16-year-old female student to be governor of Lagos state for one day after winning Spelling Bee competition

The 16-year-old female student who won this year's Spelling Bee competition is to be a governor of Lagos State for one day. Bukola Zoffun, of the Awodi-Ora Secondary School Ajegunle, also won the sum of N250,000.

The competition organised by the state Ministry of Education, which began since 2001, has the tradition of giving winners a chance to act in the capacity of the governor of the state for one day.

Speaking to reporters, Bukola said: “I have put in my best effort to have been selected at the preliminary level and here I am today a proud winner.”

She aspires to become a lawyer and expressed hopes that winning the competition will give her the exposure needed to realise her dream.

“I am very happy to be part of this competition, and I can tell you that this has given me great exposure that will help me to achieve my dream of becoming a lawyer," she said. “As the winner of the competition, I will have the opportunity to be the One-Day Governor, and I will equally use this platform to promote the need for girl child education, because what I have learnt so far is that every child has a right to education.”

The Lagos State Deputy Governor Dr Idiat Adebule, represented by the Chairman, Lagos State House of Assembly Committee on Education, Mr Lanre Ogunyemi, said the competition gets better each year because of the effort of the teachers and the government’s investment in the education. She hailed the courage and boldness exhibited by the participants and said the government will introduce more curriculums to improve their learning standard, adding that government will not relent in its effort to reposition educational standard.

The first and second runners-up in this year's Spelling Bee competition,  Miss Rosemary Ogidan of Methodist Senior High School, Badagry and Master Philip Daniel of Yewa Senior High school, Agege, got cash prizes of N150,000 and N100,000 respectively.