A secondary school pupil, Oluwatobi Ed Adetula, will represent Nigeria at the 2016 Certiport Microsoft Competition in Florida, United States to demonstrate his mastery of Microsoft Office products.

Adetula, a student of Woodland Hills High School, Lagos, will compete at the 14th edition of the global competition with participants from other countries after he emerged tops at the final of the Nigerian National Edition of the Microsoft Office Specialist Competition that saw the participation of 200 students from different secondary schools across the country.

The competition has so far attracted more than 400,000 candidates from 130 countries.

New Horizons, an Information and Communications Technology company which is sponsoring Adetula to the event, said the gesture was in furtherance of its corporate social responsibility towards youth empowerment and ICT penetration in Nigeria.

In a statement, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tim Akano, said the ICT sector was one of the most viable solutions to Nigeria’s economic crisis, in repositioning the country’s oil-dependent economy to an ICT-dependent one, such as what is obtainable in countries such as Israel, South Korea and India.

He, however, said the shift could only happen if children were given quality ICT education from the primary school to university levels.

“This is why, for the past 11 years, New Horizons Nigeria has taken it upon itself to champion this noble cause by focusing on massive ICT education across board,” he said.