March 27, (THEWILL) – Any 13-year-old Nigerian boasting of becoming a Mark Zuckerberg of Africa is likely to earn a dismissive wave from family or friends. Computer whiz Emmanuel Njoku did exactly that six years ago. His mother thought he was a joker at the time but Njoku is inching closer and closer to making his dream come true, becoming one of the most sought after programmers in the world. Not only that, he is now CEO of his own company Lazerpay – at just 19. Michael Jimoh reports…
There are a few lucky kids who come prepared for life more than the rest of us. From very early on, they have more than a clear idea what they want to become –especially professionally – and once they commit and stick to it, they more than excel in it.
Picasso is a ready example. It has been said the Spaniard started to sketch as soon as he could grasp a pencil. Lionel Messi, the Argentine football legend, is another. At 13, he told an interviewer his ambition was to win the Ballon d’ Or. He has won it six times.
In a 1957 profile for the New Yorker on Picasso, Janet Flanner suggested how the early beginnings of the painter would have been like, a genius in the making. “What must have early distinguished him as beyond normal was his unconventionally high state of consciousness. He apparently started his life by being already intact—by being precociously ready and functioning to begin with—rather than by proceeding classically through the tentative, qualifying stages of development customary to the average very young human being.”
Emmanuel Njoku is neither a world-class painter nor a genius on the soccer pitch. But as a computer programmer, the 19-year-old Nigerian is already showing signs of excelling in the field he has chosen for himself.
Like Messi, Njoku was 13, in 2015, when he started chest-thumping he wants to become the African Zuckerberg. Bemused like any mother would, Mrs. Njoku thought her son was a joker, something close to wishful thinking. Six years down the line, Emmanuel is inching ever so close to realising his dream. For one, he is one of the most sought after programmers in the world today, with flying logs to dozens of countries, perhaps, more than diplomats on peace missions during war.
Like the Gates and the Zuckerbergs of this world, Njoku is insanely devoted to computers, programme development, coding and what the machine can do for humanity. And just like Gates, he dropped out of school to focus squarely on what he believes is his first love.
Njoku’s obsession started right from home in Port Harcourt when an aunty, a robotic engineer, introduced him and his siblings to computer programming. He was hooked from then on. Before this time however, Njoku Senior encouraged his children to do their homework without using calculators. The lad himself admitted as much in one interview: “My father forbade us from using a calculator to solve our mathematics homework. Every computation had to be done with your head—why else do you have a head?”
“Why else do you have a head?” It is a question you expect from a Maths prodigy anyway. The lad more than used his head as a student in secondary school. During Mathematics competitions for which he represented his school severally, he won some and lost some. But where he easily outperformed his peers was in geometry, combination and permutations.
While students had a single textbook for all of those topics, the Maths whiz had different textbooks for each of them, and they were tomes which he studied avidly. His dedication paid off. Njoku had A+ in Mathematics and Further Maths.
Of course, Njoku had to go to university as he matured. His doting father wanted his boy to study Medicine. The young boy rebelled, opting for Electrical Engineering instead at Enugu State University of Science and Technology. That was in 2019. But after attending a few classes, Njoku thought it was all a waste of time. It has also been said that Picasso shunned classes or doodled away while in school, never paying much attention to what the instructor was saying.
Njoku recalled in one interview that what they were teaching in his first year was “too elementary” for him. “I thought everything would be advanced, but it was people packed into a small hall to learn social sciences and general studies. I was like ‘What the hell is going on here?’ And the maths they were teaching at 100 level was like my JSS 3/SS 1 maths. So, it became a waste of my time.”
Rather than waste his time in this way for five years, Njoku spent more time with his laptop, “laser-focused on coding.” He also started dodging classes, re-routed money for textbooks to “buy coding courses on Udemy.”
Naturally, his father got to know about his absenteeism from ESUST. About this time, too, the lad had a stint with a gaming company, Quiva in Enugu, a place where he updated on coding. So, under the pretext of discussing some family issue, Njoku Senior invited his son home only to impound his laptop blaming him for “coding too much.”
The intention was to force him to go back to ESUST. Njoku would have none of that. He borrowed laptops from friends to complete jobs he had going. Of his father’s action by seizing his most important work tool then, Njoku said: “I didn’t know it was a trick to seize my laptop. I went back to school and had to borrow laptop to finish some projects at hand and keep learning.”
But the most important shot in Njoku’s arm came in the form a virus, Covid-19. It is something of an irony that while the pandemic paralysed and undermined economic activities worldwide, Njoku got a boost from it, he profited from the lockdown immensely. First, the pandemic shut down most institutions around the world – including educational institutions. Second, it provided the kind of solitude and ambience Njoku needed to work.
Writing for an online publication, Techcabal, on February 24, 2022 how the pandemic was a blessing in disguise, Damilare Dosunmu stated thusly: “When COVID-19 hit in 2020 and everywhere was locked down, everybody panicked and scared, Njoku was somewhat happy; he’d be away from school without getting into trouble. So, he upped his game and started coding 12 hours a day. He didn’t want to go back to school, and the only thing he had was to learn as fast as he could and get a remote job.”
