Jolade Tella: 30-year-old human calculator tells story of what it was like to be a child genius
In a video shared on the internet in September 2019, a lady armed with a microphone and a winning smile shoots a stream of numbers at a young man in a checkered shirt. “350,925 plus 450,925 plus 550,925 multiplied by 2,000,” she asks him. And after briefly staring into space as if the answer lay invisible in the ether, he answers correctly — “2,705,550,000.” This young man, self-dubbed The Human Calculator, is Jolade Michael Tella, and is one of the few blessed with the ability to mentally compute large and difficult numbers.
‘Blessed,’ because Tella believes his gift comes from God. The fourth of five children and the only one among them with the ability, Tella discovered his talent when he was about eight. “I was so inquisitive and played with numbers in my head,” he says as we converse on Zoom. Impressive about Tella’s ability is that rather than rely on formulas or techniques, he manipulates numbers instinctually, a stroke of numerical madness without method. “I provide answers without thinking about it. I can’t explain it. It’s an involuntary action for me,” he says.
Born to middle-class parents — a clergyman father affiliated with the Celestial Church of Christ and a mother who sells cloth — Tella was raised in Agbara, in the Ado-Odo/Ota local government area in Ogun State. He hails from Abeokuta, the state’s capital.
“We were comfortable and could get the basic things needed for sustenance,” Tella says of his family. When, in jaw-dropped wonder, his parents discovered his ability when he was only a boy, they considered it a “miracle.”
“They were shocked because no one in the family had the ability,” says Tella. He himself could hardly contain his excitement, like Peter Parker after discovering he can shoot webs from his veins. “After I discovered my ability, I saw myself as a superhero, like I was Superman, because it’s a rare gift. I was so happy, to be honest.”
As is typical of the gifted, Tella initially assumed his was a generic ability, realizing his error only after entering secondary school and seeing his mates struggle to put two and two together. He similarly found no kindred spirit during his four-year stint at the Lagos State University, where he studied Geography and Regional Planning, graduating in 2021.
His talent for computation, he claims, proved useful while studying geography, a discipline laden with statistics. Like many undergraduates from middle-class homes, Tella sought to make ends meet by working a part-time job, venturing into wig-making, which he’d learned even before his university admission. From year one to three, when he did not have his nose in a book, he had his hands in a bushel of synthetic hair, and it wasn’t until his final year in school that he started to publicly showcase his facility for mental arithmetic on the campus’ premises, winning for himself a cult following in the university community. Soon he caught the eye of the university’s then vice chancellor Prof Olanrewaju Fagbohun, who invited Tella for a meet-and-greet.
Realizing he could build a name and turn a profit using his ability, Tella started to perform at student events, but never for a fee. Not that he minded the unpaid labor, as he admits using the platforms afforded by the university as a “foothold.” The few times he was paid as a student performer, it was by an anonymous source. “The money was sent through a friend, but he never mentioned the person’s name till today,” says Tella.
His first major break came in October 2020, when he displayed his rare talent at the 46th birthday party of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, held at the Ooni’s palace in Ile Ife, Osun State. “It was an exciting moment for me, and he (the Ooni) really enjoyed the performance.”
Exciting experience though it was, it jarred the nerves of then 28-year-old Tella who, used to performing in halls full of raucous undergrads, was performing for the first time in air-conditioned luxury and for moneyed royalty. “I was nervous at first, but a few minutes into the performance, it became easy for me to flow with the guests.” Tella admits to feeling anxious in the few minutes before he performs even for a crowd sans royalty. But, he says, “immediately I climb the stage, the fear is all gone.” He was paid ₦100,000 to perform at the Ooni’s birthday party and calls the event “a bragging right for me,” adding that the event brought him more opportunities and important contacts.
Although Tella does not often meet people with his ability as he goes about his daily affairs, many such people exist, some of whom inspire Tella. Recently, Manuel Akanji, a Swiss who plays for the English football club Manchester City, trended online after flaunting a degree of this ability. The revered 18th-century thinker Leonhard Euler, also Swiss, was renowned not only for his innovation in mathematics but for his gift of mental calculation. And bi-annually, the world’s best mental calculators gather in Germany to compete in the Mental Calculation World Cup, a tourney established in 2004, with the twelve-year-old Aaryan Nitin Shukla, an Indian, winning its 2022 edition.
