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However, we can help thousands of other Mohbads out there before it is too late. Mohbad was really killed by his environment and when I say environment, I don’t mean ikorodu, I mean everything that influenced him growing up. The government (this one is a big one), the family, religion, his peers and more. I saw an ID card he made as a carpenter. Ask yourself, how many carpenters do you know who have an ID with the title CEO? That really shows the boy had real aspirations but lacked good mentors and role models but still, he kept pushing.

This is the real fuel for what we do at Skillup Africa. Though the least financially rewarding, Skillup Africa is my proudest endeavor so far. Time will fail me to begin to share stories with you but I will share a few. A young boy came to Skillup Africa, he was wrongly mixed up with some people and had issues with EFCC, he was arrested, detained, and mentally messed up when he came to us. A boy that is 20+ facing all that. But today that boy is a senior developer with a fintech company, now living fine and well.

Another one came who had attempted suicide many times, he even attempted it again while at Skillup Africa, at some point I was like “God, I didn’t sign up for this o”. But that same boy today is a senior full-stack developer striving. Another one came at a time, interesting, he came from ikorodu. He didn’t know what to learn he just knew he wanted to do tech and become good at it. The initial test I give to my mentees to gauge their interest and commitment that usually takes 2 weeks on average, he finished in 3 days. Today, he is in Australia living fine as a developer.

Another lady who was a receptionist earning 40k monthly challenged herself and joined Skillup Africa against all odds and in six months, she got a job that was paying her 250k per month. This is not about Skillup Africa, well maybe it is, but more about all of us doing what we can for the rest of us so that we all can become better. That’s the spirit of Ubuntu and that’s our mantra at Skillup Africa. We shouldn’t only show love when someone dies but do what we can every day to prevent such. Many of the people crying and all now, miss the opportunity to save another Mohbad daily.

Can we have a “Skillup Africa” for the music industry so boys who want to sing can thrive without issues? Can we have a “Skillup Africa” for dance, For Nollywood, for creative arts, for tech, for education, for every field? By doing so we will save the rest of us from danger and help build a better world really. This is a call to action, take action.

If you want to learn more about our current endeavors at Skillup Africa, check the comments below.

This morning, I decided to go find my old Facebook account (that was hacked and I am yet to gain access to it again. If you know how I can get it back, Biko help o). The pictures and the posts on that account bring back a lot of memories, especially those of NYSC.

I have always been a busy person, like even if I don’t have work to do, I intentionally create work for myself just so I not to be idle. I really think the time I did the most work ever was during NYSC. I was posted to a private secondary school where I was saddled with the responsibilities of teaching basic science and Agriculture to about 8 classes this leaves me a 45mins break in the space of 8 am – 2 pm, Mondays – Thursdays. Fridays were for CDS.

I also made a decision to do special NYSC projects after I saw a genuine need, the project was to refurbish a government school’s computer room, donate computers to them, and train the students on how to use the computer. I will say more about this some other time. I was also lucky to be selected as the ICT SAED trainer for Ogun state for all corps members even as a corps member myself, this was like a first-ever in the state.

To further complicate things, NCCF chose me as the “Papa” for my district. This meant that I didn’t only have to act as the pastor to the NCCF body but as a “father figure” to many. That role wasn’t beans at all. I guess I will also write about this later. To cap it all, I had my business known as Euidem Concepts at that time also running and when I saw a market for gadgets, I started the business of selling gadgets sourced from Computer Village and China to other corps members.

To cut this long story short, I pulled all these in and thrived, smashed records in every one of the things I listed up there, every single one of them; still as a corps member. I am not able to understand corps members nowadays when there are more opportunities around. They waste away the one-year period and return to ground zero after the program. It’s a sad reality we need to begin to address more often.

I know people whose lives changed for the better forever during NYSC, I know people who began to smash huge records while serving, and several others who didn’t need to go look for jobs after NYSC. I mean, how do you leave your village, come to Lagos for NYSC, and begin to act like a Lagos big boy/girl? Our youth need to wake up.

If you know anyone currently serving or those who will start soon, please share this post with them. Maybe it will help them realign a bit. I will try to write more about my experience and exploits during that time to encourage more young people.

Below is a picture of me receiving the state honors award from the representative of the state governor for being the second-best corps member in the state. The award came with a cash gift and a job offer but you know now, man picked the money on the offer and ran.

About a month ago, an old-time friend reached out to me because he wanted us to help him build the startup he has been working on in the past 3 years but there is nothing to launch. At a point he went into depression and just recently started looking into it again. Time will fall if I want to continue to give examples of instances like this so I will just stop there.

People in tech or those aspiring to get into tech need to understand what it is that it is all about. When I built my first application over a decade ago and deployed to a small company in Ibadan, I didn’t really understand the importance of what I was doing until I was invited to their office by the MD. I saw how big the place was, I saw how much money the software was used to manage and I got scared. I was not very comfortable throughout the meeting.

Immediately I got home I went back to the code and started refactoring. I understood beyond words how important the solution was. Many of us, especially those of us who freelance, are only about the quick cash we want to make. We under-estimate the job when we bill, then when the project gets complicated, we want to leave it to move to a new one. This hurts people, hurt businesses and lives.

Those of us who work with companies, lie about milestones just to scale to the end of the month so we get our salary. It’s not smart, it’s wicked. Don’t take a job you cannot do. Don’t take multiple jobs when you don’t have capacity for one, you are not smart, you are just wicked and hurting all of us.

You may say you are just young and exploring but you can actually take lives with such attitude. Each time we take a new project at Zealight Innovation Labs I do my best to continuously educate the team in the importance of the project and it’s greater good.

The pains of that old man really broke my heart. Technology should be an enabler of businesses not the end of them