Khaleb Ogbonna speaks of life as a Nigerian journalist

Khaleb Ogbonna is an aspiring journalist from Nigeria. I spoke with Caleb about his background, aspirations, and the most pressing issues Nigeria is facing.

Firstly we discussed his roots, speaking of his background and his brief career as a medical student:

“I had a brief stint as a medical student, studying Physiotherapy in school, where I developed a flair for writing. Having been an avid reader, I took a bigger step to work for a  new media firm that was owned by a student who wanted to explore more options in the media in medical school. I thereafter switched to Psychology as my major with a special interest in public policy, business psychology, and new media”.

Khaleb Powers: Early life

For Khaleb, his time as a medical student was beneficial in how it created within him a thirst for knowledge, which has led to his current interests:

“With my interest came the hunger to produce; and with this hunger was an unsatisfied quest for original content, which has always prompted me to venture into several areas so as to create a nexus between what I want and what I can readily do. This background of the medical sector, coupled with my majoring in psychology has given me a solid foundation to build upon my interest in several areas”.

Moving on to more recent times, we discussed his last year and what were his biggest successes and what he would’ve done differently:

“The last 12 months have been filled with few successes and many failures, failures which I consider even more important because in many ways they have made me realize how powerful I am in the things I can do and how helpless I can be when I venture into things beyond my capacity and training. My big win is that I have learned to be tactical, systematic, and principled with life. I now approach things in a better way than I would have done before now.

This is a win I consider very critical and important. In doing things differently, I have learned to research opportunities, so as to make informed decisions, considering the fact that the biggest opportunity might present an accompanying failure if not well handled. I now make informed decisions based on sustainability, viability, and posterity, everything devoid of emotions”.

He discussed his most recent projects, which have required him to maximise his skill set in order to achieve the best outcomes:

“I have built upon my multitasking skills. This has afforded me the opportunity to analyze to the minutest detail how best any venture, project, and business can grow from scratch. It has enabled me to be wiser in handling critical decisions involving people and how they can be managed to get the best results”.

He elaborated on how his decision to go into journalism came from his motivation to be instinctive and accurate about a number of different topics:

Journalism for me started with reading and aspiring to do it differently. I had an uncle who is a journalist, who knew a lot about almost anything. It made an impression of how journalism is knowledge-based. I wanted to be the “go-to-guy” for instinctive and precise analysis.

So, like I said, I started with writing features for a small media firm as a student in university before I became the editor of an online news website, before taking a break due to the nature of the job not being competitive and stimulating enough”.

Khaleb Ogbonna: Nigerian life

In terms of living in Nigeria, Khaleb discussed the trends and cultural aspects of his life, that have influenced his writing:

“I am particularly interested in Africa, the growth of new businesses, the transition from the cultural/lifestyle outlook of farming to a more holistic approach (agribusiness), and brand development across the continent. I want to understand mergers and collaborations.

How people or groups of interest can come together to build great products and brands, leveraging on their strengths and capacities. These interests of mine have all made me particularly interested in private equity, venture capitalism for tech, agribusiness, and social entrepreneurship”.

Keeping on the topic of Nigeria, I spoke with Khaleb about the issue of the population rising, and the certain limitations present in his country:

Nigeria’s adaptation to population growth lies in its ability to boost productivity by cutting down avenues that hinder productivity. These avenues are mainly government-festered corruption, fascism, and nepotism. The solution to Nigeria’s problems has been analyzed, decentralized, and showcased on many platforms.

It is not enough to offer solutions for population control. We need to explore potential solutions and abilities being presented by Nigerians”

We then discussed his inspirations and what inspires him to do what he does:

I try as much as possible to take my time away from the crowd and take a broadened look at events. That’s the primary way I draw inspiration. Secondly, I read a lot and I follow trends about things as they happen across the globe. Above all, I try to interact with people from various sectors and I love traveling as well”.

Before we finished, Khaleb mentioned the flexibility of his work, and how he adores interacting with new environments:

“My work is incredibly flexible. Flexibility enables me to travel across Africa and interact with institutions to enable me to get better at my job. One of the things that fascinates me about doing a job or a project is the ability to interact with my new environment. It not only fascinates me, but it also helps me improve on productivity”

Khalebs works are available to be read at https://medium.com/@khalebogbonna

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