In line with its commitment to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4- Quality Education, leading building solutions Company, Lafarge Africa Plc., has awarded multi-million-nairaBursaries in its host communities in Ogun State.
Since the launch of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Day in 2006, Lafarge Africa has continued to live up to its billing of improving the living standard of its host communities in Ewekoro and Sagamu in Ogun State with the provision of basic business & vocational skills, start-up kits, education grants, community projects, agricultural fund, healthcare and education facilities, among others, on a yearly basis.
To reiterate Lafarge Africa’s commitment to education, 3,855 students of higher institutions from its host communities in Ewekoro and Sagamu in Ogun State have over the years benefited from its bursary awards.
A breakdown of statistics shows that in Ewekoro community, a total of 204 students received N20.4million as total bursary payment in 2015. Whereas N20.4 million was spent on 204 students in 2016, N20.4 million was dispensed to 204 students in 2017 and N20.4 million doled out in 2018. For the 2019 academic calendar, 20.4 million bursary awards were spent on 204 indigent students.
An analysis of bursary disbursements between 2015 and 2019 in Sagamu, indicates that 600 indigent students received N25 million in five years. 100 indigent students chosen in 2015 received N5 million, while a total of 100 students in 2016; other sets in 2017, 2018 and 2019 received bursaries of N5 million each year.
In addition to bursary awards, the impact of Lafarge Africa CSR interventions for its host communities in the Southwest States, starting from Ewekoro and Sagamu communities in Ogun State, showed that over 200,000 pupils have been impacted out of more than 700,000 Primary school pupils in 1,665 schools across 554 local government areas of the Country in one way or the other.
Confirming the educational interventions extended to the communities, Mr. Tajudeen Akintokun a resident of one of the host communities in Ewekoro, Ogun State, noted that the building solutions company’s interventions go beyond primary school building construction but also include that of secondary school buildings in the community.
“We can’t thank Lafarge Africa enough, if we count all they have been doing for us in education in the last 15 years, you will know that they have saved lots of pupils and students from being dropouts. Apart from what Lafarge is doing for our pupils at the primary schools, we asked them for classrooms in one of our secondary schools here in Ewekoro and they are already constructing the classrooms for us.
“They have told us that they are introducing free basic but core textbooks for our pupils in primary schools in all the 12 communities under Ewekoro Lafarge Africa’s Communities and we have also been told that they would distribute uniforms at no cost to our pupils at the beginning of the 2022/2023 academic calendar”, he said.
Also, Comrade Dauda Sekoni, one of the youth leaders in Ewekorocommunity stated that Lafarge Africa did not only provide school uniforms for the pupils but his son was among those empowered economically through the award of contracts for the sewing of the uniforms for the pupils, saying such an effort would also boost the local economy and create wealth for the youths.
In his reaction, Oloyede Sakibu, another leader in the EwekoroCommunity, advised Lafarge Africa Plc and the Ewekoro Community R Committee (CRC) on Lafarge Africa’s CSR Intervention Scheme to cover more of the less-privileged in the provisions of educational materials, especially to Primary schools, saying pupils that are given interventions in some cases are the sons and daughters of the haves in the community.
