By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA: Northern pressure group, the Arewa Defence League ADL, has accused the Federal Government of deliberately abandoning Nigerian students enrolled under the Bilateral Education Agreement BEA Scholarship Programme, alleging that the policy reversal was driven more by politics than prudence.
It alleged that the reversal was due to the perceived notion that most of the current beneficiaries are of northern descent.
The group said the president’s continued silence in the face of protests by stranded scholars and their parents amounted to “the loudest indictment of all,” insisting that the collapse of the programme represented a moral failure of government and a betrayal of Nigeria’s diplomatic commitments.
In a statement released on Wednesday in Abuja and signed by its President, Murtala Abubakar, the League described the situation of BEA scholars abroad as “a tragedy unfolding without sirens, but heavy with hunger, humiliation, and broken promises.”
According to Abubakar, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the BEA scholarship scheme, which he said had for decades served as a tool of diplomacy and investment in Nigeria’s future.
“Education is not wasteful. Knowledge is not extravagant. The BEA scheme was never charity, it was diplomacy, cooperation and investment in Nigeria’s future,” he said.
He explained that while host countries provided tuition and accommodation, Nigeria was only responsible for stipends. “It was a fair bargain, honoured for decades, even if imperfectly”, the group added.
He acknowledged that the programme had historically suffered delays and bureaucratic bottlenecks but stressed that the present situation marked an unprecedented low.
“Yes, the programme has always struggled with delays and bureaucratic cruelty. But never before has a Nigerian government so casually turned its back on students already in the field, already committed, already vulnerable,” Abubakar said, adding pointedly that, “A nation may abandon roads and refineries, but when it abandons its children, especially in foreign lands, it abandons its soul.”
The League recalled that the crisis deepened when the Tinubu administration abruptly scrapped the BEA Scholarship Programme, a decision announced in May 2025 by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa.
According to ADL, the minister argued that foreign scholarships were no longer necessary because “every course Nigerians studied abroad was now available, and often of higher quality, within local institutions,” following what he described as a “thorough policy review.”
However, Abubakar said that while the government initially spoke of a five-year suspension, it also gave assurances that existing beneficiaries would be supported until they completed their studies.
“Those assurances have since dissolved into silence,” he said, noting that for students already scattered across countries such as China, Russia, Morocco and Hungary, the policy review “translated into abandonment.”
The group said the sense of injustice was compounded by reports that the same government had made provision for fresh BEA intakes in the 2026 budget.
“The cruelty of the moment deepened when reports emerged that the same government, which claimed it could no longer afford the BEA programme, had quietly inserted N1.764 billion into the 2026 Appropriation Bill to fund 300 new BEA scholarships,” the statement said, adding that the allocation was embedded in the Ministry of Education’s N2.39 trillion budget.
“For the abandoned students, this was not a policy contradiction; it was salt in an open wound”, the league said.
Beyond fiscal arguments, the ADL alleged that the abandonment of existing scholars was politically motivated. “Government-independent inquiries and testimonies from parents and policy insiders suggest that this was never simply about saving money.
“According to these accounts, the current administration deliberately withheld stipends from existing scholars, driven by a belief, real or imagined, that the earlier beneficiary pool did not favour the South-West”, he added.
He claimed that most of the affected scholars were from other regions, particularly the North, and alleged that the newly approved batch of 300 scholars for 2026 was designed to correct a perceived regional imbalance.
“Why, then, punish innocent students already midstream in foreign universities? Why deny final-year scholars the modest stipends that stand between dignity and destitution? Is the cost of a one-way flight cheaper than honouring Nigeria’s word?”, he queried.
The League painted a grim picture of the human toll of the policy, saying Nigerian students across several countries had been reduced to living on “borrowed kindness, shame, and uncertainty.”
It noted that stipends for September to December 2023 remained unpaid, only 56 per cent of allowances were released in 2024, and nothing was paid at all in 2025.
“Some, it is whispered, have been pushed into indecent and dangerous jobs simply to survive. While they struggle to uphold Nigeria’s image abroad, their own government reduces them to objects of ridicule among international peers — students from a country that sends its children out and then pretends not to know them”, the statement added.
Abubakar said protests by students abroad, marches by parents in Abuja and even interventions by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar had failed to move the government, lamenting that President Tinubu had “remained silent, playing politics with everything.
“Not a word on the protests. Not a word on the hunger. Not a word on the moral collapse of a programme built on diplomacy and mutual respect. This silence is perhaps the loudest indictment of all”, he added.
The post Arewa group accuses FG of playing politics with BEA Scholarship appeared first on Vanguard News.
