Tobias Sylvester
Ekene Franklin, 15 who scored 347 to emerge the highest scorer of the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) has been offered scholarship worth $40,000 by Academic City College, a private university in Accra, Ghana.
The College Senior Admissions Manager (Nigeria), Mrs Ogechi Ekpe, disclosed this over the weekend at a workshop organized by the institution for schools and parents at the Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.
She said the scholarship would cover tuition and boarding for the duration of his programme at the university.
“We have a full scholarship for Ekene. He was supposed to be here today (Friday) but we did not talk about the scholarship today because he was not here. We were to present a scholarship of $40,000 to the boy from year one till he graduates,” she said.
“We were hoping he would be here today so our President can give him the award. The school is here now. We have to go there and see if we can either take him to Ghana or get our President to come again and give him the scholarship. The scholarship is for real. It is called the Presidential Scholarship so the school pays everything including the hostel fees.”
Mrs. Ekpe said that Academic City College, which offers programmes in Engineering, Business, Communication Arts and Information Technology, accepts students from 15 years of age because it has a system in place to monitor them. She said:
“That is why we want him there. Nigerian schools won’t give him admission but we will. We start admitting from 15 which is why we have a very visible Dean of Students’ Affairs. We make sure that they go to class, especially foreign students. You cannot be in the hostel during learning hours. Dean Ruth, that is her name, she normally goes round.
“There are parents that pay for their kids to be off campus but all international students must be on campus because we don’t want them to have immigration issues; we don’t want them to go off track and start doing drugs. We actually insist that in the first year at least they must be on campus.”
KanyiDaily had reported that Ekene Franklin, a 15-year-old student from Abia State, emerged the best candidate in this year’s UTME, by scoring 347 marks as the highest mark released by Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
