We'll also be having the legacy of late Governor Akira Dolu on the show this morning as we take on that as our second hot topic for the morning. Well, a look at the national dailies will be on off the press as well and we'll be looking at some top trading stories this morning. Good morning, you're welcome to the breakfast on Plus TV Africa. My name is Rume Paulsen. And I am Nyam Ghul Aggaji. Today we're starting on a very sad note because yesterday there was news that broke out that as we will put it in Nigeria, two erocotries or two very giant figures in the political scene and our national life just left us. We're talking about the speaker of the House of Representatives in 1999, Umar Galina Abba. He died yesterday and we also heard the news of Rotimi Akira Dolu, the governor of Undo State. We can only say made our souls rest in peace. Yeah, that is one of our top trending stories this morning and Undo Governor Rotimi Akira Dolu dies after a long health battle. Undo State Governor Uluwa Rotimi Akira Dolu died in the early hours of Wednesday morning after a prolonged health battle. Akira Dolu is Senior Advocate of Nigeria, S.A.N., Ex-President of the Nigerian Bar Association, N.B.A. Ex-Autority General of Undo State was a circumterm governor before his death. The State Commissioners for Information and Orientation, Bami Dili Adimola Olateju, announced the governor's death in a statement. Governor Akira Dolu, in quotes, answered the eternal call while receiving medical treatment in Germany. He succumbed to the complications arising from protracted prostate cancer, she wrote. Adimola Olateju said in a letter had been sent to President Bola to inform him of Akira Dolu's passing, adding that the family and the state governments were released for other details regarding the funeral arrangement. Akira Dolu Aketsi, as he was formerly called by friends and admirers, wore many hats and was acknowledged by many of his contemporaries as a dogged leader with unbending personal convictions. Until his death, it was the chairman of the Southern Governors Forum, a buddy with governors of 17 states in the Southern Nigeria as members. Akira Dolu also led other five colleagues in the Southwest as chairman, championing many reforms, especially in the area of security, prominent among which was the establishment of the Southwest Security Network, codenamed Amotecun. He was born on the 21st of July, 1956, in Orwar, understates to the late Reverend J. Ola Akira Dolu of Orwar and Lady Evangelist Grace Akira Dolu of Igbutu Eche Odo, government area of understates. Akira Dolu was a voice against herdsmen, attacks on farmers, and one of the unwavering critics of the administration of the then president, Mohamed Ubuhari, despite belonging to the same ruling party which is the All Progressive Congress. Aketsi, who won his re-election as understate governor in October 2020, was sworn in for a second term in office in February 2021 and had been flown abroad for treatment for his medical condition in June when his health battle intensified. He returned to Nigeria in September after months overseas but stayed in Ibadan, the Oya state capital. As his health worsened, Akira Dolu was under intense pressure from opposition parties and activists to resign or hand over power to Lucky Ayedatiwa in line with the 1999 constitution. Also, the governor's loyalists in the state House of Assembly were at loggerheads with Ayedatiwa attracting President Bola Tinibu's intervention. Eventually, the governor transmitted power to Ayedatiwa early December when he embarked on another medical leave to Germany the second in 2023. He was an associate member of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Oya state branch. He also accepted and became the patron of the Nigerian Law Society, Faculty of Law, University of Lagos patron, Breast Cancer Association of Nigeria, patron, the Law Society, Faculty of Law, Adekulea Adjusting University, Akumba, Akoko. It was also the patron, Sports Writer Association of Nigeria, Oya state branch. Aketi was married to Beti Ayamu, Akira Dulu and blessed with four children and many grandchildren. Today we're just celebrating the life of Mr. Akira Dulu. I'd like to remember him for what he stood for, the kind of man that I grew to admire. A very well, very outspoken person, like it was said in the literature he just read there.  He was always outspoken when it came to power sharing. He was outspoken, security matters. He was very outspoken and all that. And I'd also like to remember him as one of the governors with the best dress sense, because he was a guy man as it is. Yeah, so I'd like to remember him like that. I don't believe, I may be wrong, but I don't believe all the on those saga that has been going on. He had a direct hand in it, because he had been incapacitated for a very long time the way I see. And from stories that came, including the forging of his signature and all that. So it must have gotten to a head where he couldn't have done all the things that were attributed to him.  So at the time they were saying he's not relinquishing power to the deputy and all that, was he really in his faculties? Was he really in his right senses? Was he able to sign any document and all that?  