The Federal Government is reviewing its foreign scholarship and bilateral education arrangements as part of efforts to eliminate unnecessary expenditure and redirect public resources towards strengthening Nigerian tertiary institutions, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has said.
Alausa said the government could no longer justify spending scarce public funds to send students abroad to study programmes that are already available in Nigerian universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.
The minister disclosed this while explaining the rationale behind the Federal Government’s decision to review its overseas scholarship arrangements, stressing that the policy was driven by the need to build domestic capacity and ensure better value for public expenditure.
He recalled that shortly after assuming office, he was presented with a proposal involving about 100,000 Nigerian students travelling to Morocco to study courses taught in English, including mass communication and journalism.
According to him, the proposal raised serious concerns because the courses were already available in Nigeria, while the students would have had to spend their first year learning French before commencing their programmes.
Alausa said, “Number one, we have all those courses in Nigeria. And yet, number two, they were going to spend the first year learning French before they started the programme.”
He added that the cost of supporting such students abroad could not be justified when Nigeria had developed considerable capacity in its tertiary institutions over the years.
