WINNERS EMERGE IN LAGOS STATE ESSAY COMPETITION
Enilolobo Elijah of Vetland Junior Grammar School, Ifako-Ijaiye and Aderoju Precious of Angus Memorial High School, Somolu today emerged as Star Prize winners in the Junior and Senior categories in the grand finale of the Y2018 Essay Competition.
The competition, which took place at the Adeyemi Bero Auditorium in Alausa with the topic – “Lagos: A State of Excellence Indeed” – drew participants from all public schools in the State and produced 96 competitors who participated in the finals from the six Education Districts.
Speaking on behalf of the Deputy Governor, Dr. Idiat Oluranti Adebule, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Mrs. Adebunmi Adekanye commended the competitors for their brilliance and articulate delivery.
She expressed excitement that the competition, which aimed at sharpening the writing skills of the students and by implication improving their scores in the English Language in Local and External Examinations, was achieving the desired goals.
Adebule observed that the participants displayed “the gift of deep thought and articulate writing skills to convey ideas, communicate philosophy, recall occurrences and peep into the future as required in literary works”.
She stated further that the competing scripts showed improvement in the four key criteria determining the richness of an essay and the grading which, according to her, is what the government was promoting by the annual essay competition.
Mrs. Marrion Babs-Akinyeye, in a welcome address earlier, noted that the essay competition in schools has provided a platform for students to strive for excellent performance in the art of writing.
She stated that the last edition of the competition revealed that while the essays were rich in content, well organised and expressed in carefully chosen words, mechanical accuracy was lacking in the writing style of contestants.
Babs-Akinyeye said that to reverse that trend, a training workshop was organised by the Ministry for English Teachers “to retrain them in essay writing so that they will know what to look out for in an essay and also guide their students on how to write better essays and score better grades”.
She expressed happiness that the result of the exercise showed tremendous improvement over the previous edition, saying justice was done to this year’s topic.
“In fact, excellence beckons in this competition in the nearest future” she stated.
Kofoworola Ransome-Kuti of Gbaja Girls Junior High School, Surulere and Ayomikun Bamise of Ojota Junior Secondary School emerged the 1st and 2nd runners-up in the Junior Category while the Senior Category runners-up were Davies Adebisi of Oke-Odo Senior High School and Mercy Mohammed of Oshodi Comprehensive High School, Oshodi.
The event climaxed when the second runner-up (Senior category) Miss Mercy Mohammed chose to reel out the content of her essay offhand rather than read the script and the hall went into a frenzy while she got a spontaneous standing ovation.