A team of three University of Lagos (UNILAG) students have won the Hackathon4Justice competition organised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in partnership with Facebook and AfricaTeenGeeks. The trio of David Popoola, Eyitayo Ogunbiyi and Chukwudumebi Onwuli beat 47 other students from nine institutions shortlisted for the final at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel in Lagos last weekend. The students were challenged to employ technology to solve problems relating to achieving the rule of law in the areas of corruption, integrity and ethics; crime prevention and criminal justice; organized crime; human trafficking and terrorism and violent extremism after a 29-hour coding marathon. The winning team developed a software, ‘Let’s Fight Trafficking’ (TFL), to unmask traffickers.  It features an e-learning planning platform on human trafficking; a facial recognition system that matches feed from webcams and other images to determine existing case with similar images in the database; a portal for victim’s close friends to file reports about trafficking in their area and a heat map, generated from report data to let users know where trafficking is most prevalent and take preventive measures. The feat gave the winners a ticket to the Global Hackathon for Justice Event to hold at the Google Headquarters in Silicon Valley in August, where they will participate as mentors.

Below is a Summary from the Interview Competing For Greatness with Eyitayo Ogunbiyi, Chukwudumebi Onwuli and David Popoola  

They started by introducing themselves and how they met at the competition because they applied individually but soon became a team. They recalled learning about the competition from a recruiter on Facebook and applying after. While sharing their experiences, they recounted that the competition had lasted for 29 hours out of which they were allowed a two hours nap. They split the work into tasks and would meet to collaborate once there was any challenge.

The lady amongst them, Dumebi shared her personal experience at the Hackathon, she said she was able to learn a lot because there was space to ask questions. Speaking further, she said that through the competition, she was able to learn about human trafficking, corruption, justice for children, cybercrime and others. Discussing how they created the software ‘Let fight trafficking’ that won them the competition they said that the areas that were to be judged had guided them in creating the app. They said that they had to come up with a lot of features but the feature that increased their chances was the facial recognition feature. The Facial recognition feature they explained would allow trafficked people to submit pictures and through their database, it would guide them in following up on trafficking cases. They each maintained that their parents had been supportive during the process but initially expressed their doubts from fear of their studies suffering and others.

Tayo one of the participants advised that young people learning to code take care to always be dedicated especially if coding is not their main discipline. He also spoke on the need for up and coming programmers to take the learning process as number one priority and to learn to make sacrifices if they would ever ma.

Speaking on what they had learnt during the course of competing, Dumebi revealed that she had learnt about justice and this has helped her in becoming very open-minded as it concerns creating solutions. During the competition David agreed that he had learnt new things around the world of crime, there he also got to see the power of community as the final product was being crowdsourced. Tayo was of the opinion that what stood out for him was that he learnt how to work well in teams with people from different places, he learnt to communicate and connect with people.

In their final words to young people, as it concerns competitions, Dumebi advised that people make sure to try out for competitions and with or without a win it would allow them to network with people and still have fun. David maintained that compared with the fear of losing, the thrill of winning was bigger and even if one does not win the space would allow that they meet with awesome people and still have fun. Tayo followed their line of thoughts saying compared with the fear of losing, meeting people that could be influential in one’s career was a given.