Have a great day!



After a few days of being lazy with my morning run, I set out to knock off a 5km run in 30 minutes, I hit the target and it was a very easy run (as I described on Strava). Against the usual, I wasn’t going to listen to any folk or country album during the run, so after the Higher Everyday Devotional #TwitterSpace ended, I switched to Dayo Moyo’s This is The Future podcast. Moyo and I go way back and he is a great media guy. For me, it is even more exciting to see that the Podcast is back after a short break. I had retweeted and made a comment on his post about having a chat with Victoria Ibiwoye so I was looking forward to listening to the interview.

In the last 5 years, Victoria is one person I would like to call a colleague in the youth and international development space, only that we haven’t met in person but I know about her incredible work with UNESCO and her organization, One African Child. Clearly, there was a lot more about her that I didn’t know and it was very stirring listening to her story, as Moyo asked the right questions and charted the conversation in a very interesting direction.

By the way, with his, This is The Future Podcast, Moyo’s projection, as an African is to tell the stories of Africans by Africans. Please, recommend folks that you know who have intriguing stories. We could just be inspired by their works and life. I have had the privilege to be featured on his podcast where I shared about my road to the most powerful room in the world, the United Nations General Assembly.

Successful people should put themselves out in ways that others are inspired and not intimidated.

I digress, the primary reason for writing this is to share two outstanding insights from Victoria’s chat with Moyo on the podcast. First, Victoria said something along the lines of, “successful people should put themselves out in ways that others are inspired and not intimidated.” Of course, I paraphrase, you can listen to her own words here. Now, that makes a lot of sense for me as I reflect on the depth of that. It should be for you too, especially if you are active on socials. I think of it in different ways but summarily; as a successful person, seek to inspire – not to intimidate others. As a yet-to-be-successful person, while you read tons of stories (or bragging posts on social media) from successful people, you should deliberately seek to learn and be inspired – not intimidated.

The second thing I learned from listening to Victoria is how she conceived and ran with the idea of One African Child during an ASUU strike. Writing this piece on the 102nd day of another ASUU strike, it is even more meaningful. Through this idea birth during ASUU strike (which many consider an educational misfortune in Nigeria), Victoria has used this organization to inspire and shape millions of African children to embrace education in all it forms and build themselves to solve challenges around them.

It is a long day ahead for me – I would drive some 100km to get some things done, then proceed to honour an invitation to speak about the implementation of Nigeria’s recently adopted Climate Change Act at a workshop. I just thought to share this with you and now I wish you a great day!