Obafemi Awolowo University won the 2026 University Duel on April 19, 2026, beating the Federal University of Technology, Akure 107-62 in the grand finale at TenOone Studios in Lagos. The result gave OAU the title in the competition's second edition and capped a run that ended with a 45-point victory.
The win is already being read as a clean answer to a question OAU carried into the final: could it turn a strong showing into a title after finishing third in the inaugural season? This time it did, and the scale of the event made the result matter beyond one campus. Sixty-two universities and 186 students took part in the contest, which tested Applied Mathematics, Data Analysis, General Knowledge and Verbal Reasoning.
Adrian Lekan, a Computer Science student at OAU, was part of the team that closed the job. He worked alongside Alli Abdul-Quayum and Ogungbayi Imran, both Electrical Electronics students, as OAU moved through the final rounds and kept control of the collaborative Pickbox segment. That mattered because FUTA answered with a spirited mid-match comeback, briefly tightening the contest before OAU reasserted itself and finished the final quarters with the stronger scoreline.
The margin also explains why the title went to OAU and not to the team from Akure. FUTA came through a field of 62 universities to reach the last match, while the University of Nigeria, Nsukka secured third place after coming back against the University of Ibadan. In the end, OAU's depth across the academic challenges proved decisive, with one organiser saying the university showed massive depth in STEM and the intensity that secured its victory in the final quarters.
The University Duel is backed by MTN and is pitched as a premier undergraduate innovation trophy, part of a broader push to build digital skills for national development. Moyosola Omoniyi said focusing students in STEM is both the present and the future, and OAU's final made that case in the most public way possible. What remains open now is not who won, but how the next edition will answer a university team that has already moved from third place to champion.
