Bradley Opere’s name may not ring a bell in Kenya. But at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, it is on everyone’s lips after the 22-year-old emerged the winner in a recent election of the student body president.
Besides the fact that he is a Kenyan who was elected to lead students of an American public university, Opere’s victory is significant in another aspect: He won in the first round, unlike recent elections that had to go into a runoff because no candidate had garnered the 50+1 at the first vote.
Opere was declared the winner with 53 per cent of the vote, the first outright first-round victory in the past four elections.
A double major in Business and Political Science, former student at Sunshine Secondary School, Lang’ata, says he contested the position because he wanted to tell a different story; a story of the talent that Kenya misses because of corruption and tribalism.
“It is my hope that this victory can be part of the new African narrative of an emerging generation of youth who can change the course of our country from a past riddled with corruption and tribalism,” he says.
The Third Year student is a recipient of the Morehead-Cain scholarship, the oldest and most prestigious merit scholarship programme in the United States.
Prior to joining UNC at Chapel Hill, Opere attended a two-year pre-university programme between 2011 and 2012 at the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in Johannesburg, South Africa.
He says frequent strikes in school may have contributed to his station in life today. According to him, it was his leadership potential and his ability to broker peace between teachers and students that made him find his way into ALA.
“ALA is a Pan African school that admits one or two students from every African country that have shown leadership potential and in my final year of high school, some classmates and teachers thought I deserved to join ALA,” he says.
Opere, who scored A in his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination, also felt that ALA was the right place for him because it had the most compelling vision of “developing the next generation of leaders”.
His decision to join ALA, he says, proved to be one of the best he had ever made because it greatly helped hone his leadership skills.
While there, he was the chairman of the student government where he helped write the Academy’s inaugural Honour Council constitution.
The ALA programme is targeted at young leaders aged 16 to19 from across Africa who have the potential to catalyse positive change on the continent.
During their time at ALA, students complete a unique curriculum that includes courses in Eentrepreneurial leadership, African studies, writing and rhetoric and Cambridge A-Levels.
It was while he was undergoing the ALA programme in Johannesburg that he received admission to UNC and the Morehead-Cain scholarship.
“As Dean, I had the opportunity to work closely with Bradley during his time as Chair of the ALA student government, and he left a powerful impression. I’m thrilled to see him continue to challenge himself at UNC to lead diverse communities and unite people from different backgrounds with a common purpose. I have no doubt that he will be an exceptional student body President at UNC-Chapel Hill,” Chris Bradford of ALA was quoted as saying in an article published in the institution’s website.
The young man, who has his mother to thank for his success, says that although he has been discouraged by many from coming back to Kenya to join politics, says he is determined to come back home and make his contribution in changing Kenya for the better.
“Edmund Burke reminds us ‘that all that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing’. Not only am I interested in politics, I also hope many of my fellow youth are because the future of our country depends on them,” he says.
He, however, says that he will not steer away from business because he believes that politics is not the only way to have an impact on society.
“I will, however, still do business since I believe it is harder to corrupt a person of means,” he says.
