Some Nigerian students in Ukraine said: “For this, some agents are asking for $700 (N298,000) and to wait two to three months for a mere transcript. All these are aimed at discouraging students from transferring and keeping the flow of fees into their pockets.”
By Stella-Maris Okwaranyia
Despite the devastating effects of the Ukraine-Russia war on the residents of Ukraine, some Nigerians in that country seem to be unfazed, as they are bent on staying back.
The Nigerians, mostly students are daily confronted by uncertainties thrown up by the war and their fate if they return home, especially with the near collapse of Nigeria’s educational system made worse by the ongoing seven-month strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Malachy Ezeanya, 38, said he arrived in Ukraine in 2019 to get a Master’s in Psychology so as to fulfil his ambition of being a crime scene investigator.
“I borrowed money from my fellowship and from my sister too; she gave me the money with the hope that in future I would support her kids. I used it to process my visa and paid my tuition and hostel fees.
“My sister told me that she gave me all her savings, it was very painful for her to release that money and she said I should remember that they will be the ones calling me for money from that moment,” he said.
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After graduation, he got a job as a forklift driver that paid him 1,000. However, not long after that, the Russia-Ukraine war broke out. His worry is that he has lost all his belongings including his certificates.
According to Ezeanya, he could not consider returning to Nigeria because, aside from the fear of the economic and security situation in his home country, he has nothing to pay back his loans.
“I left Nigeria because I couldn’t get a job. If my country was good, do you think I would prefer staying back in Europe?” he asked rhetorically.
Natasha Akpoti, a fourth-year student at Uzhhorod National University, Ukraine, has all her documents intact but is also stuck as “it is almost impossible to get my original certificates and transcripts from the university.”
She explained that students including her now have to go through agents to get their transcripts, describing the Ukrainian education system as a money-making venture.
“For this, some agents are asking for $700 (N298,000) and to wait two to three months for a mere transcript. All these are aimed at discouraging students from transferring and keeping the flow of fees into their pockets,” she said.
According to her, Ukrainian schools do not have the interest of their students at heart because they are in partnership with those agents.
“The same agents boldly say that the transcript can be ready faster if the students want to transfer to universities that they have made available in other countries. This shows that the agents want to clamp down on students’ freedom,” she said.
She also narrated how many Nigerian students missed scholarship opportunities in Hungary for students at risk from Ukraine, which, she said, their Indian and Asian counterparts enjoyed to continue their studies.
“Not only were we denied the scholarship, but we were also denied the opportunity for self-financing, as the results of the scholarship (application) were released weeks after the slated period. By the time most of us knew our fate, it was already too late to choose the option of self-financing, for example in Semmelweis University that I had applied for,” she narrated.
The situation has led many Nigerian students to continue to wander around Europe in search of opportunities to continue their study programmes.
Another student, who identified himself simply as Emmanuel Egwim, said he did not consider returning to Nigeria because of the incessant strikes in universities and because he also felt the war in Ukraine would not last more than three months.
A third-year student of Kyiv Medical University, Egwin had fled Kyiv and travelled through Warsaw in Poland and Budapest in Hungary to Mainz, Germany. In Mainz, he is without a job as he has not been issued a pass to work or even learn the language of the people.
“Ukrainian schools refused to issue us our transcripts and our original WAEC result. They are threatening us with expulsion, but we cannot afford to be expelled because our admission is tied to our residence permit. The second after you are expelled, your permit would be terminated.”
Egwim had graduated from a Nigerian university before leaving for Ukraine to study medicine. However, his dream of becoming a doctor has been cut short by the war. He is also not considering a return to Nigeria because of the situation in his home country.
After over 1,000 students were evacuated from Ukraine to Nigeria in March, the Nigerian government through the education ministry advised the students who were interested in being absorbed into Nigerian universities to apply through a public portal. But public universities in Nigeria have been on strike since then. The hope of resolving the issue in the nearest future appears to be bleak as both the federal government and ASUU are adamant to yield grounds.
As the Ukraine – Russia war raged, thousands of Africans were among the more than five million refugees who fled the conflict and as they attempted to escape the carnage, many Africans were treated like second-class citizens. Reports of discrimination at Ukraine’s borders were widespread and acknowledged by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
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