Godliness, Hard Work And Sheer Genius: The Incredible Story Of Oluwagbemileke Joy Jegede

Written by Joel Abdulai Kallon

joelabdulaikallon@chozengenerationsl.org

03/05/17

Background

Oluwagbemileke Joy Jegede

We have all always had one awe-inspiring story that we considered an old-wives fable: simply too-good-to-be-true. A story of a fourteen year old girl skipping almost eight years of schooling and graduating with two degrees bagging distinctions in both, all before her nineteenth birthday is an extremely impossible story to believe.  That happening in a small West African country, where the legal age for admission into the university is eighteen, and where getting admission into universities and colleges at eighteen is considered no mean achievement only adds to the air of intrigue and incredulousness.

Exemplary Parenting

But that is exactly the story of nineteen year old Oluwagbemeleke Joy Jegede who was born in Nigeria but grew up in Sierra Leone. O, Joy, as she is fondly called, was born on 1^st March, 1998 in the buzzing business district of Ikeja, in the Nigerian commercial city of Lagos to middle class Christian professional parents, Mrs. Olubunmi Olanrewaju Jegede and Mr. Olusola Peter Jegede. The father, a Chartered Accountant decided to quit his secular job and move with the whole family to Sierra Leone after discovering that God had ‘called’ him to serve as an independent Christian missionary with a focus on young people. Joy was four at the time

The Jegedes can be rightly described as a small, unrepentantly ambitious, unyieldingly religious and supremely disciplined family where excellence and high performance are exalted. The only other thing more exalted than the continuous yearning for excellence through a rigorous reading culture is God. The family projects deep Christian values where Christ is at the core of every facet of family life including schooling.

Humility, Courtesy and Discipline

When I met O. Joy at my office for an interview on her most recent academic exploits which had been making the rounds on Social media recently, she looked every bit like a church girl who is out on the street looking for lost souls. She was clad in a simple but beautiful ,gold blouse and a dark coloured pencil-skirt which projected below her knees to match. She wore natural braids and had no necklace, no ear rings, nose rings.The only jewellery she had was a beautiful silver and gold plated lady’s wrist watch. Her black, soft-leather, flat-heeled moccasin gave her the perfect look of simplicity and a nun-like innocence.

As the first of three daughters, O.Joy is the fore-runner, trendsetter and trail blazer for her younger siblings and indeed many other young people she has had an encounter with, who understandably look up to her for inspiration. And it is a role she has played immaculately well. Her two younger sisters aged sixteen and fourteen are already in SS4 and SS2 respectively.

Time Is Money

Joy arrived at my office at 08:22 am Sierra Leonean time, about twenty minutes late for our eight O’clock appointment. She had called at about 07:45 to inform me that she would be showing up late, profusely apologizing for it. When she showed up, she did not stop apologizing for arriving late right through the interview. That was a most gracious display of courtesy that is not very common in our society.

It is normal for someone with whom you have an appointment to show up an hour late and offer excuses, not apologies. That is if you are lucky. If you are not lucky, you could sit there for three hours on end and your appointee not showing up at all. Again, if you are lucky, they would call you afterward to proffer excuses, not apologies: The typical Sierra Leonean black-man-time mentality that almost all of us are accustomed to.

The Ultimate Pacesetter

But Joy is not a lady who conforms to a patterned way of life – particularly when such patterns do

not add anything to her quest for excellence and perfection. Nothing about this child prodigy suggests mediocrity. She was just nine when she took the National Primary School Examinations and got an aggregate score of three hundred and fifty-four. At that age most pupils are still in class three, learning how to count, read and write.

At twelve, she took the Basic Education Certificate Examinations, a regional examination taken in many English-speaking West African countries that signifies the attainment of basic education and heralds the beginning of pre-university years. Outstanding as always, Joy got an aggregate of seven, one more than the maximum attainable perfect score of six.

It was barely after completing her Basic Education Certificate Examinations that her parents jokingly asked if she would like to attempt the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examinations as a private pupil when she got to SS1. Joy, who described herself as always being a high achiever did not take that joke lightly. As a matter of fact, Joy saw a challenge where her parents meant an ordinary joke. Even by their own very high standards, Mr and Mrs. Jegede knew that asking their twelve year old daughter to take the WASSCE in SS1 was a very daring thing to do.

