ACADEMIC JAPA SYDROME: FG Laments Failure of Nigerian Foreign Scholarship Students to Return, Says 85% of Them Don't Return

By: Olufemi Orunsola 

The Federal Government has bemoaned what some have described as an ugly trend of "Academic Japa Sydrome" among Nigerian students, who use the foreign scholarship route to exit the country, noting that no fewer than 85 per cent of foreign scholars refuse to return to the country upon completion of their studies abroad.

OPEN TELEVISION NAIJA (OTN) News reports that this shocking revelation was made public by the country’s Minister of Education, Mr. Tunji Alausa, during a one-day engagement with heads of institutions, bursars and procurement officers in Lagos.

The Minister revealed that it has become imperative for the government to overhaul the funding architecture of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and foreign scholarship schemes to ensure better value for public resources.

Alausa further revealed that, "Our evidence-based analysis showed that 85 per cent of Nigerian students sent abroad on government scholarships never returned to contribute to national development."

He added that, “Many of the programmes they studied could have been handled effectively within our own institutions.”

The Minister announced that as part of strategic moves towards reversing the ugly trend, the government had established 28 Centres of Excellence across select public and private institutions to strengthen local postgraduate training, drive innovation, and boost employment opportunities.

He maintained that "Nigeria must stop exporting brains and start investing in indigenous knowledge systems that serve our economy.”

Citing inefficient allocation of resources to underpopulated institutions as unsustainable, the Education Minister revealed that the Federal Government is poised to make sweeping policy changes in TETFund disbursements, declaring that tertiary institutions with fewer than 2,000 students would no longer be eligible for funding.

Concluding, he said, "Several polytechnics established as far back as 2019 have only between 350 and 550 students enrolled yet receive the same level of funding as institutions with over 18,000 students."

“This is inefficient. Institutions that fail to scale up capacity within five years of establishment will be excluded from TETFund support.”