I first noticed Adebukunola during one of those quiet, joyful moments on Slack when DreamMakers share pieces of their lives outside of work. It was a holiday thread. Most people dropped a photo or a one-liner. He shared a story about baking banana bread for his mom. 

Fun fact? (You can tell by how this fact comes up in my second paragraph that I am eager to share it with you.) In the Philippines, abaca fibre, a relative of the banana plant, is used to produce currency-grade paper. Which means, in some oddly poetic, Moniepoint-adjacent way, bananas have been powering dreams for a while. It’s so cool, it’s bananas!

Anyway, when Adebukunola shared on Slack that he baked banana bread for his mom over the holidays, and that his daughters quietly stole the show (and most of the loaf), as a daddy’s girl, that moment stayed with me. I thought of telling a story for Father’s Day, and I knew exactly who I wanted to speak with.

And so we talked, and here’s what I learned about his role as a learning and development specialist and as a father.

Lesson #1: Life is a list of ingredients

Adebukunola (Buki) has been a Learning and Development specialist at Moniepoint for almost two years. It’s not his first job, not by a long shot. Before this, he worked in banking for nearly five years. Before that, he studied metallurgical engineering, dreaming of working at the now (almost) defunct Ajaokuta Steel Company. Life, as it often does, had other plans.

Traditional banking, he told me plainly, was incompatible with the kind of father he wanted to be. “I knew I wouldn’t be a good parent if I stayed.” That clarity, rare and deeply honest, set him on a different path, and finding different paths was nothing new to him. He’s always known how to follow a road wherever it leads.

Back in university, during those long strike periods when time stretched without boundaries, he’d simply pack a bag and follow a friend headed to one state or the other. Other times, he’d go to a motor park alone and scan the old, sunburnt, wooden signboards atop battered buses: Illela, Yauri, Takum, Nsulu, Ugep. He’d point to a name and ask, Where does this bus lead? Then he’d climb in and go.

By doing this over and over again, he travelled through 750 of Nigeria’s 774 local government areas. Sometimes, he didn’t know where he’d sleep until he got there. But that was the beauty of it; he was drawn to the unknown, to understand people. Places. Language. Life. His uncle, a Baptist minister, both bemused and bewildered, would get a call from him and exclaim, “Where are you again? What are you doing in these places?”

But his father, the calm observer, never raised a fuss. He would simply fold his arms, I imagine, nod, and say, “Ah, okay. So that’s where he is. I know where my son is now.” That quiet understanding left an imprint.

His father, a retired diplomat, he says, was a deeply present man, the kind of dad who didn’t just show up, but stayed. He remembers how, when his mom returned home from work, it was his father who often stepped into the kitchen to cook. Sometimes he’d ask Adebukunola, the youngest of five, to join him or to make the meal for her himself. It was the kind of presence Adebukunola absorbed and stored away. And years later, when he thought about what kind of father he wanted to be, he didn’t hesitate. He wanted to show up. He wanted to be there.

Lesson #2: A good recipe combines life and learning

He wanted a daughter.

“If I was ever going to be a dad,” he told me, “I wanted to be a girl dad.” Not because he thought it would be easier. But because he imagined it would teach him something profound about softness and strength, about nurturing without control.

And he was right. From the moment his daughter was born, he paid attention. He was the one who woke when she stirred, the one who took her to the hospital, the one who asked questions at appointments. He didn’t just want to be around; he wanted to know her. To hold her fears and celebrate her tiny joys. That’s how he saw fatherhood. Not just presence, but deep, deliberate care.

So he left the bank and started a cooking business. For a while, he catered intimate events, drawing on the culinary techniques he’d picked up from Korean, Singaporean, Vietnamese, and Mexican families, people he’d met through his father’s diplomatic circles. It was a season of experimentation. But over time, reality set in. “I realised I couldn’t give a child the life they deserved if that’s all I had.”

In his 30s, he turned to what he truly loved: helping people learn. “Not just training. Not slides and presentations. The science of learning, the emotional, cognitive, and behavioural questions that live beneath the surface of performance at work.”

