A good governance advocacy group, Unity House Foundation (UHF), has announced its readiness to commence Education Champions League in Rivers State.
The league, which will be to known as the ECL Quiz and Debate Competitions, will be for all secondary schools in the state.
The competition, a part of the August Meeting, series organised by the UHF will also hold other conversations that help the intellectual well-being of the community at large.
The competition has been slated for launch March, 22nd in Port Harcourt during the 2024 edition of the August Meeting series by the group.
Speaking on the development, UHF national leader, Kingsley Wenenda Wali, said the mission of the ECL is to bridge the gaps in quality interpersonal communication and nation building by promoting the culture of reading and writing among young ones and all generations.
Wali emphasised the need to change the wrong conversation of the citizenry seeing everything from the perspectives of politics- the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (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.”
The UHF leader stated that 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 said the second price of the competition has been instituted in honour of ace broadcaster, late 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 stated that the UHF would take necessary measures and provide services or assistance, including the establishment of information centers, educational, research, and training institutions, etc., for the betterment of society, particularly for the aforementioned class of persons and others.
He said: “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 recommend 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”.
Wali announced that the event would also be for the 1st quarter 2024 book reading saying that the book slated for the day is “On A Platter Of Gold” written be Bolaji Abdulahi.
He said: “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.”
