We list 10 law Scholarships for Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 9 of them are fully funded. Most are held in China (3), Australia (2) and the United States (2). 8 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 law applicants can apply too.
Written from the 10 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 10 law scholarships open to Nigerian students. Every award on it is tagged to the field of Law, and the list is built from awards that either state no nationality restriction or are open to international applicants. Nine of the ten are labelled fully funded; one is labelled partially funded. No award on this page carries a funding label we cannot confirm, so you can read the funding tag on each entry as the provider's own wording.
The spread of study levels is wider than most law applicants expect. Nine awards are listed at Masters level, seven at PhD, four at Bachelors and one at Postdoctoral. That means an LL.M. applicant, a PhD candidate working on a thesis, and a secondary school leaver aiming at an undergraduate law degree are all looking at the same page, though not the same entries.
Six countries appear across the ten awards. China carries the most, with three. Australia and the United States each carry two. Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland each carry one.
The providers named on the page include Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Tasmania, the University of Groningen, Shanghai Universities and Beijing Universities. The Chinese entries are government scholarship schemes routed through a list of universities rather than a single institution, so the provider field names the city or the group rather than one school.
Law is the only field tag on this page, but the awards themselves are not law-only. Seven of the ten also cover Business & Management, six cover Arts & Humanities, Economics & Finance, Engineering and Medicine & Health Sciences, five cover Education, three cover Agriculture and Social Sciences, and two cover Public Policy & Development. If your first degree is in another subject and you are moving into law, or your law degree sits inside a broader policy or business programme, some of these entries will still fit.
Eight of the ten awards are open to Nigerian applicants. Of those eight, none names Nigeria or the African region in its eligibility text — all eight simply carry no nationality restriction. The remaining two do not state their eligibility on the award page at all.
Read that carefully before you spend money. An award that does not restrict nationality is not the same as an award that has confirmed you qualify. Where eligibility is not stated, you will need to open the entry and check the provider's own conditions before you pay for a transcript or a courier. The eight with no restriction are the safer starting point.
These figures describe what the awards state in their own text. They are not a promise about any single award.
Only one award on the page states a monetary value in its text, and it also states that the rate is indexed annually. For the rest, the funding label tells you whether the award is fully or partially funded, but not the cash figure. Where an entry does not name a benefit, treat it as unconfirmed and check the provider's page.
The requirements below are counted from what the awards themselves state.
Letters of recommendation are the single most common ask, so line up your referees early. Two referees who can speak to your legal writing and research are worth more than a title. The research proposal requirement sits on the PhD-facing entries, which is expected. Note the award that asks for an admission offer first: for that one, the scholarship application follows the university application rather than running alongside it, and the timeline is longer than it looks.
Only three awards state an English test requirement. That does not mean the other seven waive it. It means the test is not written into the award text on this page. Where you studied your degree in English, ask the admissions office directly whether a waiver applies to your case before you book a test date.
Four awards on this page carry a stated date. Four are marked as still open. Six are undated, and four are described as recurring, meaning the provider runs them on a cycle rather than a one-off closing date.
The busiest months across the dated entries are October with two, then September with one and December with one. Four awards close soonest:
Two of the Chinese entries run on a different rhythm. The Shanghai Government Scholarship takes applications between January and June of each year, and the Beijing Government Scholarship points you to its details for the deadline. Neither is a single fixed date, so both need a calendar reminder rather than a countdown.
Where the awards state a duration, the figures vary. One PhD entry states three and a half years with no extension available, which is a hard stop worth planning around. One bachelor's programme runs four to five years, with the master's programme stated separately. One award is described as two years. One named programme funds up to its first stated period rather than the whole degree.
For a Nigerian applicant, the practical implication is the funding window, not the degree length. If an award funds two years and your programme runs longer, the difference is yours to cover. Check the duration text on the entry before you build a budget around it.
Start with the four awards that close soonest if your documents are already in order, and start with the undated and recurring ones if they are not. Transcripts, degree certificates and referee letters take weeks to assemble from Nigerian institutions, and courier timelines are outside your control. Open the entries, read the eligibility text on the provider's own page, and confirm the funding label against what the award actually states.
If your degree class is a concern, note that only one award on this page states a minimum degree class as a requirement. That leaves the rest of the list open on that point, but it does not remove the provider's own academic conditions. Read each entry in full before you commit money to an application.
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