A Highly Successful Project 🥂🍾

I was now fully settled into the job at the pension funds administrator, I had a good grasp of the database structure and life had started to take shape. One thing I give kudos to, on my experience with the pension funds administrator is the database schema. The database schema was well designed and normalised and it was such joy writing queries against it. My SQL skills found good use and better exposure, and that experience came in handy on my biggest personal project till date... come with me.

To minimise distractions at work, my manager advised us not to do social media during work hours. It was hard for me to keep up with that rule. I agree it could be distracting, but several times my brain would get into overdrive and i would need to distract myself for few minutes.
One of such days, i was on Facebook when a former poly classmate chatted me up. He came up with a vague request, that i should help him develop a web application for a school's students online registration. I didnt think too much of it, but helped him do something quickly anyway.
It turns out however, that he had become a lecturer in a higher institution in the southwest, and his school wanted to start their students online registration portal.

And so a big project was born. Without tendering any bid, no lobby, nothing, such a big opportunity fell on my laps.

Lesson: People miss opportunity because it comes dressed in work cloths. 

I could have told the guy off on the premise that i was busy, but somehow, i found a way to help him with his request.
I didnt know the import of the project until he started sending me admitted students details, course codes, units, students scores for previous semesters etc in excel files. My database design knowledge from my current 9-5 job found good use and i did a really good job designing database tables and relationships for students details, courses, departments etc
My friend's school kept expanding the scope of the project but it wasnt an issue for me because I had developed a good structure.
When my friend asked me how much I would charge for the project, I told him N15,000 for the whole project (something of sort - I used to charge poorly for side-gigs), but he misinterpreted and started haggling the price per student. I got the message and switched up too! Charging per student for a student population of over 2000 students was a dream come true! Eventually we settled for N750 per student, and incrementally, I developed the institution's pioneer online registration and results processing portal.

I automated several parts of the application, lecturers could upload their scores (although few lecturers ever used that feature), students could reset their access PINs, up to customer service, and students could lay complaints online which I would resolve immediately. In short, I was "running" a full higher institution in another state from Lagos while still holding down a 9-5. The income was the side gig was too good to be true. I made good money and invested well by buying plots of land. In hindsight, i should have invested in foreign currency.

I held down the side-gig between 2012 and 2015. I also made tremendous progress at work and got a promotion. I think I do well under subtle pressure. I was sleeping few hours (3-4hours) per day but I didnt mind because I was making good money. The number of student enrolments kept increasing year-on-year, although the school kept reducing my income per student (from 750 to 400), so my pay did not increase correspondingly. The project's scope also expanded to include online payment and transcript generation. I was living the tech dream once again. I was grateful for the gig and thought about doing CSR by paying the students back. I planned to give scholarships to the best student by faculty, best most improved student (whose CGPA increased the most per semester), so as to spur students to work harder. But with my side income getting cut by the school, i shelved the idea.

However, the workload was getting too much. There was so much data in the database that even normalisation could not solve. Queries started taking long to execute (queries about results in particular). Teachers started complaining when it was time for end of semester results processing. In hindsight, I should have implemented a data warehouse for the school.
In 2015, the school had a new rector. I remember that after she resumed, one of the lecturers in the school advised me to come "see" her, but I didnt get the message. Shortly after she resumed, she demanded to see me and I went to see her. She told me to hand over the project and promised to pay me the outstanding that the school was owing me (she never paid the N100k till today). I found out later that she employed her cousin as a full staff to handle the project. The cousin was not hands-on but outsourced the project to his allies for support. They never requested for the school's existing data, never requested a formal handover from me.
Infact, that action took the school back to square one as if they just started the online portal all over again! Till today students cannot generate their transcripts online, students payments is still a major headache. While i handled the project, I placed my phone number on their portal for students to send me sms in case they needed instant support. Till today (September 2020), my phone number has not been removed from the school's website since 2015, and intending students still send me smses when their payments fail, now that I am in Canada.
That is the story of Nigeria - A new government comes in and cancels all the work which a former government has done because a contractor didnt settle someone in power, or because the new government wants to flex muscle, and so abandoned projects are born.

I took it in good faith and moved on, although I thoroughly enjoyed working on that project, and the renumeration made lots of sense