By Lekan Raji, Lagos
FACULTY of Business Administration of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) has won the 2016 University Debate.
It is the first time that the faculty wins the university debate since it started in 2011.
The duo of Oluwabamise Olaifa, 300-level and Daniel Ogbechi, 200-level respectively represented their faculty from the first round to the finals of the contest and won a cash prize of N150, 000 and a laptop each.
It will be recalled that Faculty of Social Sciences won the 2015 edition and Zainab Olaitan from the Department of Political science represented the faculty at the debate.
Themed “Good governance and civic leadership,” the 6th edition of the debate which held at the multi-purpose halls of the university, had four debaters representing all the faculties in the university except for Faculty of Dentistry that failed to participate in the debate. As a result, 48 debaters participated in the championship.
The debate held between August 29 and September 1, 2016.
After the challenge, Samuel Ajayi, Dolapo Agbakosi, faculty of law and Oluwafemi Akinseye, Josiah Akpan faculty of social sciences finished as first and second runners-up respectively.
While Ajayi’s team won a sum of N100, 000, Akinseye’s team won N75, 000 cash prize and the prize for lead debater in the faculty of social sciences for the year.
The motion debated at the finals states, “This house believes that strong dictatorships in Africa are better than weak democracies.”
Beyond the euphoria, however, the winners have another tasking debating adventure ahead, which is to represent the university at the national debate.
From the national level, the winners will slug it out with other participants from other African universities at the 9th Pan African University Debate Championship (PAUDC) coming up in Zimbabawe. Midlands State University (MSU) is expected to host the 2016 PAUDC.
Speaking after being declared winner, Olaifa noted that although time has been a scarce resource for him, God has been his motivation as he urged upcoming debaters to learn the basis of debating.
He said, “If I have got to make the University of Lagos debate despite my array of schedule of activities definitely I’ve got to make it count. For me that has been another source of motivation.”
Ogbechi restated the commitment of his team to groom upcoming debaters that will have better arguments to present in order to win at the subsequent editions of the debate.
He stated his team would not compete at the next debate adding that they would only exert more energies on identifying new debaters that will better represent the faculty.
Ogbechi added that his next target would be how to excel at the national and pan African debate.
