Rising above challenges to succeed requires a positive attitude!
In August 2022, Daniel, who had just received admission into the 3rd cohort of scholars at the Nigeria University of Technology and Management (NUTM), reached out to me on LinkedIn. He had been awarded a 90% scholarship but struggled to pay the remaining 10%, given his modest earnings in Port Harcourt and his family’s limited financial abilities. He was disheartened and confused, but his passion for joining the program was evident. At NUTM, we had previously been able to offer full scholarships to all our pioneering cohorts—57 scholars in the first year and 60 in the second—thanks to the generous support of partners like the Mastercard Foundation. This enabled the early scholars to learn from world-class faculty from Ivy League institutions such as Stanford, UPenn, MIT, and Oxford, as well as industry leaders like Atedo Peterside, Arunma Oteh, Ibukun Awosika and Asue Ighodalo. The scholars were housed in fully air-conditioned, self-contained rooms at Landmark in Oniru, with 24-hour ele