The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa said Nigeria was no longer funding the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) Scholarship program because it was corruption laden and a waste of government funds.
Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa disclosed this while fielding questions from journalists at a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday.
Alausa revealed that the program was no longer serving the purpose for which it was founded 20 years ago:
“When those programmes were set up, it was 20 years ago. We were meant to get students to go do programmes in other countries when we did not have capacity yet. Now, we have them”, he said.
He explained that the government was sponsoring students abroad to study journalism, psychology and mass communication in french speaking countries where they would have to spend the first year learning French Language.
“My first month in office, the project was to have 120 students going to Morocco to study courses in areas of Mass Communication, Journalism, and Psychology. And it would cost 650 million naira those monolithic students for just one year. I felt this was no more valuable and the money could be better deployed to support tertiary institutions at home”, he said.
The Minister also disclosed that some students who qualified for the BEA scholarship were studying in Nigeria while still collecting money meant for them abroad.
“One of my PA that worked with me said, ‘two of my brothers are meant to do the scholarship but they’re not’. They’re meant to be somewhere in Morocco. But were in Nigeria.
“So, the bilateral education agreement was not making sense again to us as a government. It was a way to waste government funds, and this president did not waste any government funds”, he said.
