NAN-H-8
Scholarship
Omu-Aran (Kwara) Dec. 27, 2016 (NAN) No fewer than 60 students had received cash donations totaling N1.2million from the Adebisi Fabiyi Foundation in Omu-Aran, Irepodun Local government Area of Kwara, to boost their academic pursuits.
The students, drawn from tertiary institutions, were selected from the three wards in the community.
The breakdown showed that 20 beneficiaries received cash donations of N20,000 each from Aran, Ifaja and Ihahe wards in the town.
The year’s award is the foundation’s 17th in the series and coincided with the 84 birthday celebration of Prophet Elisha Fabiyi, the foundation’s Board of Trustees’s chairman, and an insurance expert.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that some schools also received various cash prizes for coming top in the quiz and essay competitions earlier organised by the foundation.
Ansarul-Islam Secondary School, Omu-Aran won the first position in the quiz competition while Omu-Aran High School won the first positions in both the junior and senior categories of the essay competition.
Two distinguished personalities, Messrs Sunday Babalola and Joseph Bamigboye, also received the foundation’s merit awards for their selfless services to the development of their community.
Prophet Fabiyi said the awards and the competitions among schools were instituted as part of his contributions to improve the education sector and boost the students’ overall performance.
He noted that education remained the bedrock of any meaningful socio-economic development, adding that the challenges facing the sector had gone beyond government alone to shoulder.
Fabiyi stressed the donation was also meant to compliment the parent’s financial burden and to equally address poverty, unemployment as well as insecurity among the youth.
“We are all witnesses to the rapid growth and the development of Omu-Aran, because the town is expanding in an unplanned manner.
“This donation, therefore, is part of our corporate social responsibility toward ensuring the well-being of the people of this community in the areas of education and human capital development,” Fabiyi said.
Fabiyi said the foundation’s was in the process of promoting skills acquisition through building of a skills acquisition centre as well as a children recreational centre.
Chief Samuel Atolagbe, the Chairman of the awards’ committee, in a remark, said the foundation had continued to live up to its expectations and the targeted populace.
Chief Jide Adebayo, the Chairman of the occasion, said the foundation since its inception had facilitated unprecedented development in the lives of the indigenes and non-indigenes alike.
Adebayo, a former Executive Director with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), called for more support from wealthy individuals and groups toward the sustenance of the foundation’s genuine principles and ideas.
“It has been a thing of joy, especially, as the town expands in terms of infrastructure and economic development, and I pray for the sustenance of this laudable initiative,” he said. (NAN)
ISHO/PAD
========
Edited by Peter Dada