The Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano (BUK), Prof. Muhammad Bello, has called on state governments to review their scholarship policies with a view to making its impact more effective.
Speaking while receiving the Executive Secretary of the Kano State Scholarship Board, who paid him a courtesy visit in his office on Monday, 8th March, 2016, Bello explained that the concept of scholarship was to assist the less-privileged members of the society, but was somehow politicized, thereby becoming ineffective.
“Scholarship should be based on the peculiar needs and should as well be reasonable to make the desired impact on the beneficiary, a situation whereby the allowances are made across board, is seriously negating its purposes and intention,” he declared.
According to him, government should review the policy to make it such that only those who were really in need should be enlisted to benefit, otherwise, a greater percentage of the populace would not feel its impact as intended.
Prof. Bello suggested that among the new policies to be adopted should be that all parents who by all standards were well to do should kindly withdraw their children from government sponsorship, pointing out that if a child’s parents could afford to pay as much as N20,000 or N50,000 as school fees per term at a primary or secondary level, certainly such a person should not be included in the general scholarship by the government, as it was tantamount to denying more deserving students.
He equally called on the well to do members in the society to supplement government efforts at supporting indigent families by offering scholarships to the needy, disclosing that the University had been providing such supports to many of its students as part of its community service.
The VC expressed appreciation for the visit by the Executive Secretary of the State Scholarship, Professor Fatima Umar, describing her as a good Ambassador to the University and prayed for a successful tenure in office.
