Nigerian students abandoned abroad, left to starve – Atiku alleges

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused President Bola Tinubu’s administration of abandoning Nigerian students studying overseas under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA), warning that the alleged neglect has left about 1,600 young Nigerians stranded without support.

In a statement on Sunday, Atiku said the BEA scholarship scheme was quietly axed under Tinubu “without notice to parents or wards and without consideration for students already midway through their studies overseas.”

Describing the program as a “diplomatic bridge now left broken,” Atiku explained that the BEA, launched in 1993 and revitalized in 1999, was designed to enable Nigerian students pursue undergraduate and postgraduate education through agreements with partner countries.

“What was initially described as a temporary five-year suspension soon metamorphosed into outright abandonment,” Atiku said.

According to him, the decision has left students abroad without stipends, with unpaid allowances now running into thousands of dollars per student.

“Their pleas are desperate and straightforward: 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,” he said.

He revealed that the hardship worsened between September and December 2023 when stipends were unpaid, before allowances were slashed by 56 per cent in 2024 from $500 to $220 per month and later stopped entirely.

“The cruelty of the moment was sharpened by timing and tone. Hunger, rent arrears, and shame have become the daily companions of the beneficiary students.”

“In Morocco, one student did not survive the ordeal, dying in November last year and turning quiet suffering into public grief,” Atiku added.

Parents and students have protested in Abuja, gathering at the Ministries of Education and Finance to demand answers, but their appeals, he said, “have been mainly ignored.”

The former vice president also criticized remarks attributed to the education minister suggesting that students who were “fed up” could be financed to return home, saying the comment “reduced years of study and sacrifice to an administrative inconvenience.

“To anxious parents, it sounded like expulsion by neglect. Today, that pact lies broken.”

Atiku concluded that Nigerian scholars scattered across foreign campuses are still waiting not only for their stipends, but for reassurance that their country “has not forgotten them.”