Good morning once again. Welcome to the breakfast if you're just joining us here on PLOS TV Africa. Our first major conversation this morning is going to be on the resolutions of the Southern Governors Meeting. Earlier we had shared some of those resolutions including those on the State Police, a Southern President in 2023 and of course you know also their thoughts on the PIB. This morning we are speaking with the Publicity Secretary of the Northern Elders Forum, Mr Hakim Baba Ahmed and we're also going to be speaking with the Publicity Secretary of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum, Mr Ken Robinson. Good morning to you both, thanks for joining us. Thank you gentlemen. Good morning, thank you. All right, I'm going to start with Mr Baba Ahmed from the Northern Elders Forum. Quickly share your thoughts on the resolutions from yesterday but before you get into it, I saw something yesterday, Sani Yabagi, the chairman of ADP, he described the Southern Governors Meeting as a gang up against President Buahari and the North. So do you agree with him and what are your other thoughts? I would prefer to give you my opinion rather than someone else's. Absolutely. I saw the communique as one more effort by very senior politicians, governors, opinion holders, people who should know the way to approach political issues in a way that doesn't do justice to their positions. If Southern Governors want the presidency, they should work for it. Demanding or giving ultimatum or things that appear like threats is not good politics. You cannot, in a democratic setting, insist that you must have things your way. There are ways in which you can get the presidency and it's simple. Work within your party, field candidates, wherever they come from and work to get them elected. This business of it must come here, it must stay there, doesn't work. It will not work and people will not be impressed. I have to say that I'm disappointed. This is the second time Southern Governors who, one would have thought, are sophisticated, very polished politicians are making these kinds of demands, obviously targeted at the northern part of the country. Give us the presidency. The president is not given. The presidency is competed for, it's worked for, and the North is not, I guess, anybody who becomes president provided they work through the democratic and political process. What the governors are doing there is looking for shortcuts and I'm afraid they're not going to get it. Okay. Mr. Baba Ahmed, let's put a pause here. We have a report that our correspondent found yesterday, a comprehensive one regarding that meeting that was held in the Laos-a-Legos. So, Hakeem Baba Ahmed, Publicity Secretary, Northern House Forum. Also, we were speaking with Mr. Ken Robinson of Pandef, do stay with us. Let's take a listen to this report. Legos State Governor Baba Jidesong Wulu and his deputy, Femi Hamzad, welcoming each of the southern governors to their second meeting in as many months. They are here to assess the decision taken during their meeting of May the 11th, when they announced a ban on open grazing and disclosed their stand on restructuring and state policing. Governors go into closed door talks, which lasts about five hours. At the end, the chairman of the forum and governor of Oundo State, Roteme Akiridulu, reads the communique. The forum reiterates its commitment to the policies of equity, fairness, and unanimously agreed that the presidency of Nigeria be rotated between southern and northern Nigeria and resolve that the next president of Nigeria should emerge from the south. The southern governor's forum rejects the removal of electronic transmission of election results from the Electoral Act and rejects the confirmation of exclusive jurisdiction in pre-election matters on the federal high court. The governors reemphasize the need for state policing after reviewing the security situation in Nigeria. The forum reserves that if for any reason security institutions need to undertake an operation in any state, the state's security officer must be duly informed. The issue of open grazing and the petroleum industry bill are also mentioned. The forum set the timeline of Wednesday the 4th of September 2021 for the promulgation of the anti-grazing law in all its member states, anti-open, so anti-open-grazing law. 11 of the 17 southern governors were present for the meeting, four were represented by their deputies, while the governors of Anambra and Cross River States were absent. Jacinta Ubuku for PLOS TV Africa. Yes, that was a report by Jacinta Ubuku there. Filling in reactions on exactly what occurred when 11 southern governors met in the Lhasa yesterday for the meeting. We've been speaking with Hakim Baba Ahmed, representing the Northern Elders Forum and also in conversation with Mr Ken Robinson, he's a publicity secretary of the Pan-90 Delta Forum. Mr Robinson, good morning again. Good morning. Okay, let's first get your thoughts generally on this meeting yesterday and all the resolutions that they had. Well, we Pan-90 Delta Forum have lost the courage, determination and commitment of the southern governors to sustain the unity of southern Nigeria. It is interesting and it is pleasing that they met again under two months after their Asaba historic meeting. And the decisions and resolutions in this meeting in Lagos is again adding their voice and strengthening the position of the south of the people of southern Nigeria. On power rotation, you know that pandas and other organizations in southern Nigeria, like Afrinifera and our native indigos, had consistently maintained that power should shift to southern Nigeria after eight years of a Northern president. And so we congratulate the governors, we commend them and we hope that they will sustain this momentum in spite of their attempts to distract them. The people of southern Nigeria is for us, this is a new beginning of understanding and living in harmony as a people in the country of Nigeria. Okay, Mr Robinson, but Mr Babaame just mentioned that rather than the south demanding for power that it's rotated to them that the south can work for it. How about the perspective should the south not be thinking of working for it, you know internally rather than you know making demands that you know they just get that power share this time around? Well, we understand their concerns, but nobody had made any contrary comments when the 19 northern governors have been meeting all this while and they have continued to sustain those meetings year after year, regime after regime, nobody has condemned any of their resolutions even when some are very obnoxious and irrational. Now, southern Nigeria has started a new reality that we are one people, our problems are the same, those languages and tribes may differ, but we are one people and that's why it's so exciting. And this is our people, our governors who are actually their entrusts for the people. They represent the collective interests and aspirations of the people and it is a good thing that they have that realization and they are coming together in spite of their political differences and persuasions. So we commend them and we hope that our brothers and friends from Northern Nigeria will appreciate the fact and us begin to see how all of us can work together for a united, just, fair and equitable Nigeria where any Nigeria no matter where you come from, no matter your religion can become whatever that you desire to be. Hold on, I want to bring back Dr. Hakim Baba Ahmed. Some other things that you mentioned while your thoughts basically were mostly regarding the demand for a president from the southern part of the country in 2023, but there were other resolutions that were reached. There's the one on state police, there's only Petroleum Industry Bill, there's also on raids and arrests made by security agencies in their states and also on the anti-open grazing law. These governors, according to their statements, met and made these resolutions in order to achieve a more peaceful southern Nigeria and of course to pave a way forward. So are there any of these other resolutions that you agree are important and are being done in good faith and you are in support of, including the anti-open grazing law? Well, any comment made by 17 governors, we have to presume he's been made in good faith. It could be wrong as some of them are and there are contexts in which some of these issues are best raised. Governors are very important people, they are members of actually all the major decision making bodies at the national level, national security council, national council of states, a lot of other issues. They have access to the president who is a chief security officer of the country. They have many avenues with which they can raise issues regarding security, their decision on open grazing. What is amazing about this tendency to bring very sensitive issues and matters that are best handled in confidential context is that southern governors have chosen to go public with many matters that they can achieve a lot more out of if they engage those who should do. For instance, the question about no security activity or operation should take place in a state without the approval of the knowledge of the governor is very curious. One would ask naturally, what exactly do they want? The president unfortunately, and I say unfortunately because we believe that we need to do some serious work on how much power regarding security is tested in the president and commander and chief of the armed forces. If southern governors believe that they need more power to exercise, they need to exercise more power in terms of security operations in their state. A statement is not going to be what they need to do. It's again like the southern presidency thing. They need to work very hard with the decision making processes, with the legislature, with the president and with other Nigerians to make sure that governors have more powers other to that approval, stop or modify the operations of security agencies in their state. But as things stand, I don't see the constitutional basis or even the political rationale for bringing a matter of such sensitivity unless the governors have a specific issue in mind and they don't want or they don't have the courage, let me be plain, to bring it up. But I don't see how that helps a situation where 17 governors say don't undertake security operation in our state or in our region unless we're informed. So that's the first one. The issue about open grazing, they've made this position very clear. There are various positions on this. We in the Northern Elders Forum have made our position on this issue very clear. This is not an issue that can be solved overnight or by stroke of the pen and with deadlines. We understand it's a very complex issue. There are legal issues involved. We would like to see an end to open grazing, but we would like to see an orderly, organized and safe end to open grazing. We believe that this requires a national law to deal with. We don't believe that pay state decisions or panic measures are going to be the solution. Open grazing is a national issue. It's not just a full-time issue. It's not a Northern issue. And it should be handled at the national level. The federal government and state governments, all of them, not just the southern states, need to improve their collaboration, need to improve their sharing of information and strategies to deal with open grazing. So there are a number of issues that are on the whole. I just think that Northern Governors, Southern Governors, are playing to a gallery in a manner that doesn't do justice to their standing in this country. And it's sad because of all the times that we need our leaders to talk together, not to talk at each other, but to talk with each other. And to lower this tendency to go public with issues that they know very well, will just simply heat up the policy. Unfortunately, the Southern Governors have chosen this option. They would scare, they would send signals to other parts of Nigeria, but principally the northern part of the country, that they're facing hostile region that is making demands and what appears to be like this. And we shouldn't be doing this. We should be discussing the future of this country. We should be discussing where this issue about the Northern or Southern Presidency will become President Nudas. And this is basically a