My office was in search of a video editor years ago. We advertized in the media and many people showed up for interview. It was a scarce venture at that time.

Unfortunately none of the people who came for interview knew about 'After Effect' which was one of the major packages listed on the requirement tablet.

We needed someone who was very competent and very conversant with all the packages.

A week later, a teenager showed up. I thought he had come to make an enquiry but was shocked to hear that he came for the interview.

"What interview?" I echoed with heightened curiosity.

"Video editing," he responded without much emphasis. I thought he was joking.

I asked how old he was and he said he was eighteen with a school cert as his qualification. I just felt he was a joker.

In no time, he sat on the chair facing mine and exhumed his laptop from his bag. Minutes later, he was showing me what he knew on my desk in his computer.

Soon, all the members of the management team stood listening to the boy as he lectured everyone of us on all the things he knew; and he knew more than we could imagine - more than everyone we had interviewed for the job.

My boss asked how much he would take if we employed him and he said he would rather we negotiated with him on a contract basis. He dictated all the terms. He would come only three times a week. And he wanted to be paid two hundred and fifty thousand naira! My salary at that time was not up to half the amount he requested. It was an outrageous sum.

We pleaded with him to come down a little but he was not willing to go down lower than that. He said he was already making over three hundred thousand naira monthly from the jobs he did for churches and pockets of other organizations. We needed him badly. We didn't want to let go.

My boss called for a meeting immediately the boy left us.

"How are we going to pay him?" he asked.

I came up with an idea to salvage the situation. I suggested we advertize in the media that we would hold lectures for candidates who were interested in video editing and we could then raise money from the students to pay the young man. Again, our in-house computer gurus could also learn from the young man and take over from him in the event that he decided to go.

My boss bought the idea and we immediately swung into action. We called the young man and told him of our plans. He didn't mind so long he would get his pay. He demanded we get a projector. He didn't mind that most of his students were going to be more educated and older than him because he trusted his abilities.

We did radio jingles and our phones began to buzz incessantly. People were calling from every nook and cranny. The first set of students we admitted for the first week fetched us 1.8 million naira. The course was for three months.

In six months, we had made over ten million naira from video editing students.

Why am I telling this story? Because most of us have not yet realized that crude oil can't put food on our table as much as human capital development would. When we train one person, it has a ripple effect because many more people will gain from him or her. But when we ship a barrel of crude oil abroad, it does not come back again to us.

This boy who turned things around for us at the office then did not come from Jupiter. He came from Anambra state. When we asked how he came to know all the things he knew, he revealed that the state governor had brought in computer specialists to the state from Asia to teach them for free. As a beneficiary of this initiative, he was able to learn all the things he knew. And we too learned and gained a lot from him.

The governor of Anambra state at that time was Peter Obi!

Peter Obi might not know this but he gave a boy life and by extension indirectly trained more people and put food on their tables.

This is one of the many reasons why I will continue to respect that fellow. We must all learn to add values to our lives at all times because we are valued by the level of information we possess.

Written by Japheth Prosper

#peterobiforpresident

Out of the 3 top contending political parties, who will you vote for?

Join us this evening by 6pm as we discus the surge in PVC Registration across the country.

We shall also take on some FAQs regarding PVC Registration.

The meeting holds here - https://yusocial.com/hotspot

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The new blackmail in town By Azuka Onwuka

Between 2014 and 2015 when the presidential campaign was on, I took a decision not to make any denigrating statement against Buhari in line with my philosophy of live and let live and respect for the other person’s point of view.

Based on the promotion of electoral transparency, lack of desperation, a sense of fairness which Jonathan had displayed and the fact that I wanted the South-south not to complain in future of not being allowed to complete their tenure, I preferred Jonathan. But I vowed not to say any insulting or denigrating word against Buhari. I only chose to show why I felt Jonathan was a better option.

It was my right to support any candidate. It was also the right of my friends and other people to support their own candidates. I never condemned them for one day for choosing which candidate to support.

Despite all that, I was continually attacked and called names. If the name-calling or attacks came from unknown online people, it would have been easy to understand. But even people who were very close to me in real life were part of the attackers.

Let me give instances of the type of relationship I am talking about. If a friend is out of employment and you see an opening someone and make every effort to see that the person gets the job, it shows how dear the person is to you. If you have a company and employ someone to work for you, with the person later leaving on a good note for greener pastures, naturally you have a relationship in which the person continues to see you as “my boss” and is usually careful about what to say to you.

But in 2014 and 2015 when the Buhari campaign was on, some people with whom I had such long relationships threw all that away because of Buhari. They easily cut relationships with me simply because of my right to support my candidate, not because I ridiculed or insulted Buhari. There were other people who blocked me or unfriended me without even my knowledge. Some only told me years later when they had become disappointed with Buhari’s leadership style.

Yet all this bile was not used against Buhari’s candidacy.

Remember that in 2011, when it was clear that Buhari was losing to Jonathan, his supporters went on rampage and murdered 11 NYSC guys sent on national duty. They also killed dozens of other people and burnt many houses and vehicles.

Between 2014 and 2015, Buhari’s supporters burnt billboards of Jonathan and campaign vehicles. It was not enough. They pelted him with stones when he went to campaign in some Northern states. Some people justified it and clapped for them.

This bizarre intolerance was not used against Buhari.

Northerners in PDP and APC turned the Buhari project into a northern project. It was not used against Buhari.

Jonathan and his wife were called unprintable names by governors, Senators, Nobel Laureate, columnists, analysts. Some people put his name on a goat, while some used a coffin to conduct a mock funeral for him. Many people laughed that Jonathan was being dealt with.

Buhari himself used words of violence like “Ku fita ku yi zabe. Ku Kasa, ku tsare, ku raka ku tsaya. Duk wanda bai yarda ba, ku halaka shi.” (“Firstly, you must register, come out and vote. You guard, protect, escort to the collation centre and you wait until the result is counted. Anyone who stops you, kill them!”) and “If they rig, the dog and the baboon will be soaked in their blood.” Yet, many Nigerians overlooked all this and continued to campaign for Buhari until he was declared the winner.

Before the 2015 election, many people ran away from Nigeria for fear that if Buhari lost, his supporters would unleash unimaginable violence worse than what they unleashed in 2011.

But here we are in 2022 with many people employing reverse psychology, subtle blackmail and gaslighting against the candidacy of Peter Obi, using his supporters as an excuse.

You hear empty statements like: “Peter Obi is good but his supporters are so rude”. “Peter Obi is a good candidate but his supporters are demarketing him by making him an Igbo candidate.” Ettu Mohammed asked people to present screenshots of the insulting statements made by Peter Obi’s supporters, and the few who brought out screenshots showed things like “Your candidate won’t win. Let him support Obi.” These are the insults that have been bandied around and used to silence those supporting Peter Obi.

The same Peter Obi’s supporters have been told that they are wasting their time and votes because Obi will not win, and they said, no problem. They have been told that Obi won’t win because he has no structure, and they said, no problem. Even though many opponents of Peter Obi say that he is not the frontrunner, no presidential candidate gets the amount of negative posts from those who are against his candidacy like Peter Obi does. While Obi’s supporters write about Peter Obi, his opponents spend more time writing about Peter Obi than their own candidates. And when they

Does you candidate get this kind of mad love?

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When they say he doesn't have structure, show them this.

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Some people still think 2023 elections will be business as usual.
They have not seen anything yet.

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If many churches carry out the same exercise, Nigeria will change for the better.

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Senior Prefect shares his experience with #peterobi when he was the governor of Anambra State.

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