NCC National Essay Competition: UniIlorin veterinary student wins 1st prize

A veterinary student of the University of Ilorin, in Kwara State South-West, Nigeria,  Ms. Esther Gbeja, has emerged winner of the Nigerian Communications Commission’s, NCC, National Essay Competition on Fifth Generation (5G) Technology.

This was announced at a prize presentation ceremony of the 3rd National Essay Competition in Abuja, Nigeria.

The essay competition with the topic: “5G Technology: Opportunities and Challenges” received over 1,820 submissions from students in about 97 higher institutions from across the country with four participants, who emerged 3rd, 2nd and 1st place respectively.

Of the winners, the 3rd position went to both Abdulkarim Nasiru and MarcPatrick Efeni, who went home with prize sum of N200, 000 each. Nosa Edosa, took the sum of N300,000 in 2nd position, while Esther Gbeja, came first with the winning prize of N500,000.

The Executive Vice-Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Professor Umar Danbatta, said the commission is  doing a lot to empower the youth in Nigeria and this includes the essay competition.

“The NCC is at the verge of auctioning Spectrum for the provision of 5G technology and we decided to take advantage of the moment by motivating and challenging our youth to be innovative and resourceful as their counterparts in advanced countries”.

5G deployment

On the 5G deployment, Professor Danbatta reiterated that the federal government will gain 75bn from its spectrum auctioning in coming months.

“I want to reassure you that the economic benefits of 5G to Nigeria post Covid-19 pandemic will be huge, especially as almost all businesses and activities of government are migrating and offering their services online.

“5G will enable a new kind of network to Nigerians that is designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices.”

According to the NCC boss, “Nigeria’s vibrant youth population stands to benefit immensely from the deployment of 5G as it will offer technopreneurs, technology enthusiasts, SMEs and Tech-startups platform to expand and network with other global players on a scale that has never been witnessed before,”.

He added that the auction was software based, adding that provisions had been made for manual auction should the auction software fail during the process.

Engaging the youth
Earlier, the Chairman of the essay committee, Mr.Edoyemi Ogoh, noted  that the committee was guided by the Commission’s guiding principles of being fair and upright in following the criteria to determine the winner of the essay writing.

He affirmed that one of the objectives of the commission was to engage and challenge the youths from in tertiary institutions across the country in the understanding and problem solving imperatives as well as essential new technologies.

Ogoh noted that NCC was a key stakeholder in the development and growth of the communications sector in the country.

“The Commission recognises the act of innovative thinking in growing the communications industry in Nigeria.

“The Commission engaged the youth to participate in tertiary institutions across the country to challenge themselves in the understanding and problem solving imperatives as well as essential new technologies, which is one of the objectives of the NCC’s in the essay competition,”.

Ms. Esther Gbeja, 1st position, who spoke on behalf of other participants of the essay competition, thanked the NCC and urged Nigerians to support  the Federal Government’s drive to deploy the 5G technology.

Gbeja also called on the NCC to come up with creating awareness programmes and involve professionals in the execution of 5G.

Emmanuel Ukoh