The advancement of education and youth development has continued to receive ample attention in the Bank's CSR initiatives. These include the FirstBank Annual Undergraduate Essay Competition for students in all universities and polytechnics in Nigeria and the Annual Secondary School Quiz Competition. In 2008, the Bank increased the prizes. Notably, the top three winners of the Essay Competition were offered automatic employment by the Bank upon graduation. Both competitions are long-lasting initiatives to promote intellectual development through healthy academic competition among secondary and tertiary school students nationwide.

Another key component of the Bank's intervention in education is University Endowments. The total value of the FirstBank Universities Endowment in 15 federal universities now stands at over N350 million. These endowments were boosted with strategic projects which include:

• commitment of N50 million to the construction of the Faculty of Social Science Building, University of Port Harcourt;
• N28.7 million for the construction of a Lecture Hall at the Federal University of Technology, Minna;
• N38.4 million expended so far on the construction of a 500-seater Lecture Theatre at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife; and
• another N3.4 million released as final payment for the construction of the School of Dentistry Building in the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, which cost a total of N55 million.

The Bank provided N24.6 million for the construction of the administrative block of Loyola Jesuit Memorial College Port Harcourt and N10 million to support the construction of the Biomedical Research Centre of Babcock University, Ilisan Remo. In promoting intellectual discourse amongst the youth, the Nigeria Leadership Initiative received N23.8 million for its 2008 NLI Future Leaders Seminar & Award Dinner, N10 million for the Bank's partnership with Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE), N5 million for the SIFE Nigeria's delegation to the Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) World Cup 2008 in Singapore, and N6 million sponsorship of the Centenary Lecture of King's College Lagos.

Also, in the last financial year the Bank initiated the process for recruiting executive trainees, through which hundreds of fresh graduates are employed annually as part of its programme to promote youth development. In this vein, FirstBank stands out as probably the biggest employer of this genre of employees in the country.