By Orukotan Ayomikun Samuel
Scholarships are different from lotteries. Scholarships are to foster national unity, strengthen the weak, impact beings, celebrate excellence and encourage literary and scholastic abilities among scholars.
I crave the indulgence of readers before I address the crux of this piece to cross the threshold for a short take.
Scholarships are financial awards conferred on scholastic but qualified students. They are awarded to recipients based on certain gages and gauges. Empirically, scholarships could be awarded on the root of merit, economic need, career, ethnic and religious specifications et al. On the other hand, merit-based awards which are quite competitive compared to all other groupings are widely based on an individual’s academic, artistic, athletic or any other in-depth abilities.
Poverty is the bane of many African countries. By retrospect, merit-based awards and need-based awards aided the economically less-privileged. In Nigeria for instance, many citizens live in abject and punitive forms of poverty. These are people who live per-diem below the poverty line. Take it or leave it, many young people in Nigeria today have a strong will of purpose to become a big cheese in life but the wherewithal is not there. What really have those that have the papers of this world then done to help their fellow needy brothers and sisters?
Unfortunately for these hapless and helpless young people, agents of local scholarships in Nigeria that should help their course have gone on vacation for ins and outs best known to them. No matter how plethora, some Nigerians have not passed the buck in this regard. However, it is quite pathetic that some religious or non-religious foundations, trade unions, chambers of commerce, houses of prayer and worship, profit and non-profit organizations et al. have retreated back to their dens and denizens under the façade of witlessness.
Many a time, scholarships only decimate financial needs. In line with the forgoing, scholarships are a heterogeneous brand.
Archaeologically, the practice of giving fellowships began in medieval universities as a means of helping penurious students. Though, Charles Hughes had believed the history of scholarship is a record of disagreements among distinguished experts. In the century of the Anno Domini era, the clear intentions of scholarships in developing societies, like Nigeria has been ill-conceived, fuzzy and blurred. It has been reduced to another form of show-off and egoism by some egomaniacs.
I was a scholar of the Agbami scholarship scheme during my days as an undergraduate student of the best university of Technology in Nigeria, FUTA. It was one of those incentives that actually helped my progression on Campus. The Agbami scholarship scheme is one scheme sponsored by companies involved in the Agbami oil field discovered in Nigeria in the twilight of 1988.
That said, Agbami scholarship scheme ever since its launch in 2009 has influenced tremendously the lives of the Talakawa’s (commoners). It has improved the academic standing of many undergraduate students, protected the interest of the meagre genius and motivated many beneficiaries to study really hard not minding the psychological cause and effect a poor background portends. Arguably, this influence on humans doesn’t happen by chance but by common sense. This could be overtly owed to prompt payment of Scholars on the Agbami scheme as and when due.
Even the process of selecting applicants for the Computer-Based Testing (CBT) has been very transparent, unprejudiced and non-discriminatory provided the applicant has met the stipulated application conditions. Though, it is still restricted to some fields of study but quite consistent and effective.
This cannot be said of several other scholarship schemes in Nigeria which is still largely merit-based but are lacking in merit, veracity and fairness.
Scholarships are contracts and conditions precede contracts. Contracts are breached when contractual agreements are reneged. Definitely, some scholarship schemes in Nigeria today hold “contracts” in absolute contempt. A case in point is the Odu’a Investment Scholarship Scheme. The Odu’a scheme is one of such contract defaulters or shirkers. Get me right here, I am not paid to demean the Odu’a scheme but we must start telling ourselves the truth, revealing the coverts if any national progress is to be forged.
In 2013, the Odu’a award scheme manipulated the media for cheap political points. Then, it was public knowledge that Scholars under the scheme should by all accounts be awarded an annual stipend of 100,000 naira. However, 50,000 naira only was paid eventually to the few and far between recipients. Till tomorrow, what happened to the remaining unpaid money is yet to be known. Where is the place of integrity? The most sordid part of it is that: a scheme representing the interest of the Yoruba nation could engage in such misgiving and calumny even when it has think-tanks and respectable flesh and blood in its hegemony.
Many of Nigerian elites (governors, ministers, senators, presidents etc.) were once scholars of government scholarships or other forms of it. Without a doubt, those scholarships gave the lives of some of them meaning and worth. Through it, many more have had the opportunity to be cultured and educated. If not, today, they would have become stark illiterates submerged in the ferocious ocean of poverty. To whom much is given, much is expected. The corollary to this proposition is that: stop enriching your cronies with public funds and start encouraging the poor genius with public funds. Of course, it is their money.
According to the existing state of affairs in Nigeria, state scholarships are not readily available anymore except for some very few states. Federal government scholarships are lacking in credibility and accountability with its attendant misplaced priorities. A lot of state governors in Nigeria today are mere asylum seekers and figures of fun. Recently, one state governor was booed volubly by scholastic students while delivering a speech.
Many Nigerian governors have not conducted local government elections in their states, they won’t embark on real capital projects, they won’t pay bursaries and scholarships, and they won’t pay pensioners and workers their entitlements as and when due. In this midst of this governance glitch, what pricks my subconscious is: what are state governors doing with their monthly security votes? What are state governors doing to ameliorate the sufferings of their people?
In Nigeria, some of our Federal Government Scholarship Schemes have become the butt of local and international jokes. Just this month, Premium Times had reported that, over 300 Nigerians on the Federal Government Bilateral Educational Agreement (BEA) scholarship award were stranded in foreign lands. It is a blot on the landscape for Nigerian students on the BEA scheme to be called giant beggars among their lesser African counterparts. Is the statement ‘giant beggars’ the same as ‘giant of Africa’? Certainly No! This is a national embarrassment.
Year on year, the scholars on the BEA scholarship scheme face many ineffable hardships in foreign lands. The petition written by an agent of aggrieved students to the minister of education, Adamu Adamu and letter to the Russian ambassador to Nigeria speaks volume. Once and for all, the little forces that make a fuss of the vine, Nigeria, must be holistically addressed sooner rather than later.
Culled from pointblanknews
