This is unacceptable

Nigerians, unbelievably, spent a total of $39.66bn on foreign education and healthcare-related services between 2010 and 2020, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data. It’s Balance of Payments report, published last Friday, said Nigerian parents and guardians paid about $28.65bn for their wards to study abroad during the period under review. It also revealed that Nigerians paid $11.01bn for healthcare-related services in foreign countries.

Nigerians will be shocked to learn that amount spent on these foreign services is almost equivalent to the current value of the country’s foreign reserves which stood at $39.51bn as of March 23. The financial report “A Simple and Factual Explanation of Nigeria’s Exchange Rate Dynamics” indicated the high cost of these services has drastically increased the demand for foreign exchange in the country, thereby putting a strain on the exchange value of the naira to the dollar.

The report which sought to provide answers to questions on the continuous instability or volatility of Nigeria’s exchange rate explained that “the exchange rate of the naira is the price of the dominant foreign currency in the country – the United States dollar. “Like the price of every other commodity, the price of the dollar in Nigeria is determined by the interplay of demand and supply of the foreign currency in the country’s market,” it explained. According to, an increase in demand for a commodity leads to a rise in the price of that commodity; a similar result is replicated when a fall in supply occurs.”

Using the same logic, the report explained that “the depreciation or appreciation of the exchange rate of the naira is determined by the rise or fall of demand and supply.” On demand, the report explained that factors such as the cost of foreign education, healthcare and a large import bill had had major impacts on the increase in the demand for foreign exchange in the country.

It added that the factors had also greatly contributed to the weakening of the naira. According to the report, between 1998 and 2018, the number of Nigerians studying abroad quadrupled, from 15,000 to 96,702, a rise attributed to the spike in the cost of foreign education. “Today, a sizeable amount of the foreign exchange request Nigerian banks receive for school fees are for primary and secondary school education, some of which are in neighbouring African countries.”

Shocking is what many citizens will probably say. And why not. The sum the CBN has released, we are told, is only slightly than the nation’s foreign reserves that now stand at $39.51 billion dollars. A bigger shock: the number of Nigerians studying abroad has quadrupled from 15,000 to 96,702 a period of just 10 years. What more, the increase is made of Nigerians in primary and secondary schools. And the schools mostly in neighbouring countries!

It is those two last facts that make the report very frightening. The search abroad for primary and secondary education can only suggest one thing – the collapse of those two strata of our education system. The irony of it all is that those who are sending their children overseas to acquire primary and secondary education are the same people who have run the system aground.

We believe the only way to stop that is to band foreign exchange for those two levels of education abroad. That way, we’ll end the exportation of dollars to support that kind of education, reduce the pressure on the naira and redirect effort and resources towards rehabilitating our education system.