The Federal Government has pledged to pay a total of N8bn in outstanding obligations to Nigerian students on the now-scrapped Bilateral Education Agreement scholarship.
The government said that the scheme was riddled with fraud and abused beyond its original purpose.
Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, made this known on Tuesday during an interview on Channels Television.
He said N4bn had already been disbursed and the remaining N4bn would be approved within two weeks.
“We’ve paid four billion of it. We’re disbursing the four billion now. This additional four billion will be approved. I’ve been in constant communication with Minister of Finance. It will be approved in the next two weeks. They will be settled,” he said.
Alausa said one of the first files placed before him upon assumption of office exposed the scale of the scheme’s abuse.
He disclosed that he was asked to approve N650m to send 60 students to Morocco, and that among the courses listed was a scholarship for a Nigerian student to study English in a French-speaking country.
“650 million for 60 students? And as I was looking at the courses that were going to go to Morocco, we have Nigerian scholarship given to a student that will go study English in Morocco, a French-speaking country. Had so many of those courses, psychology, sociology, zoology, botany,” he said.
The minister said the BEA was originally designed as a diplomatic instrument to send Nigerian students abroad for specialised training in fields such as engineering, medicine and aeronautics, but had been distorted over the years into a general overseas education subsidy.
He further disclosed that some beneficiaries were found to be simultaneously enrolled in Nigerian universities while collecting BEA funds, a development he described as indefensible.
“We also had incidences of kids that got this scholarship that they’re studying in Nigerian universities, getting the money. So, we stopped it,” he said.
The BEA programme was established through diplomatic agreements with countries including China, Russia, Algeria, Hungary, Morocco, Egypt and Serbia, under which hundreds of Nigerian students were sponsored to pursue higher education overseas. Nigeria’s budget for servicing the scheme grew from N3.2bn in 2022 to N8bn in 2025.
The students’ crisis predated the formal cancellation. From September 2023 to August 2024, no payments were made to scholars.
When a disbursement finally came in September 2024, stipends were slashed by over 56 per cent, from 220.
Some students reported being evicted from hostels or barred from university services due to unpaid fees.
The Federal Government formally scrapped the scheme in April 2025, affecting over 1,200 students abroad.
The suspension was maintained into 2026, even as a fresh N1.7bn allocation for the programme appeared in the 2026 Appropriation Bill.
The government clarified that the budgetary provision was a procedural rollover and not a policy reversal.
