Friday, May 6, 2016 will go down in history as a day to
remember. On this fateful day, twenty-nine secondary schools converged at The
New Great Hall, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idiaraba, Mushin,
Lagos were they slugged it out at the Spelling competition. Greenland Hall
College, Alakuko stood out as the overall champion on the day with Shoms
International College, Surulere coming second and Bachel Model College of
Ikotun as the third.
The ESB 2016 had received so much publicity since the
beginning. The organizers of the event invited over 200 secondary schools for
the competition. There were mouth-watering prizes for the top nine finalists that
emerged. A dictionary and 2 bags were given to them. The champion went home
with the golden trophy, the first runner up went back with silver trophy and
the second runner up with bronze trophy plus dictionary, bags and certificate
for not just the winners but also all the participating schools present.
The maiden edition of the event was organized by the
publishers of Edulight in conjunction National Association of Proprietors of
Private School owners (NAPPS) Mushin Chapter and College of Medicine and Pharmaceutical
Science Students Association (COMPSSA) and it was a welcome initiative. The
students did express their potentials during the competition. The COMPSSA
president, Proprietor of De’Pathfinders Tutorial Consult, Mr. Dotun Sodunke, Miss
Yetunde Owolabi M.D. Yemat International Catering Institute and Ayo of COMPSSA
were the judges for the day while Mr. Kingsley Ohaeri was the moderator of the
event. The competition which lasted for four hours was originally slated to
start by 10 am but owing to some logistics challenges at the venue, it kicked
off at exactly 11:15am with some schools arriving two hours ahead of time.
The organizers lived up to their promise by ensuring that
all participating schools were issued certificate of participation and were well
taken care of. Each school present were represented by four students and a
teacher, two of the students were presented as contestants while the other two
and the teacher joined the audience.
Generally, the ESB 2016 took place without rancor, though there
were mild protests about the spelling of words given by the organizers which
Mr. Kingsley differed from the Dictionary spelling because “printer’s devil”
did set-in in the course of publication.
The Publisher, Bello Anthony Adekunle assured the participating
schools and those who could not make it of a better organization, planning and
package to take home come next year. The Editor of the Magazine, Uzoanya
Kenneth also seized the opportunity to ask the primary schools to gear up.
As
theirs is next, this 2016 with exact date and time to be made known as soon as
possible. This is as a result of the yearning by the primary schools.
