fbpx

What I am today, I owe to my upbringing

Scroll this

“The typical African parent is very strict, but my parents were not extremely strict. Yes, they were strict but, they gave us a bit of aptitude to explore certain things and try to discover ourselves. However, there were always boundaries. For me, growing up was quite challenging at a point because I was the kind who’s very reserved. You know quiet children are not encouraged in Africa; a child is supposed to be active and highly sociable. This expectation created some challenges for me because the expectations were that I would be more active, but I was very shy. In fact, there were many criticisms that I was too timid, too slow, too this, too that, so I had to endure that while growing up.

Despite the criticisms, I had some things going for me because I was always curious to learn more, and I read so many books. While growing up, my father encouraged me to study and taught me certain things while growing up such that at the age of 7 I knew about 99% of all the capitals of all the countries in the world.
We weren’t rich, and my parents were very strong in values, so I wasn’t the kind that would steal, cheat, or engage in anything that would be injurious to my reputation or the name of my family. So that helped me deflect any negative influence that came my way. I think that my upbringing has stayed with me up till now because lot of what I am today, I owe to my upbringing.

My mom was a teacher at my Primary School so it was cheaper for us because students that are children of staffs at that school would pay half of what others paid. So that helped us. My secondary school was located close to the slum areas of Lagos, in a place called Ajegunle district of Apapa, Lagos. That was a challenging environment because in there was a guy like me with very sheltered upbringing, and I didn’t even know how to speak the pidgin. On average I was close to the top of my school because I discovered something about myself. I always thrive best when my abilities intersect with my passion and things I believe in. If I were doing something but weren’t passionate about it, yes I would do well, but it won’t be something that would be talked about. So for me, that was the trend.

After secondary school, the average parent, especially in Lagos, would want their child to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or maybe an accountant or a banker. Any one of those major professions that have been known to bring money. Seeing that we were not rich people and were trying to get by, those professions were something that would bring us money. For me, I struggled to do that because I couldn’t take that path. I knew that was clearly not going to be my story. It was a tough decision, so I had to think about it.

I passed the JAMB (Joint Admission and Matriculation Board) exam and got admission to study computer engineering course. Although, It was at a time when the internet was blowing up in Nigeria, and people saw the potential in IT, computer and software engineering fields, however, I knew that I wasn’t aspiring towards those fields. So I had to make a very difficult decision to decline the admission, and do something else with my life. It was quite difficult because nobody really gets that chance here in Nigeria, and everyone is expected to do what they are supposed to, that is, what your family expects you to do. I was just a determined person who wanted to follow what he had in mind. That was costly because it almost damaged my relationship with my parents.

I always knew that psychology was my thing because I could walk into a bookstore and pick up a book and get lost in it if it had anything to do with the human mind, human potential, how to improve it, the study of human behavior, the trajectory of development, how the human mind is formed and how it is related to physiology. Sometimes the bookstore staffs would walk up to me and ask me if I would like to buy the book since I’ve been reading it for hours; it was like food for my mind. So that fascinated me, it was something that I could be doing and easily lose track of time. It was something that I really wanted to do, so that clearly told me that this is where my abilities and my passion would intersect.

Getting to do this course (psychology) was another challenge because my parents knew nothing about it, and were not very enthused by my decision to study it. Psychology is a relatively new interest in Nigeria, and most people would even confuse it with philosophy.
One of the most devastating times came in 2011 when I wrote a second JAMB exam to study Psychology at the University of Lagos. I did very well on the exam, but due to the inconsistencies with the scoring and marking that the JAMB Body has encountered in previous exams, and with the scandals and cheating controversies of the past, I got a message saying that I had cheated and my result has been canceled. I was devastated. I wondered what could had happened, and what I think they did is that they look at the result and try to judge how realistic it is, so they concluded that my result was unusually high and must’ve been due to cheating or other fabricated means. When I reviewed the results later, I thought, ok I’m sure they might have placed some red flags when they discovered that in one of the subject papers, I had a perfect score. I remembered that I meticulously prepared for that exam, and I even remember vividly that I finished the exam with some 40 minutes left to spare, which I used to review all the questions over again and affirmed to myself that the answers are exactly what they were asking for. I went to so many offices and asked them to review it, but that did not work.

This was very disappointing, so I struggled to find alternative means to getting into the University. By God’s grace, I discovered a preliminary program through which I could get into the full bachelor of science program. This preliminary program was expensive. My parents did not have the means to support me financially, so I had to to do all kinds of jobs, odd jobs, to survive. I was a sales person at a point, I tutored students, I sold computer accessories like flash drives, disks, and memory cards. I just had to strive and go out to earn something for myself.
I had to go to family friends and hustle for money all over the place, and people were kind and helpful. There were very wonderful people who decided to support me because they saw that I was very sincere and I really wanted to do something with my life. With

So I finished the one-year preliminary program in 2012. When I commenced into the full Bachelor of Science Psychology program, I encountered some challenges with the people who were accepted into the program from the onset. They had this perception of us (the preliminary program graduates) as people who had come through the backdoor because we had to do the preliminary program and join them in the official program. So there was a bit of prejudice directed at us, so much that we had to prove ourselves that we did not come there to joke, that we really wanted to learn this thing and know it very well. So the perception changed when they realized that, and we were able to earn their respect and even became very close and interacted well.

