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Forex Crisis: Nigerian Students Abroad Apply to Home Universities
Many Nigerian students studying abroad have been seeking transfer to Nigerian universities to complete their education at home because of the scarcity of foreign exchange.
Punch reported that the students were forced to take the decision following the huge exchange rate which many parents could no longer afford.
Some of the students told Punch that they would prefer to return to the country to complete their studies, instead of going through difficulties and long waits for forex that is no longer available to them at the appropriate time.
An Ogun State indigene, Babatunde Agboola, who is studying in the United States, told one of our correspondents that he and some of his friends had agreed to return to Nigeria to complete their studies.
“The message we keep on receiving from home every day is that dollar is scarce and this is affecting our education,” Agboola said.
Asked which way the scarcity of the dollar was affecting them, he simply said, “In all areas. We need to buy food and sometimes books, but when there is no money to buy them, automatically we will be affected. So, it is better we return to Nigeria to complete our studies.”
A large number of Nigerian students are studying abroad, mainly in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, among others.
A 2015 report by the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, the United States, claimed that 9,494 students from Nigeria were admitted in the 2014/15 academic session, making Nigeria the leading source of students from Africa and the 15th largest country worldwide among international students in the US.
Nigerian universities, especially the private ones, have however, expressed interest in providing spaces for willing students interested in their respective institutions.
The universities assured the concerned students of standard learning facilities like those found in tertiary institutions abroad.
For instance, Babcock University said it was interested in accepting transfer students.
It allayed the fears of concerned parents who could not afford expensive forex and urged them to seek placements for their children in the institution.
The university also promised interested students world-class learning facilities.
It listed integration of international professional certifications into academic programmes and well structured and uninterrupted academic programmes, among others, as some of the benefits interested students were bound to enjoy.
A senior official of Babcock University told one of our correspondents on the telephone that many foreign students had been seeking transfer to the institution.
He said the opportunity was open to Nigerians who actually left the country to school abroad and those who were born there.
The official said, “It is surprising that many parents said their children would not have completed their education abroad, but for the opportunity created by Babcock University to assist stranded students.
“So many people have been coming to us to seek advice on how to handle their transfer. All they need to do is to apply and come with their transcripts.
“The opportunity is open to every interested person, including Nigerians born abroad, but interested in continuing their education in Nigeria.”
When asked how the standard of the certificates of those born abroad could be determined in Nigeria, the official said, “That one is not a problem; there is a way we usually grade the certificates.”
Achievers University, Owo, Ondo State, has admitted a few of the students who sought transfer from abroad to the institution.
A senior official of the institution, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “One student was admitted into one of the social sciences departments, he came from one of the foreign universities to complete his studies here. He requested for transfer and he was offered.”
The Registrar, Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, Alhaja Rasheedat Oladimeji, expressed the hope that the university would record influx of foreign transfer of students.
She, however, stated that the university had just started admission for the next academic session and was hopeful that some foreign students would seek transfer to the institution.
The spokesperson for Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Mr. Afeez Olaniyi, said the institution was prepared to accept returnee foreign students.
“We will be glad to receive them. Yes, we do accept foreign students if they meet the requirements. We have been accepting over the years,” he said.
The Admissions Officer of Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, Mr. Adewale Ayewole, also said the institution would gladly receive any returnee student, stating, “If they have the right qualification, we will accept them. If the course the student wants to study is run in our school, we will accept them.”
Asked if the institution had been receiving requests from overseas students, Ayewole asked Saturday PUNCH to forward an email to the school’s registrar. However, the registrar had yet to respond to the request as of the time of publishing this story.
But an official of Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State, said the institution doesn’t accept foreign students.
He said, “If the concerned students have passports, they will be admitted as international students, but they cannot serve in the National Youth Service Corps scheme after the completion of their programmes. They have to go abroad for their Master’s before they can serve.
“However, if the students do not have passports, they have to write the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination and be admitted like any other local student.”
Though it has been receiving transfer requests from Nigerians studying abroad, an official of Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, said the school does not accept such requests because of its “peculiar” curriculum.
The official said, “As far as Covenant University is concerned, we don’t admit students into 200 Level or any other higher level. They must start from the scratch because of the peculiarity of our curriculum. If we are to admit them as they are requesting, we will somehow alter our curriculum which we don’t do. Such a student must seek admission afresh by taking the UTME.”
Meanwhile, some parents whose children are schooling abroad have said that their final year students have been engaging in menial jobs, among other means, to sustain themselves.
