If you ask Toheeb Popoola what he does, he won’t give you the one-word answer people expect. “I like to just call myself a creative,” he says.Popoola traces that identity back to his childhood, when his parents wanted him to become an engineer.“That was when I started asking, ‘Why should I study this? Why should I become an engineer?’”After secondary school, he applied to study Mass Communication at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in 2012 but was not admitted. He tried again the following year, but when that attempt proved unsuccessful, he decided not to delay his education any longer. Instead, he accepted admission to study Business Management at the same university. Before he could begin, however, financial realities pushed him in a different direction.As his family’s financial situation worsened, earning an income became just as important as pursuing a university education. Around that time, his father came home with a laptop installed with Adobe Photoshop 7.0, unaware that it would shape his son’s career. Curious, Popoola says he searched online to find out what Photoshop was, then began teaching himself through trial and error. Internet access was limited, and tutorials were scarce, but his father encouraged his growing interest by bringing home other creative software, including Cinema 4D and 3ds Max. As he experimented with motion design, he discovered something he had not expected: a sense of purpose. “I think this was where I went from zero to 90,” he says. “I realised I want to be solving problems.”