Unpaid tuition: Abandoned NDDC scholars protest in London

Scholarship beneficiaries of the Niger Delta Development Commission on Monday protested their alleged abandonment by the commission.

They said the NDDC had stopped paying their tuition and upkeep allowances.

The protest, which held in London, was posted on the protesting scholars’ Twitter handle, @2019Nddc.

They also complained that they risked being deported from the United Kingdom where they are schooling.

They lamented that their school fees and maintenance funds had not been paid one year after they were awarded scholarships.

During the protest, which held at the Nigeria High Commission in London, the aggrieved scholars displayed placards with various inscriptions.

Among the inscriptions are ‘NDDC has failed us’, ‘we have been thrown out of school’, ‘we risk deportation’, ‘must we protest to get paid, and ‘scholarship not suffership (sic)’.

While some of the protesters were seen sitting on the floor, others held the placards standing.

In a video of the protest shared online, the protesters insisted on speaking with the President Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), or the Minister of the NDDC, Godswill Akpabio.

But an official of the high commission, who could not immediately be identified, appealed to the protesters for calm.

He said, “My integrity will be at stake if I call somebody else to act as the minister on the telephone. It will not solve your problem. What matters most is that we are giving you our words.”

But the protesters chorused that previous promises made to them by the Nigerian government were not kept. Punch