Tobi Salami

When I was 2 years old, my parents took me along to the primary school where they planned to enroll my sister. We had only just moved to a different state in the country, so my sister had to restart the one year of her education that she had started in Abuja.

I had bright eyes, and talked only when it was necessary. The head mistress who would enroll my sister into the school had just finished screening her. Good fit, she admitted, and quickly finished the process as the clouds where getting darker.

I looked up, my parents later narrated, and said out loud “Daddy! The rain is about to fall, did you bring your umbrella?.” Shocked, the headmistress asked “Can he talk?”

A few hours later, I was also enrolled in the school along with my sister; and though I was a year+ younger than she was, we both were enrolled in the same class.

A few years later, and I was introduced to a computer mouse. Back then, they had a ball under them. And that, that was the fun of it – the cleverness of its name. This interested me – how could something that looks just like mouse be plugged by its tail into a big box and be still be called a mouse?

Something amazed me about computers, and it was not the computer itself. It was the fact that 3 of the Computer Science teachers we had in school were all multilingual. The first majorly spoke English but taught french, the second majorly spoke french but taught English (you need to hear her pronounce ‘noun’), and the third spoke multiple languages – not sure which language was his major. How could it be that a person so versatile with computers could also speak a different language?

Down the line, I understood – to be really good at computers, a person needs to speak different languages.

I have a B.Sc degree in Accounting. I know, it sounds complicated already, especially considering the fact that I hold awards in writing – some of which helped me transition into web development.

I’ll explain. 

Singer.

When I was in high school, I used to sing a lot. And there was a band in school then who thought I could come on and be their lead singer as they did not have anyone to sing their Tenor. Excitedly, I told my mother when I got home. Well, I never got to join the band.

Songwriter.

So, I thought, if I am not allowed to be a singer, maybe I could be a song writer. So, I started writing songs for the band, and boy was I bad at it! Soon, I realised it was not something I may have been born to do, yunno? But there was something else – poetry. It was similar to song writing, but required some care, some thinking.

Poet.

And that’s how I got introduced to poetry. Bad poetry, to be clear. I thought I knew what I was doing, but who would have thought? Later, I started doing some storytelling in my poetry. It worked, but it was limited. 

Writer.

So, I learned the art of long-form and short-form fiction, and other kinds of writing followed. At the time, I was done with high school and had gained admission into the university to study Accounting (because I thought accounting was like maths and I loved maths, but did not want to study pure maths because after school I did not want to become a maths teacher, math teachers were hated and I love love.)

Well, I was just 15 at the time, so, what would you expect? Writing was my survival – it was how I made sense of the world on paper. And I was pretty good at it. In 2019, I won an award for having the best piece of writing in the Nuha Foundation Blogging Prize in which hundreds of people from all over the world competed. In 2020, I won the same award again, and was esteemed to see 3 scholars Mohammad Miraly, Florian Peudevin, and Aria Yang describe me as “a master storyteller.”

Accountant.

I was pretty sure of what I was going to do professionlly, until one-year after I had begun my 4-year course studying accounting. I was no longer sure. How could I be, when, instead of algebra, I spent most of my time figuring out why the debit and credit side of an accout sheet was not balancing?

Accounting was not a very difficult course. I graduated in 2019 with a second class upper honors certificate (which is still in the possession of the school because I have just not had the time to go ask for it, and I also have not had need for it since finishing school.)

Graphic Designer.

On the first day of resuming university, I was asked to go get copies of a passport-sized photograph. I walked up to this middle-aged photographer who had a small settlement just by the school gate and asked how much he would take to get it done for me.

I did not hear his answer. I was captivated by a picture on his desk. A photo of him in two places, and the two were holding each other. I asked him how he did it. He said he used Photoshop. I was amazed. And I challenged myself to do some good photo manipulation. Afterall, I needed this skill if I was to become a fairly good web designer.

I was so wrong to assume that a photographer could not lie, or at least that he actually did not have an identical twin brother. I was wrong about both. A year later, I found out that he infact lied. And the photo I saw was a picture of the man I knew and his twin. 

It did not matter now, though. I had already begun learning graphics design, and was absolutely loving it!

Web Developer.

After high school, but before it was time for me to go to the university, my parents had asked me if I wanted to learn a skill. I did not quite like the idea of joining my sister to learn tailoring, so I agreed to go learn how to repair computers.

The company was a small one, and though it was a few months of skill aquisition, I learned quite a lot. Especially the fact that if I were to make a living out of anything, it won’t be computer repairs. But I learned something even more important – fixing computer software is a lot more scalable than fixing its hardware. I can do one over the internet, and the internet is always a good idea.

This was how I got exposed to web development. But something would really be the defining point of my career, and it was not a faulty RAM.

While I was in school, one of my aunts got sick. It was devastating to learn that she had a lot of trouble finding hospitals that offer the healthcare services she needed. She knew what she was looking for, but there was barely enough data to point her to where. Sadly, she died after a hospital was located a few weeks too late.

My aunt was not the only one I lost. I also lost my grandmother, and grandfather in quick succession for what I believed to be the same reason.

I thought to myself ‘if only there was a way to have a web application with the list of all hospitals in Nigeria and the closest one a person can go to with the healthcare needs they have, there will have a lot less deaths in the country.’

The idea has stayed in mind for years. And at the time of writing this, has still not been implemented by anyone. I will do it, if no one does before I do.

Combining the many skills I have, has made working with large agencies possible. I detailed it all in this rant. I have been privileged to work with many, many companies and agencies that web development has become second nature to me. Right now, using my skills, I write about web development, build solutions to assist people become better web developers, and put food on the table wearing these hats.

We got married on a hot afternoon in April, 2024. And even though our Uber ride had issues twice on a busy highway in Rivers State, Nigeria, we did not miss our court appointment. Oh was that day beautiful! She is a blessing, provided carefully to me.

I am also the third of five children born to my parents. My siblings are marvelous. Being the middle child brings to me all the things that happens to … well, the middle child. 

Being Nigerian, I’ve had to deal with a lot of suspicion from people, though. Some are amazed at the fact that I speak English fluently, and I amaze at their amazement! In the past, some clients have asked multiple questions to verify that I was not just another scammer (seriously, given the reputation of young Nigerians, I am not suprised!) But it’s all good now. My reputation precedes me.

When I am not building websites, I am probably singing or dancing, or doing one of the 236 other things that busy people do. 

My whole life, I have always wanted to build things. It was my voice at some point, my story at another, stanzas at a certain point, numbers while in school, and now, it’s web applications and websites.

Building stuff makes me who I am. It appears that I change a lot, but one thing is constant – I am always building stuff. And as I wrote in one of my award-winning pieces titled Are you who you are?, change is not optional and funny enough, an attempt to evade change is in itself an attempt to change a natural process.