It is over one month since Faith Odunsi won the Global Open Mathematics Competition and Nigerians are still not over the excitement of the recognition the young intellectual has brought Nigeria, a country struggling to deal with copious education problems.
Odunsi is a 15-year-old SS3 student of Ambassadors Schools, Ota, Ogun State. Her favourite subjects are Mathematics and Information and Communications Technology.
The teenager was among a group of eight contestants selected to advance to the final stage, where she vanquished contestants from other African nations, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the United States to emerge the winner with 40 points—a 30-point margin—as the second runner-up trailed her with 10 points.
Since news of this exploit broke, Nigerians have followed it up with saccharine reactions—even Ogun State’s government could not resist the urge to hobnob with her success by honouring her together with a host of others.
The state government in a statement pledged to continue to nurture and encourage any indigene of the state with demonstrated ability to perform, achieve, and/or excel in scholastic activities in order to encourage deep thinking and creative genius inherent in the people of Ogun State.
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“No stone will be left unturned to identify high achieving and exceptionally creative young persons with superior acumen, craft and performance…” according to the statement.
But this is not her first success at a competition. Her first win was in 2018 when she set a record in the Cowbellpedia Mathematics Competition by answering 19 questions in 60 seconds. Since then, she has participated in other competitions including the national Olympiad in which she was made the Queen of Mathematics from JSS3 to SS2.
She has also taken part in the South African Mathematics Olympiad where she received medals, Kangourou Sans Frontieres, American Mathematics Competition, and Pan-African Mathematics Olympiad where she also received a silver medal.
Nigeria’s education sector is studded with challenges that have inhibited its growth for decades. The sector is highly under-funded as it receives lower than 26 percent of the national budget recommended by the United Nations in each budgetary year.
In recent time, the lack of infrastructure, poor governance, and politicising of the system have further rendered it comatose. But there is a bigger picture of Odunsi’s success. Her brilliance is symbolic of the academic potentials in Nigeria, both for boys and girls if all was well with Nigeria’s education sector.
For instance, while Odunsi won in the senior category, two other Nigerians—Mofifoluwa Akinola and Otunubi Afolabi battled for the third-place position in the junior category, with the former emerging victorious.
Gender experts say the event means there is still hope for Nigeria’s educational system. If more resources could be dedicated to the education sector with dedicated and committed teachers, there will be a drastic improvement in the education system, according to them.
In addition, “Her victory is a huge victory for women and girls, and also an important milestone to advocate for girls that they have what it takes to go into STEM subjects,” said Abiodun Essiet, gender advocate and the women leader of Nigeria Women Trust Fund (NWTF).
There has been an increase in advocacy for women and girls to take part in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. Essiet is of the view that her victory proves that girls have what it takes to triumph in a STEM subject and that STEM subjects should not be a tool to widening the gender gap in schools.
She insists that Odunsi’ victory can be used to advocate for girls in high schools to take up STEM subjects and be the best, as it shows that there is still a chance to rebrand the education system.
“We need to declare (a state) of emergency on the education system in Nigeria,” Essiet suggests. “A lot is wrong and the education system has been politicised by public servants and decision-makers across the country.”
The deputy director-general, Nigerian Association of Small Scale Industrialist, Omowumi Obidiran, describes the event as “a vision of things to come” if the education sector had enough resources, arguing that Nigerians have been doing the incredible with inadequate resources for a long time.
“Imagine what is possible if we make adequate resources,” she says, noting, “We will not only rule Africa, we will rule the world; not necessarily as immigrants in the diaspora but right here, from our home soil.”
