In fulfilment of its promise to sponsor winners of the Maltina-Teacher-of-Year (MToY) Award competition overseas for capacity development programme, Nigerian Breweries Plc has sent five past winners of the competition to Tempere, Finland, for the all-expense paid programme.

The five, who were in Finland for the 10-days intensive training held between May 20 and 30, are Olasunkanmi Opeifa from Abuja, who won the award in 2018, Oluwabunmi Anani from Adamawa (2020), Abanika Taiye from Delta (2021), Alaku Ayiwulu from Plateau (2022), and Adeola Adefemi from Lagos (2023).

The teachers were taken through different modules of practical-based teaching skills.

The first three winners of the competition, namely: Rose Nkemdilim Obi from Anambra (2015), Imoh Essien from Akwa Ibom (2016), and Felix Ariguzo from Delta (2017) have had their own training earlier in the UK.

Only Collins Ezem, who won the 2019 edition and now based in the UK, is not part of the training on his own volition.

Interestingly, apart from the training overseas, each of the award winners including Ezem had also received N6.5 million cash prize while their schools got a block of six classrooms each for producing them.

Speaking on the training, Mr Hans Essaadi, Chairman of Nigerian Breweries-Felix Ohiwerei Education Trust Fund, a social arm of the company, under which the competition is domiciled, explained that the training was organised to expose the teachers to more advanced teaching methods that are more productive and positively impactful to the society at large.

Essaadi stated that the programme is designed to up-skill and maximise the capacity of the teachers to enable them to deliver effectively in a way that would impact and improve their service delivery and performance of their students.

He said Nigerian Breweries is committed to its determination to contribute substantially to the development of education in Nigeria and the production of quality workforce for the economy.

In their remarks, the beneficiaries of the training expressed profound appreciation to the management of Nigerian Breweries-Felix Ohiwerei Education Trust Fund for making the fulfilment of all award prizes of the competition a reality.

They described the training experience as an eye-opener, which has further enhanced their skills in teaching and leadership.

MToY award competition was instituted in 2015 and funded through the NB-Felix Ohiwerei Education Trust Fund, which was set up in 1994 to facilitate an active contribution to the development of the education sector in Nigeria.