Activate the Segun in you!

Found a video of an unknown miller online, I reflected on it and decided to create a story out of it, with the hope it inspires someone, somewhere who may feel they are disadvantaged because of lack of formal education.

Segun was orphaned at 15 years of age when his parents passed in a motor accident. Upon the unfortunate incident, his dream of going to the University to study mechanical engineering appeared to have crumbled right in his very eyes – parents dead, no money to enter for WAEC, and the school authority will not allow Segun complete his studies because of unpaid fees, he may never forget what the Principal told him “Segun you are a brilliant student but your brilliance, does not pay salaries neither do we run a father Christmas business here”. He was further encouraged to pack his bags and vacate the school premises.

Segun left the Oshogbo township to live with his grand mother in Ejigbo;
the town is a major Yoruba town in Osun State of Nigeria. It is about 40 kilometres (25 mi) to Oshogbo, the capital of Osun State. This was his second time of travelling to the village and had met his grand mother on five different occasions (twice in the village and other times when she visited them in the City). They had a cordial relationship but he can’t particularly qualify it as being close.

Through the luscious forest leading to Ejigbo, Segun could see the massive Maize, cocoa, yam, cassava farms spiralling through the journey. Lost in his thought and saddened by his new-found status of being a school dropout, he sighed but remembered his father’s words of wisdom - “when life serves you a lemon, make a lemonade out of it”,”

 in this world, people will always throw stones on the path of your success, you can either build a wall or a bridge with it”. He instantly forgave the school Principal and focused more on what to do with his current predicament.

Upon arrival at Ejigbo, he boarded a bike to his destination, he was warmly welcomed by his grandmother who was in tears as they comforted each other. He will later join her in manually milling the harvested maize from her farm while they caught up on many subject matters. The manual gritty grind of rubbing the maize over the grater transfixed him to a rhythm of sequential thoughts on how he can apply his engineering instincts to make maize milling easier, quicker without compromising the quality of the corn.  

A town populated by over 132,000 people who are mostly farmers. Segun within the next six years, blended quickly to the people’s way of life while supporting the family farming needs. Nonetheless, his thoughts about building a machine that can make maize milling faster never left, in fact Segun never stopped feeding his vision, thus he developed a routine of leaving the farm at 4:30pm so as to get home on time to attend to his pet project.

He conceptualised his idea, reading up on engineering related subject matters on fabrication and learning some fabrication skills on Youtube. He will later, be friend a local fabricator whom he shared his design to build a maize milling machine that can help locals harvest and go to market faster, they secretly worked on the project for 3 years until the system was perfected.

Market days are usually held on Saturdays in Ejigbo town and Segun was particularly excited about this particular market day. He was prepared to showcase his invention at the maize section of the market to notify the farmers and cooperatives on how to increase productivity and sales at the same time. His invention can mill up to 30 tons of maize in one day.

Effectively, this will bring a paradigm shift in production capacity in the town of Ejigbo. His demo was successful and the farming community in Ejigbo embraced this machine, some with bigger farming capacity went ahead to place orders for the machine. Segun named his brand Sege-Kiakia.

Consequently, a youth corper who heard the many tales of Sege-Kiakia in the town visited Segun in action at one of his clients farm and was wowed by the capacity and ability of the machine. He posted his video online and today, many Nigerians are asking for the unknown miller.

His story is a developing story. Most of his peers who shared the same vision of studying engineering at the university are now graduates, looking for jobs while Segun is an inventor; living his dream life of becoming an engineer. He turned his lemon into lemonade by being able to identify opportunities from his immediate challenges.

Formal education can be as propelling as it can be limiting. Your approach to dealing with trials from a practical perspective is more important than the application of formal knowledge in tackling challenges. Segun never stopped learning even if he dropped out of school, he simply self-tutored himself on his engineering aspirations.

Activate the Segun in you today, don’t limit yourself with what you have learned in school. Awake your passion, fixate on it and don’t quit till you turn those ideas into reality.

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Disclaimer:  Please note, this story is inspired by the unknown miller somewhere in Atan border town in Ogun state; whose ingenuity is being shared across social media. Our story is situated in Osun state to highlight that it is unrelated to the video but entirely born out of my imaginations.