democratic issue. It shouldn't lead us into this kind of situations. When you see the South, 17 Governors, all of the members of the APC or PDP and maybe one from Africa, what do they do? How do they influence their parties? Do they speak at the political parties? Do they make cases for Governors and for the South for goodness' sake? And if assuming just for the sake of argument theoretical, you could get all the Northern politicians and all Northern voters to say, okay, we all agree the President should go to the South. Why should he go? Should he go to the people who are saying we've never had a President and it must be a time? Should he go to the Southwest, which is also making a case for the European Presidency? Should he go to the South? This is everybody's interest. It's not to the Southern interest. What about the democratic process? How can you force all the voters in the North force, literally force, because somebody in the South is threatening? How can you force the voters, even if the politicians can't see? How do you get the voters in the North to all line up and say, this time we've been asked or we must vote for the Southern candidate? We have lazy politicians. We have politicians who prefer to work on or towards a gallery rather than to work with each other. And this is very dangerous for this country. They are heating up the process of elections in 2023. And it is not a positive outcome. Dr. Baba, I'm not sure if it if it can be described as forcing, because we've in the past had conversations on federal character. We've had conversations on rotation, you know, with regards to Presidents, even at the state level. So I don't think this is necessarily forcing. This is sounds to me more like a suggestion that they would prefer if it goes to the South, not necessarily forcing anyone to vote in any direction. Well, the word forcing here, sorry, I can't report the point is, I'm saying this is not the kind of language or posture that supports the case for the Southern Presidents. It suggests a demand which should not be placed on the table in a democratic context. It circumvents a very important political process, which is negotiation, compromise, and engagement. It cuts out a huge part of the country in a decision making process that it has no business doing. The presidency of Nigeria is not the presidency of the Igbo or the Yoruba or the South-South order. It is the president of Nigeria. Nigerians need to be involved in deciding who becomes president. And how they decide that is through the political process and through the electoral process. This is the democracy. And it just seems to me that people are trying to get something using very lazy tactics. It doesn't work like this. Like I said before, they need to work within their parties, work to convince everybody, all Nigerians, Northerners and Southerners, that it is time to have the president on the Southern part of the country. When we ask it in the north, where it will go? Should it go to the Igbo or the Yoruba? Should it go to the South-South? Then you see the problem. Okay. Go ahead. Thank you, Dr. Baba Ahmed. Let's invite Mr. Ken Robinson back into the conversation. Mr. Ken Robinson, can you hear us? Mr. Robinson? Okay. We'll try to reconnect with Mr. Robinson there, publicity secretary of PANDEF. But Dr. Baba Ahmed, regarding this issue of open grazing, you mentioned that it's a national issue and we should deal with it nationally. So are you basically saying that when these governors met and decided that from the September 1st, 2021, that open grazing will be banned in the estates? That they're basically not having a nationalistic view. And I ask that because what the President has said in the person of President Mohammed Buhari is a support of open grazing and that grazing routes in Nigeria will be revitalized. So where do you think this might play in when the President is saying one thing but the Southern governors together are saying another? Would you respect, I don't speak for the presidency and I have to say that on a number of occasions, I think they've got it wrong, the issue about open grazing needs to be handled with extreme sensitivity. And the last one of those statements that I coming from the presidency does not suggest that the presidency is on its feet from this issue. First of all, there is almost total unanimity that everybody agrees we need to bring open grazing to an end. It is wasteful, it is unproductive, it is not dangerous because it triggers other security issues. But where we differ is that is where it says you need to sort it out, you know to sort out the criminal element among the hardest from the non-criminal and you need to bring a whole system that existed for quite close to centuries. In a manner that doesn't do justice to an economic asset and doesn't do justice to the security of communities. It can be done. There are programs within the presidency that are at an advanced stage that should be worked around by governors all over the country to support it and to bring an end to open grazing. What happened to all those plants? Why are we just talking about now deadlines and timelines? So they're not wrong to say we don't want open grazing but what they shouldn't do is to put a situation is to put a date or circumstances that makes it very difficult to have Nigerians who have rights to be where they are and to put laws or regulations that offend constitutionality. Now I'm not an expert here. I'm not sure whether the president is right or the minister of justice is right when he says it's unconstitutional to do this. I'm not going to get into that. But what I would say is this. I think that it is wrong to insist that open roots and categories in all parts of the country need to be open. You have a conflict there between the land use act which is in the constitution with the rights of governors to decide what to do with land in their states. And the president's position that Katama be allowed to go through all categories. I think there the presidency needs to update its knowledge and understanding of what the constitution involves. But this is not about laws. It's about the rights of Nigerians to operate in a place and where governors decide that this particular economic activity represents a threat or is unacceptable for very good reasons then we should find a way to do it responsibly and constructively. And in a manner that doesn't suggest that you are just pushing out people because you have the powers to do that. When you say the president needs to look closer at what the laws say it kind of sounds. I don't know if you are saying that the presidency and of course the minister of justice may not be fully aware or be able to fully interpret what the constitution says in that regard. And then second we're having a conversation now with regards to the loss of human lives and property that has gone on for far too long. The same speed with which we give orders with regards to the national identification number and other things and give deadlines you know and of course threaten to block lines for people who do not get registered and some of all of that. Why can't we do the same thing with regards cattle you know and at the same time and I just want to have your thoughts you know generally at the same time we're talking about grazing routes. There's no other business in Nigeria that has its roots across the country that you know are demanding that they have their own roots to carry their goods and services. First of all let's address the first issue. There's a tendency to suggest that every time the presidency muddles its way through governance and it does that a lot and issues and shows lack of understanding for lack of competence in management and handling issues. People tend to think oh this is a they're protecting the interests of the north they're not they're not protecting anybody's interests. They know the presidency needs to improve its level of competence and understanding context in which it leaves the Nigerians live and in a democratic setting that's the first point we're not protecting and we don't speak for the presidency and many times they're wrong. The security situation in the country has been at a very dangerous level because of incompetence from the presidency. That's important to note first. Then secondly when the president was talking to a TV station and he says I've ordered for the reactivation of raising roots. What came to my mind not just me but a lot of people is perhaps the president has forgotten the fact that the 1999 constitution bests powers to administer land in on governance. They can actually revoke those roots and reallocate under the law and the degree that the law doesn't say no you can't do that because you are exercising the responsible powers they have the power to do that. So where does the president get his power to reactivate all that patrols? In any case it's not issues about power like I said it's about responsibility. Governors in the southern part of the country have a responsibility to if they want to stop open grazing in a manner that doesn't do justice to any element of the national community. That's for me that's the point. Now people tend to compare they say things like okay why do they rush into certain things and they achieve some objectives arrest canoe chase Sunday war but we see bandits and we see kidnappers why are we not chasing all these threats with the same speed and the same result. Again go back to the presidency ask them what is happening to the bandit we want to see an end to the bandit in the north we want to see an end kidnapper we want to see a strong decisive result against bandits and kidnappers maybe the same the same result that was deployed in the arrest of and and the attempts to arrest a group we support it because we see from where we stand evidence of Nigerians who believe that they can break laws in this country okay political protection we want to see all criminals all irrespective of where they come from wrote a book that's what we want so we don't we don't we don't see a double standard here we don't want to see a double standard we believe a presidency should attack all sources of threats on Nigerians but we should also exercise the powers that we have both the president and governors in a very responsible manner. Okay so one of the news that broke in the past few hours is about both chambers saying that INEC has a power to go ahead and conduct elections electronically people can vote online but at the result of those elections must not be transmitted online so at the governor's forum meeting yesterday they held that to consolidate Nigeria's democracy and strengthen the electoral process that they basically reject the removal of electronic transmission of results from the electoral act and they also see that they reject the confirmation of exclusive jurisdiction in pre-election matters so does another Nelda's forum stand with the southern governors on this one or do they differ regarding you know electronic transmission of results because Miss People especially the PDP who I spoke to yesterday alleged that this is just a ploy for the APC to rig the elections if come 2023. Well then Nelda's forum doesn't necessarily all the time take different stands for southern governor. Southern governors quite often have the same position look southern governors speak for communities we engage those communities at different levels we have meetings with Hainese we have meetings with Apenipere our concern and concerns of groups in the southern part of the country on many issues are shared we share the same concern one of the most important things the nation needs to do is to come to terms with the fact that our electoral needs massive and qualitative improvements so we support the idea of improving the electoral process we support any innovation that improve the credibility of the elections safety of the ballot and the certainty that people who imagine through the electoral process are actually genuinely elected we followed the debate in the in the in the national assembly regarding the reforms to amendments to the electoral act and we hope we had hoped actually that the electoral transmission of results would pass if it is established and I'm not sure that we've seen the end of this issue if it is established that it will not be then it represents a sad development and there are a number of other sensitive