Kunle Adelabu
-Charges young men to dream, live where they want to
10 years after exiting the slum where he was born, grew up and started his challenging life, the second black man to turn a chess grandmaster, Tunde Onakoya returned to the slum in Ikorodu where it all started.
Onakoya revealed his mission for his return on his X handle a few days back, charging young men who are unsure of their future not to be weighed down by challenges that they are surrounded with but must continue to dream big and live their dreams.
The Nigerian chess player and coach, who holds the Guinness World Records for the longest marathon chess game, is the founder and convener of Chess in Slums Africa. He has organised a number of interventions for children across slums in Lagos State including Majidun, Makoko and Oshodi.
Onakoya who set the Guinness record by 10 top world chess players simultaneously, has used the game he came across at a barber’s shop in Ikorodu and which has changed his life to take hundreds of young men out of the slums and the street.
According to the grandmaster, coming back was difficult because he has tried to suppress the realities of the first 20 years of his life as a young man born into a very challenging environment he left abruptly when his parents were unable to pay rent to return to their village.
But he eventually returned triumphantly, not just with dreams but with the reality of his present life as a global citizen, role model and using that to influence and mentor young men who are still dreaming.
Onakoya’s full statement is reproduced below:
To the dreamers who left home…
I recently returned to the place in Ikorodu where I lived the first 20 years of my life. For the longest time, I hesitated to go back, unsure if I was ready to confront the flood of nostalgia and the weight of the memories I had suppressed. But after two years of filming a documentary about my journey, it was finally time to revisit the starting point of it all.
As we drove down the same streets I once raced through barefoot as a child, it felt like everything had shrunk to a miniature scale. The rustic roofs, the muddy streams, the dump sites, the old friends, the first girl I ever loved, the barber’s shop where I saw a chess board for the very first time, the Church where I learned to play the piano —remained unchanged, as if time had stood still and became a museum of who I had been.
Standing by the river where we once bathed as kids, I remembered the night I left. It was a cold evening in 2015; unable to renew the rent, my Dad had to return to the village to work in a bakery, my Mum took a job as a cleaner. I had no place to call home anymore. With my bags clutched tightly and tears welling in my eyes, I left behind the only life I had ever known. Terrified of the uncertainty ahead but with the will to fight for my place in the world. I carried a piece of home with me with unwavering faith in my ideas.
It’s been 10 long years. Now, I have returned — not the same, but better —ready to leave a piece of my heart with the children here who, like me, are still dreaming .
It is the only way I can honour the privilege of who I have become.
To every dreamer who left home in pursuit of wonder, I know the hurt of those cold lonely nights and the loss of everything that was familiar. But I hope you never look back with regret. You must let your courage be your compass as you re-write your own story of becoming. You are growing into someone capable of holding the best of your past alongside the boundless potential that is in front of you. This is especially important if where you’re coming from is worlds apart from where you’re going.
Your fight is a different one.
Home is not lost, it is growing alongside your story — because sometimes, the place where you’re born isn’t where you belong; you belong where you believe you belong….where is that place for you?
And when your battles are finally won, I hope you can look back on your journey with awe and gratitude.
And like my mother would always tell me
“Babatunde mi, ranti Omo eni tiwo nse” (wherever the wind takes you, you must remember the child of whom you are)
For the ones who left home to find themselves, must someday return to give themselves away.
Keep going dreamer. I hope you never stop giving the world something new to believe in..
