It is an American success story, or it is a Nigerian success story. While both countries may claim bragging rights, we cannot deny one fact: America made the story happen. Tanitoluwa Adewumi is a wonder kid, a marvel of a story in today’s world. He won the New York State Chess Championship for his age category,
Born in Nigeria, trapped and fleeing Boko Haram, he and his family are seeking asylum in New York City in the United States. The boy, an eight-year-old, took part in a chess championship for people in his age bracket, and won. The trophy, a massive affair, he can hardly lift above his head, but the unwieldy thing he carried ungainly into his homeless shelter is a marker of his precocious genius.
It is not his first triumph. He had won seven others but this one lifts him to child prodigy, a record anywhere for anyone at that age. He stunned his new country and environment not just because he is young, perhaps too young for such an extravagance of talent. He stunned because he is a black and African, and emerged from one of the disadvantaged lands in the world, a country noted for violence and moral subterfuge, where people win elections not because they do well but because they circumvent the rules, a country of wobbly state that President Donald Trump brushed aside out of racist bigotry as shithole. He rose from ashes to shining glory.
“One year to get to this level, to climb a mountain and be the best of the best, without family resources,” said a bewildered Russell Mafosky, who presides over the P.S. 116 chess program in Manhattan. “I’ve never seen it.” Mafosky cheered to his talent and waived fees that rose to thousands of dollars.
His tale began in 2017 when his father, Kayode Adewumi, and mother, Oluwatoyin Adewumi, brought them from the turbulence of northern Nigeria and malaise of a failing home country. They filed for asylum, and that meant they had no mercy but what the new country could offer.
They had permits to work, but they did not guarantee any high pay or what many call the American dream, which implies a house with a picket fence, a good job, a holiday, guaranteed meals and good education for the children and money saved aside to pamper flesh and temper.
They had none of these. But they dreamed. While his father drove Uber cab and worked as a licensed real estate operator, the mother underwent training in the health sector, their income consigned them to a homeless shelter. They were in worse shape until a pastor showed them the way to their humble abode.
The boy was exposed to a class of chess but he could not afford to take it to a high level because it is an elite sport. Those who have won often had private tutors and did not live on the grubby provenance of a New York back alley. A fellow student invested in his talent by gifting him a chess clock and he, with a passion as fierce as a tiger, spent hours daily honing his skill. He had no laptop but shared his father’s every evening to practise online.
His teacher spotted his talent and immediately singled him out for special attention. He started to enter contest after contest and winning became a streak like a bright line in the sky. According to the initiates, Tani, as he is called, took part in his first contest at the bottom of the ladder with a rating of 105. Today he is 1587 and he is still soaring. The world’s best is statistically within fighting distance at 2845.
One important stunner is that he started only about a year ago. As his father noted, if he were in Nigeria, he would never have had this opportunity. His talent would have hidden like a diamond in his rough Nigerian life.
Tani is a metaphor for wasted youth in Nigeria. It is also an indictment of our narrow, suffocating educational system that offers no leverage for talent or creativity. In a country where a school cradles children in a collapsed building and where parental struggles infect their children’s fortunes, a Tani can only erupt in an America that, for all its failings, can still enact stories of redemption and moral illumination.
This is not the first time that America and Europe has nudged us with cheery tales of exemption and brilliance of Nigerian-born kids, whether in the sciences or the arts, but even as physical geniuses in sports like soccer and basketball.
We can only weep for the many brains and graces lost in the night of corruption and incompetence of our leaders, where success only comes from rackets and local talents are heralded for gaming a system.
“I want to be a grandmaster,” proclaimed the lad. His family can only see roses now even with the country now in a flurry of donations to the family with a car, cash, even housing offers coming their way from the American generous soul under a charity programme called GoFUNDMe. No wonder Tani says, “I feel American.” He may be black, Nigerian in birth. But we have lost him as we have many who flock out to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom from the anomie of their birth place.
