Etisalat Awards 800 Undergraduates Scholarship Worth N80million

Etisalat Nigeria announced that it has committed about N80m to the funding of scholarship awards to 800 Nigerian students in institutions of higher learning across the six geopolitical zones of the country.

The Chief Executive Officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Steven Evans, disclosed this at the 5th Etisalat Merit Awards in Abuja which held recently.

Evans, who was represented at the event by the Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Ibrahim Dikko, said the company was committed to the improvement of qualitative education in the country through the reward of outstanding students. Each of the awardees received N100,000.

According to him, over 800 scholarships have been awarded under the merit awards scheme, as the company continues to build on its core Corporate Social Responsibility platform of empowering Nigerian youths to obtain qualitative education.

Evans emphasised the importance of education to a nation, and pointed out that out of the 41 per cent of Nigerian citizens that are youths, only a fraction were students.

He stressed that education remained a powerful tool for change that could facilitate the economic advancement of any nation.

He said, “The essence of the Merit Awards is to offer the best university students in partner institutions a grant towards the successful completion of their courses of study; taking care of their financial burden and enabling them to concentrate on their programmes, thereby achieving excellence.

“Dynamic economies that have emerged in the last fifty years have done so on the back of heavy investment in education. It is with this in mind that we at Etisalat have committed to supporting the government in improving the educational system in Nigeria.”

The awardees are currently students of Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Computer Science and Management courses in their second and third years of study of the University of Abuja, Bayero University, Kano; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; Benue State University, Makurdi; Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto; Modibo Adamu University, Yola, and Kebbi State University of Science and Technology, Kebbi.