*Can’t pay fees of freshers before registration
*To extend loan to vocational training
*As Private sector partners in institutional fees payment for students
*Loan repayment seamless
*Why disparity in payment of students’ upkeep
The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has disbursed N116 billion to cover institutional fees and upkeep allowances for students across the country.
The Managing Director of the Fund, Mr Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
Sawyerr described this move as a milestone in the federal government’s commitment to affordable and inclusive tertiary education.
According to him, N65 billion has been paid directly to 239 government-owned institutions. including universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education, on behalf of students whose loan applications were approved.
He said an additional N51 billion was also disbursed as monthly upkeep allowances, directly to the beneficiaries.
Providing updates on the progress of the scheme, the NELFUND boss said the Fund received a total of 1,067,000 loan applications, out of which 624,000 students have so far benefitted.
“We have 1,067,000 loan applications.
“We have been able to pay fees and upkeep for 624,000 students in 239 institutions – government-owned universities, polytechnics, colleges of education-.
“The 239 institutions in these categories have been paid by us. We have disbursed so far, N65 billion in institutional fees.
“We have paid out N51 billion as monthly upkeep. It is a lot of money and a lot of people have received the upkeep.
“In total, we have disbursed N116 billion of Nigeria’s government money,” he said.
He added that NELFUND had continued to record high engagement of students’ applications on daily basis.
According to Sawyer, the education loan scheme is one of the flagship social investment initiatives of the Tinubu administration.
He said, it is designed to remove financial barriers for students in tertiary institutions, ensuring that no Nigerian is denied education due to lack of funds.
With the growing number of applicants and the volume of funds disbursed, the NELFUND boss reaffirmed commitment to transparency and efficiency in managing the scheme.
CAN’T PAY FEES OF FRESHERS
Sawyerr has explained why the Fund cannot pay institutional fees for new intakes before they complete their registration processes.
He said that paying tuition for students who have not registered or matriculated could result in large-scale financial losses for the Fund.
“If we pay fees for students that have not entered, what if they changed their minds and they don’t go to the schools anymore?
“We cannot just say because somebody has been admitted to a school, and we will pay the fees before registering or matriculating,” he said.
According to him, doing so would amount to disbursing against intention, a practice he warned could be financially risky for the government.
“If we carry on like that, we could end up disbursing billions of naira, only to find out that they have dropped out, got admission to a school outside the country, gone to another school, or not doing that course again,” he said
The managing director added that another key challenge is the school admission process, where students needed a matriculation number to access the loan.
To resolve this, he said NELFUND was working closely with tertiary institutions to find a temporary solution, possibly allowing students to use their Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) registration numbers as a substitute for matriculation numbers.
“There are many genuine students who have applied and they need matriculation number to be able to process their fees.
“The challenge is that, they cannot get their matriculation number until they have matriculated and they cannot matriculate until they have paid.
We are trying to work with the schools to see how those who have registered, can use their JAMB registration number, as a substitute,” he added.
The Managing Director also reflected on the Fund’s journey since its establishment, noting that several challenges had to be addressed before its operations could begin.
He recalled that the first law establishing NELFUND, signed on June 12, 2023, had several flaws, including the requirement for guarantors and income limits that excluded many households.
“One of the flaws was the requirement for a guarantor, which we saw as a difficult position to put students in;
“If you need a guarantor, it means that you need to go out and plead with somebody or pay somebody.
“The second was that, the 2023 Act stated that any family that had a household income in excess of N500,000 was not eligible.
“We all know that N500,000 is a very small amount of money for a household over a whole year.
“So, it meant that many people would not be able to apply for the loan.,” he said.
He added that the law also failed to consider how students would meet their basic needs after tuition payment, as it did not provide stipends for upkeep.
To address these issues, Sawyer said that President Bola Tinubu initiated a repeal of the initial law, leading to the drafting of a new Education Loan Act, which was passed and launched in May, 2024.
“From May 2024 when we started and now, we are delighted that, not for a single day has the site crashed, even as we received unanticipated high demand.
“We have been able to receive applications on a steady basis, process them, pay students and their institutions from what have been allocated to us,” he said
Sawyer expressed gratitude to President Tinubu for his visionary leadership, saying NELFUND has become a lifeline for thousands of students who might, otherwise, have abandoned their education.
LOAN TO VOCATIONAL TRAININGS
NELFUND has announced plans to extend its student loan scheme to cover vocational and skills acquisition programmes.
Sawyerr said the extension was in alignment with the Federal Government’s broader education and skills development agenda.
He added that the move reflected President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to inclusive human capital development beyond traditional university education.
“No nation is built solely by philosophers.
“It is very important to have people who can use their hands, energy, strength, and skills to put into action the clever ideas that come from those emerging from academic institutions,” he said
Sawyerr explained that, while NELFUND primarily focused on providing financial support to students in tertiary institutions since its launch, plans were underway to expand access to individuals enrolled in vocational and technical programmes across the country.
