Somtochukwu

Team Nigeria, comprising of some Nigerian students from the University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and University of Port Harcourt, have won the grand first place position out of over 150,000 students that participated in the Cloud and Network examination at the 2020 Huawei ICT Competition.

The students were honored for their achievement at an online awards ceremony hosted from the Huawei Headquarters in China.

The closing award ceremony event, which held recently in Abuja, was attended by the Special Assistant on Youth and Students Affairs, Mr. Nasir Sa’idu Adhama, who represented President Muhammadu Buhari. Also in attendance, were the Managing Director/CEO, NIGCOMSAT, Dr. Abimbola Alale, representing the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami; the Deputy Executive Secretary of the National University Commission (NUC), Mr. Chris Maiyaki, representing of the Executive Secretary of NUC, Prof.

Abubakar Rasheed; some university Vice Chancellors; Huawei management staff; the award-winning students; instructors; parents and the media.

Speaking on behalf the President Buhari, Adhama, said “I congratulate the Nigerian students for coming this far in this Global ICT Competition. I also thank Huawei for supporting our Nigerian students and hope Huawei will continue to partner with the country in developing our ICT capabilities.”

Alale also expressed gratitude to Huawei for the opportunity given to the Nigerian students to showcase their expertise at the global level and congratulated the students for making Nigeria proud.

“I commend Huawei for organising this ICT competition as part of your Corporate Social Responsibility efforts. We look forward to more collaboration between Huawei and the Federal Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy,” Alale said on behalf of the minister.

While speaking on behalf of the Executive Secretary of NUC, Maiyaki said: “The National University Commission will like to rejoice with Huawei and the triumphant Nigerian students on this occasion – the Huawei Global ICT competition – which is now highly regarded as the annual knowledge festival. 

The NUC is honoured to be associated to this success story. This proves that with the right environment and ecosystem, Nigeria can take on global counterparts on any intellectual platform.”

The Huawei ICT competition which was established to foster ICT learning in Africa and bridge the gap between theoretical study and practical industry experience, typically comprises of a national preliminary contest, regional semi-final and a global final. 

The global victory by the Nigerian students was preceded by a successful campaign at both the national finals, which held on December 10th 2019 and had over 23,000 Nigerian students in the contest and the sub-Saharan Africa Region ICT Competition finals which held on September 10th and 11th, 2020, featuring 123 student-talents from 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, grouped into 41 teams, to determine those who will be selected to participate the Huawei Global ICT Competition finals.

Deputy Managing Director/CEO of Huawei Technologies Company Nigeria Limited, Mr. Kelvin Yang, said: “In over two decades of operating in Nigeria, Huawei has remained committed to training Nigerians in digital skills and cultivating ICT talents to build a fully digital economy. We launched the ICT Talents Eco-system development program so that local ICT talents can be nurtured and developed to the point of global recognition.”

Speaking at the ceremony, the students’ representative, Hamza Atabor said “I will like to show my gratitude to Huawei, my Vice Chancellor, my instructors, team mates and my family for this great opportunity. This journey with Huawei came with benefits such as professional certification in the field of interest. I am now HCIP certified in the field of Routing and Switching and in a few months I will attain an extra level certification.”

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