African drums are calling. The slow rhythmic cadence of the drums penetrates into the deepest bush. It crosses black sinuous rivers and on into the surrounding country, rising and falling to the vagaries of the African breeze. It is a funeral dirge. And in the open space in the center of some village lies the cold body of a great chief. Slowly, each stepping carefully to his distance from the next comes a line of seven warriors. They circle the body, firelight playing a ghostly symphony along muscular bodies. They pause, but the wave-like ripples coursing continually up and down the back and out along the arms to the fingertips never ceases. It is the dance of death. They take up their rhythmic step again, keeping their distance. Or if the aura of two warriors overlap, both will die. All and on they dance, past the false dawn, with the villagers standing in a great outer circle. And with the coming of day, the ceremony is complete. Professor Anton Edwards, his daughter, Lorna, and his assistant, Jack Martin, have been captured by a savage tribe while on an expedition into the wilds of Africa. Guru, the professor's huge Maasai bodyguard, has crept up to the hut where the two men are confined and slipped weapons to them. Jack and the professor were awaiting Guru's signal when a cry from Lorna reached their ears. I can't sit still with that scream of Lorna's ringing in my ears. Let's do something, sir. We can't do a thing, Jack. If she's in danger, and Guru will take care of it. He's probably with her by now. It can't be very serious or we'd have heard him in the center of a fight. Hmm. Guns have stopped. Do you really think she's all right? I know she's not in any immediate danger or Guru would have let us know before now. Oh, yes, I guess so. But just waiting when... Patience, Jack, my boy. If I'm not mistaken, we'll be out of here shortly and in a position to really do something if necessary. You have a lot of faith in Guru, haven't you? Yes, my boy. I've never yet known him to miss. He's always in the right spot at the right time. He seems to have done it well this time, sir. But I don't yet see how we're going to get out. We're only three against the whole tribe. Well, the odds are pretty large, I know. But it's dark now. It's been done for a while, my lad, and there's no reason why it can't be done again. What are your plans? Well, if I know one Guru, he'll wait for the moon to drop behind the trees before starting anything. The village will be asleep by then, except for these guards and the ones tending the fire. But the moment we try to break out, the whole place will be roused. We won't make the first move, Jack. That's when Guru's. It's his job to attend to the guard outside this door. Then as silently as we can, we get to the hut where Lorne is. Do the same for her. Perfectly simple. Yes, so it sounds. But you're used to this sort of thing, sir. You've done it before. I'm afraid I'm going to prove a handicap. If you'll obey me implicitly, you won't. On the contrary, you'll be a great help. That's very good of you to say that. Well, I can't help feeling I'm going to blunder somewhere. It's just the fact that Lorne's freedom hangs on us, makes you feel that way. You got that revolver strapped on you? Yes, sir. It's the most comforting thing I've laid my hands on since we were taken. Hmm. Yeah, that's who Guru. He's starting. Won't be long now. Remember, Jack, that gun is not to be used unless it's the end of our plans. Very well, sir. One shot would rouse the village. If a native passes close to you, lie still and try to avoid him. But if he comes for you, use your hands on his throat and stop his yelling. The thing I'm afraid of is making a noise. That's the next move, Jack.  We'll have to leave him behind. I hate to do it. Just broken knees in from marching. Good Lord, sir. How about jiggers? We'll have to trust the luck and take a chance on those little fellas. Roll your riding britches up above your knees, too. What's that for? The same as taking your boots off. The first part of our journey will have to be made on hands and knees. You want to be able to feel any dried twigs before you put your weight down. You snap one and the whole place will be awake instantly. Yes, that's what I'm afraid of, sir. Well, feel with your hands, knees and feet before you put them down. And put them down as softly as possible. What was that? It's a guru doing his job. Are you all set to go, Jack? All set. I'll give him sleep soundly, Buana. That's good and guru. How many are there between us and my daughter? No matter. We kill them. All go so-so for Buana, guru. It is well. Point the way. Follow Buana. Keep to the shadow, Jack. Keep with me and don't lag. All right. Those men, but they're fires. Keep moving. They can't see anything outside the circle of the light. I think the guru's still lying still. Yeah. It's all right now. Go on. One of them got up to put wood on the fire. That is house where Missy lies. The one on the end there. I see. It is safe to rise now, eh? Aye. These men... Ah! I watch. See nothing. All for... All for Buana. All right and guru. Jack, we're going to leave you here. If any of them leave the fire and start over toward us, hoot like an owl as I've taught you. Here's a good knife. I shall leave it. But only as a last resort after we've been discovered. Can you use the gun? I understand, sir. One of us will come back for you if all goes well. If not, you'll soon know about it. But whatever you do, don't pass between the fire and the guards around Lorna's hut. Got it? Yes. Come on, un guru. We can move past. This like year pass Buana. Year war come long. Yes. Yes, I've been thinking of that myself. Is it good, un guru? It is good. To warrior, you, me, happy. They aren't my child. I speak missy. She's safe. These men house cattle. No eye, no ear, no smell. They slay one man. They're serving one man, eh? Aye, Buana. What is he? You know? Un guru, no, not. Un guru, smell him white man. White man? Maybe some renegade, eh? That missy prison hut so-so. How many men guarding it? Uh-huh. Good for you, me. Too, eh? Not so simple as that. He come for wood for fire. No ear, neck break. Down, Buana, down. Only this time I took the feet and they had fell to you. Un guru, slow Buana. In Buana hands, neck him break quick- Look. The other one has told us something. He's come to the edge of that, looking this way. Dog. Him, no good God. Him, come. If he leaves his post through curiosity, he's in for a lesson. Him, ancestor, wait in heaven. Uh-huh. He come. You take him forehead, Buana. Open, un guru, come. Aye, Buana. Buana hands, quick. Eh, take the far side of that. Maybe there are more centuries there. Nay, Buana, no more. Un guru, no. Father, I knew you'd come. Hush, dear.  