Billionaire Ex-Gubernatorial Candidate Exposes Why Nigerian Politics Is Rigged

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Most people think that with business and money that you control power. Unfortunately, it's the other way around. Power actually controls everything that you're going to do. No matter how big your business is, you can never be better than your country. Wherever you are, you will still be judged as a Nigerian entity. What do you think powerful people want? What do you think powerful people want?
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Tonye Cole is not just a businessman. As co-founder of Sahara Group, he helped grow a $10 billion energy company operating in over 38 countries. Is politics today designed to keep good people out? Yes. Those who see politics as an escape route are more audacious about the politics than those who see it as a route to service.
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But how do we change? Nothing changes from the outside. It's going to be absolutely impossible. More people have to come into the game to try to change us. You have built a billion dollar business. You have gone into politics and you have impacted lives globally. But who are you before all of this? Hmm.
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Quick one, before we jump into the Afropolitan podcast, I have a problem. So my issue is that 72% of you are not subscribed to the Afropolitan podcast. So I need you to click the subscribe button so you can join the Afropolitan family. Now we can jump back to it. You have built a billion dollar business, you have gone into politics, and you have impacted lives globally. But who are you before all of this? I see it.
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There's something missing right here. So I just have to imagine that she's here because this is very unfair. There are both of you there. And it's just me alone. So you see this beautiful person here. Her name is Sylvia. I've known her since she was like 16. And so if there's any answer that I'm going to have about who I was long before the business, long before politics, long before everything else, then it was just the boyfriend and then husband of this beautiful woman called Sylvia. Okay.
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So I believe that that's where the journey of discovery came about, round about university. I've been very independent. My upbringing was just interesting. I bounced from house to house, and I probably started living with my parents properly when I was like 16. And at that point, I was just one independent, stubborn child all over the place.
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There was stability and I think that stability came from knowing God. I got born again at 16 and then coming to meet my wife Sylvia. And so it's just, I think both of them, it was, hmm, I love God. I love this woman. So where do we find the balance? And we did find one. Can you talk to me about your journey to God at 16, at such a pivotal age? How did you get there?
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Hmm, that's interesting. So first my step-mom. So my mom died when I was 11. Then my step-mom steps in and she found God first and dragged all of us screaming and shouting and fighting into church. This was Redeemed Christian Church of God at the time when being born again was not fashionable at all. But I think I was in the university, no, I was just somewhere between secondary school and going to,
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England to do my A-levels. It was one of those periods where, like I said, I had grown up with guardians for a couple of years and this was the first time just coming into this environment. There was a lot of unsettled thoughts for me. Where my identity, who am I, where do I fit into all of this? There are many children in the house.
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As you remember my father saying that we just had people all over the place. And so here it was me looking for who I was. And I think coming to know Christ at that point kind of gave me an identity that, okay, you know, this is who you are.
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But remember, I'm still a teenager at this point, and I'm still trying to determine, okay, I know myself as somebody now who is born again, so I have an identity in Christ. But at the same time, I have this whole teenage life that I'm trying to determine and decide who I was. And I believe Christianity at that point kind of helped me. Because I probably, I'm not sure I might be alive today, because I was really, really looking everywhere for expressions. Yeah.
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But Christianity kind of held me. It just anchored me at the right time. I'm grateful for that. Was there ever an expression you didn't like? Or you look back and you're like, that was a weird time.
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No, because I think everything I did and my journey through different experiences has kind of brought me to who I am today. So everything has worked together. And so I don't think there's anything I regret. I did some scary stuff, but no regrets. Yes.
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And then walk me through how you met your wife, because, again, at such a young age. So this was so I'd gone into University of Lagos at that point. My first year in University of Lagos was a very, very serious Christianity.
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Christian experience in year one. My first year was serious Christian experience. And by the time I got into the second year in university, I had been disappointed quite a bit by some of what I saw as people I looked up to within the Christian community.
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and I just realized that there was something wrong about the way I'm kind of extreme sometimes. So if I believe in something I believe in, I go all out with it. And so here I was going all out with an expression of Christianity and believing that everything I read is how it should be. And so people should, I should identify you doing the same. So if you say you're a Christian and you told me that it was read outside, then I just believe it was read outside because
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Thou shall not lie. So, end of lies. So that's how I was. But I think I got very disappointed just coming through finding that the people I looked up to were not as true as they had this integrity that they claimed that they would be.
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And that kind of moved me away. So I went through another phase of just saying, you know what, maybe everything is not what it's meant to be. And so at this point, I step back now. I step back and I go the other way. Now I just go into the other side of the world.
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and here's another expression so now i then become uh again time to the social scene of university of lagos um i'm now one of the club leaders i mean the parties and all of that and so we organized this party i remember and um it was a pool party in the kui somewhere one of uh one of my friends father had a
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tower when one of our friends, so his father had a tower block in Korea and they had a pool there, we had a pool party and we're all there. I remember they just used to throw people into the pool. A lot of people don't know how to swim. I found myself doing the lifesaver, they will throw people into the pool and I'll jump in and save them. Probably maybe three people would have done it. In the university we're just crazy.
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So my wife was one of the ones that they threw in who didn't know how to swim. And so I went and got her out of the water. And I think that's where it started. So I started by saving her life. And she has saved my life since then.
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You know, he almost drowned. I had to sing. Yeah, in Mexico. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. I had to marry her. I actually owe her my life. You know, I mean, it's crazy, but such experiences, I think, you're either meant to meet with some weird things. You know, God just has a way of orchestrating things. And so on that day,
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And we now spend time, I said, you know what, you have to learn how to swim. You can't be caught in a situation where you are helpless. And so I then decided there and then that, okay, you know what, let's teach you how to swim. And we are praying for the whole day just in the pool trying to teach how to swim.
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one thing later another we got married you walked away from a secure job at EMSA no line of credits no dollar accounts why didn't you play it safe especially jumping into entrepreneurship that like
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I don't think that's quite true. So EMSA was an interesting pivot in life. Here I had come back to Nigeria from Brazil. And my father was running for president. And I was all patriotic. That's another story in this life. So I had this whole patriotism about Nigeria and came back.
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And then, I can't remember if it was Papangadar that did what he did and all of that. And then MSAC called and said, they're looking for somebody who knows Nigeria, speaks Portuguese, and so on and so forth. So that's how I started that job. It was a dollar-paying job. It was a good job. I actually did save on that job. What happened was...
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was Nigeria was going through a lot of strikes at that time, pro-democracy strikes. It was a very turbulent period. The company, after about two, three years or so, decided one day, I think it was the June 12th period, and they decided they were leaving.
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One day I was fully employed and the next day they were gone. I moved from having a job to having no job based on . That taught me some new lessons. But then there were savings. It was the savings from that, what I had and the pay off from the liquidation that I used as part of my own- Setup capital. Setup capital for Sahara.
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So it worked. When you look at how Nigeria treated local players at the time, do you still think it was a system meant for people like you to win? Interesting. So...
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What I remember about back then was there was what you'd call the expatriate mentality, colonial mentality at the time. It just meant that if you, once you were white,
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in Nigeria, then you would basically get everything. I remember that one of my partners and I sat back and were thinking through what's the strategy. Again, Nigeria was going through an interesting transition for us.
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On the one hand, you had this colonial mentality, but at the same time, you had a whole group of people who were tired of that and were looking for a way out. And we found it as a very interesting niche.
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So we set up the company, so this Sahara coming in now. So we set up Sahara and we'll go into offices. But we realized that if we went in as young, 27, 28 year old people and said that we own the company and we set up the company, the people who are sitting there, we're looking at you and say, who are you? You can't do that. So there was that ageism issue.
