By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Another group of 43 Nigerian women stranded in Lebanon was evacuated to Abuja on September 28, sponsored by the Lebanese community in Nigeria.
That number added to the 15 trafficked Nigerian women rescued from Lebanon who returned home in May, apart from 19 Nigerians stranded in Lebanon because of Covid-19 lockdowns who were also repatriated that month.
But there is a group of Nigerians left stranded abroad with little hope of rescue because the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) fails to fund their scholarship.
A directive given by President Muhammadu Buhari to the NDDC in August that the students be paid has not been fully complied with.
The students are thus exposed to ridicule and embarrassment from fellow students; and landlords threaten them with eviction, which will force some of Nigeria’s most brilliant minds to live on streets in foreign lands.
Some are forced to beg bread. Others take up part time menial jobs. But none of that has solved the problem of not having enough funds to settle down into rigorous post graduate study.
Excitement, then disappointment
CNN reports that when Mercy Eyo landed a foreign postgraduate scholarship in July 2019, she had just lost her father. A year earlier, her mother had passed away.
She was elated about the prospect of starting a Master’s degree in global health care management at Coventry University, United Kingdom, with a scholarship from the NDDC.
“I was super excited … I felt it was a consolation that would change my life forever,” Eyo said.
“It was that one little time I had hope in the Nigerian dream,” she told CNN, “because I wanted to return home afterward to offer what I had to the society.”
Scraping a living
However, that dream has turned into a nightmare for Eyo who said she is now living a hand-to-mouth existence and awaiting scholarship funds that have failed to arrive.
Eyo, from Bonny Island, Rivers State, is one of more than 200 students who landed a scholarship through the NDDC in 2019.
CNN has seen a scholarship letter dated July 29, email exchanges between her and the awarding body and scanned copies of the letters she sent to the NDDC in December 2019 requesting funds to process her travel arrangements.
She was told to make her way abroad and the money would later follow, but despite selling her laptops, phones and other valuable properties, Eyo wasn’t able to raise her travel funds and visa processing fees and lost her place at Coventry University.
She remains in Nigeria with no signs of the funds promised to her.
“These are things that make me cry sometimes or feel depressed,” Eyo told CNN.
Other scholarship students from Nigeria that CNN spoke to were able to make their way abroad. But they are also still waiting for the promised funds.
They told CNN that their emails and correspondence with the NDDC have been mostly ignored since September 2019.
The scholars are scattered in various universities across the United States, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.
Andrew Saba is studying for a Master’s degree in public health at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
“I don’t know the worth of a Nigerian life to the people in power. I feel betrayed by Nigeria … I can’t understand how a country can abandon her brightest of minds in a foreign land. I can’t relate to priorities of the country,” said Saba.
“I am disappointed. It is supposed to be a joyful thing to get a scholarship from your country. Numerous countries give their citizens scholarship … but ours require extra activism to work. This is not how it should be.”
The students said they are going through a lot of hardship due to a lack of funds and are unable to engage in menial jobs to survive because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Each Master’s scholar is owed $30,000, while PhD students are owed $90,000 which runs for the duration of their three-year programme.
Others say they live on charity from family at home and friends abroad, while looking for new jobs to start paying their debts and bills.
Some of them have been told by their universities that their graduation isn’t possible until their debts are paid.
In May, after growing pressure, the NDDC paid a “take-off” grant of around $1,290. This was an initial payment that was supposed to help the students with their initial visa processing and traveling costs last year.
Protests in London
Protests by the students at the Nigerian High Commission office in London caught the attention of Buhari.
He on August 4 ordered the NDDC to immediately pay the outstanding sums owed to the students stranded across the globe.
The NDDC promised to pay the fees by the end of that week, explaining that the death of its executive director of finance coupled with the coronavirus pandemic caused the delay in paying their fees.
“President Buhari … has ordered that all stops be pulled to pay the students by the end of this week. We expect a new (executive director of finance) to be appointed this week. As soon as that is done, they would all be paid,” NDDC Director of Corporate Affairs, Charles Odili, said in a statement on August 4.
Dispute over payment
The NDDC announced on August 31 that it had released over $5.9 million to 197 students in the 2019 batch on its scholarship programme and begun the process to pay 94 in the 2018 batch.
But some of the students in the 2018 batch countered on September 12 that the NDDC deliberately excluded them from the payment.
“The NDDC selectively handpicked those it paid without any defined criteria and is refusing to pay fees, grants, and upkeep of 2018 scholars for no justifiable reason whatsoever,” the students said in a statement released to PREMIUM TIMES.
“This came as a rude shock to us because historically, the NDDC had always paid the fees and upkeep of scholars in the order in which they were incurred, that is, from the earliest to the latest,” the statement added.
The students said their exclusion may have been to punish them for protesting against the delay in the release of funds for the scholarship.
The students did not disclose their names for fear of further ‘victimisation’.
They said there were at least 316 of them whose tuition fees and stipends were unpaid before the latest release of funds by the NDDC and, therefore, there are over 100 of them who were yet to receive funding for the scholarship.
Purpose of scholarship scheme
CNN recalls that the scholarship programme was developed to fund the education of marginalised young people in the Niger Delta, to aid the development of the region that produces Nigeria’s oil.
Despite providing 70 per cent of federal revenue, the Niger Delta remains impoverished and faces numerous challenges such as oil spills, gas flares, and vandalism.
The NDDC was established to drive the development of the region.
Corruption probe
The NDDC is currently embroiled in a multimillion-dollar corruption probe. Buhari ordered a forensic audit of its activities from 2001 to 2019 after it was unable to account for around $209 million spent in less than a year.
In July, acting NDDC Managing Director, Kemebradikumo Pondei, appeared to faint while taking questions from federal lawmakers in Abuja on how the agency spent around $100 million in the past few months.
While responding to questions on the students’ scholarships and other incidents of unaccounted spending, he slumped, causing chaos in the room and forcing the investigative hearing to be stopped temporarily.
After the hearing the NDDC issued a statement saying that Pondei had been ill and had attended the hearing against his doctor’s advice.
Critics have suggested the incident was a ploy to thwart the probe.
Resort to menial jobs
John Essien was a medical doctor in Nigeria and is now studying for a Master’s in health economics and health policy at the University of Birmingham in the UK.
He said he sold properties and took loans to fund his overseas travel after delays in securing his scholarship money before he left Nigeria in September 2019.
“I knew previous scholars faced delays in getting paid. But I wasn’t expecting it to exceed three months. When it did, I realised I wasn’t prepared for what was to come,” he told CNN.
Three months of waiting passed and his debts rose, Essien said. He was forced to rely on friends for money to eat and pay his rent.
In December 2019, he got a part-time job as a dishwasher with a company in Birmingham.
At various points, he said he has worked as a receptionist, porter, carpenter, bartender, and crowd control officer at Premier League soccer match venues.
Essien said he has been in contact with the other students who received scholarships from the NDDC.
They all have tales of severe hardship. One of the students contracted Covid-19 while working as a carer in a home, another one has also had access to the school’s student portals blocked for non-payment of fees.
Essien recounted how he narrowly escaped eviction from his apartment in August after missing his payment deadline by more than 20 days.
The huge economic impact of the pandemic also means that his former means of income have dried up.
“With less than one pound in my account, how do I continue begging around? Why should I deal with this kind of mental pressure?” he asked.