An Enugu State-based Non-Governmental Organisation, Pleasant Gathering, has urged students to shun social vices including pornography, cultism and prostitution that could endanger their future.

The International President of the group, Mrs Joy Ogbonnaya, made the call during the 11th edition of the group’s Mega Secondary Schools’ Student Convention, held at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, Enugu on Sunday

The convention had the theme “Nigerian Students As Agent of Transformation”.

The PG is a non-governmental youth-focused and faith-based organisation with the aim of equipping and empowering the next generation to fulfil their destiny and become a people of integrity with high ethical standards. Over 100 secondary schools drawn from the public, private and mission attended the convention.

Ogbonnaya advised the students to be focused in life and avoid all the tools of distraction such as pornography, masturbation, homosexuality, cultism, prostitution, rape, consumption of hard drugs and exam malpractice.

She said, “Nobody gives you an award for doing evil but you can be given an award for being the best mathematics student; cultism and prostitution have led many students to early grave. So avoid being perpetrator of evil and social vices.’’

She explained that the convention was tailored towards transforming and empowering Nigerian students to become the needed agent of change in the country.

According to her, no nation can experience true national transformation and positive change until the students are fully equipped and empowered for the process.

She said the objective of the PR Club in secondary schools was to enhance the reading culture of students and to restore their moral habits which to some extent would bring about positive transformation in the nation.

“It is an established fact that a transformed student will surely bring about a transformed society, hence the need to encourage and support this project,” she said.

She said the organisation in partnership with the post-primary schools management board, Enugu State through PG reading club, had engaged over 100 public, private and mission secondary schools within Enugu inculcating moral values and restoring reading culture among students.

She also explained that the reading club had impacted increased academic and moral knowledge, talent discovery, development and deployment, increased knowledge of adverse effects of social vices, reduction of cultism in schools and others among students.

The international president stated that through her efforts and help from friends and relations she was able to organise a convention for students since its inception in 2012.

“This year alone, I spent above N15 million which included food for the students, about 100 buses that conveyed them and other logistics,” Ogbonnaya said.

She, however, appealed for land for convention centre, project vehicles and sponsorship for their annual mega students convention and other programmes as well as inclusion of their developed moral scheme in the schools’ curriculum.

Speaking at the event, the First Lady, Enugu South Council Area, Mrs Adaeze Nkwuo, represented by Evangelist Patricia Okoko, said she was marvelled by the number of students that attended the convention.

Nkwuo added that the programme would shape the lifestyle of the students whom she described as “The future leaders of the country”.

A student from Coal Camp Secondary School, Ogbete, Enugu, Miracle Ogenyi, also described the convention as a source of empowerment and encouragement to students.

She said, “I like the programme because it teaches teenagers like us to understand the wrong way of life and enabled us to meet our fellow students from others schools.’’

(NAN)