The Federal Ministry of Education’s permanent secretary, Andrew David Adejo, encouraged the returnees to visit the ministry’s official site to apply for further education in any university in the country.
The Nigerian government has urged Nigerian students evacuated from Ukraine to transfer to local universities at home to continue their education amidst the gruelling “indefinite and comprehensive strike” declared by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Monday.
The Federal Ministry of Education’s permanent secretary, Andrew David Adejo, encouraged the returnees to visit the ministry’s official site to apply for further education in any university in the country.
He noted that the registration would be closed within three weeks, adding that 354 Nigerian students that had earlier registered were exempted from the new registration process.
“Building on an earlier advertisement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the Federal Ministry of Education (FME) wishes to request Nigerian students evacuated from Ukraine who are interested in furthering their education in Nigerian universities to visit the FME website on www.education.gov.ng (http://fsbn.com.ng/returning ) and complete the attached template,” a statement by the ministry said.
“Please, for those 354 returnee students that responded to the earlier advertisement by MFA need not respond.”
It added, “This is to provide the opportunity for those returnee students who were not able to indicate interest in the earlier referenced advertisement. All interested students are by this advertisement requested to do so within three (3) weeks from the date of publication.”
ASUU has been on strike since February 14 over the failure of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime to meet their demands.
On Monday, the union extended the six-month-old strike, with hopes of millions of university students dashed despite repeated meetings between the government representatives and ASUU.
On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine leaving over 80,000 international students, including Nigerians, stranded in the country.
This is also amid reports that Nigerians who fled Ukraine universities now face a tight rope.
“Nigerian students who fled Ukraine are being discriminated against by their Ukrainian universities. The universities are pressurising the students to return to Ukraine to pay their fees for September without guaranteeing their safety,” a Twitter user, @ChyLady, tweeted.
She added, “They have asked African students to pay for the next September session & go back into Ukraine to continue their studies while mandating that they must sign a document stating they are going back at their own risk & the Ukrainian university will not be responsible for their safety.”