By Dennis Agbo

As a give back to the society initiative, Nigeria beneficiaries of the Chevening Scholarships have commenced promotion of scientific literacy among secondary school students in the south east.

The Chevening Alumni Association of Nigeria is a group of beneficiaries of Chevening scholarships offered by the United Kingdom, mostly for overseas postgraduate studies.

Part of the group’s scientific literacy project is organization of science competition among students which the group said is a crucial initiative that seeks to empower students by equipping them with the ability to use science to explore opportunities, predict outcomes, interpret results, and contribute to technological development in Nigeria.

In a two days competition that ended in Enugu on Friday, the University of Nigeria Secondary School, Enugu emerged winner of the Competition, while Holy Rosary College Enugu came second and Command Day Secondary took, third.

The competition featured 25 secondary schools where seven schools made it to the grand finale. The seven secondary schools which featured at the grand finale were Spring of Life Secondary School, Federal Government College, Holy Rosary College, New Haven Secondary School, University of Nigeria Secondary School, Command Day Secondary School and Day Secondary School Independence Layout.

Speaking shortly after the competition, the Project Director, Chevening Alumni, Lucky Nonyelum said that the competition was sponsored by the Chevening Alumni Association of Nigeria in partnership with the British High Commissioner, Inspire Initiatives for Inclusive STEM Education and supported by the Ministry of Education, Enugu State.

According to Nonyelum, part of the reason for the competition was also to
promote Chevening scholarship within the South East of Nigeria, noting that the idea of the sponsorship to the UK study is to give back to the county in any way one can after the study.

“I just came back to Nigeria in January and we began the project in Nigeria. And the project is going to Southeast Enugu, Imo and Anambra state. So it is a pilot project. This competition is for senior secondary school students. The idea is to promote what we call scientific literacy. This is the ability for students to be able to use scientific principles to be able to solve problems within their environment.

“Take for instance the issues of pollution, water scarcity in Enugu. How can students use the principle of sciences to be able to solve these problems? That is what we wanted to do. So the competition is not just basically to tick boxes but actually to improve scientific literacy. Now, this competition was actually research work I did.

“In my research at the University of Sussex England, the best school in developmental studies, I researched the problems of science teaching and learning in southern Nigeria. And the data I gathered was that I used Enugu State, Anambra State and Imo State to actually gather the data and what we came to realize is that we lacked scientific literacy and that we could not connect sciences to our environment.

“We cannot connect quantum physics to our environment. Or do we really need quantum physics? It could be an argument. So that is what we do. If you noticed, some of our questions, we had collaborative questions, interdisciplinary questions which are all centred on the basis of what Nigeria is going through at the moment,” Nonyelum said.

The winning students, Ugwoegbu Precious, Ogbozor Chinazom and Okolie Chigozie, unanimously thanked the group for exposing them to practical application to science.