18/02/2025
11 years ago before I ever heard what AI (Artificial Intelligence) was or even heard anything about AI (Artificial Intelligence) in my life. A man brought some desktop computers from Aba to my office in Port Harcourt then to sell for him.
Around that same period I was the youth leader of my church. I had over 60 youth members under my care, under my watch. And then, there was a need to start a technical department in my local church then. Sadly, of these 60 members I had, not even one single person was a computer literate.
Whatever I'm saying now, I'm not making it up, because there are people who are watching this video now, who are members of my youth, and others were members of my church they know about this thing.
I talked to the pastor to start making an announcement, every week, midweek service and Sunday service, asking these youth members to come for free computer training. For one whole month, this announcement was being done, back to back.
With hope that on the day of the training, these people would fill up the church hall, with eagerness to learn how to use computers. Well, to my greatest surprise, on the day of the training, I had just 7 people in attendance.
I didn't say 7 youths, 7 people. I was begging these people, for one full month, that no matter what career you have, no matter what skill you think you have right now, having a computer literacy skill will put you ahead of every other person.
It's not a competition, or maybe it is, but having this computer literacy will keep you prepared for the future. This future is here now, and some of these people aren't computer literate. On that day, 7 people, an elder, I remember clearly, his wife.
And two other Elders wives, that's four of them, right? Then an Usher, and then that Usher was a youth. And then this 10-year-old boy and another youth. So they were just two youths, a 10-year-old boy who wasn't qualified to be a youth.
And Elders, while we were about going, I called this 10-year-old boy to find out why he was in this training instead of being in school by 11 a.m. on a Monday morning. Then he told me how his dad lost his job and they are all out of school.
Me as a struggling young man at the time, I was even warehouse rent by that time if I checked to her. And the computer that I was giving to sell wasn't giving money yet because sales weren't so good.
I started thinking of how to help this young man to at least get back to school. I couldn't afford to put him in a private school.
I asked him to go make inquiries from a government school to see how we could make things work for him. Eventually, he came back and gave me the findings he got. I was unable to provide all the money necessary, but I figured out that I could pay some money, some little amount of money for him to just start. Then, subsequently, I paid the remaining ones. Well, long story short, today that boy is in the university. That is, if he has not even graduated by now. But then, my youths never gained anything from that training because they didn't come. They didn't show up. The training was meant to last for four weeks. He ended up... He ended up passing for just one week because I was discouraged. This is 2025. And I'm sure if I go back to make that announcement again in that same church, with the same number of youths being present, knowing that more than one-third of them, rather two-thirds of the youths don't know how to use computers still now, they still will not show up. Why do you want to cheat yourself? While you're there not knowing how to use a computer, those who know how to use computers for 10, 20, 15 years, are panicking because AI is here to literally replace their jobs. And this AI is not your village people. It's not some witch from your father's house that is trying to take your destiny away. It's something a human being like you and I sat down and decided to bring into existence. But here you are, not learning how to even use an ordinary computer. How do you want to compete with AI?
You think your village people are strong? Wait and see what AI will do to you. If at this point in time in 2025 you have no IT skill, nobody's telling you to be a programmer, nobody's telling you to go and... We all can't even be programmers. In fact, there are some of us who are neurodivergent. Our neurodivergence will not let us concentrate and learn all it takes to be a programmer. You can't sit down and focus on writing a code or memorizing the code. But if they ask you now to climb the pole and link one network cable to the other, you easily do it. Because that's what your brain can handle. But the basic of all this thing is even understand how the computer works. It's no longer a professional thing. It is supposed to be something that everybody knows...
