The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has rejected allegations of financial mismanagement in the student loan scheme, saying its electronic disbursement system makes every transaction traceable from the source of funds to the final beneficiary.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, said this on Monday during an interview with ARISE NEWS while responding to concerns over the transparency and accountability of the agency’s operations.
Sawyerr said the government’s financial support for the scheme was necessary to provide the capital required for students to access loans, insisting that there was no evidence of funds being misappropriated by the agency.
“There is no evidence of any financial misappropriation by NELFUND. The reality of it is that in order for people to take a loan, there has to be some capital they can draw on,” he said.
He explained that NELFUND does not handle disbursements through an opaque cash-based system, noting that payments are made electronically to institutions and students.
According to him, funds meant to cover institutional charges are transferred directly to the accounts of beneficiary institutions, while upkeep allowances go directly to the bank accounts of students.
Sawyerr cited the University of Ibadan as an example, saying NELFUND recently transferred more than N1 billion to the institution under the student loan programme.
“The University of Ibadan students, before NELFUND, probably had a very high dropout rate because they just didn’t have access to capital to go to school,” he said.
“Now, the President introduced NELFUND; we paid, I believe, over a billion naira to the University of Ibadan recently. And those funds are transferred directly to the institution. So, where is the opacity in that?”
He said the electronic nature of the transactions provided an audit trail that could be used to establish the movement of funds.
“The transfers of money are done electronically. It’s entirely traceable,” Sawyerr said.
“The money leaves the Central Bank of Nigeria and goes either to the institution, the University of Ibadan, or in the case of upkeep, goes directly to the students in their bank accounts.”
The NELFUND boss also questioned claims that the agency’s financial operations lacked transparency, saying such allegations should be examined against the evidence available on how the scheme operates.
“It sounds a little bit like mischief to me. But again, I’d need to interrogate this research that was done,” he said.
Beyond the management of funds, Sawyerr defended NELFUND’s beneficiary selection process, saying the agency’s electronic application system was designed to assess students using predetermined eligibility requirements rather than personal connections or identity.
He said applicants are required to provide details including their National Identification Number, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board registration information, admission or matriculation numbers and bank account details.
Sawyerr said the system was not designed to identify applicants by ethnicity, gender or their relationship with government officials.
“We receive applications electronically. The system doesn’t recognise whether you’re male, female, whether you’re Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Fulani, Ibibio, or Ogoja,” he said.
He also dismissed the suggestion that applicants need personal connections within NELFUND to benefit from the scheme.
“From our perspective, it’s completely agnostic as far as how people are chosen or concerned. It doesn’t care whether you’re friends with the Managing Director or in-laws with the Executive Director. It doesn’t care,” he said.
Sawyerr maintained that the loan scheme was structured around eligibility and electronic processing, with the aim of allowing qualified students to access financial support without influence or preferential treatment.
