39:35.036)
Leopard, yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (39:44.339)
Mmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (39:52.394)
Yes.

Yes.

Jesse (40:04.84)
What does it give back to Nigerian? Instead, the Nigerians gave $4.5 billion into that refinery, making you and I that are seated here, we are all Shareholders in the Dangote refinery because the collective money is being paid into that area. What is it doing with that money? It's shipping all the products outside of Nigeria. And Nigerians are paying 700 naira for a liter of fuel

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (40:07.471)
You get spanked. We sing about it.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (40:21.953)
Mmm.

Jesse (40:34.22)
So I agree with Aya that we're not independent. And what we are doing is because we did not free up the energies of the local people to do, okay, before I leave, I'm really sorry for taking your time. I have, my in-law is from the Niger Delta, right? He married my sister. And every time I tell him, one idea is, Isoko

Adesoji Iginla (40:46.33)
I'm sorry.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (40:57.224)
Which part of the Niger Delta? Okay, we're kind of cousins.

Jesse (41:03.132)
Yeah, I work with one of the best guys I work with. I work in advertising agencies in Nigeria. I work in Leo Bonnet Lagos, and I work in JWT Lagos, Joe Walter Thompson Lagos. One of the best guys that I work with is Clemento Memo. He's from Ijaw And I always tell him, I said, look, I look in the census records, and Ijaw people are not up to three million people.

They are not more than 3 million people. So I said to him, you know what? Let's look at it this way. If.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (41:35.947)
We actually believe we're more than that. We just don't, we don't report our numbers, but go ahead.

Jesse (41:39.536)
Okay, let's just say five million people. Let's say five million people. Now, imagine what Nigeria is making from, if you're controlling, but in the first republic, that's a snapshot for us. The constitution says that you keep 60% of the resources that you've got. You send 40% to the center. If Willy Nilly, ijaw that's Bayelsa

Adesoji Iginla (41:58.759)
center.

Jesse (42:08.348)
is controlling 60% of the oil wealth in that area. It should be the Riviera of Africa. I'm talking oil wealth. I'm talking about sea wealth, because that is where you receive shipping industry growing and all of that. So if you've got that, I tell my people who are against us restructuring or even breaking our path as a nation, all you need is a visa to get into that place. Because

Bayelsa cannot produce its own doctors. It takes seven years to produce doctors. So whichever region is producing the best doctors is what they're gonna go for. In fact, if you go to Bayelsa just like if you go to Qatar, you cannot do Maigaurd as security. Rich people want people who are well-dressed, who use technology to protect them. So if you've got that skill, they're gonna pay for it. So eventually, this fear of redistribution that we've got, that oh,

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (42:38.649)
No.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (42:45.288)
Yes.

Jesse (43:05.264)
If these people have access to their own resources, they're going to be richer than us. It's a farce. Of course, you want them to be rich. They are Black people. Let them be rich. We're all being subjected to years and years and years and years of exploitation. I want to see my Black brother very, very rich. That's what I'm for. But if he's rich, I can get a visa, go to their country, offer fantastic service. And they can buy it from me. And I'm going to be part of exploiting the resources that they've got.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (43:11.065)
Of course, of course.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (43:30.481)
Of course.

Jesse (43:35.476)
So for me, until we go back to, they want to manufacture patriotism that is based on one Nigeria. No, I don't believe in Nigeria. In fact, when we see ourselves, we look at our names and we start to figure out where is it from? Where is it from? That's who we are as Africans. I need to respect your culture. You need to respect my culture. But the basis of all of that is that you must control your natural environment.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (43:52.595)
Where it's from? It's fact though. Fact. Yes.

Jesse (44:06.664)
If you control your natural environment to the 60% of what you've got in there, you're going to have patriotism naturally. I'm sorry, I've taken a lot of time.

Adesoji Iginla (44:14.414)
OK. OK, no. It leads us to this question, actually. It leads us to this question. And I'll first of all pose it to Jude, which is, if can we, if you take this quote, right, if you're emotionally attached to your tribe, religion, or political leaning, to the point that truth and justice becomes secondary,

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (44:16.816)
That's fine. Fantastic. Fantastic history.

Adesoji Iginla (44:42.158)
secondary consideration, your education and exposure is useless. That's a quote attributed to Dr. Chuba Okadigbo So the question is, to Jude first to Aya second, then we'll go back to Jesse, is can we pray ourselves out of the economic trouble we are in?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (45:03.959)
According to according to what they were a few orders they can But from I'll go I'll go to the a colocu as a since I was young and I am old I have never seen correct I don't know what the song is about that one since I was very young man. They've been praying, you know The Bible said the Bible says so far not the children to come on to say this for these are the their minds are the kingdom of God one time my son happened to see

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:21.531)
Eheheheheheh

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (45:31.615)
Pastor Chris doing miracles and said, take it, take it. And the adults were falling head to shoulder everywhere. My boy was seven that time. I never forget that encounter. And he said, Papa, what are they taking? I'm like, you can't, where? Yeah, so just like that. And I said, you can't see what they're taking. He said, no. And I said, seriously, let's look again. He's giving us something. He said, no. He says, I said, thank you very much. That's why Christ said they should allow you come into the temple. They should not push you guys out because your mind.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:43.87)
Ha!

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (46:01.071)
It's pure, you're curious, you have that curiosity, you ask questions. But the adults in the room, their mind is being cajoled, is being cushioned to believe in something they don't see. They're not actually, because we all tell stories, they're not actually believe phantom stories. No, we cannot free ourselves out of the economic crisis. You can work hard and have structures like Jesse's been saying all evening. We cannot pray. There's no society would pray themselves out of this.

He needs dedication, he needs hard work, he needs expertise. He needs the exchange of resources between different terrains like Jesse said. You cannot absolutely pray. If it was possible, I don't think Europeans would hold that, they would hold the monopoly on prayer. So we cannot. And actually, if you've been through the forewords, I never respect anyone who's sorry to offend people. Anyone who's been through the forewords of schools and then they become prisoner to their religion and tribal instincts and sentiments.

and all of that emotionally attached to that. I don't respect them. It's why the former vice president, they said he was an astute lawyer, whatever his name was. And the next thing it will end with prayer. I'm like, where are you going with this? How do you come to an economic initiative conference and you end it and start it with prayer? It doesn't work for me. So know truly and truly you cannot pray yourself out of this current economic crisis. We need people with the brains and well with her to lead us out of it.

and all to do that is to go back to restructuring. And I like what Aya said before, when she quoted Frantz and all, I always said, where is our Kwame Nkrumah? We don't have that, those who fought from the trenches. Okotie Eboh and Aororu, press, all of them, who said they wanted independence. They were in cahoots with the colonizers as well. They were drinking while we were going to check Okotie Eboh pictures. It was lounging, it was, they were dragging his robe around with him.

It was using rose dress like the colonizers. So those men were drinking whiskey, enjoying smoking cigars with them. They really did not fight from the trenches for anything. So what you don't fight for, you don't really value. So that's why I really value that quote. So we cannot free ourselves out of it. Trust me, we cannot. It doesn't work. Let me just be blunt. It doesn't work. Ha ha ha.

