31st July, 2024
By Kamal Saka-Odunjo
About 600 Nigerian foreign scholars are currently stranded abroad owing to TETfund’s omission of their names in the recent disbursement of the presidential bailout funds provided by President Bola Tinubu to save the scholars from losing their studentship in various foreign universities.
The scholars were unable to pay their fees as a result of the high exchange rate between Dollar and Naira precipitated the COVID-19 lockdown.
In the year 2021, I started the programme meant to last for eight academic semesters (i.e. four years).
As of the time my sponsorship award was granted, the exchange rate of Naira was N131 to a US Dollar but today, it’s over N1,500.
This condition has made the cost of living so difficult and almost unbearable for all TETFund foreign scholars who are experiencing the same situation.
It was on the basis of this financial hardship the foreign scholars were prompted to seek financial support in terms of a bailout from Mr President, which was graciously approved for all categories of TETFund foreign scholars who embarked on their foreign studies between the years 2017 and 2023 as they are all victims of this unfortunate financial hardship.
However, it was a rude shock to a large number of scholars as TETFund came up with some ridiculous criteria for selecting qualified candidates for the payment in which a greater number of scholars, about 600, were deliberately omitted. They were willfully described as not eligible for the payment.
Our demand for unconditional payment of the approved bailout to all TETFund foreign scholars is based on a clear understanding that the indecent decision to exclude our names from the bailout payment is indefensible, illogical and an intention to loot money meant for those 600 omitted scholars.
My PhD sponsorship award grant was approved on 11/11 year 2020. My study was scheduled to start in January 2021. But, due to two reasons, I could not leave Nigeria until October 2021.
The first reason was TETFund’s delay in the payment of the initial tuition deposit, having been mandated by my university in Cyprus as a condition for issuing the acceptance letter that would allow me to travel down to Cyprus. After several correspondence and explanations, the initial tuition deposit of a total sum of Euro 3,622.50 was paid out of Euro 8, 872.50 approved for my tuition in the award letter, with a promise that the remaining tuition balance of Euro 5,250 would be offset when I got to Cyprus.
The second reason was COVID-19, which caused a travel ban until it was lifted before I could travel in October 2021.
Unfortunately, during course registration for my 2nd semester in May year 2022, it was realised that the money left in my school account was not enough to register the number of required courses for that semester.
When I contacted TETFund for payment of the outstanding tuition, I was rudely shocked to hear from a male official who is a TETFund staff member that the money had been paid to my university account since March 2021. But, when I asked for the payment invoice for the said amount so that I could use it to claim the payment at my university account office in order to credit my account accordingly, it was another rude shock as he quickly referred me to another staff member, a female who claimed to be in charge of such records.
After several conversations without useful results, the lady further referred me to another male staff member, who they claimed was in charge of the accounts unit.
With all these abracadabra and series of altercations between us, the first staff member shamefully said they just discovered the money they previously claimed to have been paid eventually bounced and that they would need to reprocess the payment.
This ridiculous excuse came up in October, which was after six good months of contacting them for the payment.
In short, while all these were going on my student portal was closed by the university, and two warning letters were sent to me by my university in Cyprus for possible deportation due to the continued accumulation of outstanding.
I was compelled to borrow money to save my studentship after two semesters of zero academic records due to TETFund’s failure to offset the outstanding tuition fee.
After the protracted and deliberate delay in the process of that outstanding tuition fee which is about 10 million naira now, in December 2022, I travelled down to Nigeria after receiving two separate warning letters from my university in Cyprus for possible deportation due to continued accumulation of outstanding tuition fees.
On getting to Nigeria, I formally wrote my university, stating that TETFund had decided to abruptly stop my programme due to failure to offset my tuition balance.
On receiving my letter, the university management invited me to a management meeting to come and defend my complaint. At the meeting were the VC, DVC Admin, DVC Academics, Registrar, Bursar, Librarian and Director of Physical Planning. I presented my case with convincing evidence and the management unanimously agreed that such a delay in tuition fee payment was injurious to my study.
Despite the fact that those TETFund guys had lied to the management with fake documents claiming that the payment had been effected and that my complaint was not reliable, the management saw the truth in my explanation and directed that two separate letters be written on the matter- one to TETFund to fast-track the said payment and the second one to my university in Cyprus not to terminate my studentship, stating that the delay in the outstanding tuition fee payment was largely due to the CBN policy of naira redesigning which indirectly affected international transactions.
I am going into the 7th semester of the PhD programme, and not a single kobo has been paid out of the remaining outstanding tuition fee of Euro 5,250 which is equivalent of over 10 million naira at the current exchange rate.
More painful is the fact that I had quietly self-sponsored and successfully completed the coursework part of a PhD programme which I started in the year 2019 at my Alma Mater (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife) with excellent performance in the final results of my coursework before I was granted the TETFund sponsorship on merit.
Most of my colleagues have started having their PhD convocation ceremonies since 2023. But here I am with TETFund financial frustration as a Lecturer II staff in a Federal University with N132,000 as total monthly salary.
For how many years will I starve myself and my innocent family members to save enough money that can pay this type of amount from my meagre salary?
This is how the combined TETFund trio teamed up to jointly loot over N10 million Naira approved for my PhD study.
As I’m writing this, nothing has been done because these people believe they are untouchable.
*Kamal Saka-Odunjo, a Doctorate candidate from Nigeria, is currently on a Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) scholarship at the Girne American University, Cyprus.