All right, un guru. Where shall we meet? Meet by the hut. Aye, look. See two men. Aye, go. How did you do it, Father? Un guru did it all. But first, tell me if you're all right. Have they hurt you? Not a bit. I've been terribly scared, but that's all. They haven't laid a finger on me. Thank heaven for that. Where's Jack? We left him to give the signal that they found we'd gone. He'll be here in a minute. Tell me, what happened when you were taken to the chief's hut? That's the strange part. There was a white man there, and I swear I've seen him somewhere before. A white man? Eh, now I begin to understand a few things. Oh, he was very courteous. That the whole thing was unavoidable and out of his hand.  Yes. You know who it is. Yeah, the way. Here they are. Buana, Boma, have two, two guards. Find dead man, so-so. Eh, double the guard to the gate, eh? Good. Now there's one for each of us, Un'Guru. Little Buana in no part. Un'Guru show. Yes. He showed me which way to go. All right then, Jack. Follow us with an honor, but keep a good distance. When the way is clear, you'll hear the hoot for an hour. So wait for it before approaching the opening. Good luck, sir. Oh, Jack, I knew something would happen to get us out of this mess. We're not out of it yet, dear. But I think we've got the worst part over. Careful how you walk. Yeah. We dare not spoil things now. Where's Father gone? To make sure we can get out. These bushes circle the top of this hill. The only way to get out is where we came in. And they're guarding it. Yes. Is there any danger for Father? No. At least I don't think so, since I saw some of his work back there. There's good us out right now.


It's time for our first hot topic on the breakfast. I want to take a look at the size of this Government. Tinnubu appears to be ignoring Korn's president, Bola Tinnubu, for a lean government as his cabinet size near 70. OBJ, former president, Olusya Gwobasanjo, had 30 ministers. Former president, late Umar Erodoa, had 39 ministers. Former president, Gulno Jonathan, he had 37. But here we are looking at one that's about 70. Well, let's talk about that with Joe Femi Daguro. He's a founder of Lagos Forum. Good morning to you, Joe. Good morning. Glad to have you. Yeah, good to be here. So what's your take on the size of the portfolio of the cabinet we're seeing in front of us? It probably may rise. Well, actually, I've said it somewhere before that it's a prerogative of the president to choose his ministers and the people that work with him. If there's no law to guide against increase or decrease in number of ministers, then he may be doing something right, unless there's a law. And if there's a law prohibiting this number, because we have to look at what the law says, if the National Assembly agrees with him on this, then he must be doing something right. But if the law says, look, you can have it, but if the law allows him to do what he's doing right now, then nobody can stop him. From your investigation, does the law give him an open check to decide how many people he wants to work with? Well, from my understanding, like I said, I'm not a lawyer, but then he must choose from all the states. And now if we have 36 plus one, that's about 37. So if he has to choose from all the states, that means minimum you will have 37. And if you have a minister of states, all these other minister, general minister, add another 37 to him. So there must be something fundamentally wrong somewhere. And until when that is corrected, you know, we can say what we want to say, but I mean, why is he choosing this large number? There must be a reason for it. And I think these are the things we should be able to ask the president or the presidency so that they give a clue to this. Rather than for us now, if we discuss it and it comes out and tell us this is what I want to do, this is what the law says, then we'll find ourselves in a situation whereby we can defend ourselves again. So I was trying to get across to one or two people in the government to find out. But now it was impossible because I got this information to appear on this program a little bit late. So these are the things we have to investigate. And once we investigate it and we find that the president has not done anything wrong or he has done something wrong, we'll begin to take him on that. So these are the things we have to look into first. All right. Well, Nigerians are concerned because when you look at the economy and how the nation is struggling, Nigerians have said, look, let's cut down on government expenses. Let's reduce the cost of governance in this country. And so when they see this kind of this size, you know, they get alarmed naturally, whether the law allows it or not. Do you not agree with Nigerians who are saying, look, cut down the cost of governance and let's see that things are not bloated as they've been in the past. I agree with that. I agree with that 100%. I agree with that. There are so many ministries that can be matched. There are so many positions that can be cut off completely. And if we begin to look at that, where do we get the money? You know, if we say we are going to be borrowing and we're going to borrow, because we are not ruining the surplus economy. It's a deficit. And if we are running a deficit economy, and that means we might still borrow more until we have that surplus. We don't have the surplus now, unless the statistics are wrong. So if we don't have the surplus and a report has said, look, let's cut this. And why is it that even the past government have not been able to do the right thing? So we have to begin to look at it and say, look, what is really wrong? And that is why I'm saying the National Assembly has to consider a lot of things. You see, the people, I mean, that is people like us in the public. And when we say, oh, this is what we think about the government. This is what we think should happen. In most cases, it's not going to change things. And that is why there should be a mechanism whereby the people will listen.  