OtelaJa Ayanfeoluwa, a CMS Grammar School Bariga student, has emerged as the overall winner of the 2024 ‘Ethical Living’ Essay Competition sponsored by the African Capital Alliance Foundation (ACAF).
At the grand finale of the Project, which took place in Lagos, while OtelaJa Ayanfeoluwa emerged overall winner, Oseni Aaqibah Akorede of Akande Dahunsi Memorial High School, Osborne, Lagos, and Ogunlowo Ayomide of Boys’ Senior Academy, Lagos clinched the first and second runners up positions respectively.
Three Hundred and Fifty Three (353) students from ten (10) selected schools approved by the Lagos State Ministry of Education participated in the essay writing competition titled, “My Role as a Youth and the Strategies I Will Deploy in Creating a More Ethical, Just, and Equitable Society”.
The Chairman of the African Capital Alliance Foundation (ACAF), Dr. Okey Enelamah, in his remarks, said that it is essential for a society to instill and invest in ethical values especially as the world faces various challenges.
According to him, to make a lasting impact, ethical values should become our daily life, stating that “We can only receive transformative power when we make an ethical living as a mantra”.
He advised that it is daily choices that make a good society adding that “the value you build today will save you tomorrow. The youths have the power to save the society. We need to foster an environment that fosters ethical standards. At the African Capital Alliance Foundation, we are moved by the concept of a good society where people take responsible actions daily”.
An educationist and former Commissioner for Education, Lagos State, Mrs. Folashade Adefisayo, in her keynote address titled ‘The Transformative Power of Ethical Living’ said that a nation must make conscious decisions to do the right thing at the right time in all circumstances.
She admonished that the present generation has no choice but to be better if we are to have a better tomorrow, stating that ‘the youth has the power to take us out of the situation we are in now’.
The Country Director of Enactus, the implementing partner of the Ethical Living Project, Micheal Ajayi, said that the programme’s focus is all about inculcating the values of ethical-decision making in Nigerian youth.
Former Vice Chancellor of Pan Atlantic University, Lagos, Professor Juan Elegido, said that he admired the students’ incredible preference to be trained on ethics assuring them they would have great lives if they apply what they were taught.
