Marrakech – Nigeria’s Federal Government has stopped funding a scholarship program that sent students to Morocco, describing the arrangement as an “unproductive” and “worthless” use of public money, according to Nigerian media.
Education Minister Tunji Alausa announced the decision in Abuja on Wednesday during the unveiling of the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize, Nigerian outlets reported.
Alausa disclosed that Nigeria once spent NGN 650 million ($487,500) in a single year to sponsor 150 students in Morocco under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA). He recalled receiving a proposal shortly after assuming office seeking approval for those 150 students to study in the North African country at that cost for one year.
The minister questioned why Nigeria kept sending students abroad for programs already offered at home. He drew particular attention to Morocco, a “French-speaking country,” where Nigerian students were being sponsored to study journalism and psychology.
He raised the same concern about Algeria, noting that students were sent there to study English despite it also being French-speaking.
Alausa outlined three objections to the Morocco arrangement. He argued that the relevant courses already exist in Nigeria, that the students would spend their first year learning French before beginning their academic programs, and that the same NGN 650 million ($487,500) could support thousands of students within Nigeria rather than a fraction of that number abroad.
“I felt this was not morally right,” he remarked, per Nigerian reports. “Number one, we have all those courses in Nigeria. Number two, they were going to spend the first year learning French before they started the program. And number three, if we put NGN 650 million to support students in Nigeria, it will support thousands of them.”
The minister described the BEA as a drain on scarce resources. “So, the bilateral agreement was not making sense to us as a government. It was a way to waste government funds. And this President will not waste any funds, any public funds,” he told reporters, referring to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Alausa clarified that the move did not amount to a ban on foreign scholarships. Countries willing to sponsor Nigerian students, he explained, remained free to do so without requiring financial support from the Nigerian government. The objection, he maintained, was specifically to committing public funds to programs whose educational value did not justify the cost.
The minister traced the origins of the scheme to roughly two decades ago, when Nigeria lacked adequate capacity in certain specialized fields. That situation, he argued, has since changed.
“We have built enormous capacities in our tertiary institutions, universities and colleges,” he stated, adding that the country had expanded its universities, polytechnics and colleges over the past 20 years.
Nigerian media noted that students already enrolled under the previous arrangement would not be abandoned and would continue to receive support until they complete their studies. The government, according to the reports, intends to redirect the freed resources toward strengthening domestic tertiary institutions as part of Tinubu’s broader education reforms.
Read also: Gabon Shifts Student Scholarships to Morocco in Major Educational Reform