Also Indian, the 19th-century mathematician Scrinivasa Ramanujan is one of Tella’s greatest inspirations. Ramanujan, in spite of little formal training in mathematics, devised theorems so inventive they drew the attention of Cambridge dons. Tella is also enamoured of the American Scott Flansburg, whom the Guinness World Record in 2001 billed the “Fastest Human Calculator.”
Tella dreams of participating in the Mental Calculation World Cup. Now 30 years old, he continues to perform on stage but now primarily identifies as a “numeracy consultant,” tutoring children on numeracy during the weekends and partnering with schools to establish numeracy clubs.
“I have noticed that when children do not have the basic knowledge for addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc., having a solid foundation in mathematics becomes hard. Numeracy cuts across every subject and one must be proficient in it. It wasn’t easy at first to get the classes running. I started with just one pupil but currently I tutor six from different countries.”
That his parents did not oppose his choosing numeracy consultancy as a career, unorthodox though it may be, smoothened his path, and Tella is grateful for their support. “My parents never went against my wish to go into numeracy. Once they saw that it made me happy and that it is a viable career path, they supported me,” he says.
“I consider it to be a two-way thing,” Tella says when asked whether his ability to compute large numbers is a talent or a skill. “Using the footballer Lionel Messi as a reference point, I believe if he doesn’t train, he is still going to play football very well. But I don’t think he could have achieved all he has if he had not trained. Talent is never enough; it has to be properly developed. When I was very young, I could multiply, add and divide numbers, but as time went by, I started thinking I needed to broaden my skills, switch to some other areas. I went online, researched contemporary human calculators or those from times past, and found out the things they have done and the things they are not doing. Then I thought about what I can do to level up. And so, my talent gradually became a skill that I now teach.”
Tella continues to make wigs but has now relegated it to a pastime, working from home and by appointment only. He is on the lookout for similar talents and hopes to establish a “numeracy hub,” where he can prepare Nigerians for international competitions. “When it comes to mental math, we have not had people represent Nigeria at the international level,” Tella chides. “Also, there’s a need to create awareness that mathematics cannot be compared to numeracy. And that’s where problems come in because even some of those studying mathematics cannot tell the difference. There’s a Nigerian professor at New York University, Professor Sola Arin, who said the government needs to find a way to differentiate mathematics from numeracy nationally and says it should be taught as a different subject so that kids can understand even better. These are the key areas I want to focus on and be recognised for.”
Still, on the difference between numeracy and mathematics, Tella says he is invested in the former, rather than the latter. “One difference is that in mathematics, letters can be used to represent ideas, but numeracy deals solely with numbers and no letters. Numeracy means having a deep understanding of numbers. If you mention a number, seven, for instance, I can tell you ten or fifteen numbers that I can add or multiply to give me exactly seven. A mathematician might not be able to do that because it’s not his specialty.”
Tella’s admiration for certain mathematicians, sadly, has not earned him widespread acceptance from members of that tribe, as he cites mathematicians he has met at events as some of his fiercest critics, some of whom disregard his ability as a mere parlour trick, an experience that initially instilled self-doubt in Tella, but which he has long learned to overlook. “I figured I don’t need an external opinion on my abilities. These days I look past that and try to create a synergy instead.”
Snarky mathematicians aside, Tella admits to feeling riled whenever he reads acerbic remarks about his ability on social media. When he trended online in October 2022 after one of his videos went viral on Twitter, it drew all kinds of comments, ranging from the impressed, the skeptical, and the unkind. But Tella has since toed the stoic route, saying that “I have learned to look past that as well. I find it propels me to be even better.”
An extroverted spirit, Tella spends his leisure “associating with people” and taking road trips, when he is not “reading or researching.” Mental calculation skills, he insists, can be acquired by anyone with some doggedness, citing numeracy classes and YouTube as veritable aids. “Determination and consistency also matter,” he says, our conversation winding to its close. “You can only get better at what you keep doing every time, and trust me when I say you are going to excel in it.”
Michael Aromolaran is a freelance writer and journalist
