An American University has threatened to deport 21 students under the scholarship of Bayelsa government may deported due to failure failure of the government to pay up their school fees, at the end of a three week grace.
The undergraduates who are in their final academic semester at the Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, are appealing to the Bayelsa government to urgently intervene to save their carrer prospects.
Two of the scholarship beneficiaries who spoke to a NAN correspondent in a telephone interview said that interactions with the management of the University revealed that the estimated outstanding fees stood at about $970,000.00 dollars (about N300 million).
Akpos Akins, said that since the payment for the first session, subsequent payment had not been regular.
He explained that the university will not even honour individual payment by students or their parents as the management insisted that such arrangement would run contrary to the agreement signed with the Bayelsa State Government.
He said the parent association had been working hard to get the state government clear the outstanding fees to no avail.
The students who acknowledged the good intention of the foreign education scholarship by the government of Bayelsa led by Governor Seriake Dickson should help secure their future by directing immediate release of funds for the payment.
They said that the management of Lincoln University had been very good to them despite failure of the government to meet up with payment for some time now.
“We appeared to have become a source of burden to the management. We are very worried and disturbed. We have been given three weeks to pay before the school’s management take action. And without our Transcript, we cannot proceed with Industrial Training known as OPT or go to graduate school.
"The management is then obligated to report us for deportation seeing we have no further business in the country. Our time and efforts would have been wasted if that happened. We want to be seen as worthy ambassadors of Bayelsa state. We are going through psychological trauma now, we cannot even focus on our studies.
"This is an unnecessary distraction. We are not even particular of our allowances which is no longer regular but the government should help us”, one of the students lamented.
“We want to appeal to our Countryman Governor to save our future. The students are very grateful for this gesture to go study abroad. Apart from giving us hope, we are coming back to contribute our quota to the development of our dear Bayelsa state” he said.
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