He found his way into L&D roles across a few companies, but the work didn’t always satisfy him. Too often, it felt like being a doctor peddling pills before asking what hurts. “People think training is the cure for everything. But sometimes, a person’s struggling because of an attitude issue, not a skill gap. You can’t fix that with a course.”

Lesson #3: Knowing the right temperature to cook

At Moniepoint, he found alignment. “We don’t just roll out trainings. We research. We diagnose. We go back and check if it worked.” His voice lit up when he described it. This was a place where the work was allowed to be deep, contextual, and evolving.

When he joined Moniepoint, he thought he’d be helping 2,000 to 3,000 staff grow. Today, he works on training interventions for tens of thousands of people, primarily those on the distribution and offline teams. And what could have felt overwhelming, instead, feels like purpose. It helps that Moniepoint, in his words, doesn’t “play the age game.” No one makes him feel like an outlier for being a dad.

I remember pausing when he said that. I wasn’t sure what he meant at first, until it hit me. I had assumed, without thinking, that his daughters were toddlers. Perhaps it was the story about the banana bread. Maybe it was the way he talked about his children with such softness and hands-on energy, the kind you often hear from parents deep in the baby-raising trenches. But no, his eldest daughter was graduating from university the very day we spoke.

That matters. Because fatherhood, like his work, isn’t just a title. It’s a practice.

At Moniepoint, L&D isn’t about shoving everyone through the same program. It’s about understanding what people actually need to grow. He probes. Is it a skills issue? A behavioural concern? A clarity gap? A confidence problem? “Sometimes what people need is training. Sometimes what they need is a guide, or a conversation, or a better-written manual.” I learned that the most meaningful solutions don’t always resemble traditional learning.

So he gathers context. From performance data. From HRBPs. From the people themselves. He tailors interventions like a coach, not a broadcaster, designing content and formats that match real people’s real needs. And then he goes back to check if it worked.

“You can’t just throw PowerPoints at people,” he says. “Training only matters if it changes something. If it lands.”

Lesson #4: Cooling, sharing and powering dreams

He describes his role in L&D at Moniepoint as almost like being a father to many. “I was trained by really good people,” he said. “And I want to be that kind of person for someone else.”

He sees training not as information delivery but as transformation. And to do that, you must care. Really care. “Sometimes we’re in training for hours, and no one gets tired. There’s a sort of friendship, a rhythm. You’re not just teaching, you’re connecting.”

That rhythm, he believes, is helped by the sheer diversity at Moniepoint, people from different states, different tribes, different countries, different ways of speaking and seeing. And for Adebukunola, who has travelled through most of Nigeria, that kind of variety doesn’t overwhelm him. It excites him. More often than not, when someone introduces themselves, the sole of his foot has touched the sand where their story began. And that matters. Because when you’ve stood where someone comes from, it’s easier to meet them where they are.

That mindset, that empathy, doesn’t switch off when he closes his laptop.

Working remotely at Moniepoint means his family lives with his work as much as he lives with theirs. His younger daughter returns from school. They swap stories. He might still be working, his screen glowing. “She’s looking at me like, ‘You haven’t closed?’” he laughs. “They leave work and come to me, but for me, work is right here.”

But he doesn’t mind. He believes children should understand what their parents do. “You’re not in the CIA. Or SARS. Your 8-year-old should be able to say what your job is.” It’s a line that made me laugh, but he was serious. It’s part of being present: you don’t hide your life from your family. You let them in. At Moniepoint, that’s not just a personal philosophy; it’s a cultural one. His team celebrates everything: new pets, birthdays, and babies. And they do it together, with their families.

When I think about what part of his work feels most like fatherhood, it’s the care. The follow-through. Ensuring someone is better off after they’ve interacted with you.

And that, really, is the heart of both his worlds. Fatherhood and learning. Showing up, asking the right questions, listening, giving what’s needed, even when it’s not what’s expected. Helping people become their best, in small, consistent ways.

The best work, like the best recipes, comes from the right mix of care, curiosity, and incredible people. We have incredible people, we care, and we’re curious to meet you. Explore open roles at https://moniepoint.com/careers.