And some people are telling you Peter Obi will not change Nigeria. There is some truth in it. They say ignorance is bliss and also knowledge can become a form of torture for those who possess it.
But knowledge is also very vital, especially when it protects you from being cheated. And by the end of this episode, I want to make sure that we have knowledge that is not going to torture us, but is going to protect you from being cheated and not just you, the children that you give birth to or the ones you already have, which you know you'll be worried about until the day you die. The knowledge in this episode is going to help you make better decisions that would improve their lives.
So if the implementation of this knowledge doesn't work for you in your lifetime, hopefully it will work for those that you love who are much younger than you. We are talking about geopolitics. Geopolitics is a country using their geographical location on the world map and the resources that they have therein to influence decisions and direct the world and shape the direction that the world goes in.
And so it is the relationship between a country and the outside world, relationship between ECOWAS and the EU, things like that. So the idea is politics, but on a global scale. Many of us in Nigeria, especially those who live in Nigeria, are not sufficiently aware of the impact of geopolitics in our daily lives.
And so when a wind blows from the West or from Europe and it is meant to circumvent the entire planet, when it comes to us here, that wind will look a certain way. It may come in the form of subsidy removal or something and it will pass us and we'll just think, OK, this is something that's happening to us in this country. But if you're not aware of geopolitics, you will not be able to trace the series of events that has put us in that situation.
France, Portugal, England. We're all over Africa, colonizing different places, different regions and carving them out for themselves. Hold that thought.
Now, in 1960, we got independence. And what that allowed us to do was to self-govern. We would have our own people make decisions that would affect our own people to a certain degree, but we've not retained full control of our country as the term independence should describe.
Listening to this, not only is there foreign interest, there is foreign influence in our country, especially from the United Kingdom, which colonizes us. And there are several evidences of it. And I'm going to highlight a few.
One is the civil war, our Nigerian civil war, Biafra versus Nigeria. I'm saying it like it's a football match. But the way that war went eventually was as a result of the foreign powers that interfered and intervened.
At the end of the day, the UK felt like, OK, enough is enough. And they just did their utmost best to overpower the small Biafra by supplying Nigeria with weapons and guns and all of that. They even helped shut the port that Biafra got food and supplies from so that the people would be impoverished and so would not have the energy literally to fight any war.
That's an example of foreign influence in a country that is supposed to be independent. Another example is for subsidy. You would think that, ah, the president just woke up one day and decided, you know what, let us remove subsidy.
But remember, Nigeria is always taking loans. A lot of African countries are always taking loans from the IMF and from the World Bank. And a lot of these loans come with contractual agreements, come with terms.
And so there are people outside of this country that give directives to our government on what to do before they can help or support our government in any way, shape or form. So if we decide we want to take a loan, they can give us terms and say for us to release this 20 something billion dollars to you guys. These are one or two policies you have to implement in your country.
And the reason why that happens or why they would what influences some of those policies is their interest, the IMF's interest or interest of countries that they are affiliated to. So the UK or France may see that if Nigeria moves in this direction, it will be good for our country. And so IMF, because of our relationship, next time Nigeria comes to take a loan, tell them that they should include this, this and that in their country's policies before you give them that loan.
And so Nigeria inevitably comes to borrow money and they will say, OK, these are the terms of the loan. And our leaders will say, OK, good and fine. Where do we sign? And they'll take the loan and they will implement those things.
In a 2014 study done by somebody they call Benjamin Page and somebody, Gillens, they checked how much the US citizens, how much influence they have on policy outcomes in their country. They had little or no influence. So all the talk, all the shouting that citizens are shouting at the end of the day, when government are making policies, the citizens of the US have little or no influence on the policies that the government actually adopt.
And the US, relatively to Nigeria, is doing far better. Their citizens are in heaven compared to where we are here. So imagine what our own percentage correlation would be.
And it's because of reasons like this. The decisions our government makes are not based on feedback from the citizens. And why is it so? Why do the Western countries and the European countries have so much influence on us, or they have so much influence on us because they were handed over the influence, it was inherited by their predecessors, by people who came here and first grabbed that influence from our forefathers who sold it to them.
And the reason they are still interested is because we sustain them. Look at your phone, for example. A lot of the technological advancements that you see, a lot of the inventions that we have are made with natural resources that are deposited on our continent.
