With cheerful determination, Ekperigha bucks the odds to earn her degree

By Chuck Gordon

In Down Yenagoa, in the southern Nigerian state of Bayelsa, few people go on to attend college. Bethel Ekperigha and her eight siblings felt lucky to go to school at all.

Ekperigha's father lost his job when she was in middle school, and as a result Ekperigha and her school-age siblings were pulled from the nearby private school they attended. The public school was too far to walk to, and they had trouble affording the cost of a keke nanep (motorized rickshaw), so they attended school only occasionally. Among her several jobs, their mother grew cassava on leased land, and the fufu she made from it financed precious days in school for her children.

"The little money she made from that we would save up for the days we have major stuff, like test days," Ekperigha says.

Ekperigha managed to ace the tests, but the rest of the time she would help with the farming, play with her siblings, study class notes borrowed from friends, and, increasingly, play basketball.

Roundball changed Ekperigha's life, providing an escape hatch. The extremely fast little guard with a good handle ultimately earned a scholarship to Wingate, and this weekend she will wrap up four years of studying and playing basketball when she walks across the commencement stage and accepts her bachelor's degree from Wingate's president, Dr. Rhett Brown.

Bethel Ekperigha in cap and gown with an older brother at her kindergarten graduation.

Ekperigha is one of 443 students who will receive diplomas on Saturday during undergraduate commencement. The ceremony starts at 9 a.m. in the Academic Quad.

The road to this point has been far from easy for Ekperigha. Up to a dozen people lived in her family's two-bedroom apartment while she was growing up. The fifth-born, she shared a bed - "not even queen size; full size!" - with a sister and two brothers. The remaining siblings still at home slept scattered around the living room.

"Two bathrooms, but only one was functional," she says. "We didn't have running water. We would go to the river to get water."

When she was able to get a ride to school, the atmosphere there was tense.

"Teachers in middle school were really strict. They used to cane us," she says. "We were soldiers. It builds character on some level, but it was borderline abuse."

Although the stuffed apartment created "one of the best times" of her life, she dreamed of something better.

"The closest thing to outside of the country to us was what we would see on the TV," she says. "I remember I would always dream about prom. I would think, 'They're living amazing lives. I want this life.'"

Basketball provided her an out. As she spent more and more time on the state-run court a mile or so from her house, Ekperigha started thinking that she might be able to play and study overseas. From cybercafes she would Google high-school basketball programs in the United States and email coaches. Her coach in Nigeria ran interference with her faithfully churchgoing parents, who were concerned that hoops practice was interfering with their daughter's worship time.

"This girl has talent," he would tell them. "She learns really fast."

They eventually relented and ultimately understood the value of letting their daughter play basketball in the U.S. But gathering the money to pay for plane fare, visa fees and other expenses was another thing altogether. They begged government officials to help out, spending hours in waiting rooms to see leaders who were perpetually "in a meeting." They solicited donations from anyone they could think of.

Eventually, Ekperigha and her family scraped just enough money together to get her to Charlotte, where she would attend Victory Christian School. She took a seven-hour bus ride to her uncle's place in Lagos, and after a couple of days she was dropped off at the airport with five dollars in her pocket.

The 16-year-old Ekperigha had never seen a boarding pass before, much less navigated a busy airport. A flight to Morocco was followed by an overseas flight to New York and a short hop to Atlanta. She saved the pretzels and Biscoff for later and helped herself to the blanket she was given during the overnight flight.

In New York, Ekperigha was taken into an interrogation room by immigration officials worried that she was being trafficked. She was shaken by their questions - "Where are you going? Who's picking you up? What's the name of the school? What's the name of the state you're going to?" - but she remained resolute. She showed them all of her papers and said, "Whatever you do, just don't send me home."

Ekperigha loved her family, but she knew the future that was waiting for her if she was sent back to Nigeria: graduation from high school (if she was lucky), a menial job, marriage.

Grateful and eager

Ekperigha thrived at Victory Christian School in Charlotte, leading her team to 59 wins in three years, winning the state long-jump title and becoming class valedictorian. She also caught the eye of Wingate basketball coach Ann Hancock, who attended a VCS game to scout someone else and came away impressed with Ekperigha's energy and enthusiasm for the game. Hancock offered her a scholarship, which was really Ekperigha's end goal when she boarded that plan in Lagos three years earlier.

Ekperigha chats with a donor at this year's Scholarship Luncheon.

At Wingate, Ekperigha has been perhaps the hardest-working Bulldog the past four years. Every day after practice, Hancock gives out "energy coins" to the players who give it their all - sort of like the stickers that adorn college football players' helmets. Ekerpigha earned the most during her four years.

"You think about all the stuff she's going through and dealing with, and she's still the most energetic," Hancock says.

That "stuff" is often economic. Ekperigha works on campus simply to be able to afford a cellphone and clothes and to have a little spending money. She's also had to pay taxes on her scholarship. Her parents can't afford to help her with any of it. In fact, during her three years at Victory Christian, Ekperigha used some of the money from her minimum-wage job to pay the rent on a small kiosk her mother ran in Nigeria.

She was helping to subsidize them.

On the court, Ekperigha had to learn how to play within Hancock's system. Her teams in Nigeria were less structured, so it took her some time to get up to speed. She wound up averaging a little over 11 minutes a game as a senior.

If the outcome was not in doubt as the clock was winding down and Ekperigha hadn't played much, she was always eager to go in, even for mop-up duty. "She was really an important part of what we were doing," Hancock says, "because she brought it every single day in practice and made the people who did get to play more better. She took it as a challenge and never backed down and never pouted or 'woe is me, because I'm not getting to play as much.'"

Ekperigha also brought it every day in the classroom, and she'll graduate with a 3.5 grade-point average in her exercise science major. She still finds it hard to believe she's earning a college degree. "If you had told me I would be here, maybe seven years back," she says, "I literally would have told you, 'Kick rocks. You have to be playing with me.'"

In a lot of ways, however, she's in a similar boat as that 16-year-old girl who boarded a plane in Lagos seven years ago (she has yet to return to Nigeria, by the way, and her parents can't afford to fly over to see her graduate). Ekperigha's goal is to enroll in a physical therapy school in the U.S. in 2028. To do so, she'll need at least 50 hours of practical experience, so she's searching for jobs with PT clinics right now. Under her Optional Practical Training visa, she has a year's grace period in which to work in her field of study before she'll need to get a work-sponsored visa, enroll in another education program or leave the country.

Ekperigha drives to the hoop in a game earlier this year.

She also needs a place to live and a way to get to work, all of which bring up different problems (not only finding the money to buy a car, but getting insurance just so she can get a driver's license).

No matter her situation, Ekperigha never complains.

When the basketball team was going on a trip to Hawaii a couple of years ago, Hancock asked the players whether they would be OK doubling up in beds in order to save money that could be spent on more excursions. The players agreed, but with a few grumbles.

"Why would anybody be upset about that, Coach?" she asked Hancock. "I'm just happy to have a bed."

"She views everything through a different lens of appreciation," Hancock says. "And she's fighting for something, to not have to go back, to reach her goal."

Not until she graduated from high school did Ekperigha spend the five dollars she was staked with before she boarded that plane. It was a symbol, of sorts, of all she went through to get to Charlotte and of her disciplined approach to forging a better future. Now, she hopes to be a symbol, of sorts, to girls back home in Nigeria.

"I just live my life to be an inspiration to others," she says. "To the young girls in my community, I want to be an inspiration to them, that they can really achieve anything. They don't have to succumb to the norms of tradition and to what is keeping them in a box."

May 7, 2026