With Tunde Onakoya, slums take world stage

From its inception, Chess in Slums, Tunde Onakoya’s project that has caught international attention, struck a unique chord in the battle against slums. By taking Chase, the global game played by those who matter to the slums, he sought to introduce dignity and honour to the dwelling place of the wretched among the rich. Now, […]

From its inception, Chess in Slums, Tunde Onakoya’s project that has caught international attention, struck a unique chord in the battle against slums. By taking Chase, the global game played by those who matter to the slums, he sought to introduce dignity and honour to the dwelling place of the wretched among the rich.

Now, with his world record in Chess, achieved in no other place than New York City, he has further elevated the case for slums to receive attention. These dirty, overcrowded places marked by the lack of basic amenities can no longer be ignored by the powerful in society. His quest to raise $1 million to be invested in young people who live in slums must place this cause as one of the most urgent matters on the tables of policymakers right now.

Slums have become a dent, a big one, in the modern world’s glamour. That glamour is symbolised by cities and urban areas filled with beautiful neighbourhoods, the radiance of urban razzmatazz that is far from the drab of rural life.  And few countries share this inglorious title than Nigeria. We are a nation of slums. Slums exist in Nigeria as in other places because governments have been unfair and inefficient in the use of their nations’ resources to the satisfaction of human needs. 

A slum is the urban equivalent of rural poverty and more.  Poverty means the absence of choice; it means being alive but not expecting anything to change by tomorrow. The poor cannot plan because there is nothing to plan based on, so the future for the poor is a blank space they stare into with teary eyes. Therefore, for a typical young person, growing up in a slum means a death sentence to a life without a future. That picture can change only if an intervention comes by, as Onakoya has been doing since 2018 with his Chase in Slums project.

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Onakoya’s adventure has brought to the international limelight the reality of slums.  Not many would claim today they do not know anything about slums. Slums arise because of dysfunctional social systems that reward some people at the expense of others.

The world idolises its achievements in science, technology, and financial engineering, which have brought stupendous wealth to many, and all the glitter on f modern life, especially in the urban centres. Yet the world is A Planet of Slums, as Mike Davis notes in his book with that title.

Slum dwellers are the core of those who have been excluded from the mainstream economic system, whether intentionally or accidentally, and have by virtue of that become bystanders and spectators while a minority take a disproportionate fraction of what the economy offers.

The urban poor or slum dwellers face some or all of the following:  poor quality, overcrowded housing; risk of forceful eviction because they are in most cases squatters, unable to pay the rent; lack of safe, readily available, water supplies, and poor provision for sanitation, drainage and solid waste collection. They also lack access to healthcare, emergency services and policing, and poor education, because they face difficulty accessing government schools.

These factors combine to rob parents of the power to raise children who can confidently face the future. Therefore, the existence of slums is one of the challenges that Nigeria must face now or pay the price soon. Children who grow up and “graduate” as slum dwellers will become a terror to the children of the civilized society that lived next to but didn’t care about them. So, rising together today to find solutions to the growing menace of slums is the only way to that solution that comes from an enlightened self-interest.

The conditions that create or sustain slums originate in the power and economic structures that exist in a society. In Nigeria today, these conditions are present. In a statement issued in March this year, the World Bank declared “Despite having the largest economy and population in Africa, Nigeria offers limited opportunities to most of its citizens”. Well, the latest ranking by the IMF has pushed Nigeria to the fourth position in Africa, with the country trailing Algeria, Egypt, and South Africa, in the reverse order.

Yet, it is not the size of a nation’s economy that determines the poverty level in a country. The slum population globally is estimated to be one billion people, according to the United Nations. In the next 26 years – approximately by 2050, that population will rise to three billion. That would be roughly a third of the world’s population, projected to hit 9.7 billion by then.

The World Bank report estimated Nigeria’s poverty rate to have grown to 38.9 per cent in 2023, with an estimated 87 million Nigerians living below the poverty line — the world’s second-largest poor population after India.  Nigerians cannot forget that in 2018 we became the capital of poverty; since then, we have managed to become the second.

The same report said that Nigerians born in 2020 are expected to be future workers 36 per cent as productive as they could be if they had full access to education and health, the 7th lowest human capital index in the world. “Weak job creation and entrepreneurial prospects stifle the absorption of the 3.5 million Nigerians entering the labour force every year, and many workers choose to emigrate in search of better opportunities,” the report also claimed.

The statistics on slums are worrisome. The slum population globally is estimated to be one billion people, according to the United Nations. In the next 26 years – approximately by 2050, that population will rise to three billion. That would be roughly a third of the world’s population, projected to hit 9.7 billion by then.

The right time to prevent this scenario is now. The method for doing so includes the kind of project that Tunde Onakoya has elevated to the world stage for a world that still has the conscience to rise to the challenge.