Graduates should learn valuable skills – Rotimi Okungbaye, Biochemist turned Photographer

Rotimi Okungbaye studied Biochemistry at Covenant University but today does photography and marketing.  Now   Product Marketing Manager at Flutterwave, he  talks about the need for today’s graduate to be multi-skilled in this interview with franktalknow.com

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What is your perception about Nigeria’s education system?

I don’t think Nigeria’s education system is what it should be right now.  There are so many challenges – from primary to secondary to university.  Let me use this pandemic as a very good example.  If Nigeria’s education system was okay, some universities would have resumed online just like in countries where most students are taking their classes online. But in Nigeria, many students are just at home doing nothing; they can’t resume, they can’t join any classes online, they can’t do anything,   just at home waiting till everything gets better.

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That’s why I am in total support of people going abroad to study especially if they can fund themselves, if they can afford it, they should go abroad to study.  For example, a typical government university in Nigeria has lots of issues.  It is either there is a strike today or riot tomorrow.  It is very hard for you to get into university today and be certain that in the next four years you will leave the university.  It is either it becomes five to six years because of strike here and there or because of other challenges.   You are worried about your security,   your health, worried about lecturer that may not give you proper marks or the ones asking female students for sex.  So, people just want a place where they can go to university, learn what they want to learn and leave the university.

What do you think the government should be doing?

 Well, I think if our government is ready to take a very good look at our education system, they need to invest in it.  It is a lot of investment.  The people going   abroad are going to universities where the governments are funding them well. In Nigeria, government just needs to be more serious about education, the budget for education this year is very low, it is not a lot and then we have so many universities. Everything that will work well requires proper planning, partnership and at the same proper funding.

Our government spends a lot of money on so many things, spend a lot on lawmakers, spend a lot of money on roads but there are some other things that should take a lot of money like education, like healthcare, those two are very important buckets in Nigeria, once the government is not willing to invest adequately in those places, it will automatically affect the education system.

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I think if we want to have a good education system in Nigeria, it starts with our government being serious about it.  They can partner with organisations around the world or even in Nigeria, so the government needs to be determined to make the education system succeed, if not it is not going to happen. You can’t do the university system alone and forget the secondary school, it is like a pillar, it is like a thing that needs to go down into the root, from Kindergarten, to primary, to secondary and to the university; it is a journey for a student.

In what way do you think the youth are contributing in making the Nigeria education bad?

Just like any other place, no matter how good or bad  a system is, we will always have people who are not ready to learn or grow;  people who are not just interested in going to school. When you have people like that, you find a way to help them. Some people are not interested in proper schooling, some want to go into business, people want to go into music, so we can develop programmes for them so that they don’t have to spend their time learning what they are not going to use.

Generally, I think if you have a very good system, people who are interested in learning will want to learn and they will learn but once you are forcing everyone into the system as it is now, many people are already discouraged.  You go to some schools and the students are very frustrated because the lecturers are horrible people, some students are frustrated because the school itself is making things difficult for them and some other people too, they are just not interested in anything, we have different category of people.

So, I wouldn’t put the blame on the Nigerian students, people will always be people and education is a service and you can’t force people to learn. People that want to learn can go to school to learn and those that don’t want to learn, let them focus on what they want to do. We as a nation can begin to think of other areas that people can learn from. Ultimately, a good education system and a good apprentice system will always help people.

We hear so many cases of rape these days among youths, what is your take on this?

I think that people who go into these things are influenced by a lot of things, it could be the home they grew up in, maybe they have parents who were not properly looking after them because of one thing or the other or because they had a dad who was very violent against their mum or mum violent against their dad or maybe they don’t have a good upbringing.

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We also have students that are affected by peer pressure. Meanwhile, not only youths are raping;   even old people are doing that too. I think once the government sets a clear precedence that rape and anything that looks like it is not allowed in this country, many people will sit up, many people will understand that. At the same time, we need to do proper education system for boys now.  I don’t have the accurate data but majority of rape cases are boys raping, not girls raping boys. So we need to re orientate our boys about all of these things.  They need to understand what consent means, if you talk to a lady and she said no, no is no. nothing else gives you consent except yes. If you don’t hear anything, there is no agreement.  That a lady does not say anything doesn’t mean she says yes. That a lady doesn’t dress well doesn’t mean she is calling you to come and rape her. People need to know that you don’t have right over anybody’s body, you cannot force people to do what you want them to do, and rape is a violent crime because it can damage people. So I think we need to do proper orientation for boys. When I said orientation it can also start from school.

