President Muhammadu Buhari has congratulated ‘Team Nigeria’ for clinching the grand prize in the Cloud and Network examination at the 2020 Huawei ICT Competition that recorded over 150,000 participants.
Team Nigeria, comprising students from the University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University and University of Port Harcourt, were honoured at an online awards ceremony hosted from the Huawei Headquarters in China.
At the closing ceremony held on November 14, 2020 at the Huawei office in Abuja, representing President Buhari was the Special Assistant on Youth and Students Affairs, Mr. Nasir Sa’idu Adhama; while the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami, was represented by Managing Director/CEO, NIGCOMSAT, Dr. Abimbola Alale.
Others in attendance were Executive Secretary of the National University Commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, represented by Deputy Executive Secretary of the NUC, Mr. Chris Maiyaki, some University Vice Chancellors and representatives, Huawei management staff, the award-winning students, instructors, parents and the media.
A statement made available to Financial Street stated that Buhari, while congratulating the students, 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.”
Expressing gratitude to Huawei for the opportunity given to the Nigerian students to showcase their expertise at the global level, Pantami also congratulated the students for making the country proud.
He said, “I commend Huawei for organizing 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.”
On his part, Rasheed 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 with 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, established to foster ICT learning in Africa and bridge the gap between theoretical study and practical industry experience, typically comprises a national preliminary contest, regional semi-final and a Global final.
Elated by their victory, 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.”
“Huawei gives students the opportunity to learn skills which are recognized in the world of ICT. Huawei provides a platform where students can see and practice new innovative and cutting-edge technology to grow and develop themselves. To me, Huawei stands for H – hope for development, U – unique, A – available to everyone, W – worldwide scope, E – Excellent in operations and I – intelligent in technology,” Atabor added.
In a goodwill message, Deputy Managing Director/CEO of Huawei Technologies Company Nigeria Limited, Mr. Kelvin Yang, stated, “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. We are so glad that this is beginning to become a reality as we have gathered here today to celebrate and witness the excellent performance of our Nigerian students.”
“I want to use this opportunity to congratulate all the students who took part in this year’s competition…The knowledge and skills you have acquired from this competition will stay with you forever. You connected for the Glory and now the future is yours for the taking… [You] are the future of this great country Nigeria and they have already started to make us proud of what the future holds for Nigeria as a nation. As a company, we look forward to Nigeria’s digital youth becoming the world pillar of the future,” Yang added.
Huawei has continued to encourage Nigerian youths to embrace ICT learning by establishing ICT Academies in about 79 universities and tertiary institutions across Nigeria which has offered free digital training to over 40,000 Nigerians, with many of those trained students going on to take and pass various Huawei professional certification exams.