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And then we realized that everybody who was in this business, the people who were actually succeeding in the business had foreign companies, they were foreign companies. So what we did was we set up, we registered the company abroad in the Isle of Man. So we had a UK entity. We discussed with one of our
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my partner's teacher at the time and said, you know what? This is who we are. You've taught us well. We're going to say that we work for you.
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Okay, we had a lovely name, Dr. Giselle, which was not a Nigerian name. So we set up this company where we were representatives to ourselves. But we would just go there and say, look, we're staff, we can cry. You're not staff, we will fire mew, beg and beg and beg and beg and cry and cry. And so because they felt that they were helping young Nigerians who were working for this expatriate company and all of that,
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It helped us make a way. So that's how we started navigating that window. And I think it helped. They were sympathetic enough to want to help young Nigerians, but at the same time, they were not out of the mindset that only white international companies were in this business. I think it took them about three years to come up and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
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This doctor cell that we're always saying about signing all the letters, well, we have never seen the person. Then we're outside settling down. We say, okay, all right, let's go with you. Was there an experience in the early days of Sahara that made you seriously question about whether you needed to be in this sort of business? Was there any particular experience that really shook you to the core?
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Yeah, I would say one. So not questioning the business, but just questioning strategy. And it helps shape. Sometimes you need to go through really tough times. And so in this particular case, we had started building a business in the export of fuel oils.
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It was one line, one business, one line, dollar making, export of, so it was dollar earning, an export of one product. I remember one gentleman called Okai Sebo, young guy liked us, he was,
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just brilliant young guy in NNPC. And he used to tell us that, you know what, come and do this. You know, diversify your risk. Stop staying on this one business and say, you want to substitute dollar business for Naira business? I said, leave us alone. He used to say something which was interesting. He used to say,
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Naira de convert. In other words, you can use your naira and buy dollar if that's what your problem is. It's a convertible currency. Naira de convert. Okay, just leave us. Let us continue. But we're friends. So he was an older person. So this taught me first of all that, listen, when people are giving you advice that you may not
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see the value in it. But listen to it. Sometimes there are things they know that they don't know. But where did this now play up? A few years later, maybe a few years later might be right, Abacha dies and the next administration that comes in just cancels everything.
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they cancel all our contracts, everything, nothing is going, which happens all the time. You look shocked. But any administration back then, and to an extent now, it's not as prevalent, but it still happens. So every administration that comes in, the first thing they do is just cancel all the oil contracts, all the lifting contracts, anything that is done, and then the saturation nuance.
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Until they canceled it, essentially overnight, we went bankrupt overnight. We lost every single thing. We had to start all over again. Another story. But we started. Now, two things now happened.
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Now that they convert, became a reality. So at this point, we decided that diversify portfolios, don't stick to one, and diversify country. Had that not happened, we probably may still have been just in Nigeria. But immediately after that, we started looking for...
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Country risk diversification, going to different countries. Product risk diversification, don't stay with one product. And I think that we needed that lesson to change strategy. You left Sahara, stepped into politics, and walked into chaos. What did that transition cost you mentally, spiritually, and physically?
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I think it made me stronger. So one of the, everything that I have done one way or another has always kind of been somewhat pioneering. So even when it's an existing industry, an existing space, I find myself going in there and then creating something that others have either not done or just...
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treat it in a novel way that makes it succeed. And this probably started university. I remember, I don't know whether anyone used to do this before, but when studying architecture, to enable myself and my classmates to succeed, I started...
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just playing music at night and just walking through the night. So University of Lugos used to be very calm. Everybody would go do their work and all of that. But at night, I would bring in music and walk 72 hours straight. But we said music in the studio, just walking and all of that. And I found that that trend has continued for a long time. So people now go to studios and then they do music.
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So architecture had always been there. The studio had always been there. People had always gone and drawn and all of that. But then bringing something a bit different into it. Again, going into oil and gas, Sahara, exactly the same thing. But this was an area that Nigerian companies were not thriving in. So we go in there and we do it. And politics is a bit the same.
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Politics has been there. The type of politicians are there. The way they do politics is there. But then I look at it and say, you know what, I want to do something a bit different. So let's go in and see whether we can be the forerunners for a different type of politician, different type of politics, different way of doing politics.
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Is it going to bloody you? Yes. Are you going to get some failure, success? Absolutely. But it's all part of the game. So I don't mind it. A lot of times you guys ask for introductions to investors. You want to see our investor deck. You want introductions to other people. So we have finally created the room
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on Patreon. And in this room, it's a members only exclusive place where we show you the behind the scenes. You get to connect with other people. We share our playbooks. We do deep dives into specific industries, everything for an entrepreneur. It is like your total toolkit in real time.
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I always like to say this is the room where the most ambitious people in the diaspora find each other. Right. Like, again, sometimes it feels lonely building. Sometimes it feels like you're the only one in your circle who might understand what you really want to achieve. In this room, you will not feel alone. So, again, join us on African-American Patreon. Right. Patreon.com slash African-American podcast. All right, guys, let's pay some bills.
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I want to go back to your experience at EMSA. I think you have said one of the lessons you learned was to never leave your fate in the hands of someone else. Can you speak more about that lesson, especially with then becoming an entrepreneur? Why does that matter to you?
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Okay. To understand Emsa and my journey in Emsa, you'd have to understand my journey as an entrepreneur, which started before Emsa. While studying architecture, I discovered with a friend of mine, I used to build Lego as a child, just Lego houses. I love those things. People used to come and take a look at the creativity around Lego.
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Had that ended up in architecture, I have no idea, but I'd love that. There's a part of architecture called building models. Again, this was something that getting into University of Lagos, I had a very close friend. He's an A student. He came into University of Lagos with all the A's in this world. I got into University of Lagos with ABC degrees, but this guy was a bookie. He's very, very good.
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Now, and so I kind of, he taught me a lot of discipline on how to just focus on work. I taught him a bit more about life. And so we found a blend. Good blend. Good guy. What's that? I loosened him up a bit and he made me a bit more. So partnerships have always worked for me. All right. But getting to this point, we discovered together
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that we loved making models. And this was something that again, University of Lagos Architecture School was not what they used to do, but we would make the drawings and then we would make models. And the models were very visual, creative models that showed the architectural plan almost immediately. But what that did, when we realized that we could make those models, we started a business. And this was a time when nobody could prize models.
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because no one was doing it. So we started making models for architectural firms in Lagos and we could prize anything because nobody else was doing it. So we were making a lot of money. So I now realized that there was an entrepreneurial side of what we do. And then lecturers were coming up to us and all and asking us as well to help them with their drawings. And so we were just doing all sorts of side deals, side hustles.
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I remember my father then asking us, I was about to graduate that, okay, what do you want to do? What's your next plan? Unknown to him, I'd already had an office, paid for an office in Yerba, around the school, and I just felt that, you know what, we're on the road. So I'd done this, we registered a company, and both of us, myself and two other architectural students, we said we were going to do entrepreneurship.
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So I said to my father that I don't want to work for anyone. I'm going to start my business. And he says, okay, my advice to you is this. Go work for someone for five years. Use the experience of working for them to learn how to HR, how to account.
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how to be responsible with other people's money, and so on and so forth, how to do marketing. Just go in there and learn. That is not easy setting up your own business and you make a lot of mistakes. So learn from them. Between you and I, I said to myself, what does this old man know that I've been making money? But,
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I found myself ending up doing that. I worked three years in Brazil with an architectural firm and then three years with EMSA.
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But by the time this was happening, I'd entered into a comfort zone, and this was the danger is, so all my whole entrepreneurial lessons and hunger for entrepreneurship died. Because I entered into this comfort area where I could afford a car, start paying for a house, you know, you enter into that circle.