A very outspoken person, a person who is passionate about reforms and the interests of his people. I don't know much about on those state what he did in on those state, but I do know what he did for the Southwest and for Nigeria as a whole. You know, security wise, Amotecun, he was almost like single-handedly because he was the focal point where everything was rallying around until we got Amotecun, which is doing well and talking about power coming back to the South and so many other things. So his memory in my own head will be very important. I remember when the news broke yesterday, I started on my phone and I think my first exclamation was, oh no. Because I was really hoping that he would pull through. I think a few weeks ago, about four weeks ago, five weeks ago, we had a guest here talking about him on those states and the fact that the governor is not even there and the governor had been sick. And I think a lot of people were just hoping that he would get better and come back and rule the affairs of on those states. But sadly, Regem has gone yesterday to rest which is hope and pray that his soul rests in peace. And we're praying for strength to the family members and even the people on those states because obviously they've lost a dear brother, a dear friend, a dear father and whatever he was to those people. So we're praying for strength for those people at this point. And not only him, we also remember the family of Galina Abba who also died yesterday and has been buried already according to Islamic tradition. May his soul rest in peace and may the family have the fortitude to bear this irreparable loss. Well, it's still another very sad thing. Even though it happened a few days ago, bandits are a step ahead of government according to the sultan on the plot of killings. So that's the second trap-trending issue. The sultan of Sokoto, Saad, Abu Bakr III has condemned the Christmas Eve killings in 20 communities in Mangu, Bokoz, Mangu and Barkinladi local government areas of Plata State. He faulted security agencies for their failure in intelligence-guarding in which they could not avert the heinous crime leading to the death of over 100 people. Abu Bakr called on the government and security agencies to be more proactive and scale up its intelligence-guarding techniques because the bandits are terrorists and are always a step ahead. According to him. The sultan who is also the president-supreme council of Islamic affairs stated this in a Goodwill message at the closing of the ETH National Islamic Vacation Course which held on Wednesday at the Air-Bubakar-Katafar-Baliwa Stadium, Bauchi. He said, and I quote, We have problems of insecurity. Just a couple of days back there was this clash in Plata State where over 100 plus lives were lost. Why do we keep on having these clashes? Why do we keep on having these deaths caused by ourselves? A couple of weeks back, the Tudun Biri issue in Kaduna State is still fresh in our minds and now the one in Plata end of quote. Abu Bakr also warned against politicizing insecurity in the country saying this was dangerous and the worst way to go. He raised some very pertinent questions that should be asked because the answer is always in the question and if you ask the right questions, you probably will get the answer well. But insecurity, I don't know. It's so sad, like really, really sad. And I think this has even been going on social media because people have been talking about it saying, Why are we not saying so much? I mean, when Gaza, when the thing in Gaza happened, the news broke, everybody was talking about it. But this is right here in our corridor. This is in Plato state and no one is really saying anything as much and over a hundred lives. I remember that day. I think that was Tuesday. We were counting. We counted about 145. And next thing it rose up to like 160 something. So they found more bodies and stuff. And I'm like, this is 2023. What is our security agencies doing? Why are we still having this sort of issues? I mean, Boko Haram came. There was a rise of Boko Haram at some point. But right now it's banditry and kidnapping. And where are we as a nation? And we have how many billions for security in the budget? Security takes a chunk of it all. But yes, we're still seeing all of this. So what are the intelligence that they have to prevent these things even before they happen? So many questions. When you talk about banditry, you'll be thinking about stealing. They will come. They could kill you if you resist and all that. But they're basically thieves that want to cut away your property and all that. They are bandits. But when it comes to a situation where people will be moving from village to village, killing people, cutting them to pieces, even children. What kind of resistance would the children give if they want to take their farm produce, for instance, or their cattle or something? So this is a deliberate attempt. We're not dealing with bandits, even though that's the popular name we're giving them. But we're dealing with people who are doing some sort of cleansing. I wouldn't say ethnic cleansing, because they could still be the same tribe and all that, except maybe their religion might change. But they will still be the same tribe. So I don't know how to call it. I would have loved to call it ethnic cleansing. But which ethnicity are they cleansing? Who are the people who are cleansing this? What is even the reason behind all of this? So if the government can ask all these questions, it's not enough for the president to say go after the bandits. Before people can enter up to two, three, four to ten villages, know that they are in great numbers, maybe hundreds. So who are you going to arrest? At what time? What kind of intelligence do you have? No, but before they go to about ten villages, they start with one. So if you have intelligence... Forty-eight hours bandits will be operating and the government... Don't know. So you start in one hour... It feels like the people are abandoned.  