There's something I saw on TikTok that really pissed me off. I saw a post, a carousel with slides. First slide, five skills you need to learn if you're planning to move abroad this year.
Skill number one, truck driving. Skill number two, plumbing. Skill number three, caregiving slash nursing.
Number four, factory... Eh? I started looking at myself. I'm a human being. The white man in Canada or in the UK, he no pass me.
Bruh, his government might be doing better for him. But I don't see why if the skills that I already have, I cannot go there and compete with the person who has that skill there in the same position. Why do I have to go there and start doing jobs that they feel are too low for them to do when I'm a human being and I have a home as well? Somebody who is a bank manager in Nigeria will go abroad and have to start driving truck for 18 months to get by and now walk his way up slowly and they will say Nigerians are resilient.
It's the fucking gaslighting for me. And you would feel like these people are doing you a favor by letting you into their country. And sometimes, especially in the UK, you hear, oh, immigration, they are tight, they are tight now.
They are not letting people enter the country. You would think they are doing guy, like they don't want you to come. Meanwhile, they need you to come.
Now, they know it's toilet work, they want you to come. Toilet cleaning that they are willing to offer you upon arrival. But yet, they want to take the best minds here to do the worst jobs there.
You know, they muzz you. So is that what you need? Why didn't you just give opportunities to Nigerians who don't mind doing menial jobs in Nigeria? At least they will be doing this menial job in a better climate if you are helping them, you know, if you want to be kind. But no, they will take your best doctors, your best engineers, your greatest minds, your most creative people and squish them so that they will impoverish your place.
This is not conspiracy. There is a structure that makes this happen. Who do you think run the world? It is the people with the most money that run the world.
And those are not politicians. Those are business people, corporations, CEOs whose names you don't know. Now, these corporations, obviously, to keep control, to make sure you don't lose money, everybody has to be moving the way they need them to move for the company to retain its position of power.
And with a goal as selfish as that, your life will not be as exciting or as comfortable as you want it to be because that is not the goal of the people that are running the world. In those countries where those companies are, when things start to get difficult and the citizens are wondering, yo, this is not right, where is our free housing? Why is our health care not totally free? Why do we have to go through this, that and the other stress after we are paying taxes? When they are looking for who to agitate against, so they let people from other countries come in so that you can have who to blame. They'll say, ah, is this people that are planting in this country now that is making our resources not enough for all of you that belong here? Apart from the blame game, you know obviously that from time immemorial, they've been taking people from Africa to come and work in the West.
Forcefully before, now systematically. But what they will do is to make your place so unattractive and uncomfortable while propping their own stuff high, they're making it aspirational and comfortable for you and giving you opportunities to come. The plantations that your ancestors were working on, what did you think they produced there? Raw materials, food, cotton, cocoa.
It is those things now that they will now take to factories, everyone who are doing softer work, office work, can now process and then commerce can handle that business and then the country flourishes. But there's a black man under the sun somewhere for 15 hours a day extracting their own material. There's a condition now in the minds of the people in these places where the worst jobs, the hardest jobs, the bottom feeder jobs are for these people that come, these black people that come from another country.
They're the ones that usually take these bottom feeder jobs and they do it and then once they've done all that dirty work, we take it from here. And as life evolved, the mindset is still the same. Once it gets to the lower, lower, lower level, you know, the mid, the mundane class jobs, you know, it's not them though, it's not.
The supervisor at the health care centre is not an immigrant except he has been there for 20 years. They will not just import somebody from Nigeria because he headed FMC for 15 years. He will now come and head a health centre in the UK or in the US, you know, and take an appointment.
He will come and be some kind of junior staff, some kind of, he will do some kind of low level bullshit work first and you will have to grind your way up and come and give testimony in church about your success story. But systemically, this is how they wind you and everybody you know from home. And I'm not saying don't relocate.
I'm saying it is an individualistic thing to do and it's not easy to preach this to people who are already abroad because the benefits and the contrast is too much, you know. You can't tell somebody who is already enjoying that benefit to sacrifice it and then trust that the remaining 200 and something million people who may move in the future will do the same. If you notice ads that we watched growing up, when the person that is talking, look at any ad, especially the ones with children, when the person that is talking, the child talking on the screen is talking, you will know that they are lip-syncing.
It is not the real accent that actually seems to talk. That you are hearing, it is dubbed by something that sounds a little bit more British or American. A standard ad does not have the Nigerian ethos or identity or anything ethnic in it, it doesn't.
It has to be European slash British or American in the way it looks and feels. And you're marketing to a generation, a country where the median age is 20. That's how young we are and impressionable.
And these are the things, even with hair, a lot of ladies now are standing up and trying to, you know, revive the beauty and really deconstruct from the wivorn and the light-skinned propaganda we grew up watching. Even looking at myself right now, I look at a chick, a dark-skinned girl and a light-skinned girl, I will most likely turn and look at a light-skinned girl twice. I might even find that eventually that she's uglier than the dark-skinned one, but just by virtue of the colour, it makes her much more shiny, much more attractive.
