Don’t Let a Degree Define You – Nigeria’s Richest Woman Folorunsho Alakija on Not Going to University

Yesterday at Daystar Christian Centre in Lagos, Nigeria’s richest woman billionaire Folorunsho Alakija spoke to the congregation at the annual Excellence in Leadership program where she said a college degree didn’t hold her back from achieving her dreams.

TheCable reports –

Alakija said, “If I had the opportunity of going to the university, maybe I would have come out with a second class upper or lower but that didn’t happen; that wasn’t to be my destiny.” 

I would have loved to go to the university as we all know that university education is good but some of us who have not gone, it is not the end of the world.” 

The oil magnate noted that she is a product of hard work, sweat, tears, and tenacity, stressing that she’s not an overnight success.
“A lot of things have been said about me, some say I sold my way to the top; I remember that the headline of
one of the national dailies in the country once said ‘Hairdresser given an oil block’. So I even became a hairdresser, one of the many names I was given.”
She encouraged participants at the conference to believe in themselves as it would be easier for others to believe in such people; she added that she believed in herself while moving from fashion designing to an unfamiliar terrain.

Photo by Cynthia Edorh/Getty Images