Let's say, for instance, they've killed about ten people in this village so far. What are you doing to stop them? You can't just allow them to keep going. So for forty-eight hours, everybody is silent. Nobody's doing anything. So there's no phone in that place that they could have called.  Fingers are crossed. Nobody is moving anywhere. It's ridiculous. It's like we need to take our security seriously. If you are a governor, a president, or a commissioner, or a local government official, you are supposed to protect the lives and properties of the citizens. That's the first... That is your primary assignment. If you're going into governance. So now, the governor of, I think, the same state was telling us that there are places in Platteau state up to modern sixty communities that have been occupied by these bandits. Communities. So how do you want to let them encroach into... Even paying tax to bandits and all that. And the government seems quiet. Because it's not enough. And even another thing that I know that the vice president went to that place, but I think in a situation like this, the president should have been there. Yes. But he was celebrating Christmas in Lagos. Just so you know, we condemn such acts. We condemn what's happening in Platteau state. It is horrific. It is sad that this is happening here in Nigeria. In our corridors. We just hope and we pray that this would not happen again. And we hope that the people who have perpetuated this kind of horrific, wicked... I don't even know the words to use. We hope that they are brought to justice. And we pray for the families and the people who had these people that have died them in their lives. And we pray the loved ones that they have. Yes. We pray that God would just give them the fortitude to bear this loss at this time. And like I said, we condemn any form of this right here. Okay. Let's move over to another top training story. It's been a very sad day so far. But let's look at this one. China's import from Nigeria rise to 22.5% in quarter three. 2023. The Chinese Consulate General has said the People's Republic of China imports from Nigeria rose by 25% in the third quarter of 2023. This, according to stakeholders, is an indication of positive bilateral trade between both countries. This came even as a Chinese Consulate General in Lagos, Miss Yan Yuqing, reinstated that China's firmly supports African countries in exploring development parts and cooperation in poverty reduction and promotion of modernization of agriculture. In a statement, Yuqing said China and Nigeria have built a nice cooperation mechanism, broad cooperation platform, while practical cooperation in various fields are deepening and expanding. In the first three quarters of 2023, China, Nigeria bilateral trade reached 17.25 billion US dollars, and China's imports from Nigeria increased by 22.5%. She noted that the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Lagos would like to extend sincere new year wishes to friends from all walks of life in the consulate area at this wonderful moment. Since 2013, China has helped construct more than 6,000 kilometers of railway, 6,000 kilometers of roads and 80 large-scale power facilities in Africa. Landmark projects by China in Africa includes the Mombasa-Narobi Railway, Nigeria's Lecky Deep Sea port, and the headquarters of the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC. Chinese enterprises have built more than half of the wireless stations and high-speed mobile broadband networks in Africa, laying more than 200,000 kilometers of optical fiber and serving more than 900 million African people. China is Africa's largest trading partner, and by 2022, China or Africa trade reached 282 billion dollars, accounting for 20% of Africa's total foreign trade. China's FDI stock in Africa exceeds 47 billion, 1.8 times the 2013 figure. China has built 25 economic and trade cooperation zones with Nigeria and other African countries to promote industrialization in Africa. China is also supporting Africa in implementing the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is a good thing. First of all, I don't understand the headline at all because it sounds ambiguous to me. China's imports from Nigeria rise to 22.5... Should that mean they are importing more from us? Well, I don't know. For me, it still sounds ambiguous. Okay, maybe that is what it is. They should have just said exports from Nigeria to China is this, this, that. But imports, China's imports from Nigeria could also mean that what Nigeria is importing from China. I get what you mean. Because the body of the story still doesn't say goods that are moving from Nigeria to China and all that. But we do know that a lot of things are coming from China to Nigeria. What are we even exporting to China? The report