MTN Foundation has entered the selection stage of Phase 6 of its What Can We Do Together initiative after receiving 20,983 nominations from across Nigeria — the highest volume of community participation recorded in the programme’s history this cycle.
The nominations, which opened in May 2026 and ran until a deadline extended to June 22, invited Nigerians to identify public primary healthcare centres and secondary school science laboratories in their communities for possible upgrade and revitalisation. Following the close of the nomination window, the Foundation’s field teams conducted physical verification assessments of 149 facilities across the country, comprising 113 public primary healthcare centres and 36 schools nominated under the Science Laboratory Upgrade intervention.
Each facility assessment involved on-site verification of government ownership, physical accessibility, existing infrastructure conditions, and overall suitability for revitalisation. With that phase now concluded, the programme moves into formal selection, after which approved beneficiary facilities will be publicly announced.
Under Phase 6, MTN Foundation plans to revitalise 40 public primary healthcare centres and renovate and fully equip 15 public secondary school science laboratories nationwide, bringing the total direct beneficiary count to 55 facilities across Nigeria.
Odunayo Sanya, Executive Director of MTN Foundation, described the programme’s intent as structural rather than ceremonial. “We are supporting the development of stronger communities by improving access to essential healthcare services and giving the next generation of scientists, engineers, and doctors access to facilities where they can learn through practice and imagination,” Sanya said.
The numbers behind this initiative deserve a moment of attention. Nigeria currently operates over 30,000 primary healthcare centres nationally, with a significant proportion in advanced states of disrepair or functional under-capacity. At the secondary school level, the absence of functioning science laboratories has become one of the most documented structural barriers to STEM career pipelines in the country. A generation of students has passed through schools without conducting a single practical experiment.
Twenty thousand nominations for 55 spots is also a data point worth reading carefully. It means that for every facility that will eventually receive an upgrade, more than 380 community members nominated a facility that will not. That ratio is not a failure of the programme. It is a measurement of suppressed demand for functional public infrastructure, and it should be read by policymakers with the same urgency it was written by the communities that submitted it.
The community-driven model is among the most important design features of the WCWDT initiative. Rather than deploying corporate resources through internal identification, the programme places nomination authority with ordinary Nigerians, creating a bottom-up signal of where need is most acute and where community ownership is already in place. Facilities that communities actively nominate are facilities that communities have a vested interest in protecting after the upgrade is complete. That distinction matters for sustainability.
Phase 6 is the sixth iteration of the programme, which means MTN Foundation now carries a body of implementation learning — on what infrastructure upgrades last, what communities follow through, and what verification criteria most accurately predict facility viability. That institutional knowledge is as valuable as the physical renovations themselves.
The final list of selected communities will be published through MTN Nigeria’s official channels as the selection process concludes.
Leave a Reply