Adesoji Iginla (48:14.626)
higher. You can start with a prayer.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (48:16.167)
Well, I believe it was. It's time to pray. Yes. Oh, my goodness. His name is escaping. It was Desmond Tutu, Bishop Desmond Tutu. At least the quote is attributed to him. He said they came with the Bible in their hands and told us, close our eyes. Let us pray. We closed our eyes and we prayed when we opened our eyes. We had the Bible. They had our land. So.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (48:19.347)
Hahaha!

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (48:32.32)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (48:40.398)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (48:44.043)
Even if I were to go by the Bible, we're since we're not talking about the Quran right now. Let's just talk about the Bible you the Bible says Faith without works is dead So If I sit down right now and pray for a great harvest in my garden But I never actually go there go to the ground till the ground plant anything You know try to nurture anything growing

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (48:55.295)
FACT.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (49:12.583)
I can pray until I'm praying I'm bleeding blood and I'm not gonna see anything. And so unfortunately, in fact, I was joking about this when I was back home in 2022, I think, because I was home with my children and I said, I want you guys to look at the billboards and I want you to give me a sense of what the nation is about just by looking at the billboards. I was talking to my kids, my children were with me.

And they're like, okay, well, technology, phones, and they were all white models. This was before they made the change that you have to use black models in your advertising in Nigeria. And then it was, you need to open a church, or you need to sell alcohol. So those are the three things, white models with phones, lots of alcohol commercials, and then it was all these churches and everything.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (49:51.231)
Mmm.

Adesoji Iginla (49:51.511)
Thanks for watching!

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (49:57.254)
Oh, boy.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (50:00.648)
What?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (50:04.523)
joints.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:07.979)
And so we started talking, you know, and they were like, mom, you could come here as a life coach, just put, you know, bring some fone you know, Bible verses here and there, have a big revival. And in one night, you can make more than you make working your butt off for a whole month. And so definitely religion is one of the biggest industries in Nigeria now.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (50:13.823)
Yeah!

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (50:25.728)
Facts.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:33.835)
In fact, when I was driving in Nigeria, I kept asking the driver. I'm like, what's that building there? Cause they were these monstrous, I'm talking like a whole city block. And they're like, oh yeah, it used to be a textile place, whatever. But now it's a church. Now it's a church. The biggest buildings I saw in Lagos and Port Harcourt were churches. And so, and every night, I mean, you have revival 6 AM.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (50:44.371)
Hmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (50:48.52)
is a church.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (50:55.987)
Churches

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:03.047)
noon prayer, evening prayer, all day, all night vigil, all the, it's the industry. So short answer to your question, no, we're not going to pray ourselves out of this mess, but it comes back to everything that Jude and Jesse have talked about for me comes back to, one of you said something about, oh, controlling our natural resources. And my question is,

How do we control our natural resources when we don't control our minds? See, the reason why we can never create a structure that benefits us is because someone else is living rent-free and is directing our thoughts. So Nigerians are not even thinking about, and Africans as a whole, about who we are and what we need to do for ourselves. I see quote unquote elites talking about, why can't we be like Dubai?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (51:34.763)
Good question.

Jesse (51:35.177)
So, thanks for your time.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:58.391)
Why can't we be like Paris? Do you understand that these places, capitalism, they basically lived off of people like you. So who are you gonna live off of to create that? Those things aren't even sustainable long-term, but that's what we're going for. And I just wanna mention one last thing. 2023, 700% increase in visas to Nigerian students. We're leaving.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (52:09.742)
is that

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (52:26.739)
Right now, the Nigerian Medical Association is estimating that 50 doctors leave Nigeria on a weekly basis.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (52:39.303)
So who's gonna be this brain? Where are we getting the brains to sit down and think through our issues and possibly fight the oligarchy that exists right now? I don't know.

Adesoji Iginla (52:56.766)
Amen.

Jesse (52:57.244)
Well, let me check. Aya, thank you for taking my job from me. Because you went to Nigeria and you did a deep stick research. That's what we call deep stick research. That's filling the waters and dipping your toes into the waters and seeing what comes up. And your kids were 100% on point. And it all goes back to what I've been saying.

once you disconnect a man from his land then he loses all senses of identity because your land is where all your structure all your belief systems all your cosmology the way you see the world everything comes from that and i think the old books that um chino achebe wrote about things fall apart is that that's what he's describing basically

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (53:41.724)
So, that's it for today. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.

Jesse (53:55.516)
The center, it took one of these poets from the UK, the center cannot hold their four things fall apart. So what he was saying is that somebody else come and my brother that I sit with every day cannot listen to me anymore. The things that we used to do, we cannot do it again anymore. So we have to do it by, so that's exactly what I'm saying. You see, there is freedom in being connected.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (54:01.428)
cannot hold.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (54:12.167)
No. Yes, yes.

Jesse (54:23.472)
your land and exercising some form of authority on your land. I don't agree with the quote that you had initially from that guy Chuba Okadigbo I don't agree with it at all. At all. We're making a mistake. I used to think that way and I've been around, I've traveled around the world. In Iceland today, if you want to go to Iceland, they'll take people who look like them.

Adesoji Iginla (54:35.182)
Thanks for watching!

Jesse (54:52.984)
I know a lot of black people who married and all of that and they still are not made to feel at home in Iceland. I'm telling you how homogenic.

Adesoji Iginla (55:02.846)
they want to keep it yeah

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (55:02.971)
Yeah. Yes.

Jesse (55:04.736)
I'll just line this. There is something about who you are and the ethnic tribe that you come from. If you're Welsh, Welsh are proud of their ancestry. They can die on it for you. If you're Scots, I went to Portugal about two weeks ago. I went to the Algarve. And at the promontory, you know, near the sea, this guy just looked at me, how you doing?

I said, you Irish? He said, by the grace of God, I am. Ha ha. Genesai, he told me all his life story just because I identified his ethnicity and where he came from. So there's a whole lot of story that is at least 100,000 years old, lined up to that identity. So for me, that's what I always said. If your tribe or your race survived up to now,

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (55:38.255)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jesse (56:01.224)
is a virtual reason and that is what brings diversity. But what we don't understand as Africans is this. You have to be comfortable in your own skin, in your own land and have enough in your hand to bring to the table. If you're sitting at the table with me and you've got nothing in your hand, that makes you apprehensive. That makes you touchy because you don't have something to bargain with. We're all bargaining. Don't ever forget that.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (56:18.84)
Thank you.

Jesse (56:31.228)
All the wars that have been fought in the world from beginning to the end is mainly about resources, the control of resources. We fought among people that you know, people that, Umuliri and the Aguliri, they've been fighting for the last hundred years. Do you get what I'm saying? So you need to know who you are, but realize that when I come to the table with people that are not from my own ethnic, you know, race or tribe, I need to give them some gap, as in respect their culture.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (56:36.744)
Yeah.

Jesse (57:01.704)
That is where consensus comes from. That's where good consensus comes from. But having said all of that, I can wager my life on it that Nigeria is going nowhere until the people sit down and say, how do we organize ourselves? Because political power, social power, all comes from the system that you practice and that you know.

