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An intelligent 16 years old Salem Richard Nkanta has emerged winner of the Essay competition organized for Public Secondary Schools by Rotary Club of Portharcourt Gateway.
Salem who emerged winner after a keenly contested Essay writing will be going home with Hundred thousand Richer, The second position was cliched by another 16 Year old Chidozie From Airforce Secondary School While Chidera from GGSS Rumuokwuta came Third with Fifty Thousand Naira cash Gift
Speaking with Journalist shortly after receiving the grand prize of Hundred Thousand naira Elated Salem said she feels so proud of herself for bringing home the coveted prize “I feel so good to be the winner, because I didn’t expect it all. and I feel so good that I actually made my school proud of me, I have been preparing for the competition for about a month now, so I am very happy
Salem said “it all started when our English teacher came into our class and announced that there was a competition by Rotary International that anybody that wants to participate should write an essay with the Topic she gave to us, and that she will pick the best amongst us, she eventually picked me amongst the five person to represent the school in grand finale , our teacher told me, I must win but I told myself that I must win because my family don’t accept failure, I was nervous because there are so many persons going for this competition, honestly my advise to my fellow student is that they should confidently bring out any talent or gifts they have from the inside, don’t hide any gift, because I love to write but my parents wants me to be a doctor , I want to pursue this dream because I love to help people, in the next ten to twenty years I hope to be a doctor, I would study medicine and specialize in ophthalmology taking care children’s eye sight
Also speaking to newsmen at the end of the Essay competition which held at community Secondary School Okoronuodo The President of Rotary Club of Port Harcourt Gateway, Rotarian Prince Ekpere said the competition which was conceived last year held its first edition and though there are other competitions around in the city, like spelling Bee, Mathematics Competition, STEM etc, but from the survey carried out amongst students in secondary schools to see if they understand tropical Societal issues, shows that they don’t have deep knowledge of what goes on around them. they just treat issues on hear say without background knowledge , so the club decided to make them seat up, by giving them incentives to look into tropical issues and compete from well informed knowledge . Prince Ekpere said “We also encourage Teachers to participate in the essay competition as way of getting students to get back to reading and follow up on current issue happening in the country, state and the community around them to see how they can better solve problems for the society
“This our second edition has become annual program for Rotary Club of port Harcourt Gateway, Even if this is the only thing we do in our club as project every year that is what we have decided to do, in this competitions he said ‘we started with fourteen public secondary school and we ended with eight, the criteria used for selection of eight was standard marking scheme used for internal and external examinations the competition was conducted and supervised by the educationist themselves drawn form public institutions. As a person and a Rotarian I want to encourage NGOs, Well spirited individuals, Organisation to find ways encouraging teachers to go into this kind of competition because it will help to bring out the best in Pupil/students in various school and then give them broader knowledge on how to better their society when they become responsible adults, this will also help them to choose their careers too, as times goes on we would think of pushing this kind of competition to zonal Regional and maybe National competition someday.
For his part the chairman of the organizing committee for the Essay competition and partner in the essay project, Rotarian Bennett Ewuhuru explained that amongst the Rotary Seven areas of focus which includes basic Education and Literacy is to empower young people not just to read and write but also improve the academic standard for public schools pupils to excel globally . As you can see today all government Schools in Rivers State participated and only the very well prepared got qualified for this finals.
As an organization we already give relief assistance to schools, however only Rotary can not do all these things to meet these standard, for example the winning school, government girls secondary school Ozuoaba does not have a proper building but you can see the excellence which the student exhibited , and I would love to appeal to the government Of Rivers State, to look into schools with dilapidated structure, apart from this community secondary Okoro-nuodo which is newly renovated, most of them lack Laboratories, lack of teachers and so many other things I wont begin to mention here, but i want specially appeal to the commissioner for Education to look into all these issue that will yield into better learning environments for the pupils and students of public schools
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