Unlike where we took this democracy from, you had the opportunity to reach your representatives again. So there must be a place we can reach out to them in a very comfortable way that we can say, look, this is what we feel about this country. This is what we think. So except the few of us that we can speak. So let's begin to find a grassroots movement, a grassroots organizations that we can see. So we have a lot of NGOs that work in that are saying things about this, but has it made a change? So it's a phenomenon. It's a problem that has to be solved. And I just hope maybe this time around the assemblymen and women can listen to it and begin to look at it. Look, in the last government, you discovered that before the names of ministers were submitted, it took quite a while. So now they passed a law. I mean, it is true that same government has said, look, within 60 days, look, something has to be done. Because you know when you are coming into this government, you need to have ministers that should have been a kitchen cabinet, you call it, to have, you know, selected some people and say, look, this is what I want to do. So it shouldn't take you even 60 days to be able to submit this list, but that is politics. You know, there will be discussions, there will be issues here and there. And you know, all these things about friendship and loyalty. So the party members, we want to have their say as well. I mean, because it is not just the president alone. There will be people who are supporting him to make decisions. So unless a lot of things have to change, unless people have to have an orientation, they have to understand that government has to be effective and functional. But if this is what the law says, I repeat, that you must have a minister from all the states, then there should be something wrong somewhere. And then not only that, you have the civil societies.  You have issues that have said, no, the Christian must occupy certain positions. The Muslim must occupy certain positions. But let's look at the reality. We should be talking about fixing issues right now. We need a vibrant foreign affairs policy at this critical time in Africa, in the world. So these are the things we should consider and not to be able to just be talking all over the time. And you know, who is going to be what? The foreign affairs ministry needs a minister right now. Every other portfolio we have to consider as critical, the works ministry, the health ministry. Let's fix these things and let's move on with governance. And that is the most important issues now. Then you still have to now be guessing who is going to be the minister of what, who is going to be the minister of state, who is going to be the minister, the senior minister, the junior minister. There are a lot of issues. And I believe the government of Bola Metinumbu will be working, you know, to see things done properly. Look at the strike, the way it was handled. I'm looking at the way he's been doing things for a while. And I'm looking at the competence and the finesse in handling some of these issues. So if we are looking at the practicality and the flexibility of the governance and now let's bring transparency into it and let's bring clarity into all this. Then I think we must be doing something right. That's why we have to give chance. We have to give him the chance of let's wait and see, you know, how is he going to pay? Then it's a different question. Who is going to occupy what? Those are the things that are critical right now. So once we fix it, you see, look at our foreign affairs policy that I talked about. The chat issue, the Niger issue, all this was African country, Burkina Faso, Mali and all these things are happening right now. And it depends on us. And Nigeria is the president or the chairman of ECOWAS. So when we look at it right now, there's a lot of issue going on. Times you have moved past what we experienced in the last government, where it's only a big elaborate. I was running around the place with NITCOM and representing the government in most cases. We had the, in then we couldn't even had, we had the voice of the foreign affairs minister. So things have to change. And that is why its efficiency is transparency.  There was so much duplicity. It's part of what we had hoped will be changed with this administration. Okay, well, let's look at the list. You've seen the list, you've seen the names. We've seen about nine ex-governors there. Would you say that looking at that list that there is hope that this team is well put together? Or you have doubts about their ability to deliver and move this country forward? The only thing we can do, the only thing I can say is to be cautiously optimistic about some of these things. While I don't want Nigerians to lose their optimism and not to lose their mind about some of these things going on. It's just to be cautiously optimistic and that is it. You see, politics is about relationship among the politicians. It's about friendship, it's about loyalty. It's about, yes, you supported me, I'm there for you. And I think even all these nine governors, you know, if they are sincere to themselves and to this nation, I want to believe that it's a great opportunity for them to really come out and serve. They've made enough money if it's about money. They've gained enough publicity and popularity if it is about that, if it's about fame. So if you have been brought into the system right now, it should be about the greatest service you can give. So if they don't see this as the greatest opportunity even to correct their past, whatever it is, then there's something wrong with our system. There's something wrong with us as people and that is where we can continue to complain and possibly raise our voices to say, no, this is not what we voted for and to correct this anomaly. But for now, there's nothing we can do as people. It is the job of the president to select the people he wants to work with and that's the sad truth. No matter what we say, it doesn't change the mind of the people who is going to work or the mind who is going to choose who is going to work with him. These are supposed to be in the private sector. You choose some people to work with you and then they work with you. And that is it. The CEO has the right to choose and the HR, they will come together to say, look, these are the people we want to hire. Even if there are some people in-house, they can still go out and bring in SNR people to run the show. So I'm looking at it from that angle. This man has his prerogative to do that and to bring in people to work with him. And until when we see these people doing something silly. Look, when Baba Tudel Fashella was there, he did the best he could. The mistake was maybe giving him two portfolios at the same time, but later on he has to take one. So there will be mistakes that will be made, maybe, and possibly so. And then it should be corrected because we don't have the time to continue to make mistakes. We don't have the time to continue to explain the situation to ourselves. Not only that the foreign countries or our allies are looking at us, we are looking at ourselves critically right now. And that is the good thing about that. We have to have a minister of