Ejiro Osakede: My podcast birthed my passion for storytelling

PIX: LinkedinEveryone has talent. What’s rare is the courage to follow it to the places where it leads. There are people who are multi-talented in different skills and thrive in all, Ejiro Osakede has succeeded everywhere she has taken her gift.
A woman of many expressions, she’s a singer, trainer, author, sound engineer, voiceover artist, master storyteller, podcaster and event host. The resident MC at the Female Founders Initiative MEA, she is an audiobooks creator for African authors, with works from notable authors. The multi-award winner, also known as the Energetic EJ, is dedicated to training and supporting audiobook creators, narrators, and podcasters by creating content and courses that help them thrive in their craft, as well as provide support via a closed community. She is the convener of The Becoming Summit- an initiative to awaken in the young generation (Ages 18 -35) a desire to be a better version of themselves, being fit for their purpose and has reached Africa, Europe, and Asia, spanning several countries globally. 
Her Podcast, Stretch Street, focuses on documenting the stretch stories of individuals who have been through tough times and have come out of it as better people. In this interview with ESTHER IJEWERE, she shares her inspiring story.

Childhood Influence
Consider me a womb opening for my parents; they had me after trying for a child for over a decade. So, you can imagine the dramatic entry I made into the world. I was told they celebrated for like a week, starting from the hospital to the whole village.

My Dad was a sailor at the time and he worked with colleagues of other nationalities; they were all aware of the long wait and when I came along he was still away on his trip. So, when he returned, it was a whole week of partying and celebrating the arrival of his first child after waiting for so long and going through all manners of ridicule.

I was also told that I was a very bold and confident child and, so I became popular as a toddler. You see why I said the spotlight is attracted to me. And that has been the case always. Whether I try or not, I always get noticed in any setting I show up.

In this regard, my childhood prepared me for what I am doing today. God has been faithful in placing me amongst leaders, visionaries and purpose driven individuals and communities.

Inspiration behind Becoming Summit
As an African youth, there’s a tendency to shortchange ourselves and discount us even before opportunities arrive, especially for those of us from very humble backgrounds.

And to make matters worse, for young people who didn’t have the right set of people around them to help them see that although their environment seems to be stifling, they can curate for themselves an enabling environment by the type of content they consume and the type of people they connect with online.

Being A Storyteller, Podcaster, Sound Engineer, Voice Over Artist And Singer
I will start from singing. I started singing when I was a kid; I was part of the junior choir and then moved on to the senior choir. Then, I became a worship leader back then. And since then, I pretty much grew in that regard as a church girl.
 
Then, in 2000, after dropping out of school for lack of funds to pay my final year fee, I stepped into the entertainment industry as a backup singer. So, I became a back up singer both on stage and in the studio. I had the opportunity to work with musicians from back then like Imona and the crusaders band, Mr. Kool, Ochonma, Tony-one-week, Dabyna and Jahcub Abraham to mention a few. While that was going on, I also started to train as a field sound engineer. I learned how to build speakers, microphones and set up the stage for mega concerts. So, on days when I am not with the band, I will be on the stage manning the console and dealing with cables and equipment.
 
In 2005, I wrote a song and upon reflection while I wrote it, I realised that I wasn’t sure my life was in the exact direction I wanted it to be. I knew I would be in the spotlight, but I wanted my story to be inspiring and I felt if I continued at the pace I was at the time as a showgirl, I might miss my way. So, I decided to withdraw from the entertainment industry to go figure my life out.
Then, I decided to go back to school. I wanted so badly to go take an acting course at PEFTI, but I was advised against it. And I was encouraged to take up a Course that could get me a secured job. So, I settled for Secretarial Studies.

Once I was done with my OND, I knew this wasn’t the course for me, so I refused to go further with my HND, but to go out and explore my options. That was when I took the OAP course with The ProEmcees Academy founded by Kamal Salau, a veteran in the broadcast industry back then. This was where I started to get more interested in the use of my voice. And it was also during this short course that I fell in love with audiobooks.

One of the materials that were presented during this course was The Bible Experience. This project got me hooked so badly I told myself I wanted to replicate it for African authors; that became my main project for the next couple of years. Working with African Authors to convert their books into audio. Years down the line, I figured I must be getting something wrong and maybe I should go back to school to gain more knowledge. So, I went back to get a degree in audio engineering at SAE Dubai.
 
The storytelling is a result of being a podcaster as my podcast covers the stories of my guests. I started podcasting officially in 2019. It started with a faith-based podcast named Worship Song of the Week, which lasted a year. Then I started The Afrocentrist Podcast towards the end of 2020 and rebranded late 2022 into Stretch Street Podcast where the goal is to document the stretch stories of individuals to draw out life lessons from their challenging experiences, while aggregating references for young people of African descent that challenges are not exclusive to any of us. They are there to teach us and to make the most of them we must learn to identify the lessons that these challenges came to teach us and also document them so that others can learn from our mistakes or success.

Challenges
I’d say the major challenge for me was internal. I had a lot of limiting mindsets; it has taken a lot of work to get to where I am today. I am still a work in progress. This is why I take personal development very dear to my heart.

My Passion For Creating Audiobooks For African Authors
I believe that as Africans, we haven’t done a great job in telling our stories or documenting our lives from the place of strength like one of my mentors Onye Ubanatu would say. At the time when I picked up this niche, I couldn’t even articulate it this much. I just knew that I wanted to help African authors leave a digital footprint in the audiobook space. I wanted a situation where our books will be in audio format and not stop there, but also in our local dialects to preserve our heritage.
 
One time I was researching the languages in Nigeria, I discovered that some languages from the northern part of the country have gone extinct and more will go extinct in the next 20 to 30years. Leaning into audio content is one way that we can preserve our languages for generations to come. And the gift of the Internet and cloud storage can be leveraged to make this happen.
 
I can’t say that I have succeeded in birthing this idea, but I don’t cease to talk about it, because as much as I don’t feel I’ve done justice to it, I know that there are people out there who bare the same burden as me, and least I can do is keep talking about it so that they can also know that they are not alone in their thoughts. And perhaps, some day, we can have a couple of young Africans come together to do something about it and maybe build a solution collaboratively.
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