So I said to someone, Tinubu, I've been on Tinubu's case since 2007, anybody that knows my profile, in fact, at the last elections, right, one of the guys who led the campaign for them said, oh, we would have engaged you, but we know you are a staunch enemy of Tinubu. We went to London there, we went down there to our beer together. Now,

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (57:39.892)
Hmm.

Jesse (58:02.108)
I said yes, but it was surprised that on this occasion, I said no, in the midst of all this anarchy, if the Nogu can get to be president, let him be president. Why did I say that? Because the old structure of trust, the old structure of equity, of whatever makes a country, has been broken. I don't see any way forward. So what I wanted to say was that

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (58:24.425)
Yeah.

Jesse (58:30.648)
There was a lot of people who said to me, oh, if we go our separate ways, what we are practicing in Nigeria is what we're gonna practice in these subunits that we formed. I said, no. I give you the Yoruba thing. The most powerful, and it's the same way that it's gonna be in your places as well. The most powerful Yoruba guy cannot come to my yard and kill me. He may kill me. Tinubu may kill me in Yoruba land, but trust me.

my family they're going to exact revenge because we know ourselves we know your ancestry we know when you are rich we know when you are not you are not you are nobody to us do you understand what i'm saying but it went to the rulers the penultimate election to the one he won he lost it if you remember that's when Oluomo was busy attacking people they did a lot of talk then but who guaranteed his winning

Adesoji Iginla (59:00.034)
We'll kill him.

Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (59:06.518)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (59:11.358)
I'm not invisible, yeah, yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (59:24.54)
Mm-hmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (59:24.65)
Mm.

Jesse (59:28.924)
It was sent in the soldiers from nowhere. So it's the same thing for policing. They bring a policeman that...

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (59:36.555)
Which is by the way what they're doing in the East, right? Because a lot of times now they appoint police chiefs for states that are not from that state. So yeah, so in Anambra State you have a police chief who's from Kaduna. It's crazy. You're right.

Jesse (59:47.944)
Yeah, yeah, it's not gonna work.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (59:54.393)
enough. Yeah.

Jesse (59:58.772)
So that is not going to work. So that's why I tell people that. I want to come to the table. Let's say we tell ourselves at the national conference, let's practice something else for the next 20 years or the next 30 years. And then let's put in the agreement that will come and have a referendum if we want to continue as Nigeria or we want to go our separate ways. And people, when we tell people that, we need to go our separate ways, they think, oh, if you break things up now,

It's going to be like crack tag. It's going to be all over the place. No, I said no. Once you say you're going, you have to have meetings, you have to do all your due diligence, and you have to have timing. It takes as much as 10 years. And I give people the examples that people don't want to give. Take Belgium, for instance. If you remember, last year or two years ago, the old Belgian country was without the government for nearly eight months from the end. Yeah. Why?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:00:38.911)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:54.194)
months. Yeah.

Jesse (01:00:57.46)
because the Flemish, who are a bit French, the Germans, who make up part of the ethnic group, and the Dutch, who make the rest of the ethnic group, could not agree on certain things. Until they sat down. So a quick one, the fact that we did not fight the white guy with guns or with violence, like Fanon said, does not mean that all of the fights that went underneath is not classified as war.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:01:04.448)
Uh.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:05.902)
enough. I could not agree.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:01:18.944)
Mmm.

Jesse (01:01:27.752)
like the Aba Riots like all of these things that we have. I don't know if it's much. So let's start. Now, take Canada, for instance.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:01:29.561)
Hmm. Oh, no, of course, of course.

Jesse (01:01:36.3)
The people living in Quebec, is it Quebec or Quebec? I don't know what it is. Quebec. People living in Quebec are living under French cultural political system. And that's the way they want it. People living in British Columbia and Newfoundland are living under the influence of the British. And that's how they want it. And the two will never mix. They will never mix. And these are white people.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:39.842)
Thank you, back, you back, you back.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:01:40.283)
Yeah, Quebec, yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:01:46.203)
Yes, yes, yes.

Jesse (01:02:05.376)
So when people want to give you some kind of examples, they don't give you the right examples. So for me, but what makes these people different? I go everywhere.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:11.117)
cultural problems.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:02:11.275)
Uh-uh.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:02:17.547)
But Jesse, we don't even have to go to what white people are doing. How did we exist before colonialism? Did we not trade with one another and so on? Yes.

Jesse (01:02:21.141)
That's something.

Jesse (01:02:26.012)
Yeah, I did some research on you. I did some research on you, Anga. I did some research on you. When I saw, oh, who am I speaking to? Or who am I going to be here with? I called Adesoji, and I said, who is this lady? And she said, oh, she write books. She's very big on education of the African, and all of that. And I said, yeah, her philosophy agrees with mine. In the sense that imagine if Bayelsa

constituent unit of Nigeria. And it says that I have the liberty to control the education that goes on at my local level. I'm sure they're not going to make English their language. Do you know the reason why they killed that guy who was fighting for the independence in Saro Wiwa and the one before him, Ada Caburo? Because they could get away with it.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:03:08.683)
I love it.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:03:15.887)
are...

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:03:21.21)
Uh, a duckable, yes.

Yes.

Jesse (01:03:24.732)
If you are the structure that says you cannot attack a constituent unit like in America, Texas says, oh, I don't like what they're doing, so I'm going to partner with this guy and attack Utah. That's the end of the union. Do you get what I'm saying? So this is exactly where we're going from. All of us that are sitting here, we were told that Mungo Park had discovered River Niger I sat down there and I was looking at the teacher. Are you stupid? Do you get what I mean? Even till tomorrow.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:37.96)
Mm-mm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:44.95)
He did, huh?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:03:45.191)
Yeah, tough luck.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:03:45.332)
Thank you.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:03:49.535)
Hmm. Ha ha ha.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:03:50.119)
I'm gonna go.

Jesse (01:03:55.052)
Okay, um, in my house now, I took my

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:03:58.673)
But you want to get A1 in your class.

Jesse (01:04:03.495)
Hahahaha

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:04:04.795)
That's not the question, Mungo park. It's yours, it's yours.

Jesse (01:04:08.54)
Yeah, you know, so it is this sort of thing that if we do not give, because as a Yoruba guy, I'm not going to be interested in the culture of say the Tiv people beyond cursory Glancer, whatever is happening in that region. It is down to you as a custodian of that legacy that your ancestors have been holding for like the 5,000 years or 10,000 years.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:04:24.68)
Yeah

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:31.273)
Interesting

Jesse (01:04:35.264)
for you to bring to the table in a union that you create. So that's why I say to people, what I find most disarming is that those of us who are educated, supposedly, we cannot still come to the table like we're doing today and say, guys, what we've been doing is wrong. So what are you take what is happening in religion today? It's just like a fallout. If you tidy out, if you tidy your house,

There's no way a pastor is just going to, we're not America where the pastor will sway the people to vote. So they give them taxes and status. Do you get what I mean? If you come to the UK, if you're a pastor, keep shut. Do you know, you can't even tell me. So this is why I'm saying that. Because there's no structure within the old place. It's a cephalos, if I can use big word. It's neither, you know, there. So it's like, I'm more big.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:14.222)
Mm-mm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:05:14.741)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:19.906)
That's it.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:05:21.974)
Hahahaha

Jesse (01:05:35.188)
It's just, you know, shifting all over the place. So that's why every charlatan, you know, can come into this space. It's not regulated. So this is what we need to get back to so that I want to discover things. I'm Yoruba, I travel around Europe, and I see myself going to look for their history that I've read. I came to America. I never felt comfortable because of the wealth of historical knowledge that I know about America and its relation to black people.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:05:36.087)
Yeah, more bad. Step 15. Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:36.786)
whatever shape it takes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:06:00.395)
Mm.

