with Danny Dover, Dorothy Robson, and Erin Marcus. Home City is a presentation of the Kellogg Hubbard Library, and I want to thank the wonderful sponsors that help make it happen, and that would be the National Life Group Foundation, Vermont Humanities Council, Hungar Mount Wacoop, Goddard College, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. And today's program is with a poet Danny Dover, and he'll perform his poetry with musical accompaniment by accomplished pianist Dorothy Robson and Erin Marcus. Danny Dover's first full-length book of poetry, Tasting Precious Metal, was a first full-length book of poetry recently published by Antrim House Books. And his poems have appeared in several journals, including Blue Line, Blood Root, and Oberon. And Danny has submitted poems to Poem City many times over the years. Dorothy Robson is a composer, arranger, pianist, music educator, and co-founder of the well-regarded White River Valley Players. As a multi-instrumentalist, Erin Marcus is a well-known to traditional dancers for his performances with various groups throughout Central Vermont. His recent CD with Frost and Fire, Midwinter Spring, has received critical acclaim. Please help me welcome Danny, Dorothy, and Erin. Thank you, Rachel. And thank you so much for including us in this great month of poetry in my peolier. I have to say just at the start that when Dorothy was the first one to suggest the idea of writing music to some of my poems, and I have to admit I was a bit nervous at first. I never had anything like that done before. But I was pleasantly surprised. The results were really quite wonderful. And then more recently, Erin has also joined in. The idea is that each of them was inspired by specific poems that I've written and felt that they wanted to write short piano pieces to them. So you're going to hear some of those. And I'll also read a few poems as well. I thought I'd start by reading a couple of poems that came up this campaign season. I wrote a poem four years ago called Republican Primary Season. And I never thought I'd be reading that poem again. I wrote it then because I don't believe I had ever lived through a more scary, crazy campaigning season as 2012 in the parade of people who said they were qualified to be president. So lo and behold, here we are. And here I am reading the poem again. And you'll notice that this poem, most of it, has absolutely nothing to do with campaigning or politics at all. But it all makes sense when you get to the end. Primary season. Not long ago, in dead of winter, a lost flamingo turned north and tumbled from the sky over Siberia, a shivering pink body on spindly legs, found by startled villagers, an exotic spectacle. They bundled in furs nursed with nettles and warm yak milk through sub-zero nights by a spruce-fired stove and restored to health for the hard journey home. Our own flamingo beams from a bare-limbed maple in bright plastic exile where it snagged in floodwaters early last fall, a welcome break from the dull winter palette of unease and isolation that has settled upon us once again. When darkness portends whatever shifting course is feared the most as if an entire nation, tired and lost, just dropped from the sky without compass or map, a colorful alien creature waiting to be thawed out with a little kindness and sense of direction. And then it made me think the city that gave us a candidate for president who wants to build walls and keep people out of this country, also the same city gives us the borough of Queens, New York. And for those of you who have never been to Queens, this is one of the most culturally diverse places anywhere in the world where people are living in peace. And to get to Queens you have to take a subway called the number seven. And so I guess in tribute to Queens and to all of the people new arrivals in our country, I've written this tribute on the immigrant train, New York City. The Queens bound subway, known as number seven, boards deep in a dusty cave below Manhattan's glossy mountains, gathering speed on screeching rails, submerged beneath a tidal river, bursting out into brilliant sunlight like a well kept secret boldly revealed as you ride and ride, hardly noticed for your pale dull skin amid a pressing mass of faces gleaming every shade of black or brown like polished driftwood saved from shores of 100 nations, a pack of pilgrims swaying over a shifting ground. This is their ship of gambled dreams, a lurching vessel laden with all we have been or shall become, twisting on an ancient track across the swirl and sprawl of flim flam streets and asphalt rooftops, they now call home. So this next portion, we're going to do a set with, I'm going to do a set with Dorothy, who, we have these three poems. I'm just going to briefly introduce those three poems to you right now. The first one, Snake Skin. I became a mentor for a boy starting four years ago, a boy in our town, who comes from a rather challenging family situation. And I'm happy to say that we're still together. But when we first met, there was a lot of trusting, testing going on, and this 10-year-old boy. And so I wrote this poem for him called Snake Skin. The next poem that we're going to be doing, Snoyno.  