From Joe Effiong, Uyo
A total of N1.6 million has been voted by Victor&Helen Foundation as prize award for students drawn from different secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State that will emerge winners of the 2023 Ibibio Bible quiz competition.
This, according to the foundation, was in a quest to save the Ibibio language from extinction, arguing that the death of a language was equally the loss of a people and their unique culture.
The foundation said the competition would be divided into two categories, including Senior Secondary School (SSS) and Junior Secondary School (JSS) classes.
For SSS classes, the first, second, and third winners will go home with N500,000, N300,000 and N200,000, respectively, while JSS class winners will also go home with N300,000, N200,000 and N100,000.
Addressing a press conference in Uyo, the Chairman of the competition, Frank Ude, commended the foundation for rising to the occasion to save the mother tongue from extinction, adding that the competition was one of the ways the group is working to achieve the goal.
He said the foundation would embark on the provision of some teaching materials to aid teaching and learning in the Ibibio programme from secondary to tertiary institutions in the state.
According to Ude, the foundation is already in partnership with the Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages, University of Uyo, to make the course more prestigious by awarding scholarships to best-performing students of the Ibibio programme in the department.
He warned parents and guardians against killing the indigenous language by making use of only English language with little or no attention to the Ibibio language, arguing that home is the first school that children learn from.