The Embassy of Russia in Nigeria has urged Nigerians to explore opportunity through application for the ongoing Russian Government Scholarship programme, to improve themselves educationally.

Mr Ivan Lydkin, Press Attache of the Embassy, made the call on Wednesday in Abuja while addressing executive members of the National Association of Nigeria Students (NANS).

He described the scholarship programme as Russia’s way to strengthen its bilateral relations with Nigeria, under its reunification initiative.

According to him, one of Russia’s missions here is to introduce Nigeria students to Russia’s academic opportunities, to enable them to improve themselves.

Lydkin said, “We have organised interactive sessions in Nigeria for Russia Alumni in the country who are over 10,000.

“We work with 30 courses and offers full educational programme and our programme has been growing bigger and better over the years.

“The scholarship affords allowances from the Federal Scholarship Board of Nigeria (FSB)

“We have 40 educational programmes across 32 Universities which offer courses based on candidate’s choice.”

He explained the six conditions for the historic Crimea reunification with Russia, despite its undoubted legitimacy and lawfulness.

The Press Attache mentioned the six rationales to include Crimea referendum, international law perspective, and legal status of the city of Sevastopol.

Others include Russia military presence on the peninsula, geopolitical rationale and common law perspective.

Also, Mr Renat Yalyshev, Head of the International Students’ Office, lauded the scholarship initiative and urged Nigeria students to apply in order to secure better education in future.

According to him, we have Universities for all engineering, science courses and also in the humanities.

“The St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University “LETI” for instance is the oldest University founded in 1886; where you can be offered all direction of computer sciences.

“We have school of electronics and automation; we have very good experience in technology.

“A Nigerian graduated there in 1972 and since then Nigerians have been graduating from the school,” Yalyshev said.

Meanwhile, Mr Danielson Akpan, who led the delegation of NANS executive, commended the Embassy for the scholarship initiative and promised to disseminate the information to his colleagues.

According to him, what you are offering is quite commendable; our business is not just to coordinate students affairs, the complaints we received from some of them about discrimination border us.

“We believe that there is no difference between us; we should see ourselves as one, we have received number of complaints from our members out there.

“The concept of the exchange programme is important for us, but it is more important to address this issue, to allay fears by Nigerians wanting to study abroad,” Akpan said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the programme designed for graduates and post-graduates under the auspices of the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA), provides scholarship opportunity for Nigerians to studying Russia.

Under the BEA scholarship, the Russian Government takes care of the students’ tuition, while the Nigerian government pays each of the students 500 dollars monthly for their upkeep.

The scholarship provides for 100 students selected after applying via www.studyinrussia.ru.en where five successful applicants that qualify from each state make up total number of 250 persons that would be interviewed. (NAN)

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