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People won’t believe this one🙏🏾
When I was 15, still in SS2, a family friend a multi-Billionaire who owns one of the biggest malls in Abuja and a conglomerate in the Oil and Gas sector visited our family and asked my Dad one question that still echoes in my head:
“What are you planning for Simon to study?”
My Dad, chest puffed with the kind of pride only a Nigerian father carries, answered without blinking: “MBBS.”
The man didn’t even flinch. He replied calmly but deadly serious, and dropped the truth bomb that my 2018/2019 self wasn’t ready for. “Medicine is not what it was in our time,” he said, with his voice low like he was revealing classified information.
“If this boy who already plays with computers like it’s breathing gets taken to Harvard to study the tech side of Finance and Economics… he’ll be done by 20. The financial doors that will open for him are endless and unlimited.”
My Dad laughed that short, skeptical laugh fathers do when money talk gets too loud. “Who will sponsor him?” The billionaire didn’t miss a beat. He just smiled, glanced at his two kids sitting right there in the same room (Kids wey wan don almost complete their Masters for Harvard), and said: “Man of God, make the decision first.”
That night, my parents called me into the parlour. The same parlour where the fluorescent light buzzed like it was nervous too. I can still see the exact couch I sat on, that brown leather one with the cracked armrest with my legs swinging because my feet didn’t fully touch the ground yet. The smell of my mum’s 'Ofe Oha' soup still hung in the air. My heart was racing, but I was trying to look cool.
They laid it out: The man’s offer, Harvard, Tech and Money that could change bloodlines. I loved how it sounded. God, I really loved it. The idea of jetting off, coding empires, stacking paper before my mates even finished JAMB. But then my mouth moved before my brain could catch up.
“Tech? I want to be like Ben Carson the neurosurgeon. Which tech will turn me into that?” The room went quiet. I remember leaning forward on that exact seat, voice cracking with teenage conviction, and I declared like I was preaching on a mountain:
“NO PROFESSION IN THE WORLD CAN MAKE YOU RICHER THAN MEDICINE AND SURGERY!” My Dad’s eyes lit up like I’d just cured cancer myself. He beamed, slapped my back, and said, “You can even do the tech side of medicine, my boy” with 'this is my beloved son' energy.
They relayed my answer to the billionaire who wasn’t happy, you could hear it in his voice but he just agreed, “No problem. ”
In my head, the plan was crystal: 6/7 sweet years in a federal university, white coat, stethoscope swinging, Dr. Simon Thazhigilla Simon, neurosurgeon loading.
Simple.
What I didn’t see coming was:
The one-year delay just to process my admission… after the school had already lost almost a whole year to insecurity. Then another full year swallowed by ASUU strike. Then another. And another.
Fast forward, I’m still a student and the only “tech” thing I know how to do is design. Every time I scroll past stories of 20-something yr/o tech guys closing million-dollar rounds, or see that same billionaire’s mall lighting up the Abuja skyline like a reminder… I feel it.
And sometimes, the difference between two lives…
is just one “yes” you didn’t say.
But then again…Maybe this path too is becoming something. Maybe all this delay, all this stretch, all this uncertainty is not wasted.
Maybe it’s building a version of me that that 15-year-old boy had no capacity to imagine.
Because the truth is…
You don’t always know if you made the right decision.
You only get to become it.
And me?
I’m still becoming.
ONE-CHOJO💕@bilionaire_dgb
I wanted to be a lawyer growing up but ended up studying another course. What was your dream course and did u ended up Studying the course.
English
