FG pays allowances of scholarship students in Russia

 

The Federal Government has paid the eight months allowances it owed the over 322 Nigerian students on the Bilateral Educational Agreement scholarship in Russia.

The PUNCH had exclusively reported on Tuesday that the failure by the Federal Government to pay the allowances of the students had coerced them into imploring and resorting to illicit jobs, which put them in jeopardy of deportation in Russia.

Following the report, our correspondent amassed on Thursday that the students had since commenced getting credit alerts on their respective bank accounts.

One of the affected students, Moyosore Ojuri, who is in her second year studying Metallurgical Engineering at the Volgograd State Technical University, Russia, told our correspondent on the telephone that the sum of $4,450 had been paid into her bank account.

The mazuma, she expounded, included $4,000 denoted for her stipends from January to August; $200 for annual medicals and health indemnification, and $250 covering her annual protective apparel.

Ojuri verbally expressed she hoped that the Federal Government would commence paying them their allowances as at when due and preserve them from undue hardships.

“Before now, the Federal Government owed us from January to August. But now they have paid us everything. I can pay my accumulated debts and I am sure that I won’t be sent packing from the hostel over unpaid accommodation fees,” she verbalized.

One of the student bellwethers, Akinola Akindamola, a post-graduate student of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Volgograd State Technical University, Russia, verbalized that he and other student bellwethers were going round to ascertain that all of them, especially the incipient students, had received their allowances.

Akindamola, who is the President of the Senate Committee of Association of Nigerian Scholarship Students in Russia, verbalized, “The payment of the mazuma is in process and I am confident that by the terminus of today, we would all have been paid. The least quandary we optate now is to be financially handicapped. We appreciate the Federal Government for their prompt replication.”

When contacted, the Director, Press and Public Relations, Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja, Mr. Olu Lipede, corroborated that the Federal Government had paid the students all their entitlements.