A Nigerian high school student, Oluebube Ogbonna, has emerged as the winner of the first Igbo spelling bee competition in Anambra state, after competing against 356 other contestants.
The competition, which was organized by City Speller Bee in collaboration with Onitsha Business School, assessed students on their spelling, syllabication, and punctuation skills in the Igbo language.
Oluebube, a student of Divine Rays British School, won a cash prize of N300,000 while Oruche Chukwuma and Okeke Godswill took second and third places, earning N100,000 and N50,000, respectively.
Professor Ogochukwu Ofeka, a lecturer of Igbo literature at Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, praised the students’ proficiency in the Igbo language and noted that the competition had confirmed that efforts to revive the language were bearing fruit.
The project manager of the competition, Chinedu Aniagboso, expressed hope that the competition would become an annual event and called for support from the Anambra government, companies, and individuals to make subsequent editions even better.
