Tolu Iroye: The Kid With The Magic Box

Tolu Iroye, 27, dropped out of school after his O’Levels due to his family’s inability to continue paying his fees. The electronic designer did not allow his lack of further schooling to limit his future. He has created what he calls the Magic Box, a device that allows its user to switch off electrical appliances in their home or office from a mobile phone. A video demonstration of this technology at the magazine’s premises recently struck one with awe.

Tolu Iroye receiving his award for best use of technology at The Future Awards

The Magic Box began as an idea to create a non-line of sight remote control that would work for his TV set without him being in the room. “I’m motivated by the need to create solutions to problems,” Iroye said. And so he began work with components that he sourced from the Alaba Electronics Market. It took about one year to complete the Magic Box, an equipment that allows one to switch off any electronic device in the home or office with a phone call from anywhere in the world. The user makes a phone call to a sim card located in the Box which gives a voice prompt that offers options to the caller on how to switch on or off their TV, power generator and light metre through a micro-controller. 

Iroye’s recent victory in The Future Award’s best use of technology category brought out the life story of the brilliant techie which began many years ago. As a child, Iroye’s curiosity got the better of him and the quiet albeit stubborn kid loved to look at pictures in science books. Even though he could not read them, his older siblings took out time to explain the concepts to him. At age six years old, Iroye built his first invention, a cell battery using ground charcoal, a disposed carbon rod, a tin of milk, lime water, grass and herbs all picked from the neighbourhood rubbish mound.

Amused by his resourcefulness and sometimes-destructive streak - Iroye would tear apart the family’s transistor radio looking for the magical voice that came out of it - but his parents left him to explore.  He left many an electronic gadget in their Festac, Lagos apartment in tatters. From out of these he built new stuff. It was the beginning of his inventor’s journey. 

At age 10, he built a battery-powered toy car from his heap of scrap. At 12 Tolu began purchasing scraps from friends with his pocket money. While the other boys at school spent their lunch money on hiring bicycles, he used his to purchase equipment for constructing homemade antennas that neighbours bought  to enable them unscramble signals from the Cabletel satellite channel. “I still don’t know how to ride a bicycle,” Iroye joked.

More was to follow. He created a land telephone network that enabled him to communicate free with friends in their apartment block. An audio transmitter followed and then a voltage stabiliser to help the family adjust the low voltage they were supplied by the power company when they moved to Badagry. This was all before he turned 14.

Iroye's Magic Box

Constrained by an environment that stifles creativity, Iroye has taken to selling his inventions across the border in Cotonou, Benin Republic where he is hoping to gain a foothold soon enough. “This is the least of my inventions,” he says of the Magic Box. “There’s more to come in the future.”

Do I come to you by chance? No I don't.

Just left a reading by Nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. She's the author of the award winning I Do Not Come To You By Chance (Commonwealth prize for first book Africa region).

Nwaubani has got a lot of humour in her. Her book is a fine read with a lot of street sense. It is a world where the people who speak the grandest of grammars and possess the most polished certificates end up surviving on paltry pensions while the ones without any pretence to civility live large and even quote the Bible to support their ill gotten wealth.

She makes the reader laugh and told the audience that she grew up on reading comedies hence her seamless dive into writing serious issues in a funny way instead of the usual African writers’ seriousness.

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I went to my brother's wedding last Saturday at Sango Otta. I made my journey through Ifako Ijaiye and encountered a sight that made me question if we really have a government in place in Lagos. There's this crater lake in the middle of the road and people and cars got stuck in it. It was like a scene from CNN except that I was one of the live witnesses. Buses and cars failed as they tried to drive through with several ebgines becoming flooded and loosing power. See photos here. It is sad if our government cannot do anything to help its citizens while it makes to collect taxes, even increasing, it all the time.

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I entered a BRT bus on Monday from the National Stadium to Ojota and on our way we encountered traffic building up on the service lane. But not BRT, we couldn't be affected as we zoomed off on the BRT Only lane to our destination. You can tell of the comfort in the bus with the guy beside me who just dozed off. Who says Lagos is not working. Eko o ni baje o.