Nigeria’s Ministry of Education says its website was hacked to upload statements branding a controversial Russian recruitment programme, Alabuga Start Programme, as a credible scholarship opportunity for young Nigerians.

The ministry’s Federal Scholarship Board director, Ndajiwo Asta, said statements uploaded to the website in 2022 and 2023 were posted by fraudsters who sought to use the ministry’s name to legitimise the controversial programme.

“We didn’t place it. Someone once showed me the letter on the website, which was posted in 2022. Since 2022, why has it not expired? This is the AI age; anybody can just draft a letter and upload it online. That is the case here. You should know this,” she told PREMIUM TIMES.

“Every year, we receive an inquiry about the authenticity of a scholarship opportunity on the website, and I have to clarify that this is fake news,” she said. “This has been happening since the administration of Adamu Adamu, the former Minister of Education.”

The Alabuga Start Programme is a Russian state-backed initiative that offers young women fully funded scholarship opportunities for a period of two years.

Launched in 2022, the programme is run by the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, an industrial institution located in Tatarstan, Russia, and typically targets young women aged 18-22 from developing countries.

However, there have been reports that some of the young women recruited for the programme go on to manufacture drones in a military-industrial compound located approximately 1,000 km east of Moscow, known as Alabuga.

A six-month investigation by a ZAM team in seven African countries, including PREMIUM TIMES in Nigeria, has revealed that the recruitment is done in a shady manner