Tomisin Ogunnubi Helping kids go home
Tomisin Ogunnubi, a 12-year-old Nigerian pupil at Vivian Fowler Memorial College for Girls, Lagos State, is the designer of a phone app aimed at helping lost children find their way home. Ogunnubi, who designed the app while taking classes at New Horizons Computer Learning Center in Lagos, said she wanted to help children of her own age to find their way home, especially in the face of high incidences of missing persons in Lagos State.
While statistics are scarce on the number of missing children in Nigeria, there is general acceptance that it is something that demands attention from the government and citizens concerned.
Available scant records indicate that some missing children are eventually found after days, weeks or months, and sometimes a long way from home. Many missing children are never found, thereby deepening and perpetually extending the anxiety of family members who would be forever plagued with thoughts of their whereabouts. In many instances, children go missing while trying to find their way home from school, extra-curricular activities, errands and social visits. That is why Ogunnubi’s My Locator app for children is a most timely one for Nigeria.
The app comes with an Alert button that is directly connected to 767, the Lagos State Emergency Service number, and enables users to know their current location, including neighboring streets, and even save it for future use. Ogunnubi’s app is expected to drastically reduce the number of children who lose their way home from wherever their current location might be. The app is available for free download on Google Play and the Nigerian Government encourages parents to use it to keep their children safe.
Bolaji Olaoye, General Manager of Educational Services at New Horizons Computer Learning Center, said young innovators like Ogunnubi could use their skills to help relieve Nigeria from its total dependence on oil and push it to become an Itdriven country like China and India. (Compiled by Chika Ezeanya-esiobu, a senior lecturer/researcher at the University of Rwanda College of Business and Economics)