An academic alleges that some students claim they pay £5,000 to benefit from a £40,000 scholarship

Sulemana Issifu, a Research Fellow at the Hans Ruthenberg Institute, University of Hohenheim, has made damning allegations regarding the Scholarship Secretariat.

During an interview on Joy FM’s Newsfile program, he disclosed instances where students allegedly paid substantial sums of money to secure scholarships.

Issifu asserted that some students claimed they paid exorbitant amounts, such as £5,000, in exchange for the promise of a £40,000 scholarship.

Read More: We need a law to regulate who qualifies for scholarship and who doesn’t – Scholarship Secretariat Registrar

His revelation raises concerns about corruption and nepotism within the Secretariat.

“Students tell me that they pay huge sums of money. Some have told me that they pay as much as £5,000 in order to get a scholarship of £40,000,” he told host Samson Lardy Anyenini.

He added that students also allege they paid up to ₵30,000 solely for a letter from the Scholarship Secretariat, which served as a guarantee for obtaining a visa.

This practice, he suggested, hinted at a larger issue of visa racketeering.

“The problems associated with the Scholarship Secretariat are enormous. There is a problem of nepotism. I’ve seen some individuals who have PhDs and they have still been offered scholarships by the Scholarship Secretariat to go do another PhD.

“So these are cases whereby there are many young Ghanaians who do not have the money to even get a first degree, but some have the luxury of doing a second PhD all under monies provided with our taxes,” he said on Saturday.

Conversations surrounding nepotism at the Scholarship Secretariat resuscitated after an investigative piece by the Fourth Estate, ‘Scholarship Bonanza’, named persons close to key government officials as beneficiaries of scholarships that it deems inappropriate.

Interestingly, children of the National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and a former Inspector General of Police were listed among the beneficiaries.

This development has drawn widespread condemnation, with many individuals calling for transparency from the Secretariat. However, the Registrar insists that the Secretariat acted appropriately and did nothing wrong.