Nigerians have spent at least $3.5 billion on their academic pursuit in the United Kingdom (UK), and other foreign countries.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in its latest data, revealed that the figure was spent between June 2015, and August 2022.
A look into how the money was dispensed
- According to the central bank, the figures disclosed below were spent on educational services under the sectoral utilisation for transactions valid for foreign exchange.
- $375.99 million was paid between June 2015 and December 2015.
- A total of $269.1 million was released in 2016.
- In 2017, a total of $514.16 was released for foreign education.
- In 2018, a total of $546.78 was released.
- There was, however, a huge decrease as the bank only released $197.52 million in 2019.
- It was also noted that $270.42 million was released in 2020 amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
- There was a huge leap in 2021 as the bank recorded a total of $720.05 million released for the same purpose.
- However, so far in 2022, only the data from January to August has been made available which revealed that a total of $609.5 million has been released so far.
Why Nigerians leverage CBN for their academic pursuit abroad
In view of the fact that the country operates on multiple exchange rates, the CBN introduced a policy -‘ Form A’, which allows applicants to pay for service transactions such as School fees, Technical fees, Airline Tickets, Personal Home Remittance, PTA, BTA etc.
Applicants get charged N5,000 as a fee per declaration of e-Form ‘A’. Once a person applies for it, there will be a direct debit from the processing bank’s current account for each declaration.
Nigeria’s educational sector is in comatose
With the incessant strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), and the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), many people are now settling for studying abroad. This is because it saves them from the consequences of the frequent industrial actions by the educational bodies.