finance that will be able to talk to the central bank governor. Not to the last administration whereby the minister of finance is saying something. The central bank governor will disobey whatever and they will invite him to the assembly. The Senate will invite him and he will not go. So there was lawlessness, practically lawlessness, disobedience to law and order. So now we should try to avoid that and see that we have the same government. We have a government that can listen to people. And I think this is what we should be watching out for. That's my opinion. We need people now to come in and do the right thing. And the right thing may cause pain. Even when you are telling the people the truth, it is painful sometimes to listen to truth. But then what can we do to bring our country to the place we want it to be? It's our job. You are saying that perhaps this governor would be able to perform. But some Nigerians are saying it's already a bad signal that these governors, some of them immediate past governors, who probably should be under the radar of the EFCC right now to account for some of the things they did in their state. You are giving them portfolios. I'll read out some of the governors here on that list. You have former governor Simon Lalong. He is a lawyer served as two-term governor of Platte State from 2015 to 2023. All right. So you have Mohammed Baderu, an accountant and immediate governor, a former governor of Jigawa State from 2015 to 2023. You have Ibrahim Gaidam, who is incumbent senator of Yerba East, Senatorial District. He was the immediate past governor of Yerba State. Then you have Abubaka Abagudu. Abubaka Atiku Abagudu is the immediate past governor of Kirby State. You have Bello Matawale. He's the immediate past governor of Zamfara State. You have David Umahi. He's previously served as two-term governor of Eboni State from 2015 to 2023. All right. So you have Nesur Erofi. He's the former governor of Kaduna State. So we're not forgetting the very popular one, Nisomuike, former governor of River State. Some Nigerians are saying, is it not, is it not a bit too much to bring all these immediate past governors and give them portfolios as ministers? Well, unfortunately, unfortunately, there's nothing we can do, I repeat again. They've not been convicted. You know, they've not been taken before the court of law and they've not been convicted. And number two, they are not having immunities anymore. So they can still be picked up. They can still be invited. They can still be interrogated. There's no immunity covering them because a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria does not guarantee you. You can be arrested. You can be queried. No. So if the law allows that, you see, it's unfortunate that you see most of us, we don't... There is a thing as the power of inculbency. Yes, they are not the president, but the president who put them in there can very well cover them. Can't he? In any case, there are some things that are lingering and hanging over their heads. That is, that is our thoughts. That is the thoughts of Nigerians. That is the thoughts. We all have that thought. Look, why is this guy there? I would say the same thing, but at the end of the day, for this purpose of intelligence and real discussions, we have to now say, listen, unless we have to look at what the law says. If the law says, look, excuse me, you are covered. Then we say, oh, it's covering them. Whether we like it or not, whether you are a minister or not, if you are a good friend, a loyal friend of the president, there are certain things that you will benefit from being loyal to your friends, from being loyal to the president, from being loyal to the governor. It's not even all that. If you are loyal to a good friend in good position, there are things you will benefit from it. So you don't need to be a minister to have a good benefit from the minister or from the president or from the governor or from the chairman or local government. No, it's all over the place, even in the private sector. So this is what I'm saying, unless we want to feed the masses with drug information, which we do not do, which are we not do, which you will not do. But the point is this, if the law permits it, then it's free. But if the law says, look, for the fact that you are there, you can still be investigated. Even in America, I said that because this is where we took this kind of democracy from. We saw Britain, we didn't go for that parliamentary thing. We saw Germany, we saw all over the place. We went from where we think we can, I mean, we want to enjoy all the benefits of good things in life, where you have the rep and the Senate. So it's allowed. See, Trump will bring friends who are even, who cannot win the election in their state. All over the world, Obama did the same thing. This other guy here, we did the same thing. Even in UK, in Germany, name it in Europe, they do the same thing. Your friends cannot win the election, bring him to be a special advisor or minister. So what, the only thing most of our people, most of the agents are looking at.  And they are collecting whatever they have planned for themselves after the timing. That is scary and that is annoying to people. And I think most of them will begin to write like, I think Edwin Gardner wrote it. And I think maybe Osha Molle will say, look, a lot of them will begin to say, look, Osha Molle was a former chairman of APC. So he was a former NLC leader, a former governor and now a senator. So there is no law prohibiting them not to have dispositions. And unless there is a law for that, these people are free to be ministers. They are free to even contest election to aspire to be president of Nigeria. So we have to see whom do we vote as president? Whom are we going to vote as governor in future? And so that we begin to ask questions. When people come to campaign, they don't even tell us, most of them don't tell us they are manifestos. Most of them don't tell us what they will do. Most people will say, when I get there, this is what I will do, but they don't do it. And they will tell you later that is campaign audacity, where you can promise and not to fulfill. So unless we begin to, the masses, the people, the Nigerians that we talk about, our Nigerians, we should be able to find a way and come together to be asking questions, not to be taken away with a bag of Gary or a bag of beans or the recharge cards and stuff like that. You don't see in other countries around the world where senators would be distributing machines or Gary or frying pans and all that. You don't see that. You are choosing on your true representation. But here it's a different ball game. What