Brilliant Nigerian Girl Beats Contestants From 193 Countries to Emerge World Maths Champion

The National Mathematics Centre of Nigeria (NMC) has crowned Miss Faith Odunsi as “MATHEMATICS QUEEN” for her outstanding performance in the National Olympiads Competition.

Miss Faith Odunsi, 15 years old represented Nigeria at the Global Mathematics Competition, beats China, United States of America, United Kingdom and others and became the world’s best mathematics student.

She is popularly known for solving 19 mathematical questions at a record time of 60 seconds, a feat that marvelled the entire world present at the occasion. “It makes me happy and honoured,” Faith spoke about her win with Punch.

Faith is in her final class at the Ota State Ambassador School, South-West, Nigeria. She had emerged as the best Mathematics student in Nigeria before proceeding to represent the country on the global stage.

Faith explained that some stages of the competition were tough as she was just getting used to the system.

She said; “I think the first was the toughest, there was a computer-based test and we had to answer many questions in one hour. My score in the test was 66.

“The second stage took the same format and I also scored 66. The quarter and semi-finals were on Microsoft themes. We were asked questions and we put in our answers; the first to put in the correct answers got 10 points,” she added.

Represented by Prof. Peter Onumanyi, Deputy Director, NMC, Onah said that the centre, would continue to strive to deliver on its mandate and encouraged the awardees not to lose interest in mathematical sciences.

According to him, the idea is to catch them young; to catch the children young, teach them to understand mathematics so that mathematics will not die with the elderly ones who are now weak.

“Let the younger ones continue to do well in mathematics, It is the responsibility of the centre to identify and encourage young talents in mathematical sciences and stimulate young Nigerian students’ interest in science subjects’’.

You can watch her interview below:

Congratulations Miss Faith Odunsi.