"Every system we build is immediately accountable to real students, real parents, and real institutional consequences. We have never had the luxury of building in a sandbox."

Lagos, Nigeria · Est. 2002 · acecollege.com.ng

ACE College International is a private secondary school in Ikorodu, Lagos, Nigeria, serving 260+ students and 30+ staff.

This GitHub organisation is the open-source home of the school's entire technology infrastructure — built and maintained by the school's Proprietor & Lead Developer without external IT vendors, without a CS degree, and without a staging environment that stays staging forever.

Every repository here runs in production. Every commit has real institutional consequences.

There is no test environment that never ships. Every system in this organisation was built under the constraint that it would serve real students, real parents, and real staff from day one. That constraint produces different — and more considered — architecture decisions than most development contexts allow.

Systems are built so they survive beyond their original developer. n8n over custom webhook handlers. Configuration files over hardcoded values. Admin panels that allow non-technical staff to operate systems without touching code. Documentation written for the person who inherits this infrastructure, not the person who built it.

The entire stack — from the school intranet running on a repurposed laptop to the AI tutoring tools deployed in classrooms — was built with open-source software and free-tier cloud services. Commercial equivalents of these systems would cost ₦2,000,000+ per year in licensing alone.

Where multiple databases exist, we federate rather than migrate. The Sabi API reads across three live MySQL schemas at query time — preserving 13 years of institutional data integrity while enabling cross-system intelligence through a single API layer.

Languages Python 3.11 · MQL5 · JavaScript (ES6+) · HTML5 · CSS3 Frameworks FastAPI · n8n · Node.js Databases MySQL 8.0 · Three-schema federation Infrastructure Docker Compose · Ubuntu 24.04 · Caddy · Nginx · MikroTik AI / LLM Gemini 2.0 Flash · Anthropic Claude · Groq Messaging WhatsApp Business Cloud API · Telegram Bot API · OpenClaw Trading MetaTrader 5 · Exness Broker · SMC confluence engine Hosting Contabo VPS · Render · Hugging Face . Local HP Envy x360 (school server)

Why three separate databases instead of one unified schema? The school ERP (one_arps_aci) was built by an external vendor over 13 years. The Moodle LMS (studypal) uses its own data model. Migrating either would risk catastrophic data loss with no recovery path. The Sabi API federates across all three at runtime — treating the integration layer as the engineering problem, not the data itself.

Why n8n for the Bursar Bot instead of custom Python? A custom FastAPI webhook handler would require a developer to modify code every time a message template changes. n8n allows non-technical administrators — a bursar, a school secretary — to adjust notification schedules and message content without touching the codebase. The system is designed to outlast direct developer involvement.

Why single-file HTML for classroom tools? Classroom devices in Lagos operate with unreliable internet. A single-file application with no external CDN dependencies functions from a USB drive, a local file server, or a direct email attachment. Every lesson in the gamified suite works offline. Every tool that requires AI routes gracefully when the API is unavailable.

studypalNG — YouTube channel for Nigerian students and educators. Currently home to study-focused short-form content. Expanding in 2026 to document the school operations automation, AI classroom tools, and EdTech infrastructure builds featured in this organisation — making the technical journey visible to Nigerian school owners and developers who face the same problems.

▶ youtube.com/@studypalNG

Nigeria has 35,000+ private secondary schools. Fewer than 3% have any form of automated operations.

The tools in this organisation were built for ACE College International. They are open-sourced here so that any school proprietor, developer, or EdTech builder who faces the same problems can deploy, fork, and adapt them without starting from scratch.

The unit economics of building for Nigerian secondary schools look small in Lagos. They look significant everywhere else.

Principal & Lead Developer ACE College International · Ikorodu, Lagos, Nigeria Self-taught trajectory: PHP scripting (2019) → multi-system production architecture (2021). No CS degree. Every system deployed into a live institution with real accountability from day one.

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All repositories are open-source unless otherwise stated. Production credentials, student data, and broker configurations are excluded from all public releases. See individual repository SECURITY.md files for responsible disclosure guidelines.