Kano governor offers employment to foreign scholarship graduates

The Governor of Kano State, Abba Yusuf, has announced automatic employment for some postgraduate students returning from the government’s foreign scholarship programme.

He stated this after he welcomed 150 beneficiaries of the programme who had completed their master’s degree programmes in India.

Mr Yusuf, on his verified X handle, said the beneficiaries are graduates of engineering, medicine, pharmaceutics and other health-related fields.

He said they studied in different institutions, with 150 from Sharda University, India.

They are parts of 420 first-class holders sponsored under the 1001 foreign postgraduate scholarship scheme.

“Apart from the 150 graduates from Sharda University, there are 98 from Mewar University, 58 from Symbiosis University, 30 from Kalinga University, 29 from SR University, 23 from Swarnim University, and 33 from the Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU), among others.

“In a reception held at the Government House, I commended the students for their hard work, dedication and outstanding performance, noting that the foreign scholarship programme is a cornerstone of our administration’s vision for human capital development.

“This move underscores our administration’s commitment to addressing the shortage of skilled healthcare professionals and improving the state’s healthcare system and infrastructure development, Mr Yusuf stated.

Governor Yusuf approved N4.6 billion for scholarships to be awarded to 1,001 postgraduate students who study abroad.

However, the Kano State Anti-corruption and Public Complaints Commission quizzed some senior officials of the state’s Ministry of Higher Education over releasing huge funds under the scheme without the governor’s approval.

The agency found that only 418 students were sent abroad, despite the release of a substantial part of the budget for the programme.

The agency subsequently recovered over N700 million after the governor ordered an investigation, said an official who spoke off the record with PREMIUM TIMES.

The state’s commissioner for higher education, Yusif Kofar-Mata, who the anti-corruption agency also quizzed, was removed from the ministry in a recent cabinet reshuffle.