Scholarship Aid Initiative Holds Stakeholders Forum, Gives Scholarship To 3,921 Students

By ABIODUN JIMOH, ABEOKUTA

It was another remarkable year in the history of Scholarship Aid Initiative (SAI), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), as a total of three thousand, nine hundred and twenty one (3,921) students have benefited from its 2020 scholarship programme.

The organisation mission is to make education become easy for the less privileged in the society by assisting students towards their careers, knowing well that many students drop out of school due to financial problem and make them become irrelevant in the society.

The successful figure was declared on Thursday, November 12th, 2020 at the 2020 Stakeholders’ Forum and Presentation of Award, with the theme ‘Covid-19: The Effect on Nigeria Educational System (digital learning, advantages and limitation)’ held at Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta.

The forum had in attendance lecturers, educationists, students from various tertiary institutions and many others across all the six South-West States namely Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Lagos and Ogun.

In his welcome message, Dr. Adebayo Oluwatosin, the African Regional President of the organisation remarked that giving scholarship to children of the masses since 2007 was no more news

Adding that it has become priority of the organisation to make sure that these children whose parent cannot conveniently afford to send them to higher institution due to financial problem which the organisation will pay their tuition fee from the beginning to the end.

“The organisation is looking into all the menaces and took it upon herself to see that those who are willing to study among these children gain admission to study the course of their choice in the university without having to seat for Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination, and also not changing their career which may end up to change their destiny.

“Our vision is to establish private university that will be tuition free. Though, it is a capital intensive based on the fraudulent government policy for the establishment of university in Nigeria, such as 100 hectares of land which is above 250 acres, N200m bank draft, N1m application form and N5m processing fee, apart from non recordable charges and fee which we cal part of the system.

“As at today, we have gotten to some level in which the organisation has acquired 500 acres of land in Oyo State. In 2017, National University Commission have us a go ahead to start the construction of the university. Many plans are on ground to make sure that all our dreams are being achieved.

“Many brilliant and intelligent children are on the street today hawking, some are into some illegal activities due to financial crisis.

“I am appealing to the Federal and State Governments to increase education percentage in their annual budgets in order to give room for effective and standard educational sector in Nigeria,” he noted.

In the same vein, National Programme Coordinator, Scholarship Aid Initiative Dr. (Mrs) Oluwafunmilola Oluwatosin in her admonition expressed that the pandemic has really affected the educational system all over the world, but the developed countries of the world were able to face the challenges in such a way that students learning were not affected.

She stated: “But, in the case of Nigeria, academic learning could not continue due to so many factors that are always refer to as ‘Nigerian Factor’ such as poor electricity supply, poor network, inadequate internet facilities, financial problem and even high level of illiteracy to mention just few.

“I give kudos to private schools who were able to adopt the new normal learning, definitely it was not easy for them as well as the parents concerned due to these factors. They were able to shift learning from the four walls of the classroom to digital world.”

However, Director of Programme, Aderoju Oluwakemisola elaborated on the procedures on how the students were been selected. She hinted that 8,034 candidates applied for the 2020 Scholarship programme from all the South-West States in which 3,921 candidates qualified at the end.

“The qualified candidates were the ones who are able to meet the cut-off marks. The disqualified candidates were unable to make proper use of internet which leads to automatic submission of blank page after the designated time for the examination and those who scores are far below the cut-off mark,” she stressed.

Meanwhile, during the discussion some participants like Dr. Odedokun Adekunle, Director of Education Planning at SAI; Dr. Mrs Bamgbose Titilayo from Hallmark University, Ijebu-Itele and host of others expressed their concern on the challenges facing educational sector especially before and after the Covid-19 in Nigeria.

The highlight of the event was the presentation of award to six best graduating students. They were Qudus Toyosi, Public Administration; Olumuyiwa Ebunoluwa Oluwabusayomi, Mass Communication; Anthony N. Joyce, Public and International Relations. Others were Balogun Abdullahi, Olowokere Pelumi and Patrick Blessing from Computer Engineering.