TotalEnergies E&P Nigeria has awarded cash prizes to winning schools in this year’s VIA Creative Contest organised by TotalEnergies Foundation, in conjunction with NNPC Limited.
The energy company, presented a grand prize of N1 million to students of Government Secondary School, Orozo, in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, who emerged overall winners in the competition tagged “Safe mobility for young people poster contest” which saw entries from over 100 secondary schools in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt centred on creating awareness on safety for students to and from schools.
The second and third positions were won by Expressway High School Tolu, Lagos and Government Secondary School, Gwarinpa, Abuja, and received cash awards of N500,000 and N250,000 respectively.
Speaking to journalists, the acting general manager, Corporate Social Responsibility, TotalEnergies E&P Nigeria, Tonye Osifo, explained that the company remains committed to the education of young Nigerians.
Osifo explained that the winner of the Nigerian competition will compete against schools from other African countries with the winner competing against schools drawn across the globe.
She said: “The VIA creative competition is the brainchild of TotalEnergies Foundation and Michelin Foundation from our head office in Paris because of concerns about mobility accidents, road crashes across the world, especially impacting on children.
For TotalEnergies E&P Nigeria, one of our major focuses is on education, educating the children of this country in different ways.
“So we have scholarship programmes that we give to undergraduate students, we have scholarship programmes that we give to postgraduate students interested in pursuing their education in France. We also have an institute in Port Harcourt, part of the University of Port Harcourt that is the Institute of Petroleum and Energy Studies. The school is a collaboration between Uniport and IFP school in France and it is sponsored by TotalEnergies where we train graduate students in masters in petroleum engineering, technology and developments”.
She also said the company has another brainchild programme called the ETT ‘Empowering The Teachers’ where TotalEnergies sponsors Nigerian lecturers to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a semester so they go and see how engineering technology is taught in the western world, and when they come back to Nigeria, they adapt the country’s curriculum to make graduates from the engineering faculty be globally competitive.
“So the VIA Creative Contest also addresses the issue of empowering our youths to stay alive because if they keep dying in road accidents, then we will not have the youth that will lead the country,” she said.
Also speaking, the partnership manager, Slum2school Africa, Hawal Yahaya, said the competition was put in place to address the challenges faced by students on the journey to school.
“A challenge was identified across several states in Nigeria and that is safe mobility. What do I mean by safe mobility? It is the ability for students to go to school safely due to the numerous accidents that occur on the roads including safely crossing the roads. This is about sensitizing the students and the public about this issue”, she explained.
Also speaking, a student of the winning school, Miss Adekunle Peace Adeola said the competition has exposed the students to the dangers faced by students while going and coming back from school.
While thanking TotalEnergies for the opportunity, she promised that her school will make Nigeria proud at the continental competition.
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