Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has raised serious concerns over the fate of Nigerian students studying abroad under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA), alleging that the scholarship scheme has been quietly abandoned by the current administration, leaving hundreds of young Nigerians stranded and destitute in foreign countries.
In a post on X Sunday, Atiku said he had been “well briefed on how Nigerian students under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) have been abandoned abroad,” describing the situation as a national failure of responsibility and compassion.
The BEA programme, according to the former vice president, is not a recent initiative. “The BEA is a scholarship scheme that began in 1993 and was revitalised in 1999,” he explained. The programme enables Nigerian students to pursue undergraduate and postgraduate studies in partner countries through formal agreements between Nigeria and host nations.
However, Atiku accused the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of discontinuing the programme without warning. “Under the @officialABAT administration, the BEA scholarship programme, a bridge between Nigeria and the world, has been quietly discontinued without notice to the parents/wards of the students and without any consideration for their education,” he said.
He disclosed that what was initially presented as a temporary measure later degenerated into total neglect. “I am informed that what was initially described as a temporary five-year suspension soon metamorphosed into outright abandonment, leaving about 1,600 young Nigerians stranded abroad with empty pockets and fading hope,” Atiku stated.
According to him, the demands of the affected students are modest but urgent. “Their pleas are simple and desperate: pay the stipends owed, now more than $6,000 per student,” he said. Yet, he lamented that government officials responded with what he termed a detached and inhumane justification, arguing that scarce public funds must be managed “responsibly.”
“In that reasoning, the humans behind the figures dissolved into abstractions, and duty was sacrificed on the altar of convenience,” Atiku added.
The former vice president of Nigeria, between 1999 and 200,7 further criticised the timing and manner of the programme’s suspension, noting that it worsened an already dire situation. “Between September and December 2023, the students were not paid, and in 2024, stipends were slashed by 56 per cent, from $500 to $220 a month, before stopping altogether. There was no payment throughout the whole of 2025,” he revealed.
He painted a grim picture of life for the affected students, saying, “I gathered that hunger, rent arrears, and shame have become the daily companions of the beneficiary students.” Atiku also referenced a tragic incident in Morocco, where “one student did not survive the ordeal, dying in November last year and turning quiet suffering into public grief.”
The crisis, he said, triggered protests in Nigeria. “Parents and scholars poured into the streets of Abuja, protesting before the Ministries of Education and Finance, their placards heavy with sorrow and rage, their questions unanswered,” he noted.
The Nigerian politician reserved particularly harsh words for a statement credited to the Minister of Education. “Then came the final wound: defiance dressed as policy,” he said, recalling that the minister reportedly suggested that any student “fed up” could be sponsored to return home. “To anxious parents, it sounded like expulsion by neglect, Nigeria casting off its brightest children,” he added.
He stressed that the BEA was never meant to be an act of charity. “The BEA scheme was never a charity; it was a diplomatic agreement rooted in shared progress,” Atiku said, noting that it was revitalised in 1999 to help build Nigeria’s future workforce through partnerships with countries such as China, Russia, Morocco and Hungary.
“Today, that pact lies broken,” he concluded, “and across distant campuses, Nigerian scholars wait, not just for stipends, but for a sign that their country still remembers them.”