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And I was getting comfortable. I was being paid in dollars. I had a driver, I had a car, access to a house in the Kuye, all sorts of things. So I was very comfortable. I was an expatriate in dollars in Nigeria.
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So my entrepreneurial spirit kind of went down. And I think God just looked at it and just said, okay, your five years is up, your time is up, and just crashed everything. So EMSA literally crashed, just left Nigeria. And it was in the midst of all of that, just sitting down and wondering what next, that my partner comes up to me and says, okay, this brand, because you have been telling me, let's go and start this business. And I was like,
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you are coming to sweat, you are hustling, you are sweating, you know, you are coming to my office every day, look at this beautiful office. But then when he came that time around, it was very serious. So at this point, I just said, okay, you know what, let's do it. And that's how we started. What's one lesson about power that politics taught you but that business never could? Shh.
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Hmm. That's a good point. So, first of all, most people think that with business and money that you control power. Unfortunately, it's the other way around. Power actually controls everything that you're going to do. So, politics and power affects everything.
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Every single thing affects your business, affects your home, it affects who you employ, it affects what school your children go to, it affects the hospital, your healthcare, it just affects, it's pervasive. Which means that if you're working extremely hard to make money and to be successful, and the entire politics and power is wrong.
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then you find that everything you are earning here is going to subsidize what power and politics should have done. So, for example...
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You work extremely hard. You want to raise your children up within the same environment where you are, but the education system is crashing on this end because politics is killing it. What then happens for many of us is that you then take your children, either 10, 11, when they're still very, very young, you send them abroad. And once they're gone, that's it. You fall ill.
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Here, your healthcare, you go abroad to do it. Every single thing, you just keep going. So you're making money and you're subsidizing it by helping other economies get better. And I think that for me was one of the most painful realizations along the way that
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We can never be, no matter how big your business is, you can never be better than your country. Never. Wherever you go, you will still be judged as a Nigerian entity. And wherever Nigeria is, that's where you are starting from as a business. And so power trumps money any day. So focus on improving the scenario around the power, and it will make your enjoyment of the money much, much better.
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Thank you.
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So I studied political science as a major, and there was a concept called imagined communities, which is the idea that if you're in a nation, if something happens in New York, like, for example, when the World Trade Center went down, people in California felt America got attacked, we got attacked, right?
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Same thing maybe in Lagos or maybe some places in Potakot. And I wanted to speak more to that idea and more specifically to is the politics currently today designed to keep good people out of the system or does it break them when they even enter as well?
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Okay, so those are three different concepts. But let me start with the middle one. Is politics today designed to keep good people out? Yes. Okay. And I've been thinking about this, and somebody explained to me the other day what happens with lotteries. And it says that, look, with the lottery, right, people go...
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and buy lottery tickets. Now, if I've ever bought a lottery ticket ever in my life, it's just out of boredom. What is this one? Just buy it and put. But there are people who can literally not afford to eat three meals a day, who spend every single day buying a lottery ticket.
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Why are they buying lottery? The reality for them is that that lottery ticket can take them out of their situation which they never would have been able to escape ever. For the wealthy or well-to-do and all of that, they already have access to whatever the lottery ticket would have gotten for them, or they believe they can get there. So it's not the same dynamics. And I want us to understand that that's what politics looks like in Nigeria today.
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Those who are very audacious about the political game today, the ability to escape poverty, to escape anything once they get into politics is a shift. It's a lottery. It's winning the lottery ticket for them. So they will do everything to enter into that lottery.
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Now, a lottery ticket is available to all of us. We can all go and buy a lottery ticket, but you do not take the same interest in the lottery as somebody who doesn't have a chance of escaping it without the lottery ticket. And that's what politics is. So while it looks open and free for all, the way it is that those who see politics as an escape route
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are more audacious about the politics than those who see it as a route to service. Let me just go and serve. Because you see it as a route to service, the way you play the politics versus the way the politics for those who want it as an escape plate are two different things. And that's where the main difference is. So it's designed like that, but who plays the game is where the difference is.
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so going back to the first aspect of it
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Can Nigeria as an imagined society then end up back to where, whether I live in Kanu or I live in Lagos and all of that, that's what I want to do. I think politics has shifted a lot. That's where we ought to be. That's what the constitution says that it should be, but we are far from it. So the politics of today and the kind of democracy we run today and our cultural beliefs and who we are as a people culturally are clashing.
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If we want to succeed politically, we have to go back to our culture and then build the politics from the culture and move up. Our culture, culture, culture, allows strangers to come in.
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Our culture allows strangers, when I say strangers from different places, to come into our community and contribute within that community, even in leadership. Culture allows that. The political setting that we have today does not allow it. Because even though it says so, there's a power game that says that, I must go to your LGA, you must come from here. It can be very nasty. So we have to go back to
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What does our culture say? What does our culture say about when strangers come in? When they marry into the culture? What happens to their children? How are they assimilated? Every culture allows it in Nigeria. Whether it's an Igbo culture, whether it's a Calabari culture, whether it's a Yoruba culture, Ausa culture, they all allow it. And they allow, you may not be king. In fact, some cultures don't even recognize kingship.
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There is a communal, like the Igbo culture is not a kingship issue. So I think if we're going to get politics right, and we're going to get governance right, then we have to go back to the cultural foundations and then design the type of politics that will naturally flow from what our culture does. We still have some work to do. It's doable. And can you...
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Break down for me the lessons you learned in 2023 when you ran. This last one. Yes, this last one. Like, what were the lessons and how did you process it afterwards?
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I think the most honest lesson I learned was that politics, as we currently played, I used to hear that all politics is local. Mm-hmm. Okay. And that it's just local, politics is local. Nigerian politics 2023 taught me that all politics is selfish.
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Okay. It's probably one of the most selfish elections that I saw happen, where deals were made left, right, and right. And politics, people make deals. But this particular political dealing was all on very selfish arrangements. So people sold everybody out, right, just so that they can advance their own personal interests.
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And that kind of caught me by surprise in this particular election, because there was just a lot of selling. It wasn't selling entities and groups and beliefs and all of that. It was just self-positioning. And so the pieces of the puzzle just kept moving, and you were not sure whose piece was going to move. So...
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Political parties were not important in this one. It was who. People were saying, let's vote for the individual, not for the party. That enabled a lot of deals to be made. So it was a very, very selfish election, this particular one. So it was a new lesson. But how did you process it privately after everything? So I think after that, I had to sit back and take a look at this and what was lacking. And I found that selfishness and integrity don't go together.
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Okay, and so I looked around and I felt that, okay, one, the general public, did they matter in the outcome of this election? And when you're dealing with selfish interests, then the general public don't matter. And so what came to me was that, one, people don't really matter in the outcomes.
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And so if I wanted to differentiate myself, then should the people matter? And I think in my own processing, I determined that, you know what, let's stand on the path of integrity, even if it has not translated to a win for the people that their voices have not counted. I'm almost certain that down the line it would. How long it will take, I don't know, but differentiate. So there was a selfish ones who win,
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because they get elected and they win out of their deals. And then they're the ones who are standing and becoming the voice of the people, the voice of the unheard. Maybe somewhere along the line, that voice will start being heard, but it has to be authentic. So my processing was just the authentic. Come out and say the truth. People can identify the truth. They will know if you're lying. They will know if you're hiding. They may understand that maybe there are some things that you don't just say,
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You don't come out and say every single thing. But can you say enough of the truth and put enough of the authentic situation out for people to understand and decipher what's going on? And I think I will stand on that.
