The Board of the Education Champions League has earmarked N17.5 million for the maiden edition of its quiz competition among some registered secondary schools in Rivers State.
The competition christened the Education Champions League (ECL), mainly targets encouraging reading habits among Nigerian secondary school students will test contestants for traits developed through reading comprehension, analytical skills, general knowledge, reading fluency, as well as oral and written expressions.
While the winner will get N10 million, the second and third positions will go home with N5 million and N2.5 million respectively, amongst other championship trophies, prizes and institutional support.
The ECL Board said that 25 percent of the prize for each position will be applied by ECL to procure books for the school; 25 percent will be made available to the school as institutional support and 50 percent will go to the students who comprise the school’s team, payable into an account nominated by the student’s parents.
Speaking about the competition at the weekend in Port Harcourt, chairman of the ECL Board, Professor Eme Ekekwe, said the books slated for the 2024 competition are Simon Kolawole’s Fellow Nigerians, It is All Politics; Waziri Adio’s The Arc of the Possible and Bolaji Abdullah’s On a platter of Gold.
“We want to begin to build the core of Nigerians interested in leadership and being good citizen. And we believe that if we begin at the secondary school level it will help over a period of time for that crop of Nigerians to come up and take responsibility in the society and run those positions transparently, honestly and in a way that meet some of the things we think are lacking now, in terms of leadership in our country.
“And one specific tool we want to use and help that process is to get young people to begin to read. And when they read, they are aware of their environment and can understand the issues affecting them.
“I think there is a decline in reading culture. People do a lot of social media instead of reading. A book leads you through a process which is invaluable, whereas most of what is social media is not material for leadership or good citizenship,” Ekekwe said.
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