Tunbosun Ogundare | Lagos
A 16-year-old female student of Top Faith International School, Akwa Ibom State, Orevaoghene Whiskey, has won this year’s edition of the Interswitch National Science competition among secondary school students nationwide.
She is the first female student to win the annual competition,which was the fourth in the series.
Interswitch Spark science competition is an initiative of Interswitch Nigeria, an integrated payments and digital commerce platform company as part of its social intervention projects on education in Africa.
By winning the star prize, Whiskey received N7.5 million in scholarship to study at any university of her choice, among other exciting prizes.
Meanwhile, Adesayo Elumaro of The Ambassadors College, Ota, Ogun State, and Precious Akinyemi of Rhema Chapel International School, Oyo State won the second and third prizes and went home with N4 million and N1 million respectively also in scholarship.
The chief customer experience officer of Interswitch Nigeria, Oremeyi Akah, who announced the results in a statement in Lagos, said the essence of the competition is to identify and reward excellence among secondary school students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and encourage many more students into STEM education.
She said over 20,000 students across the country applied for the competition this year and that all of them went through different stages from pre-qualifying to preliminary, quarter, semi-final and final stage where the top three winners emerged.
She said the quiz competitions were held on some television stations and that prizes were presented to winners at an award ceremony in Lagos.
She congratulated the winners and urged them and those who couldn’t make it to the final to continue to give their studies the deserved attention.
She, however, disclosed that the total N12.5 million in form of scholarship won by the top three winners was to help them to fund their higher education.
She said the company had so far given out N50 million as prizes to this course and to 12 students in the last four years, adding that it would sustain the contest and other contributions towards lifting the economy of Nigeria and Africa by extension.
