Fears spike will affect student loans
Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has raised concerns that 10 tertiary institutions have hiked their institutional fees by 900 per cent for the current academic session.
Particularly, the agency raised the alarm that the institutions increased tuition fees from N200,000 to N2 million. The Executive Director, Operations, at the Fund, Mustapha Iyal, stated this during the agency’s media engagement in Abuja yesterday.
He, however, clarified that the Fund’s system promptly flagged the applications, and they were denied. He, however, did not reveal the names of the institutions involved.
The Executive Director questioned the rationale for the astronomical increase, knowing that such funds would eventually be repaid by the students. He said: “We have a structure on how we confirm (institutional) fees. I’ll give you an example. Just yesterday (Wednesday), we stopped some applications from going through because we checked the fees that we had last year for certain institutions. Some had like N200,000 (last year), but this year, they have like N2 million. He said the development could undermine the student loan scheme and place undue financial strain on students and their families.
MEANWHILE, NELFUND has announced the disbursement of over ₦73.2 billion to 396,000 students across the country under the Federal Government’s student loan programme.
The Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this during a media briefing in Abuja yesterday. Sawyerr explained that the disbursed amount comprised ₦38.3 billion for tuition fees and ₦34.9 billion for upkeep allowances. He noted that students from 206 tertiary institutions across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) had so far benefited from the scheme.
Sawyerr attributed the success of the fund to the leadership and political will of President Bola Tinubu, whose Renewed Hope Agenda inspired the establishment of NELFUND.
The NELFUND boss highlighted the fund’s progress, including the deployment of a fully digital and transparent loan portal, expansion of the framework to include students in technical and vocational training institutions, and rapid response to issues around digital wallets and banking limitations.
