There was an outcry recently when the list of the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) scholarship was released to the public. The list appeared to have favoured a certain section of the country to the disadvantage of the others.
The outcry led to the intervention of the National Assembly. The northerners especially wailed about the apparent short change – only to be shut up by no other than our own father Alh Ahmad Joda.
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Certainly, if someone as credible as Joda intervenes, that should be the end of it? I thought so. Ahmad Joda is not only credible, but also capable and has seen the controversy first hand when he helmed the education department.
So I forgot about the whole thing; until Abdussalam Abubakar Bello from Gombe came calling.
He bugged me for about two weeks. Asking me to help deliver his letter to the education minister, Malam Adamu Adamu. At issue was the BEA scholarship to Russia. Abdussalam felt he was cheated because if scholarships are granted based on the two criteria for which studentships are usually granted internationally (merit and need), he felt he deserved the scholarship.
His case is simple. The scholarship was advertised in the newspaper calling for those who qualified to apply. The qualification sought was five distinctions including English and Mathematics. Abdussalam qualified so he applied because he has nine distinctions including in English and math. He applied for General Medicine. But he wasn’t given. But someone who has only five distinctions was given the scholarship.
Abdussalam said he wasn’t alone. Many qualified candidates across the country who applied were overlooked. For example, Ojile Martha Oyinlonye has only five distinctions and was selected to go to Russia. And Martha wasn’t alone too. According to Abdussalam, although some successful candidates qualify, some of those selected are underage, overage or don’t have as many distinctions as many of those candidates left out.
How could this be? First, I felt Abdussalam was crying wolf. Indeed I’ve met some students in the past who played victims only to change their stories later. But Abdussalam appears to be different. He followed the case like a careful journalist.
The first time he shared his discontent with Federal Scholarship Board (FSB), they told him that he wasn’t selected because the Russian Embassy in Nigeria didn’t shortlist him.
FSB wrote him in an email: ”The Federal Scholarship Board has nothing to do with assessments of results, the mandate of the Board is just to make nomination to the Russian Embassy, they do the finally selections and send a list of successful candidates to the Board.
You may kindly recall that you where told to go to the Russian website to fill a form and upload your results this was to enable them do their assessments.”
When he contacted the Russian Embassy through a kind Russianwoman , an official, Mr. Ivan Lydkin, the education attache, told him that he was qualified and would have been chosen had the Federal Scholarship Board submitted his name: ”Though looking at your results, you are among the best candidates but the Federal Scholarship Board did not send your details to us so we didn’t review your application.”
So he went back to the FSB to ask why his name was not submitted. They officials there changed the story to ”you didn’t apply.” when he showed them the evidence that he indeed applied and beat the deadline by two days, he was asked to be patient and to believe in destiny.
That is not all. I saw in a document where winning awards counted among the weights Russia used in selecting candidates. Abdussalam has won four of them:
”MSSN National Quiz competition; NNPC Science Competition; Qualifiers for International Chemistry Olympiads; as well as the Overall Best Graduating Student in my school.”
Also, Abdussalam has all the documents needed to support his claim and has listed them in his petition to the minister of education, Mal Adamu Adamu.
But I decided to do my own independent digging by making two moves. First, I contacted someone I know who works in the Federal Scholarship Board to see if Abdussalam case had any merit. ”Yes, it can happen.” My contact said.
”I thought said your director was an honest woman?” I reminded him.
”Yes, Hajiya is beyond reproach but you know civil servants. She can only work with what is presented to her.” He said.
Two, I wanted to talk to Abdussalam’s family. As a teenager, certainly there must be parents who are helping him with the application and the petition? So I asked Abdussalam to let me to speak with his father.
”My father can’t talk about this case, ” he told me. Why not?
”Because he is very old. He is over 80,” he said.
”Okay, let me speak with any adult that supported you through the process.”
”I wrote the petition myself. But I will send you the number of the lawyer who is helping me.” he volunteered.
So I called Malam Aminu Ayama who helped guide him through the process. ”Like you, I decided to help him because I thought his case had merit, ” Mal Aminu told me.
”We met with Abdussalam on Facebook through a group we created to champion the cause of the Fulani. I was drawn to him because of his intellect. He wrote many interesting articles in the forum.”
When I contacted the director of FSB to comment on the case, she sent me this text:
”Salaam. I head a department under the office of the permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education. If you need any information from the department I am heading, Please route your request to the Honorable Ministers of Education. Thank you.”
Abdussalam has many prayers in his petition to the minister of education, Malam Adamu Adamu whom we can always count on to do the right thing.
But I have only one: Please investigate this one. If northerners are always blamed for not applying for opportunities, and we have someone who applied, is qualified and willing to fight for himself, surely that merits a second look? If nothing is done about this, surely we can’t fall back on the regular tat that northerners don’t apply. Baba Joda, could you please intervene again?
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