Miss Emmanuella Oziofu, a nine-year-old child prodigy and grade five pupil of Skycrest School Lagos, on Friday showcased her website, www.emmasacademy.com, and her mobile app, Emma’s ICT Academy.
Oziofu, who is passionate about Information Communication Technology (ICT), has diploma certificates in Desktop Publishing, Advance Excel, Adobe Page Maker, Advance Power Point and Corel Draw.
Showcasing her website and mobile app in Lagos, Oziofu said they were created to teach the younger generation about ICT.
“My mobile app is available for download on Google play store.
“The purpose of the mobile app is to teach the younger generation like me ICT skills I have acquired, the app is free and adults can also download and use it as well.”
On her plans for the near future, Uziofu said, “My plans are to build some websites focusing on health, offer free ICT training for children my age on Saturday, Sundays and during holidays.
“I’m also planning a boot camp for young people in the near future.
“My target is to become a professional web designer and analyst at age nine and I have accomplished it,” she said.
Oziofu revealed that she had previously created a chat site, a personal website and had at the age of eight, created three websites for her former school, Fortune Schools in Benin, Edo.
The child prodigy said that she was on a quest to gain more knowledge about programming languages and artificial intelligence.
Mr Lekan Otufodurin, the Chairman of the occasion, said that young people in the country should be given necessary support to develop their talents to put the country in a positive light.
Otufodurin, the online editor of The Nation Newspaper said “We can produce more Emmanuellas; we can support young people because they are leaders of tomorrow.
“Journalists also have to learn multimedia skills to remain relevant.”
Sharing Otufodurin’s sentiments, Dr Quasim Akinreti, the Chairman of the Lagos Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), urged journalists to acquire new skills to adapt to the ever evolving modes of news coverage.
Akinreti, a part time teacher of news media training at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) said: “What is happening here underscores my passion for Lagos journalists to have other skills.
“We are competing with content providers who are not trained journalists and journalist are currently ceding their rights to these content providers,” the NUJ Lagos Chairman said.
Mr John Mayaki, the Uziofu’s father shed some light on how he noticed his daughter’s innate talent at a young age and developed it.
“She was born on Jan. 7, 2009, when she was at about seven-years-old; she was always interested in what I was doing with my Samsung Galaxy Tab.
“I got her a laptop when I noticed her skills and I also made sure that during her holidays, I dropped her at the computer school for more training.
“In April, she completed some online courses from SOLOLEARN California.
“These courses are Certificate in HTML Fundamentals Course, Certificate in PHP Tutorial Course, Certificate in CSS Fundamentals Course and Certificate in SQL Fundamentals Course.
“Others are Certificate in JavaScript Tutorial Course and Certificate in IQuery Tutorial Course,” he said.