The Kwankwasiyya Development Foundation has sponsored 242 graduates to India for masters’ degrees, just as the foundation is determined to sponsor a total of 370 graduates this year.
Addressing mammoth crowd during a send-off ceremony organized for the beneficiaries, the National Leader of Kwankwasiyya Movement, Dr Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, said the 242 students were the first batch of the 370 students to be sponsored abroad for studies by the movement.
Kwankwaso said only eight of the 242 beneficiaries would study masters’ degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies in Sudan, while the rest would study in four different Universities in India.
The former Kano state governor explained that the gesture was part of the Kwankwasiyya initiative to help the education of youth especially those from the less privileged families.
“The scholarship is part of the Kwankwasiyya education initiatives we have started while in government. When we were in government, we initiated many programmes under education such as free feeding, free uniforms to all primary school pupils and construction of various classrooms and many more others.
“Today, Kwankwasiyya has sponsored 242 students abroad. Not only sponsoring them, but paid everything related to their studies ranging from tuition fees, registration fees, accommodation, travelling tickets and returning tickets.”
Kwankwaso assured that the movement would continue to sponsor more students abroad, as according to him education was the bedrock of Kwankwasiyya’s activities, calling on members of the movement to double their contributions to sustain the good work they started.
He said the door of the foundation would remain opened for anybody that is willing to donate to the movement.
In his remarks, the former Secretary to the Kano State government, Dr Rabi’u Suleiman Bichi, said Kwankwasiyya movement had executed various humanitarian programmes that include empowerment of thousands of women and youths, freeing many inmates, donation of tables and chairs to various schools across the state.
Bichi added that also part of the movement’s activities was introduction of the foreign scholarship, noting that the scheme was introduced during the Kwankwaso’s second tenure with a view to uplifting the lives of the youths especially those from poor families.
The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Engineer Abba Kabir Yusuf, assured that once their mandate is returned to them, his administration would sustain the foreign scholarship scheme to enable the children of the poor further their studies abroad.
He said, “Not only sustaining this programme, but we will re-introduce other education policies introduced by the Kwankwasiyya such as free education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels and the 26 Kwankwasiyya training centers which the present administration abandoned.”