You studied Biochemistry, but you have switched to Photography, what inspired you to take that step?

What happened was that after secondary school I wanted to study medicine but I did not get the needed score in UTME. My second choice was Biochemistry.  I was thinking that I was going to study Medicine after Biochemistry, but I realised  in my final year that I did not want to study Medicine again because of the length of time required,   I just realised I did not want to spend another five to six years trying to get a degree in Medicine.  Again seeing how medical doctors are being treated in Nigeria,  I was not just feeling it, I was not up for it at all. So in my final year, I picked up an interest in photography. We had some cameras at home, we had about two cameras at home, my cousin’s camera and my sister in law’s camera. I was always playing around with the camera and I was like okay this is interesting.

My brother sent me some videos to watch and to build my photography skill and that was what I was doing. So when I was doing it, I met someone who is a photographer at Covenant University at alumni meeting called Eagles Summit, he just showed me few things and we started talking and we started relationship. Whenever he had some photography assignments and he needed  someone to assist him, to help him, he would always call me.

I started working with him and  this was when I was doing my NYSC. I had thought of so many things, I was thinking I was going into HR, I was thinking of going into Photo Engineering but I just felt  I could continue to freelance  after NYSC. Then the following year 2017, I heard about an opportunity at Andela for a Media Intern, so I applied for that role and I got the role in March 2017.  That’s how I started working in tech space as a Media Intern.  I was doing Photography and a bit of Videography and I was also doing a lot of social media work.

So that is how I switched from Biochemistry to Photography to what I’m doing now.  As a matter of fact, I have a paper that I published for my final year project and my supervisor published in collaboration with some other students that worked on it.

What do you think about getting a skill in this 21^st Century?

I think skill acquisition is one of the most important things you can ever do for yourself. If you want to grow you need to learn a skill.  Learning skills is very valuable because sometimes what you’ve studied, the degree you have may not be able to get you a job, many people these days are not even using their school certificates.  I mean look at me, I studied Biochemistry and I’m doing marketing, I did not study marketing in school, I went to learn about it. You will learn a lot of things and you will be surprised how tangible these things will be for your life. I’m doing Marketing and I’m doing Photography but I did not do any of these in school.  So by basically learning from people, by learning online,   I began to gather these skills and began to use them and they began to open doors for me.

Basically, if you have an opportunity to learn skill, learn it. A skill that you think is valuable now, don’t just learn skill for the purpose of learning skill, look for skill that are tangible, that are very important, that are needed in this generation. When you can identify those things you can now select the one you want to learn and that way you are helping yourself. By the time you are very good in that particular skill, it doesn’t even matter what you learn just go straight into it. For example, some top technological bases in America, software engineers are beginning to look away from university certificates, some companies right now do not even require you to have a degree in Computer Science for you to work with them as Computer Software Engineer. Once you are able to show that you can do these things, you have done it in the past, you have the skills.  And how do you get those skills, by learning, by joining communities and getting involved in these things, that way you can learn, you can gain these skills. Skills are one of the most important things you can gain, that you can learn right now.

Education is good;  it is very important but try to complement your education with skill.  Particularly, if you love the line of education, if you want to continue in that line,  look for a skill in that particular line and incorporate it with your education and you will see that  you are going to be valuable to people. People value skills a lot. People that have skills command higher demand  and they are never going to run out of job,  especially, if they are good.

Some people have said school is a scam especially now that you can learn almost everything on the internet.   What is your own perception about school?

 I think it depends on what   you are getting from that school. For those who go to a school and  don’t feel they are learning anything tangible, it can look like a scam to them.  But people who go to school and  can see what they are learning, understand it and also look at it from the aspect of life outside the school and see how valuable it is, will see things differently. I won’t say school is a scam.  I just feel like you need to know  your purpose for going to that school;  if what you can learn in that school, you can learn it elsewhere and it won’t affect you, why not.

I  think  we need to forget the concept of school and focus more on the concept of education, on learning. When you see it as learning and as education you won’t consider it as scam but when you look at it from the perspective of school, you are going there to do this, you are going there to do that, then it begins to look like scam to you but then again I think your interest really matters.  If you have very good interest in what you’re learning,  you won’t see it that way. In as much as so many other people do not enjoy school, so many other people actually enjoy it, so many other people look forward to it.

You may want to  call school a scam due to  the way things are right now; that everybody can learn a lot of things online, so being physically present in school may not be needed but some roles still require that anyway, some programmes still require that. Ultimately, school is not a scam, focus more on education rather than school.  When you say school, you make it look like a building.  Focus more on education and growing.