University undergraduates from the Niger Delta region will soon begin to enjoy scholarships from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), as an extension of its 8-year-old Foreign Post Graduate Scholarship Programme.
The NDDC Managing Director, Mr Nsima Ekere, announced this during the flag off of the donation of 9,600 desks and 9,600 chairs to public schools in Akwa Ibom State at the NDDC state office in Uyo.
He explained that the exercise would entail the distribution of 72,000 desks and 72,000 chairs to schools in the nine mandate states of the Commission.
Speaking on the scholarship scheme, Ekere said that the NDDC had been investing massively in scholarship programmes for students seeking post graduate studies in schools all over the world.
He said that NDDC was considering intervening in under-graduate studies as well, stating that so far the scholarship programme had focused on post graduate studies.
Ekere assured that the processes for the selection of graduates for the foreign scholarship programme would start early this year, to ensure that the beneficiaries were not delayed for the next academic year.
He said: “We shall ensure that by May, all the processes required to be done to get our children ready to start the next academic year are concluded in good time.”
He regretted that a lot of schools in the region lacked basic infrastructure.
Ekere affirmed that NDDC had over the years been intervening in the renovation of school classroom blocks to redress the ugly situation.
The NDDC chief executive officer cautioned that the assistance to the schools should not be misunderstood as it was meant to “positively help our children to have conducive environment to learn.
He stressed that NDDC had intervened positively and in several ways in Akwa Ibom State, noting that the impact of the interventions had been enormous.
He observed: “NDDC has done a total of 960 projects in Akwa Ibom State. Out of this number, 494 have been completed at a total cost of N67.7 billion.
Ekere stated that NDDC would continue to take the education of children very seriously.
In his own remarks, the Akwa Ibom State representative on the board of the NDDC, Hon Samuel Frank, said that intervention in the area of infrastructure was a necessary way of touching the lives of the people.
He re-stated the fact that NDDC was not competing with the state and local governments, but was rather complementing their efforts in the overall interest of the people.

Susan Serekara-Nwikhana