From Uche Nnorom, Makurdi.
The executive secretary, Benue State Scholarship Board Mr. Solomon Tor Gba has frowned at the attitude of Keystone bank in frustrating the payment of scholarship funds to students of tertiary institutions in the State.
Mr. Solomon who made this lamentation during an interaction with newsmen in Makurdi yesterday, said while two other banks, Fidelity Bank and First Monumental Banks are cooperating with the board in disbursing funds to the students, keystone Bank has remained insistence in withholding one thousand naira out of the five thousand naira paid to the students.
“I have passionately appealed to them to stop this and even reported the matter to the Commissioner of Police and the State Security Services, SSS who invited the bank officials but they remained adamant. These are students why should they withhold their money, it is unfair”, he said.
He added that the board has over N13 million with Keystone, intimating that it would soon stop remittance of scholarship funds to the bank.
The board boss explained that the introduction of e-payment of scholarship funds has gone a long way in checking fraud which hitherto was associated with the board. This is even as he decried the manner the immediate past leadership of National Union of Benue State Students led by its president Matthew Mamwoo embezzled the sum of N13 million meant for the local chapters of the union across the country.
“There is a lot of mischief by the students. Some use fictitious names and different universities to collect money. This is what we are trying to check and we are bent on doing this”, Tor Gba maintained.
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