Jesse (01:06:04.08)
You understand, stepping on the ground itself, my body was not at ease. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? How can we wake up? Look at us, we all woke up one day. Where did we go to? Get a visa, go to America. Get a visa, go to Sweden. Get a visa, go to Germany. Do we get visas and go to Ghana or go to Rwanda or go and know who these people are? It was recently that I was, I was, I was...

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:06:08.863)
Hmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:06:26.73)
No.

Jesse (01:06:33.376)
delving more into Yoruba culture, so that I can explain it better to my son. And I found out that the Bono Empire, you see this kind of tribal marks they've got, is actually Yoruba. If you see all the local heads, you know, have been in existence for like 6,000 years, that's the same marks that you see. So if we know some of this history, why are we fighting? I went to Ghana, my mom, for instance, she's playing like, yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:06:44.405)
Yes.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:06:50.971)
Yes, they have it. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:07:00.891)
Jesse, but you know that you know we don't teach history in Nigerian schools anymore, right? Okay, so I'm not bringing you back to reality though. We're not we don't teach history in our schools.

Jesse (01:07:05.86)
I know I'm just saying solutions to if we build a structure. I know. That's why I mean that we need to go back to the proper structure, the proper structure. I was discussing with Adi Soji the other day, and I said, Ekuabo in Yoruba is welcome. Akwaabo is the same thing. And historically, we've had links, a linkage of both the Edo kingdom

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:07.086)
Thanks for watching!

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:07:25.999)
A koaba. Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:07:26.159)
Mm-hmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:07:31.143)
Yes, yes, yes.

Yes, yes, I read that recently and I was fascinated.

Jesse (01:07:35.5)
old if a kingdom as relationships with people in Ghana. So now economically the question you asked before, why Ghana makes the best cocoa? Why are we why aren't we investing in the best production process to take Ghana cocoa and bring it to Nigeria and add value to it? Why are we not doing that?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:07:50.056)
in cocoa, yeah. And bring it to Nigeria. Hold on.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:07:57.403)
because we do not own our own minds. We see ourselves as inferior. It's the same reason Dangote Te will go and hire all of these people from outside of the nation because once someone has convinced you of your inferiority, you really don't have any expectations of your own, even though we leave our shores and we go and we add great value to other places.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:08:04.135)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:08:26.087)
But if I come home to Nigeria now with my degrees and whatever I've accomplished, and a white American comes to apply for the same job that has a high school diploma and a certificate, we will see that person, we will esteem that person more than you would me.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:08:44.463)
Facts

Jesse (01:08:44.497)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:08:44.815)
because of our mentality so we and that's how the religion piece and the bleaching cream and the hair weave that Nigeria is now a capital of and here we country with 29.9 percent inflation rate where to make to make To make jalef rice for four five people in Nigeria now will cost you about 10,000 naira

Jesse (01:08:57.876)
I'm gonna do a video on that.

Jesse (01:09:03.872)
Aya, it's one of the reasons I love.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:09:14.759)
wage for a month is 30,000 naira. So ask me how are people supposed to live?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:09:22.863)
I give strangers money, not to boast, but recently, two days ago, something really touched me. My younger brother called me and said, there's this dude in my area, I respected him a lot. We used to do politics together. And he said, the daughter's getting married. I'm like, okay. I knew already what was coming. And I said, Padi, you'll give me some more time. And he said, okay. Then yesterday, he reminded me, I said, I've got this so-so amount somewhere, I can forward that. You know the response I got?

The first time in my life I'm getting anybody reject money for me. It's not, I'm not joking. He touched me. He said, uh, bros I will tell you to keep that money or because the way Nigeria be right and that thing no go reach them. Do nothing. It will be like you cost them money. I said, if that's the case, they will have to wait a bit longer for me to gather. And I came off that WhatsApp and I was like, nobody going by reject. Nobody has rejected money from me before. It was 5,000, 10,000. They never.

Jesse (01:09:52.873)
Yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:10:20.479)
for this person to say no, don't even bother. You'd better don't.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:23.746)
So speaking of.

Jesse (01:10:24.476)
I think it's the other way around for me. Before, when I send people money, they expect you to give them 100 grand and all of that. So nowadays, if you send 10,000, people are so, so appreciative. So which is surprising to me because... Yeah, because... Yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:10:27.669)
Mm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:10:31.505)
Mmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:10:36.932)
so grateful.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:10:39.459)
No, no because of the hunger so now The government is setting up um What do they call it? So they're trying to increase then trying to increase the minimum wage in the country But they're also setting up something akin to the American Social Security system where next I think they announced it They announced it this week that they're identifying

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:10:42.547)
I was shocked. I was shocked. I was like, huh?

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:50.102)
Palletive.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:11:06.979)
25, no, 15 million Nigerians that they feel are the most impoverished, and they've set aside $12 million, the equivalent of $12 million more. Well they claim there's all this transparency that's going to happen, but people are hungry.

Jesse (01:11:15.712)
Aya, I'm just going to tell you that is not going to work.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:20.302)
Hold that thought, guys. Hold that thought. We're talking about poverty. So this next quote we actually answer would set the stage for what you're about to say. So Jude said, someone posed the question. Oh, I need money. And as a result, you were looking to send said money, right? Aya said beforehand that you need X amount of money to cook a.

Jesse (01:11:24.145)
Sorry, I'm sorry. What Aya is describing.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:11:44.017)
Mm-hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:50.258)
a dish of Jollof Rice for people. So if you listen to this quote, until I see someone eating out of the gutters before I believe there is poverty in Nigeria, this was Umaru Dikko in 1982.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:11:50.475)
EAT

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:11:50.975)
I love you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:12:05.091)
Well, we're eaten out of gutters.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:12:07.083)
Well that's the criminal who first stole our money and ran to England with it. You know, father of corruption.

Jesse (01:12:11.014)
Yeah, that's a consequence of people.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:12:12.871)
We're eating out of gutters. In fact, they just reported that when they you know When you clean rice and the chaff and all of that they used to use That what they discard for chicken feed now people are buying that and Adding whatever they can to it to eat that is how bad things are just today Just today forty four messages already. I'm like you people don't give my phone number to anybody anymore They'll call

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:12:24.53)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:12:41.783)
Sister, please can you call me back? I don't have data. So you call them back and then they'll say, oh guys, really me, I have high forward fever. I can't go to the hospital because if you go to the hospital, you have to buy everything that is good to be used to treat you. Please. Can you say anything you can send? It's really, really bad. And for our elders who don't have children,

Adesoji Iginla (01:12:48.81)
I will love you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:13:10.671)
There is no system in place to provide assistance to them because the village structure has fallen apart. The young people have flocked to the townships where they are living in abject poverty. And the elites are just finding ways to make themselves more comfortable. Now we not only have.

