Everything is Different: 2018 Vs 2025 | by Godsdelight Agu | Nov, 2025
So, I decided to write this because I’m bored. Not bored because I don’t have anything to do, but because I have so much to do that I don’t even know where to start.
But let me try and start somewhere.
For those meeting me for the first time: Hi, my name is Godsdelight Agu, but my friends call me BOOKIE. Since November 2016, I have been very obsessed with creating spaces for young people to come together and have conversations.
It’s crazy to think that 2016 till now is actually 9 years. Yes, I’ve been in the youth development space for 9 whole years, and I’m not even 26 yet.
How it all started
It all started with me being curious about a number of things as a teen. I had a lot of questions that required answers, but those answers weren’t forthcoming from school, church or home. So, I created a space to answer those questions.
Every month, I’ll bring my friends together and we’ll have conversations around topics like sex, love, addictions, and other struggles we had as teens. It all started on the 26th of November 2016. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Our debut meeting was in my mum’s school premises — Mount Pleasant Academy, Aba.
I invited my friends from school, church and in the neighborhood. I told them it was my way of celebrating my 17th birthday but I did have other plans.
I had curated a list of questions on the topic — Who is an Ideal Teen? It was a very exciting and interesting conversation. I invited a resource person (Mummy Chuka). She was the only badass Teens Coach I knew at the time, from RCCG. She helped us answer our questions and tie up the loose ends.
At the end of the session, all the attendees were very excited and wanted us to do more of it! The next month was December. But we all know how December is, lots of festivities, people travelling, and all, so our next meeting was in January 2017. We had a long ride from January 2017 to October 2017. Every single month, last Sunday of the month, we gathered together to just talk.
In November 2017, I wanted to do something special to mark our first anniversary as a group. The one thing on my mind was launching a book, my first book. I was going to turn 18 that November, and I really didn’t want to become a legal adult without having any of my works published. Why? Because I’ve been writing since age 6.
I wish I could give you a fancy story of how I was able to pull it off, as a teen with absolutely no money, but I can’t. It was pure self-belief and delulu. And on the 26th of November 2017, we hosted our first-ever big event/my 18th birthday/my book launch/our first anniversary/ end-of-the-year party.
The Mutation Dream
In 2018, the dream to host our first-ever mega teens conference came. I was 18. I had never done anything more than the monthly meetings. But the dream got heavier and heavier every day.
I had learnt about “Mutation” in Biology. But not so much in depth, like when God started explaining what he wanted to do in the lives of teens and young adults with that theme. The topic he gave me was: Making I CAN a Strand of Our DNA. He also made it clear that Mutation was going to be an annual conference series. So, we had Mutation ‘18.
Once again, with no money, no sponsors and pure delulu, we gathered over 100 teens and young adults in Aba for our conference. You know the craziest part? It was a 2-day event! We hosted the conference on Saturday, the 17th of November and the Gala/Award Show on the 18th of November 2018.
By January 2019, I had become a 100L Pharmacy Student at the University of Port Harcourt. I had moved to a different city. All through the year, we couldn’t host a TITFOR Monthly Meeting. But by November, I knew Mutation ’19 was going to hold. God had told me to teach teens and young people about money. So, we tagged the event — Becoming Young Millionaires.
Just like Mutation ’18, Mutation ’19 was a success! Despite the fact that I hadn’t been in the city for the whole of 2019 and that we hadn’t publicised for so long, young people still turned up. And it was much better than Mutation ’18. The venue, the sound, the picture quality… better.
In 2020, the COVID-19 Pandemic struck and there was no Mutation event. By October 2020, I founded an online community exclusively for women called FIGURE-8 CONNECT. That was my priority for the next 2 years till I shut it down in 2022. By 2022, I founded another online community called SCHOOL OF DIGIPRENEURS. And by 2023, I founded yet another online community. This one was called THE LINKEDIN CLUB. I shut both communities down in 2024 because I was experiencing a burnout and an identity crisis.
In all those years, I never hosted a physical event. It was just webinars and online events. Zoom, Google meet & WhatsApp. But by 2024, everything changed.