You won't find them in Europe. If you think of Europe, you don't think of natural resources. You think of good governance.
You think of technological advancements. You think of them using their head. You think of good road networks, great sites, you know, creativity, the movies, the music.
But natural deposits, the thing that actually drives advancement of technology and drives and moves the world forward and sustains us. It is from here they get them, they extract them from you, and then they use them for their own purposes. And then the technology that they use, they gatekeep, they don't share.
And to be fair, we have no interest in learning it. If an African country wants money, they come with that. Tag of poor, suffering, hungry nation and collect money.
To eat, you feel me? So even our leaders are not going towards those countries with the mindset of, OK, give us the technology, teach us how to fish. That's not the mindset the black man has. That's what the mindset the African man has.
But there's a silver lining in Africa today. There are countries who have discovered this thing long ago. And I've tried.
They've tried to become truly independent, where they can make their own decisions based on what is good for them and their people. One example of this effort, a very popular example is Muammar Gaddafi. Muammar Gaddafi was interested in making Africa independent, having all our own currency and bringing all African leaders together so that we can generate our own resources and spend our own resources as we like to improve our country, our continent, the way it's supposed to be done.
And you see what happened to him. I was schooling in Kaduna and I was in my auntie's house, my cousin's house. And it was around that time that Muammar Gaddafi got killed.
The clip was on Al Jazeera. And everybody in the house that day, we were all in the mind frame that, ah, this bad man has finally been captured and killed. Because of what the media fed us.
Because of the information we had. It did not give us that full scope of what was going on. You know, we don't get the update.
And it's almost like we are booting, we are lagging. It's now that the thing is booting. It's coming long after the man has been killed.
It's now we understand what Pan-Africanists are fighting for. But in recent years, we've recorded some successes. Certain African countries have truly lifted the veil of colonialism from their country, and they are heading towards total independence.
Burkina Faso is the most common one, is the most popular one. Aside Burkina Faso, there is Niger Republic, our neighbors here, and then also Mali. I don't know much about these other two countries or what they've done.
I don't think they are. I've not been exposed to the news of their own independence or seen how it has affected them positively. But in Burkina Faso, their GDP has grown.
Their foreign reserves have grown exponentially. And why were they able to achieve this? With the help of yet another foreign country, Russia. Let me backtrack a little bit.
For a country to be truly independent, you know, that would mean chasing away literally to the foreign influence. And this is what Burkina Faso did. They're a sovereign nation, first of all, just like Nigeria.
And so they use their sovereignty. Or before they use their sovereignty, Ibrahim Thureiwe led that coup that overthrew their government. And so with the new government in place, with new ideologies, they decided this agreement we have with you guys, France, to be taking our money and giving us this, that and the other.
We don't want to do it anymore. We are a sovereign nation. We say we don't want this agreement anymore.
So they cut the agreement. The French ambassador that was in their country, they expelled him. It's OK, you can go now.
We have no relationship anymore. But the strength to be able to do this came from their alliance with Russia. And also they did a lot of rallies and campaigns against the French, which means using their media to tell their people exactly what was going on.
Like you, these people being here is not necessarily good for us. So that is why we are doing this. And so with that conscious, the elevation of the consciousness of the masses, even the people could understand what the government were doing and why it is good for them.
I imagine that this may bring some difficulties. Early on, difficulties, as in people would lose jobs. You know, certain things would happen that would be connoted as negative.
But overall, the action would be considered a net positive for the African country. And that is what they did. And as a result of that, France has become very, very good friends with the UK, because like I said, we sustain these people.
They cannot live without some sort of collection from Africa. And that is why you see our own president has become very, very tight with Emmanuel Macron, our own president. Let me show you another example of foreign influence.
Remember when Benin Republic had this coup? What do you think they wanted to do? They wanted to do what happened in Burkina Faso. But because the UK and France have become very tight. And and the UK are still our colonizers.
And so if France goes to them and says, please, this our other colonies who are trying to do this thing that they did in Burkina Faso. Can you tell your boy in Nigeria to go and stop that thing? Because why is it that in December 2025, Thinibu sent troops quickly to Benin Republic to destabilize that coup? It was because the West needed it and we are still their underlings. We don't have that independence.
