Dabiri-Erewa Makes Case for Nigerian Students in Russia??

The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora, Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has appealed to the Minister of Education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, to look into the case of the non-payment of overdue Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) student scholarship for Nigerian students in Russia.




The appeal made through the ministry of education was contained in a statement issued by Dabiri-Erewa yesterday.

She urged Shekarau to ensure that the matter is speedily resolved whilst striving to implement a system which is sustainable and capable of operating with little or no human interference.

She noted that: “the House Committee on Diaspora Affairs has recently received with a deep sense of pain, incessant sad tales and complaints of about 322 Nigerian students on Scholarship from the federal government of Nigeria now begging for food in Russia.”

“The Committee on Diaspora Affairs continues to receive numerous cries for help from our students in Russia through several channels; both at home and abroad,” she added.




Recalling the committee’s intervention in a similar case in 2013, when the House Committee on Diaspora Affairs had to intervene to resolve a similar issue involving the same set of 322 students in Russia, the chairperson lamented that currently “for over eight months (and counting) our students are yet to receive their monthly stipends.”

“The lack of prompt payment and subsequent student cash strap, has led to some of our students begging from their fellow African counterparts (on the same BEA scholarship from their countries) including those from Ghana, Namibia, Uganda and even Sierra Leone.

“This act certainly does not bode well for our students and only further dents our nation’s already ailing international image. We need to act fast to ensure we do not provoke our students to adopt immoral means of survival,” the legislator stated.

She said: “this act of unpaid student stipends is highly reprehensible and is beyond human justification. The haphazard manner of payment of BEA scholarship awardees needs to be addressed immediately with a view to implementing a permanent and long term solution.


“Many of these students (and their parents) rejoiced upon receipt of the Bilateral Education Agreement Scholarship Awards by the Federal Scholarship Board through the Federal Ministry of Education and rightly so as a scholarship should normally be a thing of joy.


“This present means of scholarship administration for our students overseas is certainly unsustainable and the Federal Ministry of Education urgently needs to implement a policy for student stipend payments which is sustainable, timely and efficient,” the lawmaker advised.




She observed that: “Although citizens of Nigeria, these students are our children, our pride, our tomorrow and we must treat them as the precious gems that they are, lest we give them the reason to forsake their fatherland in years to come.”

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