{ Case Study I · 2009 – 2011 }
Founding
The Speech Academy
Developing Ideas, Building Institutions, Leading People
- Period
- 2009 – 2011
- Institution
- The Speech Academy, Ibadan
- Role
- Founder & Director, The Speech Academy
I.The Challenge and the Opportunity
Growing up at The International School Ibadan, I was acutely aware of the gap that I perceived between myself and many of my peers: a gap of class, of confidence, of assumed belonging; and so, I retreated into the domains where I felt genuinely capable: reading and writing. I quietly consumed information from every available source - encyclopaedias, dictionaries, newspapers and journals. When I joined the Young Writers’ Club, I quickly discovered that mastery of words was, in fact, a form of power. When I enrolled at the University of Ibadan, I carried this forward by joining the Union of Campus Journalists, rising through the ranks as an award-winning writer in my first year, Features Editor in my second year and Editor-in-Chief in my third year, while writing concurrently for three separate press platforms. Slowly, I had built a quiet but growing reputation as a communicator.
The leap from writer to speaker happened by chance. At the start of my third year as an undergraduate, I was compelled to participate in an annual debate competition for the Student Leadership Development Programme. I walked to the lectern that day with no experience of competitive speaking and I felt something I had not anticipated: perfect calm. The noise disappeared and the words came out with clarity and purpose. In a field of 10 speakers, I was surprised that I emerged in first place. That experience changed everything.
What followed was three years of progressively higher-stakes speaking events: lead speaker at an inter-university debate at the University of Ghana; winning Super Bowl II, the University of Ibadan’s premier public speaking competition; and being selected to represent Nigeria at the 5th International Youth Forum in Russia. With each step, it became clearer to me that I had discovered something that, with proper development, could become a craft, and I began to suspect, a platform.
After my Super Bowl II victory, the invitations came almost immediately – people asked me to teach them public speaking, to offer group trainings, or to share whatever it was I appeared to have. The opportunity was simple to articulate, yet difficult to execute. There was no systematic, rigorous or affordable training in public speaking and elocution available in Ibadan, Nigeria. Even I had not received any formal training, yet the demand was evident. Nothing changed until one brave individual offered to pay me for private coaching. In no time, I had a curriculum to build, a name to give the enterprise, and, in retrospect, all the raw material of an institution waiting to be organised.
II.The Approach
My approach to building The Speech Academy reflected the methodology I have since applied to every institution I have built: start with the idea, design the architecture, and invest in the people who will carry it forward.
Start with intellectual seriousness.
The temptation, for a young founder with no formal background in communications training, was to improvise. I refused. I conducted systematic research, analysing speeches from YouTube, studying rhetorical theory, working through Stephen Lucas’s The Art of Public Speaking, and building a personal library of material on the Greek rhetorical tradition from Cicero through to the modern era. I learned the names and functions of the techniques I had been using instinctively - anaphora, epiphora, the tricolon - and taught myself to teach what I knew. The curriculum I built was carefully assembled, tested, and refined. It covered the phonemic alphabet, vowel and consonant sounds, audience analysis, speech structure, rhetorical devices, delivery, and performance under pressure. It was, from the outset, a serious educational programme.
Build the institution.
The Speech Academy was structured in a way that perfectly suited my target audience: busy students, entrepreneurs and professionals. I designed the classes to be taught for forty hours over five weekends. I opted to teach for two hours on Friday evenings; three hours on Saturday afternoons and three hours on Sunday afternoons. For my faculty, I extended invitations to the best speakers I knew, including my brother Sanmi Abiodun; and fellow competitive speakers, Yemi Sanni, King Ojikemba, and Chibuamam Echeta. For credibility, I asked two of my previous debate coaches to serve as guest lecturers – Dr. Bisi Olawuyi and Dr Demola Lewis, both of whom were lecturers at the University of Ibadan’s Department of Communications and Language Arts. They said yes. For course materials, I printed and spiral-bound a pack of resources that I had aggregated from various sources. For the brand identity, I asked a friend to design a logo, and then I incorporated the academy with the Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria with my mum, a school principal, as co-founder. The ambition was institutional from day one.
Recruit for potential, develop for performance.
The faculty I assembled were practitioners like me. Each brought a genuine platform as a respected speaker. The students who enrolled in early cohorts were, similarly, not passive recipients: they were challenged, evaluated, and expected to perform. As we grew, I expanded the team. Goodness Kolawole had started to develop a reputation as an accomplished speaker (his nickname was Obama), and I recognised something in him immediately: rigour, discipline, and a kind of quiet intensity about the work. I instantly welcomed him as a colleague. The same instinct led me to recruit Banke Fasominu, an exceptional student from our second cohort, as a co-teacher when we expanded into school-based programmes. Two other colleagues joined the team: Damilola Aderemi and Fola Adefemi. I was determined to build a pipeline of talent.
III.Implementation
Over time, The Speech Academy grew in three interlocking phases: the founding model, expansion into schools, and succession.