issues on relating to improving the quality of our electoral process in that that must work at the eighth senate and the huge number of amendments were forwarded to the presidency a number of times they were returned back and we're hoping that now that the president has a very cooperative and very let me let me use a polite term supporting national assembly and then I think that is literally desperate for a new electoral act to allow it to prepare long before the 2023 election we were hoping that we will not have this kind of arguments and this late hour electoral transmission of results good it should be there and it should be supported by everybody and I think that the southern governments again I remind I remind my generous have a very powerful they have many many avenues through which they can do this I wish they had demand made this demand in a context that has not again diminished its value because they they keep positive things like we want this and we must have this we must have that yes you must have that but for goodness sake play the statesman play leaders play responsible governance go to those places where you think have it stop your senators stop the members of the house you have literally these people in your pockets call them demand that they make the work pushed through legislation that is important but don't don't meet for five hours and then come back and say that we want that and we want this I don't think that the way leaders and elected passage go yeah all right I've also heard people criticize the difference the different you know tunes that the house of members are making from the southern government so you do have a strong point there very similar to a lot of people have said also but I want us to talk security now they've spoken about state police and you know the need for you know better police and of you know their states but I want us to go to the north yesterday we heard about 140 students once again kidnapped in Kadena state we've heard of multiple cases of kidnappings and and killings in the north and what do you think that the or do you think it's high time the northern governors also maybe met and you know and you know came to their own conclusions created their own resolutions with regards how to better police their states there's rumors of a bar no state having a second governor now I'm not sure if you've heard that yet one of the Boko Haramo I swap leaders has been appointed governor of certain regions in bar no state according to what the news is saying so do does the northern elders forum feel northern governors need to do better and maybe you know have their own very very important and urgent resolutions with regards security well certainly I mean you can have an end to concerns that I expressed regarding I'm sorry I've lost some power but I hope you can hear me yes we can trying to explain my own path there's no end to to what you can do and additionally under the law improve the security of my dad and the situation in the north is really tragic and this is one of the points I'm making I think in Nigeria's in the north and the south make understand everybody is living on that very very very stressful conditions from kidnappers and bandits that's the first one it's not an northern issue not a full-time mission it's a national issue what we have is a rampant runaway insecurity that is a lot more damaging in the north they're kidnapping children they're kidnapping close the school down schools this is an unprecedented threats that we're living under it's a very very serious issue northern governors are running between pillars and posts trying to find a way to deal with this issue my view is that we should we should just simply recognize the fact that this is a national issue governors have context in which they they they express their concerns they have responsibilities to make sure that they channel them in through institutional mechanisms all the decision making process there is an issue about how much power the ring of the security situation has provided for by in the constitution we support it we believe that there must be some amendment in the manner in which governors as chief security officers in states operate we support that what we think is the wrong way to go about it is to have this thing about for instance no governor governor says no no don't come to my state to undertake a security exercise unless i'm informed now that's strange uh and uh it flies in the line in the phase of of the law so that that's really personally as i said before there must be something else that the governors are hinting at that they are not uh willing to say very clearly what it is so but and i don't want to to put words in their mouth yeah absolutely not but is there anything wrong with just letting a governor know that there would be a raid you know at some point in his state is there anything wrong with informing the governor it's not i'm not sure certainly not in fact the movie is informed the better um see the idea that governors and the president and commander of the armed forces active security officers implicit in that is that they should work together um if the president controls the police they control the bsx the three governors chief security officers they complain we don't have control over the place we don't have the control some of it is true some of it is not so true it depends on on on who you speak to but cooperation and sharing of information is vital it's important um it's the language that says don't come to my state and exercise and and then take a security operation unless i'm informed that bit that bit is worried it's new um and if governors really feel this is the way to go i would have thought uh a podium after a five-hour meeting involving governors for one part of the country it's not the way to go they have a governor's forum one of the chairman of the national governor's forum governor fire me attended the meeting uh i think i saw him in among the governor yes he was he was there uh i mean he was there you would you would you would expect that governor somebody somewhere who would have um would say listen why don't we go to the governor's why don't we go to um raise these issues in a context where the president there's the vice president there are the IGP why don't we do these things where they really matter so come back to the question what is what is that position supposed to do other than to play to a gallery that really doesn't have the case um i again i have a lot of respect for for many southern governors i know them very well a lot of them are very good people but i think on this tendency to go public with issues that um they can take out more productively in a context that does justice to the issue it's just not good politics at all not on the southern governor or not on the southern presidency thing not on this issue of security not on this issue of open hand i somehow i think you have what you're seeing is a decline in the quality of leadership which is not peculiar to the south but it's it involves the whole country and it's very scary because it gives you a hint about what is likely to happen in the next few months um the pdp and apc fighting themselves and fighting each other fighting and fighting civil wars among them governors who are in pdp and apc are now ganging up and saying we want this and we want that politicians don't say we want this and we want that they work for it they they um they solve their books they do the heavy lifting um and they don't create problems nobody in this country can go anywhere or get anything unless they have to buy all parts of this country that's the bottom line whether it is by presidency whether it's security whether it is um economic issues you need the buying of all Nigerians to the degree that you need the national assembly to collaborate with you to the degree that you need um um presidency to work with you to the degree that you want a Nigerian motorist to work with you have to cultivate weight this habit of going to those places lobbying putting pressure working with them but you cannot just sit there and decide we want this and but we want that and we want it would work and if if the law is the target for goodness sake does anybody think of the effect of 100 million 20 million people caring about how you must give us this you must give us that to you does anybody worry that what this does is just simply to get the point taken well is it also um dr baba med is the is the is it the challenge at the resolutions or the way that they have been expressed do you think that they could have been expressed in a totally different manner um and they wouldn't you know maybe feel this way because i have it it also is it also is important uh dr baba med apologies it's also important um with the way that these things are interpreted um i shared earlier about the chairman of adp i believe i don't remember his name now who said that this is a gang up on the presidency and and president mama dupari um so when we have people interpret it interpret some of these things this way ignoring the fact that some of these resolutions truly are important at a time like this isn't that also more dangerous um are you talking about the ganging up or yeah i mean the the interpretation really when we were interpreted as a gang up um on the presidency and a gang up on president mama dupari um and of course you know like i said is the is it the resolutions or the way that they have been expressed that you know seem to be the biggest challenge here because you've agreed that some of these resolutions uh the northern elders forum yes i you know is in line with them but is the way that they have been put out and saying don't come to my state if it is said as we would like that we are informed would that be different um the language of the uh of the the communique yesterday was was very careful uh i read it twice i could see uh uh governors trying to walk a very tight line between making outright demands and suggestions and they chose their words very carefully and i thought was commendable but still what comes through is what comes through at two things one that 90 percent of what they said were things that they have an opportunity to raise in a context that is not productive engage the president engage the national assembly on the issue of the five percent to those communities those kind of issues can be discussed in a different context in a different setting so um uh yes the style and the locate the the manner in which they are raised um is for me not the best um also some of the issue that they raised uh uh account of productive for instance the issue of the um of the southern presidency raised in a manner and this is not the first time being raised scarce uh a lot of people from the northern part of the country because people in the northern part of the country are under the impression that we are running a democracy democracy says that parties should field candidates um going through normal the legitimate processes building candidates and the citizens will ultimately decide which candidate is the best in simple terms that's what this is all about now when when when political politicians who were elected who know how elections are held now come out and say we must be the president must come from this part of the country um they don't say must but they say they say it in a slightly different and more polite language but you know that that's what they mean um people say well how are you going to get that by resolution so all of us are going to line up you get scared what kind of president are we going to have in 2023 if if he is the product of threats and intimidation and to be honest uh some level of blackmail so what happens if there is no northern southern presidency in 2023 because not all political parties field southern candidate because northern government northern voters choose a northern candidate because the president is the best in simple terms what happens you you have a democratic process what yield another time has been primed to uh to to literally reject the outcome of a democratic process this is very dangerous so what i'm saying is that governors are politicians they know what politics they know how elections are conducted what stops them from engaging all nigerians including northern politicians and northern voters and their parties what stops them how why why are we having