And just being the kind of poet that I am, I happen to be glancing at a bag of onions one day and happen to see it in just the right way that I saw this word snoyno and figured I had to write, there was a poem there somewhere. And the third one that Dorothy's going to play is called Wavos Revueltos. And that's a little more difficult to describe. I say it's Wavos Revueltos from Camelshump to Peekskill, New York.  And Camelshump is a place that I love to hike. And I love both geology and I love also changes in our culture. And I saw this connection between how change takes place in geology in such slow and imperceptible yet inevitable ways. And we can only hope that the same thing happens in our culture as well. So, Dorothy, snake skin. A snake skin is only a snake skin until given to the 10-year-old who has barely begun to trust in you. Shed some doubts like translucent scales from his troubled heart with his searching look back to something forgotten but true in nature's fragile design, held weightless and shimmering in his restless young eyes. Someday, you pray, with grace and ease, you both may shed these clumsy skins in tall lush grass and slip away. I'm going to say a little something before the next one. The next one is the poem, Snoino, which I had a hard time learning how to say. And it is not uncommon for composers who are writing something maybe about a person's name that they want to include. And they will make a theme based on the letters of that person's name. Well, I've arbitrarily assigned A, B, C, D, E, F for the purposes of coming up with a snoino theme. And we also have an onion theme. So when you hear it, this is the onion theme. This is the snoino theme. Snoino, I'm studying the label on a bag of onions. Snoino spelled backwards, which reminds me of my old rambler that only ran in reverse. And soon I'm imagining a parallel universe where chopping snoino makes me laugh instead of cry, and where all moments when I meant yes instead of no lie waiting in a pile, like leftover parts from a broken transmission, which is to say there are a few things I would gladly reverse if given the chance, such as poisoned words once thrown in your face, spelled backwards now, harmless syllables, frozen in the frigid air between us to sprinkle down like laughter onto the dance floor of our marriage. Course bands of hard granite, once flat as sea bottom, now fold and arch like elephant skin on a bare rock mountain named for the back of a foreign beast, draped and curled in graceful curves, proof enough of nature's enduring patience in softening even the hardest places, even the hardest places, even this gritty town near my birth where old world neighbors greet dark-skinned newcomers with grinding suspicion, where the subtle shift and bending of bedrock might easily be missed one Sunday morning in a local diner as a friendly waitress seats shy Salvadorans trying their first meal out in America. How do you say scrambled in Spanish? I'm learning, she smiles, huevos revueltos, huevos revueltos. So these next two poems with Aaron's music, the first one, a bat is living in my canoe, a somewhat true story. It doesn't need too much explanation. The second poem, the full title, is to the black boy who painted his arms white. And the backstory to that is fairly simple. Just a teenager that I know told me recently that he remembered as a little boy, probably six or seven years old. He had one classmate, the only African-American who came to school one morning having painted his arms white. So I wrote the poem for that boy. Aaron, a bat is living. The faint, soft, rustle flutters like dragonflies in a dark, cramped cavity of the bow. A bat is living in my canoe. Probably nested there under the shed roof since March. Then three rough hours on a car rack to this first paddle of spring. Leave the two of us out here on still water, rousing from winter, drumming wingbeats again. Drumming wingbeats against a mist and cedar rim shore flaming in sunrise. To the black boy who painted his arms white. To the black boy who painted his arms white in the all-white school of our all-white village.  Wondering if you still whitewash your dreams or your shirt sleeves long. Once when things fell apart, I tried painting my heart black. And I had no more use for arms. You could have mine now. They're good for holding on. I, too, have wished to be unmade, prayed to pass for something I'm not. After that, a little bit of comic relief. My father was a dentist. And back in that era, it meant that I lived in a house with a dental office adjoining. And so I wrote this poem called Above the Dental Office. From school each day, I'd return to a room above the office of my dentist father over the piercing wine of molars filled and whimpering pleas of children trapped like cornered animals. And my father's voice, so caring and calm and soothing as mint, all drifting up through ceiling cracks with strains of muzak in a muted soundtrack for coming of age during warm afternoons of salacious groping with a chain-smoking girlfriend, who soon would leave me alone in despair scorned for spitting each time I French kissed her full, luscious mouth, disgust and desire and the shriek of the drill all throbbing together in the air of