I had just broken up with my boyfriend of 4 years. I thought he was “the one”. The breakup was really messy, and I was completely left shattered. Nothing made sense to me till I met my therapist, Kati Morton. Her playlist on Narcissism made everything make sense to me. It wasn’t just about the relationship with my ex that was bad, it was about my childhood and the way my parents raised me, it was about my attachment styles, it was bleeding into my non-romantic relationships as an adult.
As painful as it was, I took time to heal. I started seeing my ex for who he really was. I forgave myself. I forgive him. I permitted myself to move on. I forgive my parents. I started understanding why they did what they did. I started seeing them as humans and acknowledging their weaknesses. I found out my attachment style was Anxious and why. I started healing and forming a secure attachment. Everything began to make sense to me! I had a 360° transformation of my life!
Mutation again!
In the 4 years I’d been with my ex-boyfriend, because we had been in a sexual relationship, I had lost touch with my relationship with God. I felt ashamed to come before Him. But not anymore. The end of my romantic relationship birthed the start of my relationship with God again. And once again, he started speaking to me. Then, he reminded me about the Mutation Series. He started impressing Mutation ’25 in my heart, telling me to teach people about the same healing I had received last year 2024.
For a very long time, I fought off the idea. I had so many excuses why Mutation ’25 couldn’t happen. Firstly, I had just moved to Lagos in mid-2023. Secondly, I barely knew anybody. Thirdly, let’s be very honest, a baby girl needs money. I’m looking for a high-paying remote job that pays in dollars. Bringing people together won’t pay my bill. But the more I brought up excuses, the more God dismissed them, the more Mutation ’25 kept getting bigger and bigger.
My biggest excuse was that I didn’t know anyone in Lagos, and nobody knows me either. And God told me to start with the Mutation Monthly Series. Every month, leading up to November, I should talk about some things that have stood out for me in my healing journey. And I did that.
January through August was awesome! Unfortunately, nobody turned up in September. Was I heartbroken? Yes. Was I discouraged? A little bit. But did I give up? No. We still had the Mutation Series in October, and it was awesome!
Planning Mutation ‘25
The Planning of Mutation ’25 started in January. It started by creating a ChatGPT chat and populating things on a Google sheet. I had a detailed plan on how to successfully organise the conference from January till the D-day in November.
I had the rundown of potential sponsors, potential speakers, but did I reach out to any of them? No 🙃
As the year began, I got engulfed in the daily hustle and bustle. I got lost finding my daily 2K, servicing my clients and just trying to survive Lagos. I didn’t put together a team till April. After having our first team meeting that April, I couldn’t host another till July.
I kind of underestimated what working with a team feels like, and how it slows you down. But, it’s very impossible for me to singlehandedly control every aspect of Mutation ’25 all by myself. My team comprised some of the teens (now young adults) who believed in the Mutation Vision back in 2018/2019, and a few who embraced the vision in 2025 through the monthly series.
Our team is made up of the following sub-teams:
- Project Managers
- Design & Branding
- Marketing & PR
- Finance & Budgets
- Logistics & Operations
- Audience Engagement
- Guest Relations & Hospitality
- Volunteer & HR
My team is made up of smart and driven young men and women. The only challenge is that, beyond planning Mutation ’25, they all have real jobs, families and other priorities.
But so far, since July, we’ve made considerable progress with planning for the event. The major bottleneck is that 95% of the planning team doesn’t reside in Lagos. That means, any work that involves foot soldiers, I’m almost on my own.
Everything Is Different
Yes, I’d done this before. But everything is different. Especially post-pandemic.
- Teens Vs Adults
Back in 2018/2019, I was reaching out to teens. I was inviting teens to my events. Teens aren’t busy. Teens still live with their parents. Most teens aren’t thinking of how to pay bills or make money. So, it was very easy for them to show up and support the vision. It’s a very different experience from working with Adults.
2. TITFOR Monthly Meetings Vs Mutation Monthly Series
Although TITFOR Monthly Meetings and Mutation Monthly Series are quite similar, in that they’re both conversation-based, Mutation Monthly Series is tougher. Most of our conversations are focused on mental health. Sometimes, answering questions is tough. We also have a higher cost of event production than in yesteryears. I also need to equip myself more on the topics before showing up.
