THE Federal Government released the sum of nine billion, seven hundred and fifty-two million (N9,752,000) naira to clear the backlog of scholarship allowances owed Nigerian students at home and abroad up to December 2018.
Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, made this known during his weekend ministerial press briefing in Abuja.
He has accordingly ordered the Director, Federal Scholarship Board, Mrs Ndajiwo Mohammed who represented him at the briefing, to immediately undertake all due process required to pay the money to all the beneficiary students.
He also used the occasion to appeal to the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) to call off their prolonged industrial actions in the interest of Nigeria, parents and students.
Adamu said: “In the edition our weekend press briefing, I informed you that the government of President Mohammadu has already expended over N800 million in 2018 in payment of scholarship stipends to our students at home and abroad.
ALSO READ: Battle for presidency: APC, PDP boasts of victory
“With the current release, this administration will be spending a total of about N10 billion in payment of scholarship to our students in the 2018 budget. We are determined to do more,” he said.
The Minister, however, urged the Scholarship to ensure proper verification all the scholars under the defunct Presidential Scholarship introduced by the former President Goodluck Jonathan administration in order to ascertain that they are still in school before the money is paid to them.
He said: “Let me, however put a caveat on the scholarship liabilities the Board inherited from the Scholarship Scheme hitherto operated by the National Universities Commission (NUC).
“All the liabilities from that scheme that were transferred to the Board must be thoroughly verified before payment. The Board must ascertain that the admissions of such scholars are still valid and that the scholars are currently pursuing their programmes,” Adamu said.
He also disclosed that over 30,000 applicants sat for the scholarship qualifying examination recently conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
The scholarship examination he said was successful was for the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) scholarship, Federal Scholarship, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Commonwealth Scholarship.
The Minister said that because of publicity and public enlightenment, applications for the scholarships more than doubled, says the highest number of applicants we have had in any given year was 12,000 for the four schemes.
He added that the government of President Buhari was determined to increase the number of recipients of the various scholarships, stressing that “we shall work hard with our Bilateral partners to increase the number of beneficiaries, while we will also appeal to the Commonwealth to raise our quota for the awards.”
and then