Chukwuemeka Obi

Chukwuemeka grew up in Onitsha, the second of four children. His father is a mechanic; his mother teaches at a primary school. Engineering was always the plan — he had been taking apart and reassembling household appliances since he was nine. But the plan had a ceiling. Private universities were for other people.

His JAMB score of 271 opened a door he had not expected. The Decagon application took him forty minutes. The acceptance letter arrived six weeks later.

At Covenant University, he enrolled in Electrical Engineering and spent his first semester building a small robotics club from scratch. By the end of the year, the club had twelve members and had submitted a project to a national student engineering competition.

He is now in his second year. His father calls him every Friday to ask about the robots.