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₦3.5 Million Before Breakfast: Prince Ukeme Ukpong Surprises Students in Akwa Ibom With More Than A Session’s Fees

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3 hours ago

June 19, 2026

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₦3.5 Million Before Breakfast: Prince Ukeme Ukpong Surprises Students in Akwa Ibom With More Than A Session’s Fees

Most people clear their birthdays with cake and a quiet evening. Prince Ukeme Ukpong started his with a banner cheque worth ₦3,500,000 and twenty young Nigerians walking away with more than just a meal.

On the morning of 17th June, 2026, the Student Impact Breakfast with Prince Ukeme Ukpong held its very first edition, and it did exactly what its name promised. Twenty tertiary students from across Akwa Ibom State were brought together around one table, not to be lectured or screened, but to be celebrated. They came from the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State University, Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic, and the Akwa Ibom State College of Nursing Sciences, representing eleven Local Government Areas in Akwa Ibom and one in neighbouring Cross River State.

Prince Ukeme Ukpong speaking at the ceremony

By the time the breakfast wrapped up, the Chancellor of the Prince Ukeme Ukpong Mega Foundation had personally funded a total sum of ₦3.5 million for the students, in most cases covering well over a full session’s school fees. It is the kind of gesture that turns thank God for school fees into a story students will tell for years.

This initiative did not happen in isolation. It sits at the heart of the 22 June For The People campaign, the Foundation’s birthday tradition where Prince Ukeme Ukpong turns the day society usually reserves for celebrating an individual into a day for celebrating everyone else instead. As the sole funder of the Foundation, every Naira behind this gesture came directly from him, a continuation of the same conviction that has powered the Foundation since its very first project: impact does not wait for a perfect moment, it starts wherever you are.

The breakfast itself carried weight beyond the cheque. The Bishop of Mount Zion Lighthouse Full Gospel Church, Ebenezer Diocese, His Lordship Bishop Benjamin Green, graced the occasion alongside members of the Prince Ukeme Ukpong Mega Foundation, lending the morning a tone that was as spiritual as it was celebratory. Students who had spent months, in some cases years, quietly leading change in their communities, schools, and peer circles were finally seated at a table built for them.

What makes this story powerful is not just the size of the gift. It is the message behind it: that the students chosen were not waiting for wealth or position before they started giving back, and now, neither would their education have to wait for relief. From feeding initiatives to girl-child advocacy, from career mentorship to community uniforms sewn from personal earnings, these twenty students had already proven they understood impact long before this breakfast found them.

For Prince Ukeme Ukpong, this is what One Birthday, Many Impacts truly looks like in practice.