…How a broadcast analogy became SparkXplorer’s survival mindset
“News at 10 must air — no matter what.” That expression isn’t from a newsroom; I created it to motivate my team when our world suddenly tilted. It captures a truth I’ve always believed — that real excellence isn’t about ease, it’s about endurance; it’s about showing up and delivering when everything says you can’t.
I’ve long admired Channels Television, Nigeria’s most consistent broadcaster. For nearly three decades, through fuel scarcity, power outages, elections, riots, and political tension, it has aired its primetime News @ 10 every single night. I don’t know if that phrase has ever existed in their control room, but they live by it. Under John and Sola Momoh’s leadership, Channels built trust through unwavering reliability. Nigerians know — when the clock strikes ten, the news will air. That spirit of consistency became the mindset I leaned on when SparkXplorer, the afterschool learning platform, faced one of its biggest shocks yet.
It was early September 2025 when the email arrived. Our one-year contract with Tutor.com, the US tutoring partner that powered SparkXplorer’s On-Demand Tutoring, was nearing renewal. The relationship had been smooth — Tutor.com’s platform helped thousands of scholars from the African immigrant community in the US learn daily. Students like Giovanna, Rhafee, and Aisha were thriving — logging in every week, building confidence, and improving their grades. Everything looked stable.
Then came the message that changed everything
It was a standard renewal correspondence — formal, polite, routine. But buried within it was a single line that stopped me cold: “Due to a management policy change, we will not be renewing your service contract.” That single statement changed everything. I read it twice, hoping I had misunderstood. But I hadn’t. The countdown had started — approximately six weeks before our access to Tutor.com would be cut off. How do I tell my team that the very foundation of our tutoring system would soon disappear? How do I tell parents who trust us that the service their children depend on could go offline? It felt like the world had crumbled without notice.
For the next two weeks, I went into crisis mode. I scheduled back-to-back meetings with the Tutor.com team — calls, follow-ups, proposals — pleading for reconsideration or even a short extension. But each conversation ended with the same line: “I’m sorry, it’s a management decision.”
The six-week race
In between those calls, I searched for alternatives. Every provider I found was either twice as expensive, less efficient, or needed two to three months to integrate. We didn’t have that time. We had six weeks before our system would be cut off — and two of them were already gone. Then, one evening, during a rare quiet moment, I felt it — the kind of clarity that can only be described as divine. A whisper, not loud but firm, like the Holy Spirit speaking to a pastor who’s been praying for a breakthrough: “If they close the door, build your own.” That was it — the moment of truth.
If Tutor.com was walking away, we wouldn’t panic. We’d pivot. We’d build our own tutoring platform from scratch. I called the team together and said, “We have three weeks to do what most companies take six months to accomplish. We’re building Spark Portal, and it must go live before our Tutor.com contract expires.”
No one blinked. Everyone just nodded
We packed up and moved into my apartment at 1004 Estate in Lagos. That’s where the real story began. Team members came from Abuja, Enugu, and Ibadan, leaving their families behind for the mission. My living room turned into a command center. Whiteboards, sticky notes, power cables, empty coffee cups — everywhere you looked, something was happening. We worked, prayed, argued, and laughed through seemingly endless nights. My dining table became our daily stand-up desk. The kitchen turned into our cafeteria.
It was intense. Some nights, the servers crashed at 1am; by 3am, someone had fixed them. Other times, power failed, and we worked under phone lights. But each time frustration built up, someone would say, “News @ 10 must air.” And we’d all smile, get back up, and keep going. In three relentless weeks, we achieved what once seemed impossible. We built Spark Tutor Portal — our own tutoring platform, entirely in-house. We launched Xplorer+, our secure educational browser designed to help scholars stay focused and safe online. And we created Task Assignment, an automated system that gives every scholar weekly learning targets aligned with their grades.
Three products in three weeks — built, tested, and ready to go
When Tutor.com finally disconnected its service, SparkXplorer didn’t go dark. There was no downtime, no panic, no interruption. Parents kept scheduling sessions. Scholars kept learning. Most of them didn’t even realise that the entire tutoring system had changed underneath them.
That was the moment I knew — we had just lived through our “News @ 10 must air” reality.
When setbacks push you forward
Looking back on these past few weeks, I see it now as a blessing in disguise. The loss forced us to stretch, innovate, and grow faster than we thought possible. It made us independent. It forced us to focus on what mattered most — reliability, user experience, and control. We learnt that pressure doesn’t break great teams; it refines them. We learnt that deadlines, when embraced with discipline, can drive excellence. We learnt that sometimes, losing what you rely on is what pushes you to discover what you’re truly capable of.
Today, Spark Portal is live — fully owned, fully functional, and proudly built by our people. It features real-time dashboards, adaptive scheduling, integrated wallets, secure video classrooms, and analytics that give instant insights into learning progress. It’s sleek, fast, and reliable — designed by the same team that once feared losing everything.
Nothing trumps teamwork and commitment
When I think of those three weeks in 1004, I remember more than just code and deadlines. I remember Rahman and Ife, who coordinated deployment even when the servers went down; Abiola, who mapped the tutor workflows at 2am; Rejoice, Ife, and Demola, who turned feedback into Designs overnight; Damilola and Adetola, who tested every scenario till the platform held steady; Jessy, Yusuf and Al-Amin, who handled development, code reviews, and quality with relentless focus. And Adedoyin and Michael who recruited and trained Experience Anchor Tutors with expertise in US curriculum within three weeks. They came from different cities, but for three weeks, they lived as one team, one mission, one heartbeat. They turned my apartment into a tech factory — a war room of creativity, sweat, and faith.
That’s what “News @ 10 must air” means to me now. It’s not about television; it’s about accountability. It’s the understanding that when you’ve made a promise to the world — whether to inform, educate, or inspire — you can’t just stop when it gets hard. This is still fresh, still real. It’s not a story from years ago — it’s something we just lived through. But even now, as I write this, Spark Portal is running smoothly, sessions are live, and scholars are learning. And every time I think back to those sleepless nights in 1004, I smile. Because I know that crisis didn’t destroy us — it revealed who we are.
The truth is, the world doesn’t wait. The audience doesn’t pause. The news must air.
And at SparkXplorer, learning must continue — no matter what.
