It was not only an eventful conference but engaging; the
floor was made open for students to air their views and ask questions. Eminent
speakers were invited to speak in the persons of inter alia; Mr. Larry Oguego,
Barr. Mrs. Gozie who runs an e-kitchen via Facebook.
It was a very wonderful event where the youths of UNEC were
taught wonderful and profound things which inspired them. They were taught that
in order to lead a successful and happy life, it is very important to pursue
your passion; that is what you derive joy doing even without payment. One of
the speakers gave a profound example from the life of Chinua Achebe whom he
said refused a scholarship from the Federal Government to study medicine, for
his passion was writing, and after consulting with his uncle for advice, went
on to study English to become of one Nigeria’s most prolific writers. He asked
as an aside “how many of you would refuse the opportunity of becoming a doctor
to read English?” To achieve true success in life, you must know who you are.
And how can you know who you are, you study yourself to achieve this.
Mr. Larry prior to the example he gave from the life of
Chinua Achebe, said that if you want to be taken seriously, your name must
carry weight. He said that they are some people whose words are taken very
seriously in the world and their words carry so much weight; for example, if
the Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook) says anything about Nigeria, it would
run viral in the entire news network of the world. Everybody will get to hear
about it; this is notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Mark is not a Nigerian. In
essence, his (Zuckerberg) words will carry more weight (despite the fact that
he’s not a Nigerian) more than most Nigerian youths who are not only Nigerians,
but who have lived their entire life therein. It is this type of people that
are called opinion leaders. The government look for people like this to learn
from them and get ideas to move the country forward.
Another speaker who was at the event was one very beautiful
and “pinging” Barr. Mrs Gozie who runs an e-kitchen on facebook spoke so
eloquently. She said that that which would have been a limitation was her
stepping stone to great success. The death of her mother which should have been
a limitation sent her to live with her grandmother where she learnt to cook
real “igbotic” soup which was the foundation of her e-kitchen. The death of her
husband also which was to make life arduous for her bringing up her kids
stemmed the idea that indeed she needed multiple streams of income. If you’ve
followed this trend so far, you’ll by far notice that her major source of
income was birthed from her passion; her love for cooking.
The conference was very profound and intriguing because it
exposed the minds of youths in great length to be able to achieve great feats