a room where I first learned it's possible to live with pain or at least lie down just a few feet above it. And this poem is called Quick Stop. Not sure there's much that needs to be said about this. I think just about everybody could imagine a scene something like this if they've done any traveling in this country. Quick Stop, staggering through the sliding doors at the throughway Quick Stop with a throng of hungry travelers, desperate for the perfect fuel, seekers stocking crowded aisles stuffed with stacks of energy bars and junk food drinks, cheesy chips and candied nuts, slim gyms, KitKats, dazzling displays of doodle this and snicker that. And for a moment, I could be in church surrounded by congregants mumbling labels of fat and sugar content droning from every corner like chants or prayers or confessions of guilt and desire as if we might all be in this together, running on empty, eager to strike a deal with any flashy packaged promising deliverance. And though not a believer, I am one more weary soul searching for nothing less than a source of happiness and end to suffering hopeful that if only I look long and hard enough, the answer could be here and now or maybe at the following exit. So for this next set with Dorothy, the first poem by the numbers, I don't think there's much to say about that. This was just a poetic moment. Honestly now was written at a campsite in the Adirondacks on one of those ideal Adirondacks summer camping moments. And this is one of my favorites. I love this piece that Dorothy wrote. So Dorothy, by the numbers, there's comfort. I confess in living life by the numbers, by the ebb and flow of calories and seasons, cataloging memories like baseball cards, calibrating time in obituaries, measuring health in heartbeats, security in dollars. But by day's end, things never quite add up. And then at night, bewildered by the infinity of stars, I dream once again of wandering a world without any numbers, beyond formulas, without scores to settle. Honestly now, campsite as cathedral, quirky, rooted columns, 1,000 vestibules to choose for coffee and blessings, morning light shafts sliced through air so thick it fuses with lake and land. My breath takes in all as one rich, foamy, loamy ether. Osprey's whistle to know all this fully means to die.  Honestly now, where do we go from here? These next three poems. I wrote Labor Day, Last Labor Day, 2015. And it was inspired by the tragedy of at that time the migration of Syrians at its peak. Flood was written right after Tropical Storm Irene. And I actually wrote a couple of poems about Tropical Storm Irene. But this one was just a short time after the storm. And so I captured kind of a raw time, that feeling immediately after. And Virgin Mary is a poem I wrote for my wife, whose name happens to be Mary. One more thing about Labor Day, the other thing that this poem was inspired by, was I heard Grace Paley interviewed. And she was talking about how her father, who was in his 90s, was still giving his daughter instructions on how to live her life. And she was in her 70s. And what he said to her was, every morning, when you get up in the morning, you must take your heart in your hands and say, thank you, good job. You're doing a good job. And he kept insisting, he's saying, and I don't mean metaphorically. I mean, I want you to grab your heart, hold onto your heart and tell it what a good job it did. Labor Day, by morning, a great blue heron has settled like a bedspread over a trout-filled pool. By evening, coyotes are keening at a lone ultralight, droning softly under a full harvest moon. By midnight, bursts of small arms fire pulse from the backyard party of a distant neighbor. And by day's end, a lifeless boy from a shattered country completes his journey drifting onto a foreign shore. So by tomorrow, you might speak to your well-rested heart, nested gently in your hands, of a job well done and the long, hard work still remaining. If only I could drive an excavator. I need heavy equipment to dredge through the silt and gravel of language. It will take a dozen bulldozers to push enough words through my mouth and return them to a shady rill of sentences that I used to recognize. But so many adjectives have been lost, swept away, and the only noun remaining is water, water, water. My neighbor tries to speak, choking on water. The only verb is water, a chorus of water, wild screams of water. Speech lies soaking wet, useless, and unsalvageable. The only dry ground is silence, where we stand. While giving the dozers time to screech out a few words buried under tons of stone, until then, we'll need an earlier language. Let our fingers intertwine, and tired eyes meet and linger. Water might just return to its proper place if we wait long enough, until we can soothe each other again in a stunning waterfall of fresh-reigned tears. Virgin Mary, her favorite figurine, now a sad pile of broken blue and white porcelain, heaped on the counter, and my wife implores a resurrection. Be performed by me, a simple Jew armed only with superglue and trepidation. But setting mind and jaw squarely to the task of all mankind, I do manage restoring her slightly cracked sly smile to its proper place. The same smile that smashed