Olubori Paul Kehinde is the organizer of the Lagos Finance Conference LFC. He is also the visionary founder of Go-learn, a leading financial literacy platform focused on empowering Nigerian youths with digital skills.

On Saturday, June 3rd  his highly anticipated one-day conference, Lagos Finance Conference LFC 2.0 themed “Financial Freedom,” took take place at the prestigious J.F Ade Agyi Auditorium, UNILAG with over three thousand participants.

The Lagos Finance Conference stands as one of the largest gatherings focused on upskilling the younger generation, granting them access to numerous opportunities in the financial market and technology sectors, and offering participants valuable insights into proven frameworks, scholarship opportunities, business funding, and mentorship prospects.

In an exclusive interview with webteam@Ipledge2nigeria web team in Lagos, Olubori talks about what inspired the just concluded Lagos Finance Conference LFC 2.0, the need for youths especially undergraduates to acquire relevant skills, the importance of financial education and other sundry issues.

What are the legit ways young people can make money without getting involved in fraudulent schemes, because so many young people have gone into Yahoo, Yahoo and other illegitimate schemes? 

We have forex trading, crypto-currency, digital marketing, affiliate marketing, and real estate agency/marketing, in tech, we have web building, web 3 is an amazing place now some people are coming into Web 3 and Web 3 is going to need a lot of writers, developers, speakers, so people can come into these new opportunities. There is opportunity everywhere, you are the one that needs to find the right skill, and there is no wrong skill. You are the one that needs to be very good at what you do and put yourself out there, be visible, have good skills, and then before you know it, you will start making waves.

What are the in-demand skills presently, the skills you know that can give Youths financial freedom?

Sales, everybody must learn how to sell themselves and sell their product because you can have those skills and not be able to sell your skill to the people that need what you have. 

So you must learn to sell yourself, and introduce yourself within a limited time frame. They also need marketing skills, this is where social media comes in where you can present shows, make posts and share about what you do and then people can see you and then talk about social media management, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik tok.

When you look around you see a lot of young people, do you think the government is doing much to harness the skills of the youth to empower them the way they ought to?

I think the government is doing their best. But there is always room for more to be done, that’s why we are creating this awareness and hoping that one day we are going to partner with the government to train and educate more people.

We want to partner with the government’s entrepreneur programme so that we can also train young people on relevant skills, tech skills, and problem-solving skills, there are lots of skills out there, writing, speaking, compering, shoe making, bag making, food, and culinary skills. 

We hope that the new government is going to help us to create a structure in place for the young to be able to get full training.

In Today’s world, every skill is relevant; all you need is to be outstanding and creative about it. People want to be seen, so if you have video editing skills people will chase after you and you will make good money.

What is the LFC 2.0 event all about?

The Lagos Finance conference is a gathering of young people where we teach them about financial education and reinforce the awareness of the need for financial education and money management, money making and money multiplying.

Could you please tell us what inspired this Lagos Finance Conference

This is the second edition and is powered by Golearn. Golearn is a financial literacy platform that is helping and educating young people about money-making and management.

 Among these priorities, we discovered the way young people are mismanaging their money through their lifestyle.

Firstly, they don’t even know how to make money, so we are helping them to find legitimate means to make money and also we are teaching them to understand how they can manage money, in savings, budgeting and understanding profitable, insured and planned investment and also help them to acquire skills that they need to become financially free.

In what ways would this event impact participant of the Lagos Finance Conference LFC 2.0?

First, is awareness: Everybody needs to know that there is a need for them to have money management skills. Also, it is to share an opportunity of how they can also make money, especially for young people who are looking for legitimate ways to make a decent income. The event will expose participants to digital opportunities, tech opportunities and financial opportunities and how they can make the most of these opportunities.

What informed your choice of speakers for this event?

Our speakers, almost all of them here today came from almost nothing and had to build their way up. They will be sharing their depth of knowledge and their experiences and journey on how they were able to move from that level to where they are currently.

Where do you hope to see the Lagos Finance Conference LFC programme in the next four to five years?

I see us going global, from Lagos, we are going to Ibadan, OAU and UNIBEN. So we want to do this all around every university in Nigeria.

What are you putting in place to ensure that this is not like one white elephant project that fizzles out after a while?

No, it cannot, that’s why we are having ambassadors from different universities, we have students from Obafemi Awolowo University OAU, Ladoke Akintola University LAUTECH and University of Ilorin, Lagos State University. So we have representatives and we are moving forward. We also have partners and our brands who are making it possible, and who are funding the vision and the ideas.

What’s your one word for young people in this era? 

If possible, I will say they should live below their means. They shouldn’t live ahead of themselves. They shouldn’t try to impress people who don’t even care about them. They should save as much money as they can for rainy days. The rainy days are here, the subsidy period where everything is going to be expensive. They should use their money wisely and take advantage of every opportunity they can to make money legitimately so that over time they can sustain a level of financial freedom.