Today's Skills For Tomorrow's Wealth

As chronicled in my recently published memoir, “Adéwálé, My Mother's Son”, found my true self through the many academic competitions I participated in as a student of the Great Mayflower School. From Mobil/STAN, NNPC, and JETS national competitions, to local interschool competitions, I learned and imbibed the fighting spirit and the resilience of a true warrior. My achievements since have been built on this ability to fight for my every aspiration.

Academic competitions also gave me the opportunity to build long-lasting friendships within my school and with students from other schools, states, and regions across the country. I have grown on the strengths of these friendships. Competitions were one of the most significant experiences in my life as a teenager.

Almost 20 years later, I had hoped for an upgrade in the quality, attractiveness, and spirit of academic competitions across Nigeria, especially with the rising adoption of social media by teenagers. That has not been the case!

So, to mark my birthday this year, we decided to revive the spirit of healthy competition. We decided to launch my memoir but to do it unconventionally. Rather than gather dignitaries that will buy hundreds of copies to forever perch on their libraries unopened, we aimed for many birds with one stone. We decided to launch the Adéwálé Students' Conference to mark my 34th birthday and launch my memoir, “Adéwálé, My Mother's Son”.

At the conference, I recreated the Interschool Quiz Competition that shaped my teenage years and included a much needed 'tech' component. It was hosted in Sagamu, my hometown and involved selected schools in the Remo area of Ogun State. Rather than pick and answer questions read out by a quiz master, we used the Mentimeter app to administer the quiz to all participating schools at the same time. We levelled the playing field by providing tablets preinstalled with the Mentimeter app. All questions were there for the taking, for every competing school. To spread the spirit of competition, we projected questions and results on a screen for the anticipating audience, who held their breath in suspense and cheered their schools at intervals

The splint was rekindled. I saw the fire of excitement and satisfaction on the faces of the students and their teachers. They seemed to ask "Can education really be this fun?" and every part of the event screamed back "Hell yes!". They particularly liked how the winners were announced. We heralded the top 5 finalists to the stage with thunderous applause before the Quiz Mistress, and the Director of American Corner, Lagos, Stephanie Adesanya, hit the golden buzzer to unveil the eventual winner.

"And the Winner is...drum rolls!"

Everyone in the hall stood in anticipation, breaths held as the DJ longed to fill the air with the age-old "Stand up for the Champion" melody.

"Remo Secondary School!!!"

Imole Adeleke, one of the representatives of Remo Secondary School couldn't believe her ears! She held her face in her tiny palms as a tear of joy rolled through her fingers. I remembered that feeling. I relished it. I borrowed her joy.

I was as happy for them as I was, for myself. I knew this was the beginning of greater things. Successes like this breed confidence you couldn’t find elsewhere. And like Malcolm Gladwell expressed in his book Outliers, these finalists have been positioned to become outliers because more resources will be invested in them to keep doing better. I was them 17 years ago and for their sake, I hope Malcolm was right.

We can't wait to organize the 2022 edition, hopefully as big as the popular TV shows you're familiar with. We can't wait to see how many superstars we will raise in the coming decade!