Five Nigerian students, representing the country at the First Global Robotic Olympiad (GRO), on Saturday boasted of coming home with three gold medals at the competition.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the competition was scheduled to hold in Mexico from Aug. 13 to Aug. 19.
NAN reports that the students are expected to leave Nigeria for Mexico on Saturday evening to join the 193 teams from 187 countries for the competition.
A team of seven students that represented the country in the maiden edition of the competition in Washington DC, U.S in 2017, came third out of 41 African countries that participated in the competition.
They were ranked 25th out of 162 countries across the world and they also got two other awards.
The students, in interviews with NAN, said that their sacrifices, hard work and commitment during the preparation gave them assurance of winning gold medals.
A 16-year-old Anjolaoluwa Olowokere of Lagoon Secondary School, Aja, Lagos, said that the team had worked hard in planning, designing and building their robotics.
“This is a global robotic competition and the team is well prepared for it.
“We are extremely happy to represent the country. We are going to bring home three gold medals.
“I am confident we will get a gold medal in the ‘Zhangzheng Award of Engineering Design’, one of the award categories.
“It is an award given to the country or team with the best engineering design of robotics.
“Another award category, I am confident of is the ‘First Global Alliance Award’ where three teams or countries come together to form an alliance where the best country wins.
“We can only hope that with everything we have done and with God on our side, we will come out victorious,” Olowokere said.
Also, Dodie Iroaganachi, 17 of Queens College, Lagos, said: “ We hope to come out top 10 among the 193 teams from 187 countries,’’ Iroaganachi said.
Commenting, Samuel Mbah, 16 of Osezele Comprehensive Senior School, Lagos, said that the team would perform creditably well in the competition.
Mbah said that they had put in their best during preparation for the competition, adding that they would make the country and their sponsors, Aramex Technology, proud.
Also, Faisal Jarmakani, the Managing Director of Aramex and Doculand Nig., had at a news conference in Lagos, said that the 2018 challenge in Mexico would be on “Energy Impact”.
According to him, competitors will be expected to solve problems related to energy with the use of robotics.
Jarmakani said that all the students were building foundation blocks for a technology-advanced Nigeria.
“Without any doubt, we will soon join other countries of the world where science and technology have become the backbone of economic development,’’ he said.