Daring?

According to the education authorities here in Sierra Leone, it would take on average four years to complete the WASSCE syllabus in preparation for the examinations which determine whether one will proceed to the University, a Poly-technic or simply end up as a drop-out. In 2012, a Commission of Inquiry on education had recommended that the number of years required to complete senior secondary school be increased from three to four as a measure to address the rampant failures in the WASSCE examination.

Joy attempted the August/September 2011 examination nonetheless and got a distinction so that by December 2011, barefly a couple of months into SS2, she had already effectively secured a University requirement to study Law. By December 2012, she had received a letter of admission to the historic Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. By that same period, many of her classmates were bracing up to resume school, almost two years away from taking the WASSCE in SS4.

Two Degrees Simultaneously While Still A Teenager

She started classes, taking all her notes with a laptop, at Fourah Bay College as the youngest pupil ever admitted to the Law Department according to available records; She was looking forward to her fifteenth birthday at the time: A remarkable feat by every stretch of the imagination. But who says we must be content with one when can go on and have two?

At about the same time Joy got admission from the University of Sierra Leone, she received another admission letter from Amity University in India to pursue a Bachelor of Business Administration, a three-year  distance learning programme. This was sheer coincidence and a golden opportunity which the teenager could not afford to let pass.

She told me she had merely applied to Amity as a backup plan in case she did not get admitted at Fourah Bay College because of her age. The college has, what many critics say, is a very backward age restriction requirement policy of eighteen for admission into an undergraduate program. But the good old adage “where there is a will, there is a way” found expression in her situation. When asked how she was able to circumvent the age-requirement limitations, the child prodigy remarked that even though she did not solicit any help -directly or otherwise-from anyone in the University concerning her admission, she thought there were still a few progressive minds in  the system who must have looked beyond her age.

Among The World’s Brightest and Best

Four years down the line, Oluwagbemileke had firmly written her name in the annals of history as perhaps the youngest graduate of Law in the history of Fourah Bay College, but certainly the youngest student from Sierra Leone to bag two degrees, from two fields that are as varying as they can possible be. Even by available world records, Joy ranks very very highly. For instance, the second youngest black law graduate from Harvard Cortlan Wickliff was 22.

A Zimbabwean, Maud Chifamba, was listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the 20 Youngest Power Women In Africa in 2012. She also received the Great Young Achievers Award at the Great Women Awards held in Dubai as well as the Panel Choice Award at the Zimbabwe International Women’s Awards in 2014. Like Joy,she graduated from the University of Zimbabwe at the age of 18 with a Bachelor of Accountancy Honors Degree. Joy however added a second, with a distinction by that same age.

Creating A Balance

Now many child prodigies like Joy usually turn out to be reclusive, twenty-four hour-a day bibliophiles or geeks if you like, who show no awareness for a healthy social lifestyle. But Joy is different. At the university, she actively engaged in the extra-curricular activities of the day: representing the department in debating competitions and even serving as the elected Secretary General of the Fourah Bay College Law Society.

Additionally, Miss Jegede was crucial in the establishment of the campus-based ZEM fellowship, an off-shoot of her parents’ youth-based evangelical ministry. Joy’s knack for leadership and voluntarism is further expressed in the hours she and her friends spend, organizing remedial classes in English Language and Mathematics for pupils in under-resourced secondary schools in Freetown.

Joy attributes much of her desire and passion to invest in people to something she learned from her parents. Her other major interests are music and photography. On relationships, the now nineteen year old Joy says she has never had a boyfriend and that she does not see the need at this stage.

Celebrating brilliance:Showcasing The Africa The World Does Not Always See

The story of the soft spoken, well-mannered and polite Joy Oluwagbemileke Jegede, who hopes to subsequently get a post-graduate degree in Development Law and Policy and a Ph.D. afterwards, is one of the many great images of Africa which the rest of the world does not always get to see. It is the view of this Author that until we Africans begin to tell our own positive stories, the world will only have the grim ones to feed on.

The author Joel Abdulai Kallon is the Founder and National Coordinator of Chozen Generation Sierra Leone, a Christian youth empowerment organization that focuses on the development of strong values and morals through mentorship, personal development and capacity building, for effective transformational leadership.