Sigma Club. Sigma Club were told was founded on the sound principles of character and integrity. But I believe that it is Sigma Club's illustrious members through the years that have shown clearly that the foundations of the club were indeed well thought out. Through the years that have rendered invaluable service to the university community, as we have seen with the endowment of a scholarship and an essay competition. We must also commend the contributions of all sigmites, many of whom have made tremendous contributions to our nation and to mankind. And we commend them today, even as they celebrate the 68th anniversary of their illustrious and distinguished club. Congratulations indeed. I'm to speak on the topic developing the nation through youth empowerment. And let me say that there is no other way of developing our nation without youth empowerment or put differently without creating jobs and opportunities for young people. And this will become clear as we set the context. I want us to pay a bit of attention because there are several figures and several statistics that we'll be using. But because this is a university, we are going to have to engage on that level a bit. And I think the university community is an important place for us to analyze policy, for us to look deeply at some of the issues that concern our nation. The social media cannot do it for us. The social media, as you know, cuts bits and pieces of what may sound interesting. But I think that the university community is really the best place for us to take a good hard look at some of what we are seeing in our country, why we are where we are and what we need to do to move forward. Nigeria is Africa's most populous country. And like the rest of the continent, it is a nation of young people. Half of the population is below the age of 20. By the year 2050, we will be the world's third most populous country. Exceeded only by India and China in that order. 60% of that population will be made up of young people. And these young people must have jobs or opportunities to make a decent living. And of course they require training to cope with the emerging knowledge and technology driven economies which we are bound to see in the coming years. As a matter of fact, already the competition across the world is one that is based on knowledge and innovation. And that competition is so because we now live in a completely globalized environment. It is no longer possible to see Nigeria as a country just within its own borders. All the opportunities that we are seeing today are opportunities that cut across borders and cut across even our own local experiences. So we must think globally and in our planning and in our thinking we must be looking at how to deal with all of the issues that have arisen globally. But let's backtrack a little to give some background to where we are today. And I'll share with you some of the Nigeria Borough statistics and the World Bank on the numbers of poor people that have been in Nigeria since 1980 and bring themselves up to date. And I want to set the context because it's important for us to understand the enormity of the problems that we're dealing with and how exactly to tackle those problems. In 1980, we had 17.1 million persons who are said to be living in extreme poverty. These are persons unable to afford the basic food shelter and clothing. By World Bank standards, persons who are unable to afford anything beyond $1.90 a day. In 1985, that number became 34.7 million, a jump as you can see from 17 million. In 1992, the number became 39.2 million. In 1996, the number became 67.1 million. In 2004, the number became 68.7 million. And in 2010, the number became 112.47 million. A jump of close to 40 million persons between 2004 and 2010. Now, today, the MBS is still doing the latest in what is called the Household Survey of Poverty. So we don't have the latest in that five-year statistical figure. But as of 2010, we had 112.47 million extremely poor people. So in 1996, there were an estimated 61.7 million people. I'm just looking back at those statistics. In 2004, we saw that the number moved up to 68 million. And by 2010, that number, as we've seen, literally doubled. What happened between 2004 and 2010? How come the poverty number doubled between 2004 and 2010? From 60, from, as you can see, 67.1 in 2004 to 112.47 in 2010. What happened? Now, what is astonishing, and as we go along, we'll discover what it is. But what is astonishing about the poverty situation is that it persisted even when the nation earned its highest revenues. The nation was earning between 2004 and 2010. Those were the periods when the nation earned one of its highest revenues. Between 2010 and 2014 are probably the highest. But the highest oil revenues were within that period. And poverty numbers continued to increase and even doubled. Now, let me give you a sense of our oil earnings also. From 1999 to did. Just so that we understand exactly how much money we're talking about. And we can compare that with the poverty numbers. Between 1990 and 1998, we earned from oil. I'm looking at oil alone. There's of course taxes and all other sources of earnings. Between 1990 and 1998, we earned $119.8 billion. Between 1999 and 2009, we earned $481 billion. But between 2010 and 2014, a period of just four years, 2010 and 2014, we earned $381 billion. More than we earned in the 10-year period, 1999 to 2009, more than we earned in the period 1990 to 1998. In four years, 2010 to 2014, we earned $381 billion. Now, between 2015 and today, we have earned $112 billion. Not now, I beg your pardon. All of this is dollars. Between 2015, June and today, we have earned $112 billion. Now, take the period between 2010 and 2015. For most of that period, as we've seen, Nigeria enjoyed an oil boom with all prices hovering around $100 to $114 per barrel. This is the period we've earned the highest from oil in any period in our nation's existence. But during that period, our external reserves fell to $30 billion by the end of 2014. The number of out-of-school children as of 2015 was $10.3 million.  