The Federal Scholarship Board has sent payment instructions to foreign embassies where international scholars receiving the Federal Government’s Bilateral Educational Agreement scholarship are attending school.
The BEA scholarship is intended to promote educational exchange between Nigeria and its partner nations.
The Federal Scholarship Board, which reports to the Federal Ministry of Education, oversees the scholarship program.
The PUNCH exclusively learned that the Federal Ministry of Education has announced a reduction in allowances for foreign scholars who are now stranded in Russia, Morocco, and Algeria, among other places.
The scholars had also been owed for several months with a number of them confirming to our correspondent that they had resorted to taking loans to survive.
The ministry attributed the allowance cut to economic crises.
The government’s decision to slash the scholars’ allowances and promises to pay the outstanding owed was contained in a memo signed by the Director of the Federal Scholarship Board, Ndajiwo H.A., on behalf of the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman.