this recourse to threats and demands and and shortcuts that just won't work the northern voter is not going to be intimidated or blackmail or um who went into thinking that unless there is a southern presidency in 2023 the one who will come to an end he is not going to be intimidated um he will exercise his right as a voter uh in 2023 whatever whatever people say but the northern voter is also an enlightened voter if somebody works hard enough to convince him or her that this candidate from the southern part of the country is the best for nigeria not for ibo not for yoruba not for the south south not for the fulani not for the house but for nigeria i assure you we will vote for a southern candidate all right that was just gonna make very good preparation for people who are responsible who are leaders to be putting this issue in the manner they are is counterproductive it just creates hostility it creates resistance and it makes the job of having southern president that would be all right that that was going to be my final question but you've already answered it um dr hakim baba med publicity secretary of the northern elders forum thank you so much for your time this morning i truly enjoyed the conversation with you and we look forward to many more of these uh conversations thanks for joining us thank you thank you for inviting me thank you absolutely wow so this this indeed is something that seems that will continue to be debate because we heard what the northern what the southern governor said you know talking about how you know they believe that the next president in nigeria should emerge from the southern part of the country it's open to interpretation like you know we've seen we heard what um um the secretary the publicity secretary of uh pandev said and how you know um dr hakim baba med interpreted it to me doesn't sound like a threat because we know about the the you know norm of zoning we we know how the apc will come together and say we'll believe that the presidency should be zoned to this particular region and the pdp could say make such statements so to me i just feel that uh if if in any way some other people would say this is a great consensus that we need rather than having division and you know this one says it should be here should be here that other people would say it's great that you know we're having governors come together speaking in one voice to say let's agree on the south it's not like you're imposing that on the voters you know so people would interpret it different ways others will say you know you're making threats you're making demands others would say no this is a consensus that we need the unity that we're talking about so at the end of the day um he mentioned one thing that i agree with that the governor should do their work you know we'll keep talking about the game of politics you know definitely you will not force voters to do what they want to do or what you want them to do but politicians should do their work if you want the governorship to be zoned to the south then let southern candidates you know field in let them buy the party tickets let them win their primaries and let the voters make the choice ultimately but beyond the 2023 conversations other ones regarding state police we've been having conversations for time and time again still about the issue he mentioned let politicians do their work so let's begin to see the government of lego state start talking about the state police let's say the governor of organ state start talking about state police and beyond talk let's see them begin to make their formation would they come out of the nandrian police force would you have a system of you know instituting trainings how would you let's begin to see the walk let's begin to see the action not just you say we want this we want this or this is what we stand let's begin to see your action well some of all of this still needs to we still have to involve the amendment of the constitution with some of all of this they can't necessarily go through all of it by themselves the constitution needs to be amended and you know it's one of the things that he mentioned also that they shouldn't just make these resolutions it looks like playing to the gallery if you don't involve the representatives in the national assembly to lobby for some of these things and that's why it's politics which i agree with him you know on that level it can not just be resolution of several resolution there has to be lobbying there has to be diplomacy there has to be negotiations there has to be these conversations across board you know my fear really well not a fear per se but one of the things that i mentioned without or once again state is the interpretation and how dangerous some of these interpretations are with the way that these things are taken back you know different parts of the country regarding that thing you quoted i am not even going to take that to heart because yeah but when northern governors meet they would nobody describes that as a gang up when the not when the Nigerian government's forum meets nobody's so i just feel that his own personal opinion i don't feel it should take national precedent it should not cause any chaos anyway but there is thousands and thousands of people who look at people like this and you know take what they say seriously there's thousands and millions of people who look at what the northern elders forum says and who take it you know seriously and so it's really really about the interpretation there's always going to be these characters and yes if you're enlightened enough you would ignore it and say well this is just some character you know taking this time on tv to you know spew nonsense but there's it's also very very dangerous and for a long time we've continued to have these type of characters jump in into very very important conversations and try to you know deflect you know try to you know paint it you know either religiously or you know or politically and just completely take away the meat of the conversation and you know and ruin everything so there is those characters and they will interpret it their way so that whatever it is that the not the southern governors have met and come together as their resolutions will be disregarded because somebody has been treated in a different way entirely now we're all going to ourselves to be informed absolutely so when someone says something from their own biases and stereotypes you don't just take it who clans it there's people who still believe that the ensar's protest was meant to topple the government there's people who believe that namnikano sponsored the ensar's protest you can you would see these people amongst yes you will see these people amongst you they're learned they have gone to school they probably have phd so they can't think for themselves but there's some bias that you cannot take out of people and you know when a person let's say you can't wake up a person who's pretending to sleep and when a person decides that that is biased that they want to work with they will work with it sometimes you hear what the means of information says and you can't believe that these things are actually coming out of the minister's mouth but that's what he has said and that's what he said you can't you there's nothing you can do about it I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with him he seemed like a you know a real diplomat you know a person who understands balance understands the way that conversation should be had and the importance of those conversations and like I said you know I hope that we have many many more of such it's time for us to go we apologize for not being able to of course have Mr Ken Robinson join us publicity secretary of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum but thanks for being with us on this Tuesday morning I'd like to say a happy birthday to my sister-in-law Orgo and Juliette of all happy birthday to you and if you missed out on any of these conversations we had remember to join us on our social media platforms Facebook and Instagram at plus TV Africa yes my name is Anato Felix saying thank you again for being a part of our Tuesday morning


We want to see two of the nodes that are very prominent in the main editor. We have here the tabs, which are, you know, like every time you create a new instance, or here you will have the scene and the import. Those are basically containers with a control node inside and also let's take a look at the split container. This kind of control node that enables you to readjust the size of two controls relative to each other. So let's go ahead and create a user interface and I'm going to add a child, which is going to be our first one. Here inside containers, split container, horizontal split container, which is this one that we have even here on this node. Okay, how does this container work? This container, we take any element inside of it and it's going to split it automatically. Let's create a few panels. I'm using the color red, so we can see them better. Let's see, let's create a red one and let's add another one, which is going to be blue. Okay. So we have both panels and, okay, first things first, you will notice that this one collapses. So first of all, let's make the layout full wrecked. And now in the first one, let's add a minimum size here on the wrecked. The size of the X is going to be 200. So now we have 200. I'm raising it out to this proportion. Let's try it out. Okay, let's save it, test, okay. And we see here that we have this functionality working already and it has a min size. And yeah, that's pretty much it. And okay, let's see now how the tab container works. Container, tab container. So tab container is very similar to the split container. It will automatically create different tabs based on the main children's that it has. Let's see, let's do this one green. Let's add another one, which is going to be pink. And another one, which is going to be yellow, okay. So we have three, as you can see, one of them is only visible. The other ones are not by default. Let's make this bigger and now let's replace this blue one with the tabs. So I'm going to remove this one. And okay, so the tab align has this property which will make the tabs visible or not. Like to rearrange, which is the one that you can, you know, like if you keep your mouse pressed and you release it, you will change it. And the alignment, which is the position of these tabs, so left, center or right. Let's go with left because it's more similar to what we have here and let's try this out. Okay, so we have our split container here and we have three different tabs, each one of them with a different control color nodes. I'm using these examples, of course, as a color node, but, you know, this can be a more complex structure. You can have a graph edit node here, like the ones we saw on previous examples, and, you know, like you can have a graph node in one of them and then, you know, some other complicated things, like it doesn't have to be just the color best, only an example. And again, the same you can do with this other element, and, you know, horizontal split container can have also the visible drag or not, hidden, if we try it, like we cannot, you know, like use the mouse to move it, hidden and collapse will also remove the space between them and the default, which is to be visible, is, you know, how you have it by default. You can see it when you hover, you change it and, yeah. So those are very, very useful nodes that you can have in any composition that might need them. And especially if you're doing programs more complicated, like Godot itself, you will need to play with these elements to create a better environment for your program. So that's it for today, and see you next time. Thank you.