Through the preliminary and full program, my parents did not have the means to support me financially, so I had to to do all kinds of jobs, odd jobs, to survive. I was a sales person at a point, I tutored students, I sold computer accessories like flash drives, disks, and memory cards. I just had to strive and go out to earn something that would fend me some money to provide things that I need, textbooks, and feeding. Most of the things I needed I had to fend for myself. I had to make sure that I had the time to some other things that I mentioned, so I had to plan my time well. I rarely had time for myself; I had to work most of the weekends too.
That is how I struggled and struggled through it all and God was really there for me, I have to admit because I’m a very prayerful person, and I take my relationship with God seriously. There were times when I was painfully hungry and knew I had to do more, get out there and work harder to feed and take care of my needs.
It was a very challenging period, but I believed in what I was doing. I believed that the study of psychology would be instrumental in impacting my society even much more that its current effects. I felt that it would yield an opportunity and platform to tell people that irrespective of their adversities, anything is possible. Irrespective of what society has decided that you can become or not become, you can do something different, you can contribute more, you can be a force to be reckoned with, and your life can have more meaning than you currently think is possible. I felt that psychology would give me that voice and make me impactfully better. I believe that most of the problems we have in Nigeria as simply due to the underutilization of our teaming human resource. For me this is something that drives me to consider how best we can get people to be in the right places, to direct people, guide them correctly, and let them know that they’re not limited by anything, and are not limited to certain choices.

I believe in helping people achieve their potentials. I’ve always been eager to offer whatever assistance I could render, I tutored, taught, shared my books. I believe that it is important that everyone have the opportunity and wherewithal to achieve their goals. In school, I believe that if we all did very well, it doesn’t detract from me, rather, it improves me. So I was always sharing what I knew.

The belief that you have to hold back is really privative and pervasive because it looks at life as a very zero-sum manner, believing that you only have so much and if you share it it’s gone. When you share knowledge with people with the little you know, you empower them and enable them to improve, with opportunities to be better than they are, and then you are also becoming a better person. That is really how to make a difference in the whole scheme of things. It is important always to find a way to help someone be better at anything in anyway I could. Even if I couldn’t help, I had to connect the person to somebody who could.
This is really something that is lacking in this country. Most people do not have a platform to improve at what they’re currently doing, and that reduces the scope of their potential and if they had such environment enriched with more resources, information, or any thing that they need or would help them better themselves, we would discover that it would even help us more as a whole.
That is what I believe in, and it showed in my department at UNILAG. In their 48-year history, they’ve never had five students on a first-class like we had this time around. All the while it had always been 2 or 3 students. For the first time we had five people with the first-class grade, and this was simply because we were more interested in collaborating instead of being blindly competitive. That is what many people do that really reduces our net value. We are competing so hard and try to pull each other down, and we forget that if we raise someone up, then we all rise and it improves and establishes us as even generally more competitive. So we have to be more collaborative and help each other. This is something that I’ve learned and live by.”

~~ Ayodele Dada

Q:  So how were you able to sustain your excellent GPA (a perfect 5.0 Cumulative GPA!) considering how difficult your difficult schedule and hurdles?
~  “I have been asked that question severally and the simple answer I will give is that I never looked at everything on a long-term path. I was looking at it from one day to the next. What I mean is I was thinking short term instead of the long term because I know quite a few people who were thinking this is what I want to finish with but then you have that long goal and you are looking at that meanwhile, things are happening right in front of you in short term. I was just preoccupied with winning the short terms. That was where my focus was on. This assignment, do it well; this test, do it well; this current exam, do it well. Do today well because tomorrow is another day and the next will keep coming. So, just keep doing each they well and when it adds up, then you get to wherever you want to be.”

Q:   So you’re already working. How can you describe your experience at your workplace?
~   “My experience at work has been wonderful. I have interacted with some of the best minds at work. These are smart and driven people who will want to win in any way possible as long as it is legal and it is the right thing to do. These are highly principled people who are determined to achieve great things. It has been a great experience. I have to learn things, and I have even surprised myself by learning things that I have not even learnt before.”

Q:   Where do you see yourself in the next five to 10 years?
~   “By the grace of God, five years’ horizon, I want to have at least furthered my education. I won’t say exactly now at least I want to be somewhere where my expertise, efficiency, and certification in my field is a lot higher than it is now. I want to be professional and recognized in my field. Ten years I want to be really distinguished but, five years, I want to be on that path, whatever it’s I have to achieve the level of distinction in my field not just at this level. I really want to go far.”

Submit a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *