Founder of Chess in Slums Initiative, Tunde Onakoya, has revealed that his parents thought he was crazy when he chose to teach chess to children instead of travelling abroad.
Tunde Onakoya revealed his journey and struggles to become a children’s advocate in an interview with Chude Jideonwo, host of the show #WithChude.
According to Tunde, his decision to teach underprivileged children how to play chess was driven by his passion to impact them.
“The greatest metric for measuring success for me was in the lives of children. It was not based on my popularity or those who donated or funded me. I didn’t even know that there was a development sector and that there was funding; it was just a passion project.”
Recounting his childhood, Tunde revealed he had to drop out of primary school for two years, during which he came in contact with the game of chess.
“ … It was in the two years I was at home that I came in contact with the game of chess. I was just fascinated with the way the chess pieces were carved. I wanted to learn what it was, but they were like, you are too young to learn. But I kept going back there to watch how they played. By just watching, I was able to pick up the rules. They will always say things like, you have to be very smart to play chess, and chess makes people very smart. To me, being smart looked like a way of equalizing the playing field, so that interested me. And the summary is that chess changed my life.”
Speaking on his decision to teach chess instead of travelling abroad, he said, “There was no plan; it was crazy. It was just like something else was controlling me, and that was what made my parents worried. They were like, ‘What’s going on?’ because you know our situation: a lot of my friends had travelled out, a lot of them were getting into crypto, a lot of them into tech, and here I was at the age of 23, thinking about charity; it just didn’t make any sense, and I didn’t even have any experience. I didn’t even know that charity was like a ‘thing thing’; I only knew they were NGOs, and I didn’t understand the details of it.
Sharing his secret to success, Tunde emphasised the importance of faith in one’s journey to success.
“I think that’s the thing about faith, just having faith in your idea and having the courage to impress it upon the world. I think it’s an important decision every young person should explore. At some point in your life, just quit your job for six months and have faith in something. Don’t take my advice; don’t be like me. It’s an indescribable feeling that pushes you much farther than any form of incentive, right? Even if it was for money, it was not a logical decision, or if it was for fame. How do you even get famous for something like this? There was no picture. No one has done this, especially how I wanted it to look. There was no template to show that if I did this, this would happen.
Noting that his impact and rise to fame as an advocate was not an intentional plan, he revealed how one Facebook post about Basirat has led to other posts and activities he has engaged in to impact people’s lives positively.
“At first, there was no plan or idea, but something happened with Basirat. I remember she was always very punctual to the class, as at the time she was five years old, really small, and was always punctual with her big skirt. She would come, and I would carry her and ask her, ‘Basirat, kilo fe di to ba dagba?’ (What do you want to be when you grow older’ and she would say ‘nurse’. So, a lot of people in the community knew her as ‘Mama Nurse’. She wasn’t in school and had never been to school before as her parents were really poor, but she would always say she wanted to be a nurse as that was the only thing she saw, maybe watching TV at her neighbour’s place. On that day, I just wanted to express myself because I was doing those things that I felt so deeply connected to, but I didn’t know how to explain them to people; I didn’t know how to articulate them properly. But another day, I just decided to write about this little girl who was part of our chess club, was always punctual, and had an amazing smile. So, I took a picture of her, posted it and wrote it poetically, and I just went to bed. I woke up the next day, and I saw it had gone viral on Facebook like thousands of people, from all over the world, saw this little girl holding a chess pod and were drawn to her. People have now started saying, ‘Tunde, that girl, I want to sponsor her education up until university level’, to people from around the world. I am not even talking about Nigeria, and I barely use social media. It was just a random post on Facebook. That was it. That was just how being with them, sharing their stories, and teaching them chess became a gateway to another opportunity: education.
“For me, it now felt like a superpower, and you know, in Spiderman, it says that with great power comes great responsibility, so I just felt a deep responsibility to all of them because the world didn’t know Basira before, but because I shared her story, the world now knows her. But then, there wasn’t just Basirat; there was Jamiu, Ayomide, and all of them. So, I started writing more and felt like being able to write their stories was my superpower, right? And it was an important bridge to connect them with the people who could help them. The more I did that, I posted about Ayomide next, and another person saw it, and they were like, ‘I would like to sponsor’. So, two children had gotten scholarships, a way to go back to school. So, I wrote more; it became ten; it became fifteen; and that was the plan. That became the plan.”
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