OOF AIDE, OLADELE KUDUS CLEAR AIR ON MISCONCEPTION OF PEOPLE ON OOF SCHOLARSHIP SAGA

I would like to clarify the news detailing that Olusegun Okanlawon Foundation made unfulfilled promises; such was traced to Adeyemo Labake known as Miss Ibarapa, another was from Dimeji Ogunjobi whose submission was buttressed by Idere Update.

It is rare that I address matters making shifts on the media concerning the foundation, but I deemed it necessary to establish our ground as a foundation on this recent matter.

It seems the word ‘scholarship’ had been registered in minds as a fully funded payment when it is a grant or payment made to support a student’s education awarded based on academic or other achievements. It could be used contextually and that is why scholarships today are usually defined. Some are fully funded, need-based, partly funded and lots more.

It is important to reaffirm here that the foundation only has six (6) fully-funded scholarships, three of which are from Ibarapa spanning from the period they got awarded till the end of their University.
Kabirat Adegoke from Lanlate excelled brilliantly during the OOF mock examination for Jamb exams. Her performance despite her health condition affirms her academic prowress.
Tansho, a talented young musician in Idere, although we’ve got reports that he stopped attending the private school the foundation had enrolled him in and returned to a public school on his own accord.
Faith Akindele from Igangan was adopted and awarded on indigent status. Her father was a victim of the Fulani herdsmen’s crisis that rocked Ibarapa.
Here, I have established that our fully funded scholarships are awarded based on mental merits and not for those who excelled in social events as the case may seem with the beauty pageant winner. No offense, but it would be an aberration to our principles awarding fully funded scholarships for such cases, hence, we all know that beauty and brain are mutually exclusive, hence she was paid and other things mentioned have been answered in other posts.

Concerning Dimeji Ogunjobi’s claim that her sister was not paid while other winners in the Idere Update Quiz and Debate competition were paid, that is true. She was not paid and that fault starts with the organizers submitting 6 names then adding another three names later.
One fact here is the foundation is not solely controlled by Engr Okanlawon, rather we have a team of decision-makers, we have budgets and do not exceed them since we are not on the government’s payroll, we as a team need to consider that Okanlawon takes from his hard-earned money to grant many of such promises and other unpromised requests that flood his WhatsApp timeline always. Hence, we plan and fix budgets and we try not to exceed them. The founder did plead to include three more names per request by Idere Update but we as the team do not welcome such unexpected inclusion as it would render our budget unbalanced. Even Idere update could bear witness that we had budgeted for other academic programs that same period as it is recorded in their publication dated 21st of March, 2021 reading thus: ‘In the same vein, the foundation has also rolled out a sum of forty thousand nairas (N40,000) to support 6 students in Idere to complete their NECO registration.

Apology to Dimeji Ogunjobi especially his brilliant sister. We believe our Jamb scholarship won by your sister would be enough solace and consolation for the missed prize.

We as well apologise to Idere Update for having to bear the weight of being tagged as debtors by the family of the winners, we also loud your dignified stance on keeping promises as that is our core value as a foundation. However, we must iron out our stand on your News with the headline ” OOF yet to fulfill scholarship offer in full terms to Idere Update Debaters for 2021 contest”.
To start with, the post featured in the Leadership Newspaper was not sponsored by the foundation, we saw that on the media. However, we did offer scholarships to those six (6) students. Remember I have defined how we understood the scholarship above. The students who competed attend private and public schools, we all know public schools do not pay tuition fees probably some PTA levy, our approach then was to set aside a sum of N120,000 for all six of them. They are to receive a unique payment of N20,000 each as scholarship to fuel their academic needs as we cannot afford to pay school tuition for private school students and offer the public school students a PTA levy of N100 which would be termed a gross imbalance and outright cheating on the part of the public school students. The only reasonable balance we can arrive at is what we have done.
If herein, there is a misconception or a different idea as to how we solve that issue, we apologize but we have done our best and felt fulfilled. That sense of fulfillment was what made us move on and never stop impacting our community despite hearsays, betrayals, and whims we have seen lately.

Finally, the OOF Newsletter (20th of March 2021) and Idere Update News (21st of March, 2021) are the two sources I know of to have announced that the winners of the debate and quiz have gotten the scholarship payment. That agreed, I believe the problem now is the additional 3 students who truly deserve an apology from the foundation and Idere Update since the mistake happened to have come from their end. Truly, a mistake has no master.

Idere update published the news out of good intention and not to sway the populace from believing that Okanlawon is a man of his word and I hope the matter stops at this stage since we have apologised as a foundation as that would go a long way to prove that they have no political sentiment hidden under their sleeves.

Thank you

e-signed

OLADELE KUDUS