This prompt is not solely about financial need, as most people think. The David Oyedepo Foundation scholarship committee specifically try to evaluate the person behind that need. The word 'need' is deliberate. It is not asking whether the scholarship would be helpful. It is asking whether you need it.
The DOF scholarship is need-based, which means financial difficulty is not a disqualifier; it is part of the criteria. But it is matched with merit. This means they want to see a person who has scaled a series of obstacles, pressure and certain limitations but still manages to strive, to excel and work hard. This essay is also a character test. What the DOF committee remembers are not the essays that describe the most hardship, but the ones that describe hardship with honesty, specificity, and resolve.
A strong essay for this prompt follows four paragraphs. Each paragraph should carry a specific function.
Do not open with a summary. Open with the detail, the moment, or the image that captures what your financial circumstances have actually looked like in your life. The stronger the detail, the less you have to explain. Let the committee feel it before you tell them what it means. Include: A specific moment, circumstance, or image that captures the reality of your financial situation. Enough detail that a stranger can feel the weight of it. A pivot: what you understood, decided, or held onto because of that reality or circumstance.
This is where you show the committee that you have not been waiting for your circumstances to improve before doing the work. Name your results specifically. Then connect those results to the pressure you were working under. A JAMB score in stable conditions is one thing. That same score while managing financial anxiety, instability, and sacrifice is something else entirely — and the committee needs to feel that difference. Include your specific academic results, JAMB score, WAEC grades, awards, and recognitions. The conditions under which you earned them and a clear statement that you have earned this opportunity, not just that you need it.
Be clear about what the David Oyedepo Foundation scholarship does for you. Do your research about their values and align yourself to it. Name the university — Covenant or Landmark. Name your course. Show the committee that this scholarship is not a general rescue — it is the specific bridge to a specific future that is already in view. The university you are applying to and the course you want to study, the level and quality of education that your goals actually require and what the alternative looks like should be included in this paragraph
Close with confidence. The committee is not investing in your past; they are investing in your future. Show them what that investment produces. What will you do with this education? Who will you become? What will you give back? The final sentence should leave no doubt that saying yes to you is worth it.
Paragraph 1
One thing I did not grow up with is the luxury of certainty. There is an edge that certainty gives a person that I critically lacked. Certainty that my school fees would be paid on time. That I would have a textbook before the end of a session. That I could go on a school trip with my peers without a conversation about what we could not afford. Nothing was certain; I could only hope for a miracle. But I had a mother who was hardworking, who would spare no naira to see that my needs were met, with a dogged belief that education was the one door nobody could close on me.
This paragraph does not open with an immediate crisis. It opens with the texture of a reality, the small, everyday forms of uncertainty that stack up into something heavy. The list of specifics (school fees, textbooks, school trips) does more than describe poverty; it shows the constant low-grade pressure of growing up without financial security. The mother appears at the end as the anchor that held the writer's belief together. That is a different, more dignified kind of opening than a dramatic declaration of hardship.
Things to note about this paragraph:
• Opens with an abstraction, certainty, and immediately makes it concrete with specific, relatable examples.
• The mother's belief is introduced as a counterforce to the uncertainty
• The "one door nobody could close on me" is the emotional anchor of the entire essay. It will be paid off at the closing.
...Paragraph 1
One thing I did not grow up with is the luxury of certainty. There is an edge that certainty gives a person that I critically lacked. Certainty that my school fees would be paid on time. That I would have a textbook before the end of a session. That I could go on a school trip with my peers without a conversation about what we could not afford. Nothing was certain; I could only hope for a miracle. But I had a mother who was hardworking, who would spare no naira to see that my needs were met, with a dogged belief that education was the one door nobody could close on me.
Breakdown
This paragraph does not open with an immediate crisis. It opens with the texture of a reality, the small, everyday forms of uncertainty that stack up into something heavy. The list of specifics (school fees, textbooks, school trips) does more than describe poverty; it shows the constant low-grade pressure of growing up without financial security. The mother appears at the end as the anchor that held the writer's belief together. That is a different, more dignified kind of opening than a dramatic declaration of hardship.
Things to note about this paragraph: