The Federal Government has actually started a review of its foreign scholarship programs and bilateral education agreements as part of measures to decrease preventable spending and channel more resources into the advancement of Nigerian tertiary organizations.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, stated the government was no longer happy to fund abroad studies where similar programmes were currently being offered by universities, polytechnics and colleges of education throughout the country.
According to the minister, the evaluation is focused on enhancing the use of public funds while reinforcing the capacity of institutions within Nigeria.
Alausa described that the requirement for the policy became apparent soon after he assumed workplace when he experienced a proposal to send out about 100,000 Nigerian students to Morocco to study numerous programmes taught in English, including mass communication and journalism.
He stated the proposition was difficult to validate because the impacted courses were currently available in Nigerian tertiary institutions. He also noted that the students would have been needed to invest their first year discovering French before starting their picked programmes.
The minister stated the scenario raised questions about the worth of costs federal government funds on overseas education when Nigeria already had institutions capable of providing the required training.
He discussed that the cost of informing a large number of students in your area would be significantly lower than sponsoring them abroad, making the previous plan an ineffective use of public resources.
Alausa stated the government consequently decided that the existing Bilateral Education Agreement plans needed to be reevaluated.
“The Bilateral Education Agreement was not making good sense, again, to us in government. It was a way to squander government funds,” he said.
He worried that the administration, under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was committed to ensuring that public funds were spent properly.
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The latest evaluation follows the Federal Government’s earlier decision to stop moneying new scholarships under its government-sponsored Bilateral Education Contract program.
Nevertheless, trainees who had currently taken advantage of the previous arrangement were not impacted by the choice. The federal government had actually mentioned that existing beneficiaries would continue getting financial backing up until they complete their research studies.
The policy also does not avoid foreign governments from independently granting scholarships to Nigerian students. Countries thinking about sponsoring Nigerian students may continue to do so, however such programs would not always need monetary contributions from the Nigerian government.
Alausa stated foreign governments might preserve their scholarship provides without anticipating Nigeria to bear the cost.
He further described that the circumstances that caused the facility of lots of abroad scholarship arrangements had altered in time.
According to him, such programmes were at first created years back because Nigeria did not have sufficient capacity in specific areas of tertiary education.
However, the minister noted that the country has actually substantially broadened its instructional capacity over the previous 20 years, with universities, polytechnics and colleges of education now using a wider range of programmes.
The scholarship review is part of the Federal Ministry of Education’s larger efforts to reform the nation’s education sector and enhance domestic institutions in line with the education objectives of the Renewed Hope Agenda.