NGO pays N3.5m WAEC fees of 1,650 students in Kogi

An NGO, Stanley Jegede Foundation, has released N3.5 million for the payment of 2016/2017 West African Examination Council fees for 1,650 students in the six secondary schools at Egbe town, Kogi State.
Stanley Jegede, the Executive Chairman and Founder of the NGO, presented the cheques on Sunday at Egbe in Yagba West Local Government Area.
In a brief speech at the ceremony, Jegede said the payment of the WAEC fees represented his modest contribution to the educational development of his community.
He said that the donation, made under the Educational Development Programme of the SJF, was to support and encourage indigent, but brilliant students, to retain their interest in education.
Jegede, the Chief Executive Officer of PHASE – 3 Telecoms, Abuja, listed the schools as Titcombe College, Heritage College, Ambassadors College, ECWA George Campion Academy, Government Secondary School and St. Peters College, all in Egbe.
According to him, the payments are to be made directly into the accounts of the secondary schools for onward payment to WAEC.
He also distributed past question papers of WAEC, from 1985 to 2015, to the students to enable them to prepare well for the examinations holding in May/June 2017.
Jegede promised to grant full scholarship to any of the students that gained admission into any Nigerian university at the first attempt.
According to him, the NGO with its partners, within and outside the country, will also assist any willing students to read up to masters and PhD levels.
The Chairman described education as “very key to the development of any country”, saying that the gesture would reverberate across the country as majority of the beneficiaries were from other parts of Nigeria.
He said that the organization, which had supported more than 20 projects under various initiatives since it was founded in 2003, would also empower young widows and train some youths under its youth apprenticeship scheme.
Jegede also announced a personal donation of N2 million towards the completion of the Elegbe of Egbe’s palace project.
Speaking at the event, the Elegbe of Egbe, Oba Ayodele Irukera, described the gesture as a divine intervention in view of the effect of the current recession on parents and guardians in Egbe.
Irukera said: “Education is the main enterprise of a Egbe people.
“Unfortunately, that enterprise is now under threat as parents are now barely managing to eat, thereby making schooling almost impossible for their children.”
He said that since the state government stopped its policy of settling WAEC fees for final year secondary school students in 2014, parents had been compelled to sell off their property to pay the fees of their wards.
Oba Irukera commended Jegede for coming to the aid of the community at a critical period, and urged other indigenes to emulate him.
He pleaded with Jegede to assist the community to secure a JAMB examination Centre in Egbe, and stated that the current situation where students had to travel to Lokoja, Kabba and Oye Ekiti in Ekiti State to write JAMB was “not god enough”.
An SSS 3 student of Heritage College, Egbe, Oreofe Babatunde, while responding on behalf of the benefitting students, expressed gratitude to the NGO for the gesture.
She described the intervention as timely, noting that it came at a time many parents were owing school fees and unsure of where to source funds for the WAEC fees.