In a world climate of constant wars, dictators flashing the nuclear button, and unstable and unnerving elections it can be a lot sometimes to just go about our days without always looking over our shoulders. However, for every bad news line there is still another good happening in this world. Even if it’s a Nigerian chess champion playing to beat the world record of longest consecutive chess marathon to help raise money for child education.
Tunde Onakoya is a 29-year-old native Nigerian chess champion and activist who has been campaigning to help the current children’s education crisis gripping Africa, especially his home in Nigeria. Coming from an impoverished background himself, Tunde saw no way out until he was introduced to the game of chess. Taking that experience, he wishes to give that opportunity to all children struggling financially and he founded Chess in Slums Africa in 2018 to help make that reality true. They are an organization that uses chess to inspire, teach and help African children struggling to get an education. So far, they have helped by giving over 200 children lifelong scholarships for their education.
Tunde has also been captivating the world stage this year with his performance back in February at the Digital–Life – Design conference in Berlin. He faced severe visa difficulties but still managed to make it there and beat 10 opponents in chess at the same time. He is formidable at this game, so it makes sense that he finally went for a world record in the game that saved his life.
This brings us to this past week, where in New York City he set up a table in Times Square and set out to play the longest chess marathon ever recorded. The record he had to beat was 56 hours, 9 minutes and 37 seconds which was set in 2018 by Hallvard Haug Flatebø and Sjur Ferkingstad of Norway. So, he and Shawn Martinez, a U.S. chess champion (since the record requires the same two players to stay for the whole duration), began playing sometime last Thursday, April 18, ending just this last Saturday, April 20, for a record of 60 hours. When he beat the record at hour 58, Tunde took to X, formally known as Twitter, to announce that he was going for 60 and to encourage others to keep donating to hopefully reach his goal of 1 million dollars towards his charity. By the end he would raise around 110,000 dollars for his charity.
He did face some challenges during this marathon, bad weather and accidental milk in his coffee even though he was lactose intolerant just to name a few. He had plenty of support though, with hundreds of people coming out to show their support throughout the whole process, including some celebrities like Nigerian Afrobeat’s superstar Davido and singer Adekunle Gold. He was also provided with a 5-minute break every hour which gave him time to meet and talk with his fans in the audience. Overall, it was a beautiful time and a beautiful cause within such a time of tragedy.