Let me give you the figures of the total debts, local and foreign, for federal government and the states, from 2010 to date. In 2010, our debt was, I'll leave out the fractions. 2010, our debt was $35 billion in 2010. 2011 became $41 billion. 2012 became $48 billion. 2013, it became $64 billion. 2013, it was $64 billion. 2014, $67.7 billion. 2015, $63.8 billion. 2016, $57.3 billion. 2017, $70 billion. And 2018, it is $73 billion. Now, what do these figures show? From 2010 to 2014, where we had the highest earnings, borrowing was going on despite the very high earnings. As a matter of fact, we were borrowing very heavy because we moved from $35 billion in 2010 to $63 billion in 2014. Almost double, you know, about almost $30 billion more. Now, that, as of 2015, we were already at debts of $63 billion. Today, we are at $73 billion. Now, it's important for us to understand that what is it exactly that accounts for a situation where you are earning a lot and you are still not providing the jobs, you are borrowing children out of school. Why is that the case? Let me explain very quickly, and this is what, you know, I've described as the paradox of high growth figures and rising poverty and unemployment. The first is that high oil revenues do not necessarily translate to jobs. That's the first thing I think we need to understand because the oil industry by itself simply doesn't produce enough jobs. It produces very few jobs by itself as an industry. Of course, to make it produce jobs, we certainly need to go beyond just producing oil and selling oil. And that really is a challenge by itself. It's very important to understand that the oil industry by itself simply doesn't provide enough jobs. So the high revenues can only translate to jobs and better living standards if the revenues are invested. And there is some measure of diversification of the economy. Of course, infrastructure, education, healthcare and social protection for those who cannot work. The question, of course, is what happens to these revenues? What happened to the revenues? The most important dream on our public resources is ground corruption. The most important dream on our public resources is ground corruption. That's the most important dream. When you look at the stealing of public funds, the large amounts of public funds that are stolen, you will then be able to better understand why it is that despite high revenues, very little progress is made. And I refer to ground corruption because ground corruption, and I explain what ground corruption is, because it's different from corruption that is contract-related. Contract-related corruption is sort of a corruption where somebody gives out a contract and some public official takes a percentage of that contract. But I'm talking here, when I talk about ground corruption, I'm talking about directly stealing from the Treasury. That is to say, without necessarily doing any contracts at all, simply going to the Treasury, the highest levels of government, and withdrawing money and spending it, privatizing it, stealing it in short. Now that is the kind of thing I think that we really need to pay attention to in particular, because that is the essence of state capture. It is a heinous phenomenon that makes it possible for a country to have resources, huge resources, and yet not be able to benefit its people at all. And I'll give you an example just to better understand what I'm talking about. Today we're doing a scheme called Trade and Money, and I'm going to talk about it as we go along. Now that scheme is one where we're giving traders. These are petty traders, the lowest in the pyramid, persons who are hawking and doing petty trading. We're giving 2 million petty traders the total sum of 20 billion. That's the total sum. So 2 million petty traders are going to benefit from this. Most of them, the inventory, what they sell on their trades is not more than 3,000 Naira. So when you look at some of these very small traders, you know that really what they require isn't very much. So we start with giving 10,000. When they pay back you give 15, then you give 20, and it goes on like that until about 100,000. But that is 20 billion Naira only. 20 billion Naira only for 2 million people. Now in one transaction, in one transaction that took place in 2014, 60 billion Naira was withdrawn from the treasury and we do not know what happened to it. It simply disappeared. Now when you compare that to 20 billion Naira for 2 million traders, you can imagine what can be done with 60 billion. It's just three times more. That's 6 million people. And that's just part of it. And in another transaction, 292 million U.S. dollars simply was embezzled. 292 million U.S. dollars in one transaction. 