18th March, 2017
Akwa Ibom has emerged winner of the 20th National Junior Engineers, Technicians and Scientists (JETS) in which all the states and the Federal Capital Territory participated.
The national science-based competition for primary and secondary school students got underway from Tuesday to Friday in Lagos.
The theme of this year’s competition is “Enhancing Food Security through Science and Technology Applications’’.
En route their emergence as the overall winners of the one week competition, the Akwa Ibom representatives garnered four trophies.
Akwa Ibom emerged first in free choice project, winning with their project on “Biodegradable Waste to Wealth”.
They also got the second position for coming out with the project on using “Orange peels’’ for other uses such as Orange Peel for Weight Loss, Orange Peel for Treatment of Hangover, Orange Peel for Production of Pesticides and Candies.
The oil-rich state representatives were also rewarded for their effort in the inter-state qiuz competition by claiming the third position.
In other categories, Ekiti emerged winners of the inter-state competition for senior category, while Federal Capital Territory came second and Akwa Ibom third.
For free choice projects, Lagos State came first, Akwa Ibom second, while Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was third.
For the National Team Project in the Junior Category, Team Yobe State, emerged champions, while Imo came second and Ondo State third.
Commending the efforts of the junior engineers, the Coordinator of JETS, Mrs Grace Jakko, said the ingenuity displayed by the students showed a great future for technology in Nigeria.
“This students have done well and I praise their various efforts coming out with projects that can impact positively the lives of our people.
“This has shown that we have a great future ahead of us technologically. This is a rare ingenuity and I urge the students to pursue their dreams of becoming problem solvers in the future,’’ she said.
The representative of the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, Mr Joel Ojo, said that his experience at the competition clearly showed that Nigeria would soon be among the top 20 economies soon.
“Having gone round to inspect the array of innovative projects being exhibited in this hall, I am deeply impressed and optimistic that these young and talented students make Nigeria proud.
“I have no doubt that they will launch Nigeria into becoming one of the largest 20 industrialised economies of the world by the year 2020,’’ he said.
The students responsible for the projects that won Akwa Ibom the overall winners, Terence Udoma and Enobong Etukudo from PEGASUS Schools, Eket, said their success was on their inquisitiveness.
“When we wanted to design the project, what first came to our mind was how can we help the society? So, we came up with this idea through our inquisition.
“There are many problems encountered during our research, but we thank God that we are able to overcome.
“We will not stop here but research further on how we can improve on it and help the less privileged, especially those living in the rural areas,’’ they said.