When Ayomide Olubunmi walked across the stage at Lagos State University’s convocation, she carried the accumulated weight of four years of uncertainty, discipline, ambition, faith and an unusual determination to make something of the opportunity she had been given. She graduated with First Class Honours and a 4.77/5.00 CGPA, emerging as the Best Graduating Student in the Public Relations and Advertising Department and receiving the Alima Atta Award for Public Relations and Advertising. On paper, it is an impressive academic record. In reality, however, the transcript only captures the most measurable part of a much larger story.
Long before the graduation gown, the academic distinctions and the professional identity, there was a girl growing up in Lagos with her widowed mother. Her childhood was shaped by circumstances that required resilience long before she understood the word. As a young teenager, she hawked sachet water on the streets of Lagos and helped her mother sell cooked noodles under the Lagos bridge. At one point, mother and daughter lived in a wooden house in Okobaba slum and there were years when they slept in other people’s shops. These experiences became part of the foundation upon which Ayomide would eventually build her life, teaching her early that circumstances could be difficult without being permanent.
Her path to university was not straightforward either. After secondary school, she spent gap years outside formal education and became a teacher because she needed to make money, teaching children for very little. Her first attempt at JAMB did not result in admission, so she wrote the examination again before eventually gaining admission to Lagos State University. Even then, getting into university was only the beginning of another challenge. She had a place but she had absolutely no idea how she would pay her school fees.
Her university journey therefore began with questions about how she would navigate the realities of school and at different points, how she would meet some of the basic demands that came with being a student. There were periods when paying her school fees was uncertain and she had to rely on relatives and the intervention of people who showed up for her. Through that support, she never missed a payment, never paid late and never had to repeat an academic session because of unpaid fees.
There were days when food was not guaranteed and she shared an apartment with four other students as she tried to make a university education work within the circumstances available to her. There were also moments when she went to school on an empty stomach, carrying little more than the hope that somehow, something would change.
These experiences became the context in which she learned to persist. Every examination became more than an academic test, every semester another exercise in endurance and every successful result is an evidence that the difficult season had not had the final word.
However, Ayomide’s story at Lagos State University was never solely about surviving.
She was determined to use the university experience as a place to build while pursuing her degree, she served as the 17th Vice President of the Public Relations and Advertising Department and was named LASU Host of the Year in 2024. She hosted more than 30 events while still an undergraduate, including major events outside the university, gradually turning her natural relationship with the microphone into a professional identity.
That identity eventually became Ayothemediagirl, the personal brand through which she developed her work as an event host and media professional. What began as a name she gave herself became something people began to associate with her work. The brand became part of a larger professional journey that she was building long before graduation.
During her time at LASU, she founded and led a creative team of 30+ members, bringing together young creatives to work, create and execute creative projects. For someone studying communication, the experience became another form of education, learning how to lead people, manage different personalities, communicate ideas clearly and turn an idea into something that other people could participate in.
Her academic journey also found its way into competitive spaces, she represented Lagos State University in public relations and advertising competitions, including the NIPR Lagos PR Fest and an ARCON competition, where her teams earned podium finishes. The experience gave her another opportunity to test what she was learning outside the classroom and to understand communication not merely as an academic discipline but as a practical craft with real audiences, expectations and consequences.
That distinction is important to understanding Ayomide’s university experience. She did not treat her degree and her professional life as separate worlds. Communication was something she studied, but it was also something she practised everywhere, on stages, inside teams, through creative projects, in competitions and eventually through professional work with brands.
By the time she graduated, she had already begun building a career in communications and digital media. Her professional experience has taken her through public relations, social media, content strategy and digital storytelling, particularly within technology and startup environments. Her work sits at the intersection of communication, strategy and digital media, allowing her to approach brands from the broader question of how they communicate, connect with and remain relevant to their audiences.
In many ways, this is what makes her First Class particularly interesting. The achievement did not happen in isolation, it happened while she was building a career, hosting events, leading people, competing, developing a personal brand and figuring out what she wanted her life to look like beyond university.
It would therefore be easy to look at the 4.77/5.00 CGPA and reduce the story to academic brilliance but academic brilliance alone cannot explain her journey. There was discipline, certainly, but there was also adaptability, there was consistency, but there was also the ability to keep moving when circumstances were uncertain, there was ambition but there was also the willingness to do the work required to turn ambition into something tangible.
Her academic record tells its own story? eight semesters, 76 courses, 60 As, 15 Bs and one C, behind hese numbers are days when she had to study despite being tired, work despite academic pressure, show up despite uncertainty and continue building even when the outcome was not guaranteed.
And perhaps that is the part of her journey that matters most to her.
The student who once wondered how she would make it through school eventually became someone who understood that she could build things while still learning, lead while still growing and create opportunities without waiting for someone else to hand them to her.
Her receipt of the Alima Atta Award carries an additional significance because of what the award represents. Alima Atta was a prominent Nigerian public relations and marketing practitioner whose career included the establishment of Sesema PR and a sustained commitment to developing young talent, particularly women entering the public relations profession. The Alima
Atta Foundation has continued that legacy through its support for LASU’s Public Relations and Advertising Department and its annual recognition of outstanding female students in the department.
For Ayomide, receiving that recognition therefore places her within a lineage larger than her own academic achievement. It connects her to a woman whose professional life was built around excellence, communication and creating opportunities for others.
That idea of creating room for others is also reflected in Ayomide’s own journey whether hrough the creative team she founded, the communities she has participated in or the work she does through communication and media, she has consistently found herself interested in more than individual achievement. There is a recurring instinct to build something that other people can enter.
Her graduation, then, is not quite an ending, it is a confirmation.
A confirmation that the girl who once had to walk to school because she could not afford transportation could eventually walk across a graduation stage as a First Class graduate. A confirmation that the teenager who once hawked sachet water on the streets of Lagos could grow into a communications professional building a career in technology and media. A
confirmation that uncertainty does not always produce limitation. Sometimes, it produces resourcefulness, sometimes, it teaches a person to build with what they have, sometimes, it creates a determination that becomes difficult to explain to anyone who has never had to find a way when there appeared to be none.
And there is another part of the story that Ayomide does not separate from any of this, God.
She speaks about her journey with a clear sense that she did not accomplish it alone. The relatives who helped her, the people who showed up at crucial moments, the mentors, friends, colleagues and communities that supported her all form part of the story. But above them all, she sees the hand of God in the doors that opened, the help that arrived and the strength to continue when she could not see how the next chapter would happen.
So when Ayomide says she has graduated, it is not only an announcement of an academic qualification, it is statement about distance.
About how far a person can travel from uncertainty when she continues to move.
About what happens when academic ambition meets professional curiosity, when hardship meets resilience and when a young woman decides that she will not wait until she has everything figured out before she starts building.
The First Class of 4.77/5.00 CGPA is real, the award, events, competitions, leadership positions, creative team and professional experiences are real but they are not separate achievements scattered across four years.
Together, they tell the story of a young woman who entered university hoping to earn a degree and left having built an identity.
And perhaps that is the most interesting thing about Ayomide Olubunmi’s story.
She grew into someone who was already becoming long before the certificate arrived and now the certificate has finally caught up with her.
