Jude Obodo

Jude Obodo has developed a methodology to evaluate innate aptitudes and talents of secondary school students to help guide their choice of major in university and the direction of their careers.

Jude discovered a more reliable approach to guide young people into careers for which they manifest innate ability. He is visiting schools in Abuja and freely making available to young people his scientifically based model. This model has guided a good number of young people into careers they are passionate about with a precision scarcely realizable by the usual guidance and counseling in schools.

Jude believes that people should be directed into careers where they can add value and that such self-actualization is a prerequisite for national growth. He believes that if youth can properly develop competencies for which they manifest innate tendencies, they will be more capable of contributing to the rapid development of the country and reversing the effects of the collapse of the social system. Jude’s aim is to bring about youth empowerment which will also bring about skill development, and overall, a stable social system.

Jude encourages schools and the government to adopt the model he developed for career guidance of youth as a more efficient replacement for the less effective and moribund guidance and counseling. Using First Preferred Innovators as his instrument, Jude determines appropriate careers for young people, thereby bringing about excellence in education and entrepreneurship.

Career counseling services in secondary schools in Nigeria have collapsed in the past two decades due to government indifference, underfunding, and poor capacity. The ratio of counselors to students is the lowest in the world. Few tools are available for career counseling and even fewer are adapted to the peculiarities of the Nigerian environmental and cognitive character.

Well-meaning parents who insist on professional courses that are perceived to be lucrative often coerce students to study or major in a field for which they are totally unqualified or have no aptitude. This is made more complicated by a sociocultural and economic landscape where education is still seen as a privilege and those that have access to education are expected to benefit the larger family and community.

As a result, students often realize that they do not have the aptitude for the course that they have begun. In a best case scenario, this leads to time and resources wasted until the time when the student may or may not chance upon a course that is more interesting and or matched to his/her talents. More often it leads to an individual that graduates and spends the rest of his life at a job for which he does not have the temperamental and psychological aptitude. Career choice becomes more a game of Russian roulette than a conscious choice and decision based on sound scientific principles that exist and have been identified as having the capacity to alleviate the situation. Wrong career choices are usually preceded by the wrong choices of studies at university, and create an unmotivated and unproductive labor force. Apathy, reduced efficiency, and productivity are the most frequent and obvious results of this.

Jude designed specific visual tests that help the assessor identify specific aptitudes and talents that guide counseled students toward specific professions. His testing system uses nine categories to group skills and aptitudes around careers. For test takers identified as having the capacity to do very detailed work combined with a flair for mathematics, the system might suggest a career in accounting or other finance-related fields. Others discovered to have a strong innate capacity to develop and work in mechanical fields, are further tested to identify whether they would be better suited as civil or chemical engineers.

After the test results and counseling, Jude places each of the evaluated students in school-based clubs formed around the various categories of aptitudes he has identified. In those clubs students are given a chance to practically try out the skills that they themselves may not have been aware. Jude likes to cite the example of a young man who insisted he wanted to be a doctor despite his test results which suggested his strengths would be best utilized as an engineer. After counseling and participating in the technology club, he was convinced and went on to study engineering.

Parents are included in the process and are invited to parent-focused seminars that explain not only the utility of the program but also the importance of making deliberate decisions about their children’s university major informed by a realistic view of their capacities.

While serving in the National Youth Service Corps in 2005, Jude developed his tests further and had the opportunity to try them in a number of schools in Osun State. With the cooperation and help of his colleagues they offered the system in over thirty schools and reached about 1,000 beneficiaries. Jude still gives seminars and administers his tests in secondary schools in and around Abuja, while he also works to have his aptitude tests and assessment and training methodology adopted by the Federal Ministry for Education into the national school curricula. In addition, Jude is writing a book that will make his methodology available to teachers and parents in an easy-to-use how-to guide.

Jude’s family placed a strong emphasis on education. As the first sibling of seven, he was also a role model. Jude received a degree in biochemical engineering in response to his parent’s insistence that he study a professional course to ensure a good salary. Jude, whose test scores confirmed his interests and aptitude in writing and intellectual pursuits, turned down a number of lucrative job offers from oil companies and banks to help young people like himself nurture their talents and find their ideal career path. By the time Jude graduated he had written his first book, identifying some of the core principles that would lead to the development of his tests.

In recent years, Jude has had to raise his younger siblings and support them while they go through school. He successfully used his methods to help them identify their strengths and to pursue their interests in career choices. Since graduating, Jude has written three other books and is currently working on his fifth.