When Folake Mercy Olaniyi gained admission into Adekunle Ajasin University in 2008 to study Economics, she expected to graduate with her classmates in 2011. Instead, her journey stretched across seventeen years. It was not laziness, nor lack of ability, but a tangle of circumstances surrounding a single course, an error that changed the course of her life.
After her set completed their programme in 2011, Folake stayed back for an extra year to clear a few remaining courses. She waited through the first semester of 2012, since the courses she needed to re-take were second semester courses. By the time she successfully sat for them, she believed she was finally at the end of her studies. But a visit to her course adviser’s office revealed a devastating surprise: she was told she had failed a 100-level course from her very first year.
The news made no sense to her. It was a course she was certain she had passed. Yet she had no way of proving it. At the time, results were compiled manually. Students often had to rely on the departmental secretary to view their grades, or wait for them to be pasted on a notice board. Once pasted, results would be removed and photocopied, then kept with the class governor for record-keeping. Folake’s only backup was a small jotter where she wrote down her scores. The official photocopies that might have defended her case were gone, destroyed in a fire accident at her class governor’s house.
With nothing to fall back on, the system’s verdict stood. Folake was left behind while others moved forward. “I slipped into depression,” she recalls. “I couldn’t understand how I had failed. I had worked hard. The confusion broke me.”
As the first child in a single-mother household, she felt the weight of the setback even more deeply. Graduation was supposed to be her way of easing her mother’s burden. Instead, she found herself out of school, directionless, and carrying a wound she could not explain. For years, she turned her energy to work, her faith, and slowly, to healing. But the thought of finishing her education never quite disappeared.
In 2022, after more than a decade away from school, she chose to try again. This time she enrolled at Nexford University, an online institution based in Washington, D.C. She studied Business Administration with a specialisation in Digital Marketing. It was a fresh start, untainted by the shadows of her past. In 2025, she graduated with a First Class.
Through those years of delay, Folake built a life beyond the classroom. She married, and her husband, Opeyemi Olaniyi, became her steady source of encouragement. “He would always say, ‘Folake, learn a skill. You can always go back to school when you’re ready.’ He never judged me, and that gave me courage,” she says.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, Folake was a new mother who had just lost her job. She prayed for a business she could run from home, and soon discovered virtual assistance and social media management. That was how BMVirtual was born, a company that now supports businesses in building their online presence. For Folake, it was proof that even in seasons of loss, new possibilities could be created.
Her setbacks also inspired her to found Re-Introducing Yourself, a movement that encourages people to see beyond their mistakes and delays. Its roots go back to 2009, when she shared her struggles during a fellowship meeting and saw others step forward to confront their own. A decade later, she launched the first Re-Introducing Yourself Conference, determined to remind people that their story is never over.
Looking back, she believes her seventeen-year delay shaped her more than an easy path ever could. “It made me stronger and more compassionate. I now understand that delays are not denials; they are often divine positioning,” she says. Her message is clear: “Don’t give up. What feels like wasted years may actually be preparation years. Delay is not punishment; it’s positioning. Keep working on yourself, stay open, and keep faith alive.”
Today, as a graduate, entrepreneur, and mentor, Folake is looking ahead. She hopes to expand BMVirtual, grow Re-Introducing Yourself, and guide other young women who feel trapped by failure or delay. Her degree took seventeen years, but her journey reveals something greater, that sometimes the detour is the real destination.
