Olugbenga Obakin is a financial-crime consultant based in the United Kingdom. He is passionate about helping youths make good choices early in life. His passion, no doubt, has come from his background, having strict parents, his quest to explore life as a teenager, the choices he made, the choices made by others around him and the consequences thereafter. He believes in the saying “experience is the best teacher”.
He has a good relationship with youths while mentoring them because he has seen it all and was able to make his choices through all these experiences to become who he is today. Olugbenga is involved with Rivers of Joy Initiatives, a non-profit organisation based in Essex through which he reaches out to youths during programmes and activities. He is also involved in catering for the homeless by providing food to sheltered homes. Olugbenga is a multi-talented individual and we excited to have an opportunity to feature him.
You are a financial crime consultant breaking boundaries in the Uk while also passionately building young teens. How did it all begin?
Well, I realized my nieces and nephews look up to me a lot especially in moments that they want to make some choices, they rely so much on my experiences and follow the advice I give them. After doing consistently for years, I decided to reach out to more youths.
With your growing experience and influence, why is your focus on teenagers and not everyone?
My focus is on teenagers as well as parents. Why this? Because I have realized with time that the choices we make and steps we take as teenagers tend to mold us into the kind of adults we are and having a strong foundation helps in every step we take into adulthood. For example, having a good foundation as a teenager helps you at adulthood even when you stray away, the background helps in finding one’s path easily again.
Your debut book title is very intriguing and as a result We’d like to ask, Do Perfect Teens Exist?
There are no perfect teens per se. Neither are there perfect adults. We all go through refining and improvement processes all the time, but what is necessary is being able to evaluate oneself as often as possible. Also, what is important is the choices we make, the circle of friends we keep and the way we handle peer pressure.
You talked extensively on peer pressure in your book and on your website and social pages there are several insightful posts on peer pressure. From your experience, what can parents do to prevent their kids from falling victim to negative peer pressure?
Parents need to maintain a good relationship with their kids especially when they are teenagers. Having good relationship with them help the kids to relate more openly with them. Once the kids realize that their parents are not being judgmental, they open up and this gives the parents the opportunity to guide their teenage kids.
One has to be kind to oneself when things are not as they should be, also one has to shift focus away from what he or she doesn’t have and can’t do, to what one has and can do.
You talked about purpose in your book. However, finding purpose is one journey that too many of us discovered late. Since you focus on teens, what measures can young people take to help them discover their purpose early?
I’ ll give you an example of a shark and a lion. They are both hunters but the lion hunts in the Jungle while the Shark hunts in the sea. As soon as teenagers realize early enough that they are not the same with the next person and that people have different characteristics it would greatly help to befriend people of like minds as the circle of friends you belong to helps one to discover his or her purpose early in life. It basically boosts one’s self esteem and confidence which are key traits to finding purpose early in life.
As a teen coach, what do you think is the reason for the alarming rise of the rate of drug addiction especially in this part of the world?
I believe lack of self-confidence plays a major role in this. A lot of young ones use drugs to boost their self-confidence, thereby getting addicted. Some take solace in drugs as a result of neglect by parents thereby seeking solace in wrong circle of friends and therefore, I keep reiterating the fact that teenagers need a lot of guidance without being judgemental.
Depression is also another unsettling question. There’s been a lot of literature linking the use of the internet to the growing rates of depression. The fifth chapter of your book interestingly focuses on the use of the internet. From your experience, do you think the internet is playing a huge role in shooting up the rates of depression and low self-esteem in young people?
Teenagers get to go on social media a lot these days and get to see a lot of stuffs and if they are not able to differentiate what’s real and what’s not real, then it can lead to depression. A lot of people post things that are not real, a lot of people live fake lives and once one is not able to decipher, then it becomes a big issue causing low self-esteem leading to depression.
What mistakes do you think parents and teachers fall victim of when relating with teenagers?
They judge teenagers easily instead of finding ways to help them. Some of them are too quick to condemn these kids forgetting they too were once teenagers.
You’ve published your debut book, you’ve written extensively about teens and done a number of workshops, what more should we expect from you?
I ‘ll be doing school tours from September in Nigeria and United Kingdom. I am also working on visiting libraries where a lot of teenagers go to do some book reading. I want to create the awareness that getting it right as a teenager helps a lot in other stages of life.
We had a good time chatting with Mr. Olugbenga Obakin and we hope you enjoyed reading our chat with him. Do well to drop your comments below.
