We list 9 masters Law Scholarships for Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 8 of them are fully funded. Most are held in China (3), Australia (2) and Japan (1). 7 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 9 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 9 masters scholarships in law that are open to Nigerian students. Every award here is at masters level, and every one of them is in the field of law. They are hosted by institutions and governments in six countries: China, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States.
The list is small on purpose. Law is a narrower field than business or engineering, and masters-level funding in law is scarcer than undergraduate funding. What the nine entries share is that they are real, named awards with published information, not general advice about how to fund a law degree abroad.
Of the nine awards, 8 are labelled fully funded and 1 is labelled partially funded. That split matters when you are budgeting. A fully funded award normally means the provider intends to carry the main costs; a partial award means you or a sponsor covers the rest.
Where the awards state what they cover in their own text, the counts are:
Read those as what the award documents say, not as a promise that every cost in your life will be met. A tuition-only award still leaves you paying for a flight, a visa, rent and food. Before you build a budget around any of these, open the individual award page and read the benefit section yourself.
The spread across countries is uneven, and that shapes your shortlist:
China carries the largest single group, which is worth knowing if you are open to studying outside the Anglophone countries. The Australian entries are university-level scholarships. The Netherlands, Switzerland and United States entries are one each, so competition on those is likely to be concentrated.
For 7 of the 9 awards, the brief confirms that Nigerians may apply. None of those seven names Nigeria or a Nigerian region as a condition — in all seven cases the award carries no nationality restriction. For the remaining 2 awards, the eligibility is not stated on the award itself, so you will need to check the provider's own page before spending money on an application.
That is the honest position. Seven are clearly open to you. Two need verification.
The pathway into these awards is a first degree or an HND. The qualifications that typically lead into masters study are B.Sc, B.A, B.Eng, LLB, MBBS and HND. Whether an HND is accepted for a particular law masters is decided by each university, not by this page.
One award states a minimum degree class. Where an award asks for an "upper second", that corresponds to Second Class Upper (2:1) on a Nigerian transcript. If your transcript reads 2:2, check each award's own wording rather than assuming you are excluded — but do not assume you qualify either.
The requirements the awards state in writing break down like this:
Letters of recommendation are the most common ask, and they are also the slowest thing to arrange from Nigeria. Lecturers move, departments are understaffed, and a referee who agrees in September may not send the letter until November. Ask early, give your referee the award name and deadline in writing, and follow up.
The English test requirement is worth reading carefully. Only 3 of the nine state it. Some providers waive IELTS or TOEFL where your previous degree was taught in English, and a Nigerian LLB or B.Sc is normally taught in English. Where a waiver exists, it is the provider who grants it, not this page. Ask the admissions office directly and keep the reply.
One award requires an admission offer before you can apply for the funding. That reverses the usual order. If you are targeting that one, your university application has to go in first, which pushes your whole timeline forward by months.
Of the nine awards, 3 carry a specific date, 3 are still open, and 6 are undated. Three are recurring, meaning they run again on a cycle rather than closing permanently.
The busiest months in this list are October, with 2 deadlines, and December, with 1.
The three closing soonest are:
Some awards in this list are undated or run on a recurring cycle, for example the Shanghai Government Scholarship (SGS) Fully Funded 2026 - 2027, which runs between January and June of each year. An undated award is not an open-ended one. It usually means the provider publishes the date on its own portal, and you have to go and find it.
Work in this order.
First, decide which countries you are genuinely willing to live in. Three awards are in China, two in Australia, and the rest are single entries in Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. A shortlist of four or five is more realistic than applying to all nine.
Second, check the two awards whose eligibility is not stated, and check the one award that requires an admission offer first. Those three carry the most risk of wasted effort and courier fees.
Third, start your documents now. Transcripts from Nigerian universities take time, and courier costs are real money. Request your transcript before you need it, confirm how many copies the provider wants, and keep scanned copies of everything.
Fourth, line up your referees. Five of the nine awards ask for recommendation letters, so this is the single most common requirement in the list. Give each referee a deadline at least a month before the real one.
Fifth, read each award page in full before you apply. The counts on this page tell you what the awards say in writing. They do not tell you what a particular selection committee will decide, and they are not a guarantee of funding. The award page is the only place where the terms are final.
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