Sawyer: NELFUND Provided N11 Billion Aid to 90,000 Students in Past Six Months

According to Dr. Akintunde Sawyer, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), the agency has disbursed N11 billion to 90,000 students within the past six months.

Sawyer announced this during an oversight visit by the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFUND, led by its chairman, Muntari Dandutse, yesterday in Abuja.

The NELFUND boss said the fees and stipends for over 90,000 students had been paid.

He said: “Three hundred students have been deemed to qualify for the loans. The gap between those that have qualified and those in benefit of the loan is that we have to go through a rigorous process to ensure we are not giving money to the wrong people.”

Sawyer explained that from the N96 billion earmarked for students’ loans, about N11 billion had been disbursed to the 90,000 students across the country.

He said: “That figure, N96 billion, is the loan committed to; it’s not the disbursed figure. We have disbursed just below N11 billion. The rest of it is going to be disbursed over the next few weeks to students until it gets to that N96 billion.”

Sawyer said the loan was in two categories: the Institutional Loan and the Upkeep Loan, adding that students do not have to apply for either loan.

“They don’t have to apply for either loan. However, they can only apply for the upkeep loan if they have applied for the institutional loan and received it.

“The institutional loan is the primary loan that allows them to access education. Once they have accessed that loan and they get that, they can also get the upkeep, but they can’t get the upkeep on its own because upkeep is tied to going to school,” he said.

The NELFUND boss stressed that the agency was determined to change the lives of students through the Renewed Hope mandate of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.

He added that 12 per cent of students from the Northcentral had benefited from the facility.

“In the Northeast, 26 per cent have benefited; in the Northwest, 38 per cent; in the Southeast, about 10 per cent; in the Southsouth, about four per cent, and in the Southwest, 13 per cent.

“These numbers have doubled since we’ve been there. So, we are monitoring it month by month,” Sawyer said.

On the loan repayment modalities, the director general explained that the programme was not established for profit-making but for the long-term gains of the beneficiaries.

“This is a profit-making activity for the nation (the beneficiaries). Therefore, we have tried to put in soft terms so that people will not be discouraged from going to school,” he said.

Sawyer added that the repayment was for two years after the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), if they have a job.

“The onus is on the employer to pay on their behalf or to take money from their salaries,” he said.

Dandutse had said the committee was at NELFUND’s headquarters to assess the progress it had made.

“We are here to see the value of what NELFUND has done. It took off only six months ago. The fact is that what they have done is very commendable. Over 90,000 students have access to the loan, in spite of the challenges and constraints. This is a very significant development in terms of success of education in Nigeria.

“Going forward, a lot of resources will be invested and each of the geo-political zones will have a liaison office where they will coordinate the universities, the polytechnics and the federal colleges of education so that their workers will enhance efficiency of this purpose,” he said.

The committee also visited the headquarters of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) at Bwari in Abuja.