THE LEAP AFRICA- YOUTH LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME 2022, THROUGH MY LENSES.

I am Blessing Olawumi Oludele, a fourth-year electrical engineering student of Landmark University and very importantly, a Nigerian.

At this critical phase of my life, with all the changes, growth and major decisions facing me, I didn’t need a prophet to tell me how important good guidance was. That was why when I came across the YLP programme, I was so grateful it was an easy apply and I quickly filled the appropriate forms.

Some weeks later, I got a mail that I had been selected, along with an outline of what to expect from the programme with the appropriate time frames and some simple guidelines on next steps. It was entirely virtual. The first phase involved taking 16 courses that had been divided into three categories (Leadership, Active citizenship and community/sustainable development), each lasted for a whole week.

The leadership pillar started off with a transformative leadership course, which really set the pace for me; clarifying excellently that leadership wasn’t in any position and it could not be given to anyone, instead, that it is something everyone can rise up to.

The leadership pillar continued with visioning and goal setting, self-leadership, effective communication and ethics and social values modules.?At the end of the first week I had already started to look at situations in my classroom in school differently, I even had one of my lecturers comment that I was the most resilient in the class?just because I wasn’t slouching or asking for the class to end like my colleagues. We ended week one with a live review zoom meeting where we all talked on the modules we had completed with a guest, it was a very insightful time.

By week two, I was ready for more! I had drafted a time table to combine my school work with watching the modules and doing some extra study. My alarms were all set,?the leadership module even had me doing morning exercises I would never have agreed to prior to that.?I now wake up much earlier than my roommate and finish a good chunk of work before the day starts, thanks to the time management skills I had been exposed to, we learnt that our time is a gift that should reflect our utmost priorities.

The active citizens pillar was really different,?I used to think I was a very patriotic citizen but after the second set of modules I realized how ignorant I was. This module exposed me to people who were really patriotic and the kind of attitudes that brought about real change. I most importantly learnt that any leader in a democratic setting, gets power from the people, they are in turn totally accountable to those people and that it takes a special mix of qualities in a citizen to have the leaders you chose actually work for you.

I learnt about advocacy and public policies and how every advocacy, apart from the noise and jamboree, must be based on facts and data. Also, how essential it is to have engaging conversations with stakeholders using this data. They revealed the right way to carry the masses along with any advocacy and the often-ignored fact that we must start out any advocacy with the end result in mind.

Again, at the end of the week, I was feeling pumped with all this information?but what I am most grateful for about this module is I could see the loopholes in an earlier work of advocacy I had done and I knew how to strategize to get better result in any future engagement.?As always, we had a zoom review session with the wonderful Yemi Adamolekun, and I saw that the result of any work of advocacy is allowed to vary, and even small changes sometimes have large effects on people by listening to the practical work she had done.

Entering into week three, I had already registered online for my permanent voters’ card online, hoping to collect it once I got home.?The third pillar introduced us to the SDGs, the history and the goals with some fun games in-between the videos. That week also opened me up to so many Nigerians driving those goals even on a global scale. It thought me how I can make change starting from where I am with the ASAP acronym (Awareness, service, advocacy and philanthropy) and it took me deeper into the technicalities of implementing a sustainable project with so many frameworks and resources. It ended with a final course on upskilling for the future of work, I saw how to actually prepare for a career after school in a way that I had never seen it before. I will be entering the job market proactively creating my own opportunities thanks to that course by Nchimunya Chipo Hamukoma.

The second phase of the program was a couple of zoom meeting mentoring sessions with some of the choicest speakers available. With every new week, we were all inspired by the guests that had been invited. Each mentoring session left very different feelings and indelible lessons in all of our minds, some were more sobering, some were extremely practical while some were yet full of energy! The speakers were simply amazing. I remember when Mrs. Ndidi Nwueli, the founder of Leap Africa had her session with us, from hearing her story, to her carefully selected examples I had some clarity on what I also should be working on. I would end this article with borrowing her words that?WE SHOULD ALL STRIVE TO CHANGE THE THINGS WE CAN NO LONGER ACCEPT IN OUR WORLD!

In conclusion, the impact of this YLP program for me personally I believe has only started to bud and the full-blown effect will be something that continues to unfold even after some 10, 20 years. If you are a young Nigerian please look out for when the next cohort will begin and join the train of refocused, young African leaders!

BLESSING OLUDELE

STUDENT @ LANDMARK UNIVERSITY.