President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the payment of fees and stipends of stranded scholarship students of the Niger Delta Development Commission studying abroad.
This was contained in a statement titled ‘NDDC invites President Buhari to Commission Signature Project’ and signed by the NDDC Director, Corporate Affairs, Charles Odili, on Tuesday.
Odili said Buhari conveyed the directive to the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Godswill Akpabio
The statement reads, “Under the Commission’s finance protocol, only the Executive Director (Finance) and the Executive Director (Projects) can sign for the release of funds from the vommission’s domiciliary accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“With the death of Chief Etang, the remittance has to await the appointment of a new EDFA. Senator Akpabio, the Honourable Minister, said President Buhari who has been briefed on the protest by students at the Nigerian High Commission in London, has ordered that all stops be pulled to pay the students by the end of this week. We expect a new EDFA to be appointed this week. As soon as that is done, they would all be paid.”
The order comes barely 24 hours after the abandoned students protested at the Nigeria High Commission office in London.
The 2018 and 2019 scholars lamented that they had been abandoned by the government and left to survive in foreign countries without necessary allowance paid by the NDDC.
They also revealed that the commission had failed to process and release their tuition, which has led to the ejection and warning to cancel their scholarship programmes.
