LAPO Micro finance Bank (MfB) has awarded
scholarships to 750 students after a scholarship ballot exercises held at all
its operational zones in Nigeria. The bank has awarded 5000 scholarships since
2007 and targets 100,000 by 2022.
LAPO
Micro finance Bank (MfB)
has awarded scholarships to 750 students after a scholarship ballot exercises
held at all its operational zones in Nigeria.
The
bank’s Managing Director, Godwin
Ehigiamusoe said
the awardees will join the 5000 that have benefitted since the scheme's
inception in 2007, Vanguard reports.
He said the bank chose the balloting
system so as to make fair selection of beneficiaries in the scheme which is
meant its clients’ children.
“The
big challenge is being able to select a few number of people from a large
number of our clients and it is for this purpose we adopted the balloting
system, to ensure fairness,” Ehigiamusoe said.
He noted a steady rise in the number of
yearly awards, adding that the bank hopes to have reached 100,000 of such
scholarships by 2022.
"We target in the next five to
seven years about 100,000 student will benefit, since we started in 2007 we
have continuously been doing it on annual basis and we will continue to provide
the scholarship," he said.
We started with 32 students in 2007, by
2014 we have done 5,000 students but 2015 we are doing 700, we hope to do 1000
or five thousand next year."
A
beneficiary of the LAPO initiative, Miss Fadugba
Idowu, said she lost her parents and her education would have
stopped but for the award.
“I lost my dad and my mum was managing
to pay my school fees but in 2007 I qualified for LAPO scholarship scheme and
since then I have not been driven from school because of any fees the bank has
been paying my fee from JSS3 and now am in SSS3 preparing to write WAEC they
are also paying for that," Idowu said.
LAPO is a pro-poor financial
institution, established as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in the late
1980s, becoming a national MfB in 2012.
-PULSE
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