3. Aba Vs Lagos
Everything I’ve done in the past happened in the small city of Aba. Aba is a city for buying and selling. Not many people are thinking of hosting events and conferences, unlike in heaven, where hundreds of those happen on a daily basis. With little or no publicity, you can fill up a room while doing anything in Aba, but Lagos is a different ball game altogether!
People are busy! The cost of transportation within Lagos isn’t smiling. So many events happen every day, so you have to be a magician to convince people on why they should be at yours.
3. The Effect of Social Media
Before 2020, Social media was there, but didn’t wield such a great influence on our lives. During the pandemic, people started using social media heavily. That was when video content started booming too, through TikTok, Facebook and IG reels and YouTube. As much as this is a blessing, this is also a curse. If you don’t have an insane number of social media followers these days, people don’t consider you a person of value. And as someone planning a conference in the city of Lagos, I have struggled so much with this.
4. Sponsors
When we hosted Mutation ’18 & ’19, there was no such thing as sponsors. Money just came. People just provided key things we needed for the event, and it was successful. But because of how I imagined Mutation ’25, I went down a rabbit hole I’d never gone down before. First, we worked on an aesthetically pleasing proposal for Mutation ’25, then spent weeks sending it to some big brands that support mental health and youth development causes. We got no responses! Turns out we did it the wrong way. Sending proposals via email wasn’t a way to secure sponsors for an event.
5. Speakers
Thanks to the social media credibility thingy, most speakers we reached out to for Mutation ’25 won’t say YES. And I actually don’t blame them. They don’t know our brand, we have no followers, how sure are they that we are capable of hosting a conference of that magnitude? It was very sad. Securing speakers for an event back in 2018/2019 was no easy feat. But now, most speakers are “social media influencers”, and with their huge following, they don’t accept every invitation.
6. Venue
Getting a venue for Mutation ’25 was such a big bottleneck. Back in 2018, my friend Ekponudim, who was a SUG Guy in Abia State Polytechnic, got us a hall within the school. We didn’t pay a kobo for it. In 2019, I saved up about 15–20K. I met Pastor Joe of AG Worship Centre, and he gave us the hall for our event. But Lagos was different! The cost of the halls was 1million Naira and above. Then, I decided to check for halls on the UNILAG campus. After a long back and forth, they billed us 1.9 million to use the hall for a one-day event 🙃
7. Delusional Audacity vs. the Realities of Adulting
There’s a part of growing older I don’t like — The fact that you can’t only do things out of sheer passion and delusion, but that the realities of adult life become a thing. I think being an adult has contributed to my fear of failing at hosting Mutation ’25. As a teenager, there were so many things I didn’t think about while trying to put an event together. But not anymore. Now, I am more thorough and make sure I leave no stone unturned.
8. CAC Registration
One of the reasons we couldn’t get sponsors in Lagos was that we weren’t yet a formally registered organisation. Back in 2018/2019, nobody cared about that, as long as you’re doing good, that’s all that mattered. But now, I needed to cough out 100K of my own personal money to pay for CAC. If I want to partner with parastals like the Lagos State Ministry of Youth & Social Development, and the Lagos State Ministry of Health.
9. Rent
On top of everything, my rent is due. And I need to figure out how to pay for that. This is something I have to struggle with now that I never had to struggle with back then.
Looking Ahead…
Due to the setbacks and things that weren’t in place by the 22nd of October, exactly one month to the event, I came to the very scary decision of postponing the event to next year, 2026.
I spiralled and was stuck for days. I felt like a complete failure. Like someone who couldn’t do what they said they’d do. Like someone who couldn’t dream big and execute flawlessly. Like someone who had lost touch with greatness and was now a normal person.
There were some mistakes I made that I shouldn’t have made. For instance, I underrated working with people. I should have started planning vigorously in January. I should have figured out the venue, speakers and sponsors first, at least 9–12 months to the event, not from September. It was too late already.
I’m hoping that I do better, and that Mutation ’26 becomes the success I imagined.
