Empowering The Challenged

Lift Above Poverty Organisation, LAPO, empowers physically challenged and indigent students with scholarship 

The implementation of policies such as structural adjustment, currency devaluation, removal of subsidy and concurrent drop in oil prices, coupled with government’s inability to deliver services and meet its citizens’ expectations, have brought about a sharp increase in poverty in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, with the larger proportion of its citizen living below the poverty line. Millions go to bed hungry, with millions of others unable to pay the school fees of their children.

Moved by such pitiable condition, well-spirited individuals, non-governmental and corporate organisations in Nigeria have taken it upon themselves to provide succour for the less privileged in the society.

Recently, the Lift Above Poverty Organisation, better known as LAPO, a non-governmental organisation-turned-micro finance bank, as part of its corporate social responsibility aimed at helping the needy in the society, awarded scholarships worth over N33 million to over 700 physical challenged and less privileged persons in the country to study in secondary to tertiary levels to enable them become useful to themselves and the society.

Speaking at scholarship award ceremony, Chairperson of the LAPO Scholarship Board, Professor Christiana Okojie, said the scheme was to uplift the lives of the poor and physically challenged, especially children of LAPO clients and indigent students.

She appealed to well-meaning Nigerians, individuals and organisations to support the funding of education of physically challenged persons in the society, noting that students with various disabilities and the less privileged were less cared for by the government and even the private sector.

“It is against this backdrop that children from low-income households drop out of the educational system because they lack the necessary fund to provide them with qualitative education for a better future,” she said, noting that giving them an educational lifeline “will bring out a brighter future of our children, particularly the low-income household”.

According to her, “The need for the scholarship fund was borne out of the corporate responsibility of LAPO,” which she said was endowed with the sum of $10,000 as a cash prize from Grameen Bank during the 2006 Award for Excellence in Micro-finance.

Edo State Commissioner on the Niger-Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Mr. Henry Okhuarobo, who presented the scholarship to the beneficiaries, urged them to see the scholarship as the end to weathering the storm in the education sector and that they should “take their challenges as a step to greater heights”.

LAPO, which was initiated as a non-profit entity at Ogwashi-Uku in present day Delta State, was formally incorporated as a non-profit non-governmental organisation, NGO, in 1993. In 2010, the organisation set up a microfinance bank and transferred the bulk of its microfinance operations to the new institutional vehicle. LAPO, as a non-profit organisation, is still involved in the provision of a range of social and economic empowerment services, particularly in rural communities across the country.

According to Mr. Godwin Ehigiamusoe, Managing Director of LAPO, the prompting factors for the establishment of LAPO and which have sustained its growth were first and foremost, his ideological perspective expressed in his strong belief that meaningful development would only be possible if a large number of persons with limited means were empowered to be involved in wealth creation.

“LAPO started as a simple act of giving N100 (US$0.64) each as loan to three women in the local parish of my Christian denomination in Ogwashi-Uku. A fortuitous contact with the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh significantly influenced the scope and feature of LAPO. We meet the core needs of a large and critical segment of the society.

“Second, is the financial and moral support we received from local and international agencies; related is the fact of our prudent utilisation of such support.

“Third, is the presence of committed people. It does not cease to amaze me how my colleagues transverse hamlets and urban slums to deliver financial and social empowerment services to those in need. “Four, is our commitment to innovation. LAPO has contributed to the emerging features of microfinance practice in the areas of client engagement with strong but flexible service delivery institutional structures and procedures.”

Ehigiamusoe stated that the mission of LAPO was to empower their clients through access to affordable financial services delivered in cost-effective and innovative manner. He added that LAPO Microfinance Bank Ltd exists to address the economic and social subjection of a large number of Nigerians through the provision of financial services to micro, small and medium enterprises on affordable terms.

LAPO, a community development organization which focuses on the empowerment of the poor, operates through 320 branches in 27 states and Abuja, has employed 3, 499 staff, with over a million clients. “The major challenge of socio-economic and political transformation in developing countries like Nigeria is how to bring about the good life to the citizens. The people can only enjoy the good life if they are productive and are able to galvanize resources to create the wealth that can expand the economy and provide for the tramping population of the poor,” Ehigiamusoe said at Annual LAPO Development Forum held in Benin last week.

—Jethro Ibileke