ECL earmarks N17.5m for winners of its first quiz competition

The recently launched Education Champions League (ECL) has earmarked a total of N17, 500, 000 as prize money for winners of its first quiz competition expected to hold in September among secondary schools in Rivers State.

This was contained in a post on the website of ECL highlighting the guidelines for the competition.

According to the post, “The main objective of the Education Champions League (ECL) Competition is to foster reading habits among Nigerian secondary school students. Specifically, the competition will test for traits developed through reading – comprehension, analytical skills, general knowledge, reading fluency, as well as oral and written expressions.

“Competing schools will receive Certificates of Participation, and will be featured on the ECL website. Winners will receive special prizes and media coverage. Prizes to finalists include cash gifts, Championship trophies, and institutional support.

“The total prize money to winners will be as follows: 1st Position – ₦10m, 2nd Position – ₦5m, 3rd Position – ₦2.5m.

“Specifically, 25% of the prize for each position will be applied by ECL to procure books for the school; 25% will be made available to the School as institutional support and 50% will go to the students who comprise the school’s team. Each student’s financial prize will be paid by ECL into an account nominated by the student’s parents.”

The guideline indicated that “Each year, the ECL organisers will nominate the books on which the competition will be based. For the 2024 Competition, the books to be used are – Simon Kolawole’s FELLOW NIGERIANS, IT’S ALL POLITICS, Waziri Adio’s THE ARC OF THE POSSIBLE, and Bolaji Abdullah’s ON A PLATTER OF GOLD. “Competing Schools are not required to read each book in its entirety. Instead, specific chapters from each book have been selected for purposes of the 2024 competition.”

As per the guideline, “Each participating institution is to be represented by a team of four (4) students. Schools are to send passport pictures of their representative teams within one month of receiving the Texts for the competition. The pictures and other relevant information of the Competitors (Schools and their respective teams) will be uploaded on the ECL website.”

Chairman of the Test Integrity Group (TIG), Prof Eme Ekekwe, was said to have read out the guidelines to representatives of the schools that have registered for the competition at a stakeholders meeting held in Port Harcourt. TIG is a committee of four members who are responsible for the integrity of the questions, answers and selection of the quizmaster, timekeeper, and judges for the competition.