The Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa, has described the Federal Government-funded component of the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) scholarship scheme as a waste of public funds, saying Nigeria now has sufficient tertiary institutions to offer many of the programmes for which students are being sponsored abroad.
Alausa, who spoke in Abuja while fielding questions at the unveiling of the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize, said the government was reviewing existing international scholarship arrangements to ensure that scarce public resources were deployed to programmes that provide greater value to Nigerians.
He said some of the bilateral scholarship agreements were established decades ago when Nigeria lacked adequate capacity in certain specialised fields, but that the situation had changed considerably with the expansion of universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions.
According to him, the government could achieve greater impact by investing funds used to sponsor a relatively small number of students abroad in strengthening tertiary education and supporting a larger number of students within Nigeria.
The minister cited a proposal he received shortly after assuming office for the approval of about 150 Nigerian students to study in Morocco at a cost of approximately N650 million for one year.
He said the proposal raised concerns because some of the programmes were already available in Nigerian institutions, while the students would have to spend an additional year learning French before commencing their academic programmes.
Alausa said: “We have built enormous capacities in our tertiary institutions, universities and colleges. Now we are asking where we are sending students.
“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,” the Minister said.
He said the government could not justify spending hundreds of millions of naira to sponsor students abroad for programmes that could be undertaken locally.
“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,” he said.
Alausa added, “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.”
The minister, however, clarified that the Federal Government was not opposed to international scholarships, stressing that countries willing to continue offering scholarships to Nigerian students would remain free to do so.
He said the government’s position was specifically against committing public funds to programmes where the benefits did not justify the resources being expended.
Alausa said the decision was consistent with the administration’s broader policy of ensuring that public expenditure delivers measurable outcomes and contributes to sustainable development.