Nine-year-old Omogbolabo Odunbaku adapts mum’s inspiring life into comic book

Nine-year-old, Omogbolabo Odunbaku, has launched his first comic book, Omoh, an adaptation of his mum’s book, which tells inspiring stories of her life.

The eight-page, pictures-filled comic book was launched at his ninth birthday celebration at the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON) Centre in Lagos.

According to Omogbolabo, “the book is a comic adaptation of my mum’s 334 pages book. It has fewer pages, more pictures and less writing, unlike the original book. It tells the story of my mum’s life, which we were able to summarise in a few pages in the comic.”

Narrating his sojourn into writing the comic, he said, “I brought my mum’s book to school for two days after her 40th birthday and then I kept getting my friends to read it, they said it was too bulky and the pages were too long. So, I went to my mum and asked her if we could make the same content for children and then she said, ‘what are you talking about? I went again and she would walk out of her room.

“Every morning for one week, I would draw pictures trying to match it with the book and after she saw them, she decided she would let me do the comic book.”

On his interests in comics, Omogbolabo said the first comic book he read was ‘Captain underpants’. “I saw how horrible their drawing was and then I decided to give it a try to see if I could do better. At first, I started drawing stick men, then I moved to draw people with poses and actually things.

“I read ‘Captain underpants’ a lot because it was hilarious and I really wanted to see the comics. Then a new version came out, called ‘Dog Man’, it’s a full comic book, so far, I have read all of its books.”

His mum, Omoayena Odunbaku who holds a Ph.D in Urban and Regional Planning said that proceeds from the launch would be channeled to driving causes for empowering the girl child through her foundation, Her Ability Hub.

According to her, “I wrote a book on my life’s journey when I turned 40, it told the story of growing up in a neighbourhood in Somolu, despite the fact that I didn’t attend public school most of my friends in the neighbourhood did and some of them didn’t turn out well.” This led her to write her book, OMOH, to inspire other young girls in the same neighbourhood to be the best of themselves in their chosen field, either a career path or honing skills.”

She added that the comic book will also serve as a way of giving back to her community and ensure that more young people including in the boy child is inspired to be the best versions of themselves.