By Dele Sobowale

“I sincerely believe that our students, right from the upper primary school class through senior secondary levels and specifically at tertiary level, will begin to make better and appropriate choices of profession based on information contained in this book…”Professor Olufunmilayo Sotonade, Professor of Counselling Psychology, May 31, 2012, in 40 CAREERS : A CAREER GUIDANCE BOOK.(40 CAREERS henceforth).

A Cross Section of the Final Year Students Photo By Diran Oshe

Once in a while, a professional writer comes across a book, written by somebody else which he wishes he had written himself. The book, 40 CAREERS written by Oluseyi Olusanya is one of those books. For a long time, it had occurred to me that among the various deficits in our education system from primary to tertiary, dearth of career counseling for our kids would rank very high. Indisputably, our kids lack counseling about their possible future careers from middle primary school, when the kids begin to recognize the linkage between what they are taught in school and the careers they will pursue later in life.

Some of us as adults would probably remember our first preferences for career when we were in late primary school. So permit me to offer myself as a case study regarding how Career Counseling can alter the trajectory of one’s career goals – hopefully for the better.

I wanted to be a pilot in primary three when one of our tenants, a nice young man (young compared to my parents that is) late Steven Ikebude came to work for the Nigerian Airways wearing snow white uniforms with impressive hat to match. He was a flight assistant but, we, the small kids, called him pilot when we learnt that he actually flew on the planes. That changed to wanting to be a boxer at primary four when the great Joe Louis was knocking off the heads of all his opponents. I ended up wanting to be a medical doctor at primary five.

By mid-secondary school it was a toss-up between medicine and law. Between the time I finished School Certificate, at Igbobi College, in 1962, started Higher School Certificate at Comprehensive High School Aiyetoro, in Ogun State in 1963; received an American Government Scholarship in 1964, to study in the United States and today, I had wandered through graduating in Economics, collecting an MBA, spending over twenty five years in Sales and Marketing, and now I live mainly on writing, sales training and consultancy.

It was partly by providential intervention and the establishment of a Career Counseling Office in the university that the switch from pre-medical courses to economics was made possible. Perhaps I would have become a medical doctor.

But, it is doubtful if I would have been happy in that career. About one third of my classmates in the set of 1958-1962, at Igbobi College went into medicine. I don’t envy them. In fact everybody in my class, as well as my mother, was surprised that I dropped medicine for economics – which was not even taught at Igbobi College at the time – especially with WAEC distinctions in English, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and high credit in Physics.    Although history does not tell us the alternative to what happened, but, I am fully convinced that you probably would never have heard of a Dr Dele Sobowale, a medical doctor. You certainly would not be reading this article today.

From my Freshman year (level 100 in Nigeria) to the end as a Senior (level 400) year, the Career Counselor never left me alone. Together we planned my future; selected the courses and reviewed the progress. Even when I decided on Economics as my major subject, there were more questions regarding what I wanted to do with it. It was my disclosure about concern about poverty and its alleviation among Nigerians which influenced the elective courses.

Mostly, I concentrated on Fiscal Policy matters and less on monetary issues. By choice, I could not be a banker; I was, and still am, happy to let others chase money. It was the same man who hinted at the possibility of my becoming a writer before the great black American writer, James Baldwin, in his apartment in Manhattan, exploded, “Sh-t man, Dele, start writing and stop all these f*****g nonsense.”  Despite buying hundreds of bestsellers, it still never occurred to me that people make money from writing. I made more money from the VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, in six months, than all the money in the previous six years.

With the assistance of the Counselor, I went on an intellectual voyage of discovery – taking courses in History, Economics, Literature, Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Comparative Religion, Fine Arts, History of Ideas, Sciences, Near East and Judaic Studies, Mathematics, Semantics etc and gathering quotations all the way. From a “Know-Nothing” coming out of Igbobi and Compro, in 1964, I had read over one thousand books in just four years. By 1968, I had acquired the basic framework to do what I do now.

Today, I will not do anything else other than what I am doing now. Next to God, my parents and older siblings, St Peter’s School, Lagos Island and Igbobi, the Counselor made me what I am today. Others he assisted include Dr Cadman Mills, Ghanaian (World Bank), George Saitoti (former Vice-President of Kenya); late Winston Bernard Coard, who was involved in the nasty political turmoil with Maurice Bishop in Grenada etc.