And then Daniel Bwala, which is the spokesperson for the presidency, will come out and say Nigeria is doing well because France says so, or Nigeria is doing well because the IMF says so. They are banking on your stupidity. For that thing to sound like common sense, for that thing to sound like positive news.
I don't know what the ideas Russia has, right? Because obviously Russia are not Jesus Christ that want to liberate Africa. I'm sure that they've got their own interests. But if the UK and France or some of these other countries have inherited this feeling of entitlement and inherited this feeling of greed that they own this place and the resources they're in.
It could also be that Russia, who I don't think colonize any part of Africa, I'm not quite sure. It could also be that Russia also has the same interests, but not from an entitled perspective or a greedy perspective as the others. And if anything, they see that perspective as a recipe for disaster for the West, which is them too.
They are part of the West. And so I imagine they look at that and say, if we keep going like this, exploiting these people, a time will come where they will launch aggressively against us. And all of us are on the same continent.
And so we will all suffer. And I don't agree with this, your greed and entitlement. So I'm going to propose to these people a much more symbiotic relationship.
And if you're not going to agree to it, then I will empower the ones I can empower so we can have that relationship. So that when time comes that these people will fuck you guys up, I will be exempted. And now there may be other underlying reasons or darker reasons that I may not know, but this is the one that seems to make the most sense to me.
And that is why you see Putin in mainstream media looking like a bad person. They put him and Kim Jong-un on the same level of evil. The real evil doers are the ones that are coming looking soft to you, UK, US.
They're the ones that are looking soft to you. And then they will now paint Kim Jong-un and Putin as the devils because they are independent. They are doing their own thing and they are exercising their sovereignty.
I'm not saying Kim Jong-un is a good person. I don't know enough about North Korea because the things that I hear also so much like they will kill you for watching porn. And there are only 25 approved hairstyles.
But these are the things that the media is feeding us. And it's the same media that has been feeding us things from way back that told us Gaddafi was a bad person. And so with this information on hand now, what am I going to do with it? The first thing I'm going to do with it is to keep myself aware of geopolitics, is to keep myself aware of the truth.
And how do I keep myself aware? Is to follow investigative journalists. They are journalists who are interested in the liberation of Africa and in bringing out the truth of every single matter. The reason that it is important to follow up journalists is because they have evidence.
It's not just someone like me who would read the headlines and think about what may be going on. Journalists like David Hinden would go and find the paperwork that proves what he's saying so that it doesn't sound far-fetched or it can be proven when he's called to talk about it in public. And that is what I would do.
And also, I would try as much as possible to take what the IMF says, what the World Bank says, what BBC says, CNN and all these legacy media or mainstream media companies, what they say, I would take it with a pinch of salt because it is all propaganda media, not truth media. To the people that matter, to the elites, we are just numbers. We are just statistics.
And it's almost like, remember waterbending? This is going to be a strange analogy. Remember waterbending that Kitara in Avatar used to do? So imagine that the elites in these countries are Kitara and we, to them, are the water. And so they feel like if we move this water this way, we could achieve this purpose for our own good.
Regardless of what happens to the water. And that is how they just move things. And so they will use the media as a tool to move the water however they want to move it.
They don't care about what you think or how you want your life to be at the end of the day or the kind of life you want to live. And that's why it is right for you to stand up and fight for your right, for your own children and for yourself. And the final thing I'm going to do is to make sure that my political decisions are based on geopolitics and the truth on geopolitics.
And so if I'm going to vote for anybody, I'll be voting for the person that will make my life better. But not based on what he's saying he will do in this country. It's based on what he's going to, based on the relationship he intends to have with foreign governments.
And some people are telling you Peter Obi will not change Nigeria. There is some truth in it. But neither will Tinubu or Shiori or any other people.
Yes, they may come in and say they want to do their best to ensure that at least we are not suffering as much as we are suffering. But in the grand scheme of things, make your political decision based on who will yield the net positive results in the long run. If you've gotten to this part of the episode, then we've got something for you.
If you look in the description, you will find a link which gives you access to the Good Living Podcast discussion group. You'll find other people and myself as well. Also, a link to our website for more information on the Good Living Podcast.
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