Opekete Foundation Opens 4th Florence Bamidele Makanjuola Scholarship for Women

The Opekete Foundation yesterday, announced the opening of applications for the 4th Florence Bamidele Makanjuola (FBM) Scholarship for Women, the Foundation’s flagship initiative supporting academically promising young women from financially disadvantaged backgrounds across Nigeria. 

Now in its fourth cycle, the FBM Scholarship has matured from a scholarship fund into a structured pathway. Each scholarship covers tuition for studies in Nursing, in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education — but the award itself is only the entry point. 

A statement yesterday, explained that every beneficiary the Foundation’s structured mentorship programmes are organised around a single guiding theme: Identity. Strategy. Excellence. 

Scholars are paired with experienced women across the professions, supported through one-on-one sessions and full-cohort group work on financial literacy and career formation, and engaged in the Foundation’s national platforms long after the cheque clears.

Since the formalisation of the scholarship programme in 2021, the Foundation has reviewed more than 3,300 applications and awarded 47 scholarships across three cohorts — a deliberately measured pace, chosen to keep the depth of mentorship and follow-through that defines the FBM model. The fourth cohort will draw on lessons from those previous cycles, with strengthened financial-need verification and an expanded merit-based screening process designed for fairness, transparency, and rigour.

“The choice of fields is biographical before it is strategic. The scholarship is named in honour of the late Mrs Florence Bamidele Makanjuola, a nurse, educator, and mentor whose life’s work was the formation of young women, and whose calling shaped the disciplines the Foundation now funds. 

“One of the first women of Imesi-Ile, Osun State, to be formally educated, Mrs Makanjuola travelled to the United Kingdom on scholarship to train as a nurse, an opportunity that defined her life and informed the kind of institution she would later build. She founded the Opekete Foundation in 2015 to expand educational access for indigent girls of Imesi-Ile origin and, in time, for young women across Nigeria. “Following her passing, the Foundation was formally restructured in 2021 under the stewardship of her granddaughter and trustees into the institutional platform it is today, with scholarship provision, mentorship, advocacy, and community engagement working as parts of a single mandate,” it stated.

What distinguishes the FBM Scholarship is the conviction that financial support, on its own, is not enough. Nigeria has many scholarship programmes; few are designed as long-term institutional commitments to a single, narrowly-defined cohort. The Foundation’s focus — only women, only in Nursing and STEM education and allied fields, only those with demonstrated financial need — is the discipline that allows depth. 

Beneficiaries are supported across the duration of their studies, not for a single semester, and remain engaged through the alumnae of the Florence Scholars Programme. They are also active participants in the FBM Roundtable, the Foundation’s national platform for policy dialogue on girl-child education, and in the Foundation’s community and school outreach work in underserved areas, which expanded into rural Imesi-Ile, Osun State, the founder’s indigenous city in 2025.

The 4th cohort will be the first to enter under a fully matured programme architecture: a multi-year financial commitment, a structured mentorship curriculum, a national convening platform, and an outreach footprint that now reaches communities scholarship programmes seldom touch. Three cycles in, the institutional infrastructure is strong enough to expand the programme’s reach without compromising its quality.

The Foundation reads its first five years as a starting point rather than a destination. The young women who applied, were selected, and are now training as nurses, scientists, engineers, and educators across more than twenty Nigerian tertiary institutions are not the end of the work. They are its most credible advocates. Applications opened with eligibility and submission details available at www.opeketefoundation.org.

The Opekete Foundation is a Nigerian non-profit dedicated to expanding educational access, leadership development, and long-term opportunity for indigent girls and young women: with a particular focus on those pursuing Nursing, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, and allied disciplines aligned with national development priorities.