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From Magnus Eze, Enugu
No fewer than 20 undergraduates last month, received cheques for their tuition fees for the 2023/2024 academic session, from the Ikechukwu Ezeugwu Foundation.
By December 2021, the foundation which was founded and promoted by Ezeugwu, the immediate past Leader of Enugu State House of Assembly had produced 21 graduates in different fields of life including medicine, pharmacy, laboratory science, geology, accountancy, and political science. The first medical doctor produced by the foundation graduated in March 2021 and is currently pursuing further studies in the United States of America with partial sponsorship from the foundation.
•Ezeugwu Foundtion officials with scholarship beneficiaries
The politician, who represented Udenu State Constituency for 12 years, instituted the scholarship scheme in 2013 for indigent students in his constituency but by last year, extended a slot to each of the five states of the Southeast after a meeting with the zonal chapter of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). Students from other parts of the country are currently benefitting from the scholarship scheme.
At the 10th anniversary of the scholarship scheme and the cheque presentation ceremony at the foundation office in Diamond Estate Enugu, some of the beneficiaries recounted with emotions how they were enlisted into the scheme.
They recalled the penurious and hopeless state they were when surprisingly the foundation brought succour to them through the scholarship awards.
One of the lucky students, a fifth-year student of Radiography, Emmanuel Eze, said that God sent Dr. Ikechukwu Ezeugwu to fulfill his dream of attaining a tertiary education.
Eze said: “I had interest in University education but I lost my father when I was in JSS2. After my secondary school, I got a university admission but my mother could not afford it for me. She was crying when Hon. Ezeugwu came with a succour. If not for Ikechukwu Ezeugwu, I won’t be where I’m today. God has used him on me and God will continue to bless him and his family.”
He urged other beneficiaries of the foundation’s magnanimity to extend similar gesture to less privileged people if God blessed them after their education.
Desmond Mamah said he is a fourth-year student of the same Radiography department in the University of Nigeria. He said he got the scholarship award in 2019 which he confessed has been very beneficial to him and his family. He prayed for continued growth and expansion of the foundation.
Another moving story was that of a widow, Mrs Stella Odoh, who came to represent her daughter, Uche Ohabuenyi, a final year medical student that was unavoidably absent.
She said: “I have benefited from this foundation, if not for them, I would have died. My husband died when my children were all in school studying different professional courses.
“I broke down because I couldn’t cope with all my children in the school. I was crying when the foundation came to my relief. Ikechukwu Ezeugwu has been doing all these with the support of his wife and they will live long.
“I urge all the beneficiaries who have graduated to come together as children of Ikechukwu Ezeugwu and his wife to support them and boost the foundation scholarship scheme.”
In his remarks, Dr. Ikechukwu Ezeugwu counselled anyone blessed by God to know that the proceeds of His blessings are not meant for him and his immediate family alone.
“I want to encourage everyone that if I could make it, all of you can make it. My father was a Chief, he was not poor but had 28 children. I trekked four kilometres and rode on bicycle to go to school, yet I made it up to Ph.D, I later went to Harvard. Bear in mind that 95 percent of what you are is what you wanted to be,” Ezeugwu advised.
He admonished the beneficiaries to utilize the opportunity very well by ensuring that they remained studious.
On the essence of the scholarship scheme, Ezeugwu said: “I’m only a pencil in the hands of God. So, when you think about the trickle-down effect, the joy that radiates, because some of these elderly persons prefer that young doctors go into their villages to treat them; to touch them and they are healed fifty percent. So, I tell them that Ikechukwu Ezeugwu Foundation is not in the habit of giving scholarships, we are in the business of producing medical doctors, engineers, administrators, teachers, etc. The difference between a medical doctor and an engineer is the tuition fee that the other person who is equally intelligent couldn’t pay.
The moment that person pays that tuition fee, every other thing can always be worked out.
“There was something one of them said in their appreciation that actually touched me when I handed over the cheques to them in 2021. He said Daddy, that I don’t even understand what I was doing for them. He said that some of their colleagues instead of concentrating and reading, they will be thinking about how to pay their fees but for them, on going back, they already have their school fees, and in some schools, you can’t take your exams until you pay your school fees and so that alone gives them 50 percent concentration.”
