When I was 5, I wanted to be a farmer. I imagined a small farm, with a hut and a small family, surrounded by crops and a few livestock. Nothing elaborate, just enough to get by. I always imagined pictures with a hoe on my shoulder, a happy, albeit tired smile while leaning by a wooden fence. That was all I wanted, at least for a week.
Then I wanted to be a Superhero. Again, nothing elaborate, just superhuman strength here, invincibility there, that sort of thing. But I didn’t want to be anyone of the superheroes on TV. None of them looked like me. They were all… White. I settled for Batman though. He was rich and had all these fancy gadgets.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to have smoke bombs that make them disappear somehow. And there was the fact that he was mostly covered, even his mask hid most of his face. Yea, a black guy could pull that off. Soon after, I discovered Iron man. Even better. A suit of armour that covered everything. Nobody would know there was a black guy inside. All was good and well with the world until I discovered the Green Lantern. John Stewart.
For the first time, I felt like I had a shot at this superhero thing. No need to hide anything, he was already black. Like me. And his powers, well as imaginative as you could get really. I had found my true calling.
In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil’s might
Beware my power—Green Lantern’s light!
Interesting times…
At 8 I moved up from video games to actual computers. MS-DOS made me feel like I was some computer scientist. All I needed was a white lab coat 😂😂. After a few computer classes, I asked the obvious question: Who made all this possible?
Bill Gates.
Now I wanted to be him. Actually, I wanted to be better than him. He made windows, I’ll make mine better.
Again, I looked out for the computer geniuses who – wait for it – looked like me. Couldn’t find any. Bear in mind that the internet wasn’t really a thing then. All we had were encyclopedias and asking questions from older and more knowledgeable people.
As I grew older. I stopped wanting to be anybody but myself. I only wanted to be better at what I loved to do. Instead of trying to be better than Da Vinci at art, or Bill Gates at making computers and Operating Systems, I would follow their path and learn from them along the way.
It has worked so far. More than I can even measure.
But one thing stuck though. I’ve realised through my own journey, that we all subconsciously look for ourselves in people. And when we don’t find enough pieces of us in them, we give up on certain dreams.
This is why stories and representation are very important. Also, access to these stories too. If I had Google back then, I could have easily found Philip Emeagwali, a computer scientist nicknamed the “Bill Gates of Africa.”
These days, I see a lot of Nigerians and Africans creating tech products that are nothing short of world-class. Where we only knew PayPal and Flywire, there’s now Paystack and Flutterwave. Where there was only Amazon, there’s Konga and Jumia. It’s like we now have our own versions of almost everything, and now we can only improve from here.
But who tells these stories? Like me many years ago, are the 8-year-old kids today seeing the comics from Nigerian/African studios, or the animations. Do they know that they exist? Will the new generation grow up to believe that Nigerian products are, or can be just as good as what we import?
Or, are we telling our stories, so they see themselves, in the pioneers that currently create these homegrown products?
Who knows!