Hi, learners. Thank you very much for joining our live event. Good morning or good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. You're really excited to have you. And I'm with Dr. Eva Ponce. She is executive director of the supply chain micromasters program at MIT. She oversees the five courses that hopefully you know a lot about by now. And that will basically comprise the micromasters credential. She's also a research scientist at Center for Transportation and Logistics at MIT. And her research focus is on omnichannel retailing and specific network design issues in there. She also has 15 years of research and experience in different institutions. Eva, we are really happy to have you. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. So with that, I'm going to start our slides. But I also want to invite you all to use the Slido any time during the presentation to ask your questions and answer the polls. And the code, one theme, the code is SC1X. Yeah. Great. So today we're going to have some, we're going to start by showing you the big picture about the micromasters program and also specifically some background and information about the SC1X, a little bit about course logistics. Hopefully we don't need to focus on that a lot. Then we will move to inventory management challenges in omnichannel. Eva will explain her research and expertise in omnichannel and how inventory management concepts that you will learn in this course will be instrumental for omnichannel retailers. At the end, we will have a discussion and a wrap up. And again, we will also answer all your questions that are coming live. Thank you very much. Excellent. So welcome again to SC1X. We are, as Sina mentioned, we are very excited to have you all attending this event. Welcome also to the SCX community. This is a huge community of learners. So we have almost a quarter of a million of learners that take at least, that took at least one SCX courses. 15,000 of these learners are verified learners. We have issued so far 23,000 certificates. Micromasters holders, we have 1,162. This August, we are going to have another CFX, comprehensive final exam. So we expect to add more Micromasters holders to this Micromasters pipeline of learners. So our learners, as you know, this is a global program. So our learners from all over the world, across the world, from more than 196 countries are represented in our Micromaster program. This is the distribution of the countries. The most represented country is still United States, following by India. United States represent 20% of our learners. India represents 14%. And then we have Brazil gaining and gaining a quote here for more than 4% of our learners. Mexico and Canada with more than 3% of the learners. And then Europe is also very well represented. And we also have students from Australia, from Africa and from all over the world. So a little bit more about the program. Now you are enrolled in SC1X. This is the second course as part of the Micromaster program. So in total, the Micromaster includes five SCX courses. At the end, you are asked to pass a comprehensive final exam. This will be a proctor exam that you need to complete and pass before earning the Micromaster credential. In terms of the big picture and the contents, most of you already completed and passed SC0X supply chain analytics. This first course, as you know, is more like the toolbox is the way where we teach and you learn the basic tools in supply chain management. So in SC1X, let's say that it's a much more applied course. Our approach is very industry oriented and all of the problems we are providing here for you to solve are real problems or realistic problem, let's say in this way. In SC1X, the main goal is to go through the basic trade-offs in a supply chain, mainly in between cost and service level. We will cover demand forecasting, inventory management, transportation management, and in all of these main topics, you will deal with these trade-offs in between cost and service level and how to deal with that. In the next course, supply chain design, we focus more on the network design of supply chains. We will cover also here some relevant concepts in finance, also say the supply relationships procurement and some concepts about procurement and purchasing. In SC3X, we deal more with complexity and how to deal with complex and global supply chains. Finally, in the last course, as part of the MicroMaster, we deal with big data, how to manage big data, we will also review machine learning techniques, and then we go through the ERP system, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, TMS, Transportation Management System, Warehouse Management System, and all of these systems, IT systems that help supply chains to manage the information flows. So these are mainly the three courses, the five courses. The three first courses are, let's say, much more quantitative and the two last courses are more qualitative and all of them, as I mentioned, are very industry-oriented. And finally, the comprehensive final exam at the end of the journey. In terms of the value proposition, so one of the main thing that our learners are completing this program is because of the individual professional career development, is in order to apply for a job in supply chain, in order to promote in the company for a different position in supply chain. Some companies are also using this program as a way to train their team and their employees in supply chain management, is also a pathway to master's degrees at MIT or at any other universities. Okay, so in terms of the universities that are recognizing the MicroMaster, there are currently more than 10 universities that are using the MicroMaster as a pathway for credits. MIT is one of these universities. We have what we call the blended master degree program.  Same thing with other universities. We have Purdue University, Duane University, some universities in Australia, University of Queensland, Deakin University or Caching University. Some universities also in Latin America, University of San Francisco de Quito, Galileo in Guatemala. More and more, Brazil, USP is also considering that now. So more and more, Bolivia is also trying to join with an agreement with us. So we have more and more universities that are in the process of recognizing the MicroMaster as a pathway of credit. So these are some different benefits to earn the MicroMaster program. And now let's move to a deeper dive in SE1x. So Sina, the course lead of SE1x is going to provide you these latest statistics and the plan for the next weeks. Okay. Thank you, Eva. Excellent. All right, so if you can move this a little bit. Yeah. Yes. So first another note that we are using Slido. You could use, you could go to slido.com or slido.do. Both of them will route you to the same thing and use the SE1x code to enter the application and answer the polls and also submit your questions. We will try to answer them as they come in and disperse them. So we have one question for you. So why did you enroll in SE1x? Supply to fundamentals. Tell us whether it was your employer's suggestion, whether you founded yourself, whether you want to find a better job or whatever. So the poll is already on, on the Slido, so please take a moment and respond to that. Okay, while you're working on it, I'm going to share some statistics with you. In SE1x, right now we have a significant number of learners enrolled, 14,568 people, that's huge. 805 people are verified learners and they represent 173 countries. Important note, enrollment closes today at 1500 UTC, which has already passed, but hopefully anyone who was interested in enrollment had a chance to do that. More importantly, verification closes next week. So if you're planning to become a verified student, make sure you do that before the deadline. Don't wait until the last minutes because things like payment issues or website issues may happen, so make sure you give it enough time. And then we have 12 wonderful CTAs in this course that are volunteers that help you, help answer your questions in discussion forum and give us feedback about what you think, what learners think about the course, what are the bigger questions happening, so we could improve the course that way and learn about and hear basically your voice as well. So, yeah, so let's go back to the poll, wonderful. 48 responses. 48 responses, great, that's great. So most of you have said that I'm enrolled for my own personal development, wonderful. The next biggest group is I'm interested in pursuing a master's degree, that's wonderful. This program is a great first step if you wanna enter a master's degree. Yeah, as I mentioned, MIT is an option but also Zaragoza as part of the global network scale at MIT, in Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur, there is an accelerated way to earn a master's degree on the other universities. All of the detailed information you will find in the SEM website, SEM MicroMasters website and you have the links to those universities, you are interested in that, yeah. And some of you have some of them switching careers or planning to do, so that's also a great way to do that. Supply chain jobs are, there's no sign of them decreasing, the market is expanding, demand is increasing for supply chain professionals, so you've basically made a great choice. Yeah, and I want to add here that we have a great examples of learners, previous learners that were working in marketing, in finance, in different fields. Finally, they got a job in supply chain management. One of these learners got a job in Akamai here in Cambridge, in Kendall Square, another of our learners got in a manufacturing company. So there are some examples of people that move from one field to the supply chain management and then now they are working as a professional in supply chain management, which is great. Excellent, so let's continue. All right, so we have another question for you. Yes. So what do you expect to learn in SC1X? Tell us what are the concepts that you're interested in that you're hoping to learn in this course? Yeah, perfect. So I'll give you just a couple of seconds before I go over what we will actually cover. Okay, so we will cover three major topics, demand forecasting, inventory management and transportation management. Together these are the most important core skills of supply chain managers. So you can, most likely any company you go in they will have to understand demand and have a forecast for it. They will, if they're working with physical products they definitely have inventory management, definitely have transportation management. So mastery of these techniques will give you a leg, will give you an edge in a lot of the companies that you're going to work for. In terms of demand forecasting, we will cover the cutting edge tools for predicting demand. We're working with time series which will basically use the patterns of past to predict future. We will also cover causal analysis and we will also cover special cases which are very important because a lot of textbooks covered the general aspects but when the special cases happen you need to have a deeper understanding to basically treat them. Then we will move to inventory management. Again, inventory management is in this core tree that very comprehensively so we will cover anything from deterministic demands to stochastic demand and also single period models and multi-period models. We will cover special cases again and also warehousing topics. Finally, we will cover transportation management, fundamentals of transportation, vehicle routing and the challenges in there and also how transportation links with inventory in terms of lead time variability and other topics. So by the end of this course you should have a very deep understanding of the most important parts of supply chain management and the tools you will learn here are the tools that supply chain professionals use every day. So this will be what you learn in the course is gonna be your good friend for quite a while. Excellent. So yeah, let's see the results of the first pool. Oh, great. Here we have the world cloud. Yeah, so what do you expect to learn? Forecasting, inventory, demand, supply chain. Excellent. Data. Data, great. So yes, you are going to have a lot of forecasting techniques, demand forecasting, a lot of inventory management as Sina told you. Some of transportation management techniques too. Yeah, perfect. More and more answers are coming. Great, practical approach. Yeah, as we mentioned all of the problems that we have created for you are based on real problems or at least realistic problems. So yeah. So one thing I wanna mention is that a nice thing about CTL is, and a particular increase is that he has many years of practical work. So a lot of the examples and the definitions that he and explanations that he brings to the course are actually coming from real experiences. So that is very, very valuable. Make sure you use that opportunity. If you have any questions that are