Students to win airtime for studying

The art of learning has been made easy as Diamond bank in partnership with IT firm; Gidi mobile has developed a new mobile app that will enable candidates to win airtime for studying.

This new mobile app will prompt candidates preparing for public examination to win airtime weekly.

The initiative, tagged, Diamond Bank Prep Challenge, would see students who score the highest points answering past questions using the app winning airtime weekly.

The app has questions for past West African Senior School Certificate Examinations, WASSCE, NECO SSCE, and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, UTME aimed at boosting the preparation of candidates for future examinations.

Jude Aniele, the bank’s Head of Retail Banking explained that the financial institution is embarking on the challenge to reverse poor performance in public examinations.

“Most students are not well prepared before they write exams. They may not be well taught and may not have access to the right materials. If the success rate in WAEC is 28 per cent, how can we make it better? We thought that we could use technology to drive value. Mobile phones have deep penetration in Nigeria. Reading books today is not easy for youths because many are not willing to read. They would rather be online.

“We found that we can reach them through mobiles. Diamond Bank has partnered with Gidi Mobile to produce an app that supplies past questions that can be downloaded free of charge on mobile phones. We have added an incentive. Every week, the first 2,500 to get the highest score will get N1,000 worth of airtime,” he said.

Explaining how it works, Tunji Adegbesan, founder of Gidi Mobile Limited, said the app has 28,950 past questions for 15 subjects tested by the various examinations which can be downloaded on phones, laptops and android devices, except the Apple iOS, which he said would be available later in the year.

Adegbesan further explained that candidates gain four points for every question they answer correctly, and two for those attempted. Those with the highest points would be announced and rewarded weekly.

“If you reach 1000 prep questions, it is equivalent to 15 examination past questions. It is the first time this is being done anywhere in the world,” he said.