Beneficiaries of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC’s overseas scholarship programme are alleged to be stranded abroad and some living in very pitiful conditions.

According to a press release issued and signed by the President, Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, Worldwide, Pereotubo Oweilaemi, Esq. the attention of the IYC has been drawn to the plights of the beneficiaries of the NDDC Overseas post-graduate scholarships programme who have been subjected to miseries and squalors due to non-payment of their tuition fees and other incentives.

“IYC has taken pain to have an interface with some of the affected students, we regret to say that the beneficiaries are being subjected to inhuman conditions as some of them are being squatted in the Nigerian embassies, while some are on the verge of being repatriated back to the country,” he said.

Oweilaemi said, “We also discovered that the affected students have opened different channels of communication with the management of NDDC here in Nigeria, but to our chagrin, the Commission is paying deaf ears to all the appellations. Even after promising to attend to the plights of the beleaguered students in foreign lands on the pages of newspapers, no step has ever been taken by the Commission to ameliorate their sufferings.”

The IYC president stated that, “on the list of 2016 beneficiaries, only those who were able to raise funds to pay their tuition fees and travel expenses were able to commence studies in their chosen countries, however, the Commission has not refunded their expenses back to them”.

“Many indigent Ijaw youths who have gotten the scholarship in 2016 and were unable to pay their fees themselves are still in Nigeria and unable to process their travelling documents”.

“We wish to alert the world, especially concerned Nigerians that another ugly news of Nigerians being subjected to slavery and servitudes are on the offing if the NDDC keeps on shirking its responsibility in attending to the plights of its students in foreign scholarship programmes,” the statement read.

As part of its statutory responsibilities to the Niger Delta region, we beg the NDDC Board not to keep aloof to the debilitating conditions of the students. Let the Commission respond to its duty with immediate effect for the safety and the survival of the students in its overseas scholarship programmes. IYC also call on President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly to prevail on the current Board to do the needful before its tenure expires. The students are currently in excruciating conditions in foreign countries. (Nigerian Pilot)

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