Developing the founding model
The inaugural class enrolled approximately 42 students — students from the University of Ibadan, professionals from the city, and one eccentric 60-year-old writer and pastor who remains among my favourite founding students. The classroom was a converted office in the Student Union Building; the teaching lectern was salvaged from an abandoned lot across campus; the whiteboard was built by a carpenter on commission. We charged ₦5,000 per student and we filled the room. The model worked. Weekend upon weekend, cohort upon cohort, the academy generated revenue, built reputation, and developed speakers. We were incorporated and we were growing.
Expanding into schools
The invitation from Mrs Funso Adegbola to teach at The Vale College opened the Academy’s second chapter. Mrs Adegbola was the daughter of Nigeria’s most famous orator and one of its most favoured politicians, Chief Bola Ige (fondly known as Cicero of Esa-Oke). She had been a judge at Super Bowl II, and she instantly opened the door for me to teach her students. What began as a twice-weekly class for senior students soon expanded into a whole-school elocution and public speaking programme. From there, we expanded to Lead City High School, which was a more demanding environment with a more diverse student body, and we subsequently received invitations from more schools and organisations across the city. I was also, by this point, commanding professional fees for individual speaking engagements: ₦25,000 per talk and, at the peak in June 2011, US$200 for a graduation address at Ibadan International School. The Speech Academy had made me a professional speaker, and the professional speaker was making The Speech Academy more credible.
The succession
On 24 June 2011, I delivered the graduation address at Ibadan International School in the morning, drove to Lagos in the afternoon, and flew to New York that night. I had been accepted to the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Before leaving, I handed The Speech Academy over to Goodness Kolawole as my successor. Goodness had been there almost from the beginning, a co-faculty member, a protégé, and, by that point, the person who understood the Academy’s culture and standards better than anyone other than me. He has run The Speech Academy as his primary profession for fifteen years since. I remain a founding partner.
speakers trained across fifteen years, under the successor Faith chose
IV.Key Results and Insights
The numbers tell part of the story. In two years of active operation under my direct leadership, The Speech Academy:
- 42
- students in the inaugural cohort, with 20 graduating with certificates in the first session alone, and multiple subsequent cohorts following
- 3
- institutions in a multi-school delivery model, expanded from a single weekend programme
- 5
- founding instructors, subsequently expanding with additional recruited facilitators
- CAC
- incorporated formally with the Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria
- 5,000+
- speakers trained across fifteen years, under Goodness Kolawole’s subsequent leadership
The immeasurable outcomes matter more. The Speech Academy gave me the first evidence that I could build something from nothing; that the gap between an idea and an institution could be closed through research, structure, people, and will. It gave Goodness Kolawole a career and a calling. It gave thousands of young Nigerians access to training in public communication that would otherwise have been unavailable to them. And it gave me, in the years that followed, a framework for thinking about institutional development that I have carried into every leadership role since.
The deeper insight, which I only fully articulated years later, was this: the most powerful development happened not in the experience of being trained, but in the experience of building something worth training in. The hours I spent preparing the curriculum for my first paying coaching client taught me more about rhetoric, communication, and the architecture of a good speech than any of the 40 hours of classes I subsequently delivered. Building the institution was the education I needed.
“Building the institution was the education I needed.”
V.Challenges Faced
Building credibility before credentials.
I had no formal qualification in communications, linguistics, or education. What I had was a track record as a competitive speaker, a reputation on campus, and a curriculum I had built myself. The early cohorts enrolled partly on trust: trust in me, in the idea, and in the seriousness of what we were offering. Maintaining that trust required that the product genuinely deliver. The first graduation of students from The Speech Academy was much more than a ceremony; it was a proof of concept.
Managing a multi-role existence.
I was running The Speech Academy while teaching twice weekly at The Vale College and weekly at Lead City High School, presenting a weekly radio programme at Diamond FM, leading a nonprofit (The F.A.I.T.H. Initiative), undertaking the mandatory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) assignment, applying to graduate schools, and building a profile as a public speaker in my own right. Managing the schedule for The Speech Academy was only possible because I had built a co-faculty who could carry portions of the teaching load.
Navigating competition.
As our reputation grew, so did our visibility, and the interest of established players in the elocution space. One prominent local educator, having encountered me at a speaking engagement, attempted to position herself as my mentor and assign me small tasks. I recognised the dynamic for what it was and declined. Competition in a young market is a feature, not a threat; what mattered was that we maintained our own standards and identity rather than subordinating them to an existing hierarchy.
The timing of departure.
Leaving in June 2011 — at the moment when The Speech Academy had built real momentum — was the hardest operational decision I made in this period. It was also the right one. The institution had to prove it could survive its founder. Goodness Kolawole’s fifteen uninterrupted years of leadership since then is the answer to every doubt I had as I boarded that flight to New York.
Closing note
The Speech Academy began in a borrowed office with a salvaged desk and a whiteboard built by a local carpenter. It grew because the idea was real, the architecture was sound, and the people I chose were better than they knew. It endured because I chose succession over dependency; it thrived because I left before I became the ceiling rather than the foundation.
What I carry from that period is not the revenue, the enrolment numbers, or even the speaking prizes that preceded it. What I carry is the knowledge, tested under conditions of genuine scarcity, that institutions are not built by resources. They are built by the decision to be serious when it would be easier to be casual, to build when it would be easier to perform, and to develop people when it would be easier to extract from them.