Pelumi Yerima

Pelumi's secondary school in Ibadan had never sent a student to a private university. The fees were simply not a conversation anyone had. When her JAMB score came back at 287, her form teacher printed the result slip and pinned it to the staffroom noticeboard. It stayed there for a week.

But at home, the conversation was different. Her father had been driving a commercial bus for eleven years. Her mother ran a small provisions stall at the end of their street. There were five children. The score was real. The money was not.

A teacher found the Decagon application link and sent it to Pelumi's phone at 9pm on a Tuesday. She submitted her application at 11:47pm the same night.

Three months later, she received an acceptance letter from Landmark University and a confirmation that her first-year fees had been paid in full by the Decagon Undergraduate Honors Program.

She is now in her second year, studying Computer Science, maintaining a 4.2 GPA. She has started mentoring two students from her secondary school who are preparing for JAMB. She calls her mother every Sunday.