By Ibukun Emiola
Miss Omotoke Eniafe, a student of Orita mefa Baptist Model School, Ibadan, has emerged the overall best participant at the 2026 AI/Data Science for Her Boot Camp held in Ibadan.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that a five-day boot camp was organised by Tech Girls Club and sponsored by Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), which had its closing ceremony in Ibadan on Friday.
The overall 2nd best position was clinched by Miss Morolaoluwa Ajibola, while the overall 3rd position was taken by Miss Anuoluwapo Adepoju.
Eniafe, who is currently in a Senior Secondary 2 class, expressed delight at her emergence as the overall best, saying that the programme had improved her confidence and exposed her to programming beyond the HTML coding she previously knew.
She said that the training had also helped her develop a sense of responsibility and confidence to move around independently.
“I want to be a software engineer. This will actually help me because now, I have learnt the basics of my future career. The foundation of my future career has already started,” Eniafe said.
The Principal Investigator of the programme, Dr Ronke Sakpere, said the Ibadan training was the final phase of the programme, which had taken place across the six geopolitical zones.
Sakpere said that the training progressed from Ilorin to Yola, Port Harcourt, Zaria, Nsukka and finally, Ibadan.
She said that the programme was designed not only to expose participants to technical skills, but also to build resilience, perseverance and other soft skills required to succeed.
“The participants demonstrated their ability to apply the knowledge acquired to personal and community-based projects,” Sakpere said.
The don urged the students to continue developing their skills in Python, Excel and other tools introduced during the training.
She said that the end of the boot camp should be regarded as the beginning of a continuous learning journey.
The Project Manager, AI/Data Science for Her, Ms Wonderful Osalor, said that the students had shown remarkable improvement in confidence and technical skills from the first to the fifth day.
Osalor said the participants developed technology-based solutions to community problems, including poor waste management, traffic violations, crop contamination, transformer vandalism and cyberbullying.
She said that one of the teams developed an AI-enabled smart waste detector that could indicate when waste bins were full and provide information useful to waste-management agencies.
“Another team developed a smart system aimed at addressing traffic-law violations by capturing vehicle number plates and sending SMS notifications to offenders regarding fines.
“The capstone projects were assessed based on problem identification, creativity and innovation, application of AI and data science concepts, technical implementation, teamwork, presentation skills, impact and practicality.
”The girls showed great improvement from being a very shy individual, who could barely speak up when asked to introduce their names to conceiving ideas that are solving real life problems. Indeed their progress is very impressive and commendable,” Osalor said.
She added that students from different schools were deliberately mixed into teams to encourage collaboration and expand their networks.
Dr Wilson Sakpere, Lead Facilitator of the programme, commended the facilitators and mentors for their contributions to the success of the training.
He encouraged the students to continue practising their programming skills after the boot camp, adding that those without computers could use mobile applications such as PyDroid to practise Python.
One of the participants, Miss Esther Olabiyi, a Senior Secondary 3 student of Ibadan Grammar School and member of the overall winning team for the capstone project, said she was excited about the team’s success.
Olabiyi said that she took responsibility for the team’s presentation because some members were experiencing stage fright.
She said that she was initially nervous and struggled to speak, but eventually overcame the challenge to present the project.
Another participant, Miss Elizabeth Agogo, another Senior Secondary 3 student of Abadina Grammar School, University of Ibadan, said that her team developed an AI-based solution to crime and insecurity.
Agogo said that the proposed application was intended to alert people to possible criminal activity and assist security agencies.
Miss Grace Sakpere, another participant, who aspires to be a nurse, said that her team developed a solution aimed at reducing traffic congestion and disobedience to traffic lights.
Another participant, Miss Suliyat Olajide, said that she hoped to use AI to develop applications that would solve societal problems.
NAN reports that the girls were divided into nine groups and some of their solutions for the capstone project include; Poor waste management System, Smart AI Traffic Camera System, Identity Theft Detection System and Cyber Bullying Detector System.
Others are: Crime and Insecurity Alert System, Crop Poisoning Detector System, among others.
The programme featured presentation of outstanding and excellence awards to participants as well as medals to the three overall best students. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)
Edited by Remi Koleoso