While Nigerian leaders are still confused on what age a child should be admitted into the tertiary institutions many of the country’s youngsters are busy charting away global awards and prizes for innovative and academic excellence.
Oluwademilade Odumuboni, a 10-year-old student proved to the whole world, especially Nigerian leaders that age is just a number when it comes to innovative thinking.
Odumuboni created a waste converter designed to assist African villages in food production and guarantee a clean environment to win Toyota’s Dream Car Art Contest grand prize.
He was rewarded with a cash prize of $5,000 (about N7.5 million) and his school was awarded $10,000 (N15 million). He defeated 782,852 contestants from 90 countries to clinch the grand prize.
Oluwafemi Ositade, a 17-year-old Nigerian is another academic genius who has taken the world by surprise by his achievement.
Ositade secured full scholarships to multiple Ivy League universities in the United States, including Harvard, as well as other top-notch universities in Canada and Qatar.
A member of The Ambassadors College, Ota, in Ogun State won scholarships worth over $3.5 million from his exceptional performance on the SAT where he achieved a perfect score in Mathematics (800/800) and a near-perfect score of 760 out of 800 in reading and writing and his CGPA of 4.04/4.0 from college.
Ositade has received 14 scholarships from renowned institutions nine of which are full-ride scholarships (covering tuition, accommodation, allowance, and all other student’s expenses).
Some of the tertiary institutions that have offered him scholarships are Harvard University, Brown University, Duke University, Wesleyan University, and Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, among others.
Similarly, a Nigerian, Saidat Rasaq-Balogun has been awarded the 2024 Distinguished Student Award from Southern Illinois University (SIU).
Rasaq-Balogun was a graduate of Meteorological and Climate Science from the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), and she is working towards her Ph.D. in Environmental Resources and Policy at SIU.
She and other seven students from SIU’s campuses in Carbondale, Edwardsville, and Springfield were honoured by the university’s board of trustees and the Student Advisory Committee for the SIU System (SACSS) recently.
Not taking anybody’s success as theirs, five Nigerian students emerged victorious at the prestigious World Affairs Challenge (WAC) 2024 held recently.
Ekufu Ernest, Obuna Somtochukwu, Umeodinka Emmanuel, Ejike Ekene, and Ubah Jason all students of the Christ the King College, Onitsha in Anambra State secured the coveted global first-place position with their ‘Wise Tales by Primus’ a captivating series of digital comic stories addressing environmental degradation, climate change, and substance abuse.
The World Affairs Challenge, organised by WorldDenver, empowers high school students to develop innovative solutions for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
In the same vein, four Nigerian students from the Queen of the Rosary College came first in a global competition that had students from the Republic of China, the United States of America, Singapore, and other nationalities.
Iwuno Chisom Vivian, Nnaji Mmesoma Stephanie, Okechukwu Amara Racheal, and Okoye Chidimma Maryjane won the coveted prize with their invention called, ‘Queen’s Lab App’, a virtual science laboratory that would enable students interested in sciences in the senior secondary school (SSS1-3) to study experiments with ease.
This innovative invention won them a prize money of $1, 500 (about N2.3 million) as a team, and apart from that, the University of Delaware, United States of America also presented a cash award of $250 (about N375,000) to each of the winners.
The competition was meant for secondary school students to boost the entrepreneurial spirit in teenagers.