is constituency allowance? Do we ask them? Where is the constituency allowance? What are you doing with the constituency allowance? Let us ask questions that we make them think, oh, these people are beginning. Oh, what about the primary health center here? What have you done with it? The other day I went to the primary health center sometime at night. I saw them. The road to the place was bad. And then the doctors were there. No security provided. And here you are. You see, you provide a security for some madams and some personality. You call them celebrity or personality carrying their bags and umbrella. And that's why you see sometimes they kidnapped the doctors because we don't provide security in those places. We have to think about that. And these are the things that we should be talking about. How do we get, you know, when a government comes to power, whether a president or a government, and say, look, I'll provide job for 100 million people or 10 million people. Do you know what 10 million people means to say you want to provide a job? But I want to say you provide a job for 10 million people. You don't give time frame. So even if it is the next four years, well, we are still expecting the 10 million people. So these are promises made that cannot be fulfilled. And you are not seeing the chances of these 10 million people. You said people, we have a loan to complete the education. Fantastic idea. But now who is going to demand that ministry? These are critical questions, you know, and students will begin to resume maybe in October, you know, and then it has brought a system whereby the university had the freedom to, you know, increase their school fees. So we should be addressing those things. I think that those are the questions we should be prepared to ask and ask for the answers. So that students can go back to school comfortably well. And the process of loan, how will it be like? How long will it take for a student to get a loan or scholarship if that should be the case? How would she be asking people? Well, according to the Nigerian constitution, there must be at least one cabinet member from each of the 36 states of the country. But, you know, when you say there's nothing we can do about it, there's nothing we can do. It's important that we have these conversations, right? And it's important also that we're able to relate to members of the National Assembly who are supposedly representing us. We should be able to say to them, look, we are not happy with this aspect of our life as a people. Can you do something about it? Can a bill be enacted? Can you sponsor a bill to change this or sponsor a bill to add this to the things we are having to deal with or to remove that from some of the things we're dealing with? So when you say there's nothing we can do about it, it makes us seem so helpless in a democracy that we're in. Listen, I say that because from my own experience, I've tried at some point to have a conversation, to have a meeting with a senator. I got to his office and I tell you, I couldn't believe that it was even his office.  So that's what I'm saying. What do you want to do? You want to go to his house? Do you call him? He doesn't pick your call. So what do you really want to do? It seems we're helpless. Yes. If you have an office where you can meet or you can drop a letter, look at some of them. They are emails. They don't even read some of them. There might be some who are really good at, you know, going through emails and SMS and whatever, who are having assistance, special assistance or who can handle this issue. But where you can't see them to discuss with them, where you can't even send a mail and get a response. Then something is wrong. I agree. I said earlier, let's find a place. Let's talk. How do you talk to them? The guy sits down in Abuja and is representing me in Lagos Day. And he has an office and you go to the office. Even the office is locked up in most jams. And when you see the guy there or the lady there, you say, look, sorry, your guy is not around. So what else can you do? That tells us a lot about the quality of people we have in public offices, doesn't it? And that also tells us a lot about why Koo is becoming a thing on the continent. Does it? No, no. You see, we shouldn't take it that far. Koo is senseless, right? We can do things without having Koo. You see, I think no place in the world that you want to have a military government. No, it doesn't at all. Completely no, no. You see, the thing is this, we shouldn't be even given the opportunity to talk about that to them. Because, you see, these people, they were there before for the fact that, you know, your friend has gone and you want to bring another person in or you feel you have to go in there to take your own share of the cake. That is not it. We have never seen whereby you said you want to do something. People want to change government, but please, let's get another election. You know, we can recall these people. There's a process to recall. We can, you know, people are protesting peacefully. There's so many things you can do.  So that we should, that's what I'm saying, we should find a venue to express ourselves. But it shouldn't be that what's going on in all these smaller countries. You know, Nigeria, we can't even, I think... Nobody, Femi, Femi, nobody, nobody is calling for a Koo. But we're saying that those who have been entrusted with democracy should handle it with the diligence that it's required. So that they do not give room for the military boys, as they are called, to come in and disrupt democracy. That's what we're saying. I think this time around, most people in the military, they want a flourishing democracy. Yes, they want it because it pays everyone of us. It gives everybody the opportunity to live the life we want to live. But we have to always checkmate our lawmakers. We have to always checkmate our local government chairman. Let's start from the local government. We have to continue with conversations such as this, so that these people will hear us. I imagine they watch television, listen to radio, read the newspapers to know the voice of the people, to hear the voice of the people and feel the pulse of the people and begin to take their constituency offices seriously and the constituency project that is supposed to be handling seriously and listen to the people that they claim to be representing. Thank you so much, Joe Femi-Dagororo, for your time on our first hard topic. Enjoy the day. You too. Joe Femi-Dagororo is the founder of Lagos Forum and he's been our guest on the first hard topic. We could take a break and come back for our second hard topic. Stay with us.


