JAMIU NINILOWO BOLUWATIFE
“Standing here in America, I can’t help but reflect on the journey that brought me here. From Lagos, Nigeria, to competing in Athens, Georgia, this experience is beyond anything I ever imagined.” – Jamiu Ninilowo
Sharing a tiny room in the slums of Lagos with his now-late mother and younger brother, often spending days without proper meals, dreaming of a day at the United Nations would have been a dream too expensive for Jamiu. Yet, seven years since Jamiu found chess through Chess in Slums Africa, he had his day at the United Nations. This story is not just about that one moment, it is about the many small moments and victories that led up to it.
The first win was Jamiu refusing to settle into the rigid boxes society created for children like him. He found a catalyst in chess and embraced it completely. Jamiu started learning to play chess in Majidun, a slum in Lagos State, in 2018, during an outreach program organised by Tunde Onakoya, the founder of Chess in Slums Africa.
Although Jamiu’s financial struggles often interfered with his training, he persevered, finding ways to combine learning the game and his apprenticeship as a mechanic. On the chessboard, Jamiu found something powerful, a place where his mind could roam free and he could escape from the clutches of the economic hardship that defined most of his childhood and early teenage years. Every move he made was a protest against the limitations society placed on him. He learned not just to play but to win.
In 2022, Jamiu played a simultaneous game against the Canadian High Commissioner, Kevin Tokar, and other Canadian Naval officers, defeating them all with what has been described as “master level precision”. This is not the only time Jamiu would win a game that mattered. In a Chess tournament by Chess in Slums Africa, in partnership with Nexford University, Jamiu emerged the winner, earning himself a full ride to the university and a brand new laptop.
Over the last seven years, alongside Jamiu’s successes are pockets of personal tragedy that threatened Jamiu’s dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and chess master. From being abandoned by his father as a child to losing his mother to preventable diseases as a teenager.
In 2019, Jamiu’s mum fell seriously ill from acute malaria and was later discovered to be HIV positive. Jamiu’s mum has had serious health challenges in the past, but this time, it was different. She would not make it.
Her struggles with her health began when she had one of her legs brutally cut off by an excavator at a dumpsite where she had gone to work to provide for her kids. Unable to afford the medical bills, she resorted to traditional bone setters and charlatans for her treatment. The leg would get badly infected and require her to get an amputation and a series of blood transfusions. During this time, Jamiu and his brother would drop out of school.
Through the Ubuntu Cultural Exchange Programme, Jamiu took his story global. For a boy once overlooked, boarding a plane to the United States was a surreal leap. Winning a scholarship and earning a gold medal for being undefeated in a tournament at the CHESS & COMMUNITY CONFERENCE INC, Jamiu didn’t just travel; he marked his place as a champion on a global stage.
His confidence was quiet but unshakable. The same boy who had once struggled to stay in school now stood among Ivy League minds, holding his own across the chessboard and delivering a powerful speech on global citizenship.
Today, Jamiu is more than a chess player and a student of Business Administration. He is a symbol of possibility for every child underestimated, for every dream deferred. His story is not just about escaping poverty. It is about rewriting narratives and showing the world what is possible when talent meets opportunity.
From Majidun to the USA, Jamiu reminds us that genius doesn’t need a perfect environment to bloom. It just needs someone to believe.
#youcandogreatthingsfromasmallplace
