Meet Femi Ayodeji, Winner of the VoguePay/NACOSS Software Hackathon 2018

(Last Updated On: November 22, 2018)


VoguePay is the official sponsor of the National Association of Computer Science students. The student body that boasts of more than 300,000 students offering computer science related course across universities, polytechnics, colleges of education in Nigeria.

As part of our corporate social responsibilities, VoguePay has a mission to discover, launch and support student software entrepreneurs that will grow local content and the develop Nigeria’s software industry. Each year, VoguePay/NACOSS hackathon wins go home with N100,000, N75,000 and N50,000 respectively while consolation prizes awarded to other contestants.

Here is the official press release of the 2018 VoguePay/NACOSS hackathon event.

The winner of the VoguePay/NACOSS Software Hackathon is Femi Ayodeji, a Computer Science student from the University of Ibadan.

The Project: Oso is a personal assistant chatbot that helps in exams revision.

Oso provides questions both in subjective and objective format that helps users in preparing for examinations and tests. With questions from various courses in the University and subjects spanning through various examination bodies including Jamb and Tertiary Institution Examination, the bot informs you whether your answer is correct or wrong. This project has a futuristic functionality to take question from a user and supply the accurate answer.



In this interview, Femi shares what inspired him to join the software pitch sessions,  his excitements, and future plans.


Congratulations! You came first, how did it feel when you found out?

I was excited


Can you briefly tell us about yourself?

I’m Femi Ayodeji, the third born of four children of Mr. & Mrs. Ayodeji.

I’m an artist and a programmer, currently a 300 level computer science student at the University of Ibadan (UI). I love creating solutions, I love the feeling of being able to solve problems.


Where did the inspiration for the web/app solution you created come from?

We’ve quite some good developers in UI but the developer’s community is not as strong as it ought to be. So I created Qui (Oso question base), as a free API of past questions for developers to consume and thereafter to boost the community.

I’ve always wanted to build something for UI students and coupled with my love for artificial intelligence (AI), I began working on a bot which I later called Oso.


What were the main challenges you faced during the creative process?

There were few challenges. Thankfully, I was able to deal with them.

For example, I found it difficult to give the project a name because I wanted a local, native and descriptive name. On the technical side, I had challenges with Natural Language Processing and building the bot. I actually started the bot on Facebook but I was frustrated with approval to go public until I started building from scratch by myself.


What was the most valuable thing you learned during the process?

During the period, I had to learn new things and relearn old stuff.


Which developers have influenced your work?

Remy Ohajinwa, a senior colleague who mentored towards the competition.

What tips would you give other developers thinking of entering the VoguePay/NACOSS competition next year?

My advice to them is that they should be creative, work hard and learn beyond programming.


What are you hoping to do next?

I’ve other interesting projects but I’d prefer to optimize Oso for the time being. You’d be surprised next year.


Anything else you want to say? (Is there any advice you would give to young developers)

Thanks to VoguePay for the opportunity. It’s very rare to see sponsor for tech event in Nigeria as a lot of brands go for entertainment.

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