By Chimdiogo Amuh 

 Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused President Bola Tinubu’s administration of abandoning Nigerian students studying overseas under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA), alleging that the government quietly discontinued the programme and left about 1,600 students stranded abroad without support.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Atiku said the BEA scholarship scheme was halted without prior notice to parents or students, including those already midway through their studies in partner countries. He described the action as a breach of a long-standing educational and diplomatic pact.

The BEA, initiated in 1993 and revitalised in 1999, allows Nigerian students to pursue undergraduate and postgraduate studies through agreements with foreign governments. Atiku said the programme, once described by authorities as being under a temporary five-year suspension, had effectively been abandoned.

According to him, the decision has left beneficiary students without stipends, with unpaid allowances now running into thousands of dollars per student.

“Their pleas are simple and desperate: payment of stipends now exceeding $6,000 per student. Instead, they were told that scarce public funds must be redirected elsewhere,” Atiku said.

He noted that stipends were unpaid between September and December 2023, while allowances were reportedly slashed by 56 per cent in 2024—from $500 to $220 per month—before being stopped entirely. He added that no payments were made throughout 2025.

Atiku further alleged that the situation has subjected students to severe hardship, including hunger, unpaid rent and social stigma. He referenced the reported death of a Nigerian student in Morocco in November 2025, which he said underscored the gravity of the crisis.

The former vice president also criticised comments attributed to the Minister of Education suggesting that affected students could be funded to return home if they were “fed up,” saying such remarks trivialised years of academic effort and sacrifice.

He added that protests by parents and students at the Ministries of Education and Finance in Abuja had yielded little response, leaving beneficiaries uncertain about their future.

“At present, Nigerian scholars scattered across foreign campuses are waiting not just for their stipends, but for reassurance that their country has not forgotten them,” Atiku said.