Two graduates, Ayodele Opeyemi and Oduyemi Teniola are the first set of beneficiaries of the Food Beverage and Tobacco Senior Staff Association’s N1 million scholarship instituted for children of members who finished with first class honours.
Ayodele Opeyemi, who graduated from the Federal University of Technology, Akure, was awarded the N1 million scholarship in his father’s office at Nestle Nigeria Plc; the largesse has equally prompted the management to assure him of job placement.
Similarly, Oduyemi Teniola, a graduate of Kwame Nkrumah University, Ghana, got her N1 million scholarship in the presence of the management of Flour Mills, where her father works.
President of FOBTOB, Comrade Quadri Olaleye, said the scholarship was initiated to raise the quality and standard of education in the country.
He said, “We do not just want to be a union, but contributing to the development of the country. We discovered that the standard of education was falling, and believed that we need to do more in raising the standard in our own little way. That’s the reason why we initiated scholarship award peculiar to children of our members.
“The award of N1 million is for graduating students with first class and since we presented the two awards, it has since gingered many of our students to improve in their academics.”
Olaleye said FOBTOB’s profile has improved tremendously since his emergence as the president, as the new leadership has brought in a lot of innovation.
“In 2015, we launched our change journey, as only a fool will expect different result doing the same thing. In 2016, we came up with Journey to Excellence. Though we are a union, but we want to do things differently as we are operating in the private sector and also deal with senior and management staff, who are all our members.”
The FOBTOB president also said that the union has diversified into business to expand its sources of income.
He said, “We are cautious of what has happened to some unions who were once bouyant, but now are finding it difficult to survive.
“In 2017, we commissioned a prestigious 26 rooms hostel in Kwara University, in 2018, we commissioned another 24 rooms in Auchi Polytechnic. This year we have commenced another one 49 rooms hostel in Oye Ekiti.”