And it's not as if that is how we are normally made to evolve. Human beings are born as blank slates. It is that you grow up watching TV where the soap ad, the lady, eh, eh, she'll be darker before.
And then after she uses the soap, there's something lighter about her. They are marketing hair cream to you in Nigeria. You will never see Nigerian man with his Afro marketing hair cream.
It's American or Arab girl with that long hair. That's the ad they are watching. Hair cream, oh, in Nigeria for Nigerians.
It's crazy. I'm going to play you a clip from David Hundeyin. Hey guys, I know you're enjoying this episode.
So if you're not following, check the app you're listening on and make sure to follow. Okay. Bye.
It's about 17 years ago when I lived in the UK, there was a drink, a cider called Strongbow, which was marketed at the time as a sort of tough blue collar working class man's drink. So the end of working day drink for satellite dish installers or white van drivers and carpenters, and people will work around blue collar people. That's what it was marketed as.
So a few years later in 2015, I returned to Nigeria. I was working in marketing and the agency I was working at was tasked with launching this exact same drink in the Nigerian market. And at the commencement of this engagement, we had the opportunity to meet with the brand manager of the company behind it.
So I expected that based on the fact that I was already familiar with this drink, being this sort of blue collar working class drink that it was marketed as in the UK, that the positioning in Nigeria would be similar. So we met with the brand manager and the brand manager informed us that according to the decision of the company, the positioning of this drink would be that it's a premium drink that's intended for people between the ages of 28 and 40, who are middle-class professionals who earn above a certain amount, who live in such and such parts of town. They have a car and after a long day of work in front of their computers and their office in a nice part of town, that they wanted to hang out with their friends who are all young, upwardly mobile and attractive like them.
Long story short, they were essentially positioning this drink to be the drink of a market that basically didn't really exist in any meaningful numbers. And I queried this, that why are we advertising stuff for the benefit of an audience, a market that doesn't really exist? What the brand manager said next is something I'll never forget. He said that in the UK or in other markets in the global North, consumers are advertised to at eye level.
So you advertise to consumers in those markets by speaking to them about circumstances that they recognize. But that in African markets, that advertisements, if they're going to be successful, have to be aspirational. Which means that instead of advertising to a consumer, using something that reminds that consumer of their own life and their own circumstances and people that look and sound like them and using cultural and visual references from their own environment, that you instead import this whole other set of visual and cultural markers and even sound markers.
So the models in the video will not look like them, will not sound like them. The cultural and visual references will be from somewhere else on the planet. And that is because African consumers apparently want to be something else.
So the assumption is that you don't advertise to African consumers. When something doesn't seem right, yeah, sometimes that defiance comes off as disrespectful and whatnot. But that is a byproduct of an evolved child with confidence in all forms of expression.
They feel enough. They don't think anything is beyond them. They don't think they need to live up to any expectation.
But like I said, I cannot just stand getting cheated, you know. I will not just stand because I'm licking ice cream. Then you can now dip your hand in my back pocket and remove my wallet.
All the potential that is inside your wallet is gone because you, in your small lifetime, are enjoying this fucking great ice cream right now that you can actually share with family and friends and people will look at you in a good light because you've done well for yourself. And it's an unknown unknown. So if you do not... And for many people, it's an unknown unknown.
If you do not know that there's something in your wallet and nobody's able to steal it in the first place, you're not doing any wrong now. What is this idiot boy saying? It's sad. I'm not doing all these topics back-to-back.
I'm thinking that I'm going to effect some kind of immense change in the country. This podcast has always been about, as I learn, I talk with you, I learn. As my eyes are opening to certain things, I don't think I will stay two weeks knowing about it.
The feeling is pressing and important and not talk about it here. So that over the period of my lifetime, there will be a catalogue of honest truths that I have come to learn. And you will see in real time how it will shape my opinions and my worldview.
But I hope that it can be one of the things that sparks the mind of the people who go ahead to effect that change in the real world. For your whole month, you buy out Instaglog, you buy out whatever blog that exists out there. Buy them out and say, don't take any ads.
How much will it cost for you to run these messages for a 30-day period? People will be wondering why you are posting only this thing. Don't worry. After the 30 days pass, you can go on doing what you want to do.
I will pay you as much as you make in a full month from everybody to run this specific type of message and telling people, look, this is the relationship you and your country has with these other people. And this is how it has affected you. This is what you are in.
30 days, every blog doing that. It may not change the consciousness of the entire country, but I promise you it will make a huge difference. And somebody will be able to afford to do it.
Maybe it's even me. 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.
There you'll find other people and myself as well. Also a link to our website for more information on the Good Living Podcast. Remember to like, share and rate this podcast on whatever app you're streaming on.
Thank you.