NDDC Scholarship: Where is the Change?

NDDC Scholarship:Where is the Change?

My nephew was awarded the 2016 NDDC foreign scholarship; abandoned after six months, he broke down.

For the past seven years, NDDC has awarded 200 scholarships annually to indigenes of oil producing states for postgraduate study abroad. And then their suffering starts.

The scholarship comprises a fixed amount for tuition fees and upkeep, and a N500,000 take off grant for airfare and visa application. From the fixed amount, NDDC pays tuition fees to the school; and the balance, if any, is paid into the awardee’s foreign account for upkeep on resumption.

In the PDP years, the scholarship gained notoriety for delays and there are many videos on YouTube of annual protests by frustrated awardees at Nigerian embassies abroad. So the APC change mantra came with high hopes – but it has only become worse. The protests in July 2016 under Ms. Ibim Semenitari were perhaps the biggest ever; nonetheless, NDDC still owes 2015 scholars in 2017.
It starts with the date of award.Usually advertised around March, applicants are expected to hold admissions to resume in September the same year, but NDDC releases the final award list very late in the year after awardees would have lost their admissions. Thus awardees would have to defer their admission to the next start date – usually in January or September the next year. Also, realizing that the fixed amount does not even cover only tuition in choice US or UK schools, they look for cheaper alternatives.

Last year, the 2016 awardees conveniently received their letters on October 3 with the APC propaganda machine at its best. Ms. Semenitari published names of awardees in the dailies and the award ceremony was on TV. It was a new era of transparency and she urged awardees to quickly submit documents for payment as the funds were budgeted and available. The cloud of optimism was so high one almost forgot to ask why the list was not released just a month before when it was still possible for awardees to resume school.

Then the scramble to get new admissions began. As usual, most students ended up getting admissions in lower league schools in the UK where the fixed amount can cover fees and upkeep, and then submitted their school account for tuition payment, and Nigerian account details for payment of the N500,000. But a significant minority got admissions in other countries, including the cheaper Canada and Ireland, which have more stringent rules on sponsorship and fee payment before visa application. And the usual stories started.

After waiting for three months for the N500,000 take-off grant to be paid, awardees who were to resume in January 2017 approached NDDC and were told to “borrow money” to apply for visa and resume, and that they would be refunded. The UKBA tenuously accepts the NDDC award letter as proof of funding so tuition currently needs not be paid before visa application. For a four-year PhD, UK visa application costs about £1000,combined with airfare at £700, and living costs at £800 per month. So an awardee with a three month survival plan before NDDC pays would need to borrow £4,000or N2.4m. Does a person who has access to such funds at this time need a scholarship? Surprisingly, some raised money and resumed. Three months after resumption, NDDC has not paid any awardee anything, not even the take-off grant, while still owing some 2015 awardees. The suffering has started.

Those who couldn’t raise money,or who were not going to the UK had to defer to September 2017 hoping that by that time NDDC would have given them the take-off grant and paid their fees as has been done in the past years.

Compare this to the country-wide PTDF scholarship which is not a fixed amount so awardees choose better schools. It released its list of more than 250 awardees in June 2016 and applied for visas for its students. They have since been paid: no delays or protests. As usually alleged, a pattern of Niger deltans being their own problem becomes obvious. The much smaller PTDF has executed better projects even in Niger delta schools.

My nephew couldn’t even apply for visa because the Irish embassy has a policy that fees must be paid before visas are issued. So, after deferring, he has been waiting for NDDC to pay his fees and has become increasingly agitated. I became interested at this stage since my nephew stays with me. He showed me the lamentations of awardees on their very active Whats App group where the scholarship is interestingly referred to as a 'suffership'.

Those who have resumed have had to take up menial jobs to survive as upkeep has not been paid; and their schools have threatened to expel them by end of March as fees have not also been paid. One awardee was refused a visa because “NDDC has not paid 2015 scholars’ fees, so they [the embassy] were not confident it will pay the 2016 group”. Another one who applied to the Irish embassy was called and told that his visa would be issued when his fees are paid. Suddenly NDDC emails stopped working and calls were no longer taken. In desperation, awardees took to Twitter,hounding the technocratic Nsima Ekere, NDDC managing director since December, with tweets of pleas and puerile threats.

The APC has shown its hatred for bad publicity, so on March 14, the MD tweeted to great relief that he had approved all fees and upkeep to be paid for 2015 and 2016 awardees.Self-righteously, he couldn’t understand why future Niger delta leaders were made to pass through such suffering annually.

Then he made an interesting claim which awardees found strange and disturbing, that: only 32 of the 200 awardees had submitted account details. It was untrue. Investigations showed that he was only going to pay those who were rich enough to travel with their own funds: this is the 32. He instituted a new policy that those who had not travelled shall not be paid even the take-off grant for visa application. Like the increasingly ineffectual El Rufai, technocrats believe they are smarter than you. Clearly, he was only avoiding international embarrassment from those who travelled. Awardees like my nephew who cannot travel until tuition fees are paid are stuck in Nigeria from this policy unless they can borrow the required four to six million naira. Effectively, if you are not rich enough to pay the six million naira fees so you can get a visa, your scholarship is cancelled. Is this really a scholarship? Perhaps it will form part of the APC’s 2019 war chest!

In government, technocrats get themselves bogged down in minutiae and PR projects. By the time they raise their heads, it’s the end of their tenure and little would have been achieved.They then resort to blames, more PR and quoting complex statistics. They tend to have big ideas with little substance; unlike politicians who get things done – albeit corruptly. And nothing says technocrats are not corrupt. Nsima Ekere has a few such PR projects already:  in “Meet the Leader”, he met ‘selected’ young people from the Niger delta for an Obama-style chat this month. Meanwhile, some true future leaders, the scholars,have been abandoned.

Over the years, the only obvious impact NDDC has had, apart from the personal mansions built by past appointees across the Niger delta, is this scholarship. Many lecturers in Niger delta universities are beneficiaries. Now, no PR can manage the fact that seven months after the October fanfare, no awardee has been paid one naira. Sagay’s recent allegation makes this particularly rankling. And their children are, more likely than not, studying abroad.

I admit sheepishly that I was a core supporter of the APC in 2015 as the Jonathan government was too brazen in its corruption. But APC seems desperate to leave the country worse than it met it in every way. What has it achieved? More specifically, what has it given tothe Niger delta after two years? Prof. Osinbajo, another technocrat, recently went around the Niger delta articulately raining promises, but where is the substance? When asked about the maritime university and the Ibom deep sea port,he blamed the APC controlled senate, budgeting and pre-requisite surveys. And, of course, Ogoni clean-up will conveniently take more than 30 years. When asked about food prices, he blamed the transport network. What suddenly happened to the transport network? What has he done about it? The APC should realize that even Goebbels fell on his own sword.

As for the abandoned awardees,the anxiety and uncertainty induced insomnia and high blood pressure in my young nephew! In the Nigerian jungle where every opportunity must be grabbed,he feels like a failure. In true Nigerian style, NDDC asks: “how did the others travel and you could not? Look for a way to travel!”. It is always easier to blame the victim than to shoulder your responsibility. He is on bed rest and I take all gadgets from him at 8pm as they spend their nights on social media making threats and planning strategy for protests. I advise awardees to be careful though, as too many protests and embassies will fully lose confidence in NDDC as a scholarship body – no more visas. Moreover, we know how the APC treats protesters. His life is worth more than $30,000­ – especially as that APC bigwig’s $1m (N300m) car is rotting with customs. Or maybe the PR is so good that I’m still a closet APC supporter.

Goodluck Oronla

[email protected]
An engineer from Sapele.   
 

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });