For Mr. Sanmi Akindipe, going through high school was next to hell; hence going to the university would have been hell itself but for his financial ingenuity as a secondary student.

Sanmi

He started his first piggybank (local savings box) at 15 and through savings from his bank for a year, he opened a savings account with a bank and on the spur of what he read in a newspaper, he began to buy stocks. Thus, he was able to go through university without stress on himself or his parents.

Akindipe, now the CEO of a leading resource management company in Lagos, has taken it upon himself to  teach secondary school students financial intelligence.

According to him, if Nigeria truly wants to stamp out poverty and corruption in the land, it is high time it began comprehensive education for  kids and young adults in financial management.

“About 70 million Nigerians are in secondary schools (about 33 million of them female). That is apart from the young generation in the university.  That’s over half of the total population. These are the people that, in the next fifteen to twenty years will become managers of various sectors in the  society. It is what is in them that they will give. What you don’t have, you don’t give.”

Last month (Wednesday 9th and Saturday 12th February, 2011), Akindipe hosted over 5,000 pupils drawn from private and public schools in Lagos in the first series of seminars on financial intelligence. The seminars took place at  Ikeja Grammar School and SOS Children School Isolo, drew participants from 741 schools.

Mr.  Ayo Alimi, a teacher in St Mark’s School, Ejigbo-Lagos said: “The great thing about this training is that it is laying a very solid macro economic financial base for the nation. Now the little ones know at such an early stage how to handle money.

They know how to create wealth. You can’t quantify how that will help in nation building, in fighting mismanagement and even employment.”

He added: “if people really knew how to grow money, our public sector would not suffer so much embezzlement. Even those who steal this money, after leaving government, they can’t manage it. This seminar has taught me and my students that there is no body that does not have money. It is a matter of growing what you have.”

Similarly, Mrs. Femi Popoola, a parent, said she ensured that her children took advantage of the opportunity because “the reality of education is that it must be practical-oriented”.

She explained; “You cannot find financial intelligence in the curricula of our schools. My son already told me he would open a bank account from his savings. You can imagine the difference from our era. For some us, it is when we get a job that and we are filling the employment papers that we are forced to open a bank account.”

On whether the kids are too young to be taught how to handle money since they do not earn much, Mrs. Popoola countered: “That is where the problem is – learning things too late.”

“If you cannot manage the N200 that you get from your parents daily as pocket money, how are you going to be able to manage your salary? It is not the amount that is managed that we should look at but the culture, the attitude of being prudent,” she added.

According to Akindipe, poverty level is high in Nigeria partly because of the high level of financial ignorance and not much of lack in economic resources.

He asks: “Do you know that the average Nigerian wants to become an instant millionaire without products or services to sell? How can that be? But it is not our fault. It is because we were not taught how money works.”
Akindipe, who has written more than 25 wealth creation and financial management books, including his bestseller, Fire Your Landlord, stressed that the centre-point of human behaviour is the mindset.

“It is a disaster that children of billionaires, soon after their fathers’ death could not sustain the business. In some situations, the empires crumbled in less than two years. They do not have the right attitude towards money.

“As a student, I lived like son of a millionaire because I knew how to handle money. I got into savings and stock market and then real estate. I didn’t waste money. Look, if the average secondary student today reads at least one wealth-creation book a week, can you imagine how loaded he or she would be at the time of leaving the university.

“He read Richest Man in Babylon at 14; Sunny Ojeagbase’s How to Bullet Proof Yourself Against Poverty at 15, Akindipe’s 29 Ways of Making Extra Income at 15 and  he gets into the  university, he can never join cultists, robbers or gamblers. He is already pre-loaded for success.” He stated.
Akindipe thinks the way towards wealth creation in Nigeria is ‘paradigm shift’.