I came to this conclusion after surveying my immediate environment and I believe very strongly that our parents lied to us. Maybe for our own good, to get us to actually get an education, but they lied sha. School + professional course + good grades = good job, good salary, big house, big car, good life. We believed them!Against our will, some of us studied ‘professional’ courses like Medicine, Law, Accounting, Economics etc just so we could get that well-paying job and could live that fancy life that was preached to us. Yet, that just ain’t the case.
On Instagram, we see these comedy guys e.g Josh2funny, Crazeclown, Frank Donga, Maraji, Emma OhMyGod etc getting popular everyday for doing or saying next to nothing. Some of the skits don’t even cost much at all and in no time, they are gracing big stages, doing movies and live comedy with comedians that worked their asses of to be popular and getting paid good money for it too. I mean, seriously, who’d have thought? Money is being made from doing the craziest things right now. I have read about several ladies online who twerk i.e dance seductively for men on their Instagram, another posts pictures of her feet wearing lingerie and is privately messaged by men who have foot fetishes to send them pictures which they pay for. You can own a YouTube channel on almost anything now, once you gather enough subscribers, you get a token from YouTube depending on your content and subscribers.
Who would have thought that modelling would be taken seriously as a profession? Strutting down a runway and being paid lots of money for it, particularly when they go international? Or even football? Now my friend’s father wants his younger brother to play professionally and really encouraging him down that line when my friend dare not touch a ball after school without his father going all “have you read your books, finished your assignment for tomorrow? Get inside before I change my mind”. Even dancing is a career choice now and with people like Kaffy breaking new ground, it’s definitely staying. Or cooking? Chefs are practically celebrities nowadays, making tons of money. Tailoring, or the more packaged version, fashion designing is also a new rave now – I mean, Ugochukwu Monye, the designer of the much talked about Ebuka Uchendu’s Agbada to BankyW and Adesua Etomi’s wedding is definitely smiling to the bank, with more money to come in sef, so is acting, music, makeup artistry, spa and beauty maintenance, event planning, baking, hair making even stylists, people who style celebrities for events, poetry, spoken word artistry, artistes of all kinds etc. I can go on and on. And most of these people have degrees from reputable universities in and out of Nigeria.
I don’t even want to talk of the world of reality shows abroad right now. So much money there. The Kardashian family is worth over $50 million dollars thanks to reality TV. Even back home here, everyone wants to try reality shows when we have Efe taking home #25m for Big Brother Nigeria and contest in competitions like The Voice where you stand a chance to be like Idyl, #7m richer. And let’s not forget Bobrisky, who makes money from selling bleaching creams and making a cross dressing nuisance of himself on social media so much that he even made his gateman, Jacob a.k.a Jaycurrrrb a celebrity as well. His estimated worth is about $250,000 and a house in Lekki worth millions of dollars as well. He is also an Accounting graduate of University of Lagos.
With these few points of mine, I hope I have been able to convince you and not confuse you on the fact that our parents did indeed lie to to us. Even Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed agrees that “today’s economy is more talent-based” and not about “white collar jobs anymore” and this informal economy constitutes about 70% of the Nigerian economy, according to research. Maybe this education does play a role in creativity and idea generation but that theory they passed down to us is definitely not the norm anymore. This much, I am sure of.
Article by Soomto Ajanma
