An account of the UN International Youth Day Conference

It was not only an eventful conference but engaging; the floor was made open for students to air their views and ask questions. Eminent speakers were invited to speak in the persons of inter alia; Mr. Larry Oguego, Barr. Mrs. Gozie who runs an e-kitchen via Facebook.

It was a very wonderful event where the youths of UNEC were taught wonderful and profound things which inspired them. They were taught that in order to lead a successful and happy life, it is very important to pursue your passion; that is what you derive joy doing even without payment. One of the speakers gave a profound example from the life of Chinua Achebe whom he said refused a scholarship from the Federal Government to study medicine, for his passion was writing, and after consulting with his uncle for advice, went on to study English to become of one Nigeria’s most prolific writers. He asked as an aside “how many of you would refuse the opportunity of becoming a doctor to read English?” To achieve true success in life, you must know who you are. And how can you know who you are, you study yourself to achieve this.

Mr. Larry prior to the example he gave from the life of Chinua Achebe, said that if you want to be taken seriously, your name must carry weight. He said that they are some people whose words are taken very seriously in the world and their words carry so much weight; for example, if the Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook) says anything about Nigeria, it would run viral in the entire news network of the world. Everybody will get to hear about it; this is notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Mark is not a Nigerian. In essence, his (Zuckerberg) words will carry more weight (despite the fact that he’s not a Nigerian) more than most Nigerian youths who are not only Nigerians, but who have lived their entire life therein. It is this type of people that are called opinion leaders. The government look for people like this to learn from them and get ideas to move the country forward.

Another speaker who was at the event was one very beautiful and “pinging” Barr. Mrs Gozie who runs an e-kitchen on facebook spoke so eloquently. She said that that which would have been a limitation was her stepping stone to great success. The death of her mother which should have been a limitation sent her to live with her grandmother where she learnt to cook real “igbotic” soup which was the foundation of her e-kitchen. The death of her husband also which was to make life arduous for her bringing up her kids stemmed the idea that indeed she needed multiple streams of income. If you’ve followed this trend so far, you’ll by far notice that her major source of income was birthed from her passion; her love for cooking.

The conference was very profound and intriguing because it exposed the minds of youths in great length to be able to achieve great feats