LASU Best Graduating Student Shares Journey from Hawking Sachet Water to Scoring 4.77 CGPA
- Ayomide Olubunmi graduated with a CGPA of 4.77 from Lagos State University's Department of Communication and Media Studies
- She grew up in a Lagos slum with her single mother after losing her father when she was only five months old
- Ayomide revealed she discovered a German-based uncle she had never met, who went on to change the course of her education
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Lagos, Nigeria - Ayomide Olubunmi, who emerged as the best graduating student in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Lagos State University (LASU), says education was the only way she knew to break free from a childhood defined by poverty, loss, and survival on the streets of Lagos.
Ayomide, who finished with a CGPA of 4.77 for the 2024/2025 academic session, lost her father when she was five months old. She grew up with her mother in a slum, hawking sachet water as a teenager while her mother sold food and goods on the streets to keep them going. At one point, the two slept in a shop, according to an interview by The Punch.
Source: Twitter
Ayomide Olubunmi: From the Streets to the Merit List
She completed secondary school in 2019 with three As, three Bs, and three Cs, then spent a gap year teaching to save money for university. She sat the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination twice, scoring 245 on her first attempt and 252 on her second, before gaining admission to study Mass Communication at LASU.
Getting in was only the first hurdle. She needed N58,000 in fees but had only been able to save enough for a school costing roughly N25,000. The answer came from an unexpected direction: her mother found a contact from her late father's family on Facebook. Through that connection, an uncle based in Germany, a man who had not known Ayomide existed, learnt about her and agreed to pay her school fees for the entirety of her degree.
She also won a scholarship along the way, and she received the Alima Atta Award in her final year.
Balancing Work, Leadership, and a First Class
At university, Ayomide opened a small student business she branded "ABC," served as a student union leader, hosted events, and built a 30-member student initiative called LASU Fellows. She started her first year with a GPA of 4.91.
Her final year was the hardest. She took on a full-time remote job while managing her final-year project and trying to finish as the best student in her faculty. Her grades dipped and she received her first C, something she described as heartbreaking after years of almost exclusively As.
She said her approach to studying rested on self-knowledge. As a neurodivergent person, she found group study unproductive and worked best alone. She read ahead of her class by up to two months at peak periods, built her vocabulary through reading outside her course materials, and structured her sleep and meals around when her brain functioned best.
"Graduating with a first-class degree is simply evidence of what is possible," she said. "Given where I came from, it wasn't easy to get out. For me, education was my gateway out, not just physically from my environment but mentally as well."
She now works as a communication strategist at a technology company, a role she secured before leaving university.
LASU Records 494 First-Class Honours
Earlier, Legit.ng reported that LASU graduated 20,604 students across all programme categories at its combined 29th and 30th convocation ceremonies, covering the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 academic sessions, with 494 students from first-degree programmes earning First Class honours.
Vice-Chancellor Prof. Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello said 262 students achieved First Class in the 2024/2025 session, while 232 did so in the 2025/2026 session.
Olatunji-Bello revealed the figures on Wednesday, August 12, 2026, at a press conference announcing activities for the event.
Source: Legit.ng