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:14.371)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:13:35.411)
large walls, tall walls with barbed wire in it. Now they have electrified the barbed wire so that even the birds know not to perch on them because they get electrocuted. But I said, how much further are your walls going to go for the elites?

Jesse (01:13:54.184)
Now, that is the fall of Rome. That's exactly what I'm saying. Look, I'm an innovation manager. And what you do is you look at thresholds for things. If you say, okay, intervene in this issue, you look at thresholds for what it took to get to where you are and what it's gonna take to get to the position you wanna be, for instance. And you look at the opportunities, you look at the motivations, and you say, okay.

based on this and that and that and that, this might be the likely outcome. The reason why I kept insisting on structure is you look at what you said, you mentioned something, my mom, three weeks ago, she had a fall. Our bathroom has been made, has been adapted, so it's free of obstructions, but she's 73 now going 74. She just tripped for whatever reason.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:41.275)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:48.706)
Mmm.

Jesse (01:14:53.38)
And she damaged the femur bones, completely off the other bone. And the fees to do the surgery alone was around 800,000 Naira. And they're going to buy this, buy that, buy that, do this, do that, do that. That's another 500,000 Naira. We ended up with enough for two months to stay with her in the house.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:58.391)
ever.

Adesoji Iginla (01:15:13.558)
Mm.

Hmph.

Jesse (01:15:23.652)
It just so happened that out of the six of us, only two people were left in Nigeria. One is in Abuja and the other one lives in an area of, you know, Lagos. So I understand what you're saying. And imagine what you brought in somebody who has not got kids or somebody who's got kids and the kids are struggling. It is a bad, bad situation to be in Nigeria. So I understand all of this, but look at it this way.

We have the research is the retired Nigerians that are retiring from America, from the top economies, every year, at least up to half a million people are retiring.

These people don't want to spend, they are around 60, anywhere from 69 to 82. They don't want to spend time in the West beyond the summer months. But what keeps them from going to Nigeria to stay permanently? One, security. Two, no, I say one A, one B is Earth care. You get it.

access to electricity and basic internet. Right. Now you might say oh this problem that problem but we can get solutions to all of that. Now I know my mother-in-law for instance she's still paying her own rent living in her own you know place in London which she could give up. She's paying all of that on her pension she's retired she's 83 now. Why does she need to keep a one-bed

Jesse (01:17:06.62)
I'm paying another 300 pound a month, probably in electricity, energy costs. Why? We have a place here. If she wants to stay permanently, she can stay with us. Do you get what I'm saying? So what I'm getting to is that she can comfortably afford to pay 50 pound a month into a health insurance system back in Nigeria. And when she doesn't use it, she could not... That should be the idea.

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:09.998)
Cancel talks.

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:17.408)
Mm.

Jesse (01:17:36.544)
that if I don't use this, I can nominate someone in Nigeria within that similar age to take advantage of what I'm paying into the system. But it's not going to work. You know why it's not going to work? It's not going to work for the same reason that you pay VAT in Lagos, and it's shared across Nigeria to people who believe that drinking alcohol is around. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:40.642)
to use it.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:18:02.937)
It's our own, yeah. Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:05.06)
Mmm.

Jesse (01:18:05.824)
VAT is supposed to be the local tax. At least 60% to 70% of VAT ought to reside in the areas from which it's generated. Do you get what I'm saying? So if my, like, I've made the calculation that if we go to the Doha state, for instance, or the Doha country, or whatever it is, that is one of the lowest hanging fruits that you've got. The three of us sitting down on this table,

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:13.09)
You know what I'm saying?

Jesse (01:18:33.984)
to our retirement, we are 15 years or less. And we will not want to be staying in the cold at that age. We'll prefer to come in the summer to help our kids do their school runs. And once it's winter, bang, we're back in Lagos, in Nigeria. Not only that, imagine the wealth of experience that all of us will contribute to our local environment. So my mother-in-law is a retired nurse.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:18:49.554)
We'll take off.

Jesse (01:19:03.144)
If she goes back to Nigeria, do you think she's going to just sit back in her society and keep drinking kai kai? No. She will be applying that knowledge base that she's got. So there's quite a lot of things that we can infuse back into the economy. But those three things have got to be there. So that's why I'm saying that in Bayasa, it's easier and quicker for them. So I met the guy who fixed my internet. I changed it recently. He's a Lithuanian. And he said, look.

Adesoji Iginla (01:19:12.143)
the...

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:19:13.288)
Yes.

Jesse (01:19:30.58)
Is it Lithuania? One of these, you know, neonatal countries down there. All of their government system is online. The whole country itself is 2.3 million people. Everybody is listed online. The government does not even need a physical space to sit down because they believe that Russia can attack them at any point in time and government needs to continue. FIESA can take just, you know why you not get a good census? Before the white people left, they put the massive population into the north where there's no population.

Adesoji Iginla (01:19:33.903)
Yeah, both.

Jesse (01:20:00.712)
that much and they based the allocation of resources on the amount of population that you've got. So you can conduct one million population censuses, it's all going to come back to the same political answer. Do you get what I'm saying? But if you've got the structure and Bayessa says, all of Bayelsa's, do you want to register on a database? I don't care about your NIN and BVN. Your NIN and BVN, I told you it's not going to work because it's not stopping the guys who are kidnapping people.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:20:13.964)
Yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:20:29.747)
No.

Jesse (01:20:30.028)
They're still making calls. They're still transferring accounts. So it means that since the whole system is corrupt, it's not going to save you. But if you run stuff by yourself and buy yourself, people say, we have 3.5 million buyers. Half a million are in abroad, and the rest are in here. OK, they can now say, this is the power of data. But you have to have data policy. You know I've been writing about this for like ages. You can now say, OK, buyers can say, I, for instance, would do it.

Adesoji Iginla (01:20:53.517)
I know, I know.

Jesse (01:20:59.22)
Do you know you don't need to contribute more than one pound, one dollar, wherever you are a month to your people, to your locality? Imagine that where I come from, there are about 50,000 or 1,000 of us, I would decide to contribute just a hundred pound every year. I'm not saying month, every year. That should go to local courses. Do you know how many things they can do only for children and adults and old age pensioners?

Adesoji Iginla (01:21:26.674)
Oh, dude, yeah.

Jesse (01:21:28.204)
Do you know how much impact we can have outside of government into that area? But there's no capacity to do that. If you send it now, it's just like the other day, I was sending someone, Adewomi. When Adewomi came and they were eulogizing him from America, Obama was saying, Adewomi, I said, that guy's a traitor. People were saying blah, blah. So I left him. One of the things he did with the GED government was to bring in legislation that allowed GMO food to be legal.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:21:46.979)
Hahaha

Adesoji Iginla (01:21:48.931)
the guy with the bow tie.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:21:50.919)
Yeah, they did be well.

