The Federal Government, through the Federal Ministry of Education, has announced a slash in allowances of foreign scholars who are currently stranded in Russia, Morocco, and Algeria, among others by 12.7%.<\/p>\n
The ministry attributed the development to economic crises.<\/p>\n
It will be recalled that Nigerian students studying in Russia, Morocco, Algeria, China, Hungary, and other countries, on the Federal Government\u2019s scholarship lamented their unpaid stipends for eight months running.<\/p>\n
The students are studying under the Federal Government\u2019s Bilateral Educational Agreement Scholarship.<\/p>\n
he BEA scholarship is for the purpose of education exchange between Nigeria and the partnering countries.<\/p>\n
The Federal Scholarship Board is supervising the scholarship under the Federal Ministry of Education.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s decision to slash the scholars\u2019 allowances was contained in a memo signed by the Director of the Federal Scholarship Board, Ndajiwo H.A., on behalf of the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman.<\/p>\n
After due consultations, the Federal Scholarship Board has come up with adjustments in line with budgetary provisions in the payment of BEA scholar\u2019s supplementation allowances for the 2024 academic year,\u201d the memo, dated July 23, 2024, and addressed to the scholars\u2019 association, read.<\/p>\n
According to the memo, the monthly allowances were slashed from $500 to $220; the graduation allowance from $2500 to $2000; and the PG research allowance was slashed from $1,000 to $500, among others.<\/p>\n
The total for the payments initially paid was $5,650 per student but will now be $4,370<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Scholars\u2019 Association is hereby notified that due to the prevailing economic situation, the payment mandate for the BEA scholars\u2019 allowances will be as per the new adjustment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe balances for the years 2023 and 2024 owed to scholars will be paid as soon as the funds are made available,\u201d the ministry said.<\/p>\n
Recently, the President of the Union of Nigerian Students under the Federal Government-controlled Bilateral Educational Agreement Scholarship, Ayuba Anas, said the scholars had not been paid for close to eight months.<\/p>\n
Anas said, \u201cFor the past six to eight months, scholars enrolled in various institutions abroad have endured financial strain due to the delay in receiving their stipends.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition, from the last payments we received (March-August), there was a shortfall of practically two and a half months\u2019 payment. Moreover, some students in China have not received any stipends since they arrived in April and May 2023.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Federal Government, through the Federal Ministry of Education, has announced a slash in allowances of foreign scholars who are currently stranded in Russia, Morocco, and Algeria, among others by 12.7%. The ministry attributed the development to economic crises. It will be recalled that Nigerian students studying in Russia, Morocco, Algeria, China, Hungary, and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":40260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40266,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40252\/revisions\/40266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}