Adeoye Fawaz, an 18-year-old conductor, has emerged the winner of a Chess competition organised by Slums Initiative in Oshodi, Lagos State.
Tunde Onakoya who is the founder of the organisation that penetrates slums engaging young people has explained it was a risk they had to take organising the tournament.
In series of tweets he said the team saught the assistance of the police and engaged cult leaders.
One of them, the cult leaders, stood out. Identified as SPIDER, said to be their “Number one” was “nice to us and gave us his full support and assurance”, Onokoya said.
He added, “Spider assigned some of his boys to go help us pick out the children amongst them between the ages of 10-18 years old. They came back with about 25 children who also live and hustle under the bridge. My heart sunk deeply when I saw them.
“We took down their names and did a vulnerability assessment. Most of them are orphans who have lived the most parts of their childhood on the streets. The only life they have ever known is one of survival. The stories were heartbreaking.”
Some of the Area Boys were made part of the project team and were assigned roles and responsibilities.
Chief Security officer was one Dayo, Taofeek worked as Welfare/Logistics, Project Supervisor was Olumide Aka Pastor and Volunteer Teacher- Toheeb.
Untill the competition came to a conclusion on Tuesday, December 14, 2021 Oshodi was his home for two weeks Onokoya mentioned.
Onakoya said, “Spending time with them has made me more empathetic to the plights of these people who are in many ways just like us. Many of them want to learn and work good jobs but have no way to train themselves. They’re acting out the only other script life made available to them.”
