Scholarship: Niger flushes out 7, 000 ghost students, saves N125m

Aideloje Ojo

Niger state government has flushed out over 7, 000 ghost students from its scholarship list thereby saving N125 million, the Commissioner for Tertiary Education, Dr. Bashir Nuhu, has said.
He disclosed this yesterday in a briefing in Minna, explaining that the list of fake students included those who never graduated from schools, duplicated names and the names of non-existence students.

He said the fake students were discovered in a verification exercise by his ministry to ascertain the authentic list of students benefiting from government scholarship.

Nuhu said government had spent over N704.5 million in payment of scholarship to Niger state students from 2011to 2013
He said the disbursement of the 2014 scholarship estimated to benefit 9, 000 students at the cost of N94 million would soon commence.

He said government intended to increase the scholarship money per student following the savings being made from the blocking of ghost students
The commissioner said government had in 2011 paid N298.8 million to 23,609 students as scholarship, while the sum of N236 million was paid to 20,028 students in 2012, adding that the figure reduced drastically in 2013 to N170.4 million for 14,241students as a result of the verification exercise.