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But how do we change? I feel like, honestly, every time I look at the elections, and I get excited for a moment because I see certain people, certain individuals like yourself who say, I want to run a race full of integrity. I want to tell the truth. I want to set out a clear plan. And what ends up happening is we get to the end, and it's always the same thing.
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So a part of us is like, going back to what you said earlier, that is the reason why the private company has to, or private individuals have to step in because they're like, we keep thinking something's going to change. It doesn't. So nothing changes from the outside. Yeah. It's going to be absolutely impossible. So when you take a look at it, there are three things that have to happen.
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The first is that more people have to come into the game to try to change it also from the inside. So that's the first aspect of it. So part of what my responsibility is in the first instance is to stay there long enough to encourage others to say, you know what, let me come in and join. Then be a lamp or a guidepost, right?
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For those who look at it and don't understand it and say, you know what, is there hope? Can you explain what I should be looking for? I don't understand. And we're there. We're ready to advise, help, hold hands, and let's go in. But you need those things. So you need a mentor. You need someone who will take you in.
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You need people who will stay long enough. You need to have patience. This thing is not changing in one day. So you need to have patience, people who are willing to stay the course. But I think most importantly, this is what a lot of people, your excitement comes, the excitement you are talking about, about elections and all that,
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comes with feeling that, you know what, let me go and vote for the right person. I've seen somebody that looks like and sounds like what I want. And you go out and you go and vote. And that's excitement. And then you wonder, I just voted. So what happened? How did they all change? All right. And this is where we need to bring people on board. The PVC is the lowest denominator in any election equation. The lowest.
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you have to be a card-carrying member of a party. Whatever happens at the polling unit, is just number one in a step of about 100.
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By the time you are finished with that, there are things that are happening behind the scene and the only people who are visible behind the scene are party members. Now, if you're not a party member, you don't know what is happening. And if you don't know what's happening outside, then whatever result comes at the end of the day, you have to accept it. So our responsibility is to bring people in behind the scenes. Go get your PVC, that's normal.
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Become a card-carrying member of a party. Get involved in the processes of an election that have nothing to do with election day voting. There's a lot more to be done. Now, once you understand this back end, then things become easier to control. And that's where we are working on. How do we bring more people into the back end?
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And do you think there's enough young people doing that back end? No, no, no. Not enough, but they're coming to understand slowly. But they'll get there. And you talk a lot about faith, right? Do you feel like going into politics was a calling? Did you feel like it was time? Like, what made you leave? You were a private citizen, private company. Very comfortable, enjoying myself. Yeah, you were. I'm going to take this crazy job into politics. Yeah, chaotic.
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You know, if you don't have a belief and you don't have a purpose, then you chase shadows and you can't stay long into anything. So for me, faith plays a long role.
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big part of this journey. And I believe that the current journey I'm on, right, is part of my destiny, part of my purpose, what I have been called to do. And that affects Nigerian politics to such an extent that the next generation of politicians will look different, will sound different, and will behave differently.
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That's what my mission is. Now, how we get there is a journey. Are we going to get there? I have to believe it. I have to see it. I have to envisage it in my mind. And I have to understand that this is what my call is. And so I run for it.
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One of my favorite quotes, it says, play long-term games with long-term people. I feel like as I've gotten older, or as I'm getting older, one of the things I've come to fully appreciate is the idea of compounding in life, right? I love that. A lot of young people, and especially people my age and even younger, it takes us a while to fully understand that, and I believe it's something that you're fully embraced. In fact, I want to read the quote. It says, when you find the right thing to do, when you find the right people to work with, invest deeply.
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sticking with it for decades is really how you make the big returns in your relationships and in your money. So compound interest is very important. Can you speak a little bit to what that lesson is, especially for young people watching the show? You know, it's so interesting that you bring this whole issue of compounding.
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There's a book, Someone Gifted Me, which maybe I'll not have bought it, but two people mentioned it in the last couple of days. One is a professor of finance in Madrid, where I just came back from, and he uses it to teach young people when they ask him that, how do I start investing? What do I do?
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And somebody else who met me on the plane and just goes, normally, I follow you. And he was reading this book. So he gifted me the book and it's called The Psychology of Money. So, in The Psychology of Money, one of the chapters there was talking about compounding and talking about Warren Buffett and how compounding has helped him over the years. And it got me thinking as well about my own journey. And
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where compounding started. So we started in this whole journey of investing and saving and all of that. If I go back to when I really started, I must have been about 23, coming straight out of university. And maybe if I want to count my university years working then that, you know. So let me say from the day I graduated,
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and moving on. So we've been investing and building and compounding and all of that. So by the time I was 50, we had really done quite a bit in compounding. And so one could say that a lot of the success that was achieved was just from these little steps over time and all.
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Where it got interesting was, having read that, I sat back and I was just thinking about it. Okay, so here I am now, starting from ground zero in politics. I said, how long it's going to take me to compound this lesson? However, in thinking about it more seriously, there are relationships that I've been building over the years, and those things continue.
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There are lessons that I've learned in business over the years that continue. There are investments that I've put in place right from the beginning, which continue and they continue to compound. So advice to young people is that I started saving. I started saving when I was 15.
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A level 16, my first bank account that I opened, I began just saving a little money there. I've lost money, but the saving culture has continued. So once in a while you will lose. Once in a while you enter into a bad deal,
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wipe off certain things and all of that. But because I've had that ability to just save over and over and over again for the last 40, 45 years thereabouts. How old am I? For three years. So for the last 43 years of saving, I can't go broke. It's not possible.
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In terms of the other angle of it is one of the other lessons, especially being an entrepreneur, is developing frameworks and how you assess business partners. You also started off with partners for Sahara. What would you say are some of the lessons you've learned from that, how to apply it, even when you're going into business with other people as well?
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Okay. So partnership is very interesting. Most from what I hear, feedback, I know most partnerships fail, or they're very hard to sustain. That's what I hear. I've always found it easy, but people say it's difficult. So when I think about it, why do partnerships fail? Three things. Number one, they fight about money.
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So where there is a money issue, then partnerships tend to fail. Number two, relationships. The husband coming into the partnership of... How would I put this? Bringing in your problems at home into...
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the business. Either the wife coming in and questioning how the other wife is spending money or why this one traveled and you are not traveling. Keep that out. So where that comes into the partnership, it begins to affect the partnership seriously. Number three,
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You have to trust, you cannot be the same type of people. So you cannot have three alpha males in partnership, it can work. You can't have three very happy, good, lucky people, and none of that. So in partnerships for them to work, you have to have three different characters that are complementary to each other, or four different, whatever, you just have to be different. And I think that has worked extremely well for us. I'm not naturally an alpha.
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Okay, I have some alpha traits, but I'm not an alpha personality. But I understand alphas very, very well. So I help them be who they are. But they break, they are a bull in the China show. They just break so much behind them, but they will get what you want done.
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So I think it's more my responsibility to fix the shop. Get down, okay, break away. But before you start breaking, let's remove the things that are valuable so that the ones you are breaking are things that we can live without. And then you need somebody who... I also understand the ones who are very diligent, they're focused.
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focus on every dot must be done, every eye, every cross, every team must be crossed and all of that. They read contracts, they don't want to take risks, they slow the business down a lot.
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I like those ones as well. So I find myself in the middle of the two. The alpha does not like the person who reads all the contracts. But you need that person because you're going to run into trouble one day. And those contracts, that reading between the lines, just identifying where the hidden minds are, you need that.
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So I find myself working best where I sit between those two. And I think that's what you need in partnerships. If you can get that right, that mix right, you will fly.
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I wanted to transition to the work you've done with the Behavioral Health Institute. What do you think Nigeria still gets wrong from a mental health perspective, especially for men? That's a very tough place. So first of all, the awareness of mental health or the acceptability first, that mental health is something that happens to people.
