… Accuses President of playing politics with foreign policy 

Joel Ajayi 

A northern forum known as Arewa Defense League (ADL) has broken silence on why the federal government abandoned the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA), accusing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of playing politics with the policy. 
The Northern group also condemned the President’s silence on the protests since the moral collapse of a programme built on diplomacy and mutual respect, describing the act as “the loudest indictment of all.” 

In a statement released Wednesday in Abuja and signed by the President of the League, Murtala Abubakar, said the tragedy unfolding beyond Nigeria’s borders, is a one without sirens, but heavy with hunger, humiliation, and broken promises. 

According to Abubakar, there is nothing inherently wrong with the BEA Scholarship Programme. Education is not wasteful. Knowledge is not extravagant. The BEA scheme was never charity—it was diplomacy, cooperation, and investment in Nigeria’s future. Host countries paid tuition and accommodation. Nigeria paid stipends. It was a fair bargain, honoured for decades, even if imperfectly.

“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.A nation may abandon roads and refineries, but when it abandons its children, especially in foreign lands, it abandons its soul.”

The statement added that the justification to abandon the policy was thrift and the reality many now fear is far more cruel. 

“It began when the Bola Tinubu administration abruptly scrapped the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) Scholarship Programme, a lifeline that had enabled thousands of brilliant but underprivileged Nigerians to enter classrooms across China, Russia, Morocco, Hungary, and beyond.

“In May 2025, the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, announced that the government would no longer fund foreign scholarships, insisting that every course Nigerians studied abroad was now available, “and often of higher quality, within local institutions.” Public money, he argued, should no longer be spent on overseas education when domestic alternatives existed.

The decision, he said, followed a “thorough policy review.” Yet for students already scattered across continents, this review translated into abandonment.

“Only days earlier, the ministry had spoken of a five-year suspension. Then came assurances, soft words meant to calm parents and scholars alike, that existing beneficiaries would be fully supported until the end of their studies. Those assurances have since dissolved into silence.”

While condemning the development further, the League said: “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 allocation, covering allowances, health insurance, travel, and other essentials, sits comfortably within 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.

“But 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. Most of the stranded students, it is alleged, come from other regions, particularly the North. The newly approved batch of 300 scholars for 2026, despite the programme’s supposed suspension, is widely believed to be tailored to correct this so-called ‘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? Why threaten to fund return tickets for those who dare to complain, instead of fulfilling the support they were promised? Is the cost of a one-way flight cheaper than honouring Nigeria’s word?

“The human cost is devastating. From Morocco to Russia, from China to Hungary, Nigerian students have protested in despair. Parents have marched in Abuja. A former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar has intervened. Still, nothing changes. Stipends for September to December 2023 remain unpaid. Only 56 percent of allowances were released in 2024. In 2025, nothing came at all. 

“Young Nigerians, sent abroad as ambassadors of hope, now live on borrowed kindness, shame, and uncertainty.

“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.

“And President Tinubu has 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.”

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