"We skip meals to survive" – Nigerian students in Russia Laments

SAMUEL Adewale’s dream to study in a good university came true in 2013 when he received a letter of admission from the Don State Technical University, Rostov on Don, Russia.

ADVERTISEMENT

He said, “When I learnt that I won the scholarship, I felt really excited. I never thought that I would be awarded a scholarship, since I knew studying outside the shores of Nigeria cost a lot of money. Against this backdrop, I must appreciate the Federal Government’s gesture.”

But the twist to this development is government’s failure to pay his allowances. It has caused him suffering and hardship.

Under the arrangement, the Federal Government pays for the upkeep of the students, while the country where the scholarship award is tenable, provides the tuition.

The tough times that Adewale and 371 other Nigerian students on the BEA scholarship now face in their various universities in Russia, due to unpaid rents and other allowances, make them to wonder whether the exercise is targeted at punishing him.

The students, who went through a rigorous process to emerge beneficiaries of the programme, are imagining whether they are actually on a scholarship due to the failure of the Federal Government to fulfil its part of the BEA.

Sharing his ordeal with our correspondent in an electronic mail, Adewale lamented that the Federal Government had abandoned the BEA scholars.

He said, “This unpaid stipend has affected my studies and that of many of my colleagues badly. During the holidays, many of us would sleep late at night (sometimes not until 4am or 5am) just to make sure we skip breakfast and lunch. For me particularly, when I wake up at about 3pm, I will brush my teeth and drink water. Then, I wait till 7 or 8pm before I start hustling for what to eat. Normally, I do not eat breakfast before going to school. I do that after all my lectures and I make sure I eat two times at night because I know that I am not going to take anything for breakfast. But eating twice is not even possible anymore because there is no money to buy foodstuff.

“Nowadays we go to bed and to classes on empty stomachs. Besides, many of us have not been able to pay our hostel fees. Soon, we will have to renew our visas and health insurance schemes. These problems affect us greatly.

“Often, when I get to class, instead of concentrating on lectures, I would be thinking of how to deal with these problems.”

Another Nigerian student, who sent a picture of himself and his colleague eating Manka (Russian semovita) without soup, said the life they face in the former Soviet Union Republic was better imagined than told.

Punch