Lagos, Ogun students to represent Nigeria in science robotic competition in Russia

After a keen contest between over 50 participating schools from across the country in each categories, Troika School, Igbo-Efun Lekki, Lagos; Fountain Heights secondary school, Surulere, Lagos; and Bells University of Technology, Ota Ogun State will represent Nigeria at the World Robotic Olympiad in Sochi, Russia come November this year.

Troika School, Lekki retained their spot for the second year running as they emerged winner in the elementary regular category, Fountain Heights in junior regular category while Bells University of Technology won in the senior regular categories.

Tayo Obasanya, founding director, Arc lights while commenting about the event noted the World Robot Olympiad is a competition that involves children in the primary, junior secondary and senior secondary school and engages them in robotic education which promotes computer science, science, technology, engineering and mathematics and is open to students who are in public or private schools.

Obasanya disclosed that the competition is good because it helps bring technology which children today are already used to, introduces it to them in such a fun way that learning becomes not just exciting, but key concepts in science and technology are well understood.

While commenting on what informed the choice of the organisers in Russia, Obasanya observes that Russia is one of the countries that has been successful in its space adventures and as a result, they decided to choose the theme, ‘Robert and Space’ to inspire more creativity and science and technology development in young people across the world.

On the performance of schools in the competition so far, she disclosed that the reason for the low turnout of schools was as a result of the fact that academic activities just resumed in Nigerian schools as a result of dealing with the public health issue (EBOLA).

“The teams here are just participants; we don’t have guests or observers. We have 50 teams from different parts of the country like Niger, Osun, Oyo, Ogun and Lagos. It’s an impressive turn out vis-à-vis the issues we have had in the country. More importantly, similar event is being held in Port Harcourt, so this is like a zonal competition” she added.

She further revealed that the competition has added value to the learning of the students because key concepts in science have been broken down and students understand the use of energy, adding that things that would have been theoretical for them are now applied in real life.