10 million U.S. dollars is 3.6 billion. So you can imagine what kind of money we're talking about. This is what I refer to as grand corruption. I think it's very important for us to bear in mind that no nation on earth can possibly prosper when its resources, when the Commonwealth is fleeced in that manner. And this is the whole issue. This is the point. No matter how you slice it, if resources of the country are looted in the way that they were looted, it's almost impossible for the country to make progress. No matter how you slice it, you can say, we can argue from now till eternity. You and I know that if your personal resources are stolen, your poor, that's how it works. And I think that it's important for us to keep ensuring that we do not miss that point because it's possibly, and in my few years in the public service of this country as vice president, I have seen that were we to be able to deal with that problem, the problem of grand corruption, which is really one of the major issues we've tackled as a government, the resources available to us will be tremendous. That is why it is possible, for example, that today, and I've just seen from the figures, we're earning 60% less than was earned in the period 2010 to 2014, 60% less. And yet we're spending 2.7 trillion on capital, the highest in the nation's history. Why? You can do more with less if you don't steal the money. That's how it works. You can do more with less if the money is still in your hands. That's how it works. And I want to say, and I want to say that flowing from that, and I've said that no economy can survive if there's a theft of its commonwealth. The third point, of course, is that you cannot invest in infrastructure and the creation of an enabling environment for business, and this is what we've seen through the years, because we've lacked the resources, the quantity of resources required to invest in infrastructure. Investments in infrastructure were not made. You cannot develop an economy where you don't have investments in rail, in roads, in power. You cannot. It just won't work. No matter what anybody says, no matter how they want to make it sound, it is simple common sense. The fourth is the lack of commitment to diversification of the economy, which would in turn provide multiple streams of income. And we've seen this time and time again. So let us just go quickly to what then is the plan to provide enough jobs, to build a country where young people will find the opportunities, will find the jobs, and can make progress. There is no nation on earth that is built by just a group of people called as leaders. Everybody must pay attention. If you don't pay attention, you will find that our future is lost. We must all pay attention. We cannot all participate in government, but we must pay attention. We must see what is going on. We must ask and scrutinize. We must say what exactly is going on here. If we don't, the common world would have disappeared long before we are aware. So it's important for us to pay attention. Now how can we then make sure that we do not return to the years of mindless looting of public resources that has impoverished us and endangered our future? The first is to deal with ground corruption. And that is one of the first things that the Buhari administration did. And I'm not talking, and I want to just emphasize that I'm not talking about the corruption somebody is taking, policemen are taking, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the direct duty of the Treasury. We need to deal with that first. If you don't deal with that, we will not have the resources to do the big things that need to be done. Second is the investment in infrastructure. No country that seeks to develop and prosper can afford to treat infrastructure with non-challenge. And so it is important for us to put our resources into infrastructure. As of today, as I pointed out earlier, in two budget cycles, despite earning 60% less, we are investing 2.7 trillion on capital. And I've said this is the highest in the history of the country. The next question, of course, is what is the impact? Where is the impact of that spending? And that's a good question. And I'll answer that right away. Building infrastructure, as you know, is like laying a foundation for a skyscraper. You must do downwards, lay your paths for a year, two years in some cases. At that time, people don't see the building yet. But the foundation laying is growing up. Here in Ibadan, for example, some of you might have seen the railway line. There's the latest railway line. But the first phase of that, the latest railway line. But the first phase of that, the latest railway line. This is the standard railway line. The first phase of that railway line starts from their proper port in Lagos. And of course, all the way to Ibadan. That's the first phase. We expect that we'll be able to see the completion of the first phase get into Ibadan by January of 2019. We started constructing in 2017. And the project, of course, is making good progress. When it is completed, not only will goods be able to move from their proper ports all the way to Camel. For now, it will move from Lagos to Ibadan. And then to the hinterland. But also, it will provide passenger transport for those who want to come from one end of our country to the other. At the moment, also in Abuja, after 15 years, we've been able to complete and commission the Abuja Light Rail. That project starts from the airport and goes to the city centre. So the Abuja Light Rail has been officially commissioned. It is now running a free service. And by the time, I think it's next month that we then begin to run a commercial service. Aside from that, the Abuja Caduna Railway was also completed in 2016. And that is a very, very effective way between Abuja and Caduna. It takes about an hour, 20 minutes between Abuja and Caduna. Now, in addition to that, here in the south, of course, work is going on on the Lagos Impact on Expressway. And we need to ask ourselves, how come? Has been there all these many years? It needed to have been sorted out. It just wasn't. And it still is. And this is the major outlet for Lagos from the commercial city of Nigeria out to the rest of the country. There