Jesse (01:21:58.076)
in Nigeria, but leave that alone. He went to ADB, African Development Bank. And this is Akinwumi Is Akinwumi Akinwumi? He was celebrating the fact that ADB got $7.8 billion as foreign capital injection into Africa as loans in one year. So they were dancing in it.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:22:05.5)
It got killed me.

Adesoji Iginla (01:22:06.155)
going.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:22:16.808)
Mmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:22:20.075)
Hmm.

Jesse (01:22:24.66)
the staff members, they were just doing this dance. I don't know if it's religious or not. And I said to someone, I'm really ashamed. At that point in time, we had a project in the office. And we, it was called Trade Bank for Africa, TDB, or something like that. It's about 22 nations of East to West to South Africa with investors like Mongolia, nation investors like Mongolia, China, and all of that. And I wrote the old, you know,

proposal, you know, and I said to myself, so when I wrote the proposal, they were dealing with, they were, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are, they are,

Jesse (01:23:21.568)
to the amount, the disposable amount, that the lowest local government in China.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:23:27.843)
Oh my God. And that man was already several billion for the whole of Africa.

Jesse (01:23:28.396)
Thanks.

Jesse (01:23:32.268)
So, I said to people, now that 7.8 billion comes with conditionalities. And those conditionalities are going to remove at least 30 billion dollars from the African continent in terms of paying back the loan, in terms of stopping you from producing the same thing that money is meant for. So, sorry, let me just land. Now you, me, Aya, and about 18 to 15 million Nigerians.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:23:37.16)
Yes.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:23:45.119)
Hmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:23:51.192)
Okay.

Jesse (01:24:00.144)
outside of Nigeria. Do you know how much we send into Nigeria without condition every year? We spend at least 20 billion USD into Nigeria. Nobody is saying how do we channel this money like Pakistan is doing. Like I don't need to go to a private

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:24:04.117)
billions, billions.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:24:19.927)
Like like the israelis did with that with american is israelis who really funded israel

Jesse (01:24:22.953)
You know what I'm saying?

Jesse (01:24:27.848)
Now, the Pakistani model actually wowed me, because what it did was set up a bank here, set up a bank in Pakistani, and the government actually became the underwriter for certain trusted state partners in real estate, in companies and all of that. So all you just need to do is you can say, I just want to invest 10 pound a month, and you put your money in it. So as I'm speaking to you now, I bought...

a lot of shares before I left Nigeria. I appointed a company to say register my shares and manage it because I know I'm going to be all over the place with managing it. They did whatever they did, stopped talking to me, and all of that. Now, the SEC brought out this page where you can put your name and get. So I saw all of the pages. So Afinversed, I wrote Afinversed, I sent them. This is the page, what can you do to manage it? I've not got a reply in three months.

This is what we're dealing with. Do you get what I'm saying? So there's so many points of waste in a system without structure. But if that structure is linked to you and is linked to you locally and linked to your local environment, brother, you will take advantage and then you will be responsible for what you've got.

Adesoji Iginla (01:25:27.266)
Hmm structure luck

Adesoji Iginla (01:25:52.058)
Final question for you guys. It's a question on leadership. Because the entire crisis itself is a crisis of leadership, actually. And so if you can pull out your particular one second.

Adesoji Iginla (01:26:16.734)
If you can pull out your take on this. So a great writer once wrote, a handful of us, the smarts and the lucky and hardly ever the best have scrambled for the one shelter our former rulers have left and has taken it over and barricaded themselves in. That's Chinua Achebe from A Man of the People. Talking about the question of leadership.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:26:44.879)
Thank you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:26:45.77)
So in got four minutes. So I'll give you guys one minute each, then I'll ask the Refinery question because I need your take on this. So what would you say in terms of leadership? A minute each, what's your ideal leadership for whatever you envisage Nigeria to be or not to be? You know, so over to you guys.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:27:03.269)
Thank you.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:27:17.298)
For me, an ideal of leadership is self-acquaintability first and foremost. It starts with me. It starts with being less ignorant. It starts with understanding you, the identity, your culture, where you come from, having a proper awareness of what is happening in your locality.

Tinnabu comes from a place, he's the president of Nigeria, but there's a place where he's a very local man. And people will say, ah, Bola, you know what I mean? At the center, you might call him his excellency. I think that's what Jesse was trying to say earlier. So I come from a place, it's me understanding that, understand my identity within the whole entrapment and see how we can harness that. So it starts from me. If I don't know any of these things, or the knowledge we've brought out here today, if I don't know any of these things, how do I start to negotiate my place on the table?

I don't know what I bring to the table like Jesse said earlier. How do I begin to hold that bargaining chip? How do I even sit there to have that conversation? Raise my head. My head will be bad all the time because I don't know what I have. How many biases know what they have? How many really? Indeed, how many? How many debtors know? How many people from the Southwest know their wealth? How many people from Edgerton know what we have? So again, going back to why I was saying

our mind has been captured. And I always said, I'm so sorry, we're all Nigerians here. Through frustration so many times, as much as I like to promote black people, I've always said Nigerians are the most pathetic black people on earth, and they're the bane of black people worldwide. And until Nigeria and Nigerians know themselves, the black man will remain, the black and the black man and the woman will remain on their knees. And it's out of frustration because of the potential that I see, because of what I believe that we can do.

You just only need to see what Jess has been saying about the structure. So for me, it starts with me, accountability. It starts with me.

Adesoji Iginla (01:29:14.13)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:29:19.267)
What kind of leadership would I'd like to see? I would actually love to see us go back to our roots. You know, we once had, I'm not describing us as a utopia by any stretch of the imagination, because obviously we had enough issues that allowed us to be exploited in the way that we have been over the centuries. But we had systems where we did not have old people's homes.

We did not have orphanages. We did not have prisons in the way that we understand them now. We did not have mental institutions in the way that where we actually even have those. Where education was not just for the few. If you lived in a community, everybody got the education they needed to be a functioning citizen, whether it's out to fish.

how to dry food, how to grow food, how to take care of your environment. Like education was something that was available to everybody, whether we wanna call it our rites of passage or whatever. I would really like to, the leadership I'm looking for is a leadership that goes back to our roots. Some of you may have heard the term Sankofa, going back.

and retrieving the knowledge that we've lost. So for instance, in Opobo, which is considered, in my opinion anyway, a food desert, pollution, environmental pollution has definitely changed the landscape environmentally, what animals and seafood we still have available, what we're able to do with the land. But if we go back to the little things like people having vegetable patches, people caring about one another,

When I was a young woman, a young girl in Opobo, I did not see the hunger and the poverty that I see now. We took care of one another. When I was growing up in Opobo, we did not lock our doors. But we also did not have a police force per se.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:31:23.447)
It was the community coming together and quote unquote policing itself. So I would like a leadership that goes back to really the basics because what we're chasing after that we see the West having done, and I understand yes, the time has moved on, technology and so on and so forth, but it's really not sustainable in the same way for us. Leaders who will go back to the basics, go back to us taking care of each other, going back to us.

having the relationship with our land that we used to, which meant that we understood God does not make it anymore land. No one person owns land. Everybody takes care of what we have so that we can all live and thrive. That is the kind of leadership that I want to see. But what I'm seeing because of the educational system is where we're constantly trying to be something that we're not.