should have given us the kind of things that are leaving Nigeria for China. Right. Should we have even making our money? China is very biased when it comes to trade and even accepting anything from another country. So what is that thing that is going to one of our biggest partners in the world trade space so that we can know that maybe we need to produce more because China has the population. They have the market for these things. And for it to even rise up to 22.5% that means there is the market for it even more as well. Yes, so we should have known. It's really vague. But if it means that things are leaving Nigeria to China and the value has risen to 22.5% that's good. That's a good thing. As I said, things are looking up in 2024. Okay, well, whatever it is whether we are importing or exporting let the Nigerian population have a feel of a good life because it shouldn't always be that Nigeria is not getting it right in any way. But there's another thing as we're going into 2024 we should be mindful what we say about Nigeria. Some of the things that we say just to get favors from the other countries may be very detrimental to Nigeria even more detrimental than the things that we are finding in Nigeria. For instance, you want asylum in the UK and you say all sorts of things about Nigeria that are negative and may not even be as bad as you are putting them just because you want asylum. You are part of the problem someone who says those kind of things let's be patriotic a little bit and highlight the good things that we also find in Nigeria. I think with everything there are always pros and cons it depends on how you want to look at it sometimes we fixate on the bad things and forget there are good things and you're not leaving in the moment you're not enjoying the good things because you're just looking at the bad thing and that's all that's in your mind. So with Nigeria, I know Nigeria might not be the best country right now for a lot of people and that's why you're seeing this whole Jack Waist Syndrome everybody's trying to move out of Nigeria in search for grainer pastures but why can't we look at the good things as well and then try to fix the bad things so you're fixated on the good things that helps your mind. There are a lot of good things here just being a Nigerian is a good thing I tell you there are countries that are not people who are so resilient as Nigerians.  They don't even care when we go outside it's here that we fight that if you're Nigerian they just respect you knowing that your spirit is a can do spirit so we should be proud of that and even our exports you're seeing us making giant strides for instance the health sector in the US there are lots of Nigerian if you cannot export the farm produce we can export the people you go there and you find out some hospitals the entire shift is made up of Nigeria doctors and nurses and all those Texas like Nigerians let's even talk about our entertainment industry that is a big export here in Nigeria we're winning Grammys we're winning so many awards we're on billboards we're getting recognition left, right and center you're hearing them play you're going to be so happy I'm always look at Amazon look at all these the Netflix all of them are trying to get into the Nigerian market they've come here to tap into the Nigerian market and only what is big for a very long time if you hear of a very big movie that is coming on it will have either a Nigerian actor maybe even though there are residents wherever they are a Nigerian actor or something that will touch Nigeria so that when it comes to Nigeria it will resonate well with the people so I think Nigeria is a country that we should be proud of and tell the world that we have arrived that's right with the touch of Gra Gra we're here with Nigerians and that is the way to go we should stop talking down on Nigeria internally we can fight our politicians we can say a lot of things that's what happens at home you can't fight but you don't go out there and spread your debt in public at home you can say this is not right this is not what you should do and I think that's what we need to do as Nigerians have a united front and then work together to make our nation better to that point where we're satisfied we know that we've worked for this not running away not having to slander our country not even being part of the problem because sometimes people are salient partners in certain things for instance people are corrupt in their offices it's not only the politicians right now so you're trying as much as possible to make Nigeria better we already know Nigeria is the way it is okay fine how do we go from here but you see the entertainment industry for instance that we were talking about is an industry that has next to zero influence of government on it so they're not giving them money so on their own they were able to flourish so if you have the conduce period of the Nigerian government and if we get to the point where we don't have to wait for the government the government will be looking for us because if you find out you are no longer relevant you'll be thinking of ways to connect with the people but now you come home and we'll give you chief tensi for stealing money look at the entertainment industry you hear that they go there and they win awards and stuff and the government is congratulating