Twelve students benefit from Mafograms scholarship scheme

To encourage academic excellence and give back to their alma mater, Old Students, Association of Mafoluku Grammar School (Mafograms), 92 set, Oshodi, Lagos, offered scholarships to six indigent students.

The old students said the gesture was borne out of their passion to give back to the society and let people know that good things could come out of Mafoluku-Oshodi.

Speaking with The Guardian, President, Mafograms set of 92 and Special Assistant (Special Duties) to the Postmaster General of the Federation, Taliat Kolawole, said citizens should not leave funding of education to government alone and expect a robust result.

“A lot of structures are dilapidated and teachers are not available to teach all subjects, so, what our set has done was to write the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to request that the school should be given eight corps members and we would pay their stipend.   As ex-students, we also wanted to encourage academic excellence; so, we decided to give scholarship to 12 students-six to the very best students and the other six to indigent ones.”

On what the body was doing to encourage teachers, Kolawole said: “The welfare of teachers is the primary responsibility of the government, so, bringing NYSC members will reduce the workload on the teachers. The best we are trying to do for teachers is to make their offices more conducive, because the state of the office also affects them emotionally and psychologically.

Speaking on the association’s contributions to the school, Kolawole said: “We have been doing a lot of things for the school, but this is the first time we are giving scholarship to the students. This time around, the school said it lacks the required number of teachers and we thought it right to intervene”.

While commending the association for the gesture, the Principal, Ayanleke Temilade, said: “We are lucky to have this kind of students that graduated from Mafograms. I am delighted because of their passion to support, to give what they didn’t enjoy when they were in school. Some of the students they reached out to are orphans. The scholarship is a life-changing gesture for the students; no student will benefit from this and not come to give back to the community. The association has planted a seed in these students; I want to encourage others to key into this.”