As if programmed by the secret hand of fate, jobs started coming. The first came in March 2020 at Kwivar, in Port Harcourt where he’d lived mostly. Njoku had finally come into his own – at just 16!
“The salary was ₦70, 000,” Njoku said in the same interview with Dosunmu. “When I got it, nobody could talk to me. I was the biggest boy I knew. My parents couldn’t believe you could get a job during the pandemic when companies were laying people off. Though the salary isn’t enough reason to not study medicine, they finally saw what I had seen since 2015.”
Money in hand and more time to himself, Njoku had limitless opportunities to broaden his knowledge, especially about blockchain which he soon mastered. Soon, there was another offer from the British Virgin Islands. What was the pay? $700 monthly. It was the beginning of Njoku’s rollercoaster ride in the tech world. ESUST was now out of the question for him.
Recounting what happened between his last job and September of the same year, the tech journalist wrote: “In April 2020, a month after he started working at Kwivar, he got another offer as a blockchain developer at Project Hydro, a blockchain company based in the British Virgin Islands. He would be paid $700 monthly in Hydro tokens. At this point, he knew he wasn’t going back to school; everything happening to him agreed with that decision.
“Njoku wanted to leave Kwivar and needed something to replace it. So, he reached out to Ugochukwu Aronu, the co-founder of Xend, the parent company of Quiva Games where he’d interned for five months, to check if there was an opening. After sharing what he’d done at Project Hydro—decentralised wallet, snowflake infrastructure for decentralised identity—Aronu invited him to come to Enugu and join his new venture Xend Finance, a decentralised finance (DeFi) platform for credit unions, cooperatives, and individuals, backed by Google and Binance.
“At the time, the pandemic was already easing up, and students had started going back to school. So, Njoku told his father he was going back to school. Aronu made him an offer—₦150,000 net salary, a MacBook, and free accommodation.”
Njoku himself later recalled: “I went to Port Harcourt to show my parents the offer and told them I was dropping out of school. It was obvious they couldn’t do anything about it. Going back to school just to graduate and earn about half or as much as I was already earning wasn’t wise.”
There are very few parents, if any, who will plump for their wards continuing their university education after presenting such plum appointment. Njoku’s guardians finally allowed the young man to take his fate in his hand and so, gave their blessing for him to follow his heart.
His next place of work, Xend Finance was also fortuitous. An engineer had failed to report for work. Njoku was an available and ready replacement as a blockchain engineer. There were obstacles in the beginning. But then, as every engineer knows, problems are meant to be solved. Njoku did.
“It was difficult because I had to take charge of an entire project in the middle of building. I fixed the bug, wrote, and deployed smart contracts. But I made a deployment error that cost the company $10,000.”
The owner, Aronu, informed Njoku the loss would be deducted from his pay. He was earning N300, 000 this time. It is enough to give any teenager the jitters. But it also made him look for jobs outside the country – if only to pay back without putting a big hole in his wallet.
The international offers came in quick succession. First, it was MakerDAQ offering $3, 000 monthly pay. Next was Instadapp. Pay was $90 per hour. Njoku later confessed he was simply won over. “I was like these people don’t know me: I’ll work 20 hours per day.”
Njoku’s epiphany in the tech world came around this time, too. MakerDAQ had arranged a meeting in Portugal. For some reason, Njoku couldn’t attend because his visa was approved almost too late. Enter his robotic engineer aunt again. Relocate to Ghana and apply for visa from there. It worked like magic. Njoku also relocated to Dubai, thanks to her aunt’s sagely counsel.
“She also suggested Dubai, and I took it. After staying in Dubai for a month, I told her I’m not coming back home.”
Why would he, considering how much money Njoku was making in Dubai. There were ideation sessions, as well, with like-minds from Nigeria and other countries. There have been offers for as much as $3, 000 weekly from a company in Singapore, partnership with others all over the world.
As they say, Njoku is on a roll, getting good pay for something he is passionate about and no longer getting scornful, sidelong glances from parents who baulked initially at his chosen métier. Indeed, he confessed to Dosnumu that having made this pile of cash, he could no longer allow his father pay his brother’s tuition, a medical student in Bulgaria. “My brother is in Bulgaria, so imagine earning in naira and paying tuition in euro. So it’s only right I took that off my father’s plate.”
Now fully in charge of Lazerpay, co-founded with Abdulfatai Suleiman, it is a “crypt payment gateway startup launched in October…During its beta phase, the crypto startup has been endorsed by several tech and blockchain enthusiasts as a necessary innovation needed to accelerate crypto adoption in Africa. But what is even more remarkable about Lazerpay is Njoku, its 19-year-old CEO, who seemed to have emerged from nowhere to become one of the most sought-after young tech darlings in Africa.”
Summing up Njoku’s odyssey so far in high-tech world, Dosunmu concluded thusly: “He knew what he wanted from a young age and stood by it. His steadfastness has turned everybody around him into a believer…Njoku isn’t Zukerberg and may never be, but he’s building his own empire in the blockchain world. At 19, this can only be the beginning of his journey.”
About the Author
Michael Jimoh is a Nigerian journalist with many years experience in print media. He is currently a Special Correspondent with THEWILL.
