|
Listen to article
|
Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum has committed N12.9 billion to sponsor 54 young Nigerians from his state through five-year degree programmes in engineering and aeronautics at the Isaac Balami University of Aeronautics and Management, directing the first annual payment of N2.5 billion to the institution at a ceremony in Maiduguri on Thursday evening and handing each scholarship beneficiary an immediate N500,000 to cover resumption costs.
The investment is one of the largest single scholarship commitments made by a Nigerian state government in recent memory, and it is directed entirely at a single, newly established institution — one that did not yet exist less than a year ago. IBUAM received its federal operating licence from the National Universities Commission on April 30, 2025, following presidential approval granted during a Federal Executive Council meeting on March 3, 2025. It is the first privately owned university in Nigeria dedicated exclusively to aeronautics. Its formal public unveiling took place in Abuja on October 17, 2025, less than four months before Thursday’s scholarship ceremony in Maiduguri.
The 54 beneficiaries were chosen from a pool of more than 3,000 applicants. State Commissioner for Education Lawan Abba Wakilbe said the ministry screened the field down to 1,200 candidates through a written examination before arriving at the final cohort. The selection was structured to ensure geographic equity: precisely two students were drawn from each of Borno’s 27 local government areas, a deliberate design that Zulum said was intended to prevent concentration of opportunity in urban or more accessible parts of the state.
The programme distributes its 54 places across five disciplines. Ten students will study Aerospace Engineering, ten Systems Engineering, eleven Electrical and Electronic Engineering, eleven Mechatronics Engineering, and twelve Software Engineering — all fields directly linked to Nigeria’s chronic shortage of domestically trained aviation professionals. Balami has cited projections of a global aviation manpower shortage exceeding 65,000 trained professionals by 2040, which he says makes Nigeria’s near-total absence from aeronautical education both a national vulnerability and an economic opportunity. Balami, IBUAM’s founder and chancellor, was born and raised in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. In an account he has repeated publicly on multiple occasions, he describes a childhood of manual labour, working as a farm hand, a bus conductor, and a suck-away evacuator during school holidays to support his family. It was a government scholarship from Borno State, granted during the administration of a previous governor, that first financed his aviation studies and set him on the path that would eventually make him one of Nigeria’s most prominent aviation figures and a former president of the National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers.
Read Also: Nigeria Divided Over US Troops As Aircraft Land In Borno
At the ceremony in Maiduguri, he told the assembled beneficiaries and officials: “Having benefited from the state, it is only fair that I give back.” He also announced that beyond the 54 state-sponsored slots, he was personally offering scholarships to another 54 students from Borno, placing them on aircraft technician and aviation planning tracks at his own expense. That personal contribution effectively doubled the number of Borno students entering IBUAM’s first cohort.
Balami has described IBUAM as a comprehensive aviation ecosystem rather than a conventional university, combining academic degree programmes with a functioning aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul facility in Lagos, where students spend practical hours on weekends and during holidays.
“Our students will not just study theory; they will spend their weekends and holidays in the hangar, repairing engines, testing avionics, and learning real-life operations. By graduation, they will be employable anywhere in the world without supervision,” he said at the institution’s October launch. The university’s stated model grants every graduate a private pilot’s licence alongside their degree, with optional commercial certification pathways.
The context of the scholarship is worth noting beyond the aviation sector alone. Borno State, in Nigeria’s far northeast, has been the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency that erupted in 2009 and continues to generate low-level insecurity across the Lake Chad basin. Two generations of young people in the state grew up with intermittent or disrupted schooling, displaced families, and an economy heavily dependent on humanitarian assistance. Governor Zulum, who has been widely recognised within Nigeria for an unconventional governing style that includes personal visits to remote communities and an emphasis on grassroots accountability, has framed education investment explicitly as a strategy for long-term stabilisation rather than short-term recovery.
The governor also addressed the beneficiaries directly on Thursday with an instruction that reflected the weight of public money behind the programme.
“What matters most is not just gaining admission, but how focused you will be in your studies,” he said. “I advise you to remain dedicated and become good ambassadors of our state.” He warned, when the scheme was first announced in November, that no political connections, not proximity to his own office, the deputy governor’s office, or any minister, would influence candidate selection, and that he would personally review the final list. Thursday’s ceremony was his confirmation that the process had concluded as directed.
Read Also: ISWAP Commander Killed As Troops Strike Borno
The Federal Ministry of Women Affairs had separately pledged, at IBUAM’s October inauguration, to sponsor 100 female students annually from across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones to study at the university, a commitment that, if honoured, would make IBUAM one of the more significantly publicly funded private institutions in the country within its first years of operation.
The N2.5 billion first-year payment has been disbursed. Students are expected to commence studies in Lagos on a date the Borno State Scholarship Board said would be communicated directly to beneficiaries.