related to practice, definitely us or Chris can answer at some point. And this is not something that you can get very, very easily in a traditional classroom. Okay, we have another question for you. Yeah, is which topic interested you most of the three main topics we have called demand forecasting, inventory management or transportation management. So vote for that. And then let's review the courses schedule and the verification deadlines. All right. So while you're replying to the poll, a couple housekeeping notes. Well, we started the course in June 27th and we will finish on 26th of September. Enrollment deadline, as I said, is 18th, which is today. Do we still have time or is there a grace meeting or it's already closed? Okay, no. Because it was supposed to be closed at 1500 UTC. Verification, we still have one full week. So make sure you take advantage of that. Meet term, very, very importantly, is going to be open 8th of August and is due 15th of August. There is no way we could extend the deadline. So make sure you plan accordingly. And it's also very big chunk of your grade. So you will have a week. So hopefully everyone can find a good slot of time to basically take that exam. But again, know that the system does not allow us to make any changes to that timing. And one more thing is a time exam. So the maximum duration of the exam is four hours. It's good that you reserve for at least four hours or a little bit more in order to go through the exam. You might not need the full four hours, but I would recommend to at least reserve for as lot of time that cover the whole duration of the exam. Yeah, you know these dates now. So mark in your calendar. I'm booked for some of these slots. Yeah. Yeah. So we have one question that I don't wanna miss. Yeah. As her says, or Azhar says, I've missed the C0X, can I have access to it still? Okay, so yes, this is from Azhar. So the question is, we really encourage you, we highly encourage you to take the courses in order in the sequence starting with zero, one, two, three, and four. However, can you take a C1X without taking a C0X? The answer is yes, you are allowed to do that. I would say that this depend on the math background that you have. Some of our learners have a very strong math background. So for this learner that's really already went through statistics techniques, regression techniques, probability and these kinds of things should be fine. You should be okay. We also provide the key concept document of the previous course in the current course. That means that once you start a C1X, I really encourage you and recommend you to go through the key concept document for a C0X in order to refresh, in order to fix some of the previous contents. Having said that, is doable? Yes, some of our learners do that. It's always better to do in sequence, but it's possible. Okay. Another learner is asking, their name is Global, which I don't think that's a real name. So also make sure you use your name so we know who the question is asking. But he's asking or she, what are some career paths available after completion of SCMP Masters? So I've been hearing a lot of great examples of students getting hired in the best companies. I've heard Amazon, Walmart, what was? Yeah. Macassan and all. Yeah, so definitely. The learners get, most of them get a very good job in supply chain, the supply chain management field. For the blended program, 50% of our learners are from all over the world, and not from the United States. And most of them come back to their countries. I need to say that OPT is something that is not something that we can grant through the blended program because you only spend one full semester on campus. So it's a question that is not possible to grant you an OPT. But most of the blended students come here and then they get a promotion in their current jobs, in their companies, or they move to a different companies, in their countries, or in any other countries. So yeah. I would say that I think almost all of them are working now and are working or about to start working. They graduate last June, yeah, and they are all of them working in different companies. So that's great, yeah. All right. So let me take a quick look at the questions and see if there's something that we can urgently for now. Okay, so let's continue. With the verification, yeah. So as Sina mentioned, there is only one more week to verify. For those, the question of the verification is if you have a clear idea that you want to pursue for a certificate in UC1X, or you want to be part of the MicroMaster program, then it's mandatory that you upgrade your status to be a verified student. There is the only way to earn a certificate in the SCX courses. So if this is your case, if you have a clear idea that you want to pursue for the certificate, then we really encourage you to do as soon as possible. Don't wait until the very last minute because we always see some issues with the payments, some issues with the platforms, some issues with many things. And after the due date, unfortunately, due dates are hardwired in the systems and we cannot extend that. So please, if you are interested, let's do that. If you just want to go through the videos and the main practice rolling on quick questions, but you are not interested in the certificate, then you don't need to become a verified student. It's only to pursue for a certificate. We also provide some supplemental material for verified students and life events. The second and the third life event is only for verified students. How to proceed here? You just need to pay the $200. This is the first step. And the second step is the ID verification. So the ID verification is you need to show an ID card with your name and your picture in the same card. This name should match with the name that you have included in your edX platform, in your profile. With that, you should be okay. But there are two steps. It's not only pay, it's pay plus the ID verification. And both the steps are mandatory in order to earn a certificate in the course. Yeah. Any question here? Contact directly with edX support because edX is the organization that is managing the ID verification and all of the payment issues directly with you. So any issue with the ID or the verification process, you should go to info at edX.org. Great. Wonderful. Yeah. Okay, so let's move to the SCX learning experience. So in this SCX courses, we have two different spaces, the learning space. In this space, you will find videos, quick questions and practice problems. This is a material that everyone can have access, audit and verify learners. We really encourage collaboration here. The discussion forum is the space that we encourage you to use in order to post your question, any question related to the content. If you read the news related to something happening in the supply chain management and you find this interesting, share with your peers, it's a great way to collaborate with your peers, to learn from your peers. Most of our learners, they already have SCM experience, experience in supply chain management. I found myself very, very helpful and also useful to go to the forum and learn from this community of SCX learners. Yeah, the SINA is monitoring that and he's participating in the forum. The teaching assistant are there, the MIT staff are there, and also your CTAs, the community teaching assistant. Our amazing community of teaching assistant are helping there, moderating this forum. So take advantage of that. I really encourage you to go to the discussion forums. And then we have assessment. Assessment is an individual thing. Unfortunately, it's not a group thing. And it's an individual. That means that we need to assess your knowledge, not the knowledge of a group or a study group. So in this sense, you will have a great assignment every single week, 20% of the total grades. You will have meter, 35% of the total grades and a final exam, the 45% of the total grades. And this is a peer assessment. So if you have any question related to the meter, final or any grade assignment, you should send an email directly to the SE1xhelp.mit.edu email account. We do not allow any posts in the forum or in any other means about grade assignment, meter, final exam. We do not allow collaboration here. We really follow the owner code very seriously. So please don't post anything related to that in the forum or any other means. So any question about graded material, whether graded assignments or midterm or final, they're not allowed on the forum. Yeah, directly through the email account. The teaching assistants are monitoring that. The course lead is also there. We are taking care of every single email we receive. So we will go through that, but in an individual way, not in any other... Let me also add one more thing. Sure. When you email us in order to get the quickest answer, make sure you include as much information as possible. So tell us exactly what question, what lesson, if it's a video, tell us what part of the video, what slide or what minute, or if you have a problem in solving one of the questions, maybe share your screenshot, tell us, share your Excel file basically help us put yourself in our shoes and ask the question, with this information, is this person is going to be understanding what I did and are they going to be able to answer it? If the answer is yes, then go ahead. But if not, give us as much information as possible so we could give you the quickest answer without a back and forth to email dad. We really appreciate that. So we have a few questions coming up. Sure, let's go through that. Okay, I'm a chemical engineering graduate and I want to know how the scores will help me in the field in particular. So, for Anita. Chemical engineering. So I would say, for Anita, this depends on... She's a graduate, but it's still not working, seems, no? Okay, so there are many chemical companies and they are coming here to CTL sharing with us the distribution challenges with their products. There are some issues related to chemical companies. This typically has those materials behind. There is a lot of regulation to complain to meet to... So, yeah, supply chain management is needed for sometimes to manage the production process in the plant for the distribution part. I would say that distribution is one of the big part of these chemical companies. So I would say that either in production or in manufacturing or in distribution. Yes, absolutely. Two main parts that I see here. So you have knowledge of the product itself, but that's not gonna help customers. Firms need to be able to produce it and move it and give it to the retailers and maybe other businesses. So that's where you can combine your deep knowledge of the product with business knowledge about how products move and how products are made. So if you combine those, then that will give you the opportunity to actually move up in the industry, in the chemical industry. You cannot manage a factory without knowing the details of operations, details of inventory or how to receive stuff and how to move stuff. So that's very important. Even higher levels, you can be a supply chain manager in chemical industry and so forth. This related to SC1X, related to SC2X, there are some decisions related to where to locate the plants, the chemical plants that network design models can also help to make this decision. This is covering SC2X. So yeah. So as I was asking the follow-up question, is it necessary to complete SC0X to get MicroMaster Certificate? Yes, it's mandatory. You need to pass and complete as a verified learner the five SCX courses plus the CFX in order to earn the MicroMaster Credential, yeah. So do you need to finish all courses in 2018 to get the, to enroll the final exam, CFX? Yes, it's mandatory. Yes, to take the CFX, the comprehensive final exam, it's mandatory to have completed the five SCX courses and pass the five SCX courses as a verified student in order to be eligible to take the CFX. Only those learners who already passed the five courses can take the CFX. Okay. This one I'm going to take. Parnita is asking the follow-up question. I'm a verified student of this course. How long after the course will the certificates be available? Two weeks. Typically, yes. I would say that within two weeks, you will have that sometimes much earlier, but yeah, within two weeks. Okay. Bindu asking what is on the channel, we will cover that. Also, Kuryan is asking about machine learning and technologies, SAP. We will cover that later. Yes, in the discussion part. Does, so Yushi is asking, does blended program graduate qualify for TN visa for Canadians? I'm not sure. I'm not sure about this answer, Yushi. What I'm sure is that OPT, we cannot provide OPT because you only spend one full semester with the blended program. For the SEM residential program, that is a 10 month program at MIT, OPT is allowing a student get the OPT. For the blended, this is not happening. And regarding this specific thing, I do not know the answer. You should have this consultation to directly with the international office. Yeah. Okay. So let's move on. Yes. We will come back to the rest of the question later. Yeah. And we have about 45% of our learners, they are interested in demand forecasting. So these are your weeks. Yeah, this week, next week, until when? Until week four? Yes, yes. So yeah, you have two more weeks about demand forecasting, great.  