me open more than 30 years ago, still thrilling in random glances over a sandwich or pillow. And though we've been broken a few times, as may happen to most things brittle when hit by something hard, the scattered China always beckons us to the bare floor on bent knees, searching eye to eye under chair and table for the missing piece with jagged hands sparkling blue and white and soft in prayer. This next section I'm calling the Death, Dying, and Serious Bodily Injury section. Last July, Lisa and Dale O'Keith were on their way back from a trip from their home in northern Wisconsin to the coast of Maine, and were returning when they drove on the road right past our house. And a few minutes later, about a mile above us on a sharp curve, an out-of-control car sideswiped their motorcycle, taking off Dale's foot and severing Lisa's leg, literally left it on the pavement. Mary sent them a card. We got a phone call. And soon we were visiting them in the hospital regularly. And so out of this senseless and brutal accident, a new friendship developed. And so I wrote this poem, The Accident, as kind of a tribute to how these strange gifts can come to us. And Moonlight was written while camping by myself in the Adirondacks on a beautiful lake while thinking about a dear friend of ours who soon passed away. That was a couple of years ago. So that's Moonlight. So, Dorothy? The Accident. Sorry. We are total strangers. Yet here it is, a hospital room with not enough chairs and a missing leg, yours torn like paper from your body. You glimpsed Mary's blooming gardens as you cruised by moments before time stopped. It's sufficient reason to be here now. Flowers gripped by hands, ill at ease in this room of phantom limbs. I would much rather hold my breath if it could help to restore you. Is this what it takes?  Spare the pity. In this world teeming with damaged souls, we are all one tribe circling the fire of a new friendship with laughter and stories around your bed. The healing bones know exactly what to do. Moonlight for Lynne Hall. Because a thing is named, moonlight dying. I could believe the thing is known. But one small pond on one warm night has spawned a language all its own for water, loon, stillness, shimmering. And my body softened loose as sand, sifted gently on a granite ledge. A wash in satin pools of light amid the wild ones, shouting praises to a stenographer moon who madly scribes their brilliant prose into lines of stars upon a page of tonight's unfinished story, her story dying, in fading constellations inked behind and approaching dawn. So I'm going to finish up with a couple of poems. And I thought I'd read a poem that's written very recently. We just got back from a couple of weeks in Ireland. And I thought with spring on its way that the image in this would be very appropriate for what we might hope to see on the hills of Vermont soon. It's called Gathering Sheep. I've come to rest in a well-grazed pasture, tucked deep and high in a rugged draw, carries grim fogged mountains, leering down with grizzled chins of broken boulders upon the long green valley of Bredia, neat trimmed and silent with a hint of rain, nothing a stir. And then I spot them a mile below two black collies in tandem motion, sprinting back and forth in graceful arcs. The sheep has won, darting about as a school of fish, then stretching out like rising bread or a flowing string of scattered pearls, a single moving fluid thing alive and shifting like northern lights or the mind of a child and the dogs, relentless choreographers gliding noiselessly, exclamation points on a landscape at a loss for words as the earth and all its fragile creatures take time to play and dance together. And before I read this last short poem, again, I want to thank everybody for coming, and especially to the work of Poem City and the Kellogg Harbor Library. Just fantastic, Rachel. Thank you. And to Dorothy and Erin, I'm so appreciative of the time we've spent together doing this. And we're going to be performing again in Randolph on April 29th. So please tell your friends. And be sure to help yourself for a book on the way out. $19, they are practically free considering how much they cost to produce. So anyway, this poem was written for a much more severe winter than we just had. But I think you'll get the gist of it. It's called Chickadees. In this deep, cold cave of January, the house beams settle with a cracking thud like an empty pint slammed down on a pub counter. I could use a refill about now. Daylight is running low, and the snow tires have a better grip on things than my slipping sanity. Thank God for the Chickadees.  A little more coffee or tea, tea, tea? Thank you. Thank you.