Here are our recommendations for the in-class meeting dealing with suprasegmental features. The title of the respective e-lecture is Phonetics suprasegmental features. As usual you should start with the definition of your central goals. So first of all in this particular case I would recommend that you go through all the topics you've dealt with up to this point with your students. Then you should define the differences between segmental and suprasegmental phonetics. Do some ear training with your students again and finally please don't forget secondary articulation because this is a suprasegmental feature too. Before you start with the practical as usual about 25% or so of the in-class time should be reserved for questions that the students might want to ask about the virtual session, about the e-lecture or the workbook content. The questions for example could be what are the basic segments of speech. They should be collected for future classes and for optional revisions of the online content. Since this is the first session on suprasegmental features it is advisable to develop a list of topics in cooperation with the students about what they should know at this point in the class or if you use this unit in isolation what they should know prior to this class. So far all students should understand how the field of phonetics is subdivided. Let me exemplify this with a short question and answering part with one of my first term students Katrin Dilman. So here is Katrin. Hello. So hi Katrin. Katrin do you remember the three main sub branches of phonetics? They all start with a small letter A. Yeah I do. There is first articulatory. Okay. Articulatory phonetics. Articulatory yes. Auditory. Auditory phonetics. And acoustic phonetics. Acoustic phonetics. Okay and alternatively there's also a possibility of labelling them with three Ps. Yeah we can say production. Okay the production of speech. The perception of speech. Okay good. And physics. Great. So this is what your students should know up to this point in time and the students should have an understanding of the basics of speech anatomy of airstream mechanisms so that terms like pharyngeal does that ring a bell? Yeah it does. Good and I know she knows what it is. Alveola or pulmonic airstreams are no longer unknown terms to them. So you could ask for example the question what type of airstream is involved in all segments of speech? The pulmonic airstream. Good. Or you could ask your students something like do you know any non pulmonic airstreams? I know two more. There's for example the velaric airstream as in ejectives and in implosives and the glottalic airstream which we use mainly in clicks. Okay great. So once this part and this general part has been finished the discussion of suprasegmental aspects can start. To introduce the differences between segmental and suprasegmental features a parallel with music might be very helpful. Do you play a musical instrument Katrin? Yes I do. I play the clarinet. Okay great that could be of wonderful help here if you play a musical instrument you have some basic understanding. So I can ask her the question what are the basic segments in music? Well the notes. The notes okay so let's move some notes into my staves here. So what a great melody this will be. Fantastic composers you might say in the end. Well just random. So these are some notes on the staves and now in looking at the notes we can ask the next question what sort of effects can we produce in music that affect more than one note? For example we can make the notes loud or we can make the notes soft. Okay and there are some symbols used for loud and soft? For loud it is an F for forte or a P for piano. Piano. And if I want to apply this to several segments you can use diminuendo which is as far as I think this sort of symbol. Yep it is and crescendo. The opposite. Okay is there any other effect than a change of loudness in music? Well for example you can make the notes longer. Okay and what do I have to do then? You have to add a dot. A dot okay so somewhere a dot is added so these are now long notes. There's in fact there's there's a rule how much longer they are if I add a dot. 50% longer. Okay so this is a rule in music or we can also I remember another one we can link notes. Do you know what this is called if we if we link notes? That's called legato. Okay again a suprasegmental effect in music. So we have effects such as lengthening, linking, loudness effects and of course we can use notes with different tone height so we have things like C, D, E, F, G, R, C something like that. That was German by the way so it's not too bad you learn a little bit of German at least the letters. So on many instruments we have tones just separate tones on some instruments we can even glide the tones into one another like on a violin. Okay so this is what we know about music. What are the basic segments of speech? The consonants and vowels. Okay so this is then the equivalent of the notes in music and now all we have to sort out is that we have to find the equivalents of forte, piano, crescendo, diminuendo and so on in human speech then we have the suprasegmental effects. So this is where we are at the moment. Basic segments of speech and we need suprasegmental features. Let's look at the first one loudness. Now what is the physical counterpart of loudness? It's intensity. Physics intensity and how is it measured? In decibel. In decibels okay. All right so let's illustrate this. Here is a word an artificial nonsense word which could be pronounced something like kor, ta, mi, tun and now I produce each syllable in the same level same height, same length and so on and if I want to make one syllable stick out from the rest on the basis of loudness I would say something like kor, ta, mi, tun and which one did I emphasize? The ta it's much louder. The ta the second one so this one but of course as you know this is a little bit artificial so normally we don't do this in real speech. Okay let's take the next one the next effect pitch. The physical counterpart of pitch cutting? Frequency. Frequency okay. And it can be measured in Hertz. In Hertz very good. Okay now at this point as a teacher you can make an x-course into frequency analysis if you have time of course. Explain to your students terms like frequency, amplitude, oscillation and maybe Hertz. So once you have done this you can return to your word again here it is kor, ta, mi, tun and now I want to apply a different pitch to one of the syllables so let's do it kor, ta, mi, tun the third one the mi. The third one I sound like someone in church don't I? A bit. Okay all right so both effects loudness and pitch are of course totally unnatural. Normally to make a syllable stick out from the rest loudness and pitch movement go hand in hand and instead of marking the syllable by means of an underline we use a different symbol in phonetics but do you know which one? The apostrophe. We use an apostrophe and the apostrophe is then a symbol that combines loudness and length into what is cumulatively called stress