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anyone. It's a tough thing here in Nigeria. There's superstition tied to this a lot. There is spirituality tied to it. So it's either that you are possessed by a demon or somebody has cursed you, and all of that. So in Nigeria, we have to deal with a lot of these things. We have to deal with the spiritual aspects of it. We have to deal with the superstitious aspects of it. We have to deal with the shame.
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So a lot of people are very ashamed of it, so they don't want to talk about it. They will hide the person, lock the person up and all of that. So I think in Nigeria, the first hurdle that we need to pass when it comes to behavioral health is the fact that it can happen to anyone. And sometimes it's just stress-related. Sometimes it's just background. It's upbringing. It's peer pressure. It's social media. It just can be anything. So that challenge of,
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being open to listen, to advocate, to advise. I meet parents who are confused about how to deal. They just don't know how do we deal with my son? How do I deal with this family?
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person that I've given everything, sent to the best school, giving them, and here he is, displaying things that we don't understand. Is this spiritual? Did they curse him? Is this somebody from the village? So you have to deal with all of that. So I think in Nigeria, it's a difficult place. It's difficult, and some cases are pretty bad. Now,
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The second aspect of it is that we don't have enough professionals dealing with it here. Because behavioral health is an issue that affects people the world over,
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And here in Nigeria in particular, when you are as a medical profession saying that you are going to do psychiatry or other, first of all, your family begins to pressure you that you want to go and deal with mad people. Are you mad? What's wrong with you? So it's already a problem as a field for practitioners to go into. Then when they get into it, they find out that it's a very high demand, lucrative thing. So they are snapped up out of this country very, very quickly.
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So it's a double one for us. You don't have enough professionals. Then you have to deal with the misreading of what it is. So it's a long journey. It's something I'm interested in, but it's going to take a while.
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Did you see people in your family experience it? What drew you to that specific field? Yeah, so, yeah, I've seen people in my family experience it. I've seen people experience depression. I've seen people just break down...
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just from just breakdown. In university, I met, I had a friend, very good friend. One day we were working in class and the guy just got up and started running. Just ran out of studio and we had to chase him down, brought him back and had to now start speaking to him, calming him. We didn't even know what it was, but he just, we call it, he snapped. He just snapped. He just lost it and all of that. And that was it.
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He never finished. From that point, he was gone. There was another... So we've seen a lot of this. There was a young man who... He had never... Again, another friend of Zayan. One day, he had never... He went, from what we understood...
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He went and smoked a joint. He had never smoked anything, but how he entered into this room where they were all smoking, they gave him a joint, took a puff of this joint, and the next thing, this guy was... He had just lost it. So the line for some people, you know, some people can smoke anything for years and they'll be okay. But...
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Others just touch it once and they're gone. And he don't touch it and that was it. And again, we lost him. I'm not sure. It's been years. But we tried to bring him through that process because here we are students. Now, what do we tell the parents? I mean, his cousin was my roommate, so we're very, very close. And eventually we had to take him abroad to a home. So I don't know.
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So I think those are the lessons. Those are the things that I saw physically, myself, experiences that I've had to deal with people, both close friends, family. You know, I can't. There are more examples, but that's how it is. Thank you. And, you know, one thing I want to circle back in, because you talked about how power comes money. What do you think powerful people want?
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I love that. Okay, so there are different types of powerful people. A lot of powerful people want more power, and that's dangerous, because once they taste power, then they want more power, more power, more power, more power, and power can corrupt. And the old saying about absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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Definitely. So the ability to balance power with being content, balance power with the understanding that power is given to serve, not for your own personal gain, is a character issue. And that's where we find the mix. So people get power, especially within our context here. And remember the lottery scenario,
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Because that power brings to them almost immediate wealth recognition, saluting by officers. Suddenly they have bulletproof cars, they have sirens, they have all of these trappings of power. People see that and they want more and more and more of that. Yeah.
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But those who come to power because there's an understanding of, one, the danger of power, there's a fear. You must have a healthy respect for what power can do, how it can destroy you. You must have a healthy respect for what power attracts to you that can be very destructive,
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And so if you are not aware of those things, then power will destroy you very quickly. I'm extremely cautious about power. So power and humility are things that you must figure out how to work together. I can't remember if it was Confucius or some...
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Eastern Asian philosophy, but it says something about the ultimate power is not when you train in martial arts and all of that, it's not the use of it to kill someone because you can, you are taught to do that. It's the control of it not to use it for that. So you know you have the power to do it, but can you control yourself enough?
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not to use it when somebody angers you and you send one, the guy's dead. So it's that control. So in my move into power, as I engage power every day and all of that, I consistently remind myself that you must be humble,
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You must find that ability to anchor yourself in Christ, anchor yourself in God, understand that power comes from him. Ultimately, he can take it away. If you abuse it, it will destroy you. But humility all the time. And I just consistently remind myself about that. And, you know, you're a very public figure. So I'm curious, do you sometimes want to be unseen? Well, of course, many times.
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Many times, unfortunately, I've lost that ability of being unseen. But how do you stay grounded in that? How do you still… Humility, understanding. Understanding that every single day you wake up is a blessing. You must understand that…
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What you have control of, the only time that I have any control of is just the second that I'm saying whatever I'm saying. I cannot guarantee that in the next five minutes, I won't slump here and die and this whole thing will change. I can't guarantee that. I can't guarantee that. Look, I went to visit my auntie last week. It was a true story.
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We were in our morning prayers, right? And my sister says, I spoke to Antinene yesterday, and she says that, oh, none of you have come to see me, and you know that I haven't been well. You're not even calling me. So I was in Port Akron, and I said, you know what? Let me just go see her. I was about to leave, back to Lagos. So I go to see her. She's in hospital, had bed sores, and all of that. I go there. She's lying down. She's OK. She's very happy to see me. We are gisting.
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And I decided to start calling all my sisters, my family who were on the morning prayer, because everybody had said, ah, it's true, let's call. So I called them on video. They're talking to her. We're talking. Everybody's saying hello and all of that. I leave her.
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there. This is very okay. I leave her. I said, Antonina, I'm going to Lagos. I'll be back next week. When I'm coming back, I don't want to see you in hospital again. I always joke with her, get up, let's go and play football. What are you doing here? Get up, get up. When I come back, you're not here and I leave. I go to the house, quick meeting, pick my bag, start heading to the airport. I get a call. Antonina is gone. She's passed on.
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How do you explain that? Totally okay. Now she's elderly and all of that, so it's fine. But...
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The point is that nobody has any control whatsoever about what happens the next minute. So for me, living that life, understanding that whatever you have at this point in time is a gift and use it for others, not for you. Just use it to impact, serve, do whatever it is to improve your life. Use it. That for me is what keeps me grounded.
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And you talked a lot about your legacy and how you want to impact in politics. Is there other industries that you want to impact in this next chapter? Yeah, of course. So what? So first of all, I have this.
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amazing dedication, I don't know why, to the next generation. I have no idea why. I just, I see them and I see the youth and they kind of challenge me. How do they challenge you?
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They ask a lot of questions. They do things that probably when I was their age... So, okay. So, they ask a lot of questions. I find them to be a lot more intelligent in this generation than we were in our generation. I see that they have a lot of energy that is waiting to be directed, but they don't know...
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how to direct it and where to go. I see that it can be very destructive if it is not channeled properly. I see that if you can channel it, if you can just give them the direction, it's almost like a water hose, okay? Fire hose. If you channel all the water and put it in a...
