Pa Onakoya, the father of Nigerian chess master, Tunde Onakoya, has revealed that he wasn’t initially in support of his son playing chess.

He admitted that when Tunde was a child, he used to disrupt his chess games to make him focus on his education.

The proud father disclosed this in a sideline interview with City Edge TV when he joined his wife and many others at Lagos airport on Wednesday, to give the Guinness World Record-breaker a heroic welcome.

He said, “To me, Babatunde Onakoya is an angel because whatever he set his mind on you must succeed.

“As a small child, when Tunde was playing chess, I usually packed everything away from him because I wanted him to focus on school. I didn’t know that it was what would make him popular like this.

“My advice for parents is that they shouldn’t discourage their children from their passions. I wanted Tunde to be a doctor but I didn’t know that chess would make him popular like this. I thank God.”

Tunde Onakoya recently broke the Guinness World Record for the longest-ever chess marathon with a time of 60 hours at Times Square in New York, United States.

He broke the record of Norwegian players, Hallvard Haug Flatebø and Sjur Ferkingstad, who played for 56-hour, 9-minute in 2018.

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