Eighteen of 22 selected secondary schools on Wednesday began contesting for honours at the 3rd PwC Chess4Change Grand Slam in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the tournament for the secondary school which will end on Friday has 22 schools with about 320 students participating.
The first edition of the competition in 2014 had six schools represented but the number was doubled in 2015 to 12, and now increased to 22.
However, four of the invited schools did not turn up for the competition, sponsored annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a multinational professional services network headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
PwC is the second largest professional services firm in the world, and is one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, EY and KPMG.
Commenting on the increase in participation, Bayo Babalola, Technical Director, Lagos State Chess Association (LSCA), said the initiative was to give opportunity to other schools in the state.
“We want to give opportunity to more schools to participate because of the great advantage chess has in the life of students.”
“This is a fantastic opportunity provided by the sponsors PwC. The programme has been on for three years now. We normally start with teaching sessions and end with a grand slam.”
“One of the aims of the grand slam is practicalising what they have been taught and also for talent identification.”
“These are the future stars of Nigeria as some of them will represent the country.”
“The idea of introducing it to the secondary schools has been achieved. We have been able to train the public schools that cannot afford to have chess coaches,” he said.
Babalola said that PwC was sponsoring the tournament because of its immense benefits to the students, adding that it’s time for other corporate organisations to lend more support.
“PWc is sponsoring because of the unquantifiable benefits it has for the students.”
“It helps them to improve their memory, helps in analytical thinking, aids decision making, improves Mathematics skills and boosts self-confidence.”
“These are the ones the country can bank on to be her representative because this is the only grassroots support chess tournament in the whole of Nigeria,” he told NAN.
“The students themselves can attest to the fact that they have improved a lot since they were introduced to chess.”
“One of the champions here has been sponsored abroad for tournaments.”
“We hope to see more sponsors coming to support chess because it is the way to go.”
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