is the Lagos of the Abuja Expressway, Kurodusha Damu Road, etc. Obomoshwea-Lawni Road, the Maiduguri-Potaku Rail and Wari-Alaja Railway, which is very important, especially for our iron ore. These are infrastructure projects that are going on today. In order of these infrastructure projects, we have to take counterpart funding for them. The Chinese are giving us money for the Lagos Canal and we are providing our own 15% counterpart. So it's a long-term loan. They are also doing the same for the Lagos-Kalaba Railway. We cannot, without borrowing, be able to complete this project. But the borrowing, and whenever you borrow, it must be for infrastructure. It must be for something that will conduce to progress in the economy. You can't borrow to pay salaries. You can't borrow to spend on the current. It has to be capital. And this is what the government has tried to do. On power, we've moved generation of coins with transmission and distribution. Unfortunately, the discourse, private owners of distribution facilities have not necessarily had the resources, especially to invest in distribution. But we've taken that on and through the TCN and the Niger Delta Power Holding Company, we are completing transmission projects around the country. But the more important strategy is to decentralize power production. We've adopted an off-grid program which means that we're encouraging private investors to collaborate with government to build independent power plants and supply power to willing buyers. This was made possible by what is called an eligible customer declaration made by the Ministry of Power Works and Housing. By this collaboration, we've been providing power, especially solar power, to economic clusters, especially markets across the country. What that means is that we've been doing a fair number of power projects, especially solar power projects, in markets across the country, providing power, solar power to those markets. And of course, that is much cheaper, much cheaper than barrel fuels, much cheaper than all the other sources of power that we found. A rare market in Naba, for instance, about 31,993 shops, Sabungari market in Kano, about 13,500 shops. Surah market in Lagos, 1,047 shops, Isiko market in Undo, baggy here, in the real estate. Now, in total, we've done about 81,000 of these shops, servicing about 320,000 SMS, MSMEs over. Yesterday in Lagos, we commissioned the Surah Market Solar Project. Businesses there now have a 24-hour supply. From printers, commercial trailers to small shops, everyone is employing more and making more profit. If we stick to that agenda in the next two years, we will see the most significant improvements in our power sector. In providing jobs and opportunities for the future, another area of focus is agriculture. Agriculture has been a major story because of increased budgetary allocation to agriculture. In 2015, the total budgetary allocation to agriculture was 8.8 billion. In 2016, we moved that up to 46.2 billion. And in 2017, the last budget removed it to 103.8 billion. Through the anchor boroughs program and this is credit given directly to small holder farmers through the CBN and 13 banks, we've also put in about 120 billion to 720,000 small holder farms cultivating 12 commodities including rice, wheat, cotton, soybeans, cassava, poultry and groundnuts across the 36 states. The importance of our agricultural project is that first it creates opportunities, several opportunities for young people, for those who want to involve themselves in farming and the whole agri-alike value chain. And to support that we launched a fertilizer program in collaboration with the Kingdom of Baroko. Today we have many fertilizer planting plants with a capacity of 2.1 million metric tons. Price of fertilizers then dropped from about 5,500 to 7,000 per bag. Now one of the very important things is that with the ramping up of agriculture we now have a situation where within the next few months we shake the self-sufficient in rice production. We were producing but we were buying 5 million dollars of rice every single day. 5 million dollars a day of rice that's amount of importation. Today we are down to 2% of those imports, around 2% of those imports. By focusing on agriculture we know that this is an area where there is a great deal of opportunities. Especially for young people not even necessarily in participating in farming itself but several of the opportunities around technology that we have seen especially in the last few years. I'll give you a few examples. Farm Crowding is a small company formed by young men and women all of them under the will of 25. It's a digital and cultural portal that crowdsources farming for farms across Nigeria. It was founded in 2016 by Onyeka Akuma and three other young Nigerians. It works a bit like a mutual fund to gather money from multiple investors to establish farms and hire small holder farmers to cultivate them and then pay the investors dividends from the harvest of these farms. In December 2017 it raised a million dollars in farming. So this is one of the very creative innovative ways. But we young people are not only investing in farming but investing for others in farming and making money for themselves and making money for their various investors. Four years before Farm Crowding in 2012 a lady called Yemisei I'm sorry founded Solji a cassava processing company in the rural town of Aduawa'i in the south west here more than 200 young Nigerian laborers. The starch that that farm produces from processed cassava is now being used by several leading Nigerian food manufacturing companies including Nestle, Unilever and Nigerian Roads as increasingly replace