Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has clarified why the Fund cannot release tuition fees for newly admitted students until they complete their registration and matriculation.
Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, Sawyerr warned that paying fees for students who have not formally enrolled could expose the organisation to major financial losses.
“If we pay fees for students that have not entered, what if they changed their minds and they don’t go to the schools anymore?” he asked.
“We cannot just say because somebody has been admitted to a school, we will pay the fees before registering or matriculating.”
He stressed that such early disbursement would amount to “disbursing against intention,” a move he said could cost the government billions.
“If we carry on like that, we could end up disbursing billions of naira, only to find out that they have dropped out, got admission to a school outside the country, gone to another school, or not doing that course again,” he cautioned.
Sawyerr also pointed to challenges within the school admission system. Students must obtain a matriculation number before they can access the loan—yet many institutions only issue those numbers after matriculation, which itself requires fee payment.
“There are many genuine students who have applied and they need matriculation number to be able to process their fees,” he explained.
“The challenge is that they cannot get their matriculation number until they have matriculated and they cannot matriculate until they have paid. We are trying to work with the schools to see how those who have registered can use their JAMB registration number as a substitute.”
Looking back on the Fund’s evolution, the NELFUND chief said the organisation had to tackle several structural issues in the initial law that created it on June 12, 2023. These included the requirement for guarantors and an income threshold that excluded many families.
“One of the flaws was the requirement for a guarantor, which we saw as a difficult position to put students in. If you need a guarantor, it means that you need to go out and plead with somebody or pay somebody,” he said.
He added that the former provision limiting eligibility to households earning below N500,000 annually was unrealistic.
“We all know that N500,000 is a very small amount of money for a household over a whole year. So, it meant that many people would not be able to apply for the loan.”
Another oversight, he noted, was that the old law did not include stipends for students’ upkeep, focusing only on tuition payment.
These challenges prompted President Bola Tinubu to initiate a repeal and replacement of the earlier Act, resulting in a new Education Loan Act, which took effect in May 2024.
“From May 2024 when we started and now, we are delighted that not for a single day has the site crashed, even as we received unanticipated high demand,” Sawyerr said.
“We have been able to receive applications on a steady basis, process them, pay students and their institutions from what have been allocated to us.”
He expressed appreciation to President Tinubu for what he described as visionary leadership, noting that NELFUND has already become a vital support system for thousands of students who might otherwise have dropped out of school.
NAN
