Adeyemi Abdul Basit Adetunji
The Lab in My Mother's Room
I didn't grow up with much money. That taught me something early: if you can't buy it, you build it. And you don't just build it. You build it with the littlest resources possible. You build it from scraps.
I was 12 when a lecture in our JETS club explained how lemons can be used as a battery. There were 30 to 40 of us in that room. We all heard the same thing. I was the only one who couldn't let it go. In the car, I told my mother I wanted lemons. She had no idea why. She bought them anyway.
I worked in my lab. In reality, it was my mother's room. My first bulb was too big, and nothing happened. I hadn't studied any physics yet, so I didn't know why. I kept trying. Then I pulled a tiny LED out of our Christmas lights. Yes, I ruined the family's Christmas lights. The LED glowed.
The next morning I carried it to school. My physics teacher was shocked. He didn't expect anyone to go home and actually do it. So I partnered with him and another student to perfect it and build a better prototype. At the Valedictory Service, I presented it again. Out of everyone who heard that lecture, I was the one who went home and made it real.
After that, I couldn't stop. Mini mixers. Power banks. Proximity-activated dispensers. Even a stun gun, which I brought to school and almost got into trouble for. I didn't always know why I was building them. I was curious. I would see it, I'd be curious about it, and I'd do it. That was the cycle. There was never any reason to it in particular.
I Walked In Anyway
At 13, I had to choose between science, art and commercial. I wanted science. It was the only thing I ever wanted. But to get in, you had to pass a competency test, and the competency test was 80% maths. I was bad at maths. Very bad.
The results came out. My name wasn't on the list.
I didn't accept that. I was supposed to be in art or commercial, and that was clear. But science was what I wanted. So I pushed my way through. I attended classes I was not supposed to attend. I walked into the science hall anyway, even though it was clear I wasn't supposed to be there.
Only after all that persistence did they give me science on trial. The deal was simple: get good, or go back.
Ten to Three: Battles with Monsters
So I studied maths every night, from about 9pm until 2 or 3 in the morning. Then I slept a little and woke up at 6 or 7 for school. Some nights I didn't sleep at all. I started battling insomnia, because every problem I couldn't solve became a nightmare. Those problems were monsters in my sleep, and sometimes I had to get out of bed and go back to solve them. Until I solved them, they wouldn't leave.
By the end of secondary school, on prize-giving day, I was declared the best in maths. The best in physics. The best in biology. The best in chemistry. And the biggest of all: the best in science. Overall, I took first position across all three: science, commercial and art. I was also Student Body President and valedictorian, and I had to lead and manage people. The boy who wasn't on the science list left as the best in science.
It was real hard work and late nights. That did something to me. I realised I could do anything. Everything was possible with the right amount of sheer will and hard work. I was blind. I began to see.
The designer nobody heard
At the same time, I was working. I started learning graphic design at 13. At 14, I was already negotiating with clients. I was closing deals at that age, too. I never picked up a call. They'd hear a young voice and they wouldn't take me seriously. So I worked only by text. The work had to speak for me. At this age, I understood something. I didn't just have to get customers, I had to keep them.
And when a client asked for a change, I'd go back, adjust it, and send the new version. No arguing about it. Just the new version.
The War
At university, I got into electrical and electronics engineering. Engineering school wasn't easy either. It was war. I taught myself programming and went back to my old love of building things. Fire alarm system prototype. MP3 player. Water level indicator. I designed PCBs and learned 3D modelling. I gave my youth to technology, and I don't regret a single night.
The Two Marks That Haunt Me
In my third year, I took electromechanical machines. To get an A, I needed 70. I got 68.
I was devastated. I wasn't chasing B's. I wanted A's. And I had gone to every single class of that course. But attendance was on paper, and the paper was gone. I was told I didn't attend most classes, or enough classes. I had no way to prove I had.
Then I looked around and saw it wasn't just me. Grades felt random, and nobody knew where they stood. Students found out they weren't eligible for an exam only when they got to the hall. Lecturers who never came were never marked absent, and the students took the blame. I had sat in rooms full of paper sheets that were never used.
I had no time to build anything about it back then. But the two marks that haunt me never left.
I Sat in Those Halls
I sat in those halls. After classes, I sometimes helped the class rep photocopy the sheets. Sometimes you had to photocopy them out of your own money. A student has to do that. And when attendance isn't counted correctly, you lose the motivation to even show up. You get demotivated. Going to class doesn't have to be a chore.
So I didn't have to be told this problem was real. I've felt it myself.
I've Failed: The Boulder
In my final year, my project was a drone for farm surveillance. It was a hexacopter, and it weighed more than 2 kg. I was building it with one partner.
Then our dean told us to change the topic. Too complex, too difficult, too expensive. My partner said, let's just change it. I don't want anything more to do with this.
I asked him to hold on. There were only two of us, and the project needed both of us.
I didn't argue with him, and I didn't order him around. I showed him what I could see: this could be one of the best projects ever done, and we could put our names on something great, not something average.
I kept going back to him. I kept trying to convince him to stay in the group with me. I told him it would be worth it, because I had understood from a very young age that with the right amount of work, in the right direction, it's all possible.
I did convince him. He stayed, and I led us from there.
Then we failed. We failed a lot. We failed again and again, on a project we'd already been told to drop. I mean that wasn't the first time I was in a building on fire. But I am used to things not working out immediately and on the first trial. I had learnt that a bad start doesn't have to be a bad finish, and one has to be comfortable with being mad alone.
There were so many doubts that we could make it work.
But I had understood earlier that one must imagine Sisyphus happy. I had learnt that I had to push the boulder, and that one must fall in love with the boulder more than the destination of the boulder, because the process itself is more interesting than the destination.
It flew, and it worked eventually.
A-Kiosk
That same year, I was quietly building something else beside it. A-Kiosk. It was what I'd wanted to build since the day I saw 68.
I had no time to work. So every naira my parents sent me for food went into that prototype, until it worked. I lost 4kg in two weeks. It was hard, because money was tight. But since I was young, I've learned not just to build with little, but to reach my goal with the littlest resources possible.
I didn't get to 143 by guessing right the first time. It's 142 times I was told something didn't work, and I listened.
It works. The firmware is on its 143rd version. The demo is real, not a mock-up.
They said I wasn't fit for science. I got in anyway. So when I found another system deciding who belonged and who didn't, on nothing more than a sheet of paper that goes missing, I knew exactly what to do. I built the list that can't disappear. I built A-Kiosk.
What I believe
I believe I can change things. I believe I can bend life. I believe I can change things around. I do not believe in the status quo. I do not believe in taking things as they are. I believe I'm surrounded by illusions. I believe I can see through them if I decide to. I believe I can make what doesn't exist, exist. I believe in winning.
How it ends
I understand that most successful founder stories end with "and then I dropped out." I know this story might have sounded better if it had ended that way, just like the stories of our most successful founders.
But sadly, I graduated as the best student in my department, electrical and electronics engineering, in my university, Lead City University. I graduated with a first class, and I was the only first class student in the department that session. I still think about that boy who wasn't on the list.
Yesterday, I was bad at math. Today, I am a local champion. Tomorrow, my work will reach the world.