INTERVIEW: CRITICAL THINKING SHOULD BE ENTRENCHED IN SCHOOL CURRICULUM——-OLOROGUN FRANCIS OKUMAGBA
INTERVIEW: CRITICAL THINKING SHOULD BE ENTRENCHED IN SCHOOL CURRICULUM——-OLOROGUN FRANCIS OKUMAGBA
Olorogun Francis Okumagba, President/Founder Free Mentorship Grooming (FMG) is an accomplished banker, a business strategist with vast experience within and outside Nigeria. He has unique strategies that enable people to breakthrough in any type of business. Whether small, medium or big enterprises, he is able to put life in businesses that ordinarily are not considered important. In this interview he said that the potentials in various careers are not harnessed because critical thinking is not available in school curriculum he described as colonial, native, achaic and hard to interpret.
WHAT DO YOU OFFER IN YOUR ORGANISATION?
In my free mentoring programme, we groom and mentor people to position them to succeed in what they do or choose to do, we provide mentoring and business consulting for people for their businesses to strive. The problem we have in the country is that people in government do not have time for their people, those who have money do not have sense and those who have talents are struggling because they are looking for money and there is no body to coordinate them, having worked in the banking industry for the past twenty five years, the experience I have in the bank and my exposure in Canada, when I came back to Nigeria I decided to set up a company that will fill the gap and solve the problem that we have in Nigeria, education is good but we need to have proper interpretation of our career, a lot of people are educated but behave like illiterates, we need coordinators who will be putting people together on how they can succeed.
YOU DO FREE MENTORING, HOW DO YOU FUND YOUR PROGRAMMES?
It is not absolutely free but the cost is very little compare to what we offer because when we make impact and the beneficiary also make impact it expands my space, it makes me to be popular and draw more people. I announce myself anywhere, I go to organisations, cooperatives to offer complementary knowledge sessions, I want people to know what we have to offer because we need collaboration to change our education system. There is nobody I cannot impact, if you are a parent send you children for mentorship, if you are in any organization create opportunity for me to give my presentation, people should not be stingy but learn to invest in people’s lives.
BASED ON YOUR EXPERIENCE WHERE IS THE PROBLEM?
The problem is the education system, education is a tool that transforms people but the education we have is in the way colonial masters gave it to us, we have not changed it but the people who gave it to us have changed their own several times. Education this time is how aware you are on the internet but in Nigeria schools do not train people how to interpret what they learn, we need to have a system that will orientate the mind so that we can have education and be able to interpret it. Nigerians are people who survive any where even under harsh conditions. Our politicians do not do anything but they make money, because of this, people follow their direction and young people do not want to do anything, politicians should stop telling the citizens lies, they should encourage them to use their potentials.
YOU ARE INTO MENTORING, WHAT IS YOUR SUGGESTION TO HANDLE THE TREND?
We need to modify our curriculum because it is too colonial, native, achaic and unable to interpret to meet the current needs for development. Artisans will be employing graduates in Nigeria because they are entrepreneurs and they need to employ people who are looking for jobs. If you look around, the people who look for jobs are the graduates. The people driving uber, doing security and odd jobs are the graduates while the artisans sit where they are and employ graduates to work for them. If we do not change the system we will continue having terrorism, yahoo yahoo, militancy, social problems because the graduates can not interpret the education they have. In advanced countries, 18 years old can stand on his own because their education systems enable them to interpret what they read. I am presenting myself to partner with the government to start creating awareness and re-orientation in the mind of the people, we will need to involve teachers and lecturers in the programmes.
