Kaduna to pay tuition fees for brilliant indigent students - Official

The Kaduna State Government said yesterday that scholarships had been approved to cover full tuition fees for brilliant and indigent students of the state in all tertiary institutions.

The Executive Secretary, Kaduna State Scholarship and Loans Board, Rilwan Hassan disclosed this during a media chat in Kaduna.

Hassan said the gesture was to ensure that no student dropped out of school due to the recent hike in school fees in all state-owned tertiary institutions.

He noted that the scholarships were designed to cover students from poor and vulnerable households and According to him, the scholarships have provided for complete school fees for merit students and those from indigent households.

He said that there were currently 27,658 people in the State Social Register of poor and vulnerable households.

Hassan said: "We had an interactive session with the students and staff of Kaduna State University (KASU) on Thursday to sensitise them on the available government interventions and how to access them to continue with their education.

"We encouraged the students not to be demoralised with the recent hike in school fees as the state government had made adequate scholarship provisions for those from poor homes.

“But students, whose parents can afford to pay the new fees, should not even bother applying for the scholarship, but they can apply for a loan,” he said.

He said that the state scholarship board was, therefore, looking for indigent students who found it difficult to pay the previous fees to access this intervention.

Hassan, however, said that the board would conduct an evaluation to determine and verify those that were actually from poor and vulnerable homes and needed the support to benefit.

He added that the applicants would have to provide the Tax Clearance Certificates of their father and mother or death certificates for those whose parents have died.

“But for the 27,658 students in the social register already adjudged to be from poor households, they do not need to provide tax certificates. We only need to determine if they are students,” he added.

The executive secretary also explained that for the merit-based, a student must have at least a 4.0 Cumulative Grade Point Average and do not need to provide a parent’s tax certificate.