This past weekend was a very busy one for me. I attended quite a number of seminars as a support facilitator and facilitator alike. I went with my boss for some and one of my colleagues joined us for others.

Very early, saturday morning,  we set out from Lagos for Abeokuta, Ogun State. Our destination was University of Agriculture, Abeokuta. The theme of the seminar was Ideas, Opportunities and Wealth. The hall was almost packed full with students desirous of learning how as students they can leverage on the ideas and opportunities available to them to generate wealth. Of course,  one of the most pressing needs they had was knowing how to source or recognise opportunities around and take advantage of them.

The seminar host/organiser, Mr Olumide Adeleye, a young,  inspiring and entrepreneural student of the university took a session on the 21st century and the relevant ideas and opportunities that exist in this age. So fluent was this speaker that I wondered why he needed external facilitators at all. In my opinion, he did justice to the topic.  Anyway, Deolu Akinyemi (CEO,Generis Solutions) came up next speaking on the same theme but from a different perspective. Deolu highlighted that to take advantage of opportunities, you need to first see those opportunities; for you to see those opportunities, you need to be tuned to them.

“Opportunities pervade our environment all the time. There is no scarcity of opportunities, but you’ll never be aware of them until you are tuned to recognise their presence.” He said.

Man has within his brain an antenna like device that is activated by different interpretations of different things in his environment. This device is called the Recticular Activation System (RAS). The RAS is what is responsible for mental balance because man is said to have access to 60,000 different signals coming into his brain per second. The RAS is what makes it possible for the human brain to filter such signals and messages to particular ones that the man requires or is willing to process immediately. The reason one’s RAS would not pick an opportunity is because he’s not tuned to it, so it’s being filtered out.”

He also let them know of some opportunities that were available at the moment. Opportunities like CV Bank, Forex trading and so on. After Deolu, came up Femi Onagoruwa (former associate editor, StockWatch magazine and presenter on Stocks on 101.5 FM). He spoke on how to maximise the very bearish Nigerian Stock Exchange and how to play in other investment opportunities. I also was invited to speak on how the CV Bank opportunity worked. Interestingly, I met a few people from my past there at the seminar. One was a friend’s younger sister. We used to be in the youth choir together in my former church. She was all grown up now and looking really beautiful and different. Coincidentally, her boyfriend had been looking for a way to get in touch with Deolu Akinyemi and since his babe knew me, he seized the opportunity to become my friend so that I can organise a smooth access to Deolu…Lol. Amazing what networks can do ei? Another was a guy who used to hawk plantain every night at a particular bus terminus not far from where my family used to stay over 10years ago. Every night, himself, his sister and brothers would carry trays loaded with plantain and go and sell them at the bus terminus till the early hours of the morning. I was so glad to see that through all that struggle, poverty and stress, he’d been able to push himself to the university. There’s no telling to what heights he’ll reach and all that had happened in the past would be juicy history.

We left UNAAB at about 5pm, but not before a few of them had signed up to the CV Bank and New Nigeria Club and set out to see my parents who incidentally reside in Abeokuta. You’ll get the rest of the gist later……….