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November 12, 2026
Designing Your Future: Career Guidance at Al-Iman Secondary School, Jos, Nigeria
By Code Orbit
From Fear to Focus: 24 Girls at Al-Iman Secondary School Choose Their Own Future
Jos, Nigeria — November 10, 2026
One girl walked into the room scared to study medicine. She walked out with a plan. "From today, Insha Allah, I will work hard to study MBBS," she wrote.
That is what happened on November 10, 2026, when Code Orbit Nigeria held a career guidance workshop for 24 SS3 female students at Al-Iman Secondary School, Jos. In 35 minutes, led by Nazifi Adam, Program Director, Code Orbit Nigeria, the girls did something many adults never learn to do: they stopped letting others choose for them.
The workshop began with the traps. Peer pressure — choosing a course because your friends chose it. Parental dictation — choosing because you were told to. The prestige trap — choosing a course because it sounds important. Nazifi named each one plainly, and the girls recognized them at once. In their sticky notes afterward, they wrote that they learned not to follow friends blindly, and that no one should change your passion.
Then came Ikigai — a framework that asks four questions: what do you love, what are you good at, what does the world need, and what can you be paid for? Where those four meet is where a career begins. The girls worked through it for themselves, then mapped their path: the career fields open to them — STEM and IT, healthcare and medicine, business, creative and social sciences — and the real routes to get there, from university to polytechnic to Innovation Enterprise Institutions, with the O'Level credits and JAMB subject pairings they need to get in without losing a year.
The workshop also gave the girls something they had never been told: their rights over their own data. Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, no one can take or use their personal information during registration without their consent. Their data is theirs. For young women about to fill out admissions and scholarship forms, that knowledge is power.
And Nazifi spoke directly to the girls about technical fields — data analysis, artificial intelligence, software engineering. These are not only for boys. They are for anyone willing to learn. The girls in that room are willing.
The sticky notes tell the rest. Khadija wrote that she learned to always depend on herself, sit down, and understand herself very well. Another girl wrote that she learned to depend on her ambition. The girls wrote about helping each other and teaching others what they learn — because in Code Orbit, a student who learns comes back to teach.
This workshop is part of a collaboration between Afia Khanam, Founder of Code Orbit (USA), and Nazifi Adam, Program Director, Code Orbit Nigeria, with Al-Iman Secondary School. Afia Khanam founded Code Orbit in 2024, teaching a handful of students at a local library in Colorado. Today, its free STEM, coding, and AI education and mentorship reaches from Colorado to Jos — and the mission is the same: make learning free, make guidance real, and let students choose their own future.
Twenty-four girls walked in. Twenty-four young women walked out, ready to choose for themselves.
Jos, Nigeria — November 10, 2026
One girl walked into the room scared to study medicine. She walked out with a plan. "From today, Insha Allah, I will work hard to study MBBS," she wrote.
That is what happened on November 10, 2026, when Code Orbit Nigeria held a career guidance workshop for 24 SS3 female students at Al-Iman Secondary School, Jos. In 35 minutes, led by Nazifi Adam, Program Director, Code Orbit Nigeria, the girls did something many adults never learn to do: they stopped letting others choose for them.
The workshop began with the traps. Peer pressure — choosing a course because your friends chose it. Parental dictation — choosing because you were told to. The prestige trap — choosing a course because it sounds important. Nazifi named each one plainly, and the girls recognized them at once. In their sticky notes afterward, they wrote that they learned not to follow friends blindly, and that no one should change your passion.
Then came Ikigai — a framework that asks four questions: what do you love, what are you good at, what does the world need, and what can you be paid for? Where those four meet is where a career begins. The girls worked through it for themselves, then mapped their path: the career fields open to them — STEM and IT, healthcare and medicine, business, creative and social sciences — and the real routes to get there, from university to polytechnic to Innovation Enterprise Institutions, with the O'Level credits and JAMB subject pairings they need to get in without losing a year.
The workshop also gave the girls something they had never been told: their rights over their own data. Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, no one can take or use their personal information during registration without their consent. Their data is theirs. For young women about to fill out admissions and scholarship forms, that knowledge is power.
And Nazifi spoke directly to the girls about technical fields — data analysis, artificial intelligence, software engineering. These are not only for boys. They are for anyone willing to learn. The girls in that room are willing.
The sticky notes tell the rest. Khadija wrote that she learned to always depend on herself, sit down, and understand herself very well. Another girl wrote that she learned to depend on her ambition. The girls wrote about helping each other and teaching others what they learn — because in Code Orbit, a student who learns comes back to teach.
This workshop is part of a collaboration between Afia Khanam, Founder of Code Orbit (USA), and Nazifi Adam, Program Director, Code Orbit Nigeria, with Al-Iman Secondary School. Afia Khanam founded Code Orbit in 2024, teaching a handful of students at a local library in Colorado. Today, its free STEM, coding, and AI education and mentorship reaches from Colorado to Jos — and the mission is the same: make learning free, make guidance real, and let students choose their own future.
Twenty-four girls walked in. Twenty-four young women walked out, ready to choose for themselves.