• Fund’s portal firmly secured, says Sawyerr
The Managing Director of Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Mr. Akintunde Sawyerr, has said the fund is set to disburse another tranche of N92 billion to deserving students across public tertiary institutions.
He said the student loan scheme was established to serve public tertiary institutions to enable the country make the most of its limited resources.
The NELFUND boss hinted that the scheme could be expanded to accommodate private institutions in the future.
Sawyerr spoke yesterday on an Arise TV programme where he discussed repayment clauses, the application process, and fee disbursement of the loan scheme.
He said NELFUND had paid N10 billion to 90,970 people, committing to disbursing N92 billion ahead of sessions to begin in a few weeks.
The managing director said his meetings with the Presidency centred on the prospects of making the student loan scheme available to all institutions.
He explained that the loan was established primarily to assist most vulnerable students who cannot afford to pay for tertiary education.
“We’re more likely to find these in public institutions where fees are low. We’re dealing with public funds. The funds are limited.
“When I spoke with the President, he expressed his desire that the fund should be available to all Nigerians. But you have to manage funds and start somewhere. I do not doubt that at some point in the future, it will be expanded.
“The fee range we pay out goes from about N46,000 to N150,000, depending on the course. These are the amounts of money stopping people from progressing into tertiary institutions. In private institutions, it will probably run into millions.
“We’re focused on trying to help as many as possible, rather than a few. We have to manage funds,” Sawyerr said.
NELFUND said 10 per cent of an applicant’s earning is to be deducted by an employer and remitted until the loan is fully refunded.
Sawyerr said 373,000 students had registered on the fund’s portal and 284,000 sought the loan, with more applications from the North.
“We noticed that a good number of the people from the South study in the North and have applied. There’s a sort of geographical disparity but not by state of origin. There seems to be a lesser level of enthusiasm in the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Southsouth.
“There are different cultural attitudes to taking loans. There is no boycotting in this scheme. There might be trust issues but we’re addressing that,” he added.
Asked about glitches and the complexity of the application process, Sawyerr said NELFUND disallowed human interface to avoid graft.
“We’re using an electronic process and specific identifiers that make it unique to the individual with the use of JAMB numbers, NIN, BVN, and matriculation numbers. The individual goes online to provide us with that information.
“We match it with what the institution has provided us and know that we are dealing with an individual. It’s an IT-based system. They’re bound to have challenges but it’s a generally simple portal to engage with. We have support staff that help us cut through issues that arise.
“This is a public fund. We are not in a hurry to disburse the fund to the wrong people. We’re trying to ensure we are not hacked or defrauded.
“We recognise that anywhere you have a system like this, you can have people attacking the site, wanting to insert ghost students, and doing identity hijacking. We are very careful to put in place processes that ensure we don’t pay people who sneak into our database,” he said.
