John Oba
The federal government, through the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Youth and Student Matters, Comrade Jude Imagwe, has unveiled a national spelling bee competition to celebrate and empower the Nigerian teenagers.
Speaking during the unveiling ceremony, Imagwe said the pilot season of the competition tagged GNEXT 2014 which was in collaboration with GNEXT Alliance would be limited to Unity and Modern schools, but that “this limitation will be removed in subsequence editions.”
He said the programme which would start from the zones with students from each state participating, “while the best two from each state will come for the final is to guard them in their spelling ability and to bring the best out of them.”
He said: “The real wealth of a nation is primarily warehoused in the heart, minds and hands of her citizens; particularly the younger generation. The ultimate vision of Mr President’s transformation agenda is to empower young Nigerians today so as to ensure sustainable national greatness tomorrow.
“There is need for us to begin to build young people that would love their country and saddle with leadership sense and patriotism. This is also to see how the educational value and content of our younger ones will be broadened. There is the need to strength their sense of acceptance and desire to take challenges and make them have the confidence to stand among their pairs anywhere in the world.”
Youngstars Development Initiative, Mr. Kingsley Bangwell, which organisation “is a partner in the programme,” said at the end of the project young people would be able to demonstrate their intellectual capital and use it to bring some more colour to the beauty and diversity of the nation.
Lauding the programme, an assistance director, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs Onanuga A., said it would enhance the students performance at school.