According to him, Nigeria’s next development phase requires a balance between academic and technical competence.
“At NELFUND, we have a mandate to also do vocational skills.
“We have not started yet, but I know that the President Bola Tinubu administration has ensured that there is full coverage around the skills issue.
” The Ministry of Youth Development is doing skills, the Ministry of Education is involved in skills and the Ministry of Digital Economy is involved in IT soft skills.
“So, skills is something that many departments of government have been charged with doing.
“And I think it is very clear that an engineer who can build, is better than an engineer who can just design.
“The stage that we are in this country now is what I would call, the design, build, and operate stage,” he said.
PRIVATE SECTOR PARTNERSHIP
NELFUND says it is receiving an influx of interest from private sector organisations and philanthropists eager to partner, in financing institutional fees for students nationwide.
Sawyerr said individuals, companies, and charitable groups have expressed readiness to collaborate in expanding access to education for underprivileged Nigerians.
According to him, several private companies and wealthy Nigerians have approached NELFUND to use its platform to pay the fees of students they do not personally know.
He said the development marked a new phase of public-private collaboration in education financing.
“We have also had a number of people who received loans from the old scheme in the 70s who have given us cheques.
“They believe that in giving us money or paying off their loans of 50 years ago, in some cases, shows that they are having some level of trust in government,” he said
The NELFUND boss said such partnerships would help to sustain the scheme and expand its impact, particularly for indigent students who might otherwise drop out of school.
“We see this as a veritable platform to be able to pay fees using money from the government and the private sector.
“In terms of sustainability, what I can tell you is that this programme will be best sustained with public-private-partnership.
“The private sector is also going to benefit, largely by having people who are better educated to be employed in to their workforce” he said
On NELFUND success story, Sawyerr said they have been able to reduce the number of people dropping out of school,
“A number of people have graduated from various institutions because the Fund came to their rescue.
“You would be amazed at the number of people that were going to drop out in their final year that took advantage of the loan and the Fund rescued them
“I think at this point, I should give credit to President Bola Tinubu for being visionary to positively affect the lives of many Nigerians,” he said .
NAN reports there are multiple funding streams, including tax, levy, government budget, and potential external grants that give NELFUND a more diverse and potentially sustainable financial base.
Under the new National Taxation Act, a four per cent development levy is imposed on company profits and NELFUND is slated to receive 25 per cent of the proceeds from this levy.
NELFUND also receives funding via the federal government’s annual budget. For example, in the 2025 budget, the government allocated ₦175.13 million to the Fund.
According to its founding legislation, NELFUND can also be funded via donations, gifts, grants, endowments, and “revenue accruing to the fund from any other source.”
The law also allows NELFUND to engage in “other productive activities” to generate income.
In August, 2024, the Fund received ₦50 billion from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to help expand the loan scheme.
SEAMLESS LOAN REPAYMENT
Akintunde Sawyerr, has assured that the repayment process for the student loan scheme has been designed to be seamless, transparent and fair to all beneficiaries.
Sawyerr explained that graduates are granted a two-year grace period after completing their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, before repayment begins in the third year.
He stated that repayment responsibility, primarily rests on employers of graduates who benefited from the scheme.
“There is a requirement for people to start paying back the loan. But, that requirement is placed upon the employers – the people who employed beneficiaries of the loan -.
“The requirement from them is that they pay 10 per cent of that person’s income monthly to the Fund,” he said.
According to him, the remittance would be made monthly, even if the employee is paid weekly or bi-weekly, to ensure a smooth and consistent repayment process.
“We do not have any intention of forcing people to pay NELFUND back, other than the employers.
“If employers engage people with NELFUND loans and they don’t pay us their 10 per cent back monthly , we can go after the employers,” he said.
However, Sawyerr said self-employed beneficiaries are expected to make their own 10 per cent deductions and pay directly to NELFUND.
He also disclosed that the Fund had in place a Global Standing Instruction (GSI) system to recover funds from defaulters who attempt to evade repayment, if they have money in their bank accounts.
“People sign up for this when they take the loan. We’re not ashamed about it.
“It is important that we protect government’s money, in order to get some money back for their younger brothers and sisters that are coming up the line. We have to keep the programme sustainable,” he said.
Addressing concerns that the loan scheme might restrict beneficiaries’ freedom to travel abroad, Sawyerr clarified that NELFUND loans do not impose any form of travel ban or control on recipients.
“The fact that you take a loan from us does not mean you are a slave to the government or to NELFUND.
“You took a loan to get education for yourself. You cannot be enslaved.
“People can travel wherever they want to go at any time. Their names are not at the airports or at the land borders.
“The bottom line is that there is an expectation that, if your country does something for you, you should pay it back because there are other people who need it as well.
‘So, people can travel. They can do whatever they need to do,” he clarified.