them because you've gone there to you've gone there to make a name and they're ready to congratulate you so that's what we can do at some point when you start doing all of these things we're trying to flourish by ourselves the government has no choice but to dance to the tune and say we're so proud of where Nigeria is going and then they want to plug in because there's always that thing when you see that people are thriving you want to plug into that and we're just hoping that I'm excited for 2024 this is the last Thursday in 2023 I'm excited for 2024 and all of the things that are to come with it it would not tarry Nigeria is already great it's my country I love Nigeria all the people who are trying to bring us down well this is Nigeria I don't have that craze of Jack Bar maybe my children will go but I don't know I've always told myself even when I was young that if I'm going abroad it'll be on my own terms I will have to go there do what I can do that will take me there should give me the way with all to come home anytime I like so it shouldn't be that because I'm looking for transportation to come from UK to Nigeria and I can't have it that's why it will take me 10 years let it be my decision to stay one year, two years without coming home but I'd always like to know that it's within my grasp alright let's go on a short break and when we return we'll be looking at what the national dailies are saying but first let's look at the weather stay with us


Welcome everyone once again. Let's talk about social inclusion today on this episode. Let's explore the world of the gig economy based domestic cleaning where gender inequalities intersect with other axes of disadvantage. And I've invited Laura Wiesbock from the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna in Austria to explore the experiences of female cleaners in private households. So I'm covering here today the challenges they face in this fragmented and, of course, informal sector. With Laura, we will examine how platform-based cleaning laborers face, for example, power imbalances, objectification, information asymmetry, and understand more about the reality. Laura, welcome to our episode. Hi, pleasure to be here. So Laura, the growing marketization of domestic work and coupled with the emergence of the gig economy platforms in the sector requires more research. And I believe that's why you started this study with your colleagues. Definitely. Well, first of all, if we look at research in the gig economy, there is an institutional gender bias. So we can see a lot of research on delivery services, on drivers and all that. But not so much in the domestic field where mainly women, as you already mentioned, women with migratory experience work. And this is a particularly vulnerable group as they work in isolated, unprotected spaces, unprotected because, as you already mentioned, they work in the informal sector, most of them. But also because there is no social control, there are no other people present except the employer, there are no other colleagues present. So it's a rather invisible group. So it's much more important to look at this kind of group, but also much more difficult, which also contributes to this lack of research. Complementary to exactly that. So let's look a little bit more that before we jump into the finding. So what was missing in the research specifically that you wanted to address? Well, we started with a very open question. We wanted to know how do domestic cleaners experience working in the gig economy. We were interested in, yeah, how does the job differ from experiences from beforehand, so to say. Because we know that many of those platforms position themselves as neutral mediators. So there are people looking for domestic service, people offering those kind of service and platforms, many platforms don't take any employer responsibilities. It's a kind of matchmaking platform and the way you, yeah, the way you work with your employer, with your client is not up to us. But we find that this is not particularly true because the platform structure, this kind of employment field, this structure, opportunities for workers. And we were interested in how do workers, domestic workers experience working in the gig economy very openly. Well, share with us the main findings and conclusions of that then. Yeah, with a great pleasure. So we found three dominant themes throughout the 15 interviews we conducted with domestic cleaners. And one of them was reserve army mechanisms, because as we know on those platforms, there are so many profiles of potential workers, of potential service providers. So through this visual oversupply, there is the tendency of wage dumping. So domestic cleaners we interviewed said that clients even want them to work for 10 euros and we have to keep in mind this was last year, where the inflammation was kind of at its peak, at least in Austria. So there is reserve army mechanisms, wage pressure, but also a culture of exchangeability. So workers would tell us if they have to cancel one gig because they're sick, they won't get any gigs anymore from these clients in most cases. And this is different to, for example, in the informal labor market when I, when I'm looking for a domestic cleaner and you say, hey, I have a domestic cleaner, you can, I can recommend you this person. Then there is not this kind of visual oversupply and this reserve army mechanism to that extent. So another theme that we found that was quite dominant was, as you already mentioned, objectification, lookism, but also many incidences of sexual harassment. So this is also kind of due to the, to the platform logic on the websites. Profile pictures are the main component of profiles. So users would select cleaners based on their looks on their appearance on their attractiveness.  