Chukwudi Nweje
Joshua Oshowo, a Bachelors of Engineering (BEngr) degree holder in Computer Engineering from the Covenant University is a business automation consultant and global teenage development consultant. He shares his dreams for youths.
What I do
I am a business automation consultant; I and my team help people identify their businesses and fight their life path. I make businesses out of them and help them integrate smart technology into their businesses to make them sustainable over a long time.
I coach professionals in developing their ideas and companies automating their business processes. I also help in automating offices, homes and factories with smart technology devices that ensures higher security, efficiency and profits.
As part of my work, I help companies analyse their projects via business analytical techniques needed to get them their desired technological results and satisfaction of all stakeholders.
I also help inventors and innovators develop their ideas into feasible products in form of hardware 3D engineering design / robots or software (Mobile AppsWeb Apps) or books imitational publishing of ebooks, audio books and online academies via PELEGUIN Engineering Concepts.
I am a Teens Coach and Entrepreneur that helps Teens develop from amateurs into fulfilled experts in what they love by passing them through an automated career assessment, linking them up with to unique career skilled trainers globally, linking them with teens mentors in their areas of personality weakness via smartteenshome.com
Years in business
I have been doing this for about eight years now. The company started in 2012 and I have helped different companies with their embedded systems. I have a non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Smart teens Home which started in 2013. It is a platform that helps to energise English speaking teenagers globally to know their career path, get trained, link themselves to trainers and mentors who will mentor them in the areas of their personality life skills and also link themselves up to start-ups. Sometimes there are issues with hiring high-paying staff, so we link them up to start-ups and internships after training so that we can solve the whole cycle of sustainable education from knowing your career path, getting the right skills, getting mentored and getting interned.
Why English-speaking teens
At the moment it is only English-speaking teens because the platform is built on English and there are various careers you have to deal with. We have a 25-year plan to have a global sustainable education. In the next 25 years there will be approximately 21 billion people around the world and at least one teenager in every family of seven, that will be approximately three billion teenagers. We have understood that if we can get teenagers to know their career path, get trained, get mentored, you know at the teenage age, the brain is still evolving so they need mentors to coach them on life skills and then we will get companies that will intern them, we will ensure that education is sustainable and everyone is employed and can do something reasonable with their lives. This way they will be role models in their families and if we can get at least one role model per family with the right job and happy job in his life path we can ensure that every home is sustainable and can find a good way out of poverty.
Unemployment
I was doing a research on Singapore recently and I read that Lee kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister, he said, ‘we are not depending on the British, we are not a receivership government.’ So, he decided to raise a new generation of children and youths, who were ready to learn and became the anchor-men. This made me understand that at the moment a good population of youths in Nigeria are travelling out in search of greener pastures. At the same time, top billionaires in the world are coming to Africa. Why? Because they have found something, the numbers. Our strength lies in that numbers. Making Nigerians skilled and making them a global force with talent will solve the unemployment issue. We have to fix skill acquisition, once we ensure that the youths are all skilled in the career path they have chosen, they will not need to be employed in Nigeria, it will be a global employment opportunity. A lot of employment opportunities in the world today are sent to China. The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige is right in saying youths should not depend on the government for jobs because and population that depends on the government will surely outgrow the government. It is our duty to develop ourselves for the global workforce which every country in the world today needs. That is why you see Jack Ma and the Twitter founder coming to Nigeria because they know there are talents here that only needs to be brought together and we will solve our challenges.
Evolve
Evolve is a development programme for youth and professionals to help increase their capacity in their businesses. It is a monthly event. It was started in January this year. Our aim is to ensure that every professional in Lagos can upscale their basic work with the right skills and knowledge to produce the best services for the society.
Target audience
We are looking at young professionals between the ages of 18 to 40, who have their own personal businesses, self-employed people, young graduates, small and medium scale entrepreneurs. We are hoping to upskill them by bringing in talk-leaders to coach them so as to leverage their capacities to produce the right products and services for their different target groups. Last month we coached them on business development. This time we will coach them on behavioural skills. The coaching will be on Saturday 29 February at no 10 Yaya Abatan street Ogba, Lagos by 10:00am.
Youths and social vices
The goal of every person is to be fulfilled, and when a gap is not filled there is a problem, it is said that vacuum harbours a lot. That means when you don’t fill a gap on time, something else will fill it. When a person has not identified himself on time, if he sees anything that will give him that uniqueness, he will latch onto it. When he sees that vice, we see it as vice because we have filled our own vacuum, but because he has not filled his vacuum, he will go outside the norm to find that thing of interest to him and fill it. Once they have gone outside the norm to fill their vacuum and they will operate based on that thing they used to fill their vacuum.
What we will make them understand is that that vacuum can do more. When they come to our programme, they will get something unique and different to fill that vacuum with whether as a youth or a business person. That is the attraction because we will show them a bigger picture of fulfilling themselves and filling that vacuum with something special and also making money from it.
Moneybags as role models
The youths of now are products of stories they have read and the stories that the elders wrote. The wrote that in the past a big man is somebody that has money and every chid that read about an uncle that came home with money dreams to be like that uncle regardless of how that uncle got the money. With that mindset it is believed that once you leave the house you must come back with the and show the threshold you have reached in life. So, anyone that leaves home as a teenager goes out and sees any opportunity good or bad will take it so long as when he comes home, he will be welcomed as a good and faithful servant. All he will care about is the yes approval he will get from his parents and all his siblings at home.
Changing the mindset
To change this mindset, we have to make sure the right information is passed, sustained and written as stories in booklets that everyone would like to read. The more they read these stories and the more they see stories from people that come for our events, the more they will know that it is better to practise those stories we are sharing than to remain in the path they are going.
Not too Young to Run Act and dearth of youths in politics
If you look at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) decision to deregister political parties that do not have an elected official at the moment, you will discover that it takes a well-planned action with a well oriented team, with the right goal, it may be a 30 or 40 year-goal. Jim Ovia in his legacy book said ‘do not be impatient, it is good to run fast but do not be impatient.’
If you look at somebody like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who started the All Progressives Congress (APC) that is ruling now, he didn’t just push out first. He started by studying under others. He built his team with a goal; ‘Grater Lagos’. They continued working quietly, Tinubu worked under the late M.K.O. Abiola, he was at the back. Imagine if he had pushed to take over or took some drastic action when he was younger, may be in his 30s, some people would have hailed him but maybe he would have also died fast.
Not too Young to Run doesn’t mean youths must take the head immediately. The wise ones should start by serving people at the head so that they will gain influence. When they have reached second or third in the chain of people, they can easily bring out their influence and do great things.