The Federal Government has pledged to pay a total of N8bn owed to Nigerian students affected by the now-scrapped Bilateral Education Agreement scholarship scheme, describing the programme as heavily abused and riddled with fraud.
Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, disclosed this on Tuesday during an interview on Channels Television.
According to the minister, N4bn has already been released for disbursement, while the remaining N4bn is expected to be approved within the next 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 the Minister of Finance. It will be approved in the next two weeks. They will be settled,” Alausa said.
The minister stated that one of the first documents presented to him after assuming office revealed widespread irregularities in the administration of the scholarship scheme.
He cited an instance where he was requested to approve N650m to sponsor 60 students to Morocco, noting that some of the approved courses raised concerns.
“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,” he said.
Alausa added that several courses funded under the scheme, including psychology, sociology, zoology and botany, could conveniently be studied in Nigerian universities.
According to him, the Bilateral Education Agreement programme was originally designed to promote diplomatic and educational cooperation by sponsoring Nigerian students in specialised fields such as medicine, engineering and aeronautics.
However, he said the initiative gradually lost its focus and became a general overseas sponsorship scheme.
The minister further revealed that investigations uncovered cases where some beneficiaries were simultaneously enrolled in Nigerian universities while still receiving BEA funds.
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“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 stated.
The BEA programme was established through agreements between Nigeria and countries including China, Russia, Algeria, Hungary, Morocco, Egypt and Serbia, allowing Nigerian students to pursue higher education abroad.
Nigeria’s spending on the programme reportedly rose from N3.2bn in 2022 to N8bn in 2025.
The crisis surrounding the scheme intensified after students reportedly went for nearly a year without payments between September 2023 and August 2024.
Although payments resumed in September 2024, many scholars complained that their stipends were reduced by more than half, leading to difficulties in paying accommodation fees and accessing university services abroad.
The Federal Government officially scrapped the scheme in April 2025, affecting more than 1,200 Nigerian students studying overseas.
Despite the cancellation, a fresh N1.7bn allocation for the programme later appeared in the 2026 Appropriation Bill.
The government, however, clarified that the allocation was merely a procedural rollover and not a reversal of the decision to discontinue the programme.