The Accidental Builder: When Problems Spark Product

You know how it is. Sometimes you're just going about your day, dealing with some wahala at work, and next thing you know, you're knee-deep building something, not because it's your job title, but because you just can't stand the old way anymore. That "no gree for anybody" spirit, but applied to inefficient processes.

I just read about Abimbola Bajomo's journey into product management, and it hit me hard because it mirrors so many stories I've seen and lived, especially here in our own little corner of the world. She grew up in a finance family, tried to dodge it, studied Sociology, and ended up designing a digital submission platform using PowerPoint. PowerPoint! That's raw, unadulterated problem-solving right there.

The Power of "E Fit Better"

Abimbola's story is a classic case of the "e fit better" mindset. She was managing the ESQ Nigerian Legal Awards, and submissions were coming in via email, documents flying everywhere. Can you imagine the chaos? The tracking spreadsheet probably had more tabs than a browser after a deep dive into Stack Overflow.

As developers, we often jump straight to the code. What framework? What database? But Abimbola reminds us that the core of product thinking starts much earlier: understanding the user's pain, mapping the existing messy process, and then visualizing a cleaner, more efficient flow. Using PowerPoint for this? That's her version of a Figma wireframe, a low-fidelity prototype showing exactly how things should work. It’s the ultimate user story, told visually.

It speaks volumes about the drive to execute on a solution, even when the official "tools" or "titles" aren't there. Many of us in Nigeria, running small ops or trying to bootstrap, know this feeling. We don't have dedicated UX designers or big budgets. Sometimes, it's just you, your laptop, and the sheer will to make things work.

From Academic Rigor to Real-World Solutions

Her detour through sociology and NYSC at NISER, where she learned the importance of "going deep enough" in research, is also crucial. That attention to detail, that rigor, it's not just for academic papers. It's the same discipline you need when debugging a stubborn bug at 2 AM or meticulously planning a database schema. It’s what prevents a system from crashing when traffic spikes, or what ensures the user experience isn't frustrating.

She didn't code the platform herself, but she designed the solution. That's the essence of product leadership – seeing the need, envisioning the fix, and then communicating that vision clearly enough for someone else (or eventually, for a dev team) to build it. It’s how many fantastic products start, not with a million-dollar seed round, but with someone in a Gbagada workstation or an office in Onitsha saying, "This system is broken. I can do better."

Navigating the Ecosystem with Builder's Eyes

Abimbola’s story reminds me that the path into tech isn't always a straight line from computer science degree to senior dev. It's often organic, driven by necessity and a burning desire to improve things. This is especially true in Nigeria, where everyday challenges – from power instability to logistics nightmares – force us to be inventive.

We need more people like Abimbola, people who can look at a problem, no matter how mundane, and instantly start thinking about a digital solution. Whether it's streamlining food deliveries in Akure, optimizing bus park operations in Owerri, or managing finance flows in Lagos, the demand for builders and product thinkers who understand the local context is immense.

Her journey, from resisting finance to embracing product thinking in a legal firm, then circling back to fintech (which she eventually did), shows how interconnected skills are. The legal briefs taught her regulatory details, crucial in finance. The sociology sharpened her understanding of human behavior. Every experience was a brick in her product-building foundation.

So, next time you see a manual process that makes your eye twitch, don't just complain. Fire up PowerPoint, or Figma, or even a simple notepad. Sketch out how it should work. You might just be the next accidental product manager, building the next big thing, one problem at a time.