Finland, a country known for highly rated free tuition tertiary educational system, located in Northern Europe, may have taken stricter measures for prospective Nigerian students vying for admission into their universities.
Hundreds of young Nigerians gain admission to Finland annually to further their university education. Education in Finland is goverment sponsored and therefore free to Non -EU or third country nationals.
Information reaching us indicates that the Finnish network for International programmes steering committee, the body responsible for international programmes administration may have decided to exclude Nigerians from writing the annual entrance examination in neighboring Accra,Ghana for the next academic session 2012/2013.
Instead Nigerian applicants will have to travel to Finland to write a one day entrance examination. Nigerian applicants will have to go through a stressful process of securing a visit visa first to Finland, just for the sole purpose of writing few hours entrance Examination while other African applicants will write the entrance examination in Africa.
Nigerian applicants that eventually fail the entrance examination would incure financial losses in travel costs.
There were rumours that advance fee fraud, corruption and documents falsification associated with Nigerians abroad might have been the major reason.
A source from FINNIPS said: “ The entrance examination locations and the countries from where the eligible applicants will be invited to participate in the exam, are decided separately for each year. The situation will be re-evaluated for the 2013 application periodâ€.
Efforts to contact Nigerian organisations in Finland have started yielding results. The Nigerian ambassador should be willing to take up issues that relate to the welfare of Nigeria. Some concerned Nigerians are of the opinion that we need some sort of concerted voice to intellectually engage the authorities to back pedal on this decision.
• Olalekan Oladepo Smart
Lappeenranta
University of Technology, Finland.
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