Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has raised alarm over what he described as the neglect of Nigerian students studying abroad under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA).
He lamented that about 1,600 Nigerian youths are currently stranded overseas, left without financial support and facing diminishing hope. Atiku recalled that the BEA scholarship programme was established in 1993 and later revived in 1999 to enable Nigerians pursue undergraduate and postgraduate studies in partner countries through bilateral agreements.
According to him, the programme once a vital link connecting Nigeria to the global academic community has been quietly terminated under the @officialABAT administration. He said the decision was taken without prior notice to the affected students or their parents and with little regard for the impact on their education.
“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.”
He said their pleas are simple and desperate: pay the stipends owed, now more than $6,000 per student.
“Yet from the corridors of power came a cold, technocratic explanation: scarce public funds must be managed “responsibly,” and money meant to keep these students alive abroad should instead be redirected home.
“In that reasoning, the humans behind the figures dissolved into abstractions, and duty was sacrificed on the altar of convenience.
“The cruelty of the moment was sharpened by timing and tone. After months of cries from students and parents over unpaid allowances, the authorities announced the suspension with a levity that stunned those already on the brink.
He said 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.
He further stated that no stipends were paid to the students throughout 2025.
According to him, hunger, unpaid rent, and humiliation have become a constant reality for the affected scholars. He recounted that in Morocco, one of the students succumbed to the hardship, passing away in November last year and turning silent suffering into open tragedy.
Atiku also noted that distressed parents and students took to the streets of Abuja, staging protests at the Ministries of Education and Finance, carrying placards that reflected their pain and anger, yet receiving no answers. He described what followed as the final blow, when the minister, in a press statement, suggested that any student who felt “fed up” could be sponsored to return home—an approach he said trivialised years of academic effort and crushed aspirations.
To worried parents, he said, the statement sounded like abandonment by design, with Nigeria turning its back on its most promising young minds and exposing them to ridicule among peers from other African countries that uphold their commitments.
He stressed that the BEA was never meant to be a handout but a diplomatic pact aimed at mutual development, revived in 1999 to strengthen Nigeria’s future workforce through partnerships with countries including China, Russia, Morocco, and Hungary. Today, he said, the agreement has been breached, leaving Nigerian students across foreign campuses waiting not only for their allowances, but for reassurance that their country has not forgotten them.