By Chinwendu Obienyi
With the lingering foreign exchange (FX) scarcity as well as the backlog of form A applications in several commercial banks, fresh indications emerged that some students may have to forfeit their admissions due to the current challenges.
This is coming after Nigerian banks announced a reduction in the amount of dollars available to customers for personal travel allowance (PTA) and business travel allowance (BTA) on a bi-annual basis.
According to the new directive, PTA available to customers will now be slashed by 50 per cent from $4,000 to $2,000 while the BTA will be slashed by 60 per cent from $5,000 to $2,000. The banks in several emails sent to their customers also extended the processing time for accessing foreign exchange (FX) for international school fees processed through Form A from 48 hours to 120 days, marking a significant shift in the FX policy.
Form A is an application form designed to pay for service transactions (invisible trade) that allow customers to make payments for services such as school fees, technical fees, dividends, airline tickets, loans repayment, judgment debt, personal home remittance, PTA and BTA, among others.
The service also allows students to pay for foreign tuition via CBN at an official foreign exchange rate rather than using the black market rate with a wide margin.
Although it has been applauded by some Nigerians, the latest policy has heigthened frustrations among parents and students who urged the Federal Government and the CBN to speed up the process of tuition payment for Nigerians studying in the United Kingdom and other countries.
Nigeria, like many other countries, has been grappling with a shortage of FX due to a decline in oil revenue, its major export. This has put pressure on the country’s FX reserves and the value of the Naira.
Ekezie Veronica, a student in Northampton, who spoke to Daily Sun, said, “Many of us here (Nigerian students) have been embarrassed and humiliated by the actions and inactions of our Nigerian banks due to the way the Form A payment application is being utilized. Since last year, I had applied for form A and it took more than 3 months for this to go through. I had to borrow money from friends over here to pay the remaining fees as the school threatened to kick me out.
I looked at the latest policy and I am even feeling sorry for my friend who wants to go to school here too. She is meant to resume in September 2023 but her fees have to be paid by May, How can she make such a payment just like that? Money does not grow on trees. It is high time that everyone concerned came together to give this menace a lasting solution once and for all”.
When Daily Sun spoke to a bank official about the matter, he said, “The truth is that we have several backlogs of Form A applications and so like we said that it was going to be first come, first serve, we cannot just leave people who applied first for someone who applied yesterday”.
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