KADUNA State Scholarship and Loans Board said that two female candidates topped a list of 29 first class degree holders that were awarded scholarship under the merit-based foreign scholarship scheme.
A statement by the executive secretary of the board, Malam Hassan Rilwan, disclosed that the awardees, Amina Sani Bello and Halima Alhafiz Aliyu, came first and second respectively.
Hassan said, “41 applicants comprising 29 first class degree holders, six master’s degree holders with distinction, five second class (upper division) degree holders with CGPA of 4.0 and above, and one undergraduate student made the list of the merit-based foreign scholarship.”
The statement added that out of the 138 applicants that applied for the scholarship, “96 of them passed the Use of English and Plagiarism cut-off mark of 50 and less than 25, respectively”.
“Each of the 96 applicants was officially contacted and requested to upload a personal statement and three-minute video clip,” Hassan said, adding that 54 applicants passed the evaluation.
The executive secretary said that the management and staff of the board were not part of the final scoring and selection process after short listing of the candidates, as part of the board’s transparency and open governance policy.
Malam Hassan recalled that the state governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, had promised that all qualified first class graduates from the state would be sponsored to the best universities in the world.
He pointed out that before the coming of this administration, scholarship award, “was always an under-the-table discussion preserved for only the privileged.”
“Most of the 138 students would not have known of the opportunity if not for the transparent disposition of the el-Rufai administration. The process is open, traceable and cannot be manipulated,” he added.
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