Raliat Abdulsalam is a business analyst and accountant with over 14 years of varied work experience in the oil and gas sector, Information Technology sector and in the civil service where she worked at the Federal Capital Territory Water Board. She is currently the Operations Director of RT Independent Oil & Amp; Energy Marketing Company Limited, an indigenous oil marketing company, as well as Managing Partner of RHS Automated Logistics, a firm involved in the downstream product marketing and distribution in the oil sector. In this interview with Yetunde Oladeinde, she talks about life in business, motivation, as well as her passion for developing young talents in sports and the arts.
Tell us about your talent show
My love for community development and giving back to the society made me to start an initiative for children involved with football as a sport and it is called the Lekki Junior Strikers Academy. This organisation reaches out to both the privileged and the underprivileged children from ages four to 15 across Lekki. We started with very few children but have grown to fifty children, and it is currently searching for an affiliation to an international football club to ensure the continuity of training for the very skilled kids who want to be professional football players.
Kiddies Talent Show is a show that not only searches for talent but nurtures the talents.
It’s a show that has never been done in this country. I am not saying that there have not been other talent shows for children but this is different.
While it’s a talent show based on kids, but it’s also based on kids with their different abilities and different talents or innate abilities that every child has. It deals with music, arts: performing arts and theoretical art like painting, drawing, hand tricks, craft and comedy.
In fact, everything that the child has which most of us overlook as parents. We also look out for the oratory skills in every child; that is children that are imaginative enough to tell stories and act it out, which is a huge talent. These are kids that end up becoming artist, work in radio stations and pick people’s imaginations; so these are the things we are looking at because we don’t want to restrict the child to traditional talents which is already known.
We are looking at alternative talents that every child has, but parents or the economy are not looking at to promote. Today, because music and acting is reigning, everybody wants to become a musician or an actor but what about the painters? I pass by the road side and see young guys that are artists that put their work on the wall for all to see. If your child has that ability and passes through our organisation, we are going to nurture it and we will help give them enough exposure, that is the future we see and that is what we are all about.
When did the Kiddies Talent Show start?
It will be funny to tell you that we started this talent show in 2013 and we staged the first season in the same year. It is a television reality show that we put out there for the world to see, that we have untapped talents in Nigeria.
How was the idea conceived?
One of the directors of the company approached me because he knows I am involved with sports programmes with kids and he came up with the idea of doing a beauty pageant for children. I am not a beauty pageant kind of person for children because I am a Muslim and I felt that it could be exploitative to expose children that way. I might also be exerting on parents, so I went back to him and told him I wasn’t interested.
I got thinking that instead of a beauty pageant, why can’t we do a talent show where we can promote the act even after the show is over. So we sat down and formed a committee to set the ball rolling and so far we’ve been very lucky to achieve a lot.
How successful was the first show?
Considering the fact that it was the first time ever and we put it on television we should say 100% because I wasn’t expecting it to go that way.
You know how difficult it is to put such a programme on television considering the cost, but we had a few sponsors that believed in our dream and of course we all invested our time and money to make sure it was a success and it was.
We sold 1,500 forms. It was all over Lagos, and people heard on radio, courtesy some jingles which were sponsored by companies that partnered us. Our first auditions were at the National Theatre, then we showcased it on Silverbird Television and Lagos Television.
I want to use this opportunity to say kudos to Lagos Television (LTV), they gave us massive support; we didn’t pay much as a result. We also got support from LASSA, LIRS, and the Lagos State Commissioner for Education gave us access to public schools.
The amazing thing about the Kiddies Talent Show is that it is not restricted to certain kids; it is for everybody, whether you are in a public or private school. A child just needs a little bit of push and you will be shocked at what a child can do.
People will like to know what has happened to some of the first season participants.
In our first season, we reduced the numbers from 500 to 250. Then along the line, we went down to 24 because we didn’t start auditions on time and we needed to finish before schools resumed their session.
The 24 kids were put in a boot camp for two weeks after which 10 finalists were selected from the two different categories. We have the junior category (6-12) and the senior category (13-17); so you are looking at five finalists who won something.
The first prizes were one million, second 500,000, but we had to cut down the prizes at the end of the day because we did not have enough financial support. Instead of our promised one million, we paid half a million to the first two prizes, 250,000 for second prizes, and our third prizes were 150,000 each while the fourth and fifth got 100,000 each.
Our first winner in the senior category, 15-year-old Deborah Umoren, is a musician and we’ve been able to sign agreement with Key Productions to record a single for her which will help launch her career.
Within that first 10 category, we have 6-year-old Gift Benedict who displayed great oratory skills, so we’ve signed an agreement with Inspiration FM for her to read stories. She writes her stories herself and acts them out expertly.
There’s Mustau Adeleke, who is on scholarship from one of the parents that watched the show, Mrs. Isiba, because she was overly impressed with him when he produced a battery that could charge a phone without having to plug it on the wall. Everybody was moved by that and the scholarship covers his university education.
We have also enrolled him as an intern with Lego so when he is on holidays he has somewhere to go to and continue to improve on his construction skills.
When they were in the house they formed a theme song which will also go into production. Hopefully, during the short holiday period they will go into the studio and try to work things out and we are still looking for more sponsors so that we can engage more kids.
What are you looking to improve upon in the second season?
We plan to reach out to more people and we’ve decided to go into schools because if you look at our environment the child has a triangular life. We decided that for us to have a wider audience and have a talent that is worth looking at on television, we’ve decided to go to schools and talk to the PTAs because the schools know the talents that are out there and it’s a platform in which you can reach out to children.
To improve on the quality of our talent show, we need to go beyond what we did before. This time we’ve started earlier to raise awareness for season two and we plan to be more competitive this time.
When is season two coming up?
The season two is going to start in January and we are starting auditions by January 31. We are looking at using either the National Stadium or Teslim Balogun Stadium, both in Lagos.
The auditions will span five weeks – only on Saturdays – because we want to give everybody the opportunity to attend, including those in boarding houses. After auditions, we now go into elimination rounds and this time we are improving the elimination round by grouping the kids that have the same kind of talents together.
And for each show in the elimination round which is for three weekends, you will see the different groups and the judges and public will vote through so that by the end of the day we’ll have various talents from the different groups.
And I can assure you we are working with security outfits to ensure the safety of the kids, so parents don’t need to be worried. It is important to also say that no child will be allowed to audition unless parents’ or guardians’ consent has been sought and he/she is physically present.
Finally, what has been your biggest inspiration?
I have a giving nature and it is tough in this environment to give because when you think about giving you don’t expect to make money from it as putting smiles on people’s faces is enough.
I draw fulfilment that after the first season of the Kiddies Talent Show, we changed the lives of a lot of kids. I am imagining in the long run how many people’s lives would be changed and that already gives me the push and the power to move on.
Everyday, my prayer is to give hope to at least one child and sometimes when you look around, the children with the real talents are those who can’t afford proper academic life.
I know by enriching people’s lives I’m automatically enriching my own and I thank God because he is my biggest inspiration and without him I don’t think any of these things would’ve come to fruition. I also thank my darling husband and wonderful kids for their support.
