“I was given food at the back door for ten years, not knowing that the girl they called ‘orphan’ would one day own the school.”
At six years old, Amarachi lost everything. A fire consumed her parents and her home. Instead of compassion, she was met with cruelty.
“Your people are cursed. I can’t keep the daughter of a witch,” her landlord said as he threw her out.
From Owerri to Port Harcourt, she lived under bridges, begging for food to survive.
One morning, she stood outside the gates of Royal Kingsway Academy, drawn by the smell of food. There, she met Mama Risi, the school’s kitchen cleaner. Mama Risi began sneaking her scraps—bones, leftover rice, bread crusts.
“That became my lifeline,” Amarachi recalls.
Learning Through the Cracks
Day after day, Amarachi sat on a rock behind the school wall, listening to classes through holes in the fence. She memorized math lessons, recited poems aloud and soon earned the nickname “Radiohead.”
One teacher noticed her remarkable gift. Instead of driving her away, he smuggled her books and whispered to Mama Risi:
“Let her sit quietly at the back of Classroom 3. No one needs to know.”
Amarachi began attending classes barefoot, unseen, but determined.
At 17, she sat for the WAEC exams under the school’s name. She scored eight straight A’s, yet there was no applause.
“I cried alone, clutching my result slip. But I promised myself the world would hear my name one day.”
Full Circle
Years later, after graduating from the UK with honors in Business Administration, Amarachi built a thriving logistics company.
Then came the day she bought a bankrupt property in Port Harcourt. The address stunned her: Royal Kingsway Academy.
“I quietly signed the check,” she says. “When I walked in, the principal said, ‘Madam CEO, welcome.’ I looked at him and said, ‘I used to sit behind that wall… with jollof in a nylon bag.’”
The Amarachi Risi Academy
The school reopened months later as Amarachi Risi Academy: Where Every Child Has a Seat.
Every classroom was renovated. Teachers’ salaries were doubled. Hundreds of children, especially orphans and the abandoned, were enrolled for free.
As the new sign was unveiled, Mama Risi wept openly.
“They gave me bones,” Amarachi whispered. “I made them a throne.”
The Message We Cannot Ignore
Amarachi’s story is not just one of triumph, it is a mirror held up to society.
How many Amarachis are still out there, unseen behind walls? How many dreams are dying because no one cared?
No child should be invisible. No child should eat alone. No child should be denied a seat at the table because of poverty or status.
Empathy is not charity; it is humanity. A simple act of kindness saved Amarachi. Today, she feeds generations.
“The little girl once fed through a hole in the wall came back to buy the entire building,” Amarachi says.
“Now, every child has a seat at the table.”
