On Monday, scores of beneficiaries of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) scholarship scheme in the UK hit the streets over the alleged refusal of the Commission to pay their entitlements which has forced them into destitution and taking odd jobs to survive.
The students converged on the Nigerian High Commission in London to express displeasure over the neglect of their welfare.
The scholars, who sat on the floor during the protest, lamented that they have been stranded since the NDDC stopped paying their tuition and allowances one year after they were awarded the scholarship.
The inscriptions on the placards read: “Abandoned in The Heat of COVID-19 Pandemic”, “NDDC Failed Us”, “‘We Have Been Thrown Out of School”; “We Risk Deportation”, “Must We have a protest to get paid?”, and “We Are Scholars, Not Militants”.
“We have continued to receive threats to be suspended from studying and thrown out for not paying rent. The IMC leadership @NDDCOnline have looted our funds. We will not accept the half school fees or upkeep you are proposing,” one of them wrote on Twitter.
A video of the protest, which has gone viral on social media, showed the scholars asking to speak with President Muhammadu Buhari and Godswill Akpabio, minister of Niger Delta affairs.
Kolawole Johnson of Act for Positive Transformation Initiative had in July while appearing before the house of representatives committee probing the NDDC accused some officials of the commission of paying monies meant for students under the scholarship into their personal accounts, an allegation that was however denied by the interim management committee of the NDDC.
