I completed my first personal curriculum

I've now finally completed the term for my first personal curriculum! As you'll remember, back in January I started this journey to study three subjects:

1. Nigerian political history 🇳🇬
2. Non-Abrahamic religions 🤲
3. Yoruba language 💬

My term officially ended on March 31st, so here's how it went. Spoiler alert, I basically did not do most of the assignments 🙈

What I did (+ didn't do)

Nigerian political history 🇳🇬

My goal with studying Nigerian political history was to get a better understanding of how and why we got to our current state. I wanted to achieve this by learning about all our different leaders from independence till date to provide context on today.

In doing this, I read/watched:

1. Read "Nigeria - A New History of a Turbulent Country" by Richard Bourne - As I mentioned in my mid-term update, I think this was a great introductory text, covering events from the amalgamation in 1914 to the elections of 2015.
2. Watched "A History of Nigeria" by Jide Olanrewaju - Another introductory resource, similar to Bourne's book, but in video form.
3. Read "Nigeria's Soldiers of Fortune: The Abacha and Obasanjo Years" by Max Siollun - I wrote about this in my last newsletter. A much more detailed account of the period from 1993 to 2003.
4. Read "Soldiers of Fortune: Nigerian Politics from Buhari to Babangida" by Max Siollun - Finished this on my last day of the term. Again a much more detailed account, covers the period from 1983 to 1993.

Some resources I didn't get to (yet):

1. "Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria's Military Coup Culture" by Max Siollun - The final post-independence book which covers 1966-1976. Just started it!
2. Edmund Obilo's videos on YouTube - A political commentator covering events in our history but also current day topics
3. Obafemi Awolowo's Autobiography - I decided not to go too much into any one individual's account given my limited time
4. Journey of an African Colony - This covers more colonisation and the road to independence so was out of scope
5. The other 2 Max Siollun books - These cover Nigeria before colonialism and British colonial rule, so were out of scope as well

My assignment was originally to create some data visualisation / resource on the key events from our history. However, once I started planning the live event with Max Siollun I got sidetracked and didn't complete it. So I've switched my assignment to doing the event instead 😅.

Non-Abrahamic religions 🤲

I was recently asked about what really motivated me to study non-Abrahamic religions and in my response I spoke about a video I watched which compared Christian and Buddhist ideology. It made me realise that my perception of religion was quite limited considering I had only really been exposed to Christianity and Islam having grown up in Nigeria. Studying this topic was a way of me trying to expand my worldview.

Here's what I read/watched/listened to:

1. Read "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" by Sogyal Rinpoche - a comprehensive book on Buddhism, recommended to me by an actual Buddhist.
2. Watched "All religions explained in 10 minutes" on Youtube - a short and funny breakdown of the major world religions
3. Watched "Around the World in 80 Faiths" - which I wrote about in more depth in a previous newsletter
4. Read "Wisdom of the Orishas" - a short text on Ifa and the Orishas
5. Listened to the "Secular Buddhism" podcast - I only listened to a couple of episodes, but this was an interesting alternative way to approach Buddhism

Some resources I didn't get to (yet):

1. Anything on Hinduism/Sikhism
2. "Nigerian Gods" by Kome Otobo - I started skimming this, but haven't read it properly. It looks like a great reference for a lot of the religions across the country.
3. "Exploring African Spirituality" on Youtube

Although I started off this topic strong, I felt like I didn't put as much time into it in the latter half of the term. Work, travel, and life made things get busy and I think this topic is what I let slip. My assignment here was to write about my learnings. I did start this with my summary on the documentary, but didn't get to writing anything more than this.

Yoruba language 💬

My motivation for studying Yoruba is pretty simple, it's my native language but I never learnt it properly. Although I've already been studying myself for a while, the curriculum format helped me structure it more.

Here's what I did:

1. Weekly lessons with a tutor
2. Watched "Saworoide" - This was actually really impactful in terms of improving my listening
3. Listened to Radio Lagos - I only did this a couple of times because I found the content quite boring 😅

What I didn't get to (yet):

1. Reading "The Forest of a Thousand Daemons" in English and Yoruba - I actually did purchase these books, but I quickly realised that the Yoruba version was way too advanced as the book is almost written in proverbs. My approach will be to read the English version entirely first, then go back and forth each chapter.
2. Other Yoruba movies - top of my list is Oleku

I didn't really have a formal assignment for this since I'm doing the lessons. But going forward immersing myself in more media will be a priority.

My experience and what next?

Reflecting on the past few months, I would say that this personal curriculum has definitely helped me move substantially closer towards each of my goals. I learned so much in this short time. Knowing I had this deadline, every week I had to meet specific goals to keep things moving, e.g. read a certain number of pages, watch a specific thing, etc. I 100% would not have accomplished as much as I did without the structure of the curriculum.

Also, doing this in public helped because I knew I would have to provide updates to you all. Having the bi-weekly newsletter meant I had somewhat of a schedule to provide updates. Of course this only works if you're someone like me that likes structure and finds this sort of format motivating.

Would I do this again? Absolutely, I think this is a great way to kick-off learning a new topic.

That said, I won't go into another structured curriculum right away, i.e. Q2 2026. As you've seen, there are still a number of things under these 3 topics I want to continue exploring, so I want more time to continue doing that.

I think I would do another structured curriculum when I want to kick-off learning a new topic. But for now, I'm happy to continue taking my time and diving deeper into these topics. So you may still hear from me on these 3 topics while I continue them. And maybe later in the year or next year or whenever, I'll kickstart another term!

If you're interested in doing your own personal curriculum, reminder that I have this free Notion template you can use to help manage it.