Career Choices: The Myths Nigerian Parents Have

Written by Melody Nduka-Nwosu

17) Every time a Nigerian Adult says they’ve never heard of your uni/course a part of your degree disintegrates, along with your dignity.

— WALE LAWAL (@WalleLawal) June 28, 2014

Recently, I came upon a series of tweets by Wale Lawal (@WalleLawal) which had to do with graduating from university; he titled it, ’28 Things Nigerian Adults Will Not Understand About Your University Degree’, and as they were I could relate to most of them and those that struck me the most had to do with career choices. There were a lot but I’ll concentrate on a few numbers; numbers 2, 12, 13, 16, and 24.

Number 2 says, ‘Upon All: That because you studied Mathematics does not mean you’re good at Accounting or have the slightest desire to be an Accountant’. For real though, most Nigerian parents/adults (50 and above) feel that because you’re good at a particular field, you ought to study courses in relation to such a field. An example, when I was in junior secondary school, my Mum expected or should I say hoped that I would be a Science student in senior school just because I was good at Integrated Science and Mathematics; my dad on the other hand wanted me to be the next Okonjo-Iweala and subtly placing on me an expectation to be a Commercial student (I even took Further Math classes because of him). Meanwhile what I wanted was to be a lawyer which meant I had to be an Art student. I can still remember the look on their faces when I told them of my desire and this leads me to numbers 12, 13 and 16.

I have put 12, 13 and 16 together because in my opinion they are inter-related. In summary, they say a person should not feel bad for studying what he/she wanted and that one’s degree regardless of the course studied is important. After all there is a saying that goes, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well”. I hope you understand that Nigerian parents/adults? Please let your children study what he/she has a passion for, after all a course would not be placed on a university’s syllabus if there was nothing substantial to be gained from it. I remember my dad telling me that he hopes that when I get to university that I will not change from Law to courses like Theatre Arts or Fashion & Design as he would not ‘waste’ his money on such a course. Now that I think about it, my dad is lucky I’m hell bent on studying Law because if I wanted to study Theatre Arts, there would be nothing he can do about it. Thank God he has become more liberal. After all, education is education and regardless of what a person studies as long as he/she can read and write properly and graduates from a good university, he/she would be considered a graduate. It just goes to show that everyone with a good skill is useful to the society, as not all doctors, lawyers, or accountants make it in life or derive satisfaction from their careers. Moreover, everyone wears clothes and listens to Music so those fields cannot even be looked down upon. Most times, a person’s skill or passion for a particular cause is what makes him or her stand out.

Finally, number 24. In my opinion, this is perhaps the most popular myth among Nigerian parents/adults. It says, ‘Nigerian adults don’t believe other university courses exist outside Law, Medicine and Business’. Although, it is similar to numbers 12, 13 and 16, I have to specially concentrate on it. Number 24 is true with a capital ‘T’. I heard a story about a mother who wanted her daughter to study Medicine so that people would call her ‘Mummy Doctor’ (Wale Lawal mentioned that degrees are not transferrable), the daughter studied Medicine, gave her mother the certificate and told her, ‘Now you are ‘Mummy Doctor’’, before going back to school to study Theatre Arts. That is the typical way of Nigerian parents/adults; what their children study becomes a thing of unnecessary competition amongst themselves (the parents); this does not mean that parents should not be proud of their children’s success, however it hints at a failure on the part of parents to accept their children’s choices. The parents now tend to impose their own desires on their children, I mean parents should just take a chill pill and think of what would make their children happy and as long as what their children want to do is legal and they are willing to work hard, parents have nothing to worry about. In the words of Albert Einstein, ‘Imagination is more important knowledge’, so I encourage everyone to dream but with purpose though.