important staff with local produce varieties. Southway is one of those companies that found growth opportunities even in the midst of the recession as companies cut down their imports. In 2015 Israel grew three fold and in 2016 it began building a second production line. Another young Nigerian called Almasha Babangona is the name of this company. What he does is that he supports small-holder farmers in northern Nigeria with financing with agricultural input, with training and marketing and his legacy is experienced in the private sector in particular and changing the life of several thousands of struggling farmers. There's another small company called Fresh Direct by a very young Nigerian also I don't even believe she's 30 in young Nigeria. She has perfected an innovative approach to farming using these used containers without soil and very little water and what she's doing is probably going to be the beginning of an urban farming revolution in Nigeria. The interesting thing about all of this is that young people have an edge where technology is concerned and a lot of young people are bringing their cutting edge knowledge of technology to bear on several different businesses and I have no doubt that some people sitting here in this room might even take up the advantage of some of these opportunities and the opportunities are growing every day an area where we've launched some of the most aggressive drives is the tech space. The future of jobs is in technology and innovation. We've partnered with local and international technology companies in the building of tech hubs and promoting innovation. Our aim is to democratize access to innovation and cyber commerce and create jobs. In September 2017 we hosted Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook where they were doing. And after that event we went on to partner with the World Bank to launch a business plan for young entrepreneurs who participated in the qualifying stages of that competition. At the end of the competition we selected 81 beneficiaries to which we disbursed total sum of 700 million in grants. Now funding as you can imagine is key to practically every one of these things and I think why now the Bank of Industry has set up a technology fund of $10 billion for startups and this is managed by the Bank of Industry and at the Development Bank of Nigeria they are also working with international financial institutions and the Central Bank to provide local funding to technology. Now there is so much that can be done in the area of technology and so much that is being done. I have been personally to about 11 or 12 different technology hubs in Nigeria and we are collaborating with these hubs. In these hubs there are young Nigerians who are working on different forms of innovation different forms of innovative technology. In Europe we have some who are the humanitarian hub there in a dual state we have seen some incredible work going on just in genesis in a new state there are so many all over the country and so much that is going on. We are collaborating with Civic Hub which is in Abuja and they are doing what is called the University's Challenge the University's Challenge the Students' Innovation Challenge and I hope there are people here who are participating in that and what they are doing is that we are looking at the best innovations coming from the different universities those innovations will then be backed by funding the best innovations will be backed by funding funding from the Bank of Industry and the Central Bank of Nigeria so that we can get the very best of those innovations grow them into businesses and they can attract jobs. Let me just give you a few examples of what we are seeing already in terms of jobs in terms of technology companies that are providing jobs. In the FinTech space in particular payment payment systems there is so much that is going on I just give you just two examples space time I am sure some may have heard of space time this is a safe payment system which offers seamless money transactions between customers established in 2016 by two young Nigerians and their alumni of Babcock University Within the first three months of 2018 they have processed over 3 billion and they are generating 40 billion now and ever for Nigerian businesses. The company is today powering over 9,000 businesses that did not exist two years ago space time has over 50 employees all of them are under 35 years old all of them are employees including the founders. There is also Antella I don't know how many have heard of Antella and this is a multinational company specializing in training software developers what they do is they just train software developers was co-founded by Nigerian in 2018 not even 30 years old yet and the company estimates that in 10 years and this is what they are working on there will be 1.3 million software development jobs and only 40,000 computer science graduates to fill them so they are saying by their projections there will be 1.3 million software development jobs those jobs are already coming up but there will be 40,000 trained hands to get those jobs so there is clearly a huge vacuum in terms of competent young individuals who can take up these jobs the company's vision is to change the future of Nigeria and the African continent and they are looking and getting talent from everywhere today the company has about 1,000 employees worldwide the truth of the matter is that no matter how you look at it technology is where the great opportunities are and you find technology in the creative arts as well already one of the others has come to Nigeria looking for persons who are skilled in animated cartoons one of the things we are