And they, for example, one cleaner also told us a client asked her to come for this gig. And then he said, you're not my type. After all, you can leave before she even started working. There were also many incidences of sexual harassment, which is not nothing new. It's also due to this setting, this informal isolated setting. But now this was taking place digitally and also in person. So cleaners would receive unwanted masturbation content or were asked to send nudes or some stuff like that. And they are not able to fight this kind of violence because they're in an informal setting. And they told us, many of them told us that clients are well aware of those power imbalances, which is the last theme on these websites that we analyzed. Several power imbalances and information asymmetries are installed in the website design. So for example, cleaners were not able to rate their experiences with clients, but clients were able to do so based on a five-star rating system. And this was a huge problem for cleaners because, for example, for those sexual harassment incidences, many cleaners told us we want to warn other colleagues, but it's not possible. So that's a very one-sided power asymmetry. And interestingly enough, clients can evaluate or rate cleaners when they were in touch with them, when they communicated with them once. So what is happening is that it's not only the cleaning service is rated, but also the communication style, for example, if the cleaner answered the requests in a timely manner. And that means that a new job profile is created for cleaners in the informal labor market. They have to act like a digital entrepreneur, so to say, and this is very hard for them because when working, it's not possible to answer to those requests. But then they would get a bad rating for not answering immediately and that would influence their future job opportunities. Also, as already mentioned, pictures are in the center of the profiles of cleaners, but not of clients. So many times they don't know who they're talking to. And one could say, well, that's standard in employment situations that workers, people looking for a job, have to present the person more and employers more at a job. But in this particular setting, in this isolated private intimate setting without any social control, we would think and also the cleaners pointed to the fact it would be important to get more information about the person. So these are three main themes we found which, yeah, also taken all together, show that power asymmetries change to some extent and also the job profile changes. And in this informal segment for a very vulnerable and I would also say exploited group. It is probably a bit obvious to assume that practical implications of these would require, would mean more protection and regulation, more responsibility maybe for the platforms that as you mentioned before is missing. Definitely. And this is a topic that is many researchers in the social political fields deal with this topic. It's quite difficult, for example, the platform we analyzed for the platforms operating Austria, but the company is based in Berlin or another platform operating in Austria is based in Switzerland. So different legal circumstances are complicating this kind of fact. But what we would say in our case is that those platform profit from the unregulated informal labor market. And for political reasons, I think that's scandalous. And for us, it was the social political aspect was very important. So in our advisory board, we had several unionists straight unionists and also labor law experts because we're social scientists sociologists. And it was also important for us not only to take information from this vulnerable group, but also based on the problems they told us about, create a website in 16 languages where they can where cleaners can inform themselves about their legal rights. It was launched a couple of days ago geek clean dot net. And so, yeah, the project is very interwoven with social political aspects. And so you mentioned the work done by your colleagues and by researchers out there what should be steady now from now on what's what's ahead of us. Yeah, I mean, I think we should ask big question, big question society is speaking so how do we want to organize care in in our current societies apparently we're in a crisis of social reproduction that is inherent to capitalist systems. So how do we want to continue this, this topic this field in aging societies, especially, and also scientifically speaking we should be very critical about all those. Yeah, numbers that are supposed to represent equality, for example, if we look at the participation rates of women in the formal labor market this is often used as an indicator for equality are more and more women are participating in formal labor market so it means more equal societies. But behind those numbers are