To promote excellence among secondary school students, the Nigeria Computer Society, (NCS) says it will hold a National Information Technology Whizkids Competition for secondary schools across the country.
Mr Rex Abitogun, the Chairman of the society, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Tuesday that the annual competition was for students in both private and public secondary schools.
He said NCS considered the competition as a development process and encouragement of excellence among secondary school students across the country.
According to him, the competition, which is usually organised in July every year, begins from the state level and schools that emerge best proceed to the national level.
“At the national level, NCS picks the best from each state and the competition is usually conducted at the society’s annual national conference.
“The best schools are rewarded with laptops, desktops, and money and these are part of things we are doing to encourage the young ones,’’ he said.
Abitogun said the society was also planning to one million students in information technology, adding that ICT professionals across the country would participate in the training.
He said the society was adopting a model whereby professionals who had spent some time in the ICT industry could train upcoming youths on skills they required, especially in areas of programming and system maintenance.
He said Abuja chapter of the society had empowered six schools with computers as part of pilot project in the FCT.
“What we did was to get some of these systems and members to volunteer their skills to fix them.
“These are part of the interventions we are coming up with as without ICT we cannot really move forward.
“We talk about fighting corruption, you need ICT to fight corruption, and this is very critical to the nation at the moment,’’ he said. (NAN)