THE PLATFORM 11.0 with Leke Alder

Federated Illogicalities

The enigmatic Mr. Alder mounted the stage, charged up, after receiving an energetic welcome from the exhilarated audience.

Knowing that his lecture was full of uncommon diction, he began by telling his audience that his speech would be available for download, immediately after his session, at www.lekealder.com (look out for the tab ‘lectures’).

He started by mentioning the three kinds of emotions that Nigerians face: FRUSTRATION, ANGER and DEPRESSION.

He gave an illustration of Nigeria’s problem using “the Apapa gridlock”, a spot in Lagos, Nigeria infamous for its stand still traffic caused by trucks passing through a narrow strip of real estate, thereby, constantly causing stand still traffic.

He buttressed this point saying that this particular ‘gridlock’, can be easily understood by anyone who is familiar with a slug of coca cola where the mass of liquid has to rush through a narrow bottle neck that slows down the rate of the evacuation through the throat. Consequently, the gridlock was a bottleneck.

Mr. Alder compared Nigeria to Dubai and showed how the nation has contained similar issues such as we have in Nigeria. All these brought Mr. Alder to the point of stating the various illogicalities that Nigeria suffers from.

The first is CONCEPTUAL ILLOGICALITY. In his words, it is “the fact that we pride ourselves in being a federation, refer to ourselves as the federal republic yet we run a unitary administrative structure. There’s systemic misalignment.”

The second is DEMOGRAPHIC ILLOGICALITY. This, he explained by stating the gross under-representation of Nigerian youths in the political system. Mr. Alder took the position that, since the youth are familiar with technology, an example being the smart phone, they can come up with fresh ideas unlike the old and recycled leaders who, in his words, don’t even have an understanding of modern economics.

The third Illogicality is RELIGIOUS ILLOGICALITY. This kind is about Nigerians being so religious that they believe political participation is not necessary for them. Meanwhile, they pray about things that are results of policy failure.

Further more, Mr. Alder touched on how to appropriately distribute energy in Nigeria, based on the geographical advantage of each geographical region. For instance, the North can thrive on Solar Power, the East can thrive on Clean Coal and Hydro Power, the South, on Fossil fuel, Natural Gas and Hydro Power. As for the West, Hydro Power and Wind Turbines can be their energy source. He concluded this energy discourse by using Power Point Illustrations to show the economic advantages of Solar energy to the North. He followed this up with a series of tourism benefits that the North can leverage on, laying emphasis on the summer goodness of Northern Nigeria.

Mr. Alder did a recap of the second Illogicality – demographic Illogicality. He stated that Nigeria is running on the expired vision of the old generation. Hence, we should come to agreement with the verity of this statement: ‘old men shall dream dreams of yester years, young men shall see visions.’ “

He then continued by saying,  “Vision is the purview of youths and not of old men.”

This call on today’s youth took Mr. Alder to remind his audience that Nigeria’s former Heads of State were all youths apart from Nnamdi Azikwe who was 59 and Shehu Shagari who was 54.

Mr. Alder then did a contrast with the present Nigeria where the leaders are recycled with the median age being 55 not just at the Federal level but also at the State level.

He summarised by saying, “Vision has to be reviewed periodically. Once a vision is achieved or overtaken by events, it must be discarded and a fresh one crafted. The vision we’re running was crafted under a set of circumstances that no longer exist.” He therefore canvassed for ‘fresh ideas’ from the youth.

As a result, Mr. Alder gave an example of a fresh idea and prescribed that we could vote with our mobile phones since the mobile telephone density of Nigeria is about 150 Million.

Anticipating that there would be opposition to this fresh idea, Mr. Alder countered them in his best statement. He noted that the current system we run is routinely rigged, it is hijacked by hoodlums, the figures are easily manipulated by corrupt collating officials and “the correction of the injustice created can take years to redress at the election tribunal.” He called out the staggering statistics of Big Brother Nigeria voters as a demonstration that electronic voting is a possibility in Nigeria.

He further challenged the thinking that is against electronic voting by giving various instances where our transportation through the air plane, the train and the terminal, all involves us trusting our lives to a computer. He also gave examples of Dubai using technology in solving simple issues.

Mr. Alder took the audience back to the third Illogicality which he emphasised as ‘The Illogicality of Unthinking Religiosity’. After giving various examples of how this Illogicality is potrayed by Nigerians, he put this to the audience, “take care of our governance, sort out our policy, 99% of our prayer points will disappear. Then God can focus on more important stuff concerning this country…”.

He concluded his speech by quoting Bertolt Brecht: “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, and takes no part in political life. He doesn’t seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans, of flour, of rent, of medicines, all depend on political decisions. He even prides himself on his political ignorance, sticks out his chest and says he hates politics. He doesn’t know, the imbecile, that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber and worst of all, corrupt officials, the lackeys of exploitative multinational corporations.”

The conclusion of Mr. Alder’s speech was that Nigerian youths must;

1. Create a round table,

2. Develop an agenda,

3. Develop a strategy,

4. Raise finance,

5. Organise a platform, coalesce a platform, hijack a platform,

6. Mobilise and

7. VOTE.

He bowed out with a “Thank you. May God bless the Federal republic of Nigeria and God bless you.”

You can listen to the full speech of Mr. Leke Alder by clicking the link The Platform, Get Involved 07 Leke Alder

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