The Ebonyi State Scholarship Board has challenged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in the 2027 election, Chief Ifeanyi Odii, to acquaint himself with the details and operational framework of the state government’s scholarship scheme before making further claims about the programme.
Chairman of the Board, Hon. Chaka Nweze, made the clarification while reacting to recent comments by Odii on the scholarship initiative, describing some of the assertions as lacking in facts and capable of creating misconceptions about a programme funded with public resources.
Nweze, a former Chairman of Ohaozara Local Government Area, acknowledged Odii’s recognition of Governor Francis Nwifuru’s investment in education, particularly the overseas postgraduate scholarship programme, but said the available records provided a clearer picture of the scope and beneficiaries of the initiative.
According to him, the Board’s records currently indicate that 304 Ebonyi students are studying in universities in the United Kingdom, while one student is in Canada under the overseas scholarship programme.
He said 202 of the UK-based scholars had completed their master’s programmes, with approximately 90 per cent of them graduating with distinctions, while many had progressed to PhD programmes.
Nweze added that about 101 students were still undertaking their master’s programmes in the UK.
He said the beneficiaries had been admitted to reputable institutions, including De Montfort University, Leeds Beckett University, Robert Gordon University, the University of Lincoln and Ulster University, among others.
The chairman stressed that the foreign scholarship programme represented only one component of the Nwifuru administration’s broader intervention in education.
He said the state had also awarded more than 1,000 scholarships to Ebonyi students studying in universities within Nigeria, arguing that the policy was designed to widen access to tertiary education rather than restrict opportunities to a privileged few.
“Whether a student is studying in Ebonyi, London, Leeds, Abuja, Enugu, Lagos, Nsukka or any other part of the country, the principle remains the same. We are investing in the education and future of Ebonyi youths,” Nweze said.
He said the central question should be what the state was achieving through the investment, stressing that the government was not merely paying school fees but developing a pool of skilled manpower capable of contributing to the state’s future development.
Nweze listed engineering, medicine, science, technology, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, renewable energy, environmental science, agriculture and data science among fields in which beneficiaries could deploy their acquired expertise.
“A scholarship does not end when the student receives a certificate. The real return on that investment begins when the graduate puts that knowledge to work,” he said.
The chairman also disclosed that beneficiaries of the overseas scholarship programme were required to execute an undertaking with the Ebonyi State Scholarship Board to return to the state and serve for five years in government agencies or institutions after their studies.
He explained that the requirement was part of the state’s strategy to ensure that the knowledge and expertise acquired abroad were eventually deployed in Ebonyi.
Nweze further dismissed suggestions that the selection of beneficiaries was based on political patronage, insisting that the process was guided by academic merit, equitable representation of the 13 Local Government Areas and other established criteria of the Scholarship Board.
“If there are concerns about whether a particular Local Government Area was fairly represented, let us look at the records from Onicha LGA, where Odii comes from, and the other LGAs rather than rely on assumptions,” he said.
He urged stakeholders interested in the programme to examine the records and established criteria of the Scholarship Board rather than draw conclusions from what he described as incomplete or inaccurate narratives.