and this can be accompanied by length effects. Now this is the third suprasegmental feature and the physical counterpart it's duration okay so physical duration how do we measure it and seconds well in speech rather than milliseconds okay milliseconds because we speak so fast again our word and now you see I spread the syllables out a little bit kor, ta, mi, tun and how do we mark length with a dot with two dots two dots okay so with a colon so this would be then kor, ta, mi, tun could we make consonants longer for example the last consonant in the first syllable can you do that kor, ta, mi, tun very good not many people can do that but you can okay so this is the effect of length right having done all this I think I would now do some ear training with the students and perhaps first of all apply to stress so let us combine our knowledge now you can use your workbooks you can use your notes and I will pronounce some words and then students have to write them down indicating the syllable that sticks out from the rest so words could be something like this nonsense words of course something like pemptomik, pemptomik the second one could be something like marschthenel, marschthenel and the third one projkast, projkast, projkast once you're ready you show the solution well here it is pemptomik, marschthenel and projkast now the students can compare their solution with the model solution and you can do the same thing in English now English nonsense words would be something like vuokrumptjes, vuokrumptjes, vuokrumptjes or battenheimer, battenheimer, battenheimer and here is the solution the English solution and again you can compare your solution with the model solution again as you see and hopefully have heard stress is a combination of loudness pitch and length next ear training would be tone now we can apply pitch changes to the syllables now what would you suggest Kathleen what can we do now in order to train tone sufficiently uh well we could take a syllable and simply change the pitch on it okay so here could be a syllable ba, ba, ba, ba any sort of tone and now let's assume this is our level line and now we want to apply some tone so let's first of all apply a level tone to ba, ba very good and if you produce a rise ba good a fall, ba very good and these three tones are of course the register tone because they constitute the basic registers of tonal movement in natural language and now we can combine these tones and produce contour tones such as let's use another color here something like a fall rise ba or a rise fall ba and it's always a good idea if you produce these tones to a company with them with gestures like ba, ba then you find it much easier to produce these tones um but do we use tone in English yes I think we do but not systematically so tone in English let's produce the English flag here and discuss that we we use it but not systematically let us illustrate this um let me ask you a very nasty question what did you do last night I was out for dinner really now what do you think about my answer you don't sound very interested not at all what would it be had I said really you sound like you don't think that I would go out for dinner okay but I of course I know you you can go out for dinner so that's not the problem with my answer so this was just an illustration of an effect of using tone in English so now I suggest to use an example from the language index you can practice here with tone in chinese for example you can ask your students to read from transcription let's say they have to read the chinese version of the very big book and here is the result so the advantages you can compare transcription with your own pronunciation and the real pronunciation by a native speaker before we summarize we should not forget another suprasegmental effect namely secondary articulation here are the main types behind us they have all been explained in the workbook in the virtual session in the e-lecture so all you can do in class is possibly produce them practice them so let's do that the first one is called labialization now kathrin can you illustrate that to us labialization yes labialization labialization so it's some sort of lip rounding isn't it okay and then we have palatalization so you see the tongue in palette halalization approaches the palette by the way you find the phonetic description the diacritic on these diagrams then we have velarization velarization yes so your tongue was very high in the velar region and finally we have palatal but pharyngealization where the tongue is very much in the throat pharyngealization and you see the way i wrote all these words you take the place of articulation and adiization so that's quite simple okay now we should have understood the whole story we listed explained and exemplified all suprasegmental features we trained a lot with our students and we have achieved marvelous results kathrin how long have you been in our class um four weeks four weeks only and you know such a lot about phonetics well four weeks in four sessions that's enormous i hope you've been enjoying the class up to this point so i leave the final words up to you okay thank you i can say that although you have to learn quite a lot of theoretical stuff phonetics is really fun and interesting so bye bye


Hi there! I'm Sandy Olok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube, and today I'm going to paint realistic narwhals with distress inks, and I say realistic in kind of the ish sense because they're still stamps, and they're still cute, and I don't know that narwhals are actually this cute in reality, but it's an Avery Elle stamp set, not a brand new one, but I thought it would be fun to use this one because I have been on a kick doing underwater scenes. I have my underwater scenes class that has taken off and everybody's really enjoying it and doing so well at using their Copic markers to create underwater scenes, so I've been having fun doing that with watercolor and other things as well. So I've stamped two different colors on here, pumice stone and weathered wood, and then I went over it a little bit with the ink blending tool not necessarily to blend it, but to suck up some of that color because with distress inks they kind of pill up on clear stamps like this and I didn't want to get super heavy fat lines. I really wanted as light a line as I possibly could so I could really make this a little more realistic, a little more no-line coloring type of look. So in addition to pumice stone and weathered wood, I've added a little black soot to my palette on my glass matte, and I guess I'll talk a little bit about the matte. It's got this big side on the left that has the black and white grid. I'm not such a fan of it. It's very distracting to my eye. I like something a little planer there, but I'm trying it to see how I like it and there's some uses for which it's fine and here I have my misty around it so I almost have a little frame around my piece that's blocking out the rest, but it also has this little area on the right-hand side that you can see that has the grid