Will only add that as much as civic education should be accessible, let’s just be careful not to encourage spoonfeeding people knowledge. People have to want change. Which means they have to be ready to learn/put in the work. Otherwise the only muscle we’ll build is laziness.

And me I don’t spoon-feed (not the same as making something easier to understand btw). It goes against everything I stand for. Because corny as it is, the change we want starts from within. If by now you’re still expecting someone else to do the work for you, please look within.

I can’t shout how important the next few years are. People keep saying 2023 but that is not far at all, even by political standards. Necessary as it is, starting now is the equivalent of pulling an all-nighter. Any education we do now has to be like shacking Red Bull.

The other thing I find interesting is how we keep saying grassroots education. Honestly, it’s misdirected because you can only know Nigeria from the grassroots. Educate yourself. What you think this country is, is miles apart from how the majority experience it.

So we should be talking about exchanging knowledge with people at the grassroots, building collaborative infrastructure and not this dodgy view of them as vacuous. They have more to offer than thumbprints. Knowing this is what makes us better than the current Ogas at the top.

PS, exchanging knowledge is really as simple as genuinely asking people what their experience is (and sharing yours). You’re passionate about public health, ask the people directly involved and impacted by it. How does it work? How are they affected? What would improve it etc.

Huge issue at the moment is leaders just don’t get how people struggle (more here: https://republic.com.ng/vol3-no2/nigeria-crisis-of-representation/). But you don’t need to directly experience an issue to know it’s an issue/how to fix it—that’s the power in exchanging knowledge and collaborative civic education.