Nigerian students face deportation, send SOS to FG

The federal scholarship scheme undertaken by the government coordinates and disburses scholarship to Nigerian students home and abroad. It is a highly sought after opportunity by students and parents. However, while many students still struggle to get the scholarship award, especially to schools abroad, those already on the scheme decry government neglect. They say government […]

The federal scholarship scheme undertaken by the government coordinates and disburses scholarship to Nigerian students home and abroad. It is a highly sought after opportunity by students and parents.
However, while many students still struggle to get the scholarship award, especially to schools abroad, those already on the scheme decry government neglect. They say government has not fulfilled its responsibilities in the bilateral agreements between it and the other countries.
The students who said they have not received their allowances (stipends) in the past eight months, called for urgent attention to their plight before they are treated as illegal immigrants in their host countries.
Daily Trust obtained a letter signed by the President of the Association of Federal Government Doctoral Candidates in Russia, Godwin Ezinkwo,  stating that students sent on scholarship by the Federal Scholarship Board are abandoned to starve in foreign lands every year  and that for up to eight months now, they are left without their monthly remunerations (stipends).
He said some of the students who have finished their courses of study are being thrown out of their hostels with nowhere to go and may face deportation if they are unable to purchase their tickets back home by the end of July 2015.
The president noted that the scholarship scheme which is awarded to students with exceptional academic prowess has turned to a source of torture on those who have not committed any crime by accepting bilateral scholarship to study in countries like Russia, China, Cuba, Morocco, Algeria, Ukraine etc. He said it has made them vulnerable to all sorts of vices and exposed them to danger in these countries.
Ezinkwo said: “It is a shame that every year Nigerian students resort to begging their counterparts from other African countries to survive.
“To make their case worse, the laws in some of these countries prohibit them from working and making money, which could have helped them to meet their needs,” he also said in the letter.
It was gathered that several attempts in the past through the National Assembly and the media to resolve the issue of delay of students’ stipends in foreign countries have not yielded much results.
The letter stated that when other students from other countries receive their stipends every month, Nigerian students have to wait for a minimum of six months to be paid.
Reacting, spokesperson of the Federal Ministry of Education, Mr. Olu Lipede, admitted that the students have not been paid but denied that it is up to eight months. He said that several attempts to resolve the issue before the last government left were futile.
Lipede said there was a move to approach the president directly to see if something could be done as a matter of urgent intervention.
He however explained that sometime in the past, scholarship money used to be in the recurrent allocation and so many things go into it. He said the moment they started drawing money from the recurrent allocation, the scholarship remittance was usually affected, “and the ministry decided it should be moved to capital allocation.”
“With that, each money allocated has a specific subject and you can’t spend for any other thing except for that subject so that gives enough guarantee,” he added.
The ministry, he said, has always been in touch with the budget office and has written to it several times and also visited the students several times. “The ministry might have to go to the president for this because everybody feels the pain, it is the image of Nigeria and they are the children of Nigeria,” he said.
“They are practically like our own children, it pains everybody, but then it is a situation that we can’t really help right now. So we believe that with the president’s intervention, by the grace of God, something positive will come out of it,” he assured.
Lipede condemned stories that the ministry either embezzled or put the money in fixed account to generate profit. He said such information was untrue and rubbished the effort of the ministry in protecting the interest of the students abroad. He said the money allotted for the scholarship programme cannot be spent by any individual or used for any purpose.
“People should try and understand that it is not that anyone is nonchalant to Nigeria’s children outside, it is just that something needs to be amended somewhere,” he said.
While hoping that the new administration will take a second look at the issue to help, Lipede pointed out that government should look for a way of not releasing scholarship money quarterly but in bulk, at the beginning of the financial year.
He said: “2015 Capital Allocation has not been implemented, not even first quarter released.”
Meanwhile, the students abroad have called on President Muhammadu Buhari, Senate President Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara to come to their aid.
“We call on the Senate and House committees on education to urgently look into this matter in order to stop this menace and proffer a permanent solution to the quagmire in which the Federal Scholarship Board has found itself,” the letter urged.
Meanwhile, all efforts to get the Director of Federal Scholarship Board to speak on the matter proved abortive.
However, Daily Trust gathered that the nonpayment of the students’ remuneration was one of the issues laid before the president on Tuesday at the villa.