By Okoh Aihe
Our elders certainly have a well of wisdom. When they say, the young shall grow, they obviously know what they are talking about. That, it is the child whose growing up makes life a continuum and stretches it into eternity. It is the child’s achievement tomorrow that accounts for the future.
The young really shall grow. Those who mishandle that reality would usually rue tomorrow how the child was treated yesterday. They try to gather the sherds of a past that is completely shattered but in vain. The young shall grow.
I say this in respect of ‘Gbenga Sesan, chief promoter of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN). Over two years ago, at the time of the year baskets of gifts move round in large numbers, a friend reached out to me to inform that ‘Gbenga has been trying to reach me. His representative eventually did and, shortly after, a big hamper came.
Quite a number of items in the basket. There was also a big pack of very expensive coffee. I love the smell of coffee, the aroma, quite seductive. But I don’t do coffee. I do green tea. Sometimes, a cocktail of it, spicing it up with some black tea. Before Christmas 2025, the same thing happened. Another basket came, with lots of items.
It is not about the basket, it’s about the idea, how a long-forgotten contact would suddenly spring up in somebody’s mind and you begin a search for the person’s details. I knew ‘Gbenga in early 2000. The chief executive of The Executive Cyberschuul, Engr Titi Omo-Ettu, a former NITEL general manager, had organized a web design competition which ‘Gbenga won. Before this time, Omo-Ettu had organized trainings for tech reporters introducing them to the new world that was well on the way for which we had to be prepared.
For me, it is my humble belief that Omo-Ettu did so much to propagate the seed of what would eventually grow into the ever-expanding tech sector, for which he has not been given due credit. I say it here without any water in my mouth that anybody who ever undervalues his contributions to the tech sector displays the amount of ignorance that is found only at the bottom of the cave. It is unfortunate how we bury the achievements of yesterday in today’s basket of worries and celebrate the empty drums who make our lives unbearable and development impossible.
Omo-Ettu had a soft mind for young people and he organized tech trainings for them, especially those who didn’t have the capacity to afford it; ‘Gbenga is a proud beneficiary.
‘’At about the same time, I won the Most Promising Web Developer Contest sponsored by The Executive Cyberschuul (TEC), whose CEO, Engr Titi Omo-Ettu, was on a mission to provide young Nigerians with affordable ICT training. Apart from the N100,000 prize and being named Nigeria’s Information Technology Youth Ambassador, the company sponsored my ICT training campaign around Nigerian universities. That was the moment Paradigm Initiative Nigeria was born,’’ ‘Gbenga wrote in his book, The Paradigm Initiative Story: A Work in Progress.
He had also just won an ITU Fellowship that brought together about 108 fellows from all African countries, and would therefore be participating in the meetings of the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), and then the Technology Youth Ambassador. Things were falling in place for the young man who was still a student at the Obafemi Awolowo University. The world was opening up to him. It was at this time Omo-Ettu introduced him to some of us. The young shall grow, they say.
As a young student at the Federal Government College, Idoani, Ondo State, Gbenga had made the pilgrimage to see the two computers recently donated to the school, and there a teacher looked at him in the face and said arrogantly, ‘’computers are not for people like you; you can’t understand how to use them.’’
It was humiliation beyond measure for the young man but it turned into a resolve. ‘’I don’t remember anything beyond crying and wiping my tears as I returned to the junior secondary three block. I probably forgot about it almost as soon as the tears dried up. Still, I believe that the distance between the administration block and my class laid a foundation for my career and what eventually became Paradigm Initiative. I was made to feel small, as a way of avenging that terrible experience, I decided to learn how to use computers and to teach every young person so they could also go to any computer room without being turned back,’’ he wrote.
The young shall grow. ‘Gbenga Sesan has become a social entrepreneur who has attended and received trainings in Stanford University School of Business, Harvard, Oxford and the Lagos Business School, among others. Paradigm Initiative which started their first project from the suburbs of Ajegunle, that dreaded part of Lagos, now runs partnership programmes with several organisations in different African countries, which include: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Writing about his Ajegunle project, ‘Gbenga said: ‘’The Ajegunle.org project is a train-the-trainer capacity building initiative that uses a relay training model and positive peer pressure concept to transform a notorious slum in Nigeria, as a model intervention for other underserved communities.’’
The project has grown beyond Ajegunle to embrace the entire African continent and the global community where Paradigm Initiative is executing ICT trainings to liberate the poor of the poor while also speaking at big conferences.
The young shall grow. ‘Gbenga has hardly forgotten anybody who contributed even a little push in this journey of life.
Vint Cerf, VP Chief Internet Evangelist, Google Woodhurst, also made this observation in the Foreword to ‘Gbenga’s book. ‘’I took away the important point not to forget where you came from and who helped you get to where you have ended up,’’ he wrote.
The young shall grow. By humiliating ‘Gbenga, that teacher lit a fire in the young man with which he has illuminated poor lives across communities, liberating them from the backwaters of life by teaching them the use and application of modern ICT tools to help them secure seats at the table of humanity.
I haven’t seen ‘Gbenga Sesan for over two decades. When Dr Chimezie Amadi, Commissioner for Digital Economy and E-Government, sounded me out on his well-designed SKillUp Imo Project, it was ‘Gbenga’s picture I saw beyond that huge concept. Give a child a little tech push, a little tech opening and he will jump to hit the stars.
The SkillUp Imo Project is major plank of the Digital Imo Agenda which has been carefully designed to train and equip over 300,000 Imo youths with digital skills and knowledge, prepare them for outsourcing jobs while equipping others with necessary tools that can set them on the journey of tech-preneurs to enable them lift themselves and their communities out of destined poverty.
Amadi has done well and SkillUp Imo has become a redemptive and varnishing opportunity for a Governor Hope Uzodinma who, otherwise, would have remained on the path of opprobrium like the rest of them, who, after stealing so much from the people and giving them very little opportunity to rise above the mire of pain, run for sanctuary at the National Assembly. SkillUp Imo has become a model which is readily being offered to others.
It is for the same reason I write in support of some of the programmes by the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani – Project Bridge – his dream to build a ninety thousand kilometres of fibre backbone for broadband connectivity to connect the underserved, including the perennially underserved corners of our dear nation, and the 3Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme to raise a community of tech talents across the country.
As I always say in my very humble estimation, you may not be able to hit the full target but even a minuscule success goes a long way to create defining opportunities for children living in communities, neighborhoods and situations created by leaders whose promises hold little value.
For me, each programme provides the opportunity to liberate another ‘Gbenga Sesan from the naivety of a teacher who thought he could see a child’s future by merely looking at his face. In time the future provides better answers for yesterday’s ignorance. The young shall grow.
