The keenly-contested 2023 Asiwaju Moshood Shittu (AMS) Educational Foundation Debate and Quiz was on Wednesday won by Offa Grammar School (OGS), Offa.
The event took place at the R.A Lawal Auditorium inside OGS on Tuesday, July 4, 2023.
The event featured quizzes, debates on various topics, question-and-answer sessions among others.
Other contesting schools were Olalomi Comprehensive School (second), Moremi High School (third), Offa Community Secondary School (fourth) and St Mark Secondary School (fifth).
In his remark, AMS commended all the schools for their participations in the contest.
He said, “how to realize new and progressive Nigeria lies in the hands of us here. If they tell you the population of Nigeria in yesteryears, you will be surprised. But look at us now.
“We are not preparing the mind of our people towards problem solving as we grow in population.
“I had been supportive of my parents even when I was in secondary school. As I was in business, I also invested in construction. I have a construction company. We realized that most of our boys in our sites smoked. They were either smoking Indian helm or some drugs that affected them. They used these drugs as stimulants to boost their power at work. There were things that could make them not to have a good future.
“Nigeria is submerged in a lot of problems, how can we make peace to manifest in the society? We need to prepare the minds of these young people, we need to produce quality people in the society. We need to prepare our young ones for the future. This can only be done via collective efforts.
“We want to raise Offa to an enviable position for the whole of Nigeria. We want Offa to be cited as a good example of a place to find quality even in overseas. We had said Offa has the highest number of professors as a community in Nigeria. We had said Offa is this, Offa is that; we need to build more quality people through qualitative and quantitative education. Education is not useless, it is the best way to transform our society.”
The proprietor of Lens Polytechnic and Lens University, Dr Azeez Issa enjoined the students to discover themselves in the course of forging ahead in life.
He added, “make your horizon wide. Think deeply before you make decisions. Don’t follow the crowd. Ask people questions, ‘what does this means?’ ‘What does this does?’ If you ordinarily design comedic animations, you will excel. Go online, you will see millions of views these animations generate, the views means get the creator lots of money.
“How do you become successful? Be visionary. Think of where you want to be in years to come and work towards it. Ask questions about so many things.
“Another problem is thinking success cannot be achieved unless you go to a university. That is not true. You can study Pharmaceutical Technology in Polytechnics. Lens Poly is the third to run it in Nigeria. We are the first to run Multimedia Technology, we are the first to run Graphics Design and Advertising. With Pharmaceutical Technology, you can sell the drug yourself,” he said.
Other resource persons at the event were Uthman Mahroof Wolf, owner of Wolf Group of Companies and Taofik Adekunle Jimoh, a lecturer at the Polytechnic Ojoku.
Chairman of New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) in Kwara State, Alhaji Jimoh Fatai and the current Arewa of Offaland, Ms Ibrahim Halimat Olamide were also among dignitaries at the event.
The debaters were also unveiled as ambassadors of AMS Educational Foundation.
