Former vice president Atiku Abubakar has expressed concerns over the abandonment of Nigerian students under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) abroad.
The former vice president said about 1,600 young Nigerians are stranded abroad with empty pockets and fading hope.
Atiku, in a statement, recalled that the BEA is a scholarship scheme that began in 1993 and was revitalised in 1999.
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He added that it allowed Nigerian students to pursue undergraduate and postgraduate studies in various countries through agreements between Nigeria and those nations.
He, however, said under the @officialABAT administration, the BEA scholarship programme, a bridge between Nigeria and the world, has been quietly discontinued without notice to the parents/wards of the students and without any consideration for their education.
"I am informed that what was initially described as a temporary five-year suspension soon metamorphosed into outright abandonment, leaving about 1,600 young Nigerians stranded abroad with empty pockets and fading hope."
He said their pleas are simple and desperate: pay the stipends owed, now more than $6,000 per student.
"Yet from the corridors of power came a cold, technocratic explanation: scarce public funds must be managed "responsibly," and money meant to keep these students alive abroad should instead be redirected home.
"In that reasoning, the humans behind the figures dissolved into abstractions, and duty was sacrificed on the altar of convenience.
"The cruelty of the moment was sharpened by timing and tone. After months of cries from students and parents over unpaid allowances, the authorities announced the suspension with a levity that stunned those already on the brink.
He said between September and December 2023, the students were not paid, and in 2024, stipends were slashed by 56 per cent, from $500 to $220 a month, before stopping altogether.
He added that there was no payment throughout the whole of 2025.
"I gathered that hunger, rent arrears, and shame have become the daily companions of the beneficiary students.
"In Morocco, one student did not survive the ordeal, dying in November last year and turning quiet suffering into public grief.
"Parents and scholars poured into the streets of Abuja, protesting before the Ministries of Education and Finance, their placards heavy with sorrow and rage, their questions unanswered.
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"Then came the final wound: defiance dressed as policy. In a press statement, the minister declared that any student "fed up" could be financed to return home, as though abandoning years of study and shattered dreams were a minor administrative detail.
"To anxious parents, it sounded like expulsion by neglect, Nigeria casting off its brightest children and leaving them to become objects of pity among peers from African countries that honour their obligations.
"The BEA scheme was never a charity; it was a diplomatic agreement rooted in shared progress, revitalised in 1999 to build Nigeria's future workforce through partnerships with nations such as China, Russia, Morocco, and Hungary. Today, that pact lies broken, and across distant campuses, Nigerian scholars wait, not just for stipends, but for a sign that their country still remembers them," the former vice president said.
