From Blessing Douglas, Port Harcourt
In a bid to encourage security personnel in active services across the country, the General Overseer of Omega Power Ministries (OPM), Apostle Chibuzor Chinyere, has sponsored children of fallen heroes on scholarship abroad.
The beneficiaries who are children of policemen who died while in service, departed the country yesterday, to study course of their choice in Ecole Superieure De Management (ESM), University, Benin Republic, under the sponsorship of OPM.
Addressing the beneficiaries before their departure, the GO of OPM noted that the 17 beneficiaries were selected from the different zones of the country with no emphasis on religion.
He said the scholarship covered tuition fees, accommodation and one-square meal in a free OPM restaurant in the ESM University premises.
“In everything we give God the glory. I know wherever your fathers are they will be very happy. It is not easy to fight to protect a nation. Your fathers sacrificed their lives for this great nation and they paid the price.
“I believe that you are going to be successful, concentrate on your books. Don’t join bad gangs and achieve the purpose you are send to the school”.
He also said the scholarship was a way of helping families that lost their father while they were serving the country and cannot afford education, adding that the programme would serve as an encouragement to serving officers in different forces that their efforts to ensure sanity in the country are not in vain.
The clergy said: “In a way of giving back to the society, we looked at late policemen who died in active service. Somebody came to the church and was telling me how their father died as a policeman and they have stopped going to school.
“I thought, if I am seeing one person, it means there are so many others that have similar experience, so I have to inform that I need some of these people that died in active service that their children have stopped going to school so that I can give them university scholarship. That was how this list came, 17 of them.
“They brought them from the different zones of the country. Whether Muslim, Christian, it does not matter. The concern is that their fathers paid the ultimate price by protecting this country and in the process they died. This is so that their children don’t get frustrated. Some of them came from the village, because they have relocated to the village.”
Chinyere however, urged the Federal Government to put up a process or programme that allows children of security men who die in service to have automatic scholarship till their university level.
Some of the beneficiaries who spoke with journalists before their departure, appreciated the clergy for pulling them out of their frustration to give them sound education. They expressed joy that they have the opportunity to school abroad free of charge.
Picture: The General Overseer of Omega Power Ministries (OPM), Apostle Chibuzor Chinyere in a group photograph, with children of fallen heroes who benefited from the clergy’s scholarship abroad.
