MEET THE AFRICAN 19-YEARS-OLD BLOCKCHAIN WHIZ

If you grew up in a typical Nigerian household, chances are your parents intended you to pursue one of the following careers: Medicine, Law, Engineering, or Architecture.

Well, Njoku Emmanuel was not excluded not from this "typical Nigerian cycle" as his parents wanted him to become a Medical Doctor. As a matter of fact, his older brother was already studying Medicine at the University.

Njoku Emmanuel together with Abdulfatai Suleiman and Prosper Ubi later cofounded Lazerpay - a Crypto Payment gateway that allows users to make crypto payments and manage their crypto assets all in one place. The co-founder and CMO of BINANCE, Yi He, once opined that with Africa's population, the continent could lead the future of the blockchain industry. Thus, it is no surprise that several Tech Experts, Investors and Blockchain enthusiasts have given kudos to Lazerpay and they also believe that the innovation will accelerate Africa's Crypto adoption. One of the interesting features of Lazerpay is that it allows users to invest and earn. For example, the longer you invest, the more you earn.?

Njoku is a young 19years old boy but he has a remarkable story and journey as a Blockchain whiz in the African Tech space. Before Lazerpay and his technology journey, the chances of him following his brother's footsteps as a medical student seemed pretty high, however, this Mathematics genius that had won several awards had a mind of his own.

In 2015, their aunt, a Robotic Engineer, introduced Njoku and his brothers to computer programming. Although it was a casual introduction, a seed was planted in Njoku's heart that he would write codes to change the world.

While other children dreamed of things within their reach, Njoku dreamed of creating an operating system like the revolutionary Bill Gates or a social media application that can connect people around the world as Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook. He yearned not just to be a mathematics whiz but an African Tech Whiz able to solve the continent's and perhaps, the world's needs.

Njoku's father, being an Engineer by profession, forbade his children from using calculators to solve Mathematical problems - little wonder why Njoku won several Mathematics medals. Thankfully, his in-depth knowledge of solving Mathematics problems contributed in the development of his problem-solving skills which is a core skill required for programming.

Like many other teenagers, Njoku also loved playing video games. Due to his inquisitive and adventurous nature, he started learning game development and used C++ to develop games.

In 2017, Njoku finished his final secondary school exams with A+ in both Mathematics and Further Maths. By 2018, he already got admission to Enugu State University of Science and Technology to study Electrical Engineering.

During his first year, he was opportune to work with Quiva Games in Enugu as an intern. While juggling between his Engineering Course and building his coding Career, Njoku gradually realized that Engineering wasn't as intriguing as he hoped. The Math seemed as basic as his Junior Secondary School Math Problems and he kept wondering why he had to stay in a hall packed full, studying social science courses and GSTs (General Studies). At that point, he knew he didn't want to dedicate the next 5 years to studying Engineering.

From that point, he decided to focus more on his coding career. He began cutting classes and soon, information reached his father...

His father invited him home and as a dutiful son, he obliged his father's request. He was oblivious it was a ploy to confiscate his laptop. Although his laptop was confiscated, Njoku's motivation to learn to code remained high. When he returned to school, he borrowed someone's laptop and continued working on his unfinished tasks.

While Covid-19 lockdown was a nightmare to many. However, Njoku was among the few that benefited from the pandemic. He had more time to code - about 12 hours per day - and his hard work eventually paid off. His family was met with celebratory news as he got a job with Kwiver - a buy now pay later company in the city of Port Harcourt. He was employed as a Mobile Application Developer. Little did his family know that this was just the beginning of great things...

About a month after he landed the job at Kwiver, he got another opportunity to work as a Blockchain Developer with Project Hydro. At this point, he would no longer earn in Naira but Dollars. His pay was pegged at $700 a huge difference from the #70,000 he was offered at Kwiver.

Before the pandemic struck, Njoku had started learning Blockchain on Udemy and his experience with the British Virgin Island company, Project Hydro provided him practical knowledge. With the ample experience and knowledge he got from Project Hydro, he got another opportunity to work with Quiva Games in Enugu (the company he interned with when he was at Enugu).

He spoke with the co-founder of Xend Finance, the parent company of Quiva Games, Mr. Ugochukwu Aronu and shared his experience working with Project Hydro. Aronu made Njoku an offer of #150,000, a MacBook and free accommodation. He spoke to his parents about the new offer and his intention to drop out of school. At this point, his parents agreed to his request.

At Xend Finance, Njoku took the lead role of the blockchain project because the lead Blockchain Engineer was not available. There was so much for Njoku to do, he had to fix bugs, write and deploy smart contracts. Unfortunately, Aronu gave him terrible news, he made a deployment error which cost the company about $10,000. Although his salary was now #300,000, it couldn't easily make up the losses.

Panic-stricken, he began to apply for international jobs to help make up for the losses. He later got an offer from MakerDAO, a prominent DeFi company in the world. The company's offer to the school dropout was a whooping sum of $3,000 (which is equivalent to #1,710,000 with an exchange rate of #570 in today's economy). At the end of the day, Aronu informed Njoku he was joking about the losses, but it was too late.

The Blockchain whiz received countless offers after MakerDAO. One of such was from Instadapp which offered $90 per hour. Having found his strength in blockchain,? Njoku decided to quit his job at Xend Finance and focus solely on Blockchain.

MakerDAO had an offsite meet up in Portugal and this became a source of worry for Njoku as his Visa wasn't processed on time. It was then his Aunt, the Robotic Engineer suggested he travel to Dubai. He listened to her and after traveling to Dubai, he decided not to return home. After moving to Dubai, he started making so much money that he began to fund his older brother's tuition, the one studying Medicine in Bulgaria.

Soon, Avarta, a blockchain security company in Singapore offered him a contract of $3,000 per week to work with them. Later on, Njoku had a new vision which made him reject two offers for full-time employment from Avarta. He wanted to establish a crypto-payment gateway. For this idea, he rejected Avarta's offer of $7,000 monthly and $50,000 worth of Avarta tokens. He also rejected their offer of $15,000 monthly.

Today, Njoku's dream to establish a Crypto payment gateway has materialized via LAZERPAY. He has evolved from the 15 years old boy who sat listening to his aunt talk about Computer Programming to the CEO of Lazerpay with several successful blockchain projects to his name. Njoku is a true definition of an African Tech Whiz and a hero influencing the Tech Ecosystem. With more Njokus' Africa will face a rapid Tech revolution for sustainable growth and development of the economy and like Yi He puts, Africa will become a leading continent in the development and evolution of the blockchain industry.