Abuja, Dec 11, 2025 – The Aliko Dangote Foundation on Thursday launched a ₦100 billion annual education support programme to expand access to quality education across the country.
The Scholarship Initiative was launched by Vice President Shettima.
According to a statement issued by Stanley Nkwocha, a Senior Special Assistant to the President, Shettima represented President B0la Tinubu at the ceremony.
The president described the gesture as a monumental boost to Nigeria’s education sector and a lifeline for West Africa’s declining human capital profile and urged stakeholders in public and private sectors to recommit to building an inclusive system where every Nigerian child has a fair shot at becoming the best version of themselves.
“Now is the time to recommit to building a future in which every Nigerian child has a fair shot at becoming the best version of themselves,” he said.
The president said education remained a burden shouldered by those who understand its power to transform lives and societies and warned that West Africa’s position as the region with the world’s lowest Human Capital Index demands urgent corrective measures.
“Posterity must remember us not for the offices we held or the titles we bore, but for the doors we opened and the lives we transformed,”
“A youthful population is a global asset only when it is educated. Without education, it becomes a threat to itself and to the nation that houses it.
“We must treat education as a survival strategy. This is why our administration treats the National Human Capital Development Programme as a national emergency,” he said.
Aliko Dangote said he had committed 25 percent of his personal wealth to the foundation which would live beyond his lifetime.
He said the ₦100 billion annual education would last for 10 years and would be operated on transparent, merit-based selection system.
Dangote said the foundation would partner NELFUND, NECO, WAEC, and other agencies to guarantee accountability in the operation of the scholarship scheme.
He said that too many brilliant students in Nigeria had been pushed out of school because pf lack of financial support.
Dangote described education as the strongest engine of social mobility” and the clearest path to national development.
