A public secondary school in Abuja put together a robotics team that finished fourth in the world and first in Africa at a global competition. It happened at a government school, and that’s the detail that lingers.

Government Secondary School, Gwarinpa, is a public school in Abuja. Its robotics team, Bright Stars, was named National Champion in the Junior Category at the Nigerian National Finals. That win sent four students to Geneva to represent Nigeria at the AI for Good 2026 Global Summit’s Robotics for Good Youth Challenge. The team was Moshood Faozan Oladokun, Abubakar Akbar Adinoyi, Ojini Chibuike King David and Abubakar Naylaa Ohunene. Competing against teams from more than fifty countries, they finished fourth in the world and were Africa’s highest-performing team.

The person credited with building the conditions for that result is the school’s principal, Abubakar Ajayi Ozovehe. When he took over Government Secondary School Gwarinpa, he pushed the school past the standard curriculum toward technology and robotics instruction. Most public schools in Nigeria don’t have the budget or the mandate to attempt that. The programme that produced Bright Stars grew out of that decision. Leadership newspaper has since named him its Public Service Person of the Year for it.

This isn’t a private academy with fees that put it out of reach for most Nigerian families. It’s a public secondary school, the kind millions of Nigerian children attend because it’s the option available to them. It produced a team that beat entries from countries with far larger education budgets. Nigerian public education carries plenty of failure worth documenting. This particular building in Gwarinpa found a way to give its students a shot at something bigger than the classroom it started in.