So we will cover more topics that are hopefully giving you a bigger tool set. It's more challenged, but at the end, you will be able to handle a lot more different situations in practice. And around 35% of the learners are interested in inventory management. And we also dedicated some weeks to inventory management. So you will understand all of the inventory policies and implications and the trade-offs behind these different inventory policies. And 22% transportation management, great. Perfect. So let's come back to the courses. Yeah, do you want to continue? The course content, already a lot of you know about this. We have a combination of videos. The good thing about those is that they're transcribed. You can go back, you can pause, you can pace them, you can make them faster. Then we will have slides and also the videos from around the world, different topics that have been curated, selected very carefully. Chris particularly has spent a lot of time creating those videos. And again, according to my experience and the residential ones, these are very, very good content discovered. So basically there is less, I mean, the contents are very compressed. So a lot of very good things are taught to you in a short amount of time. So this saves time and also helps you cover the major factors. And an interesting thing that the MicroMasters program in SCM has introduced is the use of sandboxes. So these are the interactive problems that are placed on the web and you can go play with them, change the parameters and see how the outcome changes. The beauty of these problems is that you can apply your knowledge and you can test them. You see real-time feedback of the changes you make as a manager or as a professional, as a professional. So make sure you use these. Again, we have an IT team that works on these. They spend a lot of energy on these and we really hope that this really enrich your learning experience and we are also open to learning about your feedback. Yes. Yeah, these are interactive problems. As Sina mentioned, are fun problems and we are very proud because Connor Makowski, he's the digital learning as part of the MicroMaster team and his team has worked on that for some months. They developed these tools. We think they are fun in order to apply the concepts. Great. Excellent. So let's move forward to the discussion forum. So discussion forum, we really want you to use this space. It's a way, as we mentioned, to interact with your peers, to pose your questions to, maybe sometimes I learn from our learners that they discover the discussion forum because they have some specific question about one video or one specific concept and they say, hey, I'm struggling with that. Then they went through the forum and was a very similar question there. So it was a great way to see another peers with the same question and sometimes the CTAs, sometimes the course lead, but sometimes your peers answering this question. And this is always good to share these questions, these doubts that you can have and interact with your peers. So yes, I encourage you to use these resources. Okay. Then we have live events, surprise. So you, for now, you know how it works. So we will try to invite experts in the field. Today, as you know, we are gonna talk about Omni Channel. In the other live events, we will talk about different concepts depending on where we are in the course and we may have external experts or some basically industry managers as well. So those will only be open to verify the students, make sure you make use of those as a great opportunity. You can still have this live Q&A with them. So we really hope you enjoy those as they come. Excellent. Okay. So yeah, time for questions and answers. Do not hesitate to post your questions through Slido. We will go through it. So let's see what we have here. We have quite a bit of questions. So, are pin, are we pin? Yes. Does the blended, no. No, we'll start off. Is the format of the midterm final, midterm or final exam the same as that of graded assignments? How many questions and how many, someone moved her, okay. How many questions and how much time do we have to complete the midterm and final? So typically the format is similar. It's not the same. As you know, these exams are timed. So that's a big difference. You typically have four hours to complete those and a week to submit for graded assignments. It's not timed and you will have two weeks. So it's tighter in that sense. Usually we will have four problems, but we will plan it such that it doesn't need four hours. Our plan will actually be target somewhere about two hours. So four hours should be plenty, but still you should be very, very prepared. If you don't get a good score on midterm and particularly on final, you will have a very hard time because all the graded assignments only add up to about 20% of course. So, but that said, if they're not gonna be hard, we actually, when we create problem with test them, many different people test them from different levels of knowledge, new people, more experienced people. So we make sure they have the appropriate level of difficulty and you will not see any surprises. It will be exactly the things that we covered, maybe bigger problems or slightly more complex problems than GAs, but nothing too different. Yeah, I would say that go through the practice problems and the GA, I think is the best way to prepare for the midterm and the final exam. So try to solve the practice problem by yourself, go through the grade assignment. It's only the 20% of the total grade in this course, but it's the best way for you to be prepared for the midterm and the final. And the goal is not to provide a super complex midterm or final exam. It's just to assess that you have the appropriate knowledge to pass this course and to earn the certificate and that you have these basic concepts that we have been taught during the different weeks. So these are the main purpose of the midterm and final. Our time exam, as Sina mentioned, so you need to allocate a book for this specific as a lot of time, four hours midterm, four hours the final, always should take less on that, but at least book for these four hours. Just in case you can go through the problems you can review, double check, be sure that you submit your answers because if not, you are not going to be graded based on your solution and that's all. But the results in general are pretty high results and very good performance. So those learners that really watch the videos go through the practice problem and solve the grade assignment, let's say the percentage of success is really, really high. So I would say that those students that do not complete the grade assignment or do not review the whole contents of the course are the ones that are more struggling.  We usually have quite a number of people scoring 100%. You can definitely do it, but you have to make sure you understand every single practice problem and graded assignment. We have one important question. And then we are going to move to the discussion. Han-Dakkar Rafi, who did asking, is it effective to learn supply chain management online? Oh, great question. That's a very good question. We know that something we know is face-to-face interaction matters and people learn from interaction. With that being said, there are several things that you can do online with much lower costs and much more efficient, more flexible that's not possible in the classroom setting. Particularly if any concept that is a formula or a technique or a skill, these are very good for automation and putting them online because we can have a very well-rounded experience and an expert in the field to teach that to you. And you will have supplemental materials. You can stop the videos, you can go back and watch them as many times as you can. It also fits your schedule. So those are the benefits of online education and that work well for tools and skills. But for anything that's interpersonal or social capabilities, leadership capabilities, obviously you definitely need that in-person interaction. So that's why universities still exist, right? But we have found ways to put anything that we can online. And you may argue that in some aspects, online classes are at least as good or better than classroom experience, but that's my own opinion. It's also a function of your learning style. I personally value the flexibility more, but there are also a lot of people who need to actually be in class. They need a schedule, they need that weekly class to basically move them forward. So there's also that personal aspect to it. Yeah, in terms of the online learning, I want to highlight one thing that has a really a high impact on the learning experience that is the immediate feedback. So when you are taking an online course, you can watch the videos, you can solve practice problem, you can solve grade assignment, and you can, for the practice problem, you, quick questions, you are going to have immediate feedback about the answer and explanation of this specific problem. And this, from the learning perspective, is something very powerful. And I think that contributes a lot in terms of learn more about the certain concept. I think that for those, for instance, to explain the EUQ model or to explain any quantitative tool that you have a bunch of problems to apply the concept and practice yourself in a flexible way with immediate feedback is really, really powerful. I was really, I was very positive surprise about how powerful online learning can be for certain techniques and certain concepts. Having said that, I fully agree with Sina that there are certain skills that we still need to be in person. The interaction to discuss complex problems once we add complexity to our problem is really difficult to go online because online education should be very straightforward. There are not too much space for gray. It's more black or white. So for numerical problems, it's perfect. For multiple choice or checkbox assessment, it's great. But for those things that are more open-ended questions or need more discussion, interaction is still very powerful. And negotiation, leadership, these kinds of soft skills are still needed for professionals. And we still, what we believe is that the combination of online and in person is very powerful. And based on the results that we have with the first cohort of the blended student, we can say that the results are very good. We had outstanding cohort of learners that learn a lot and take a lot of advantage for combining both walls, the online plus the on campus. Okay, so there are also three questions that are similar. I'm gonna quickly cover that because we also need to move forward. The questions are about machine learning and Python and technologies overall. Do you need Python in supply chain? The short answer and that's my opinion, definitely. I worked at Walmart e-commerce for a while and while I was trained as a supply chain professional and I knew inventory, I know transportation and everything, but I found a lot of my time being spent on programming. That's surprisingly. And that was a big surprise to me. I was working with databases because there was no one who would support me with the data I need for my mathematical model, for my inventory model. So I had to do that pieces myself. So if you know those, that will give you an edge and also it will allow you to automate a lot of the