UBA Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, has announced the commencement of the 2021 edition of its annual National Essay Competition (NEC) in Nigeria with a call for entries. The National Essay Competition (NEC) is part of UBA Foundation’s education initiative which is aimed at promoting literacy and encouraging healthy and intellectual competition amongst senior secondary school students in Nigeria and across the African continent.
This year’s edition, which is its 11th, has been modified to ensure ease of access and the increased participation of students from Senior Secondary School across Nigeria, who can submit their entries from the comfort of their homes and schools through the UBAF NEC digital submission portal www. ubagroup.com/national-essay- competition. Like the previous year, the prizes for the NEC 2021 winners have increased in value considerably by 33 per cent. The first prize winner will receive an educational grant of N3 million to study at any African university of their choice, up from the N2.5 million in 2020.
The second and third prizes now stand at N2.5 million and N2 million educational grants respectively. Winners of the 12 best essays will also go home with state-of-the-art Laptops to help them with their tertiary research work and other studies.
The Chief Executive Officer, UBA Foundation, Mrs. Bola Atta, said that the Foundation scaled up the prizes for the second year in a row in order to accommodate the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and also the fluctuation in the currency levels. She explained that with the digital submission portal, more students in secondary schools across the country will have the opportunity to scan and send in their entries and compete to win educational grants for study at any university of their choice on the African continent.
