Senior secondary school students in Nigeria have a few more days more to enter the UBA Foundation national essay competition, which closes November 13, 2015.

UBA Foundation, which is the corporate social responsibility arm of United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, has announced that the closing date for the entries will not be extended.

Ijeoma Aso, the Managing Director/CEO of UBA Foundation, says the response to the essay competition from students has been impressive. She urged other students yet to submit their essays, to finalise it and submit, so as to stand the chance of winning any of the fantastic prizes on offer.

Entries for the essay competition opened on September 30, 2015 and will close on November 13, 2015. The essay topic for this year is “What matters most to you in life and why.”

The first prize for the UBA National Essay Competition is a N1 million educational grant for the winner to study in any African university of his or her choice. The second and third prizes are N750,000 and N500,000 educational grants respectively.

Ms Aso explained that the competition is part of the Foundation's initiative to promote creative and analytical thinking in senior secondary students in Nigeria and is a follow up on the Foundation’s Read Africa initiative, which promotes reading culture among students through the reading and free distribution of Africa literary classics in secondary schools. The national essay competition is also held in Ghana and Senegal.

Entries received for the competition will be reviewed by a distinguished panel of judges made up of professors from reputable Nigerian universities, who will then shortlist 12 best essays for further assessment.

A second round of the competition will involve the 12 finalist who will write a second supervised essay from which three best essays will be selected.

“Three best essays will be selected as the overall winners from 12 finalists that will emerge from the first round of the competition,” said Ms Aso,

The top three winners of the competition win educational grants to study in any African university of their choice.

As the Corporate Social Responsibility arm of the UBA Group, UBA Foundation is committed to the socio-economic betterment of the communities in which UBA operates, focusing on development in the areas of Environment, Education, Economic Empowerment and Special Projects.

UBA foundation remains a role model for other corporate organisations in Africa. The Foundation has dedicated resources to ensuring that CSR is not simply conceived as a marketing tool in the corporate world but as a corporate contribution towards promoting sustainable development in communities

•Photo shows UBA Foundation CEO Ijeoma Aso.

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