OPay N12bn Scholarship: Lots of Students Struggle to Pay Their Fees - OOU SUG President says
As part of OPay’s plan to give back to the society and particularly impact the lives and education of youths, they have finally taken their scholarship programme to Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU).
In June 2025, OPay signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with OOU to kickstart their plan of awarding scholarships to students of the institution.

Speaking at the event, OPay’s Chief Public Affairs Officer, Mr Justin Zhang, shared the company’s reasons for kickstarting a scholarship programme in Nigerian universities. According to him, they decided to focus on the youths who are their major customer base. He said:
“For OPay, we have been in Nigeria since 2018, but we only passed the break even last year, the fourth quarter of last year. So when we started making profits, we considered what we could do to give back to Nigeria. We decided to do something for the young generation to help their education.”
Zhang added that OPay’s scholarship programme started in 2024 with University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University.
“We started this project last year, we did some pioneer projects with the University of Ibadan (UI) and Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), one in the South and one in the North and it was successful. So this year, we want to extend to 20 universities. For every university, we give 20 slots to students, we sponsor them with N300,000 per year which means that every year, we spend N120 million for the scholarship project and for the first phase, this project will last for 10 years”, he said.
Justin Zhang also spoke on OPay’s other initiatives to give back to the society and how they have kicked off plans to donate to primary and secondary schools as well as housewives to need to learn skills to start businesses. He said:
“Apart from this, we also did other projects like “Play4aChild”. It's a donation to primary school and secondary school students, to give them some learning material like bags or books or payroll or something like that. This year, we also started another pioneer project which we call the Woman Empowerment Project. We give training to 100 house women and also select 50 from them to give them some sponsorship for them to start their business, for example, like tailoring, they start tailoring and we sponsor them with a tailoring machine and some clothes so they can start their business.”
“I think for next year, our major consideration is to give training to some students and we are focused on students in the future. So we will give some training to students and lead them to learn some skills and also to start their own business as well. This is our plan. For OPay, this is a CSR project, we didn’t ask the schools to give us something back. We don’t have any requirements.”


Through OPay’s partnership with Olabisi Onabanjo University, they will award scholarships to 20 outstanding students in the institution, with each recipient receiving 300,000 Naira. This initiative is part of their broader 10-year Scholarship Programme, which is valued at 1.2 billion Naira.
OPay is committed to fostering education and providing financial assistance to students, allowing them to achieve their academic and career goals without the hindrance of financial constraints.
Legit.ng had a chat with OOU’s SUG president, Muiz Olaoluwa Olatunji and he shared his thoughts on his school’s partnership with OPay. He said:
“My name is Muiz Olaoluwa Olatunji, and I’m the 38th SUG president. Having OPay scholarship here today is a good thing, particularly for my administration as the SUG president and to all our indigenous students, I am happy for them because this could be a kind of a program that will actually ease the tension of them dropping out or any of them not being able to further their education, so I'm really, really happy to have OPay scholarship here in our school, and I'm very, very grateful for the good and gesture for bringing the scholarship to our institution. I thank them so much, I really appreciate them.”
Speaking further, the SUG president shared his experience with students struggling to pay their fees and how OOU had been making efforts to help them.

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“Even up to this moment, I think we have a lot of students that are struggling to pay their school fees. We have a lot of them, and just getting this kind of opportunity will surely be a kind of a miraculous thing to them. We've assisted some of our students in paying school fees many times. I think the last administration, I worked closely with them and I know how much they struggled and spent more than millions to support students in paying their school fees”, he said.
Source: Legit.ng

Adunni Amodeni (Content Editor) Adunni Amodeni is a journalist with ten years of working experience in the media industry. She graduated from Babcock University in 2012 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communication. Adunni previously worked with Encomium Magazine (2012-2015). Email: shoyemi.adedolapo@corp.legit.ng

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