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By Adeola Badru

A non-governmental organization, HACEY Initiative has in its bid aimed at improving women/girls’ health and productivity, awarded some students from various secondary schools in Oyo State prizes for coming first in an essay competition hinged on the eradication of Female Genital Mutilation, FGM.

The award ceremony which was held on Friday, at the Conference Room of the state’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, saw five students from five secondary schools in the state awarded for their stand outperformance in the HACEY’s Essay competition.

According to the Representative of the Organization, Mr Bamidele Oyewunmi, the Essay competition was in commemoration of the international day for zero tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. He noted that over one thousand entries were received from Oyo, Osun and Ekiti states respectively and after the entries were screened, the best five was picked and fortunately, all the five including the overall best came from Oyo State.

He’s said: “Hacey Initiative is a developmental organization focused on improving the health and productivity of women and girls in our communities. One of our priority and major interventions is this “Stop Cut” project to ensure that every woman in southwest Nigeria is free from female genital mutilation.”

“Research has said that over 2million women are at risk of being mutilated everyday. Now older generations have the idea because it seems to be a traditional practice and we understand that older generations have this idea and we want to educate and orientate the coming generation and that’s why we’ve had include boys and girls in our intervention.”

“This project, the Hacey competition is to commemorate the international day for zero tolerance for female genital mutilation 2022 which was held on February 6, 2022. The process of this is that we received over 1000 essays from Oyo, Osun and Ekiti states.”

“After screening these essays and seeing beautiful ideas that these young ones have written on how they intend to eradicate the practices of female genital mutilation in their generation, we have also done interviews for them to see the authenticity of their writings and we were able to pick the first five which has been presented today and the overall best of the three states actually emerge from Oyo State.”

While speaking on the aim of the essay competition, Mr Bamidele said: “Young people are now more informed about ways to end female genital mutilation. They have more knowledge about laws and policies. Imagine one thousand students have written about how to end female genital mutilation stating how to end female genital mutilation in their community and state.”

“Definitely they have done the research, they are informed about the laws available, they know the consequences both the long and short term of female genital mutilation. They are now champions who will be able to speak against FGM in all their gatherings.”

While speaking to newsmen, the Commissioner for Education, Barr. Abdulrahman Abdulraheem said that he’s not so surprised as Oyo is a pace-setting state but so much delighted with this yet another milestone which was achieved by Oyo State students in the state’s journey towards being the best not just in Nigeria but in the whole of Africa.

He said: “When you talk of Oyo State, you talk of pace-setting achievements and today I’m happy we are recording yet another milestone in our journey towards being the best not only in Nigeria but in Africa generally.”

“The concept of the current administration is aimed at ensuring that in education we become the best and I thank God today that we are recording another success today.”

“I thank you young ones for making us proud because when you go through the rigorous process adopted by Hacey, you will know that it is not just by a stroke of luck nor by manipulation but by hardwork and when I saw the schools that are being represented here, they are among the best in Oyo State.”

“I also thank God for this and I thank Hacey for trying to change the narrative. When we were young, FGM was just like a common practice that was seen as normal not until when we were growing and we were made to understand that it is not a proper procedure. It was recently we learn the medical reason behind this.”

“Keep the flag flying and we in this ministry will continue to do anything to collaborate with you and with this I thank everybody for making this project a successful one and I believe it will spur us to achieve more and more.”

While speaking, the elated overall best student, Miss Awolowo Elizabeth from God’s Blessing Private School, said that she wanted her voice to be heard across Nigeria that Female Genital Mutilation is evil and that women and girls should be saved from diseases and death because the loss of a woman is the loss of the world.

The students were all presented with gifts while the overall best was presented with a cash gift of N50,000 and a brand new laptop.