Sometimes, when you want to orient your professional career, ask yourself if there is a vibrant market to consume your skills, and if you can sustainably feed a family from with what you want to do. Do not just blindly follow your passion. And if you really want to follow a passion that has a poor market, have that career option as plan C or D.

Let me explain.

When I see Cameroonian youths jumping into the music world and sometimes football, I cry. Yes, it is your passion. But how many in 10 footballers or musicians around you make it to the end? Are you gambling your career to see if you will, by the streak of some good luck become a “Stanley Enow” or “Enoh Eyong?” Even in Cameroon, a French-speaking entertainer is more favored than an English-speaking one.

It is very silly and foolish to think that a youth buries his energy in entertainment, sports, and leisure, whilst abandoning anything academics. Unlike Nigeria where there is large consumer economy for those skills, Cameroon does not even inch closer to that. A school teacher earns better than those artificial rappers who bury their names in fame and glory with no money.

Please youths, go to school and get at least a masters degree. If you have talents, your talents will remain with you. At 90, late Anne Marie Nzie could still sing better than most of us. If you complete your masters at 26, you have the time in the world to do as you please. At least, you can always apply for better jobs while exploiting your talents.

Have our role models become singers and entertainers? What in the world! That is how we start to fail, especially for a nation that seeks development experts, and not entertainment experts as in the U.S.

Get your priorities right, lift up those trousers to your waist level, buckle up, and stop playing some artificial rapper. You are only fooling yourself if you do not have at least a Masters in Cameroon. Even taxi drivers have Bachelor’s degrees. A functioning regime will absorb them and not you with nothing in the head.

Tiwa Savage with two masters degree should be your mentor if you wish, and not some local Douala rappers with nothing to show for. All they know is “yeah yeah man.”

Do you agree with Tapang?