By Dipo Olowookere
The first national champion of the ICT Olympiad competition has emerged and she is Miss Nkete Obidimuso of Livingstone College, Lagos State.
Miss Obidimuso clinched the first prize of the contest, which is the hallmark of all ICT competitions for secondary schools in Nigeria.
Over 10,000 students registered for the competition, while about 7,000 students participated in the first stage of the competition in over 2,000 secondary schools in across the nation. Only those who scored a minimum of 70 percent in the first stage qualified for the boot camp (2nd stage).
Obidimuso Nkete led the competition in the first stage with 98 percent to qualify for the boot camp and also emerged as the best student from Lagos zone in the 3rd stage of the competition and represented Lagos State in the national finals, which took place from September 26—29, 2018 in Ibadan, Oyo State.
At the national finals, the finalists were required to select one of the project topics provided by the organizers, to be designed using HTML5, CSS and Adobe Photoshop/Corel Draw at the Finals.
Nkete’s award winning project was the design and development of a dynamic website for Nigeria Air- the proposed Nigerian government airline. The website showcased the Nigeria Air logo (using Photoshop/Corel Draw) and it contained several webpages with ticket reservation page
After a tightly contested competition, Obidimuso Nkete scored a total of 71.5 percent in the finals to emerge as the winner the 2018 ICT Olympiad.
She won a cash prize of N250,000, one year training scholarship with NIIT worth N150,000, a brand new laptop computer and a trophy. She is to meet with the Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Mrs Idiat Adebule, for the formal presentation of the awards.
Explaining why the competition was organised, Media Co-ordinator of National ICT Olympiad said it was to “discover Nigeria’s best young computer scientists, develop healthy competitive skills as well as improve the youth’s self-esteem together with creating pride in academic achievement.”
The National ICT Olympiad, the first of its kind in Nigeria, is approved by the Lagos State Government and endorsed by Nigeria Computer Society.