doing with our end power program is that we are training 15,000 persons in the skills required for animation we are training 15,000 of them and already we have about 5 or 6 businesses around animated cartoons the scope of opportunity is huge and our business has got me to support that as much as possible our technology agenda is focused on our new education curriculum which emphasizes STEAM not STEAM but STEAM science, technology, engineering, arts and math we are currently developing that curriculum especially the science, technology and engineering and math aspect of it with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT with Cisco Academy with IBM and with the Oracle Academy that nationwide curriculum is one that we expect will incorporate from the first century STEAM thinking mainly in things like coding design skills digital arts, robotics machine learning and so on the curriculum will cover primary to secondary education with the skills that are necessary to equip young people for the coming years the arts component of that vision is also extremely important to us visual arts, dance, music, film and theatre comedy, literature and so many more fields I think that Nigeria has proved to the world that we have the talent and originality and ambition but what is important originality, that ambition must return to cash it must return to jobs without turning into cash and jobs without the skills required to do so it will just retire and that is one of the reasons why especially for technology and entertainment the president asked that we set up a special advisory group of major players in technology and entertainment in order to advise on policy and to develop policy policy has to change and is changing very quickly in those fields but in order to do so effectively we need to have these young men and women who are out there doing this business in the policy groups I have the privilege of chairing that technology and creativity advisory group and we will be working on various policies and projects just as an example the payment systems that we have all these payment companies that are participating in payments many of them are competing with banks so the banks are saying they don't have banking licenses but you are competing with us so we need to develop policies for payment systems we need to develop policies for fintech companies the banks can't hold innovation down they can't stop innovation they can't tell us that we must go back to the past but we must also ensure that we regulate anybody not only to prevent unfair competition but also to ensure that these are systems that have integrity and a system that will not end up robbing Nigerians of their hard-earned resources so there is a lot of work going on the technology and creativity advisory group a lot of very interesting conversations going on and a lot of young people who are involved in the whole process of developing policies the third and final aspect of what I will talk about is the social investment program now the social investment program is the largest and most ambitious social protection program in the history of Nigeria we provided for it 500 billion in both the 2016 and 2017 budget but what we spent so far is 250 billion from both budgets the program has four components the end power program which is a graduate employment scheme and that's the largest tertiary job project in Africa where employing at the moment 500,000 graduates and they are included as teachers, agriculture extension workers and as public health officials each of these volunteers is provided with an electronic tablet containing relevant training materials including some which they use for their own personal training personal self-development and some which they use on the job so at the moment we've given to just over 200,000 over 200,500 electronic tablets the remaining 300,000 have just been onboarded they were onboarded in August so we have a total number of 500,000 graduates who are under the end power program but that device is very important that tablet is important because it not only helps in personal development of the beneficiaries it also helps them to do their own businesses many of them are working as data collectors they are working as analysts many are involved in service different service across the country so there's a lot of work going on if you look at what is contained in their devices they're able to learn coding they're able to learn some kind of robotics, entrepreneurial training and all that and that's the kind of material that's contained in the tablets that they have we also have the government enterprise and empowerment program G where levels ranging from 50,000 to 350,000 to over 300,000 traders, artisans, farmers across the 360 we tend to give a million loans under the market money scheme or the cheap scheme I've talked already about the trader money scheme which is the one for the lowest in the pyramid the one for the petty traders and I've said that we're giving out 2 million loans now one of the reasons why this is absolutely important is because you cannot create jobs without focusing on small businesses small businesses are the last lot of the economy of energy it's not the big businesses it's businesses that are able to employ one, two up to 30 people if you're able to do millions of those kinds of businesses then you can truly have your GDP improving at a rate that will be much faster if you large companies because the small companies provide the jobs so the focus is on giving credit to these small companies a level of credit is directed to venture because the banking system as we know, most loans coming out of the banks are far too expensive so