We are glad to know that you're still there. We're going to take this small time that we have left to talk about safety in electronic payment system and how we can use homegrown solutions to do this. We are privileged to have in our midst Mr. Dallington Onyagoro who is the CEO Aladdin Digital. Good morning and welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Good morning viewers Yeah, a lot of people want to do business, but they are afraid of electronic transactions So should they or should they not be afraid of this? Yeah, I can answer that both ways. I mean, they shouldn't be afraid of electronic transactions But that's the future and that's actually the present Going by what happened in February when there was a cash crunch and with the narrow design Everybody realized that the best way to go is to actually begin to patronize different electronic channels like POS terminers mobile wallets and so It comes with its own challenges, but Everything that has the good side also has the negative side. So they have to throw the baby and the bath water out You understand that so there are ways to mitigate some of these weeks which we're going to discuss subsequent Okay, but when you when we got to that time of a cash crunch We found out that the transactions were not even going What were the challenges? What are the challenges in Nigeria that made us to suffer the way we did? So first of all, we have to also appreciate the fact that Nigeria when it comes to payment It's actually more advanced than some countries in Europe and even in North America I'll give you an example We started enjoying instant payments almost like over 10 years right now In some of those North American countries when you do payments, it takes about two to three days to get to the beneficiary I have accounts in the u.s When I send those money back to my gtb account from my u.s account It takes 48 hours to 72 hours to get to gtb But today you can send money to somebody and in the next two three minutes The best in case they're not so the problem was that the system was overwhelmed All right because of the narrow policy and everything more people migrated online and Our system the infrastructure was not ready to accommodate That influx of new people new people that actually began to migrate to that system Or like what the cbn told us I think they underestimated the volume of people that actually needed to do transactions per day Which at much was around 49.7 trillion That was transacted in terms of cashless transactions in Nigeria Just in the month of March in the first quarter. I was around 127 trillion That was transacted so that influx between January and March The whole infrastructure and the wallet system the banking system was not ready for it So that led to massive failures But the system is adjusting right now and the levels of failures have started reducing also in the systems What about Homegrown tech companies like you you run Aladdin Yes, so what about what is your the role that you're playing now to make sure it stabilizes So most of the fintechs you have today they're actually pioneering what we call wallet to wallet transactions So why most of these failures occur is what you are doing interbank transactions You are moving from you know one commercial bank to the next bank or one system to the next system And that goes through a switch and when you go through a switch a switch is its technologies So there's the possibility of failure So for example, if I say some fintechs now have close to about 30 million users And those 30 million users can do wallet to wallet transactions at zero cost So because it's an intra transaction within an ecosystem the rate of failure is actually minimal So all those homegrown solutions in terms of wallet transactions in terms of even some of the contactless solutions They are bringing now it's actually aimed in improving adoption and also reducing the instances of failure that we see also When you talk about wallet to wallet I'm always thinking bank of course. I don't know how else to move money and to keep money So what do you do? Do you connect that to your bank account or something? How do you do it? So the beauty of wallet to wallet transactions is that you can actually fund your wallet in so many ways First of all, you can fund your wallet by what they call attaching your card Or in in fintech balance, we call it tokenizing your card So whether it's a master card, a visa card, a strawberry card, American Express or your Vef card You can actually attach it to your wallet and with the click of your button You can always fund your wallet from your debit card All right, or you can do some wallets have what they call virtual accounts that are attached to them All right, so you can also fund your wallet through virtual accounts But the beauty is that once that money enters into the ecosystem All right, and you have all that wallet users in that ecosystem It becomes quite easy for you to make payments in a time with At zero cost because the average cost for inter-bank transfer is between 10 naira and 15 naira, right? You know, based on CBN regulation and based on the amount that transfer it 150 So for example, if you have DPS transaction and you're going to do cash withdrawals I mean sometimes they charge you as much as 800 naira or 1000 naira depending on But but the fintechs are actually building an ecosystem not just within Nigeria But they are building an ecosystem within Africa and that's what people like us like Aladdin is trying to achieve Because you found out that payments within Africa is actually broken is as expensive as 15 percent Some corridors between Tanzania and Uganda to send payment is at as high as 36 percent So what we're trying to build is to build a pan-African