And we're taking ideas and policies that work for other people because they have us to exploit. And we're trying to implement it in our nations, in our countries, in our community. And it's not working for us.

Adesoji Iginla (01:32:34.262)
Thank you, brother Jesse.

Jesse (01:32:37.388)
I'll take on from when I finished, from Opobo. I was fascinated by the Jaja of Opobo because it was not royalty. It grew and became someone that was challenging the Western influence in the whole of Nigeria. So what I'm trying to say is that structures produce leaders and leaders produce structures. It's just like the case of chicken and the egg. But what we know is structure is like a mother.

you know, without the woman you cannot have procreation. It's just not, you know, possible. So what I want to see is exactly what I want to see. You cannot see that unless of course we go back to the basics where people have association and voice and individual power, respect and acceptance within their own cultures. Because what your culture produces...

is what you're gonna give to the world, is what you're gonna give to your neighbor. So if my neighbor is not making me to be at peace, we become another Umuleri and Aguleri, if you get what I'm saying. So, I mean, it has to be local. It has to start from local. If it doesn't start from there, then anyone can come. The European powers can come, buy off the guy who's at the top and impose whatever they want to impose on you. And the guys who are at the base will never have a say. But...

To end it, we're having HS I-Speed train built in the UK. So I was looking at the figures and the construction patterns The same thing if it was built in Spain will cost about 193 It will cost about 7 billion pounds basically if it was built in Spain But because it was being built in the UK, it's costing upwards of about 60 to 70 billion now

they have to cut you know part of it. Why? Because in the UK it's just it's not just a question of construction. There have been conventions, there have been laws that gave power to the local individuals. So when they got to the Pennines and certain areas in mid UK, these guys said no, if we're going to take it through, it's going to be underground because we have an area of astounding

Adesoji Iginla (01:34:50.548)
No, you're not taking it through here.

Jesse (01:35:01.68)
In fact, they dictate to them anything that is up here in above ground has to be done in a certain way that conforms with nature. In that area alone, he added over a billion pounds to their construction and they had to do it. So that's exactly what I mean in Nigeria, that nobody can just come to your ancestral land, onto your place and impose whatever they're doing on you. And that's the only reason why you can be part of the decision making process. And also when you are done wherever you go.

Adesoji Iginla (01:35:19.29)
incest.

Jesse (01:35:30.624)
I have the faith and the ability to return into that culture and contribute to that culture. A lot of us now, where we are going, once we finish from here, we want to go look in Nigeria. We'll be so shocked. I will not be able to contribute.

Adesoji Iginla (01:35:46.766)
Hmm. So Refinery question. Final question. I'm a book person. So you're Nigerians. So can you recommend a book each?

Jesse (01:35:48.908)
Thanks for watching!

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:35:49.613)
That's that's facts.

Adesoji Iginla (01:36:02.85)
to Nigerians listening and watching. A book each.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:36:08.473)
Okay. Okay, for me, I always quickly recommend this book, this present darkness by Stephen Ellis.

Adesoji Iginla (01:36:09.503)
Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:36:18.526)
Present Darkness by Steven Ellis.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:36:21.269)
this present darkness. I think it calls it, I can't reach it right now, it calls it the most complete book on Nigeria, gangstaism and corruption, something like that. But it's called This Present Darkness by Stephen Ellis. Again, it was written by a white man. But he lived all his life in Nigeria, died before the book came out. So yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:36:28.963)
Close.

Adesoji Iginla (01:36:38.902)
Oh man, it was the ancestors, wasn't it? Aya?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:36:45.899)
Wow, well, there are so many books that I could recommend. At this point, the one that has absolutely captured my mind and my soul and my spirit in terms of thinking through our issues on a number of levels and thinking through what possible solutions would be is a book by Ayi Kwei Armah called The Resolutionaries.

Now I could start with, okay, just start by reading any history of your people. And I have a whole bunch of books on, like I have one by Dike on the Niger Delta that gives us, you know, good, good. Cause that's the area that I'm from. Even just studying, um, King Jaja and understanding what he set up in Opobo and why the British had to get rid of him.

and the role he played in the Ashanti war and helped the British, you know, conquer the Ashantis. And then when they deported him and they had their little kangaroo court, it was actually in that area of Ghana where now there was no black entity that could actually fight on his behalf. So there's so many lessons that we can learn from history. I would say just start with.

Jesse (01:38:05.097)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:38:09.791)
the Niger Delta by DK, but definitely if you want to be forward looking in terms of solutions and understanding where we are right now, the resolution is by Ayi Querma.

Adesoji Iginla (01:38:20.561)
And Jesse?

Jesse (01:38:22.392)
Oh, the OGs have said, you know, fantastic book, but this book goes with me.

Adesoji Iginla (01:38:27.902)
Oh, hahahaha!

Adesoji Iginla (01:38:33.334)
Le coupe de gras, yeah I know, okay, okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:38:33.464)
Yes!

Jesse (01:38:36.028)
Yeah. You know, Jake is, they said, there are two people that Einstein was recognized as 100 years ago. Mitch Foucault has been recognized as one of the best brings in the last 50 years. But I think this guy is the best guy for the last 200 years. I'm not joking. So I choose these out of his works because he's the best guy.

Adesoji Iginla (01:38:58.39)
Hmm, Chiekh Anta Diop

Jesse (01:39:03.932)
If you want to understand what is going on in your own culture and how interconnected we are, you need to go back to pre-colonial past to feel the topography, the political topography of how we are. And what Aya just said now, I need to, once we finish, I'll put it somewhere to quickly go and look at it. Because I saw about two documentaries on the Ashanti war.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:39:09.604)
Yes!

Adesoji Iginla (01:39:12.248)
colonial times.

Jesse (01:39:31.004)
And there was no mention of the role that Jaja of Opobo played in it. I'm telling you. So it was from the British military, you know, who used us.

Adesoji Iginla (01:39:35.126)
That's it.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:39:39.607)
Yeah, Ja-Ja-Ja-Ja-Ja volunteered and sent soldiers on behalf of Her Majesty.

Jesse (01:39:45.52)
because they couldn't defeat those guys until they brought in one guy who had been in Canada fighting those aboriginals and they brought him and he chose this elite squad and they went there. So I did not know, instead of them to say, and this from a well-respected British military historian, he should have said, oh, this guy actually helped us.

win the war. In fact, the guy who won that war came back to the UK, he was knighted and he was a celebrated, you know, military general and the place of the people. Anyway, if you want to understand what's going on, how we organize. For instance, I was looking at the issue of slavery because any idiot can come to you and say, oh, charter slavery is nothing because we've had, you know, slavery everywhere and all of that.

No, they're not. And this book will tell you why in Africa, slaves are not just slaves. Slaves have a life. They contribute to the economic system. And they win their, by their own, by statutes, they win their own freedoms, you know, and they become great, in fact, far greater in the place they have been enslaved than where they came from sometimes. And it shows what happened in the Indian subcontinent, where...

