The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) is developing an online portal that will allow parents to check whether their children’s school fees have been paid through the student loan scheme, as part of efforts to prevent duplicate funding and improve accountability.
The fund’s Managing Director and Chief Executive, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this in Abuja, explaining that parents would be able to use their children’s matriculation numbers to confirm whether institutional fees had been settled or remained outstanding.
The proposed platform follows concerns that some students whose fees had been covered by NELFUND continued to collect money from their parents without disclosing that the payments had already been made through the loan scheme.
Sawyerr said the verification system was intended to improve transparency and help families establish the actual payment status of beneficiaries.
The planned portal comes alongside a digital wallet system NELFUND is piloting to ensure that approved tuition payments reach the institutions concerned rather than being transferred to students’ personal bank accounts.
Under the proposed arrangement, approved fees will be credited to a digital wallet linked to the beneficiary’s institution. Students will then authorise payments directly to their schools, while digital tokens will be restricted to designated institutions to prevent funds from being diverted.
NELFUND Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal, said the wallet-based payment system was undergoing pilot implementation. He added that more than 400,000 applications were in the system at the time of the briefing.
Meanwhile, NELFUND announced that it had disbursed N218.2 million to 3,575 students of the Federal College of Agriculture, Moor Plantation, Ibadan, Oyo State, and the Federal University of Education, Zaria, Kaduna State, to cover institutional fees for different academic sessions.
The Provost of the Ibadan institution, Prof. Jonathan Atungwu, said the college received N54.21 million for 360 students in four tranches between August 2025 and April 2026. The payments covered the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 academic sessions.
At the Federal University of Education, Zaria, Vice-Chancellor Prof. Yahaya Bunkure confirmed that the institution received N163.99 million in eight tranches between December 2025 and February 2026 to cover students’ registration fees for the 2025/2026 academic session.
The verification portal and digital wallet initiative are part of NELFUND’s efforts to strengthen the management of student loans, improve transparency in fee payments and reduce disputes associated with duplicate payments and refunds from institutions.