A parent, Mrs. Abigail Ademuyiwa, whose son is studying in the University of Kyiv, Ukraine, stated that her son was in the final year, but had been seeking scholarship to complete his education following her inability to send money to him.
She said “Since last year that the foreign exchange has affected the naira, the money I have been sending to him is no longer enough to take care of him, but he told me that he had been seeking scholarship there to complete his education, apart from engaging in menial jobs to cater for himself. He will graduate this year.”
A man, Alhaji Ahmed Sani, said he would have loved to bring his 21-year-old son from Ghana to complete his education at home, but he was constrained because he was in his final year.
Sani said, “The tuition I paid in his first two years was not up to what I paid after the forex crisis. Before, I used to pay N200, 000 per session, but I now pay N400, 000.
“If not because he is in his final year, I would have loved to bring him back to complete his education at home.”
He, however, told one of correspondents that two of his friends whose children still had more than two academic sessions to complete their studies had sought placements for them in Nigerian universities.
A Minna-based businessman, Alhaji Jebo Mohammed, lamented that it had not been easy for him to access forex to fund his children’s education abroad.
Mohammed, however, said in spite of the forex crisis, he would endeavour to ensure that they finished their education abroad. “It is a commitment and task that must be done,” he said.
The Vice-Chancellor, Caleb University, Imota, Lagos State, Prof. Ayandiji Daniel Aina, said though his university had yet to receive applications from students seeking transfer from abroad, it was logical for parents who could no longer afford their children’s tuition because of the forex crisis to bring them back home for the completion of their studies.
Asked if his university would admit such students if they sought to transfer to the school, Aina said, “They are welcome, but we are not basing our readiness to admit them on the forex crisis.”
Police Special Fraud Unit (PSFU), Ikoyi, Lagos, said its operatives have busted a syndicate who used Point of Sale (POS) terminals and other technological tools to gain access to financial institution’s database to steal more than N3 billion.
Police did not name the financial institution where the money was stolen but DSP Ovie Ewhubare, spokesperson for the Unit, in a statement Friday, said that while a member of the syndicate has been arrested, other remained at large.
The PSFU spokesperson said the suspect was apprehended following an extensive investigation into a sophisticated cyber intrusion targeting a financial institution.
“The members of the syndicate allegedly used Point of Sale (POS) terminals and other technological tools to gain unauthorised access to the financial institution’s database.
“The breach enabled the suspects to initiate fraudulent transactions worth more than N3 billion,’’ he said.
According to him, investigations reveal that the proceeds of the alleged fraud are quickly laundered through multiple bank accounts in an attempt to conceal the source and movement of the funds.
The spokesperson said that the detectives deployed advanced digital forensic techniques and financial analysis to trace the transactions, identify members of the syndicate and recover key evidence to support prosecution.
Ewhubare said that Mr Eloho Okpoiakpo, commissioner of Police in charge of the PSFU, commended the investigating team for its professionalism in uncovering the alleged fraud.Law Enforcement
He said that Okpoiakpo directed the detectives to intensify efforts to apprehend other fleeing members of the syndicate, assuring that every effort would be made to bring all those involved to justice.
A new case study by Moniepoint Inc., Africa’s all-in-one financial ecosystem platform for individuals, businesses and their customers, traces four decades of Nigeria’s food service industry and reveals how the sector’s most persistent payment problems, that include settlement delays, unreliable confirmation, unchecked theft and inaccessible credit have been resolved by real-time digital infrastructure, turning food commerce into an $11.09 billion market in 2025.
The sector has undergone a massive structural shift marked by food-delivery super-apps, as well as a new generation of cloud kitchens operating without a single dining chair, with the food service industry poised to experience unprecedented growth as the Nigerian market is projected to reach $19.31 billion by 2030, growing at 11.73% annually.
The study traces the industry’s roots from the UAC-owned Kingsway Rendezvous of 1973 and the 1986 launch of Mr Bigg’s, through the rise of Chicken Republic and other quick-service chains, to the present day, where food and drinks form the second-largest merchant sector on Moniepoint’s platform, trailing only retail.
Tosin Eniolorunda, group CEO of Moniepoint Inc., noted that “Moniepoint believes financial inclusion is not just about access. It’s about dignity, about enabling people to transact on their terms. What’s happening in the food service sector today is significant. The real competitive question today is how deeply that payment infrastructure is woven into the way the business actually runs day to day.
“Moniepoint is sitting right at the centre of that shift. We are ensuring that payments are connected to inventory, inventory to recipes, recipes to procurement, procurement to credit, and credit to growth plans. By building out tools like Moniebook and Orda that match the operational reality of these culinary entrepreneurs, who act as mini-factories converting perishable raw materials into time-sensitive output, we are providing the digital operating system that drives sustainable scale for Nigeria’s socio-economic development.”
