Bello panics, stops Natasha’s WAEC grant to Students in Kogi

Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello has stopped private individuals from offering grants or paying WAEC fees of students in schools across the State.

This was contained in a statement made available to CAPITAL POST in Kokona on Tuesday by the Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan Campaign Organization
(NAUCO).

The organisation said, the ban followed Barr Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s preparedness to offset WAEC fees of students in Kogi Central Senatorial district, which may have not gone down well with the State government ahead of February’s election.

In the letter by the Executive Chairman of Kogi State Science, Technical Education and Teaching Service Commission, Hon. Cecilia E. Cook, which was sighted by CAPITAL POST in Lokoja, Kogi government cited security concerns as reason nobody was allowed to offer grants in the State, warned that any principal who flout the ban would be sanctioned.

The letter reads: “All principals of public and grant aided schools must obtain permission from the commission for any internal or external programme.

“As a result of the security situation in our nation, all the STETSCOM Zonal directors are directed to inform all the principals in their respective zones, that students’ participation in Zonal programme outside their schools and external programme outside the state is strictly on permission by the authority of STETSCOM.

“The Zonal Directors should sternly warn the Principals in their zone, that should any Principal defaulted this instruction, he or she will certainly and surely be shown the way out.

Strictly comply with this instruction, please”, the letter reads.

Recall that Natasha H Akpoti -Uduaghan who is the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Senatorial candidate for Kogi Central Senatorial district, on December 11, 2022, declared to donate five million naira to offset WAEC fees of students in Kogi Central to help parents cushion the burden of paying the WAEC fees of their children in the five local government areas of Kogi Central senatorial distinct.

With this directive of the state government, the students across Kogi Central who would have been beneficiaries of the PDP senatorial candidate’s largesse are the biggest hit of the state government’s order.

Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan Campaign Organization noted that the decision of Kogi State government to stop the payment of WAEC fees because of security reason is baseless and an attempt to further punish the students whose parents have been denied of their salaries and could not pay their children’s WAEC fees.