that you can drop a little distress ink into for painting. I don't paint real often with distress inks, but when you do, it's a really good thing to have. So there you go. I don't have a full verdict on whether or not everybody in the world needs this glass matte or not. We'll see if I eventually keep it on my desk. You'll see in a few months whether or not it's still here or if it entirely disappears. Then you'll know. So what I have done here is painted just water into the back sides or the top sides of each one of the narwhals and I let the water sit there because I wanted to break up some of the ink that's there from the stamping and to add texture to it, the first layer I'm putting down is this kind of this weathered wood color and I'm stippling. I'm just doing kind of dots and then letting it get heavier around the shaded side and then lighter toward the other side. Since I let that water dry just a little bit, I didn't let it dry a ton, let it dry long enough for me to paint the other narwhal, then it's doing a little bit of blending in but a lot of it is going to just sit there as texture. Then I took some of the pumice stone because I wanted to make it a little bit more of a warm gray, but I also wanted that feel of the cool gray as well because when I looked at pictures of narwhals, they have grays, blacks and browns on the backs of them so I wanted a mixture of all the colors so that it would look kind of realistic and I'm painting that a little more heavily with the side of my brush right over top of that texture. With Distress Inks, the stuff you paint underneath will soften a little bit but a lot of that is going to stay. If you did that with watercolor, you'd almost want to do the texture on top but with Distress Inks, you can get away with doing it underneath and layering it that way because just the way that Distress Inks works, they kind of stick to the paper a little bit more than regular watercolor would. So I know a lot of people, and I have titled this, you know, painting, a lot of people think that Distress Inks are watercolor and you can do watercolor like techniques with them but they are not watercolor. They're still in ink and so it's a little bit different and the pigments react differently. So that's why there's different techniques involved in trying to paint something realistically with these than there would be if you were trying this in watercolor. If I tried this in actual watercolor, I would probably use maybe some Luder Black or some of the Primitex in order to get that kind of texture. That would be really cool on critters like these that have a texture to them. But with the Distress Inks, I'm just using two colors layered on top of each other and then to add some contrast because for me, contrast is what makes an image look dimensional, makes it look more realistic is when you get that actual contrast. So Black Soot is a good color to pull in here for those absolute outside edges that are nice and dark. And I'm even going to extend the line a little bit further with the Black Soot because that will fully cover up the stamped line that was underneath and it will make it look like that outside edge is the heaviest and darkest all the way around. There's a few spots where I want to add some of that texture back in, a few places where it might have gotten lost or didn't get added in in the first place. And the Black Soot is great for that as well as like the tips of his flippers and that sort of thing. Do the same thing on the other Norwhal. And I don't know if I mentioned it yet, but I'm using Arches Rough Watercolor Paper. I do like the rough a lot because it gives me a lot of texture and on something like this I knew I wanted lots of texture. Anyway, besides which I'm running out of my cold press. Yes, sorry. My words are escaping me. My cold press paper I need to place another order and get some more paper in. I usually keep several pads on hand so I never feel like I'm running out of anything with a lot of my craft supplies that are my go-tos. I make sure I keep a bunch of it on hand so that I don't feel like I'm working in scarcity because otherwise they get in a panic.  What am I going to do? So I'm going to make sure I get good and stocked up on watercolor paper so I don't have any panicked moments and if anybody else is like that. But there you go. And here is the reason why I left this in the misty to do my painting because I wanted to put the faces back in and I could do that using a distress marker. So now I've got my stamp in there. My sentiment stamp is all done and I'm going to use a little block to do these bubbles. They're actually dotted bubbles in the stamp set which is kind of fun. So I'm going to then add a background behind it and I'm going to do something similar to what I did with the narwhals in the first place which is paint some water streaks and then drop color into the water streaks because that's kind of what I ended up doing on the narwhals is getting it good and wet and then putting the color in. With distress inks you can get some hard edges sometimes and if you want something really soft then put the water down first and then drop the color in and you'll end up with a much softer look to it. You'll still have to watch the absolute edges but at least the color will spread a little bit more and you won't get big blobs of color and in some areas I'll just mix up some really light gray color in other areas. I'll just be dropping some into the water itself. If you put a little bit of color right around their bellies then it makes their bellies look whiter so that's a little trick for you. So I just did some streaks down the center of the card didn't do the whole thing and just had those bubbles shining through and I think it came out really fun. You're a rare friend as rare as a narwhal. So I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did click that like button make sure you share it if you know somebody who needs to know how to do this technique and I will see you again next time. Make sure you are subscribed and click the little button right beside the subscribe button so you get this delivered to you by email so you're the first ones to see my videos. I'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.


And thankfully, it's been really great on the Apple platform. But on the Google side, it's been a little bit more of a struggle. But we have been working directly with Google engineers on it. And we've been trying to bring it to Android, but the performance just isn't there quite yet. Why? What's missing on the Google side? Honestly, so most of the chips just haven't been able to process the video at the frame rate that we need. So we're processing video at 60 frames per second, which is necessary to see the ball accurately. And so most Android devices will actually overheat if you do that. So the latest pixel from last year, for example, in 10 minutes will just overheat. And that's not enough for a tennis match. And so the new pixel just came out at the 7, so we're going to try it out. Hopefully, it's better.