things that you're doing on a day-to-day basis and basically understand how things work. A lot of the applications in supply chain management are linked to databases or linked to other technologies in the company. So a better understanding of these will definitely help you understand how things work in the business, okay? Yeah, there are one question. What are the maximum students allowed for the blended program each year? It's 40, 40 students is the maximum number of a student that we are admitted per cohort, 40, 42. Okay, let's move to the omnichannel discussion. Yeah, so with that, I... Let me just ask, there are still some questions that we couldn't answer. We will do our best to answer this in maybe under the YouTube event. And so come back later and see those. Yeah, or maybe at the end if we have the chance to go through that. So regarding the omnichannel discussion, what they want is just to connect here. One of the topics that is one of the main challenges that retailers, manufacturers and different actors in the supply chain has nowadays. And this is when they are planning to expand their distribution channels and they are considering to move online or if they are a pure player and are considering to move more physical. But this at the end, those companies that are considering to move online or offline and combine these different channels in what we call omnichannels. So there are many different challenges here, but one of these challenges is the how to deal with the inventory management. And since in SE1X, you are going to cover a lot about inventory demand forecasting and inventory management. And both things are really tricky on each channel because for demand forecasting, we also need to be able to have a good model in order to predict the demand for each of the channels that we are going to offer. And in terms of the inventory, we are going to see why inventory management is one of the main challenges in omnichannels. So, and this is just to bring here the discussion and make you think about real challenges in the industry for retailers nowadays and how these connect with the contents you are reviewing in SE1X and as part of the MicroMaster program too. Okay, so the growth of e-commerce is something that is happening in all of the countries, in all of the continents. Some data about the United States, online sales are growing 15% a year versus 1.5% for overall retail sales. So it's really growing faster than other channels. In the chart, you can see since the year 2000 how e-commerce has been growing. But if we have a look to the year 2007, we can see that after 2007, the increase of e-commerce was really higher than in the previous year. So my first answer for you is what happened? What happened in 2007 that might be one of the reasons of this increase of e-commerce in the next year. So I'm going to give you some minutes to answer to these questions. I want also to highlight that this figure represent different industries, the footwear, toys, small appliances. We can see the same trend in all of these industries. So let's have a look to the poll. It's starting now. So go back to Slido and find a poll. Yes. And answer it there. Yeah, one more figure here. Last year, online sales accounted for 7.3% of total retail sales. Yeah, as I mentioned, this is growing. UK was one of the countries that was leaving e-commerce and the percentage of online sales. United States, this is growing more and more every single year and gaining more market share, online sales. I would say most of the countries, also in India, in China, and we have very good examples of marketplaces. Amazon is one of the most well-known companies. That's in China, we have Alibaba, another marketplace that is growing. In India, we have Flipkart. Rakuten. Rakuten. In Japan, Rakuten has been bought by Walmart recently. So yeah, and we are also seeing how traditional Rika mortars are moving to this space and how traditional pure players are moving to the Rika mortars space. So it's a very interesting environment. Let's see, the introduction of the smartphones. Yes, this is the answer. Okay, great. So let's go to that. Yeah, this is what happened. In 2007, Apple announced the first iPhone, more and more companies introduced smartphones. The combination of these smartphones plus internet connectivity, plus 40% of the population has an internet connection today allows people to buy from almost anywhere. So from my point of view, mobile commerce is one of the drivers, is one of the trigger in order to disincrease the e-commerce and also omni-channel. So let's have a very quick look to the retail buying, processing omni-channel. There are different stages here or steps. The discovery, the search, when we buy the transaction, when we purchase the product delivery and return. So when we are talking about omni-channel and when we are adding these new mobile devices, what happens is we can't discover and we can search anywhere for any product. Then we can also buy from anywhere. We can buy from, whichever, we can buy from work, we can buy from home, we can buy while we are waiting for the tea or the bus or the train. So we can buy almost from anywhere. And what is happening now with the delivery is that customers are almost asking to be delivered to almost anywhere. This is only true, to be honest, if we are in a city. So anywhere deliveries or anywhere returns are only allowing a city. If we live still in rural areas, this is not fully covered. But in any case, what I want to highlight here is that in every single step of this buying process, we have different options that can happen anywhere. And this at the end, it complicates things. And then the retailers need to manage the different channels that are crossing each other in an integrated way. So this is like the main point here. And if you have a look to the chart, you can see this mess, this chart at the end represent this mess and this combination of different channels in each of these steps. So this is one of the things I want to highlight. This is just a basic definition of OmniChannel. And when we are talking about OmniChannel, we are talking about combining digital and physical commerce. And we are trying to offer a customer experience that is called like a seamless journey. This seamless journey is only possible if we are at the end supporting the back end of the supply chain. And we need to integrate the different channels that they mentioned and need to be integrated because when we are talking about multi-channel, our companies that are offering also different channels but as a completely separate channels. When we are talking about OmniChannel, we are talking about integrated these different channels. The supply chain management plays a relevant role here. We run here at CTL around table about OmniChannel. And one of the main takeaways was that when a company decide to implement an OmniChannel strategy, we need to have supply chain management department involved in that. Ideally, leaving this implementation. If not, at least need to be 100% involved in this implementation because in order to make this happen, we need that the back end of the supply chain is working for this OmniChannel strategy. So this was one of the... I have one quick question for you. What are the key challenges that retailers need to... I'm going to open the poll now. Need to face in an OmniChannel retail environment. And I propose you some of the main challenges that we identify in this round table here at CTL. How to manage the returns, where to prepare the orders, where should the order meet the customers or how to deliver. So make your selection, make your choice. In the meantime, what I'm going to do is I'm going to review some of the main challenges in OmniChannel. We have one of these challenges is related to information and another one is related to fulfillment. We have the traditional retailers in the... that are, for instance, Walmart or Target or any of these companies that offer the product through the store, also the pickup and the fulfillment happening in the store, the peer players like Amazon and then we have a combination of hybrid models. These companies that are offering information online pick up in the store, click and collect. And Home Depot is one of these examples, for instance. A new business model. Those companies that are offering the store as a way to go try the product that you cannot buy. So in terms of inventory, there is no inventory in this showroom in order to sell the products. They just allow you to try the products and then from a centralized distribution center or a fulfilled fulfillment dedicated center, they make the delivery to these online orders. Okay, so this is just to let you think about that. I think we are running out of time. So let's have a look to your answers. Where should the order meet the customer? Yeah, this is one of the main challenges because this is related with the different channels that the retailer need to decide to offer to their customer. This has a lot of implication and one of the main implication is how to manage the inventory. And in terms of inventory, I would say that inventory visibility is one of the main things that companies that want to move into our new channel need to achieve. Inventory accuracy is also very important here because we really need to know the amount of products that we have if the product is available and through which channel is this product available. And this is going to affect many other decisions like shipping decisions and decisions about the channel we are offering to our customer. So inventory accuracy, inventory visibility and the integration between offline and online is also one of the main challenges that these traditional retailers that are moving into online are facing today. So the number one challenge in moving to OmniChannel that a lot of companies have is management of inventory in general, issues of visibility. A lot of companies don't know exactly how much of that product they have in all, either the stores or at the centralized warehouse. So, and it's not, they can't easily solve this because they need to improve their forecasting model, they need to improve their infrastructure, and they need to change all the legacy databases. So that is one of the biggest hurdles in front of the companies. Hopefully with the methods you will learn in this course, you will be able to contribute to that piece as well. Excellent. Okay, so I think we are running out of time, Sina. So we have some more questions on the lobby, what we are going to do is trying to answer these questions through a slide on, yeah? And yeah, any final question we want to address here? So let's take a quick look if there's something that we can address right now. So what are the fee for giving exam $200 professional? Let's see, what is the candidate? One person had asked, and I forgot to answer this, how does Twitter machine learning is going to replace traditional forecasting models? To some extent, yes, because machine learning models are very, very powerful. But the problem they have is they're, most of them are black boxes. So you don't know what happened, you get a very good prediction, but you don't exactly know what are the factors that caused it. That is also very important to know what factors are driving the demand. So for that, still the traditional models, particularly regression models are very, very useful, and definitely not never going to basically go away. But still machine learning is a great compliment to those. Okay, so final words from my side, just encourage you to go through AC1X if you are interested in the certification, verify it as soon as possible. And in terms of the contents, very happy to see that you are interested in demand forecasting, inventory management. As you see, for instance, if you are talking about on the channel, these two are very relevant topics that all of the tools that you are going to review in AC1X might help you to better manage doing a more efficient and accurate way in this new environment that we have with more challenges for all of the actors in the supply chain. So with that with AC1X, we are always open to your feedback, to your questions, reach us through AC1X help, reach me directly if you have any feedback that you want to share. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you very much, Eva. Thank you all for joining. Thank you.