what we've tried to do is to give direct intervention through the DOI through the GIP which is the government enterprise and apartments scheme and then the ones that are being given directly to the trader money to the trader money people of course what we found also is that with giving money to the small businesses they're able to open bank accounts they're able to come into the form of the economy in fact so far in a short period of about 18 months we opened about close to 500,000 new bank accounts and wallets for beneficiaries and intending beneficiaries so in conclusion Nigeria's future lies in the hands of the youth but that future is already there our role is to ensure that we deliver the empowerment that makes that possible and when I say our role I speak about government the public sector in particular to young people my message is that you must be vigilant you must take time to study the facts take time to scrutinize the arguments and take time to question the arguments the future belongs to you there's no need for anybody to argue that because the future is all about you for that future can only be guaranteed by your own vigilance and by making sure that those you are entrusted in power use that power for the benefit of the people of our great country thank you


Let's start with the news today out of Russia that, you know, a, what is his name, Maganov, Maganov, who is a senior businessman and oligarch in Russia. He's the chairman of Russia's second largest oil company, Luke Oil, was found dead at the bottom of a hospital window, so theory is, as these Russian theories go, theory is he committed suicide. So the 67-year-old plunged to his death, although the news says circumstances surrounding his fall were unclear. It turns out, though, that a bunch of Russians have been falling to the deaths out of apartment buildings and hospitals and office buildings in the last couple of years. That's why I called it Russians falling out of windows. Weird. Who knows? Maybe this is the, maybe the radioactive stuff takes too long or too risky to eliminate your opponents, maybe just throwing them out of windows makes more sense. So this falling of somebody involved in the oil company seemed a little weird, and so I looked it up a little bit and there was an article in Newsweek called, the title of the article is, Russians must keep mysteriously falling out from windows to their deaths. I'm not making this up. It's an article in Newsweek. And this is not even the list, which we'll get to in a minute, of all the oligarchs that have died since the Ukraine war started. Now, I just want to remind you, this is Russia that Jordan Peterson and many people on the right say is our ally, is our friend, is the West. We shouldn't say anything negative about them. And Donald Trump once said, when he was told that Putin kills journalists, Donald Trump's response was, well, we kill people too. Why is that a big deal? Well, I'm sure you could probably combine a list of Americans falling out of windows. But let's just take this list. Let's just go with it. It's fun, right? Russians falling out of windows, I guess is morbid, but here we go. So in December 2021, Yegor Plusvinin, the founder of a nationalist website, Sputnik and Pogrom, died after falling out of a window of a residential building in the center of Moscow.  Maybe he was using it to break the window so he could fall out of it. He was a supporter of the annexation of Crimea but then a predicted civil war and collapse of the Russian Federation. Not a good message before you go to war. On October 19, 2021, a Russian diplomat was found dead after falling from a window at the Russian embassy in Berlin. Well, it turned out he maybe wasn't a diplomat, but was probably an undercover officer with a Russian FSB. It also turned out he was the son of General Alexander Zalo, the deputy director of the FSB second service. So who knows what's going on there. In late December 2020, Alexander Kagansky, a top Russian scientist reportedly working on a COVID-19 vaccine at the time, was found dead with a stab wound after falling from his high-rise apartment in St. Petersburg. Supposedly, he stabbed himself and then fell out the window. There also were reports of healthcare workers falling out of hospital windows, some to their deaths in Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm just reporting the news. I don't make it up. And in this case, I don't even know how to interpret it, so it just is what it is. In July, now this one is interesting. This one is really interesting. In July, Dan Rappaport, a 52-year-old Latvian American investment banker, an outspoken Putin critic. I mean, this guy really went after Putin, was found dead after falling from a luxury apartment building in Washington, D.C. Police say they don't suspect foul play, but the case remains under investigation. This guy, I remember this guy, he's a private equity fund guy. I think he had a lot of investment in Russia, made a lot of money in Russia in the 90s and 2000s, and then turned on Putin and was this extraordinary critic of Putin's. And he claimed that his life was in danger, claimed that they were trying to kill him. Well, he's dead falling out of a window. It seems like there's a pattern here. Maybe this is the way we get rid of political opponents. Rappaport's friends say he was assassinated, that the whole thing is highly suspicious. And anyway, that's Rappaport. Rappaport's, by the way, Rappaport's former business partner. I shouldn't laugh because people are dying here. Rappaport's former business partner Sege Kachinko, Sege Kachinko, fell to his death from a Moscow apartment building in 2017. Russians falling out of windows and dying. This is much cheaper than radioactive poison. It's much cheaper than poison tipped umbrellas, which is the traditional way in which the Russian Secret Service have been killing people they don't like.   