Victor Osimhen grew up in Olusosun, a neighbourhood in Lagos built around one of Africa’s largest landfills, where families sifted through waste to survive and children wore boots scavenged from the dump, Footynaija.com reports.
He lost his mother before he was old enough to remember her face. His father lost his job, and the family of seven crowded into a single room. Osimhen sold sachet water in Lagos traffic, sold a pastor’s bible study books on the street and slept in the church when the rent at home could not be paid.
He dropped out of school in Senior Secondary School Three (SS 3), his final year, because football felt like the only door left open.
It paid off, in ways that are almost impossible to overstate.
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He led Nigeria to the 2015 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Chile, finishing as top scorer with ten goals. A move to Wolfsburg followed in 2017, then Charleroi, then Lille, then Napoli, where he fired the club to their first Serie A title in 33 years and became the first African player to win the Serie A Golden Boot.
Last year, Galatasaray paid €75 million to make him the most expensive signing in Turkish football history, and he has since won back-to-back Süper Lig titles in Istanbul.
None of it has made him forget what he left behind in Olusosun.
Speaking on Instablog TV, Osimhen has revealed that returning to education is in his plans, not for money or status, but because he owes it to the version of himself that had no choice but to walk away from school.
“As an adult, not everything I learned in school. There are some kinds of life lessons you encounter through life’s journey,” he said.
But the formal education he never finished still calls to him.
“For me, it would be an amazing thing to also try to get a degree, which I’m still considering because football, you won’t play for so long, probably 20, 25 years, and then you’re done,” Osimhen added.
The message he most wanted to pass, however, was not about himself.
“In as much as I have a lot of things to fall back to when I’m done, I think it’s still important for me to set an example, to set a standard for the younger generation,” he said.
“Even though you dropped out due to some kind of challenges you have, it’s something you can always go back to. School is always there.”