less privileged women working informally doing the social reproduction activities that those middle class women did for free before. And so, feminism equality work life balance who are we talking about we're talking about a particularly group of women. So, this is also I think in the responsibility of researchers to point to that. Well, sometimes quantity of work does not mean quality of work for equally for everybody. Laura, if you had this has been a very straight on point episode but if you had to make a punchline of this conversation in one or two sentences for people to remember about this talk. What would it be. I mean it also depends on the audience and if the audience is scientists I would say, I would look closely on how to conduct research with vulnerable groups that research itself doesn't come near and exploitative. So, I mean, for example, we provided an incentive for all interviews for 20 euros to remunerate for that time and also work closely with social political actors and creators websites. I know that it's not possible in every research project and I'm sure that not everybody is interested in this linkage. But yeah, I would say in current times it might be more and more relevant also for scientists to position themselves in that way. And for a general audience I would say, yeah, I mean on a personal note it would be interesting to talk in the in the own social circles about why it is so normalized. This kind of huge informal labor market. Yeah, why is it so normalized that women with migratory experience less privileged women do the base work of our national economy in informal labor market and nobody actually are not so in the public discourse it's normalized and not so much problematized. Laura, thank you very much. Thank you. For those who are watching us on YouTube, you can find all the resources, all the materials, including the study that Laura just mentioned on the let's talk about social inclusion website. And you can also listen to this episode, whatever you get your podcast you can subscribe to our newsletter to stay in touch with new episodes and follow us on Twitter. Thank you very much.


Hello and welcome, this video is part of a series. Be sure to check out the full playlist in the link in the description of this video, as well as the end of this video. Also check out all my previous shell videos. I've done hundreds over the years on the Linux shell, Bash shell, and other shells. And in the previous video, we looked at creating a command, a function such as this for our shell. Basically, we're creating our new function that makes a directory and then if successful in creating that directory, we move into it. So I can hit enter here and now I can say mider123, any created directory called 123 and move me into it. If I move back out and I run that same command again, I'll be getting the file already exists and or the directory already exists and it does not move us into it. Today, we're gonna take that a step further. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to, in the previous video, I told you how you can put it inside your Bash RC file to make it so that you can have this throughout multiple sessions. First off, I wanna say that you can also name this function mkdir and that way you don't have to learn a new command. But if you're gonna do that, I would recommend doing it like so just to clarify in your code if you would do it like this. So basically, this is telling it specifically to make sure you're using the command makedir and not the function that we're currently in. I think that if you leave that out, in most cases it will probably work fine, but it's good practice to put that in there. But getting on to our Bash RC file, I've created an if then statement inside my Bash RC file, so .bashrc right here, I put it at the top here just to get to it quickly and I call it mkdir. So basically, we're gonna be doing the same thing, but instead of just trying to create it and if it's successful move into it, we're gonna check first, does that directory exist? So we're saying if this directory does not exist is actually what we're checking here. So we're saying the exclamation mark says, if this is not true, check if this directory exists. So if it does not exist, we're going to make directory, make that directory and if that's successful move into it. Now it can fail for multiple reasons. As I said in the previous video, it could fail because that file, that folder file already exists or because you don't have permissions, but we're checking here, does it exist? So we're taking this up farther and we're actually checking, does it exist? If it does not create it and try to move into it, that still may fail if you don't have permissions. But here, if the file already does exist, we're gonna output a message saying that the folder already exists, which you already kind of get from the mkdir, but let's go ahead and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna save that, I'm gonna go into my bash shell and I'm gonna say make one, two, three, which we just created, so it should tell me they cannot create the directory, the file already exists. Oh, that's the mkdir. My command was mkd, one, two, three. So you can see there's a difference. Mine gives you this output, which is from our if then statement. Now, why would you wanna do this? You're