According to T.W. Schultz, although it is obvious that people acquire useful skills and knowledge, it is not obvious that these skills and knowledge are a form of capital, capital which in substantial part is a product of deliberate investment. Education is therefore, a deliberate investment in people aimed at making them better skilled and intellectually sound. The socio-economic development of any nation is, to a large extent, dependent on the percentage of its population that possesses requisite skill, education and experience to drive its development. Education is very vital to development.

Children and youths, as leaders of tomorrow, should be the primary target of human capital formation in any society to prepare them for greater responsibilities. Given the challenges that children are faced with today especially in the face of the rapid advancement in technology, education can only serve to ensure a brighter, successful and fulfilled life for today’s children.

Without doubt, early childhood development is an investment for life. Increased investment in children today builds a better educated, prosperous and peaceful citizenry tomorrow. Children with the right kind of education grow up to meet the cognitive, social, emotional and physical needs, become productive adults needed for the socio-economic development of their country.

The NNPC, recognizing the importance of education to the development of our dear country, six years ago, introduced the annual national quiz competition for secondary schools across the country.

The competition starts from the state level and moves to the zonal level where a zonal winner emerges from the six geo-political zones in the country. Winners from the six zones compete at the grand finale and representatives of the winning state are awarded scholarships for their tertiary education by the NNPC apart from other mouth-watering prizes given to the best three states.

The competition is considered by the NNPC as a development process and encouragement of excellence amongst secondary school students across the country who are the future leaders of this great nation.

This year’s grand finale, the 6th in the series, had participants from the Federal Capital Territory, Enugu and Kaduna states as well as Oyo, Edo and Gombe states who represented the North Central, South East, North West, South West, South South and North East Zones respectively.

The competition offered the participants a platform on which to interact, exchange experiences having come from different parts of the country and appreciate their differences in terms of culture and tradition.

The three representatives from the FCT, who emerged winners of the competition with 95 points automatically qualified for the NNPC scholarship for their tertiary education in any Nigerian university while representatives from Enugu and Kaduna states who came second and third respectively went home with other prizes.

The decision by the NNPC to sponsor the national quiz competition is seen as part of its corporate social responsibility and in furtherance of its quest to touch the live of Nigerians in many positive ways.

NNPC’s Group Executive Director, Corporate Services, Alhaji Ibrahim Waziri who represented the Group Managing Director of the corporation at the grand finale of the 6th NNPC National Quiz Competition congratulated all the participants and told them that by choosing to be educated, they have consciously positioned themselves on the path to success and a promising future.

The Group Executive Director, who urged the participants to continue to be diligent, transparent and honest in all their activities, gave a piece of advice to both the winners and losers at the competition.

One encouraging trend observed was that the quality of performance of the schools had been on the increase since the competition began, thus justifying one of the reasons NNPC initiated the quiz competition in the first place.


A representative of the participants who spoke at the end of the quiz competition expressed gratitude to the NNPC and prayed for the corporation to continue to come up with initiatives that would touch their lives in many positive ways.