By Ighomuaye Lucky. O
Imaguero College, Idia College and St. Maria Goretti have emerged winners of the Osaide Foundation for Girls in STEM competition, held in Benin City in partnership with the Association of Professional Women Engineers in Nigeria, Benin chapter.
Imaguero College scored 50 points to emerge 1st, Idia College, 44 points to come out 2nd while St. Maria Goretti scored 43 points to emerge 3rd.
Addressing Journalists at the Next Gen Bootcamp with the theme: “Bright…Minds, Bold Futures, Learn, Lead, Thrive” the founder, Osaide Foundation, Engr. Dr. Patricia Nekpen Opene-Odili, said 10 girls schools, making 50 students all together were selected to participate in the competition in the state.
She said that each of the 50 students who participated will get a consolatory prizes of items worth N25000 while each of the 15 students that made their schools proud would get items worth N55,000.
Engr. Opene-Odili said the idea is not about the money but to encourage the girl-child develop interest in sciences.
Opene-Odili, while speaking on the rationale for taking delight in grooming girl-child in sciences, said it was to catch them young
“I ‘m the founder of Osaide for Girls in Science and Engineering Foundation and my passion for girls starts from the fact that when I was younger, most of the people who come to talk to us about career talk, choosing a career, we always had doctors, we always had pharmacists, we had lawyers come to school, but we barely had people who are engineers come to talk to us.
“And in the course of studying engineering, I also discovered that girls are a minority and I was in class with about 63 boys, but we were only two girls, you know, and so for me, the passion and the zeal to bring in more girls into the engineering field was born from when I was in school.
“And having graduated also and working in the industry before I retired, I also discovered that there are very few
women who are engineers and the best thing for us to do, no matter how few we are, is to take each other’s hands and to make sure we all succeed.
“So now we’re catching them young, making sure the girls, especially the indigent students, have opportunity to also experience the sciences and that’s why I’m a STEM advocate”.
For the chairman, Association of Professional Women Engineers in Nigeria, Benin chapter, Engr. Perpetual Oby Obeta, she urged the girls to know that they have all it takes to become what they can be in life, noting that they should also know that engineering is a field they can do very well in inasmuch as it’s dominated by the male folk.
She said that all that they needed to do is to have the flair for mathematics.
On the part of the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Works, Edo State, Engr. John Obanor, he called on the students to leverage on the competition to improve on themselves academically.
He urged the students not to look down on themselves because they are girls but should see themselves as special, having the potentials to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the boy-child.
Engr. Obanor commended the Osaide Foundation for coming up with such initiative to encourage the girl-child to take interest in the science subjects.
Speaking for the winning team, Angel Irhabor, an SS3 student of Imaguero College, Benin, she thanked the organizers for giving them the opportunity to test their abilities in some core science subjects.
She said with the exposure gotten from the competition, they are confidence that they can also go to other competitions outside the state and excel.