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and you can direct it. You can do great things. You can kill fires. You can wash off debris. That's what I see the youth as today. If we can channel the energy and direct it to anything, direct it into politics, direct it into business, direct it into agriculture, into technology, just give the direction, they will go there and change it. The main thing is, how can you harness all of that and be the one that will direct it? That's where I see my challenge that people,
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Can I harness this raw energy, this raw belief and don't let them give up hope. Just don't give up hope. But let's see if we can harness it. And if my responsibility and my generation's responsibility is to harness what you have and then point it in the direction that you should go.
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and believe me for me today. If I can point that thing at Nigerian politics and bring everybody to come into Nigerian politics, Nigeria is an amazing country. We get this country right, the whole of Africa. In fact, I used to say this and I still believe it. Get this country right, the black race, the entire black race self-corrects. Get Nigeria right, self-correct.
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I was at the United Nations, a woman, she calls herself, what's her name, other African. She comes up to me, she's 80-something now, and she comes up to me and she says that, I don't know what it is I see about you, but...
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I heard you speak, and I want you to know that the diaspora, the Americans all over America are looking to Nigeria and Africa, that if Nigeria can stand up and give them hope in America that they can be okay. But right now, they look at Nigeria, and because of how we are and how dysfunctional things are, we're destroying their own hope.
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to get it right. She will call me every now and then and she will speak for hours. My son!
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Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up. We believe in what Nigeria stands for. I believe in what you stand for. I believe in the calling that you have. And you must get it right. Okay? All right, mama. We'll get it right. Okay, so we're going to do our fire rapid questions. I actually had one more question.
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I wanted to talk about reinvention. You've done oil. You've done politics. You've done architecture. You've done a lot of things. You've done a lot of things, right? But when was that moment when you realized that life was a series of reinventions? Because you already spoke about you'd, in a way, conquer the business world, right? And you're known. You're certified.
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but now you're in politics and you have to start from zero to one. Yes, you can leverage relationships. You can leverage some of the other things you have done. But when did they really click to you that life, as long as you live, will be a series of consistent reinventions, especially if you're somebody who wants to keep on striving? That's a very, very good question. And I don't think it's something that I've really thought about as to when, because like you say, it's all a series of... And, you know...
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So I think the first time that I kind of realized that change and whatever you had set out to plan for can change was probably when I had to take the job, when I first took a job away from architecture, my vision
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as an architect, as an architecture student, was one of global domination. I don't know, for some reason, I just, I saw myself, I don't know why, I saw myself as being an Oscar Nehemiah, I.M.P. These are global architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, that I used to read about. I saw their architecture and all of that, and in my mind,
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I saw my buildings all over the world. I actually visualized this, that architecture students globally would be reading about the designs I put, the buildings I put in architecture schools all over. And this was my mind. This was what I saw. So I never saw myself living in architecture. It just was not part of the plan. Yeah.
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This was going to be the first Nigerian global architect that was my vision.
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And then I get a call one day saying that from Brazil, I'm here. And I call and, okay, my architecture firm in Brazil had recommended me to an engineering firm. And what was I meant to be doing? Doing business development, going after World Bank projects in engineering and pipeline for water, totally outside of architecture.
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But there was something that just said, I'm adventurous. And again, there's a part of me that just spontaneously does things. So there it was, and I was like, okay.
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First, my job in Brazil as an architect is waiting for me. Because my boss says, look, you're a very good architect. Why are you even going back to Nigeria? I said, I have to go back. I have to go and do this whole politics thing. He says, OK, you know what? Go. But be reassured that just get on a plane, come back here. So I kind of knew that the job was there waiting for me. But then I said, you know what? Let me test this and try it. And I tried. Then I now discover that I actually enjoy
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I knew this a bit about traveling, but I enjoy going to new places. I enjoy meeting new people. I enjoy selling products, ideas and all that. I'm just fooling up on these jobs. And it exposed me to negotiating contracts of billions of dollars for the first time. So before then, architecture, I never negotiated this kind of contract. But here I was in an engineering firm.
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I went negotiating $5 million, $10 million, I was 23, 24. Now this is a lot of money for a 23-year-old. But now began to expose me to the things about not being afraid of money. The kind of effort that it takes to negotiate $1, is the same that it takes to negotiate $100, same it would take to negotiate a million. So I entered into this phase,
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And that taught me one thing. Then it crashed. All of that crashed. And then I had to go into yet another field. So I think this series of the ability to just get up and realize that it's not so much the field that matters. It's the experience and the relationships. There's a process in business that is the same, whatever you're doing. And I think that has helped a lot.
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Well, one of the things that has always moved me is that there's a restlessness that comes in your spirit when it's time for you to pivot. You just kind of, they say, you just know. And I realized that with Emsa, I was the same. There was a time, I was just restless. As an architect in Brazil, I was restless. I needed to leave, so I moved. With Emsa, I was restless, but I usually stay.
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not having the courage to move because voting takes some courage. So now I've learned not to be afraid of it. Once that restlessness is on, just move.
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And there's also something to be said about when you're also comfortable, right? Like you said, you were earning in dollars, you're young, I'm sure like, you know, living, living la vida loca, being able to then say, I will leave this comfortable because people you talk to around you will say, why are you doing that?
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What are some of the frameworks and signs that maybe you can advise young people to say, okay, when the restlessness starts? Because I think I watched a video the other day that says, when it's time for this year's season to be over, things that were easy now become hard. Oh, I was going to say that. Absolutely. So I wanted to know, like, what did that look like for you when you're saying, okay, I have to explain to people, maybe my family members or whoever, like I'm pivoting again. And they're saying, but you're in a good situation. Why would you...
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Okay, so again, talking about things that will happen when they haven't happened, right? It's usually difficult to explain. But one thing I can assure you is that if you don't move, that thing will crash. Okay, especially if it is destiny-oriented, okay? If your destiny...
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And now I'm speaking about things that are difficult to hold on to. They're not that tangible. But your destiny, when you're working in it, means that there are so many people that are dependent on you actually working in your destiny. So many people. And when you don't do it, then their lives go into all sorts of dysfunction.
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So it's important for you to fulfill your destiny for their destiny to be fulfilled, if it makes sense. Now, when you don't move into it, then you're delaying their purpose. God may do it in such a way that there are other people that will do what you do so that they're not totally dependent on you.
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But you have a destiny and you have a core. Now it's his responsibility to ensure that you get there. Now he will start making things very difficult. Now some people are so stubborn that even when it's that difficult, they stay. And even when it crashes, instead of them going back and saying that, okay, you know what, let me go to where I'm meant to go, like Jonah, you know, let me go back.
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Some people decide to start that same business and crash. The same thing that they said is get out of here. They go back in that same industry and it becomes a problem. So know that once you start seeing things becoming difficult, it's time for you to pivot.
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there's usually a warning. You usually know that you are meant to have moved. What is keeping you is fair. Your comfort, it's fair. That's it. It's really fair. So we're going to go into the rapid fire segment. Fire away. What book has shaped your worldview the most? Purpose Driven Life. That's a good one. What's your guilty pleasure food?
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Guilty pleasure food. Anything sweet. Cake, candy, anything. I can live on that. If you could live one year anywhere else in the world, where would it be? One year, one year, one year, one year, one year.
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where would I like to be somewhere I've never been maybe Greenland Greenland when America is trying to colonize yeah somewhere where I can just be there you know that's nothingness you know it's cold though yeah I know that's the whole point let me see if I can actually survive a year in an igloo what's the one thing you do every day that keeps you sane pray love it okay
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What is the most misunderstood thing about you? Misunderstood, misunderstood. How can I be so humble when I have so much?
