#YNaijaNewEstablishment: Anne Adams, Joseph Obanubi, Adeoluwa Enioluwa | Meet the 2021 Class of The New School

Pearl Okorie (Actor)

Beautiful, talented, and a smile befitting of movie royalty, Pearl is one of the up and coming actresses who, given the right opportunity, can take the Nigerian movie industry by storm.

In her short stint with acting, she has been involved in productions that are renowned amongst Nollywood lovers. She played supporting cast in the 2020 critically acclaimed Oloture. She is a recurring character in Africa Magic’s hit series Forbidden, she guest starred in the popular TV series Jenifa’s Dairy, and she starred in the 2019, Ndani TV hit series; Oga Pastor. 

Prior to any of this, in 2015, she was among the cast of; The Cynosure, an all women, interactive talk show that is both entertaining and educative. 

Prior to being given a role in Oloture, she had paused acting to pursue a master’s program in Marketing Communications at Pan Atlantic University.

When she isn’t in front of the silver screen, she is gracing a digital one. This actress recently launched her own YouTube channel which aims to highlight the fact that perfection is nothing more than an alien concept.

Isaac Okoro (Basketballer)

As far back as The National Basketball Association, NBA, began gaining global ratings, Nigerians that have been represented in the sports are too far and few in-between, especially considering that Nigerians have produced some of the greatest athletes the league has seen.

Both Hakeem Olajuwon, and Giannis Antentokuonmpo, have not only been great players in the league but they have won actual MVPs, with Hakeem winning the 94/95 NBA championship.

With the 2020 draft, perhaps we could be witnessing the birth of another iconic Nigerian basketballer. Taken as the fifth overall pick by the Cleveland Cavaliers from the best 60 listed young basketball players all over the world, Isaac certainly has a lot of promise and untapped potential and with his athleticism and natural talent it wouldn’t be surprising if he becomes an all-star in the league.

Sodiq Yusuff (Mixed Martial Artist)

In the world of combat sport, fight record is everything. A fighter’s win percentage determines just how far the said fighter can go, and with a total record of 12 fights and 11 wins, 6 by knockouts, this young fighter, may just end up being the next Kamaru Usman.

Sodiq debuted for the mixed martial arts giants Ultimate Fighting Championship UFC, in 2018, and has since gone on to win every match in the octagon. As of October 2020, he was ranked the number 10 fighter in the featherweight division in the UFC, making his chances at getting a title shot high.

Prior to gaining entrance into the UFC rooster, Sodiq had a professional record of 6-1, 6 wins one loss. He began his overall fighting career in 2016, making his four-year stint in the sports an incredibly impressive one.

Frank Aghuno (Fashion Designer)

For this creative designer, the prospect of finding a career in fashion was a fairly obvious and rather inevitable one. Right from the tender age of 11, Frank had a keen taste for fashion, his mother’s traditional head wraps triggering the epiphany he experienced that made his decision to become a fashion designer resolute.

While studying Finance in the University of Lagos, he decided to take a bold step into his fashion journey, which was founding his own fashion line. ‘Fruche’ as he would name it borrows from Nigerian and contemporary cultures, merging both concepts to create something that is in a sense timeless. The idea of his clothing line is to design something that is not only unique, but also quite bold.

Tife Soloye (Content Creator)

Tife is like every other prolific content creator, except for her insistence on creating content from a faith based point of view. What this means is applying Biblical references to the content she creates.

The faith she identifies with reflects in the activism she is constantly involved in. She owns a YouTube channel where she talks about her life in general, and she uses her social media page to empower women and spread positive encouraging messages to them. She also passionately stands against social injustice.

She was awarded the highly sought-after Chevening Scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree in the United Kingdom. She is also a board member of the Sanitary Aid for Nigerian Girls (SANG), a volunteer group whose goal is to provide young girls with sanitary aid, should they have no means of getting any.

Adebanke Ilori-Oyeniyi (Advocate)

Adebanke is simply a leading lady in the corporate world. Looking at her resume so far, it’s safe to say that she is far ahead of her time.

She is a lawyer, a women’s advocate, and quite frankly, a leader. She is of the opinion that Nigeria would experience a positive shift in its governance and state of affairs, if it allowed more women and basically competent young people in positions of power. She is deeply versed on the idea of electoral reform.

So far in her career, she has risen from the ranks of associate at a law firm to managing director at another. She is currently the Executive director of Raising New Voices Initiative, a nonprofit political advocacy group.

Nkechi Onyinyechi Ogbonna (Journalist)

This journalist describes herself as an African storyteller. Nkechi is a journalist who for three years has been writing for the BBC. She is based in Lagos, Nigeria, and her stories centre the struggles synonymous with the region. Her work at BBC requires her report data driven visual contents in indigenous west African languages.

So far, she has recorded seven years in the journalism profession, juggling between radio, television, and digital media. She began with anchoring news bulletins on radio, before delving into financial journalism for CNBC Africa.

Journalism for her, since then has revolved around raising the issues of social injustice particularly pertaining to West Africa. She also covers Finance, Arts, Culture, Education, Women and Children, Conflict, Entertainment, and Real estate.

Abdulsalam Suliyat Modasola (Singer)

The DMW record label has seemingly leveraged the star power of its number one artist; Davido. His influence spills on to the other talents in the label and a number of them have gone on to become superstars in their own right.

For Abdulsalam Suliyat Modasola, popularly known as Liya, Davido via this record label, all but gave her an inch and she took a mile. She is the first female artiste to come out of this label and with her hit single Melo, which is doing great in streams, recording over 700,000 views already, she is proving to be a very valid signing for the music team. Davido described her as the first lady of 30BG.

Prior to signing with DMW, she had a few singles like; Be My Vibe, Trust Issues, and a few others. Her Instagram page has seen a surge in followership, growing from 30,000 followers to 160,000 in about a month. She is a fast-rising star, and the much needed female touch to the DMW family is sure to make the label more dynamic.

Adesokan Emmanuel

This young content creator graduated from the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University with a BSc in Electrical Engineering, he completed his compulsory National Youth Corp Service shortly after and right off the bat got a congratulatory message from the African Giant: Burna Boy.

This acknowledgment from such a big name artist wasn’t a random coincidence, it was due to the fact that for a while now, Adesokan has been putting out content on social media which often goes viral. His use of comedy seems to reflect some of the rather raunchy opinions a lot of people seem to oddly agree with.

Tagging himself the King of cruise, this comedian also utilizes popular streaming platform YouTube to deliver his brand of comedy. His style is non conformed R rated slapstick that has found a place in the minds of thousands of Nigerian comedy buffs.

Emmanuel Mayaki (Tech)

The world of tech and its relevance to humanity is in a constant state of evolution, and as the race to make tech much simpler for users to operate and programmers to build, there is now more need to educate more people on learning to program. Emmanuel Mayaki is a programming genius who now has some responsibility to be one of said educators. She was given a teaching job by a school in the UK to teach her peers about coding.

This ten-year-old, that’s right, ten-year-old, got her first teaching job at Southfield Primary School in Coventry, England, as the after school coding club teacher. She specializes in HTML and CSS, to which she educates her peers on the fundamentals. She also has some proficiency in Dreamweaver, Phyton, Java Coder and more. She created an App which she uses to pass knowledge on coding and graphics.

At age seven she was able to earn a certificate in all major Microsoft programs. She is praised by her instructors as being a genius, able to speedily absorb any subject taught to her, regardless of how complex it may be for her age.

Don’t sleep on this one. 

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