By Mahdi Waziri Isa
For the fourth time in 14 years, ENACTUS Team of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, has successfully represented Nigeria in a keenly contested global competition in Utretch, Netherlands, recently, where it emerged the fourth best out of several teams that participated from 36 countries.
The Nigeria ENACTUS Team which came fourth behind two teams from Egypt and a team from Tunisia, thanked Nigerian business mogul and philanthropist, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of AA Rano Group (AA Rano Air and AA Rano Oil and Gas), Alhaji Awwalu Abdullahi, the chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Abuja-based YALIAM Press, Alhaji Yahya Amfani, and Ahmadu Bello University Consultancy Services (ABUCONS) for the handsome financial support the trio accorded the team.
Speaking in a chat with Education Monitor, the founding Faculty Adviser of the ABU ENACTUS Team under whose tutelage and mentoring, the 14 year old Team waxed from strength to strength, Professor Muhammad Kabiru Aliyu, said the Team represented Nigeria in the United Kingdom for the first time in 2017 where it emerged Eighth, out of several teams that participated in the competition from 36 countries.
Professor Aliyu further revealed that the Team, for the second time, represented Nigeria in 2018 at Silicon Valley, United States of America, where it emerged the best fifth out of several teams that participated from 36 countries.
“In 2022, ABU ENACTUS Team successfully represented Nigeria for the third time in Puerto Rico, where it emerged seventh out of several teams that we competed with from 36 countries,” Professor Aliyu revealed.
“This year’s edition which marked our fourth time to represent Nigeria was named Action With Africa (AWA), out of the 230 teams that started the competition, and through several stages, the ABU Team finally competed with the best six teams that emerged tops from 36 countries, where we emerged 4th, behind two teams from Egypt and one team from Tunisia”, he stated.
CEO YALIAM PRESS Ltd
The team that emerged fifth in the global competition – Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University Makurdi (JOSTUM), Benue State, is also from Nigeria.”
The ENACTUS Team from Ahmadu Bello University has been the top leading students organization in the university. ENACTUS, which is the short form of Entrepreneurial Action and Us, is also the largest student organization in the world, with presence in over 700 universities in over 36 countries.
MD ABUCONS
ABU ENACTUS has created brands that are sustainable social enterprises that create value and wealth through invention, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Over the last 14 years, the team has developed several projects and which were presented in various competitions both within Nigeria and abroad.
The team started PUP Industries about 2 years ago, which is short for Plastic Up-cycled Products; it is a social enterprise that up-cycle plastics into valuable products. The flagship product of PUP is Shoe Polish which is tackling the problem of the most used and the least recyclable plastic which are LDPEs (low density polyethylene). The team has converted used sachet water bags into wax to substitute the least eco-friendly paraffin wax commonly used in shoe polish. The wax has considerably less carbon footprint compared to the conventional wax. This is the first Made in Nigeria Shoe Polish and the first ecofriendly in the world.
This year the team developed another product from the same sachet water bag known as P2P. P2P stands for Plastic to Paint. The team has converted the discarded popularly known ‘pure water’ sachet into different types of colorful paints which is also mosquito repellant. In addition, the team developed and presented another product known as TOMPA. TOMPA is a product which the team developed as a means of drying tomatoes into powdered form while retaining all its nutritional values without chemical preservatives. This is an attempt to arrest the yearly waste of tomatoes due to lack of sustainable preservative methods in Nigeria leading to great loss by farmers.