We list 8 phD Scholarships for Nigerian Students in Canada, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 5 of them are fully funded. 5 state eligibility that includes Nigerian applicants. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
Written from the 8 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 6 min read.
This page collects 8 PhD scholarships in Canada open to Nigerian students. Every award on it is at doctoral level, and every one is based at a Canadian institution. The list is narrow on purpose: it is not a general study-in-Canada page, and it is not a page about master's funding, even though several of the awards here also accept master's applicants.
Five of the eight are labelled fully funded by the provider. Three do not state their funding position either way, so this page does not describe what they cover. Where an award names a benefit in its own text, that is what is reported here — nothing more.
Five of the eight awards are open to Nigerian applicants. None of those five names Nigeria, or West Africa, or Africa as a region. All five carry no nationality restriction at all, which is why they appear on this list.
The remaining three do not state an eligibility position on the award itself. That is not a refusal and it is not an invitation. It means the detail is not written down where this page can read it, and you will have to confirm it with the department or the graduate school before you spend money on a courier.
Read that split carefully. A scholarship with no nationality restriction is not the same as a scholarship that welcomes international applicants in practice. Canadian doctoral funding often runs through a supervisor's research grant, and the supervisor decides. The award text may be silent on nationality while the department quietly funds only domestic students in a given year.
Of the eight, 2 name travel as a covered cost and 1 names tuition. Those are the figures as written in the award descriptions. They are not a summary of the full value of every scholarship here, and they are not a promise that the rest pay nothing.
Five awards are marked fully funded by their providers. What "fully funded" includes varies between them — a stipend, a tuition offset, or a combination. Where an award does not spell out its components, this page does not fill in the gap.
For a Nigerian applicant, the practical question is not the label. It is whether the package covers international tuition, which at Canadian universities is charged at a different rate from domestic tuition, and whether the stipend survives the cost of living in the city where the campus sits. Ask both questions in writing before you accept a place.
The requirements stated across these awards break down as follows:
The letters of recommendation are the item that catches Nigerian applicants out. Four referees across four forms means four separate requests, four reminders, and four people who have to upload before a deadline that is not their own. Approach your referees early, give them your CV, your transcript and a one-page summary of the project, and tell them the exact date the portal closes. Do not assume a referee who agreed in October will remember in February.
The research proposal is the other serious piece of work. Two awards ask for one. A proposal written for a Nigerian M.Sc supervisor will not read the same way to a Canadian admissions committee. State the gap in the literature, the method, and why the project needs to be done at that institution specifically.
Where an award requires an admission offer first, the scholarship clock starts after the university clock. That reverses the usual order and it means your programme application has to be finished months before you would otherwise think about funding.
One award on this page carries a fixed date. One is still open. Seven are undated, and one recurs. February is the busiest month, with one deadline falling in it.
The award closing soonest is the University of Saskatchewan Graduate Scholarship 2026-2027, which closes on 28 February. It is open at master's and doctoral level.
Also worth noting is the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Vanier CGS) 2027, which is anticipated to close before November 2026. Vanier is not applied for directly by the student in the ordinary sense — it runs through a Canadian institution that holds a quota to host Vanier scholars, so the internal deadline at that university will fall earlier than the date you see.
The undated awards are not open-ended. "Deadline: see details" usually means the deadline is set by the graduate programme or the faculty, not by the scholarship office, and it changes between departments. Treat an undated award as a prompt to email the graduate coordinator, not as breathing room.
Beyond Saskatchewan and Vanier, the page includes the UBC Four Years Doctoral Fellowship Program (4YF) 2027 at the University of British Columbia, and the University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowships (UMGF) 2027, which run at master's and PhD level, with the PhD portion running up to four years.
There is also McGill University Scholarships and Fellowships 2026-2027, where the scholarship deadline follows the admission deadline, and University of Waterloo Scholarships 2027, which is fully funded and open across undergraduate, master's and doctoral level.
Providers behind these awards include the University of British Columbia, McGill University, the University of Waterloo, Université de Montréal, and Canadian Universities as a group, alongside one Canadian institution holding a Vanier quota.
Fields named across the awards are Arts & Humanities, Engineering, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, one award each. That spread is thin. If your research sits in a field not named here, the awards with no field restriction are the ones to read closely.
Canada hosted 12,072 Nigerian students in 2023, ranking third as a destination for Nigerian students, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. That is a large, established community, and it matters for practical reasons: people ahead of you who have already done the transcript run, the study permit file, and the first winter.
For doctoral study specifically, the pathway in is a master's degree. An M.Sc, M.A, MBA or M.Phil is the qualification that leads into PhD and doctoral funding. Funded doctoral places in Canada are frequently tied to a supervisor or a research group, which means the programme application and the scholarship application often share a single deadline. You are not applying to a scholarship in the abstract; you are applying to a supervisor who has money.
Durations vary across the awards here — three years, four years, a maximum of three years, and one that runs four years for a PhD and three for a master's. Plan your funding across the whole period, not just the first year.
Start with the Saskatchewan award, since it is the only one on this page with a date you can plan around, and it closes on 28 February. Then read the Vanier page and work backwards from the November 2026 anticipation, remembering that your institution's internal deadline comes first.
For the undated awards, email the graduate coordinator in your intended department and ask three things: whether the award is open to international students, what the internal deadline is, and whether the funding covers international tuition. Get the answer in writing.
Line up your referees now, request your transcripts early — Nigerian universities are not fast, and courier costs are yours — and check whether the programme you are targeting offers an English-test waiver for a degree taught in English. That waiver, where it exists, saves both money and weeks.
Looking to study in Canada without the burden of tuition fees? Great news for aspiring international students! Canada offers a wide range of fully funded scholarships for Nigerian students in 2026-2027, making world-class education accessible and affordable. These scholarships cover tuition, living expenses, health insurance, and even travel costs—opening doors to top-ranked Canadian universities. Whether you're applying for undergraduate, master's, or PhD programs, this guide lists the best funding opportunities available. Studying in Canada not only provides academic excellence but also a multicultural environment, permanent residency pathways, and globally recognized degrees. Read on to explore the top scholarship programs in Canada for international students and learn how to apply successfully.
*UNESCO Institute for Statistics, inbound internationally mobile students from Nigeria, 2023.
A browser notification when a scholarship you can apply for is added or about to close. No account needed.
