November 14,2022

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) released $3.5bn for foreign education in the past seven years (June 2015 to August 2022), data from the apex bank released on Sunday has shown.

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

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.

For 2019, there was a huge decrease as the bank released $197.52 million.

It was also noted that $270.42 million was released in 2020 amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

There was a huge leap in 2021 as the bank recorded a total of $720.05 million released for same purpose.

So far in 2022, only the data from January to August has been made available which revealed that a total of $609.5 million has been released so far

The data from the apex bank revealed that Nigerians remitted more than $3.5 billion to foreign academic institutions under Buhari without significant reciprocity in the form of inflows from foreign sources to the local education sector.

The huge net dollar outflows have dual adverse effects of underinvestment in domestic education and creates pressure on the naira exchange rate, economists said.

The high demand for dollars to pay foreign educational institutions affects Nigeria’s foreign reserves and contributes immensely to piling pressure on the exchange rate.