Bright Okereke didn’t plan to become a product manager. A missing biology exam changed everything.
In 2013, Okereke, fresh out of secondary school, was hoping to study Electrical and Electronics (Computer) Engineering at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO) in southeastern Nigeria’s Imo State. He had spent most of his teenage years obsessed with computers.
“I got access to computers as a kid; I was enrolled into a computer training centre immediately after my primary school,” he says. “I was able to pick up very quickly and during my secondary school days, I could type at over 100 words per minute.”
Computers fascinated him, and engineering felt like a natural path. But when admission season came, things did not go as planned.
Okereke, who grew up in Aba, the commercial city in southeastern Nigeria’s Abia State, failed to secure admission to study engineering. He had listed Agricultural Extension as a backup course.
“I loved agriculture,” he recalls. “ My dad had a farm, and I used to join him.”
Then another problem surfaced.
A university staff member informed him that he could not switch into Agricultural Extension because he had not taken Biology in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), Nigeria’s university entrance exam.