By Samson Folarin
*Babajide Sanwo-Olu
The Lagos State Government has promised to support public speaking and diction tasks in public schools to boost the confidence of pupils in the state.
The state Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, spoke at the handover of 10,000 units of Spelling Bee dictionaries to be distributed in public schools across the state.
The donation was made by the New Era Foundation – organiser of the Spelling Bee competition.
According to Sanwo-Olu, the competition, which holds yearly for secondary school pupils, has left lasting legacy and footprints on education in the state.
He explained that the competition, since inception in 2000, promoted access to quality learning and offered secondary school pupils from humble backgrounds opportunity to be on the same pedestal with their mates from rich homes.
The governor said the English language competition had also transformed lives through the changes it brought to public speaking and vocabulary spelling.
He commended the wife of a former governor of the state and the brains behind the competition, Mrs Oluremi Tinubu, describing her as a “caring mother”.
Sanwo-Olu said, “The donation is simple but historic. This is another demonstration of Senator Tinubu’s love for our children and education system. We will see the footprints of this intervention both in primary and secondary schools, because English learning is a strong tool that can define what students become in future.”
Mrs Tinubu urged the government to focus on education to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from eroding the progress the state had recorded since 1999.
“The dictionary contains all words used in the Spelling Bee competition from its inception to date. It is our hope that it will help improve vocabularies and dictions of the public school children,” she added.
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