IT was a period of renewal of hope and aspirations for the students and lecturers of the Department of Mass Communications in the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic Abeokuta on Tuesday, July 18. Indeed, many of the students described it as a day to be remembered for a long time to come as they had the chance to former students of the department coming back to encourage them on the way to go in order be great in their chosen field.
The 1987-1992 set stormed the school as part of activities marking 25 years of their graduation from the school with a view to mentor and arm the students for the journey ahead and how to handle the challenges they will encounter outside the four walls of classroom.
As part of the programme tagged, “Home Coming, Classroom Experience & Post Classroom Realities” the class of 92 took turns to lecture the students on what they could do even while in school to guarantee employment instead of waiting for a job that is not there after their graduation.
Amidst cheering and clapping from the students, Mr Femi Adefila, the Managing Director of Rave FM Station located in Oshogbo, Osun State set the tone when he took the crowd round his history and what being an entrepreneur entails, adding that being a professional journalist puts him in a good stead as a media owner compared to others considering the prevailing trend where politicians and moneybags own media houses.
Adefila cite as examples, stations like Channels Television, Brilla Fm and others that professional journalists own which accounts for why those stations are doing well.
In his lecture on how a journalist can remain relevant in today’s newspaper world, the Editor of Nigerian Tribune, Nigeria’s oldest surviving newspaper, Debo Abdulai, who is also of the class 92 set charged the students to develop their creative minds by constantly seeking knowledge through reading wide if they hope to make a living from journalism after leaving school.
Using himself as an example, Abdulai stated that having spent 23 years in Tribune and rising through the ranks, “the success of any journalist is not only dependent on acquisition of right skills and experience but more importantly in showing initiatives,” he stated, advising that the students should develop the right initiatives and cultivate as well as nurture relationships while in school as these will become handy when they eventually get to the field.
Another member of the set and current President, Association of Voice-Over Artists of Nigeria, Babajide Morounfolu took the ecstatic crowd down memory lane on how he made his first eight thousand naira in school on voice over. While noting that the experience outside the school is a completely different ballgame compared to school life. He charged the students to cultivate the habit of developing their talents from school days noting that such may make them employers of labour instead of seeking for jobs that don’t exist after graduation.
To demonstrate his resolve to help develop skills and talents, Morounfolu urged any student interested in being a voice-over professional to register with him with a view to starting while in school.
The ovation that greeted the gesture had hardly gone down when the Publisher of Eagle online, Dotun Oladipo showed the students the many uses they could put their whatsApp handles to do to make money instead of using it to crack jokes, send unprofitable messages and waste data.
“If you belong to a whatsApp group of five with each member numbering thirty, you could help advertise or rebroadcast messages to such people and if you know your way, it is a source of revenue” he stated.
Delivering a lecture on Impact of digital marketing, Segun Adebowale, took the mammoth crowd on how to use social media to aid marketing, with powerful slides on the impact of twitter, Facebook and other social media, noting that unlike in the past, these mediums are so powerful and almost immediate and advised the student to cultivate the habit of making use of them.
A class governor within the set, Adekunle Adesina took the audience on the marked difference between real practical Public Relations and what is taught in school and advised the students to take very seriously, their writing skills as it will help whoever wants to take PR as a profession.
In order not to make it a mainly serious affair, the set provided free lunch for the over 800 students that attended the four hour mentoring programme and donated a 3.5kva generator to the department.
Siji Oyesile is a member of the AMACOS ’92.
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