Lagos ‘One-Day Governor’ To Emerge December 15
A One-Day Governor of Lagos State from among students of the state-owned secondary schools will emerge on Tuesday, December 15.
He or she, like previous others, will be a student that wins this year’s Spelling Bee competition at the grand finale event scheduling for Tuesday at the Adeyemi Bero Auditorium, Alausa Secretariat, Ikeja and to be broadcast live by the state-owned television and also watched on social media platforms.
Director-General, Office of Education Quality Assurance, Lagos State, Mrs Abiola Seriki-Ayeni, made this disclosure at a press briefing in her office, on Wednesday.
According to her, the competition, which is in two categories-primary and secondary school- is designed to, among others promote healthy academic rivalry among students, and enhance their spelling, vocabulary and public speaking ability.
Mrs Seriki-Ayeni explained that this year’s edition with preliminary and elimination stages already held, is unique in the sense that only the finalists and their teachers and one student each from the 57 local government and council development areas of the state will be allowed access into the venue of the finals so as to be able to follow the COVID-19 physical distancing protocol and other guidelines.
She said, while the winner and runners-up of the primary school category, which would be held on Monday, would receive cash prizes, the overall winner of the senior school category would in addition to performing a pseudo-role of One- Day Governor, would also go on education and cultural exchange programme together with other finalists in the category to the Republic of Finland.
She said the state government was very passionate about the competition since its maiden edition in 2001 and that the previous outings have yielded (and still yielding) tremendous results not only in the education sector but economic life of the state.
Giving reference, she said the winner of the 2007 edition, a female, Mariam Busari and the second runner-up of 2004 edition, Mr Alex Ezenagwu, are today Law Officers in the state Ministry of Justice and an Associate Professor of Law at Hamid Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, respectively just to mention a few.
She, however, noted that the One-Day Governor with his or her pseudo-cabinet members would perform those roles in a date to be announced later.
In her remarks at the briefing, the 2018 winner, Gloria Ajala. a student of Lafiaji Senior High school, Lagos Island and now applied to study Accounting at Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, said the competition had boosted her academic performance and other endeavours.
