Buhari should abolish government foreign scholarships.

By Dr. Ahmed Adamu

More than N100 billion is spend on foreign scholarships annually by Nigerian government. This has caused over supply of Nigerian currency, triggering the continues decline of the value of the Nigerian Naira. This figure is extremely higher when adding the cost of other self-sponsored foreign education.  Nigerians studying in UK contribute 2.3% to the GDP growth in UK and their patronages contribute 2.6% to the overall UK employment. All these are injection to foreign economies, which could potentially be invested in Nigeria.

How different are foreign Universities are from Nigerian Universities, you will talk about access to energy, IT, resources, facilities, conducive atmosphere, and efficiency. All these can be provided in all Nigerian Universities with the savings that will eventuate from abolishing foreign scholarships. If you divide N100 billion by the number of federal universities, you will see that each university will get N2.5 billion a year. Nigerian universities can perform to the international standard if for five years N2.5 billion is injected in them annually. Then those that were already trained abroad can teach in these universities, and then you can bring foreign teachers and pay them incentives to encourage them. It is cheaper to transport education, than to transport students.

I am using this medium to call on the Nigerian president elect to consider this as one of the immediate policy he will adopt in the first 100 days in office. He needs to cut down government expenditure by 50% in one year, increase bank rate and taxes. Now people trust the government, and are willing to contribute to the governance. The extravagance and wastages during the political campaign has caused unnecessary inflation in Nigeria, which used to be 7.9% in November, and now 8.6%  this month. The money in circulation must be controlled. It is commendable that the president-elect has proposed to reduce government overheads by proposing to scrap unnecessary political appointments.

All the money saved from the austerity measures should be invested in manufacturing and industrial sectors as well as education, science and technology. Small skills labourers should have a coordinated wage system, so that cost of production can be predicted, and small skill labourers who contribute immensely to the economic growth will not be underpaid.

Ahmed Adamu (PhD Economics)

President, Commonwealth Youth Council

+447867289539.