By Brittany Rogers
Above image courtesy BYU–Pathway Worldwide
Through BYU–Pathway Worldwide, Amos Abioye landed employment that transformed his life—and he hasn't even graduated yet.
The one bedroom in the rented apartment Amos Abioye grew up in belonged to his parents. He and his four siblings slept in the living room—which was also the soccer pitch.
“We played barefooted in the house mostly,” says Abioye. That is, until the game spilled into the complex’s cement courtyard.
Church and soccer—football in Nigeria—fill his happiest childhood memories.
Christmas, not so much.
“I didn’t grow up in the best of circumstances,” he explains, though he fondly recalls one Christmas when the missionaries brought over vegetable oil, rice, and toys. But usually holiday trappings were spartan. “I have slept on the bare floor. I have gone hungry. I have been hopeless,” Abioye continues. He often woke up afraid, he says, “not knowing if life had anything to offer me.”
Now his life couldn’t be fuller. For one thing, he and his wife have a 1-year-old. For another, at 33, Abioye serves as a stake president.
Abioye says this full life is thanks to the gospel and to BYU–Pathway Worldwide, through which he gained—at last—employment with a sustainable living wage. “To be able to provide for myself and for my family . . . has been the biggest miracle of my life,” he says.
And without his BYU–Pathway education, he adds with a laugh, he might still be single.
“We had to wait two years after the proposal to get married!” says his wife, Oluwashola “Shola” Maria Awolope Abioye. Both of them were scrimping, trying to finance their education while saving up enough money to wed.
“I just kept praying that a miracle would happen,” Abioye says.
BYU–Pathway provided. The Church Educational System does not just educate students and wish them luck; it also builds relationships with companies all over the world, placing thousands of students in remote work with better pay than their local economies can provide. Well-paying jobs in Nigeria, for example, are scarce.
When Abioye enrolled as a BYU–Pathway student, he already had a degree from a local university, and the best job he could find—in Lagos, the economic capital of Nigeria—was managing luxury apartment buildings, making the equivalent of 100 US dollars a month. He couldn’t rent a room on that income. “I was squatting with somebody I knew,” says Abioye, doing custodial services on the side to make ends meet.
One year into his BYU–Pathway courses, Abioye gained employment as a paid BYU–Pathway mentor—providing an immediate improvement in his standard of living well before graduation. After crushing that role, he gained promotions, eventually landing a job as a talent acquisition specialist for Global Managed Services, where he plugs people living in emerging markets into jobs with life-changing wages.
“It’s marvelous,” he says. “The last thing I did that brought me this much joy was my full-time mission in the Ghana Cape Coast Mission.”
It’s a feeling he’s been chasing ever since. On his mission, Abioye slept in his own bed for the first time in his life. He didn’t have to worry about food. “You could just focus on the work!” he exclaims. He craved the financial security that would allow him to live the gospel with that kind of focus for the rest of his life.
When the call came to lead the Ile-Ife Nigeria Stake, “I got the shock of my life,” he says. Abioye doesn’t have a car, which means he takes public transit to visit all the wards in the stake. Zachary Bunker, one of Abioye’s closest mission companions, underscores what this looks like: “Imagine a guy sitting in church clothes, crammed in a Toyota van with 15 adults and a goat.” The two remain close—Abioye even named his son, Kaden, after Bunker’s son—and chat just about every Sunday. “He’ll call me sometimes at 4 in the morning Nigeria time. He has so far to travel,” says Bunker. “It’s pretty inspiring.”
For their part, Abioye and his wife feel blessed. They live comfortably in their own apartment and are finally planning their traditional marriage ceremony. Their parents were unable to afford the trip to the sealing in the Aba Nigeria Temple. At the traditional ceremony—akin to a reception—they’ll deliver the dowry and celebrate with everyone they love. “I’m looking forward to dressing like a bride again,” says Shola. Her aso oke dress, in swaths of navy and sky blue, complements Abioye’s four-piece agbada—and Kaden has an outfit to match.
Alongside work and his church calling, Abioye continues to chip away at his applied business management bachelor’s degree as well as an MBA through a local university. “I have a lot going,” he says, “but I am committed to go to the next level, to move a chair forward.” He plans to graduate in 2027.
“If there’s anything I would like to share,” Abioye says, “it’s gratitude for the blessings of the gospel. It’s gratitude for the blessing of BYU–Pathway. It’s gratitude for hope.”
