We list 5 undergraduate Education Scholarships for Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 4 of them are fully funded. Most are held in China (3), Romania (1) and the United States (1). 4 state eligibility that includes Nigerian applicants. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
These awards do not restrict the field of study, so education applicants can apply too.
Written from the 5 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 6 min read.
This page collects 5 undergraduate education scholarships open to Nigerian students. Every award here is for a first degree, so the entry point is your secondary school result rather than a completed B.Sc. The awards come from five providers: Shanghai Universities, Beijing Universities, Boston University, Romanian Universities, and the Hubei Government.
The spread of countries is narrow and worth knowing before you start. China accounts for 3 of the 5 awards. Romania accounts for 1, and the United States accounts for 1. If you have already decided you want to study in a particular country outside those three, this particular list will not serve you.
The subject range within the awards is wider than the page title suggests. Education appears in all 5, but so do Arts & Humanities, Engineering, and Medicine & Health Sciences, each also appearing in 5. Agriculture and Business & Management appear in 4 each. Economics & Finance and Law appear in 3 each, Social Sciences in 2, and Energy & Environment in 1.
Funding labels matter more than the word "scholarship" on its own. 4 of the 5 awards are labelled Fully Funded. One award does not state its funding either way, and this page says nothing about what that one covers.
Where the awards state their benefits in writing, the picture is thin and specific. One award names tuition. One names accommodation. One names research or training costs. These are the benefits the award pages actually spell out, not a general promise that a fully funded label covers every cost you will meet.
Read that carefully. A fully funded label tells you the award is substantial. It does not tell you that flights, visa fees, health insurance, or your living costs between stipend payments are included. Those answers live on each individual award page, and you should open the ones you are considering and read the benefit section line by line before you build your plans around them.
For 4 of the 5 awards, Nigerians may apply. The reason is straightforward: none of those four names Nigeria or a region as a restriction, and none of them carries a nationality restriction at all. For the remaining award, eligibility is not stated on the award page.
That is a useful position to be in. It means the commonest reason Nigerian applicants are turned away at the first screen — a nationality clause — does not apply to most of this list. What will decide your application is your secondary school record, your documents, and whether you meet the specific entry requirement each award quotes for itself.
The pathway into this level is your senior secondary result. WAEC, NECO, NABTEB and SSCE results are the qualifications that lead into an undergraduate degree abroad. Most of these awards ask for those results plus an admission offer, and each award page quotes its own entry requirement. Check that requirement before you spend money on anything.
The stated requirements across these awards are few, and each one costs you something.
The admission offer requirement is the one that reshapes your timeline. If an award wants an offer of admission before you apply for the money, then your university application comes first, and the scholarship deadline is really a deadline for a process you should have started months earlier. University admission offices move at their own pace, and you cannot hurry them.
The English test requirement deserves a practical note. Only one award on this list states it in writing. That does not mean the others waive it — it means the others do not state it on the award page. Where a test is required, budget for the test fee, the preparation, and the time to sit it and receive the result. Do not leave it until the week the scholarship closes.
The research proposal requirement is unusual at undergraduate level and belongs to a specific award. If you are applying to that one, treat the proposal as a serious piece of writing, not a formality.
The deadlines on this list are mixed, and that is the single most important thing to understand before you plan.
Two awards close soonest, and both are named here so you can go straight to them:
The busiest months across the dated awards are December and March, one award in each. The recurring awards follow their own annual rhythm rather than a single fixed date, so a deadline you missed this year is likely to return next year — check the award page for how that cycle is described.
For the 3 undated awards, the page does not carry a closing date. That is not the same as having no deadline. It means the date is not stated here, and you should open the award page and look for it before you assume you have time.
Beyond the two closing soonest, three more awards sit on this page. The Shanghai Government Scholarship (SGS) Fully Funded 2026 - 2027 is offered through Shanghai Universities and is listed for undergraduate, master's and PhD study, with applications described as falling between January and June of each year. The Beijing Government Scholarship 2026-2027 (Fully Funded) comes through Beijing Universities and is also listed across the three levels. The Hubei Government Scholarship 2026 (Fully Funded) is offered by the Hubei Government, again across undergraduate, master's and PhD study.
Notice what these three have in common. They are Chinese government or provincial awards, they are labelled fully funded, and they are open across study levels. That means you will be competing alongside master's and PhD applicants for the same scheme, even though the award you are seeking is the undergraduate one. Your file has to stand on its own.
Study durations vary by award and by country. Where durations are stated, they range from 4 years for one award, to a bachelor's degree programme of 4 to 5 years for another, to a breakdown of undergraduate at 3 to 6 years, master's at 1.5 to 2 years, and PhD at 3 to 4 years for a third. Plan your finances around the possibility of a longer programme, not the shortest figure you can find.
Start with the two dated awards, because they are the ones with a clock running. Read the Boston University page and the Romania Government page in full, and note exactly what each one asks for before you begin gathering anything.
Then work backwards from the deadline. If an award wants an admission offer first, your real start date is the day you begin the university application, not the day the scholarship portal opens. If an award wants an English test score, book the test early enough that a resit is still possible. If an award wants letters of recommendation, approach your referees with plenty of notice and give them your CV and your results so they are not writing blind.
For the three undated awards, open each page and find the deadline. If it is genuinely not stated, treat the award as one to prepare for rather than one to schedule around, and keep it on your list for the next cycle.
Finally, be honest about your documents. Transcripts, result verification and courier fees cost money in Nigeria, and they take time. The applicants who lose scholarships are rarely the ones who were not qualified. They are the ones who started three weeks before the deadline and discovered that a document they needed would take six.
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