Students on scholarship of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) protested on Monday in the United Kingdom the non-payment of their tuition fees.
Carrying placards, the students converged on the Nigerian High Commission in London to express displeasure over “negligence of their welfare”.
They said they had resorted to begging for food and risk deportation since the NDDC stopped paying their tuition and allowances one year after they were awarded the scholarship.
Some of them sat on the floor during the protest with their placards reading: “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”.
In a video which has since gone viral, the students are seen asking to speak with President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Godswill Akpabio.
An official of the high commission addressed the protesters, assuring that their concerns would be addressed.
“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,” the official said.
The NDDC is being probed by the House of Representatives for alleged mismanagement of funds.