The report finds that for most of that history, Nigerian food businesses ran almost entirely on cash, with multi-location operators managing cash across a dozen or more outlets, facing constant exposure to loss, theft and human error. The rise of bank transfers in the 2010s introduced a new pain point around confirming that the payment had actually landed before releasing an order. At peak hours, the study notes, this manual verification could add two to five minutes to every transaction, with digital infrastructure most likely to falter precisely when demand and stakes were highest, especially during Christmas, New Year’s and Eid celebrations.
The study also documents how disconnected payment and inventory systems enabled operational leakage that was structurally difficult to detect, from unaccounted stock in the kitchen to under-ringing at the till and how Nigeria’s collateral-based lending system routinely locked thriving food businesses out of credit.
The International Finance Corporation estimates that the country’s unmet MSME credit demand was $32.2 billion in 2022, a gap that falls disproportionately on women, who, the report shows, own 86.8% of businesses in the accommodation and food services sector, the most female-dominated sector in the Nigerian economy.
To address these bottlenecks, Moniepoint introduced three structural interventions that reshaped the industry’s economics. Moving away from the traditional $T+1$ bank settlement cycle, it provided instant, same-day access to funds, allowing operators to finance the next morning’s inventory directly from the previous day’s sales.
This was paired with automated transfer confirmation at the terminal to eliminate manual verification queues and an embedded lending model that used verified transaction history instead of property collateral to unlock bulk purchasing power ahead of seasonal surges. Driven by these updates and the tightening of the cashless policy, Moniepoint witnessed a 2,823% surge in QSR terminal usage.
Beyond payments, a unified business banking dashboard replaced month-end spreadsheets with real-time, role-based visibility to curb financial misconduct across multiple branches. With Moniepoint’s launch of Moniebook and the acquisition of Orda, analysts say that the business is transitioning from a payment provider to a complete operating system, in line with its ecosystem ambition.
This integration allows culinary businesses to track ingredient depletion against precise recipes to expose hidden theft or portioning errors, while simultaneously consolidating fragmented orders from delivery apps, social media, and walk-ins into a single inventory ledger.
Some other insights from the study:
- Transaction volume across the industry peaks at lunch, between 1 pm and 2 pm, with a second evening peak at 7 pm reaching 10 to 15 times its level at 7 am – except online food delivery, which peaks and remains strong past 10 pm.
- Card payment activity records its biggest month-on-month jump of the year between November and December, while April is the industry’s quietest month for payment activity, running 46.3% below December’s.
This food service case study joins Moniepoint’s expanding pool of definitive thought leadership materials curated for the benefit of stakeholders, including regulators, investors, and the general public, aimed at enhancing their understanding of how digital payment ecosystems are transforming Nigeria’s commercial landscape across diverse sectors and market structures.
Flutterwave has secured a strategic investment from Circle Ventures, the venture capital arm of Circle Internet Group, to accelerate the expansion of its USDC payments and settlement infrastructure across Africa.
This comes as demand for faster and more efficient cross-border transactions grows.
The investment strengthens Flutterwave’s ambition to integrate USDC settlement into its existing payment ecosystem, allowing businesses to receive payments in local currencies while settling in the dollar-backed stablecoin.
The company said the move would reduce settlement delays and transaction costs while enabling near-instant settlements beyond traditional banking hours.
The announcement comes after Flutterwave participated in the launch of the Circle Payments Network in 2025, marking a deeper collaboration between the two companies in advancing digital payment infrastructure across the continent.
Flutterwave said the investment aligns with its strategy of positioning stablecoins as a key component of Africa’s financial infrastructure, while ensuring blockchain-based payment services operate within existing regulatory and compliance frameworks.
Commenting on the development, Flutterwave Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Olugbenga Agboola, said the investment would help build the infrastructure required for the next phase of global money movement from Africa.
According to him, stablecoins have evolved beyond experimentation into core financial infrastructure capable of transforming how businesses move money across borders.
“This support from Circle Ventures is about backing the rails that will power the next era of global money movement from Africa. Stablecoins like USDC are no longer an experiment; they are becoming core financial infrastructure.
“By embedding USDC settlement into our current payments infrastructure, we are building a system that lets businesses move money at the speed of the internet. This fundamentally changes how payments from Africa connect to the world, and it positions Flutterwave as the default stablecoin gateway for the continent,” Agboola said.
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