Juliet Damilola
John Obaro, Group Managing Director of African technology giant, SystemSpecs, has urged
students to acquire skills and attitudes necessary to thrive in a more technologically advanced
future.
Delivering the guest lecture during the recently held 10th matriculation ceremony of
McPherson University, Ogun State, Obaro said “Today needs thinkers so that we can be
relevant tomorrow. It has been said that knowledge in most fields doubles about every
five years. You must therefore have your eyes and imagination one step ahead of today,
or your skills will be a mismatch for the new world of tomorrow.”
According to the technology tycoon, experts have said that in another 15 years,
majority of careers people are training, for now, may be irrelevant as most would be
automated. Without meaning to undermine any course of study, some of the careers
that have been identified include travel agents, typists, cashiers, librarians, couriers,
bank tellers, textile workers, the print industry, sports referees and umpires, pilots,
drivers, vendors, telemarketers and fishermen.
He further stressed that most jobs today will become automated in the future, and
people who succeed will have to be people who can think outside the box, people who
are curious, ever-learning, innovative, people who can flex and adapt to the new
changes and realities of tomorrow.
“Creativity is the most important skill you need to equip you for tomorrow. You will
not be hired because of what you know or what you have memorised. Google will do a
better job than that. You will be hired because of what you can do with what you know,”
Obaro added.
In addition, Obaro highlighted some of the attitudes the students need to acquire to
prepare for this frightening but exciting tomorrow. These include an entrepreneurial
mindset, search for knowledge beyond the classroom, deep and wide reading,
familiarisation with digital tools, knowledge sharing, online security and privacy, and
quality friends.
To support technology advancement and in line with the SystemSpecs’ Group 30 years
anniversary, the GMD donated thirty Monitors and thirty Uninterrupted Power
Supply (UPS) to the McPherson University Information Technology (IT) centre.
John Obaro founded SystemSpecs, a foremost provider of financial and human capital
technology solutions in 1992. SystemSpecs is the creator of some of the most iconic
technology solutions in Nigeria and beyond. These include payment platform, Remita;
human resource management solution, HumanManager; and e-commerce platform,
Paylink.
On February 22nd, 2022, the firm expanded its operations as it celebrated its 30th
anniversary. SystemSpecs announced that it had transformed into a holding company,
with two distinct subsidiaries: Remita Payment Services Limited (RPSL) and
SystemSpecs Technology Services Limited (STSL). It also announced the emergence
of a new chairman. Ernest Ndukwe, former Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian
Telecommunications Commission (NCC) and Chairman of MTN Nigeria, took over
from Dr Christopher Kolade, Nigeria’s former high commissioner to the United
Kingdom.
