Four students have qualified to the national final from Lagos for this year’s edition of the Nigerian Spelling Bee Competition at the weekend.

The year’s competition, hosted by the Blooming Greens School, Yaba, Lagos on Saturday, saw Master Burhanudeen Afunku of Al-Fallah Beneficent Foundation College, Idimu and Precious Munachi Emmanuel of Blooming Greens School qualified from the junior category.

Master Sheidu Abdulhafeez of Abibatu Mogaji Millennium Secondary School, Agege and Master Jamalaudeen Mamman of Air force Secondary School, Shasha qualified for the senior category to represent Lagos at the national final slated to takes place in Port-Harcourt from July 26-29, 2024.

Speaking about the competition in Lagos, the National Coordinator of the Nigerian Spelling Bee, Abdul Salam Ibrahim stated that this stage was held in order to determine finalists that would represent Lagos at national final in Port-Harcourt, according to the national coordinator, about 500 participants (students) took part in Lagos State where these four emerged to represent the State in the national final coming up in July, we have been to all the states in the country except Kaduna and Abuja, he said.

Mr AbdulSalam further stated there are two rounds involved in the stage; first is written, adding that the students that got 3/3 will move to the oral round, 12 students had 3/3 and were moved to the oral round.

Speaking about registration of the students for the competition, AbdulSalam emphasized each school paid certain amount of money to have the students registered for the competition.

“A sum of N1 million awaits the winner of the competition at the senior category, while N500,000 will be given to the winner in junior category in scholarship respectively in July, 2023.

“The three national winners will represent Nigeria at the inter-continental championship in Ethiopia, this is so because Nigerian Spelling Bee is a member of Africa Spelling Bee,” he said.

Adding her voice, the CEO and Proprietress of Blooming Greens School, Susan Babatunde-Yamah said, “we hosted the competition because we were very much interested in the literacy of schools and because Spelling Bee is a very big arm of literacy in English Language and we have big dreams in our school and we are happy that one of our students made it to the national final.

“Every school should deeply delved into literacy right from this part of the world because we adopted English as our official language, so for them to be masters and have great command of English Language, they must know how to spell words in the language correctly.

“In this competition, many questions were given to them and many of the adult could not answer the questions,” she said.

According to the proprietress, everything concerning education must not be joked with by any country and government.