Data obtained from the website of the Central Bank of Nigeria on Sunday revealed that Nigeria’s educational sector suffered massive capital flight during the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari(retd).
Specifically, using the CBN’s balance of payment statistics, Nigerians have spent a hefty sum of $3.5bn on foreign education in the past seven years (June 2015 to August 2022). Recently, academic activities in Nigerian universities, polytechnics and colleges of education were grounded for months in 2022.
According to the CBN data gathered from amount spent on educational services under the sectoral utilisation for transactions valid for foreign exchange, a sum of $375.99 million was released by the apex bank between June 2015 and December 2015. Further analysis of the data revealed that a total of $269.1 million was released in 2016.
There was a huge leap in 2017 when the apex bank disclosed that a total of $514.16 was released for foreign education. In 2018, a total of $546.78 was released. For 2019, there was a huge decrease as the bank released $197.52 million.
