9th March, 2024
By Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt
A peace, social justice and good Governance advocacy group, also known as the Rivers Unity House Foundation, UHF has announced its plans to launch an initiative to be known as Education Champions League or ECL Quiz and Debate Competitions for students of secondary schools in the state.
The competition competition will be launched on March 22nd in Port Harcourt during the 2024 edition of the August Meeting meeting series by the Foundation.
According to Kingsley Wali, the Convener of the Foundation, the aim of the Education Champion League ECL “is to bridge the gaps in quality interpersonal communication and nation building by promoting the culture of reading and writing among our young ones and all generations”.
He emphasized the need to change the wrong conversation of the citizenry from seeing everything from the perspectives of politics, especially Rivers, where, according to him, people tilt their lives only on APC and the PDP.
He said: “the ECL is intended to promote and encourage a reading culture. To take us away from people who do nothing else than politics. To create the possibility of getting the city back to reading habits. We want to create a society, generation that is readership friendly”.
He said parts of the competition would be quizzes, book readings, and reviews, as well as revitalizing existing libraries and building new ones.
Announcing that the reading challenge has already secured sponsorship for the first 3 years, Wali added that the 2nd price of the competition has been hijacked and instituted to immortalize the late ace broadcaster, Boma Erokosima.
He said winners of the competition would be provided scholarships, grants and other incentives to advance knowledge, education, and literacy within and outside Nigeria.
Wali added; “The purpose of the Education Champions League Quiz Competition is to encourage Reading, Analytical and Critical thinking skills among secondary school students to motivate them to improve their language skills and help them with finding their level of English while comparing their test results with their peers and students from other schools.
“Based on that, it is strongly recommended that all schools should nominate only those students who can represent them within the context of proper articulation, expression and presentation. The goal is to create even and fair conditions for all test participants”.
The UHF Convener announced that the event would also be used for the 1st quarter 2024 book reading of the Foundation.
He revealed that the book slated for the day is “On A Platter Of Gold” written be Bolaji Abdulahi.
“One of the biggest problems we have in Nigeria is that people don’t read, people don’t write. People putting down what happened when they were in office so that others can learn from them”, Wali declared.