The Federal Government has halted its scholarship program under the Bilateral Education Agreement, stressing that funds meant for the programme could be put to better use in Nigeria.
Disclosing this at the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize in Abuja, the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, said President Bola Tinubu’s administration can no longer waste millions of naira to sponsor Nigerian students overseas to study courses being offered in Nigeria.
The minister said he received a proposal upon resumption of office with a plan that the government would spend N650 million to sponsor 150 Nigerian students to study in Morocco for one year.
Alausa explained that the proposal was turned down because the students would need to spend another year studying French before starting their academic programs, even though the courses they wanted to take were available in Nigerian universities.
He said the same N650 million, if used within the country, could help support thousands of Nigerian students instead of just a small number studying abroad.
According to Alausa, both Algeria and Morocco speak French, yet some Nigerian students are being funded to study subjects like English, journalism, and psychology in those countries.
“We are sending students to Algeria, which is a French-speaking country, to study English. We are sending students to Morocco, a French-speaking country, to study journalism and psychology.
“I felt this was not morally right. Number one, we have all those courses in Nigeria. Number two, they were going to spend the first year learning French before they started the programme.
“And number three, if we put N650 million to support students in Nigeria, it will support thousands of them. So, the bilateral agreement was not making sense to us as a government. It was a way to waste government funds. And this President will not waste any funds, any public funds,” he said.
Alausa said the BEA agreement might have been reasonable around twenty years ago when Nigeria didn’t have enough expertise in certain areas, but he pointed out that the country’s higher education system has grown a lot since then.