Stab, jump. I would do that. All right. Now, that's not the only thing because there's an overlap here because the guy who jumped out the window today, or yesterday, was an oligarch. So the other avenue of research is, well, are oligarchs, what's the life expectancy of an oligarch in Russia these days? And it turns out not very long. It turns out that seven Russian oligarchs, seven Russian oligarchs, have died under kind of mysterious circumstances in recent months. So I'm going to read you this. This is morbid, and some of this is brutal. So bear with me, I guess, because this is a little kind of spooky. But let's go through this. Let's start with Sergei Potentprosenya. This is a millionaire oligarch. He was found hanging in a rented luxury villa in Spain on April 19 of this year. His wife, an 18-year-old daughter, were also found dead in the apartment with stab wounds.  Other family members doubt this. So there's a lot of people questioning this interpretation of it. Okay, one murder, suicide, maybe. Let's not jump to conclusions. So let's look at a week earlier. Vladislav Avaev was found dead of a gunshot wound in his Moscow apartment. This is April 18, so a week earlier, along with his wife and 13-year-old daughter. Now, the first guy was involved in natural gas production company. This guy is the former vice president of Gas-Pombank, probably on subsidiary of the Russian Energy Giant. And the police investigating this as a murder, suicide.  Two in a week. Okay, and then there's Vasily Melinkov. Vasily was found dead in his apartment in Novgorod, Russia, right? On March 23, so like less than a month before this, the billionaire was stabbed to death as were his wife and two sons. Ten and four. The motor weapons were found in the scene. The police investigating the theory that Melinkov killed his family and then killed himself. Three in a month. Three motor suicides in a month, all related to, what was he a billionaire of? He owned a medical equipment supply company, but all oligarchs, all Russian oligarchs, not supposedly he was really hurt by Western sanctions. He killed his four-year-old kid because he was hurt by Western sanctions, really. And then there's Mikhail Watford, who's a Ukrainian-born oligarch, also in Russia. Russian was found, I mean, a Ukrainian-born affiliate associated with Russia, was found hanged in his garage in his home in Surrey, England, on February 28. He had moved to the 1960s after he's made his fortune in oil and gas, right? The Surrey police, they're investigating it, but they don't think there's anything suspicious at this time. Alexander Chulkayov was found hanged in an apartment garage in St. Petersburg on February 25, just three days before this other oligarch. Police told the Gazeta that they found a suicide note conveniently right next to his body. Anymore? Yeah, Leonhard Schumann, according, another top gas bomb executive, was found dead in a cottage in the same village in January, in January before the invasion. Again, suicide note, two hangings, suicide note. I guess they went from hangings to murder suicides to throwing people out of windows. Then there's Alexander Subotin, a former attack executive of Russian oil company Lukoil, was found dead in his house in some place in Russia. He supposedly suffered a heart attack, but a source told tasks, the news agency, the Russian news agency, that he had arrived at the house in severe alcohol and drug intoxication the day before and was found dead in a shaman's house in a room used for Jamaican voodoo rituals. As I said, I don't make this up. Russia, this bastion of Western civilization, this beacon of hope for the West, because, again, it's anti-left, seems to be killing off people off in ever more creative ways. And it seems like children involved in this as well, and maybe voodoo, maybe the voodoo was used to cause the murder suicides, that would save you on hitmen if you could just voodoo them out of existence. That is Russia. That is Russia. Now, it could be that there's just a lot of depressed people in Russia. It could be that there's just a lot of confused people in Russia. Overall, suicide rates in the United States are very high, particularly over the last two years. Deaths as a consequence of overdose of opioids and other things are very high in the U.S. I think we'll do a show on suicide and opioid deaths soon. I've talked about this before, about the betrayal of, you know, by the intellectuals of the common American and the despair that so many Americans feel and I think they're taking it out by taking opioids and committing suicide. So, we'll talk about that. We'll do a show on that. But so, you know, maybe this is just that, but it is a little suspicious that these oligarchs, that they all have some relationship or most of them have some relationship with the oil and gas business industry. Most of these deaths happen after the war started. Very, very strange.  And this is, of course, in the context of Dugan's daughter being assassinated last week in a failed attempt to assassinate. Dugan, his daughter, got killed in his stead. Well, I'm glad I'm not going to Russia anytime soon. And certainly, if I go to Russia, I'm asking in the hotel for a first-floor room, although, you know, I could still commit suicide by hanging and leave a note. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and, of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. 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