Tehran – Nigerian students in Iran have appealed to the Federal Government to offer them scholarships to enable them to complete their studies.
A spokesman of the Nigerian community in Iran, Malam Auwal Kabuga, made the appeal on Tuesday in Tehran during an interactive session with President Muhammadu Buhari.
According to him, the over 260 Nigerian students studying in Iran are not on Federal Government scholarship.
“Mr President, we are appealing to your government to grant us scholarships to ease our hardship during the course of our study in Iran.
“Mr President, we will also recommend the establishment of collaboration between Nigerian universities and Iranian universities for mutual benefits.
“We will like to appeal to Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) to establish a point of issuance of e-passport in Iran.’’
Kabuga expressed dismay that Nigerians in Iran had to travel to India, Dubai or Abuja to obtain e-passport.
In their contributions, other Nigerians urged the Buhari administration to urgently tackle the security challenges in the country as well as the rot in the nation’s power sector.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
Responding, President Buhari said that he had already directed all his ministers to commence work immediately so that Nigerians could feel government’s impact.
The President stated that he has directed the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, to go ahead with the planned work on major road projects across the country.
“On roads, especially Lagos – Ibadan express way, yes, I think there were some fabulous talks, yesterday.
“The Minister, I did not know that he had taken a lot of notes and he decided to take 15 minutes to discuss with me what he intends to do, especially about this (Lagos-Ibadan road).
“Whether we come from Ibadan or from Maiduguri, I think there are bad roads between Lagos –Ibadan and then up to Kaduna and so on; it’s a concern.
“This is because the casualties we have in terms of broken down and expense; and then it makes the conveying of goods and services much more expensive because a journey that should take a maximum of 24 hours, some people say is taking 20 days.
“But, I know that is exaggeration but at least is taking a week and this makes goods and services very expensive throughout the country.
“And then the question of insecurity and therefore is affecting the economy. So, something is being done about it.’’
Buhari further said that the present administration was doing all it could to address the challenges in the country’s health sector.
According to him, the government will tackle the problems of expired drugs and quacks in the medical profession as well as get rid of “baby factories’’ in some parts of the country. (NAN)
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