By PROVIDENCE OBUH

LAPO Micro finance Bank (MfB) has awarded scholarship to about 750 students who are children of it’s clients who meet the requirements set by the scholarship board, targeting 100, 000 scholarship by 2022. The bank conducted a scholarship ballot exercise across all the zones of its operation in the country and 1000 students qualified for the scholarship but 750 who meet the requirement would benefit the scheme.

Speaking at the annual scholarship ballot exercise in Lagos, Managing Director, LAPO MfB, Mr. Godwin Ehigiamusoe, said that about 5000 beneficiaries have emerged from the scheme which started in 2007. He explained that the essence of the balloting was to make the process of selection of beneficiaries as transparent as possible and to justify the confidence repose on the organization by the clients over the years.

Ehigiamusoe said, “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. 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.

“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,” he said.

A beneficiary of Life Time Comprehensive College, Isefun Ayobo, Miss Fadugba Idowu, said, “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. Am grateful to LAPO.”

Also, Head, Philanthropy and CSR, Mrs. Osayi Itohan, added that the scholarship scheme fund was endowed with the sum of $10,000 cash prize from Grameen Foundation’s excellence in micro finance award in 2006.