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Mmm. I like that. I was thinking that. I was thinking that. Is there a role that self-awareness... Now we're done with the segment, but this is now my own personal question. Is there a role that self-awareness has played in shaping that? Because humility... I love philosophy, but there are two types of... I forget there was a book we used to read back then called The Fable of the Bees. I don't know if you've ever read it. The Fable of the Bees. No, no, no. There's one that missed me.
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But it was talking about how pride and humility works. So there's outward humility and then there's inward humility. So outward humility being outside, everyone sees you as humble. But your pride inside is... Can't die.
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And so the reason why I say that is I do therapy a lot. I've been to a lot of mental health stuff. I've come to see that first emotional intelligence and also self-awareness play a key role. How has that shaped your view, especially in how you approach different things, especially from a self-awareness perspective? So if you've ever been in church and you're within the church setting,
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then you will discover very quickly that there's the outward humility and inward pride. It's on display consistently. And so I used to... So I believe that one of the things that I came to terms with very, very quickly, and again, Christianity has helped me on this, is...
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If you want to be destroyed eventually, quickly, then embrace pride. Now, outward humility means absolutely nothing in terms of the final result of whether you'll be destroyed or not. Because you're faking to the people that don't matter. It's the inward humility that matters inward. Why?
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God resists the proud. And he's not resisting the proud on the outside. He's resisting the one on the inside. So if you want to be resisted by God,
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end up with pride. So I have to walk every single day that I don't want all of these things to be destroyed. So how do I do it? So I remind myself that I don't want to come against God. Now that is dependent on whether I believe in God or not. So to the person who says that there is no God,
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whether he's proud or whether he's not proud, that's for him. But for me, that believes, then I must daily remind myself that all of this can go. Now, life in itself has taught me, just going through life, I've seen people, I mean, I've seen people make a lot of money and I've seen them lose it all. I've seen people who have entered into situations that they should never have entered into, right? But,
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I've seen people destroyed by pride. It's not everybody who is humble that makes a lot of money. But guess what? Money is not the marker. And that's what a lot of people miss.
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you can, if your humility is right, contentment, your family setting, how your children grow up, what they see when they go out, the doors that open for them because they say that your father is this. You know, there's so many things that money cannot buy that humility opens to it. The kind of doors that it opens, money can never buy it. So I think the game of...
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remaining humble versus the loss of pride. It doesn't compare. I wanted to even draw more on that, especially on bringing your father into the topic. What is one thing when you were younger, you might not have fully understood that now that you're a bit older, you've understood about what it means to be a man?
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Interesting. Okay. Apart from the responsibility that you take on, ensuring that you are the key provider, right?
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The man has to just, it doesn't matter. Nobody's, you don't care how hard you work and all of that. You must make sure that you provide. I think that is something that coming of age taught me that
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Be responsible. Take responsibility for every action that you take. So there's a consequence to each action, but you must take it. So that I learned also from my father. But I think if I take your question more literally and I change it a bit, that what's the one thing I learned from him that has shaped my worldview moving forward? My dad was into politics, and I never saw him bitter about anything.
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And politics is a game of people who betray. I've seen people who stabbed this man. He went out to help them. He was doing well. And they stabbed him. And I discovered. And I went to him. And I'm saying, are you still want to help this person? And he says, one day you'd understand it. And he has never carried a bitter grudge on anyone. I learned.
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Once you carry bitterness, once you carry grudges, once you carry unforgiveness, peace grows. Illnesses come. You have such a paranoia. Everything about you becomes dark.
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Your children no longer become a blessing. Your household is not a, you know, you introduce so many things into your family that it begins to destroy everybody. And for the journey that he took, I never allowed bitterness or grudges or things to, I learned that one. And I said, okay, that's something that I must take on so that I can be quit also
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to my family, to my children, I know that that level of peace around them, that you haven't attracted all sorts of ridiculous things because somebody stabbed you, they stole an election, they cheated you, they took your money, didn't do it. You know what? Leave those things. Let them go. I will not hold on to that. Let's hold on to the journey and where we're going to. That's where it is.
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I think my last question, there's a, I like to say there's an attack on the family units just globally. I wanted to speak, especially for our listeners, what would you say has been the significant thing you've learned about marriage and how it has actually been beneficial to your life as well?
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Okay. So I think, again, just talking about the family unit and just understanding what it means, my wife in particular has been a source of calmness.
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in the mind. I don't think I would have been able to achieve all that I did if I did not have that confidence that somebody was watching my back and providing the things that I couldn't provide.
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One of the transitions, transition period when we started off, was like for two and a half years, close to three years. Took everything, I took all my savings, every single thing, I would put it into the business. None of us, not my partners or I and all, earned anything with me and,
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from the business. So we're all meant to survive and support ourselves from other sources. Now, two of my partners had a place called Men's Room. So they used to sell clothes and all that was there. So that's where they were getting the unsustainments from. I was married.
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None of them were married and I was married. And that's a partnership. You have to trust each other. But all of us had decided that we were going to sacrifice for this company. This company must survive. So we're not taking a salary. How was I surviving? I didn't.
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Because they had a place to get from. It was tough for them as well because they were selling clothes, but they had been doing this for a while. So it was tough for them. It was tough for us. And guess how I survived? My wife was a medical doctor at the time doing her housemanship and all of that from Luth. For that period of time, we lived on her little salary and all of that. I was starving myself because we all had a son.
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a wife and myself. She was in Lagos. I was living in Port Harkot. So I had to go to Port Harkot to start the business. So I wasn't seen. I had to trust her. I had to trust me. She had to pay for the school fees, for the electricity and all of that, for that period in time.
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When I hear some people say that, I can't let her pay for now. If she knows because she will trust you. If she sees where you're going and knows that you're making an effort to survive, to make sure that your business, whatever it is, is good. Today, after a while,
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I can afford everything. My wife is enjoying the money. She does not have to work. She has the compounded interest of what she spent. By far, the compounded interest works beautifully. But that's what marriage is about. Truly, it's a partnership. There are days when it's good.
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Things are working better for you. The days when it works better for your wife. But together you understand each other. You find the balance. You are two parts of a coin. She says that there's something that I drew for her, like concentric circles. Okay. You come with your own friends and baggage and all of that. I come with my own friends and baggage. The day we get married, if you do this,
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and I put all my circle upon your circle, I'm going to crush you. I'll just suffocate you. You have no breathing space. If you do it on me, the same. So we have a concentric circle like that. I have a space that is my space. My friends don't have to be your friends. Your friends don't have to be my friends, but there are some.
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that are together. So I give her space to keep some of her friends, keep some of her attitude. I keep my own attitude, keep some of my friends, but there's a space that we are together. As long as that works, we are beautiful. It has worked beautifully for me.
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Marriage, give and take. You learn every day. Actually, I have one last question to follow up there because I also feel like this conversation around marriage, a lot of people are like, I'm opting out. It didn't work. What's the irreconcilable differences? Whatever. How do you get through the lows? How do you get through those...
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So first and foremost, by the time you get into, so this is my wife again, I'll speak to what she comes up with because we do counsel people first of all. And one of the first things is that once you're going into a marriage with the mindset that you have an out,
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then almost always that out is going to present itself and you will take it so the first aspect of it is once you know that i'm in here for better for worse you're going in divorce also to come onto the table then you know what you're stepping into so i find that a lot of times it's in the foundation of how you even get married in the first place
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That is the problem. If you're getting married out of infatuation, you're looking at this very fine girl, you like tall girls, yellow girls, light girls, black girls, whatever. If it's in the external, if that's what the attraction is, and you haven't gotten a bit deeper into purpose, into why are you good for me? Why am I good for you? Not the inferior things, but what is it about your purpose and your life
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and my purpose and my life that will come together for us to build together. If you don't have some of those deeper discussions before you get married, then you'll find it a challenge. I was counseling a couple. I know he's like a son to me, and he's met this wonderful girl. So...
