“What an old man can see sitting down, a young man cannot see even if he climbs the highest iroko tree.”
For some strange reason, the aforementioned proverb was the first thing that flashed through my mind when I saw David Olomukoro walking toward me with his massive 6’7”-plus frame for his interview. David is a Master of Business Administration student (degree in view) and B.Sc. Computer Science graduate at Nile University of Nigeria and one of the best players and leaders of the university’s nationally renowned and successful basketball team, Nile Spartans.
I had scheduled the interview with him to understand how he managed to continually excel in sports and academics simultaneously – he graduated top of his class at the undergraduate level (B.Sc. Computer Science), looks poised to achieve a similar feat at the postgraduate level with his MBA programme, and, in between, received a number of sports scholarship offers to play College/University basketball in the United States of America, which he turned down.
As David approached me, the closer he got, the taller he appeared to become. By the time he was standing in front of me, I was almost straining my neck to see his face. Thank goodness for metaphorical sight, I thought to myself, because, literally speaking, it was hard to imagine this young man not seeing whatever any old man could see sitting down.
Interestingly, David wasn’t always the physically imposing athlete whom I interviewed on that very sunny January (2024) afternoon at the Nile campus. When he entered the university (not Nile University) in 2016, he was a chubby, much shorter, teenager, who had never played any sport.
However, in his first year of university, he experienced a growth spurt, which continued into his second year of university, when he transferred to Nile. “I was already 6’5” when I came to Nile [in 2017] … I hit 6″6′ in my first year at Nile,” he said. Not knowing what to do with his new-found height, David decided to try out for the university basketball team despite being out of shape – fitness and weight wise – due to never having played any sport before. “I thought that it [his height] gave me an advantage in this sport [basketball],” he stated. David was right.
The Nile basketball team’s head (and founding) coach, Abubakar Hamza, was impressed by David’s height and decided to give him a shot on the team, ignoring his weight and sporting background or lack thereof. This was the turning point in David’s life – the defining moment that radically altered the trajectory of his life, setting him on course to fulfill the enormous potential he never even knew he had.
David’s transformational journey wasn’t a smooth one. It was filled with challenges, especially in the early stages. “David’s path into the Nile Spartans was the most brutal of any student that had ever made the team. With him, we [the coaches] had to start from zero, maybe even less. He was overweight and unathletic. So, before we could even get him started on the basketball basics, we needed to fix that. In his first month, we placed him on an intensive training program designed exclusively to help him shed weight and build stamina, speed, and agility.
“So, during team training sessions in those days, you’d always see David doing running drills outside the court alone while the rest of his teammates were in court practicing their ball skills. Even after team training, we made him stay back to continue his fitness drills. Must have been really frustrating for him. He even complained a few times [chuckles]. But massive credit to him for not giving up,” stated Hamza (Head, Nile University’s Sports Department; Head Coach, Nile Spartans) in a subsequent interview.
David’s perseverance was rewarded in a big way. First, he got into the best shape of his life, turning into an absolute physical specimen. Then he swiftly developed into one of the Nile Spartans’ best players of all time, facilitating the team’s rapid transition from a non-entity in the Nigerian basketball scene into a nationally acclaimed serial trophy-winning machine.
David was a prominent member of the Nile basketball team that won over 11 major trophies between 2021 and 2022, including the high-profile 2021 National Division 1 Basketball Championship and 2022 NUGA Games. The historic victory at the National Division 1 tournament is especially notable because it made the Nile Spartans the first-ever university team to qualify for the Nigeria Basketball Premier League, the nation’s highest professional basketball competition (the Nile Spartans made its debut in the 2023 edition).
David’s seismic growth into a fine basketball player soon earned him attractive basketball scholarship offers from various colleges/universities in the U.S. He, however, turned down these opportunities, choosing instead to take advantage of Nile’s 100% sports scholarship offer to pursue an MBA degree.
“In 2021, I was invited by my friends to an invite-only training camp organized by an NBA [America’s professional basketball league] player from Nigeria. A few other coaches from abroad [the U.S.] were there and they saw me play and were interested. I was offered scholarships to come and play for them. But going over there would probably mean another B.Sc. degree, so I decided to accept Nile’s offer [100% scholarship] to do my Master’s instead,” he said.
That David was able to meet the brutal physical and mental demands necessary to achieve excellence and success at the highest level of basketball, while also having enough energy and desire left over to flourish academically was a stunning feat. He attributes this uncommon achievement to the lessons he learned from the adversity he faced while trying to break into the Nile Spartans in 2017 and the positive outcomes that followed. According to him, that experience helped him understand and harness the power of discipline, consistency, delayed gratification, and marginal gains, which enabled him to emerge as the best-graduating student in his department at the undergraduate level.
“I would stay back after class to read for like 30 minutes while my peers ran off to have fun. After training, I would go to the library or my room to get some hours [of studying] in. It didn’t feel great because it sometimes meant sacrificing my social life. However, I was already used to doing things that didn’t feel great – running while my mates were playing ball, and so on. But by the time you do that consistently, over time, those few minutes and hours add up and when exams come around you have an advantage because you aren’t scrambling to memorize a whole semester’s worth of topics in one week,” he said.
The aforementioned lessons have continued to prove useful to David at the postgraduate level, where, barring an unlikely academic collapse, he is on course to finish among the best-graduating students in his MBA class. Beyond academics, David believes that the invaluable experience gained from his basketball journey at Nile has made him more mature and equipped to deal with life’s challenges and excel in other professional endeavours.
“I would refer to the court as a mini universe. It teaches you a lot of little lessons that may have taken you two or three years to learn outside. It teaches you hard work, smart work, how to be diplomatic, how to control your ego, mental fortitude… It teaches you that anything is possible when you set your mind to it. That’s why you see a lot of basketballers who exceed people’s expectations by the time they leave the professional [basketball] world and are into business. You see that they succeed there as well because they’ve learnt how to win,” he said.
With an MBA degree in view, David hopes to one day become one of these successful businesspeople. In the meantime, however, he remains focused on taking his basketball career to the next level. “Definitely, I plan on it,” David replied without hesitation when asked whether he planned on plying his trade in the U.S. (the premier destination for professional basketball players) in the near future. On the evidence of his journey so far, it would take a bold person to bet against him achieving this goal.
About Nile University of Nigeria
Nile University of Nigeria is a private multidisciplinary university established in 2009 and located in Abuja, Nigeria. Nile University is committed to building future generations of professionals and leaders who can thrive and positively impact Africa and beyond by leveraging academic innovation, state-of-the-art facilities, and great talent. The University currently has over 40 undergraduate programmes and more than 50 postgraduate programmes spread across eight best-in-class faculties: Health Sciences, Law, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Arts & Social Sciences, Management Sciences, Computing Studies, and Science. Nile University is a proud member of Honoris United Universities, the first and largest pan-African private higher education network with 16 institutions in 10 African countries.
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Ekezimero Eto
Marketing Communications Manager, Nile University of Nigeria
