NELFUND: Over 1.3 Million Nigerian Students Have Benefitted from Loan Scheme, Says CEO

Akintunde Sawyerr, the Managing Director and CEO of The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), has announced that the federal government's student loan initiative has successfully assisted over 1.3 million Nigerian students to date, underscoring the program's expanding reach in improving access to higher education nationwide.

Sawyerr stated in an interview with ARISE NEWS that the scheme allows students to benefit from government policies without needing personal connections, emphasizing its impartial nature. "I can tell you today that 1.3 million plus Nigerian students have benefited without having to have any handshake with anybody whatsoever," he confirmed.

He further elaborated on a recent issue involving Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), explaining that reports of a significant gap between loan applications and approvals stemmed from an incomplete data upload by the institution, rather than a flaw in NELFUND's disbursement process. NELFUND mandates verified submissions from educational institutions before processing any funds.

Regarding the LAUTECH situation, Sawyerr clarified, "In fact, only 5,237 students have been approved. Now, when I say approved, I mean the school has returned only 5,237 students as being eligible for us to pay the loans." He attributed the discrepancy to LAUTECH's failure to upload an additional 15,000 students to the system, a point confirmed by the university upon NELFUND's inquiry.

NELFUND has since engaged with LAUTECH to rectify the oversight and ensure all eligible students are correctly documented. Sawyerr expressed the importance of maintaining trust and confidence among students, especially given past challenges they may have faced.

He reiterated that NELFUND disburses funds exclusively based on authenticated student rosters provided by the institutions, not on individual applications.

"This is a damaging report, and as I said, before the end of today you will see a rebuttal from the institution because we provided them with the facts. 5,237 only were approved by the school for us to pay, and that’s the process we’re in," Sawyerr added.

Sawyerr addressed concerns regarding transparency and student reimbursements, explaining that such situations often occur due to a time lag between the application, verification, and disbursement stages.

He detailed the process: "Students apply to us for these loans. We collate the students, we verify them, or we check to ensure that they are indeed eligible. We then send that finalized list to the school. The school checks that the students are there... The school then has to send back to us, electronically, the list that they confirm."

He acknowledged that some institutions might omit or remove students during their internal verification, but NELFUND proceeds with payments for those approved. Sawyerr noted that as the scheme is relatively new, initiated during a different academic calendar timing, initial applications sometimes coincided with impending payment deadlines for students.

"What then happens is that when a student applied and they have a deadline of the week after or two weeks later to either pay a registration fee to sit an exam or to get involved in academic classes, and the school says ‘Unless we see money, we are not going to allow you to commence,’ what then happens is that the students have to make the payment. When our payment to the institution arrives sometime after that, we’re now into what we now know as refund territory. The individual student or their family has paid, NELFUND has paid; the school is holding a double payment," he explained.

Sawyerr further noted that while institutions are expected to refund students in cases of overpayment, this is a new administrative task for many schools, requiring them to establish new processes.

"At that point, the institution is obliged to return what the student has paid to the student. Now, this is not something that they’ve been doing for the last 10 years, 15 years, let’s say. It’s brand new territory for the institution, so they’ve had to find and devise ways of doing this quickly. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing anything untoward. It simply means that they have to bring in a new administrative process to fit that. We are not empowered to do anything other than to encourage the institution to return the funds to the school," he stated.

He highlighted NELFUND's collaboration with oversight bodies like the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and the National Assembly to monitor disbursements and ensure accountability. These collaborations also aim to assist institutions in refining their refund procedures to minimize delays and alleviate financial pressure on students.

"But we’ve been working very closely with institutions. We’ve been working closely because they’re interested with the ICPC; they’re interested in tracing any monies that leave government coffers and go to either another government coffer or to an individual. So we’ve looked at this very closely, we work very closely with them. The National Assembly also have oversight functions; they’ve also been following this. There’s a lot of money that departs from NELFUND, and people want to know where it’s going," he shared.

On the sustainability of NELFUND, Sawyerr acknowledged that perceived delays are mainly due to coordination challenges, asserting that the system is becoming more stable as processes are refined.

"I’m happy you used the words ‘seems to be’ a backlog—remember I talked about the complexity: hundreds of institutions, different start times, thousands or millions of students applying at different days, different expectations. We have to crunch all of this and make sure that we’re trying to give the right people money at the right time. But you know, it can’t always be the right time because some people apply way too late. A lot of people didn’t believe this was real. Some institutions have not-so-efficient systems or administrative systems of capturing data. So it seems to be late, but in reality, there’s been a lot of learning that’s had to be gone on by the students, by us, by the institutions, so that we can get to a point of synchrony."

Regarding the ₦20,000 allowance, Sawyerr explained it was determined based on NELFUND's financial capacity, intended as a modest support for students' incidental costs like data and daily expenses, in addition to their covered tuition fees.

"20,000 Naira was the figure we looked at, we looked at what was affordable. We’ve taken the school fees off the table, and really, to be honest with you, given the environment that we’re in, this was a token to say, ‘Hey, look, this is something over and above your fees that we’ve already taken off the table.’ You can buy credit, you can do photocopying, you can buy data. So it’s something that just keeps them going so they don’t go to class with an empty stomach," Sawyerr concluded.