State Universities will benefit from FG’s loan scheme, and 60,000 students have applied
During a press conference held in Abuja on Thursday, Akintunde Sawyerr, the managing director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, revealed that the website of the student loan fund had garnered more than 60,000 views since its launch.
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Only two federal universities and two federal polytechnics have not yet submitted their student lists, according to Sawyerr, who also pointed out that more than 90% of federal institutions have already done so.
Sawyerr added that during the following three weeks, students at public colleges will have access to the program.
The Access to Higher Education Act, 2023, was signed into law by President Bola Tinubu on June 12, 2023, allowing impoverished students to get interest-free loans for their academic endeavors at any Nigerian postsecondary institution.
According to Dele Alake, a member of the Presidential Strategy Team at the time, the action was taken in “fulfillment of one of his campaign promises to liberalize funding for education.”
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The Nigerian Education Loan Fund was also formed under the Act, commonly referred to as the Student Loan Law, to handle all loan requests, grants, disbursements, and recovery.
Despite the government’s initial announcement that the program would begin in September, there were multiple setbacks that resulted in an indefinite postponement at the beginning of March.
The Tinubu mandate to broaden the FG student loan program to include loans for vocational skills was cited by the Presidency as the reason for the delay.
On January 22, following a briefing by the NELFUND team, which included Dr. Yusuf Sununu, the Minister of State for Education, the President gave the Fund instructions to offer interest-free loans to Nigerian students who were interested in skill-development programs.
Tinubu noted that developing skills is just as important as earning undergraduate and graduate degrees, and he grounded his decision on the scheme’s need to accommodate people who might not wish to pursue a university education.
Furthermore, since launching the student loan application portal, the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, or NELFUND, has reported that it has received over 60,000 applications from students enrolled in federal government universities.
Nevertheless, 30,000 applications have been handled satisfactorily, according to NELFUND.
Additionally, according to NELFUND, 90% of federal universities have already uploaded their student data to their dashboards, with the remaining 10% still to do so.
In addition, the student loan agency announced that in three weeks it will open its site for the input of data from state-owned tertiary education.
In order to achieve this, it was requested that state-run institutions start sending in student data for further processing.
