FirstBank, Junior Achievement Nigeria partner

First Bank of Nigeria Limited has partnered with Junior Achievement Nigeria to implement the 22nd National Company of the Year (NCOY) competition, which will hold today.

The annual flagship event, which was last held physically in 2019, will bring together 12 winning student companies from the Regional Company of the Year competition to compete for the National Company of the Year award sponsored by FirstBank. The winner of the National Company of the Year competition will proceed further to represent Nigeria at the Junior Achievement Africa’s Company of the Year (ACOY) competition.

The goal of the Junior Achievement Company Programme is to inspire senior secondary school students to start and run their businesses, develop a product or service and market their brand. With the support of seasoned volunteers, students come together to form a company, choose a business name and elect company officers to oversee the operations of the company for the program duration.

The activities help them hone some in-demand skills like creativity, accountability, teamwork, leadership, problem-solving, critical thinking and public speaking needed to succeed in this competition and thrive globally. In the end, the student companies present the results of their enterprise before a panel of judges.

The judges for this year’s competition are: Osayi Alile -CEO, Aspire Coronation Trust(ACT) Foundation; Molade Adeniyi -CEO, Wave; Nneka Itabor, Head, Transaction Banking Sales, Commercial Banking, FirstBank; Afolake Oredola, Business Manager, Commercial Banking, FirstBank; Uchenna Achunine, Director, Business Development and Communications, Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF); David Adegboyega, Sound Character Coach and Nation Builder; Femi Iromini, Co-founder/CEO Moni Africa.

According to the Executive Director, Junior Achievement Nigeria, Foluso Gbadamosi, she stated: “We are glad that the National Company of the Year competition will once again be held physically after 2 years of being virtual. We are eager to see the tremendous business solutions and enterprises that our young leaders have doggedly built. More than ever, it is extremely important to equip young people for a global economy and we are grateful to selfless minds in the form of people and organizations who have partnered with us on this mission. We celebrate our sponsors, First Bank of Nigeria Limited for their continual support in building young leaders and we say a big thank you to every friend and stakeholder of JAN.”

FirstBank’s Group Head, Marketing and Corporate Communications said: “We commend Junior Achievement Nigeria for organizing the 22nd edition of the National Company of the Year Competition, a competition that has been impactful in promoting the entrepreneurship skills, spirit and talent innate in school children, who are unarguably the leaders of tomorrow.

"Our sponsorship of the National Company of the Year competition aligns with our FutureFirst initiative driven to promote financial literacy, entrepreneurship and innovative development and career counselling of school children at an early age. We are excited to be part of the entrepreneurship journey of all representatives of the participating teams and we wish everyone the best.”