wallet system Where I can easily send money to you in Kenya in Rwanda or in Ghana It's almost at zero cost and in two minutes because you are doing wallet to wallet transaction So that's where fintechs are actually innovating in that space So why there are other solutions that are trying to do inter-bank connections You know trying to connect CBNs across different jurisdictions, which is also prone to failure But the wallet to wallet transaction also reduces that you know incidences of failure And that's the kind of ecosystem that most fintechs are trying to build right now Can the banks take advantage of what the fintechs are doing? Yeah, but this is what about the man the fintechs cannot actually operate without the banks Because most of the banks are the the license one most of the most of the fintechs are relying on the licenses of the bank because they have to collaborate And the one answer is that some of these switches that make some of these things happen Are also controlled by the CBN and the banks are stakeholders in those switches But just that the difference is that these guys are actually innovating on top of what the commercial banks are doing Commercial banks are big. They have legacy systems So they will not be able to iterate and innovate fast as fast as fintechs who are soft So who are simple and nimble and able to take quick decisions than the commercial bank I worked in gtb. I worked in some of those banks But can you write a memo and you get a approval down to the Md level you must have taken one week two weeks three weeks But if interest is run by 30 people 20 people with their ceo and their co-founders They can take a decision within 24 hours and it's the dev guys already building it So that ability to be nimble and to be innovative and to iterate and to build faster That's what differentiates the fintech ecosystem from the commercial bank ecosystem How safe is this? Yeah, it's actually safe because it's in the protocols that actually moves this money around It's actually being encrypted. So like I told you, they're also relying on existing infrastructure You cannot build something or nothing And the good thing that we have is apart from the Kenyan market where you have EMPESA Which is mobile money. All right The Nigerian interbanking system has been very very helpful In facilitating fast payments in Nigeria in the past more than 10 years Even our POS terminals and everything before used to have POS terminals We have a chance to get T plus one. That means they get settlement the next day Listening to liquidity crisis But now you can actually get settlements in the same day or even same minute when you use your POS for collections So in so all these innovations are being built on an existing infrastructure, which has also been improved daily Yeah, okay. So Is there a deliberate policy you would want from government to make these things even more in our society? Yeah Like for example, we have a sandbox system from cbn. We have some policies that came out recently All right, but it's all about the matter is that In terms of making it easy for for example, there are so many licenses available And I'll tell you what I have different licenses for different types of fintechs There are about eight categories of 14 categories of fintechs But sometimes it's not usually very clear which license you need to do a business as a fintech Do I need to get good for this license? Why do you get the microfinance bank license and stuff like that? So that level of clarity is why most fintechs are still relying on the license of a partner bank to do transactions I believe some level of clarity will actually help and at the same time too You know, let's let's the elephant in the room is the truth is that is the show of crypto You understand that's well most of the transactions actually moving in that in that space what they call stable coins You know, I hope to know people are not too sure about cbn stand on crypto You know, for example, we heard about last time I want to stop you know, taxing, you know, revenue from crypto So we're not too sure so people That's what Nigeria is among the top three in terms of usage of crypto in the whole world It's among the top three in terms of the number of people that use crypto is over 30 million people use crypto in Nigeria Bigger than any other African country. So it's an elephant in the room So we need to understand what is the regulation clear regulation in terms of stable coins And not because I just can actually make interbank payment and pan-African payment also easier When I can use stable coins to make payments, you know in shopping malls and stuff like that Some of this clarity, you know in terms of regulation is what we're also seeking that space Okay, when you talk about wallet to wallet, we're wrapping up now when we talk about wallet to wallet For instance, Aladdin has an app Of course, does the person I'm transferring to have to have Aladdin? That's what I'm saying So you don't need to have an Aladdin app. Aladdin can do wallet to bank You get my point Everything I can do wallet to bank or wallet to mobile money So I can do wallet to gtb or wallet to sorry for calling any of the banks But is it but but when you have when