The Lagoon School, Lekki, Lagos has won the Senior Secondary Schools ultimate public speaking contest tagged: “The Eloquence Cup”.
The Eloquence Cup which is an annual, iconic oratory competition between public and private secondary schools is aimed at nurturing the culture of effective spoken communication at the secondary school level.
This year’s competition was themed’ The Role of Technology and Social Media on Nigeria’s Educational System’ and it is the 6th edition.It was held alongside the institution’s 18th anniversary on 2nd November ,2024 in Lagos.
The competition featured two speakers from each of the following nine government-owned secondary schools: CMS Grammar School, Queens College, Kings College, Ilasan Senior Secondary School, Lekki, The Lagoon School, Lekki, Gbara Community Senior Secondary School Lekki, Government Senior College, Ikoyi, Government Senior College, Maroko, and Dairy Farm Senior Secondary School, Agege.
Students from the nine secondary schools spoke extensively about the benefits and disadvantages of technology and the use of social media in their educational pursuit.
In the individual prize category, the students from three of the nine participating schools – Ezennaya Derek of Kings College , Opeoluwa Adeosan of The Lagoon School and Jasmine Chris of Dairy Farm Senior Secondary School, Agege took first, second, and third prizes respectively with cash rewards of N150,000; N100,000 and N75,000.
While addressing the students, Mr Bayo Osibo, the Chairman of the alumnus of the School of Eloquence said the public speaking competition is a training ground for young ones.He urged the students to take the opportunity to build their oratory skills.
“All professions involves public speaking.Be it politics, lecturing or medicine.This public speaking competition is not just a competition but it is an avenue for building capabilities.The young ones should start building up themselves early.”
Ubong Essien, a certified speaking professional and Dean, School of Eloquence while delivering his speech said the public speaking competition is the school’s Collective Social Responsibility (CSR) as it was observed that speaking skills are barely taught in most private schools.
“Most of our schools have sadly become bastions of raw, strict academic instillations, with little room for the freedom of learning expressive skills.”
“The School of Eloquence is committed to spearheading the ‘Catching Them Young’ programme.Every school term, we deploy our alumni assets comprising professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, politicians who have successfully passed through our training to selected Public and private secondary schools to spend an hour teaching and showing public speaking basics to students from diverse backgrounds and then hand out our 40-page public speaking pocketbook to each student for further reading.” he said
