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| Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa. |
The Federal Government has halted the funding of certain foreign scholarship programmes and is redirecting the resources towards strengthening Nigerian tertiary institutions, according to the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa.
Alausa said the government could no longer justify spending scarce public funds to send Nigerian students abroad to study programmes that are already available in local universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. He disclosed the policy shift while explaining the rationale behind the review of overseas scholarship arrangements under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA).
The minister recalled that shortly after assuming office, he was presented with a proposal involving about 100,000 Nigerian students travelling to Morocco to study courses taught in English, including mass communication and journalism. He said the proposal raised serious concerns for three main reasons.
First, the courses were already available in Nigeria. Second, the students would have been required to spend their first year learning French before commencing their academic programmes. Third, the cost of supporting a relatively small number of students abroad could instead be used to support thousands of students within Nigeria.
“Number one, we have all those courses in Nigeria. And yet, number two, they were going to spend the first year learning French before they started the programme. And number three, in the position of a few million to support this in Nigeria, we support thousands of them,” Alausa said.
He described the previous arrangement as an inefficient use of public resources. “So the Bilateral Education Agreement was not making sense, again, to us in government. It was a way to waste government funds. And this President will not waste any public funds.”
The decision builds on an earlier move by the Federal Government to discontinue new government-funded awards under the BEA scheme while continuing to support students already enrolled until they complete their studies. Existing beneficiaries will not be abandoned.
Alausa clarified that the policy does not amount to a blanket ban on Nigerians receiving scholarships from foreign governments. Foreign countries that wish to sponsor Nigerian students can continue to do so, but the Nigerian government will be more selective about committing its own public funds to overseas education.
He noted that the circumstances that justified sending large numbers of Nigerian students abroad about 20 years ago have changed significantly. At that time, many specialised programmes were not available locally. Over the past two decades, however, Nigeria has developed considerable capacity in its universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.
The scholarship review forms part of broader reforms by the Federal Ministry of Education aimed at repositioning the education system under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda. The reforms prioritise strengthening domestic tertiary institutions, expanding technical and vocational education and training, improving digital education, promoting research and innovation, and aligning education more closely with the needs of the economy.
Alausa has consistently argued that education spending must produce measurable outcomes, especially given Nigeria’s competing development needs and limited public resources. The government is simultaneously strengthening domestic student support mechanisms, including scholarships, bursaries and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, which provides financial assistance to students in tertiary institutions.
As part of efforts to encourage excellence, the minister recently inaugurated the Tertiary Institution National Gallery Prize Committee (also referred to as the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize) to recognise outstanding academic research and innovation with potential for commercialisation and industrial application.
“We want undergraduate researchers to see a clear pathway from academic research to industrial application, enterprise, innovation, and national development,” he said. He emphasised that the most successful nations of the 21st century will be those that systematically transform knowledge into solutions and intellectual capital into economic value.
By redirecting funds from certain foreign scholarships to local institutions, the government aims to build a stronger, more self-reliant tertiary education system capable of producing the skills, research and innovations required for national development.