you're when both of you have the same Aladdin app You don't need to pay that 10 naira or that 20 naira or that 15 naira sending money to your commercial bank account I can send money to your own Aladdin wallet and it's faster. The failure rate is less than 0.01 percent I get my point because you are sending money within the Aladdin ecosystem You're not taking it outside the bank because when you are going outside the bank you need a switch No, no, but if someone has the Aladdin app, I'm using it because you are the same Exactly Exactly You have Aladdin app and someone else that I intend to send money to has another kind of app Exactly I will be charged right? You will be charged if we decide to charge but most of the flintests are offering free transfers You know what I'm saying and that's that's that's that's that marketing gimmick of entering the market So how do you make the money? There are many ways of making the money see that's what I need to talk about what they call free tech economics So for flintests sometimes it's not about making money. They sacrifice making money for valuations See because uber uber was not profitable for a long time, but uber was valued over 50 billion dollars So when you come to the start-up world what they're looking for it's only what your investors are looking for is your level of transaction volume How many users do you have? What's your turn rate? What's the level of engagement? How many active users do you have? What's your gmv? Your gross maths, you know what the volume of transactions you are doing because by the time you can get people hooked up into your ecosystem You can start beginning to introduce charge. I don't want to mention a very popular flintest today in Nigeria That's over 40 million users when they started it was free But gradually they introduced 10 error Partly like every 10 transactions So they have 30 million people by the time you charge 10 error times 30 million people You can see that in a single day the millions they're going to make But they started by sacrificing that initial revenue to gain traction and that's what most flintests play in that direction Exactly How much time do we have? To take these these three days from you No, but I'm sure that that will be is also closing because they are investors are becoming more vociferous about revenue All right, so over 2021 over two billion dollars came into Africa in terms of fintech investment You know billows of dollars are coming into Nigeria Kenya some of the major hops fintech hops in Nigeria So and investors are also becoming wary of just doing free transactions without showing Sense of profit and you know and revenue. So people are rethinking that model into breathing profitable and revenue You know sustainable businesses business models also in fintechs. What's the future of fintech in Nigeria? The future of fintech is actually also But even even the banks realize it. That's why the banks are not doing hackathons They are doing events to incorporate the fintech model into their own model. That's more than my partnering with fintech All right, because if you think the ability to iterate faster You know makes it easier and as we see most of the banks are not going for the group model You know what they call the hotco so that hotco allows them to have a fintech arm I can mention selling bank has one gt bank has a hotco everybody's going to I was the former staff of gt so I was an s gt so I can tell you for free that everybody's going towards that hotco And that gt bank you have scored, you know, which is actually a free tech arm of gt bank Well, that's the future and the reason if you look at the reason why they did that The valuation of a fintech can go as high as 33x But the valuation of the commercial bank cannot exceed more than three or four x in terms of you know the value But the fintech can start today and we look at for example paystack was sold for 200 million dollars within four to five years How many banks can use that for 200 million dollars in four to five years? Now look for a flutter with its value that three billion dollars On the other point so the the valuation level of fintech is usually higher if you get it if you execute well So that's the future and everybody knows that they need to have an arm of fintech in their hotco Because of the level of value you can get from fintech in a short while. Okay. Well He talked to me Like an orator and then sometimes use the jargon that only the fintech people will understand But the beauty of it is that there is a future and we are tapping into it as Nigerians and it is a very good thing I'd like to thank you CEO of Aladdin digital for coming on the show. Thank you very much And we do hope that whatever policy needs to be put in place will be put in place So that people like you and others who are struggling to come up as well will do the needful We've been talking with mr. Darlington and Yagoro CEO of Aladdin digital on the program this morning. We do hope that you had a wonderful time This is where we draw the cotton on the program this morning. It's Going to be another very wonderful day tomorrow. So do join us then. My name is Nyamgol Agadji Thank you on behalf of the entire team. Bye for now