Nigeria Content Online

“Poverty was handed over to me. I inherited poverty from my dad.
Nobody gave me weekly allowance or pocket money. But there is something that
hardship does to your brain. Poverty makes you desperate to make it by all
means.”

These words were spoken by Paschal Okwundu, a Stanbic IBTC
banker, as he addressed 100 young people who attended The Ajegunle Project, a
youth enlightenment initiative organised by the Tulip Foundation, a social and
moral values non-governmental organisation on December 4, 2010 at Bequest
College, Ajegunle.

Mr. Okwundu described growing up as a 19-year-old in Ajegunle,
Lagos’s most popular slum, who wanted to go to university but whose parents had
no money to send him there. It cost N1,650 to purchase the Joint Admissions and
Matriculation Board form at the time, but neither Mr. Okwundu nor his parents
could afford it.

Determined to succeed

Mr. Okwundu began to organise after-school lessons in maths and
physics for students at Hope Tutorial Centre in Ajegunle. Five days a week, he
worked two hours daily. He earned N45 an hour, making N450 weekly and N1,800
monthly. By 2001, he had saved up enough money to buy a JAMB form and he got
admission in 2002 into the University of Lagos to study chemical engineering.

“I had saved N2,500 in two years when I got my admission,” he
told the students. “But this money finished in two weeks. So I began doing home
coaching and working night jobs again. And by the time I was in year three, I
was running two businesses and making N34,000 monthly.”

Education and
transformation

Richard Yabrifa, who also grew up in Ajegunle and now works with
First Bank, also spoke to the youth on the importance of personal development.
He said the purpose of education goes beyond getting a good job, paying one’s
bills, and catering for one’s family, but becoming an agent of change in one’s
environment.

“Many people go to school but their education has not brought
much transformation to their lives because they have not realised the value of
their education, which is personal development,” he said. “Ask yourself, has
education really changed my ideas, my level of reasoning? You should see
education as your own responsibility to make an impact on the society.”

He further encouraged the youth to align their dreams of what
they wanted to achieve and become in future with their purpose for going to
school, which should not be dependent on the state, the educational system nor
their teachers.

“Purpose is that thing which motivates you to move forward.
Attach a high value to it. Without purpose, you’ll just go to school and just
make up the number, graduate, and at the end of the day become among the number
of unemployed graduates. Don’t see it as your teacher’s responsibility to give
you an education but as your personal responsibility,” continued Mr. Yabrifa.

From zero to hero

Johnson Abbaly, the president of Achievers Consortium
International, a non-profit youth empowerment organisation, compared the resilience
of Ajegunle youth to the 2005 Champions League winners, Liverpool FC, who in
the finals of the football competition came from a 3-0 deficit to win the
tournament against AC Milan.

“Nigerians have a spirit that never says die, and in Ajegunle,
that spirit is very evident in our daily survival,” he said. “Don’t allow your
background keep your back on the ground. You can come from zero and become a
hero. Stop looking down on yourself and instead start celebrating yourself as a
success.”

The coordinator of TAP and Tulip Foundation founder, Bolatito
Coker, further said the answer to rebranding Nigeria lay in changing the
mentality of the younger generation by instilling the right values in them.

“The rebranding of Ajegunle is the major focus of this project,”
she said. “With this project, we want to encourage the youth that there is more
to life, more to achieve, more to hope for, more to dream about, more to live
for, and so many more. They can be the best at what they do.”

Show some love

A motivational speaker and pastor with the Church of God
Mission, Ifeanyichukwu Harrison, who for 10 years had lived in Ajegunle, said
from his 18 years experience working with the youth, the absence of love is the
main reason children grow up to become the miscreants the society now
castigates them for.

“We need to learn to accept these so-called area boys and give
them a sense of purpose,” he said. “Most of them have become what they are
because nobody loved them, because nobody wanted them. As a people, we need to
show some love.”

Youth speak

Many youth who attended the TAP event said they had come to see
themselves and their environment differently. Priscilla Arinze, a recent
secondary school leaver who for 15 years has being living in Ajegunle, said
that the messages had inspired her. Before then, she had questioned the
necessity of an education in Nigeria.

“The youth in Ajegunle need to change their mentality and know that
education is necessary,” said 17-year-old Miss Arinze. “I used to wonder what
is the need going to school but now I understand the usefulness of an education
is to learn more and develop myself. I have learnt to aspire for greater
heights.” Edidiong Solomon, a 12-year-old JS3 student of VKC Schools in
Ajegunle, said: “I learnt that my environment cannot stop me from becoming
something in future. I am going to make a difference in this country and
improve Ajegunle.”