How a scholarship, a borrowed laptop, and a stubborn email changed the trajectory of my life; and led to VarsityScape.
I finished secondary school at fifteen. When I was done, I decided it was time to move forward. I wanted to study medicine. The University of Benin had other plans: they gave me physiotherapy instead. It was a new department. They didn’t have much, including a logo. So they needed someone to design one. I didn’t know how to do graphic design. I had a tablet. I said I’d do it for five thousand naira.
I borrowed a laptop from my friend. I used to go to his place and work there. I stressed him a lot, that was before I got my own laptop. He was pretty cool about it. I learned how to do the design. I delivered. I got paid my five thousand naira. It wasn’t a fortune, but the naira was better then. More than the money, it was the learning. That was the first time I was paid for something I’d taught myself to do.
Around the same time, I’d joined the IT team of Christian Fellowship International (CFi). It was another place where I could learn, meet people with huge ambitions, and think about the future. I’ve always been focused on what happens after school. I used to ask recent graduates: What’s next? What’s happening after now? For most of them, it wasn’t exactly clear. I found that a little strange.
But it didn’t bother me too much. I was a bit smug, maybe. I already had a sense of what I wanted: at some point a medical doctor, but also something with technology. I said I was going to write a book. Plus many other things. I didn’t have a single path. I had a direction. And that direction was shaped by a simple realisation: if I stayed in Nigeria and tried to get into medicine the usual way, I’d be fighting a system that wasn’t built for scale.
So when my roommate told me about the Bilateral Education Agreement between Nigeria and Russia, a full scholarship to study abroad, I checked my WAEC result. I was qualified.
The First Attempt: Bird in Hand
The first year I applied, the exam was in Calabar. I traveled down with my dad. The problem was timing: the date I was supposed to write the scholarship exam clashed with an exam I had at the University of Benin. I’m from Delta State.
The exam rotated by states in the same geopolitical zone, and that year it wasn’t in my state. We went a day early to see if we could write on another date; if they could make room for us. They said no. I’d have to wait till the next day. My dad said: A bird in hand is worth more than two in the bush. He meant: don’t risk your university exams for a maybe. So we went back. I didn’t write the scholarship exam that year.
I was ready to take a carryover. For me, it was a risk–reward calculation. If I stayed and wrote the university exam the next day, worst case I get a carryover and I can rewrite. But if I left and wrote the scholarship exam, and I won; that changes my life. My dad didn’t see it that way. I don’t hold it against him. He was protecting me. But I’d already made up my mind: I was going to try again – and this was my last chance since your result needed to be under 2 years.
The next year, I didn’t tell him I was going to write the exam. This time it was in my state. The exam had rotated to our state for the geopolitical zone. So I traveled to Asaba. I wrote. I got the scholarship.
Only Send My Documents to Kazan
When you apply for the BEA scholarship, they give you a list of schools to choose from. They send your documents to different universities. I’d always thought I was randomly selected by Kazan Federal University. Later I realised there was an email I’d sent, strongly worded but polite, to the Russian embassy.
It said: Please send my documents only to Kazan Federal University. Only after Kazan rejects me should you send them to any other school. They gave me some diplomatic response about how everything would be decided by the process. But I think that email played a role.
I’ve always tried not to be passive about my life. Even when the choices aren’t fully in my hands, I do what I can to tilt the odds.
Funding Ourselves to Get There
Before we left for Russia, the embassy contacted us. The Nigerian government was delaying the release of funds for the scholarship. Our admission could expire. So we had to fund ourselves to go. The Federal Scholarship Board wasn’t giving reasonable responses. Our parents were called in.
Still, we had to find a way. My dad was frustrated. What are these people doing? They don’t have a sense of what they’re doing. I wrote him a strong letter. I told him I was going after this. It was a chance I couldn’t pass up. He came through. Whenever my dad had cash, he was more than willing to spend on his children. That year he got me a laptop and what I needed. I landed in Russia with one clear thought: These people might not pay our stipend. In the BEA, the Nigerian government pays the stipend; the Russian government gives the free tuition.
So I was already thinking: we need to make money. We need to be entrepreneurial. Eventually they started paying, about twelve months after we arrived. They’d paid the old students, and the ones who came after us. We were the cohort in between. Some students had almost given up. But the government came around. So we kept going.
Learning Russian and Living the Contrast
We had to learn Russian in a very short time. That took resilience. But the bigger gift was the contrast. I’d studied in Nigeria. I’d seen the system from the inside; the queues, the uncertainty, the frustration of being assigned a course I never chose. In Russia I saw smaller class sizes. Oral exams that actually tested understanding. Interactive learning that felt less like memorisation and more like discovery. Predictable structures. It was everything I wished existed back home.
And that contrast is what pushed me to start VarsityScape. It began as a platform for students and institutions of higher learning. Then we realised the problem was much bigger. We needed to solve something that would be viable in the long term. So we pivoted. We built an Academy Operating System, infrastructure for anyone who wants to launch and scale an academy. That journey started in Russia, in the gap between what I’d left and what I’d found.
I remember one of my classmates once asked me: Are you comfortable spending all these formative years, your twenties, in Russia? What does that look like? Do you have friends? I was. It was a unique experience. I’m grateful to the Nigerian government, despite the flaws along the way, and to the Russian government, for that opportunity. It gave me a lens the rest of my life will use.
Coming Back
When I finished my studies in 2024, my dad said: Don’t come back to Nigeria. I did anyway. Soon after, we won the Mastercard Foundation Edtech fellowship grant; a hundred thousand dollars for VarsityScape. That was the kind of bet I’d always made. I wasn’t going in for small. I was going for big. And there’s definitely more to come. I want to build a tech city. I want to show that certain things are possible. That ideology keeps me going.
What I Took From It
So what do you take from a story like this?
Don’t be passive. When the system says “wait,” ask if there’s a way to push. When the embassy says “we’ll see,” send the email. When your dad says “bird in hand,” hear him, but if you’ve done the math and the upside is worth it, try again when you can.
Make demands. Not rudely. But clearly. I wanted Kazan. I said so. I wanted to go to Russia even when the stipend was uncertain. I said so. You don’t always get what you ask for. But you rarely get what you don’t ask for.
Take calculated risks. The first year, staying back was the safe choice. The second year, going to write the exam without telling my dad was the risky one. I’d already decided the reward was worth the risk. Know your numbers. Know your downside. Then act.
Use what you have. A borrowed laptop. A fellowship. A question, what’s next? , that you keep asking. It all compounds.
And one more thing: love the story you’re in. The delays, the uncertainty, the formative years abroad, for me were not setbacks. They’re the material you’ll use to build what comes next. I’m building VarsityScape so that millions of young Africans don’t have to rely on luck and stubbornness alone. But I’m also glad I had both when I needed them.