My Humble Beginning (Video)

It took me time to discover what i really wanted to do. I always knew i wanted to be great. I feared being ordinary and whenever I prayed as a younger woman and even as a girl, I asked God to make me a household name. It was important to me that my name be heard. I knew that much, but I had no idea how to get there and for years I thought, worried, prayed and wondered at what it was I had to do to get there and what career path I had to pursue to get me there.

I will not bore you with all the details of how I tried several things and failed at some, before I arrived at what it was I believed I was meant to do. I’ve written about all that in this blog; it’s one of my oldest entries.

Eventually I discovered I was really good at two things and did it well – Speaking and writing. In school I had people think I was an English student, a Law student or someone studying Mass Communication. I also found that my writing evoked emotions in people. Having discovered both, I held tight onto them and decided to hone my skills in those areas.

Yesterday, I was doing a bit of introspection and thinking of my humble beginning. My present situation is still a humble one but I’ve decided to celebrate how far I’ve come with you by going through my earliest works both as a writer and as a presenter. I have also decided to share my earliest works here too, so that in future, I can come back to them and gauge how much success I’ve made.

My first written works were put down on paper so I can’t find most of them. I will however share the very first entry I posted on this blog. I wrote it sitting in my grandma’s kitchen with my aunt. My grandma had just died, my visit to the village was no longer the same. I realized then that more changes would come soon so I sat there, reminiscing, taking in my surroundings, saving them in my memory to get back to when they change, and just generally appreciating all I had in that moment. Hence, My Favorite Spot In The World was created.

Feel free to read it then compare with my most recent stories and let me know if you think there’s an improvement.

Now, on to my second passion. I began presenting while in camp for NYSC. I had been in the Campus Watch Press and our activities, plus my love for radio, prepared me to excel as a presenter, though I had no previous knowledge. I was the camp newscaster/presenter and everyone called me OBS. OBS means Orientation Broadcast Service and was the name for a group, but being the voice everyone heard, I became the face of OBS and the name stuck till date. I still have one of my Man O’ War instructors call me that whenever we chat.

Then I got a side job during service to work in Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s media house, Gotel, and I enjoyed it. The positive feedback helped too and made me decide that once service was over, I had to be a presenter or nothing else.

My first professional TV presenting job came almost four years after and I embraced it like a long-hoped-for child. It was a development related program and was called Civil Society Weekly, a production of MAP media. Below is the video. Watch and let me know what you think.

Prior to working professionally as a presenter with MAP Media, I shot a lot of personal videos, long before Facebook Live became common and everyone started doing it. Those amateur videos are on YouTube. You’ll see them if you search YouTube for Lilian Ezejelue.

Never despise the days of humble beginnings. Start from where you are, with what you have, someday you will look back at where you started and probably cringe at how inexperienced you were, but you would have come far.

What was here humble beginning story? I will love to hear.