The Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Mr. Akintunde Sawyerr, has defended the Fund’s decision to withhold the payment of institutional fees for newly admitted students until they complete their registration and matriculation.
Speaking in Abuja during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Sawyerr said the measure was necessary to safeguard public funds from potential large-scale losses.
“If we pay fees for students who have not registered or matriculated, what happens if they change their minds and decide not to proceed?” he asked. “We cannot simply release money because someone has been offered admission.”
He warned that premature disbursement could amount to disbursing against intention, a practice he described as financially risky for the government.
“We could end up paying billions of naira only to discover that some students have dropped out, secured admission abroad, switched institutions or abandoned their initial programmes,” he cautioned.
Sawyerr also pointed to an ongoing bottleneck in the admission-to-loan process, noting that students are required to provide their matriculation number to access the loan, even though many institutions do not issue one until school fees have been paid.
To address this, he said NELFUND is working with tertiary institutions on a temporary arrangement that would allow genuine freshers to use their Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) registration numbers as substitutes pending full matriculation.
“There are many genuine students who have completed their registration, but they can’t matriculate until they pay. We are working with the schools to see how they can use their JAMB registration numbers as substitutes,” he explained.
Reflecting on NELFUND’s evolution, Sawyerr said the agency had to overcome several legal and structural challenges before it could fully commence operations. He noted that the initial law establishing the Fund, signed on June 12, 2023, contained critical shortcomings that would have excluded thousands of intending beneficiaries.
Among the flaws, he said, were a mandatory guarantor requirement and an income threshold that disqualified households earning above N500,000 per annum.
“N500,000 a year is a very small amount for a household. It meant countless students would automatically be ineligible,” he said. “The guarantor requirement would also force students into uncomfortable positions—begging or paying someone to stand in for them.”
He added that the initial law made no provision for students’ living expenses, covering only tuition.
These gaps, he said, prompted President Bola Tinubu to initiate the repeal of the 2023 Act, leading to the drafting and eventual passage of a new Education Loan Act, launched in May 2024.
Sawyerr stated that since the rollout, the Fund has recorded strong demand without experiencing platform downtime.
“From May 2024 until now, not for a single day has the site crashed. We have received applications steadily, processed them and paid both students and institutions from what has been allocated to us.”
He expressed appreciation to President Tinubu for what he described as visionary leadership, noting that NELFUND has already become a lifeline for thousands of Nigerian students who might otherwise have abandoned their educational dreams.
