By Ellen Edet
On April 23rd, 2018, the Initiative for Inclusive Dialogue in Nigeria (IIDN) launched a call for essay submissions on the topic - “What good governance means to me”. We are now very pleased to share that the winner of the writing contest is Nnadi Obioma Jnr. He is a JSS3 student of Assumption Secondary School, Lagos state, Nigeria. IIDN had the opportunity to speak with Nnadi by phone to share the good news and to learn more about his motivations and future plans. This essay is a reflection on some of the things that he shared, during that call.
When school is in session, Nnadi stays with his uncle in Lagos. On the other hand, when he is on holiday - for example, this past Christmas - he goes home to his family in Enugu state, Nigeria.
Nnadi was initially introduced to news and political affairs in Nigeria, by the same uncle that he resides with during the school term. It is a tradition to listen to the 7 a.m. news on the radio and also, to watch the news at night with his uncle.
Nnadi is constantly interested in writing essays and participates in a lot of them. He came across IIDN’s writing contest during one of his routine searches for essay contests online. He was intrigued by the topic for our contest - “What good governance means to me”, and given that the state of Nigeria at the time (the Boko Haram crisis, etc.) called for good governance, he decided to participate and share his views.
In the future, Nnadi would like to be an architect. He says that he has received a lot of compliments regarding his drawing skills and structure modeling using paper. He would like to concentrate on building architecture, and looks up to an architect in Enugu as a role model.
Nnadi mentioned that while he would like to buy a device to use to access Nigerian and world news online, the essay contest prize (awarded on January 12, 2019) would be better served towards paying for his Junior Secondary School Exam (JSSE), given that he is in JSS3.
He is looking forward to senior secondary, reading more news and participating in even more essay contests.
Well done, Nnadi!
Thank you so much to the Vancouver Women’s Library (now-defunct) for being a generous, co-sponsor of the contest prize. Many thanks to Misrak Tekle, who is an Ethiopian human rights lawyer, for helping the IIDN team to review submissions.