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Both of them have many things in common, but one of them wants to go abroad and the other one wants to stay here. So I sat both of them and when I spoke to her, I said, okay, look, everything that I can tell from you from the day you were born,
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Living in Nigeria is not on your option at all. Okay? So I can tell, you know, you are living this place. On the other hand, this gentleman here, right, he's very petroglyphic, you know, I want to build Nigeria and all of that, but you love each other and all of that, so this is what's going to happen. Let me just speak to you first, as a woman that I know that he loves and he's willing to do anything for. For the first part of your life, he's going to sacrifice for you. Mm-hmm.
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Okay? So, he's going to take you. He will go abroad with you. He will stay with you. He will make sure that you have settled your life. But the day is going to come when he's going to call in that favor. And he's going to say, Madam, we're coming back home. The day that comes, please get up.
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because there's going to be a sacrifice. He's going to put his own life on hold to ensure that your dream is met.
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When he decides that it's time for him to move on his own, you have to give him the full support. And I think that's what marriage is about. Some women hold their dreams to ensure that their husbands move. But the day comes when they say, okay, it's time now for me to work in my own purpose. Support me.
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That's not the time for you to start telling her you're a housewife, my friend. Go and sit down and take care of my children. No. When it's time for her and she decides that, okay, you know what? I've put the children up. I've given up my life so that I can make sure that they're in school. They do that. I've put my career on hold, whatever, whatever. I've done that. And now it's time for me to find myself. I think it's the husband's duty at that point to say yes.
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How can I help you? What can I do? Where can we go? Once you have that kind of understanding you're good, many frustrations come because the husband or the wife is refusing to be the helpmate either way, the support system.
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Your dream is my dream. And too many women give up their dreams to ensure that their family move. And they become resentful. Because they now start saying that you didn't allow me to do this. You didn't stop me from doing that. And then they try to force the children to become what they were not. And the children say, I know I have my own life. I'm not going to. Don't leave your life through me.
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Marriage is about giving, sacrifice, understanding that there's a time for one to move, there's a time for another. Sometimes you have this beautiful relationship where both of you are in the same business and you work together and your dreams are working. Excellent, but not all the time. Not all the time, so that's what it is.
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Well, thank you so much. One more question. No, no. What is it? It's always the last question. Okay, sorry, sorry. We were so into this conversation. Okay, so the last question we ask every guest is who do you want to see on the Afropolitan podcast and who is someone's story that you think needs to be told? That's a very, very interesting one. Let me see.
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Okay. So I think you need to take this with generational gaps and just speak to people from different generations. Somebody asked me recently that, why don't we have patriots? Why is patriotism so difficult in Nigeria? And I said, the reason why is because they have not seen people who they can emulate
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and follow. If you can find people that they can emulate and follow, then it would be good to have them in there. Alright, so having said that, let me see. Who should you speak to? The other day we spoke to, we met all of us, we saw and we heard Zuriya's story and all of that.
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Again, she's out there, but a lot of people still don't know who she is. But that's a story that is incredibly inspirational. And I think it's something that we should do more and speak a bit more to her story. I think in the area of... You need to talk a bit more about the area of politics and what we're seeing in politics.
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And there are three people that I would say that you need to speak to. One, speak to Aswe. He's going through South Air right now, and it will be good to hear his story. The second one I would ask you to speak to, if you can bring somebody like the governor of Katsina on board. Why? Why?
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He will appeal a lot to, so his name is Dauda. He will appeal to a lot of your audience, right? As somebody who has, against the odds, succeeded and got him in there, how did he do it?
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What did he do? Would he be willing to share that story? If he can share the story, I believe that it's going to open up a lot of interest into some of the things you're doing. I would also say you should speak to Eriti Kinube.
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has survived against a lot of odds in the political space as a woman. And has had to stand up and fight a different type of fight that Natasha is fighting and she's surviving. But how is she doing it? What message does she have? Women need to be heard a lot more.
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and they're not being heard properly. So we need to speak to them. Who else should I ask you to speak to? There's somebody who has inspired me for many years, and it's Indidi Umeliu.
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Yeah. I was trying to capture her. She escaped, but she's in D.C., so hopefully when I go back, I can connect to her. Now, get into this story, and this is on patriotism. This is one person, I mean, I have people who have done this Nigeria story bleeding out of every pore in our body, but Nditi has succeeded where very few people have succeeded on the
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the issue of patriotism and all of that. That's one woman you should find, and you should speak to. There's another person who, on the advocacy area, Adadego. Did I say Adadego? No, Adadego. Adameleko.
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Yemi, you need to meet with her as well. She's fought this story called Enough is Enough, EIE. She left a wonderful paying job in America as a consultant. She could be anything in this world. Intelligent, brilliant, she could be anything. She decided many years ago that she's coming back to Nigeria to come and fight this whole course of a better Nigeria.
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get to speak to her. She'll be great. Last younger generation, technology who, technology is speaking volumes as to how we move forward and all of that. So some of the voices within the technology space that you can speak to. Speak to Ine. We have. We met him. You met him already? Yeah, he's a very, he's an investor, so yeah. Okay, that's true. That's true. That's true. So, Ine is good. You can speak to him.
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Who else in that space can you speak to? Ah, speak to Kola Masher. Kola Masher is merging technology with agriculture and doing incredible things in the North, removing people that would otherwise have no hope.
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and he's bringing them into the spaces and technology, teach them in agriculture. So we have many hidden stories. And I think you can find, if you can find all of this, meet Tunde, chess. Yeah, we met him over there. Has he been on the- Yeah, he has, but he's going to do it again. Bring him back again. So there are people doing great and amazing things. So I'd say keep doing that.
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I was going to ask, and I know I've said my last question for how many days, but I wanted to get your thoughts because in the TED Talk, you said in Nigeria, we tend to forget our heroes, right? We tend to forget the people who have really done a lot of amazing stuff.
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And one of the reasons I said to Chika when we were starting this podcast is we want this space or this platform to be somewhere we honor our heroes, honor the stories of people who've really done the work. Why do you think we have a hard time with honoring those people and also a hard time with just our history as a nation? Like what is going on with that? Preserving these stories and honoring people. Yeah.
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I can only hazard a guess. First of all, people have... Why we have a hard time moving forward is that people seem to believe wrongly so that all the efforts that they have...
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that they've seen others do have not been rewarded and recognized. In fact, a lot of people have put out so much and they've been rubbish down the line. And so selfishness has become a way of life. Just, you know, let me just do it for myself and not wait for anybody else to do it.
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And I think that that's wrong. And so a very deliberate move to remember, to reward, to honor is critical. But the issue is who is doing the honor and who is doing the remembrance. National honors ought to have been the space where people generally are remembered. But a lot of people buy the honors.
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You can pay for it, you can buy it. So people don't respect it as much as it should have been. So there must be a mechanism whereby people are actually genuinely remembered and honored for doing the right thing. So maybe one of the answers to that would be for somebody with integrity who is known
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in Nigeria that, okay, you know what? This person has integrity to begin to look for, seek for, and honor people. So like what Moe Ibrahim does, so he's built something, people trust him and all of that, and he begins to honor people.
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And I think we need, maybe as journalists and working on podcasts, we need to find a true platform that recognizes and honors people. I know this day award does that. Some people believe in it. Some people think it's political. Some people think it's not and all of that. But it's those kind of things that look at people,
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identify a clear criteria, can explain why people have been honored and why they've remembered. And I think that would help a lot. So we need to defend all that mechanism to make it happen. Thank you so much. Thank you.