Mohammed Shosanya
Government Secondary School Orozo and Government Secondary School Gwarimpa Life Camp both in Abuja have been handed over the prize money as respective winners the VIA Creative Competition organized by TotalEnergies in collaboration with Nigerian National Petroleum Company NNPC Limited.
The VIA Creative Competition is a yearly road safety awareness campaign programme for Road Safety Education, Safe Mobility, and Citizenship was created and implemented by TotalEnergies, in partnership with the Michelin Foundation.
At the handing over ceremonyTonye Osifo, Acting General Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility, TotalEnergies E&P, explained that the goal is to contribute to education in road safety and citizenship with the best educational quality and the greatest possible impact through awareness on safe mobility to at least 20,000 young people within the age range of 10 to 18 years across schools in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
She said: “We are here to hand over the awards to the winning students. The first and third place winners of the VIA Creative Competition. The second place winner is a Lagos school, and that has already been done. That is Expressway High School Tolu. First place is Government Secondary School Orozo, the third place is Government Secondary School Gwarimpa Life Camp. This VIA Creative Competition is a brainchild of Total Energies Foundation and Michelin Foundation from our head office in Paris. Because of concerns about mobility accidents, road crashes, across the world, especially impacting on children.
“For Total Energies E&P Nigeria, one of our major focus is education. Teaching the children of this country in different ways, so we have scholarship programmes that we give to undergraduate students in the universities, post graduate students interested in pursuing their education in France, and we also have an Institute in Port Harcourt, part of the University of Port Harcourt, that is IPES Institute of Petroleum and Energy Studies, that school is a collaboration between UniPort, ISP in France, and it is sponsored by Total Energies where we train graduate students in Masters in Petroleum Engineering, and technology and development”.
In her remarks, the Partnership Manager,
Slums2School Africa, Hauwa Yahaya, said the programme was informed by the need to develop policy around protecting children from one place to the other, especially pedestrians from road accidents through systematic information dissemination.
“We have identified that there needs to be policy around protecting children from one place to the other, especially when crossing the road. So as far as the roads are being made safe for vehicles to go through, we also know that we have pedestrians. We have people that walk. They do not have cars. They have to do with trekking.
“So protecting the pedestrians is a challenge that have been identified. The pedestrians bridges that have been provided are not enough to protect pedestrians and keep them safe, hence the need to provide information and enlightenment to say this is how these facilities are expected to be used” she said.
The winners described the programme as very interesting and educating.
Adekunle Peace Adeola, SS2A, Government Secondary School, Orozo, said: “It is first time i am participating in this programme and it was very interesting in that what they are trying to pass on to us will reduce road crashes and accidents. We are meant to also pass the lesson to others who did not have the opportunity to participate in the competition to that road accidents would be reduced drastically. It felt good when it once announced that our school won the competition”.
Besides,Abdullahi Hauwa, of the Government Secondary School Gwarimpa, Life Camp, noted that “The competition was interesting, informative and exciting and it is nice to be an ambassador of Safe Mobility, it has really been a nice journey.
She added:” The inspiration behind our poster is because we have a lot of students who come from far places, and before they get to school they have to pass through some busy roads and expressways. So we know made a poster that enforces the use of pedestrians bridges”.
