Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has faulted the Bola Tinubu-led government over what he described as the neglect of Nigerian students enrolled abroad under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA), alleging that nearly 1,600 beneficiaries have been left without financial backing.
In a statement released on Sunday, the 11th of January, 2026, Atiku claimed that the BEA scholarship scheme was discontinued by the current administration “without notice to parents or wards and without consideration for students already midway through their studies overseas.”
He lamented that a programme he referred to as a “diplomatic bridge now left broken” had once played a key role in expanding access to higher education for Nigerians. According to him, the BEA introduced in 1993 and revived in 1999 was established to allow Nigerian students undertake undergraduate and postgraduate studies through formal arrangements with partner nations.
Atiku further alleged that the suspension of the scheme gradually became permanent. “What was initially described as a temporary five-year suspension soon metamorphosed into outright abandonment,” he said.
He explained that many of the affected students are now struggling abroad due to unpaid stipends, with accumulated allowances amounting to several thousands of dollars per individual.
Detailing their situation, Atiku quoted the students’ demands, saying, “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.”
According to him, conditions worsened between September and December 2023 when stipends were not paid at all. He added that in 2024, monthly allowances were cut by 56 per cent from $500 to $220 before payments were eventually halted.
Atiku described the impact on the students as severe, noting that “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.”
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He also referenced a fatal consequence of the crisis, stating, “In Morocco, one student did not survive the ordeal, dying in November last year and turning quiet suffering into public grief.”
The former vice president said parents and students had staged protests in Abuja, visiting the Federal Ministries of Education and Finance in search of explanations, but their efforts, he claimed, “have been mainly ignored.”
He further criticised comments allegedly made by the Minister of Education suggesting that students who were “fed up” could be sponsored to return to Nigeria, arguing that such remarks “reduced years of study and sacrifice to an administrative inconvenience.”
Addressing parents, Atiku added, “To anxious parents, it sounded like expulsion by neglect. Today, that pact lies broken.”
He concluded by saying that Nigerian students scattered across universities abroad are still waiting not just for their outstanding allowances but for assurance that their nation “has not forgotten them.”