Gold Chessers: Nigerian teens learn their way out of the slum on chessboards

For the dozen children and teenagers who constantly crowd around plastic tables in the Majidun neighbourhood of Lagos to (learn to) play chess on plastic mats printed with chess boards under their supervisors’ watch, the wit and critical thinking abilities they would learn on the chessboard will eventually help them make their way out of the slum.

One of the said teenagers, inspired by the 2016 film about a Kenyan girl who makes it out of the slums through chess, Queen of Katwe, Michael Omoyele hopes chess will help him too.

In his words, “To live here is hard.” And that is no wonder for a boy who at 14 has already dealt with severe food scarcity and worked to feed himself.

“On the chessboard, you work hard in order to win, and from winning chess games I believe I can do better in becoming a champion and being wealthy also,” he said.

Michael practises at home, in a room with watermarked concrete walls and peeling blue paint and the din of crying children in the background.

Babatunde Onakoya, 26, inspired by the critical state of Nigerian education and his own rise from a deprived childhood through chess, founded Chess in Slums Africa in 2018 to educate some of the many children and teenagers who were either out of school or not learning useful survival skills.

He maintains the hope that teaching these children and teenagers chess can build a better future for all of Nigeria.

“This is why we are teaching them chess, as a way to raise a new generation of intellectuals, people … who will be curious enough to question everything, who will be curious enough to innovate.”

Babatunde Onakoya

Original Article Written by Libby George and edited by Estelle Shirbon for Reuters.