Must Prodigies Lose their Childhood?, By Kola Amodu 5 min read
No admissions officer in this country would have opened the portals of her university to Esther Okade, the phenomenal British-Born Nigerian girl who at age six earned a credit in mathematics at the General Certificate of Secondary Education examination and a B grade in Pure Mathematics at the advanced level, four years later. She would simply have pointed to the statutory minimum entry age of sixteen, while stealthily conceding, if pressed, that over the years fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys and girls have sneaked in, brandishing falsified birthday certificates. By contrast, Britain, which recently favoured ten-year-old Esther with a place at the Open University has cheerfully accepted children, including several Nigerians from the mathematically gifted Imafidon family, Anne-Marie at thirteen, Christiana at eleven, etc. into its universities.