Nigerian Chess Master Tunde Onakoya has teamed up with Akintunde Sultan, Co-founder of AltSchool Africa, and Samuel Otigba of Jobs59 to launch a ₦250 million scholarship initiative designed to bridge the digital skills gap among recent graduates and National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members in Nigeria.

The initiative was announced via an X (formerly Twitter) post on Thursday. It aims to help young Nigerians acquire job-ready technical skills during their mandatory service year, easing their transition into the job market or post-graduate exploration. Nigeria's youth unemployment rate has remained in double digits for years, and the country's tech sector, despite its rapid growth, continues to face a shortage of locally trained talent — a gap initiatives like this seek to address.

Sam Otigba described the scholarship as a direct intervention against graduate underemployment in Nigeria, stressing the goal of transforming the service year into a launchpad for sustainable tech careers.

"We're solving the Olodo uprising pandemic, one NYSC at a time. That's our contribution to society," Otigba said in the post.

Recognizing that hardware access remains a significant barrier to technical education, the organizers plan to provide free laptops to a select number of qualified beneficiaries through an additional evaluation process.

"We also know that learning without a laptop is a major barrier, so we'll be providing laptops to a select number of scholarship recipients through an additional application process," part of the announcement read.

AltSchool Africa will host the academic sessions, covering high-demand fields including AI-powered full-stack engineering, cybersecurity, cloud engineering, data analysis, technical product management, and digital marketing automation. The curriculum areas align with roles that Nigerian and broader African employers have flagged as difficult to fill, reflecting a wider industry push to develop technical talent pipelines locally.

This is not the first collaborative effort from the trio. In July 2025, they launched a SIWES-connect programme designed to link students and graduates seeking internship opportunities with companies in need of talent, leveraging the founders' social networks.

According to the official announcement, the scholarship is open exclusively to recent graduates and serving NYSC members. The program will cover a total of ₦160,000 per beneficiary, broken down into ₦10,000 for application costs and ₦150,000 toward tuition fees for any 9-to-12-month AltSchool Africa diploma program. At ₦250 million in total funding, the fund could support over 1,500 beneficiaries if the full amount is deployed toward individual scholarships.

Beyond technical training, beneficiaries will gain access to mentorship, guidance, and direct internship or job opportunities through the Jobs59 platform, beginning from their sixth month of study.

Qualified applicants can apply at The organizers have not yet disclosed an application deadline.