THE GIRL, OMOTOLA
Omotola Akinsola, born 24 years ago, did not start life on a bed of roses, born to a family of inter-religious pedigrees, Tola learned to be a part of two belief systems – Christianity and Islam – and yet, not let them clash.
“We used to live in Yemetu, a face-me-I-face-you. We had two rooms, one was a bedroom and the other was a sitting room in the day and a sleeping space at night. My father took the whole wing,” Tola reminisces.
“When I was to attend secondary school, I asked my parents to let me attend a public school, I didn’t want to be different from the other children in our neighborhood at Yemetu. I wanted to be like them, to have the same life they had. I didn’t want to feel privileged. After striking a deal with my dad, he conceded. So I was admitted into St. Louis Grammar School, Mokola as a boarder. However, education in the public school was just as horrible as my father had predicted. By my J.S.3, things got so bad at school. The sins of our seniors were visited on us, the juniors; the results of our junior school leaving exams were withheld. It was upon this nerve-wracking episode that my father, honorably, pulled me out of St. Louis Grammar School, and put me in the International School, Ibadan (ISI) where I had my senior school education”
ISI was a tough time in my life’s journey. I repeated my first year in ISI and I had to make a choice between staying back in ISI and repeating S.S.1 or leaving for another school and still repeating S.S.1. I chose to stay back in ISI but I had no idea what I was signing up for. I resumed to the dazing reality that I had to walk past the SS2 class every time I had lunch break; that was a pretty awful. It was a hard period of sneers and jeers from my former mates every lunch time. It was a dark period in my life but I survived. As I approached SS3, I had made my desire to not study in Nigeria a major talk in my house. I could take any country – the UK or the US – but not Nigeria. Because of this, my father began to save money towards sending me abroad; he invested in shares. Once I completed my secondary school education, I made up my mind to school in the US and so I took the SAT and TOEFL. I got admitted into Columbia College but in June of 2008 when I was planning to leave for the US, tragedy struck. My sister died!”
“June 13, my sister died. She died on the same day that my father returned from Botswana on a brief visit from his sabbatical leave. The death hit the family hard; it was totally unexpected and devastating. Rising from the tragedy, I delayed my resumption in the US till winter and moved with my dad to Botswana so I could stay with him through the moment of our loss. While in Botswana, I attended Queens University of Creative Studies. There, I enrolled for Public Relations and did a semester.”
THE ELLEN PARKER MIRACLE
“In December 2008, I moved to the US.
I had just settled into school with part of my fees paid, when my father called me to inform me that Nigerian stock market had crashed. Since everything my father had saved to train me with in the US was reduced to nothing, I decided to come back home. My father encouraged me to stay in the US and promised to raise the money but things didn’t go as he had planned. Paying my school fees became hard and it began to tell in fatal ways when I couldn’t register for my next semester courses. Luckily, I was able to call in a few favours and the school policy of not registering until 50% of the fees was paid was waived for me. A new session crawled in and no good news came from home.
Things began to look so bad as the debts piled up.
By the end of my sophomore my debts had accumulated to $20,000! ”
Omotola rubs her neck and squeezes her face as she talks about the depth of the financial mess she suddenly found herself in a strange man’s land.
She continues:
“I approached the Reverend of the church I attended and asked if she knew any member of the congregation who needed a help around their house. At that moment, I needed someplace to lay my head so desperately. So I asked the Reverend for people who would take me into their homes while I did the work in the house and still went to school. That, my dear, was how I met Ellen Parker. Ellen Parker was a widow and was without a child. She was a white woman and she lived in the biggest house on the street. Ellen took me into her house but not on my terms. She made her house my home and she didn’t let me do any chores as I had planned.
Ellen took me as a child; on bad winter days she’d drive me to school.”
Tola smiles
“One day at school, I was called by the Dean and told that all my outstanding debts had been paid! The Dean told me that a certain woman – Ellen Parker – had come by the school to pay off the debt. I dashed home to warn her about a possible scam. Glowingly, she admitted that she made the payment. She asked me to never hesitate to ask for anything I needed from her from that moment onward. Ellen had found out about my outstanding school debts and had singlehandedly cleared it! I stared in disbelief. It was unimaginable that a woman that I had only known due to circumstances paid my debt of $20,000 without being asked to. It was a miracle.
In 2011, I graduated from Columbia College with a GP of 3.8 out of 4.0.”
THE POST-GRAD COCKTAIL
“Before the end of my study at Columbia College, I had got admission in New York University, Columbia University, University of Chicago and the University of Washington for my Masters. I settled for Washington because I loved their curriculum. For me, the content was more important to me than the name of the school. I got an 85% scholarship at Washington University and proceeded with my masters. In 2012, I won the Congressional Fellowship at the Capitol Hill. I was attached to the office of a Republican senator and we (the senator’s team) worked our asses off! It was the year of abortion debates and Obamacare. I learned to do thorough research and to be diplomatic. It was quite an experience. I began my masters the August of 2012 and I finished July 2013. I built my own curriculum and handpicked my courses to meet the total required number of units in the faculty. As much as I could I made my course inter-disciplinary – combining courses from Social Work and the Business School.”
THE CANCER
In 2010, Omotola was diagnosed of cancer. Early detection helped she consistently took treatment till the growth was dissolved. All through the treatment, she focused on the goals she had set in front of her. She lived with a sharp awareness that with every tick of the clock, her life was on the line. The realization of her mortality drives her to redeem time, always! I do not talk much about the cancer; somehow it reminded me of my cross.
In 2013, Omotola returned home and started the Jumpstart Academy, an educational organization that sought to complement the effort of government in the area of education. The academy takes specific interests in every student enrolled with it and the Academy follows-up on them.
Then in 2014, she was nominated for the MTN show "who wants to be surprised" and went home with the grand prize of 50million naira!
"Take charge of your life. Walk on water…maybe you can defy gravity. Take that first step today."
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