Stranded foreign scholarship holders who received a scholarship under the Federal Government’s bilateral education agreement have written to President Bola Tinubu about the scholarships being withheld from them for a period of 14 months.
The letter dated August 20, 2024 was signed by the association of all scholars in Hungary, Morocco, China, Serbia, Algeria, Venezuela and Russia.
The BEA scholarship supports educational exchange between Nigeria and the partner countries.
The awarding of scholarships is the responsibility of the Federal Study Advisory Board, which reports to the Federal Ministry of Education.
The PUNCH had exclusively reported that the Federal Ministry of Education had announced a cut in scholarships for foreign researchers who are currently stuck in Russia, Morocco and Algeria, among other places.
The scholarship recipients had also been due payments in advance for several months and some of them confirmed to our correspondent that they had had to take out loans to survive.
The ministry attributed the reduction in allowances to the economic crisis.
The government’s decision to drastically cut scholarship beneficiaries’ stipends and the commitment to settle the outstanding amounts are contained in a memo signed by the Director of the Federal Scholarship Board, Ndajiwo HA, on behalf of the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman.
In a letter seen by our correspondent on Wednesday, the scholarship recipients pointed out that due to delays in the payment of scholarships, many of them have fallen into “great hardship and are forced to work hard in distant countries to make ends meet.”
“This has certainly affected our academic performance,” they complained.
The scholars’ union said it had “received reports of suicide attempts by some scholars, while others were threatened with legal action by their landlords and/or creditors for not paying their loans or rent.”
The letter continued: “Recall that in the Federal Scholarship Board memo sent to us on July 23, the Director of the FSB announced a 56% adjustment of the monthly stipends for 2024 due to the domestic exchange rate. As sad as this sounds to the ears of the scholarship recipients, they hope that the reduced amount will be paid out as soon as possible to provide temporary relief.
“Unfortunately, even a month later, we have not received the reduced amount. According to information from the FSB, the funds were sent to the CBN for onward distribution to the various embassies, which have not received the payment to date. All attempts to contact the CBN regarding the status of the payment have been unsuccessful.
“We therefore use this medium not only to call on the CBN to ensure the payment of these reduced scholarships, but also to call on the Honourable Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, to urgently ensure the payment of the reduced scholarships for 2024 and the six months of 2023 due to the scholarship beneficiaries.
“We implore the Presidency and the entire Federal Government of Nigeria to recognise that we are not only the future of this nation but also its lifeblood. To abandon us now is to condemn us to a life in the shadows, a life where hope withers and dies. The agony we have endured since July 2023, unpaid and neglected, has already brought many to the brink of the abyss. Another day of delay will not only deepen our suffering but will seal the fate of the weakest among us, including orphans and those without any support. The blood of innocent scholars will be on your hands.”
