Essay contest: NCDMB rewards varsity students with cash, digital tools
Sopuruchi Onwuka
Three university students weekend received computers and cash as the prizes for winning different categories of the 7th Nigerian Content Annual National Undergraduate Essay Competition, 2023.
The winners including the top 10 finalists in the essay competition were unveiled at a ceremony hosted by the NCDMB in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State where they received their prizes.
At the event, a 200-level student of the Faculty of Law, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka; Miss Iruoma Favour Lazarus, emerged the overall best essayist and was awarded a prize of N1.0 million (one million Naira only) and an HP laptop computer.
Miss Lucy Agbalu, a 100-level student of Microbiology at the University of Calabar, came second and received a cash prize of N700,000.00 (seven hundred thousand Naira only) in addition to a laptop computer. Also, Mr Akinduyite O. Samuel received a laptop computer and N500,000.00 (Five hundred thousand Naira) cash prize for winning the third position.
Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Engr Simbu Wabote, declared at the ceremony that the competition was designed to generate early consciousness for local capacity development among Nigerian graduates in order to prepare them for the challenges of owning responsibility in the industry.
Engr Wabote whose remarks at the event were delivered by the Manager in charge of Corporate Corporations, Barr. Esueme Dan Kikile, described local content as “an existential necessity for every nation, particularly for developing nations like Nigeria.”
He attributed the resilience of the Nigerian petroleum industry in the face of the global shut down in response to the deleterious COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to local capacity utilization, adding that the need to enhance capacity development requires assimilation of younger generation of professionals.
Engr Wabote noted that disruption of global logistics and halt in the migration of manpower across several months of pandemic related shutdown forced every nation to rely on internal resources for survival.
“The Nigerian oil and gas industry survived that period because of the huge local human and infrastructural capacities we had developed since the enactment of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act in 2010,” he pointed out, adding that efficient implementation of the Act, “ensured that Nigeria’s oil production continued without interruption, even when all the expatriates had left the country.”
Engr. Wabote, who was represented by the Manager, Corporate Corporations, Barr. Esueme Dan Kikile, called on policy-makers at different levels of government and in the private sector to take deliberate steps “to develop resilient and sufficient human and infrastructural capacities in key sectors of our national fabric, which can withstand any external shocks in future.”
While commending winners of the essay contest and the consultants, Mahogany Century Concepts Limited, he said the Board has sustained the competition for seven years because of the huge value it placed on it.
He stated that the essay competition is designed to challenge students in tertiary institutions to focus their minds on productive activities.
It would be recalled that the annual essay competition is one of several initiatives of the NCDMB designed to mobilize and guide the youth segment of the Nigerian population. Others include the ‘Integrated Institutional Strengthening and Upgrade,” under which the agency has undertaken and completed massive renovation of technical workshops and installation of world-class facilities in institutions like Government Technical College, Amoli in Enugu State; Government Technical College, Abak in Akwa Ibom State; Government Technical College, Port Harcourt; and the University of Ibadan Vocational School.
The Chairman of the occasion, Professor Allen A. Agih, in his opening speech, commended the NCDMB for its remarkable contributions to capacity building in the country. He corroborated the point made by the Executive Secretary on how the resiliency of the oil and gas industry withstood the pandemic.
“Nigerians did not run to foreign countries when COVID-19 struck,” he stated.
Chief Executive Officer of Mahogany, Mr. Eyinimi Omorozi, thanked the Executive Secretary and Management of the NCDMB for the sponsorship of the essay competition and contribution to national development.