Nigerian student wins award at the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition

The 2017 Royal Commonwealth Essay Competition (also called the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition), has just ended and a Nigerian was the only contestant that came from the continent of Africa and yet he emerged second runner-up and bronze medallist. To put this into perspective, there are 19 commonwealth member states in Africa which constitutes about 37% of the total member nations of the associat

Joshua Borokinni

ion, and Joshua Borokinni was the only person from Africa that made it to the finals of the senior category of the competition. 

Out of the 12,300 youths who participated in the competition; Turon-Semmens from Australia secured the gold, while Hiya Chowdhury from India the silver, and Joshua Borokinni from Nigeria the bronze. Borokinni is a student of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) where he is studying medicine. As part of the prize for winning, the winners would visit London where they are to take part in a series of educational and cultural events expected to be held in November.

The Royal Commonwealth Society has been managing this competition since 1883, making it the oldest international school writing competition in the world. Every year, the competition proposes a topic and gives the youth (of the age 18 years and under) who are from the commonwealth nations, the chance to express their opinions in written words. The theme for this year’s competition was A Commonwealth for Peace, with topics that challenged young writers to consider peace at every level, from the personal to the political to the pan-Commonwealth.
An excited Borokinni voiced his appreciations for the organisers and vowed to use every opportunity that the result of the competition would bring to showcase Nigeria and Africa in a positive light to the world.