already getting that output from the mkdir file because in certain scenarios, if you can come up with something, it might be beneficial to have different checks for different problems, whether it's permissions or if the folder already exists. You may want to, which we're gonna do here in a moment, just a theoretical example, if that file exists, create a new folder with that name and some sort of integer at the end or some other character. So a very basic example here, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go back into my bash rc file and in here, I'm gonna say, yeah, you know, the folder already exists and then I'm gonna say creating that file underscore one instead and then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to call this function itself. So I'm gonna say mkdir $1 underscore and if all goes well, I can exit out of this. I can go into bash again because it's in my bash rc file, it doesn't automatically go into the session I'm in because the bash rc file runs when you start a new session. So I type bash here and if I mkdir 123 this time, if I typed everything properly, it says this file already exists and we are creating this instead, but didn't create that. So I typed something wrong. It did create a folder with the underscore. Let's see, then bash rc. Oh, because I didn't put the one there. There we go. So if we go back out and now if I mkdir 123, it says 123 already exists, creating 123 underscore instead. Oh, I forgot to start a new bash session. Whoops. So let me do that real quick. So that might mistake. Hopefully that didn't confuse you too much. The changes again didn't take effect because I didn't start a new session. It's my bash rc file. So mkdir 123 now I'm getting the results I wanted. Okay, so it's saying that 123 already exists and creating 123 underscore instead and in which it did and it moved me into there. Now if I was to move back out, I can run that command again, mkdir 123. And this time it's gonna tell me, oh, well, 123 already exists. We're gonna try creating 123 underscore one instead and then it says, oh, 123 underscore one already exists and we're gonna create 123 underscore one underscore instead. You could probably come up with a better script where it actually numbers it rather than putting an underscore one each time. But every time I run that command mkdir 123, it will go through the cycle of checking each one because it's calling upon itself. Again, you can make that a little bit better. I'm just doing this like a quick little basic example here for you. But I hope that I showed you a little bit something today. So let's review the three things we went over today. So we added our command to our bash rc file but not only did we add it to our bash rc file, we added to it by having an if then statement that checks where the directory exists. You can also have it check other things. Again, permissions and have it do something else with permissions or give different messages, whatever it gives you a little more flexibility than our code from last time, which was very basic and worked, but this gives you more options. Again, if you were to want to create a function called mkdir, which is the original command, that way you don't have to relearn the command. It's a good practice to put command dir in there. So if I enter now and you do want a space after the curly braces here, there we go. So now I can say make dir123 and it creates, so I don't have to learn a new command.  And again, the command here is just specifying that we're using the mkdir command and not this function so it's not calling itself. So again, if you left that out, I think it will still work, but it's good practice to have that there. So that's it. We learned three things, putting into the bashrc file or if then statement and also the command command to make sure that we have the original command rather than the function we're calling. I know I messed up once or twice in the middle there. Let's just go back here and just as an example, create another file, I'll call it folder. I'll call it folder. And if I move back out and try to run that again. Oh, right, mkdir folder. There we go. So instead of creating folder which already existed, it created folder underscore one. Again, up to you in your scenario, I think in most cases I would prefer if it already exists to move into that folder, but that could cause problems if you do that because maybe you thought you just moved into a new directory but you moved into a directory that already exists and all of a sudden you start messing with files that are in there without realizing you start overriding stuff. You might like try to cat or echo something into a file that you don't think exists and then overriding it. Again, all your preferences is all about flexibility and doing what you need to accomplish. Anyway, I do thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed these tutorials. Be sure to check out the link in the description to my website, filmsbychrist.com. That's Chris the K there. You can search through all my videos and I've got plenty of them. You can also go to the support section on my page and support me through either PayPal or patreon.com forward slash milix 1000. I do thank you for watching. If you do like these, be sure to like, share, subscribe and comment. I hope that you have a great day.