Slavery, that was the first time that slavery was actually linked to the socio-economic and political order of that place. So they had to appoint to you the kind of job you could do. So the black original inhabitants who were in India, they were segregated to that. They cannot do any other jobs. You cannot say, okay, like America, I'm going to aspire to do this job. No, your job was casting stone. You don't go from it. You are like the vultures. You have to take the deadly way.

And so if you see all of those guys by the Ganges who are burning bodies and all of that, those are those guys. So, and it was a case system that promoted, you know, white. So while we're talking about, you know, the European racism, the Indian one is actually far, far worse. Anyway, it traces it back to what we have now and why we need to respect ourselves and respect our spaces. You see?

Jesse (01:42:06.836)
The reason why the white guy got an in-route into us is because we let our differences define who we were. Like the Yoruba and the Edo. They claim Oromino as ancestors. So I don't see any reason why. In fact, the Edo's built a far more technologically advanced civilization. Maybe not as wide and as big as Oyo or Ife.

Adesoji Iginla (01:42:12.706)
Get in the way.

Adesoji Iginla (01:42:29.482)
Civilization. Exactly.

Jesse (01:42:35.796)
but they built the most technologically advanced. When the Portuguese came, they found on the floor heating system. So if you have on the floor heating system today in the UK or the US, some people did it back there. You built more walls than the Chinese ever did, you know, and you had these calendars, you know, that was not Gregorian, that was so perfect. So for me, that's why I'm saying, so I want to respect that. I want to discover that as a Yoruba. I want to celebrate that.

Adesoji Iginla (01:42:48.202)
Bye bye Danix. Hmm.

Jesse (01:43:05.712)
I want to take my son to go and celebrate that, not to put it in the same pot and mash it together like Aguiyi Ironsi said. No. We all have to shine in our little spaces and bring the light together at the center. That is what Nigeria needs to be. Anything other than that, go your separate ways please.

Adesoji Iginla (01:43:24.926)
OK, you guys have given me books, and I would like to suggest this one. The Open Sore Of A Continent A personal narrative of the Nigerian crisis. So.

Jesse (01:43:28.684)
Thank you.

Jesse (01:43:33.037)
Oh!

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:43:44.282)
That's so Giba, you know you need the dictionary to read Wole Soyinka He doesn't write for us. He writes. No, he writes. He writes to show up. He writes to show off his English acumen.

Adesoji Iginla (01:43:54.614)
This one is a bit gentle. This one is a bit gent- It's a bit gentle.

Jesse (01:44:03.388)
is command of language.

Adesoji Iginla (01:44:04.254)
Yeah, this one is a bit gentle. It's a bit gentle. But I have to say thank you to you guys. It's been a true conversation. And in fact, I thought it was going to be economics, but I'm going to have to rewrite the title because no, it was an insight into our psyche.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:44:33.466)
So if I may just interject really quickly the point that Jesse just made about slavery King Jaja is a perfect example of that Because he was captured and he was enslaved in Bonny and then rose to the top Now when Bonny they did have something in the rules that said if you were Formally enslaved you cannot become king of a body But he was essentially as powerful what?

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:44:54.413)
Thanks guys.

Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:45:02.806)
any other person in Bonny rising from so there was no the concept of chattel slavery and everybody you had that comes from your lineage is now a slave did not exist and then of course we know he went on after the Bonny Civil War he went on to found a Opobo so a perfect example

Jesse (01:45:20.276)
I want to learn about this. I just thought you can bring Aya back just for this, for us to learn this. Honestly, I'm Nigerian and I love what she's telling me. It's genuine because it's been related to me from the local perspective. So what I know about Jaja of Opopo as what the British told me. And this is part of the education thing that Aya has been talking about. We're being mis-educated all the time. Yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:45:23.874)
Hehehe

Adesoji Iginla (01:45:24.882)
Hahaha!

Adesoji Iginla (01:45:34.455)
Okay.

Adesoji Iginla (01:45:44.978)
We could at some point we could actually do what's it called? So we could interject, we could have two books in

Jesse (01:45:53.696)
No, no, you can bring her. I'm perfectly okay to listen. I just want to know and listen, you know, for you and I, for all in London, I think I'll have to meet up with you guys for a pint or two, you know.

Adesoji Iginla (01:45:57.521)
No, we're good.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:45:57.901)
Hehehehehehe

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:46:05.642)
No worries.

Adesoji Iginla (01:46:07.6)
Yeah, so yeah, we could have a conversation about just the history of Nigeria, just the history itself, because I think it's one of the things that's often lost in conversation, the history of the place. Because the only time we tend to speak is when something crops up. We don't go back to say, yes, yes. I mean,

Jesse (01:46:13.76)
Yeah.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:46:26.226)
Yeah, so reactionary.

Adesoji Iginla (01:46:31.642)
recent has been the issue of the because I'm pointing to where the Benin bronzes going back. But who played, how it's run around the money from it. And it goes back to what issue that

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:46:36.651)
Mm-hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:47:00.778)
we don't have a structure in place. Anyone or anything could literally just walk in and just trod over our value system. You know, we had Festac 77. One of the requests was that the British Museum allow the Queen Idia's Mask return. And they said no.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:47:22.19)
We need your support.

Jesse (01:47:22.39)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:47:25.57)
Can you imagine?

Adesoji Iginla (01:47:26.702)
I... exactly. And the day I entered the museum to see that mask, I mean I'm not Edo but I understood the cultural reverence immediately because this thing was staring. You know when somebody focuses a stare on you and is literally following you in the room, my son was like,

Jesse (01:47:26.944)
The Thief's in, the owner.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:47:29.74)
Hey.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:47:38.653)
Mmm.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:47:45.194)
Mmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:47:54.23)
And I said, go and look at the date it was made.

And it was made that people that look like you, that even the guys who stole it, said they couldn't have been you.

because

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:48:08.398)
As John Henry Clark would say, it was made at a time when white people had not even figured out how to wash themselves.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:48:15.393)
Hmm. Hehehehe.

Adesoji Iginla (01:48:19.191)
No, I mean, that's the irony. That's the irony. I mean, thank you very much. You guys have given me two hours of, in fact, this is going to have to be split into two now, part one and part two, because you might, you might pull people to, people might just lose their minds thinking, wow, all of this. And yeah, thank you very much. Thank you.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:48:27.586)
You're welcome.

Jesse (01:48:34.872)
We are.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:48:35.428)
You do your thing.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:48:44.73)
Thank you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:48:44.755)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for... Thank you.

Jesse (01:48:45.44)
Thank you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:48:46.446)
Jude, Jesse, what an honor. Thank you so much. Can't wait to see you when I come to visit. I just want to thank you.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:48:48.201)
Nice to meet you guys.

Jesse (01:48:49.555)
Thank you.

Yeah, no worries. No worries at all.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:48:52.29)
No worries.

Adesoji Iginla (01:48:53.675)
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and good night everyone. Yeah, bye bye.

Jesse (01:48:58.176)
Good night.

JUDE EMMANUEL-UKATO (Jude Speakz da God) (01:48:58.189)
Thank you very much. Bye bye.