OPay Partners with University of Ilorin to Sponsor Students with Scholarships for 10 years

Nigeria’s leading fintech company, OPay, has set out to sponsor University of Ilorin (Unilorin) students with scholarships for the next 10 years. This is to help struggling students better manage their educational needs.

On April 16, 2025, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between OPay and Unilorin and during the ceremony, OPay’s Chief Public Affairs officer, Justin Zhang and University of Ilorin’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Wahab Olasupo SAN, spoke about the partnership.

UNILORIN's Registrar, Mr. Mansur Adeleke Alfanla; UNILORIN's VC, Professor Wahab Olasupo Egbewole (SAN); OPay's Chief Public Affairs Officer, Mr. Justin Zhang; and OPay's CSR Manager, Mr. Itoro Udo.

While speaking at the MOU signing, Mr Justin Zhang explained how OPay, which is CBN licensed and is the biggest mobile money operator in Nigeria with up to 40 million registered subscribers, decided to think about how they could give back to the society seeing as the majority of their customers are young people.

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For OPay’s civic social responsibility, they decided to focus on education after seeing a lot of hardworking youths struggling to get an education to make their lives better. Justin said:

“In my 13 years of experience in Nigeria, I met many young people who are very smart, ambitious and with great passion, but they don't have enough resources and ability to grow. That's why we considered doing something for them. I know that some students in Nigeria, after the first year of going to school, they go back to work for another two or three years, so they can make money to continue their studies. Assuming someone attends their first year of school at 21 years old, after they manage to get the full education, they are probably around 27 or 28 years old. At this point, they can only get some jobs with lower pay. They cannot do more than what they can do. So, I think giving scholarships to students is the right way to go.”

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Speaking further, Justin Zhang said that in 2024, OPay started a 10-year scholarship project with United Nations and European Union custodians. He continued that in 2025, Opay is on a mission to give scholarships to 400 students by giving N300,000 every month to each student.

He said:

“Last year, we started a 10-year project for scholarship with UN and EU custodians. This year, we plan to give 400 students a scholarship. Every month we are sponsoring N300,000 per person. We want to sign a long-term agreement with the universities. Those 400 students will be separated into 20 universities in Nigeria and each institution will sign a 10-year contract.”

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Mr Zhang disclosed that apart from OPay’s scholarship to universities, they also plan to make donations to primary and secondary schools, and to empower housewives across various societies.

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“We give them some school items like bags, books, and some other school materials. This year, we also started a 10-year project. We call it a women's empowerment project. It's a partnership with the EU.

"We are sponsoring the training of 100 housewives in various societies, and then sponsoring 50 of them who perform well in the training by offering sponsorship for buying some materials and for helping them to start their business. We want to take a long time monitoring to see how they perform and how the training and sponsorship change their lives,” he added.

Justin Zhang concluded by saying Opay is open to discussing more possibilities of how they can help University of Ilorin students and society, leading to a growth in the economy.

Unilorin’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Wahab Olasupo, showed appreciation for Opay’s plan for students of the university, and he assured them of nurturing their partnership.

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The VC also explained the selection process of the scholarship recipients and how transparency would be ensured. He said:

“We have our processes and systems that we use in identifying who has what. And it may interest you to know that in this university for more than 20 years we have created a column for scholars. Students who are the best in their various departments and I believe that by the time OPay identifies the number of slots that they are giving us it is not going to be difficult for us to identify because as we speak, we have the best scholar in each faculty, we have the best scholar in each department and of ours the best scholar in each program which is going to be a lot easier.”

Prof. Olasupo spoke about Opay’s scholarship program and how it benefits the Nigerian education sector. According to him, the scholarship will enable students to focus on the things that are important.

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“What they are doing is part of the expansion, creating opportunities for people to study with ease and without too much stress because at the end of the day if you have the support from organizations like OPay, sponsoring you with scholarship it means you will not be thinking about what am I going to eat, how am I going to get money to buy books, how am I going to get money, get data for my phone, how am I going to get money to go to school with public transportation because N300,000 is a lot of money and I believe that we should appreciate OPay and such other organizations that are reaching out to universities and of course as they have reached out we will also reach out to you. As soon as possible we will also visit you so that you will know that we value this relationship,” he said.

Source: Legit.ng