He, however, appealed to beneficiaries abroad to fulfil their repayment obligations once they begin to earn income, emphasising that the initiative is a social investment, not a profit-making venture.
“The idea of this is to have social impact. We are not trying to make a profit. Government is not trying to exploit people.
” The president wants people to get educated so that we can have a more peaceful country, a more prosperous country.
“That is the whole idea of this,” he explained.
Highlighting the long-term vision of the Fund, he described NELFUND’s legacy as a transformative programme designed to give hope and opportunities to young Nigerians who otherwise could not afford higher education.
WHY DISPARITY IN PAYMENT OF STUDENTS’ UPKEEP
NELFUND has explained the reasons behind the observed disparities in the payment of students’ upkeep allowances under the new scheme.
Sawyerr, attributed the disparities to application timing, institutional processes, and the evolving nature of the initiative.
The NELFUND boss acknowledged that, while the Fund had received several complaints from students regarding delayed stipends, many of the issues arose from procedural and timing differences across institutions.
“It is not possible to have this kind of scheme without having a complaint somewhere. We receive complaints everyday here, about one thing or the other.
“When we analyse the complaints, some of them are our fault, some of them are not our fault.
“Some students will tell you that they have been waiting for their stipend, they have not gotten it.
“When you asked, how long have you been waiting, when did you apply? They will say, last year.
“When we look at the books, however, we will discover that they only applied the previous week.
“When it comes to money, people want to see how fast they can get it,” he said.
He further explained that students’ varying academic calendars and application timelines had made synchronisation of upkeep payments complex.
“This is a relatively new scheme. This is not a scheme that has been running for 10 years or 20 years, where you can say, Ok, we have these people that we are paying.
“Remember that, we are dealing with students who are applying at different times, who are at institutions with different timetables, who are at different stages, in terms of where they are, in their sessions.
“The complexity of start date, end date, as people graduate, sessions close, a new session begins is not small,” he stated.
Sawyerr, however, said that the Fund would not make retrospective payments to avoid cases of double disbursement.
According to him, to avoid double payments, once students apply for a new session and they begin the processing, they will stop payments for the previous session, irrespective of how many months’ stipend they have received.
He admitted, however, that many students misunderstood the process because it had not been clearly explained, before now.
“The truth about it is that, we are dealing with many different date points in this business.
“A session is generally 12 months. Nine of the 12 months is the period that people are actually in schools
“If a student applies for the loan in time, may be, based on the school calendar and it is approved and we start disbursement at the beginning of the session, the student may receive 12 months upkeep stipend.
“If another student apply, may be in the middle of the session, such student will only receive what is left, which might be six months or so.
“We will not pay people backwards. Once students apply for the new session, they will start receiving their monthly stipends from the month it is approved till the end of the session.
Once you apply for another new session, let’s say, 2025/2026, and we start processing it, we will stop payment for the previous session of 2024/2025.
“If we do not handle the process like this, we will find ourselves in a situation where we are paying people, double,” he clarified.
On the issue of refunding excess fees, the NELFUND chief said the Fund had been encouraging institutions to return excess payments, where both students and the Fund had paid for the same session.
According to him, when students apply for the loan, it takes some time to process, because they have to carry out due diligence.
“Part of that due diligence is that, the institutions have to verify and confirm to us that the people who applied for the loan and whose names were forwarded to them, are their students,
“They must also verify the approvals and send them back to us.
“These processes are time-consuming, but they are worth carrying out.
“By the time the confirmation has been done, and we are through with our final checks and disburse the funds to the institutions on behalf of the students, sometimes, it might not meet the deadline set by the school, and the students might have paid
“Unfortunately, all we can do is to encourage the schools to refund to the students, the money they paid to the school.
“We cannot force the money out of the schools, but we are encouraging the schools to make refund,” he said.
He, however, disclosed that the Federal Ministry of Education would soon take a firmer stance to ensure institutions refund such excess payments timeously, rather than carrying them over into a new academic year.
Addressing reports of schools inflating tuition fees, the NELFUND head clarified that institutions themselves input the official fee structures into the student verification system.
“Apart from all the other information that we asked for, the schools, on our student verification system, provide us with the fees for each course.
“If the fees is N80,000, they load it there as N80,000. If the fee for another course is N200,000, they will load it on our system as N200,000.
“When a student apply for the loan, they can see what amount is uploaded on their portal.
“If it is higher than what it should be, they can challenge it, and say, my course is N180,000, but on the portal, i saw it as N200,000.
“They have, always, been able to challenge that process,” he explained.
Sawyerr recalled that because of initial hitches when the programme started newly, some schools failed to provide timely data and the Fund improvised, but, it had since been resolved and corrected.
“We put in some arbitrary figures, so that the system could work and the students could apply. for the loan.
“Then, retrospectively, we went and changed the figures to the actual ones,” he said.
He assured continuous improvement in the system to nip hitches and discrepancies in the bud and enhanced transparency of the process.
